Beyond the realms of faith and religion, we explore the intersection of politics and spirituality in today’s episode. The Sekulow hosts engage with influential experts like Rick Grinnell and Mike Pompeo to unpack recent political developments and their larger societal implications. As America witnesses a resurgence in Christian media and music, signaled by recent broadcasts like American Idol’s Easter special, we question if we’re experiencing a faith revival. In a surprising turn, we also delve into breaking news from Iran and the Trump administration’s reaction to the deep-state efforts against Pete Hegseth amid ongoing DC political drama. This episode
SPEAKER 07 :
After meeting with the Pope yesterday, J.D. Vance responds to his passing.
SPEAKER 02 :
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. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Sekulow. Hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Will Haines is joining me in studio. We’ve got a packed show later on. Rick Grinnell and Mike Pompeo will be joining us to discuss some of the latest news coming out of Washington, D.C., as well as some of those negotiations still happening in Iran. But, of course, we’re going to open the show with what everyone’s talking about, is that it’s the passing of the Pope. The Pope has died today on Easter Monday, aged 88 years old. We have seen the Pope just yesterday giving an Easter address and meeting with Vice President Vance. So, of course, we knew he had a lot of health problems, had a lot of health struggles over the last few months. It did seem like things were maybe… Getting better for Pope Francis. But unfortunately, he passes. I’d say, you know, being the pope, be able to do the Easter address just a few hours before you pass is pretty phenomenal. And, you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of controversy with this pope over the last few years. And I think we’re going to talk about that coming up in the next segment of what the future of the Catholic Church looks like. looks like and how it plays on the world stage versus how it plays in America as we have seen a rise in American conservatives joining the Catholic Church. And we do have a statement from Vice President Vance, who, again, just met with him yesterday, met with the Pope yesterday at the Vatican, was there. J.D. Vance, a pretty recent convert to Catholicism, I believe.
SPEAKER 03 :
So it’s interesting timing for sure. That’s right. So Vice President Vance put out on X, I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him. I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days of COVID. It was really quite beautiful. May God rest his soul. And then a link to that homily by Pope Francis from back in 2020.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. So that is from J.D. Vance, obviously coming out again. The breaking news this morning, the passing of the pope. It’s something that happens. It’s happened a few times in our lifetime. I have more recently as they’ve gone a little bit older and picking who the popes are going to be. So maybe this time we will see an adjustment. Who knows? There’s a whole process. And a lot of you saw the Conclave movie. Everyone’s kind of followed the journey of what it looks like to be the next pope. And right now they’re starting the nine days of mourning. I’m not all that familiar with all the traditions. So I’m not going to claim to sit here and be an expert in this. But I love your thoughts. I love your thoughts on where the Catholic Church is going right now. You know, you have, as you said, a resurgence in American conservatism going towards Catholicism. And I thought it was kind of strange, I’ll be honest. But, you know, it is what’s happening right now. And just a turn to faith that’s happening in general. You may have seen yesterday on ABC. disney owned they did a three-hour edition of american idol all in tribute to easter sunday using christian and gospel songs featuring all their hosts and a lot of the i mean there’s been more christian songs probably on this season of american idol than i’ve ever seen before i mean big uh big moment so i’d love to get your thoughts on that are we seeing that sort of revival in the land to quote carmen happening once again 1-800 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard on the air today. Get your comments in. 1-800-684-3110. We did see this Pope certainly push a more liberal, I guess you’d say, agenda over the last handful of years. Maybe not as much as people portrayed, but there were moments certainly where he was not as traditional Catholic as a lot of my friends who are Catholics would have hoped.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. And we’ll get into this in the next segment some as well. But there was there was many things that this pope did that kind of broke with even some would say with Catholic doctrine in some of the statements and proclamations that he made and the way that he jousted with the leadership of the United States, calling out specifically what he saw was unfair treatment of migrants. weighing into world political issues more than what we had seen even in our lifetime. But we’ll get into some of that. And also, how will the Catholic Church kind of take this going forward? Is the way Americans are converting, will that have any bearing on who they choose as their next pope?
SPEAKER 07 :
All right, we’ll talk about it when we get back. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Give me a call. Phone lines are open for you. Welcome back to Secula. We are going to be taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. For those just joining us right now to restate what’s going on, obviously the breaking news this morning was that Pope Francis has passed away and a lot of the Catholic churches in mourning, but also it comes on the heels, legitimately, a few hours ago. where Vice President Vance was meeting with this Pope to discuss some of the, obviously to celebrate the Easter holiday, Resurrection Day, but also to talk about some of the ways the Catholic Church has weighed in on the politics of the time. Maybe more so than ever, this Pope will be remembered as someone who was maybe more controversial for conservatives, It was a little more left-leaning. And will we see now the Catholic Church try to adjust who they pick? Because we did have that. We had this sort of rise happening right now in the state of the church, if you will. One of our producers just put this on my desk. This is a new research. This is a belief in Jesus’ rise fueled by younger adults. And I’m seeing that. I’m pretty heavily involved now in the Christian media side, the Christian music industry. And with that, I’m seeing such a turn back to faith. This feels like a really important time. In America, at least, and in the UK. We’re seeing both of that too. In Europe, it’s happening, but in the UK, I can tell you, it is stronger than I’ve seen it in my lifetime of this sort of true evangelicalism that’s coming out of the streets of London. in a way that has not happened in a very long time because they have been a place where the church though exists has been on the decline and the state-run church has been of issues and then of course you have in the catholic side a rise in sort of traditional catholic um leaning more towards conservative republicans if you will that is something that is changing too because we always kind of associated catholicism over the last maybe decade or maybe two decades as more of a liberal leaning churches or churches that were kind of a bit, you know, full up with tradition, but not necessarily with spirit, if you will, in terms of the way they interacted with politics.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, in this study, you mentioned the Barna study, which is the state of the church 2025. This is kind of a overview of all of Christendom, if you will. But this is showing that their study compared to an earlier study shows that 66% of all US adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today. And that’s a 12% increase since their study in 2021. So that’s a significant shift. But then when you also look specifically at the Catholic Church, as you were mentioning, this just came out a few days ago, the National Catholic Register showed that year-over-year reporting, so just the 2023 to 2024 year versus 2024 to 2025, There are increases anywhere from 30% to 70%, depending on the diocese that they’re talking about, the local areas and how it’s broken up, and 30% to 70% in new converts. And I think this has decreased. to go back a little bit as we talk about what comes next for the leadership of the Catholic Church at the Vatican with the new Pope and what we’ve seen here in the United States. We have seen like these numbers, 30 to 70% new converts, younger Americans, leaning right center right to more full-on conservative uh that are joining the church in mass and a lot of that they’re pointing to push back on some of the the lax non-structured things that we’ve seen a lot of non-denominational churches um or even some mainline denominations that have kind of gotten away from a lot of the tradition and structure but we’re seeing this happen at a time where the church globally the catholic church globally was seemingly based off the leadership going further left. And then you see Americans here at home that are more conservative, family value based individuals that are not only joining. but being very vocal and evangelistic about their conversion to Catholicism and why that they believe this is a good choice and reaching out and imploring others to come to mass with them in a way that I’ve never seen in my lifetime of people trying to not just become Catholic or be socially Catholic, but trying to get people to join them in this. and you also think about what happened under the biden administration you know president biden a catholic president but we saw the use of the fbi that was targeting this type of catholic a new young energetic catholic that was liked the tradition that they called them the radical traditional catholics and they were wanting to send spies in and wanting to monitor them and considered them a domestic terror threat leading up to an election. And that brings to mind here that when you see some sort of revival, and regardless of your thoughts on various denominations or the Catholic Church, when you see people moving towards something passionately, And the government decides, and we talk a lot about the First Amendment and the freedom of religion here at the ACLJ. But when you see the government decide, you know what? That’s too conservative for me. I don’t like that in the church. We’re going to try and spy on them and consider them a terror threat and monitor them. That one thing, if it tells you anything, that if the government feels that way, maybe something good is happening in the faith movement there. But also it makes you wonder, if they thought they were that dangerous, does the Vatican… Respond to the movement in the United States and in the UK and say, you know what? We went with someone who was very more left. Do we kind of try and moderate that and go back center to really moderate?
SPEAKER 07 :
show what the church is doing right now it’s looking towards the future if you look at i would say that the sort of gen xers and the millennials and look my generation included a lot of them grew up in the church and got pushed away didn’t care for it anymore didn’t raise their children on it so you have that generation of sort of the younger millennials who have rejected it now you have a massive response from Gen Alpha and from Gen Z that are looking for something, something to hold on to, something real, something that’s going on inside of their lives instead of just the vapid world of social media and everything they’ve been preached to, honestly, from the media for the last 15 years, pretty much their entire lives. And I’m seeing that. I’m seeing it. So does the church say, hey, We are going to actually now try to appeal to that age group, to an age group that is up and coming. I’m not talking about us, Will. I’m talking about the generation below us. I’m talking about people that are in high school right now or maybe their early years of college. Because I’m seeing it. I’m seeing it happen. I’m seeing it happen for Christian music. I’m seeing it happen for Catholicism. There is a moment of time happening right now. And you got to get your head out of the sand if you think all of this is dead. I was saying that last night. If you’re watching that three-hour American Idol special and you tell me that there’s no Christian music happening anymore… Sorry, I’ve been to three arena shows with 20,000 people packed into arena worshiping. It’s happening. It’s in front of your eyes. It’s under your nose. Take a look around what’s going on. And most of the people there, teenagers. Okay, once again, much like when we grew up, teenagers. So how do you avoid the pitfalls of what happened before? I think there’s ways you can do that. And I think some of it is going to be, like you said, appealing to this audience that they want to see. Now, I don’t know how that exists in Rome. I don’t know how it exists at the Vatican. Because that’s a totally different thing than evangelical Christianity in the way that traditional… You know, pops and booms, Jesus movements that have happened over the years occur because this is a lot of politicking, as we know, in terms of who gets to be the pope, how the pope gets to run. And certainly, like I said, I’m not a specialist in this. I am not a Catholic. I got my friends who are Catholics. A lot of them were not thrilled with this pope in general. A lot of them couldn’t publicly say it. which was which is an odd thing also you have that weird sort of balance between uh god and the pope and and i don’t want to get into theological discussions about that but you know that it’s very different uh but when we see these sort of revival moments happening look i think there’s a lot of great passionate uh christians in the catholic church uh who are ready for something like you said they love the tradition they love the structure but want to get back to it let’s go take a call real quick eric is calling and hopefully this gets you to call into 1-800-684-3110 Eric, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 05 :
So I think it’s a good opportunity for us to get more, as Christians, to get more media going. I mean, we need more YouTubers. We need more of an influence out there, and there’s never been a better time. I’m trying to do kind of a residency, a Christian film residency, where, you know, media missionaries. I went to The Chosen last night on Easter. Wow, man, there was a packed theater watching something different. Like, it used to be, you know, always action movies and… And then you’d sprinkle in this woke agenda. And last night, it was like our team did something.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, Eric. And they did it. It was fun. Yeah, I mean, I went to the premiere for The King of Kings, which is the new Jesus animated film that is out right now through Angel Studios. Beautiful movie. Incredibly well done. And again, packed house. I think it finished number two behind Minecraft movie. So, I mean, you’re seeing that big impact happen right now. And that’s what we’ve done here at the ACLJ, too. You know, we’ve done, I always say, you got to go to the law, you got to go to the hearts and minds. And we’ve done both. We kind of live in two worlds, and those worlds both have to coexist. You have to make sure you’re there legally, you’re there in the courtroom for the teams that need it the most, for the people that need it in the moment, especially the churches and people who need their true religious freedom protected. Then you got to make sure you’re winning hearts and minds. That’s how we do that with this show, with some of the movies we put out, the documentaries, the specials. It’s all snowballing. It’s all happening. And look, do I think the producers there in American Idol are like, we’re going to win everyone over for Jesus? Probably not. But what they are seeing is a massive opportunity and huge audience appeal. Why? Because it’s happening right now. And it’s happening in unique ways. It’s Brandon Lake, but it’s Jelly Roll. It’s that’s what’s happening right now. 1-800-684-3110 because Christians have learned their lesson and now are more accepting and less sticklers than they used to be in terms of who we’re willing to talk to and more forgiving than they used to be, which I think is part of the Bible. Pretty good. Pretty good part of it. A little bit of forgiveness. We’ll be right back with more on Seculo. Welcome back to Secular. We do have some phone lines open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I am reading through a lot of your comments right now. A lot of people talking about how they celebrated Resurrection Day yesterday. But look, there’s a comment right now that said, hey, it’s very rainy here in East Africa today. I just want you to understand that. When we are talking about the worldwide reach of this show and this organization, This is where the world has changed. Sure. It’s great to be on terrestrial radio and still be able to exist. Tune into your AM station, your FM station. We’re broadcasting. They’re still great in your local markets. It’s great to be available on things like the Salem news channel. It’s great to be available on TBN once a week, but by able to be able to use free new media, we are able to reach all over the world and we are reaching all over the world. It’s amazing. So remember, when you’re talking about your American values, your American Christian values, if you will, it can reach all over the world because of broadcasts like this. This is why we have to be in the courtroom, but we also have to be here. We have to be broadcasting every day because it’s so important on a worldwide scale. there’s so much happening including obviously we’ve talked about what’s going on in congo and the christians that are under attack there and around the globe we are fighting we’re fighting there’s a lot of imprisoned christians still overseas uh they’re being persecuted around the globe and we have to have your support to to help them because we don’t take obviously any sort of uh you know money from these clients these are people who are being tortured for their faith And we’re engaging right now with Congress to help defend Christians who are facing that unthinkable reality. We are working really diligently to mobilize all of our offices around the world. And I’m so happy that I get to see these comments come in, because it gives me a good reminder of how far of a reach that our broadcast gets to. When you see 470,000 people on YouTube, That number sometimes can get a little blurry on what it means, but then you’re able to realize, oh, we can reach around the globe and spread this message. It’s really amazing. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Will, we wanted to adjust the topic a little bit. Obviously, we’re talking about the passing of Pope Francis, but we did want to move on because a little bit in the world of American politics, there has been some shakeups.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right, and over the weekend, which many people during the Easter weekend aren’t necessarily paying attention to the news as much, maybe spending time with family, going to Good Friday services and Easter services. Two nights of WrestleMania. Trying to tune that out, or two nights of WrestleMania for you, Logan.
SPEAKER 07 :
Some of us did all of those things.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a lot. And that means you probably didn’t have time to look at what some of the D.C. class was writing. I was way too focused on John Cena. So there was quite a few articles that were all coming out at the same time and that there was articles in Politico saying that there was so much chaos. at the Department of Defense that there’s no way that Pete Hegseth survives this. There was articles where some of the people that were fired for leaking were trying to come out and saying, you’ve defamed us. We didn’t leak anything. This is about something else because we stood up to you. And there’s all these articles all hitting at the same time. It felt so coordinated over a holiday weekend that they’re flooding the media with attack pieces against Pete Hegseth. And then you have today the White House coming out and saying that they back Pete Hegseth and says the entire Pentagon is resisting him. And this whole story to me just feels very much like the first Trump term. When you put someone in at an entrenched bureaucracy, an entrenched federal agency, and they want to change things. They want to make it better. This is, remember, the Pentagon that hasn’t passed an audit yet. in seven years, and they can’t account for where all this money goes. And it’s one of the biggest budget items in the government. And is it any wonder that all of a sudden, when they are trying to make real reforms, that they’re going after the Secretary of Defense, the person chosen by President Trump to lead these reforms? But one other thing, too, that can’t be lost on this, because we’re going to talk more about this with Rick Grinnell, what he sees, how it compares to some of the attacks on cabinet members under the first Trump term. But we have a unique opportunity right now to see real reforms at the Department of Defense. And I just want to bring up what we discovered in our FOIA when they were training people at Fort Bragg that pro-life groups were terrorists. There was a slide that specifically said that. terrorist groups and was listing pro-life groups like operation rescue national right to life specifically saying if you’re watching on the screen this is the actual slide we didn’t just uh right decide to make this this this is the slide they were showing to your american military it And we got this from our FOIA, the actual deck that was being presented. A Freedom of Information Act request. That’s right. I tried to spell everything out. And so it even talks about people that are sidewalk counselors or crisis centers, something we’re defending right now in Massachusetts through our Choice Begins Here campaign, as well as the lawsuit to try to shut down the government funding of these ads that the government’s running saying don’t trust crisis pregnancy centers or pregnancy resource centers. But all this goes because we found this out and then we started to get information from the FOIA and we see that there was a concerted effort, it feels like, within the Department of Defense to make this go away. And they said, we admit we made a mistake. The mistake was the top of that slide said terrorist groups. It wasn’t a mistake to have them in there. It wasn’t a mistake to talk about these groups in the context of terrorism awareness training. But just the slide heading shouldn’t have said terrorist groups. But then it goes on because as you read this 100-page investigation report, we find out that the people that were interviewed on behalf of this said, no, they were hostile towards these groups. They didn’t like them. They were telling you, be aware of these groups. And so that apology and saying that there was a mistake wasn’t really an apology at all in that more than almost 10,000 people that we know of had been trained on this and this wasn’t just a brand new training this had been going on for years so that type of stuff is still happening at the department of defense and you need someone like pete hegseth there that we are drafting a letter right now to go directly to him not just the low-level bureaucrats not just the people that are entrenched that want to train our soldiers that operation rescue and pro-life groups are terrorists and you got to watch out for them to our military So we got to go to the top. And is it any wonder that you know that would be a friendly voice at the top of the Department of Defense wanting to root out this kind of bad actor bias calling pro-life Americans terrorists? When you have someone at the top that would be receptive to this, of course, you’re going to see the sharks circling and try to attack because it’s not just this. It’s every issue of corruption and malfeasance in the Department of Defense.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hopefully, the Trump administration is a little bit different, not listening to the media, not listening to their people who are pushing back on them to this point where they’ll get bullied into making a decision that they don’t want to make. We’ll see what happens. Politics can be dirty. Washington, D.C. can be very dirty. But maybe… Maybe you’ll actually have someone stick up for him. We’ll see. But we’re going to try to help in that. Hey, I want to throw up that QR code right now. We are only a few days away from the end of our life and Liberty Drive. It only lasts through the month of April. And I’m going to ask you right now to go to ACLJ.org as we head into the second half hour of the show. And some of you lose us. So this may be where you end. If this is where you lose us, I’m going to ask you to go right now to ACLJ.org or scan the QR code that you see on your screen. You have heard about what we are doing right now. We are fighting to free imprisoned and persecuted Christians around the globe. We need your help to support them. Sadly, so many Christians were not able to celebrate Easter yesterday. They were imprisoned or they lost their lives. But with the ACLJ, we’re able to help out and we’re engaging right now with Congress to defend Christians facing unthinkable persecution. The Congo, we’re mobilizing our offices around the globe to defend Christians from Pakistan Supreme Court to the halls of the UN. And we’re engaged in battles for Christians coast to coast in America, including those who are having their churches and their street preaching shut down. We need your help right now. Go to ACLJ.org or scan the QR code you see on the screen. Donations are doubled just for the next few days.
SPEAKER 02 :
keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to Sekulow. Second half hour is going to be jam-packed. We’re going to take as many calls as we can in this segment. If any of you call in at 1-800-684-3110. Because joining us next, Rick Grinnell, followed by Mike Pompeo. So it’s going to be a packed second half hour of the broadcast. Of course, we are talking about a few different topics. One of which is, of course, the passing of Pope Francis. Now this comes also on the heels of… You may have seen what happened at Coachella, where there was a massive Coachella music festival. In California, there was a massive display against Israel that happened on the stage at Coachella. You have some of the owners of Coachella who have called this inappropriate. They had nothing to do with it. It’s just the person running the graphics for that band specifically put up. These messages that were not just, hey, ceasefire. It was profanities targeted specifically at Israel, Israeli citizens. And it’s really horrifying when you look at the pictures from it, especially over Easter weekend, especially over Passover, when all of this is on the top of the mind of historically how things have gone down. So I want to make sure that we didn’t do that because look, even this Pope, look, a lot of people had issues with the Pope who just passed. I mean, one of the last things he did was call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Of course, a lot of us, you know, I’m looking at the sign right now from Coachella that said blank Israel, free Palestine. So you can fill in the blank yourself there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and when you think about how one disgusting this is, but on top of that, that the October 7th attack, Attacked a music festival.
SPEAKER 07 :
Very similar.
SPEAKER 03 :
Very similar to Coachella in the fact that there’s no solidarity between people that just want to go and enjoy music. We remember the attack on the Bataclan in France by ISIS, and the entire world was outraged about, and rightfully so, about a terrorist attack on people going to a concert venue, hearing music, relaxing, having a good time, and terrorists specifically targeted that. The difference here is that it was Israel and Jews that were killed, and so it’s okay for the world to not care. It’s okay for the world to blame the victim at a concert that was just attending a music festival. It’s shocking that we still see this.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I have no issue with a band telling you their political opinion. Most of the music I love, probably these are not conservatives, okay? I know people have gone after Green Day a lot in this because Green Day has become a very pro-Palestinian group, if you will, a very pro-Hamas group, sadly. Look, I used to go to their tours all the time. They were never friendly to George W. Bush. They were never friendly to American Idiot. They were never friendly to Ted Cruz. But you know what? That’s our own politics. I never really had as much of a problem with that. We’re complaining about how you feel politically about what’s happening in your country. You are not essentially calling for the eradication of a people group. or a uh you know supporting terrorism that’s a little different than saying i don’t like ted cruz and saying uh you know blank israel you know free palestine this is a different but they don’t understand that there is a difference there that that is what’s happening phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110 president trump did just make a statement by the way we’re talking about the pete hex with situation where there’s a lot of pushback on pete right now uh clearly there is a media angle that wants him out of power wants him out of his position president trump just responded at the easter egg roll that happened this morning i know it’s happening easter monday here you know standing next to the easter bunny you got to make these kind of statements and of course our friend sean spicer may or may not have been not this year but previous in his previous life uh the uh the easter bunny so let’s uh let’s hear not that you know what i mean the guy you okay moving on let’s go ahead let’s hear from president trump
SPEAKER 06 :
Here we go again. Just a waste of time. He is doing a great job. Because he’s doing a great job. Ask the Hooties how he’s doing. Ask the Hooties how much dysfunction he has. He’s doing a great job. Everybody’s happy with him. We have the highest recruitment numbers I think we’ve had in 28 years. No, he’s doing a great job. It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that’s what he’s doing. So you don’t always have friends when you do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
There you go, from President Trump. And we’re going to get Rick Grinnell’s take on this in the next segment. He’ll be joining us live, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 07 :
You won’t want to miss that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Correct. Maybe, though. You never know. I don’t know. Who knows? He can talk about a lot of things.
SPEAKER 07 :
He can talk about everything. Right. I mean, he is heading up the Kennedy Center. I assume they had a bunny. Give us a call if you want to be on the air. We’ll be right back. Go to ACLJ.org if you want to support the work. Rick’s coming up, and then Mike later on. Welcome back to Seculo. It’s Monday. We’re going to be joined right now by our friend Rick Grinnell, who is currently at the Kennedy Center, it looks like, also, chatting with us. Rick, it has been a pretty wild weekend. Obviously, a lot of people woke up to the news of the passing of the Pope, but there’s been the Easter egg roll this morning. Everyone had their Easter holiday, and… We’re celebrating going to church, Resurrection Day that was happening. But in that, there was a lot of noise from, of course, the left who are trying desperately, Will, it seems like, to push out one of President Trump’s cabinet members. Now, this happens, and look, in Washington, D.C., it can happen, and it can actually get done. It can happen where there’s enough pressure. I’m hoping and thinking that President Trump and this administration, a little bit different, they don’t maybe listen to the mainstream press as much as some of the others. But, Will, I’ll let you take it from here.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Rick, to me, this in some ways feels like something that would have happened at the beginning of the first Trump administration, where what we’ve seen is more coordination and better messaging in this second round to go into these bureaucracies and get things done. When you have a monolith like the Department of Defense with so many entrenched bureaucrats, and this is, once again, an agency, a department that can’t pass an audit, you are going to have people there that don’t like change and don’t like restructuring. And so to me, this entire media swarm that came out over a holiday weekend where you were seeing headlines on every D.C. type media outlet about how bad Pete Hegseth is, it just felt so coordinated and obvious that the goal here was people inside the bureaucracy, the deep state, if you will, trying to push him out because he actually wants accountability there.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, look, I think your point on the it feels exactly like the first term is exactly what I was thinking. This used to be a thing, right? The media would go after somebody and then there would be panic. And usually it’s they’re going after people that are effective. In Pete’s case, they’ve just they’ve never really let up. They just keep going after him. I know the feeling and it doesn’t matter. Honestly, President Trump doesn’t focus on that. He’s not reading The New York Times or The Washington Post. All of these newspapers, by the way, you know, they have paywalls. Raise your hand if you’re paying for them. I’m not paying for them. You can’t even click past it. And so I really don’t think that it matters much. Pete just needs to stay focused on doing his job. He’s doing a great job. The fact that he’s losing some staffers is irrelevant. Honestly, he there are so many people that want to work there that want to work for Pete. He’ll have a pick there. of people. And, you know, who knows why they’re being let go, but one was already kind of talking to the media and talking about, you know, inside information of chaos. And I think that’s so typical of what people say. So in Washington, D.C., where I am now, I’m not always here. I don’t always love being here. But I am here, and it’s so typical of what this city does, which is try to talk about palace intrigue and gossip. But most of us know that we just ignore it. And I will say that most of our listeners are barely even hearing about it. It’s good to confront it, but it is really just irrelevant gossip in Washington.
SPEAKER 07 :
Rick, I couldn’t agree more. I found out about all this this morning because most of us are living our normal lives, having our Easter weekend. What are you saying about me?
SPEAKER 03 :
I didn’t have a normal life over the weekend, Logan, that I read things?
SPEAKER 07 :
I’m sorry. Well, you want to raise your hand if you’re one of the paywall people. That’s this guy over here. Okay, not me. That’s why, honestly, the ACLJ page, I’ve always said never gonna be behind a paywall as long as I have any sort of say in it because you actually want your message to get out there and eliminate these friction points. If you wanna be real influencers, by the way, this is just all of a sudden I have like a TED Talk right here. Eliminate these friction points that are happening on your websites and all over. This is for Christians, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, atheists, whatever. If you want your voice heard, we don’t live in a world where these paywalls are going to work and quit asking me for 59 cents a day to subscribe to your newspaper. Okay. That doesn’t give me a lot of feeling like I am putting some value in this content. I don’t know if this content is only worth 59 cents, then I am. Okay. I’m done now. I’m done now. But Rick, it’s true. And has Washington, D.C. You bring up, you don’t love being there all the time. And look, same reason why I planted ourselves here in Nashville. Does it feel like a different time, though? Does it feel like things are changing right now? I mean, you’re at the Kennedy Center. You are doing so much. Does it feel like there is any sort of breath of fresh air there? Or do you want to get out as quick as you can?
SPEAKER 01 :
I basically go from the Kennedy Center to the White House to my condo. And so all three of those are the access of positivity. So let me just say that as long as I stay within that little realm, I’m doing pretty well. Yes, I have a lot of friends here, a lot of friends in the administration. So this week, I’m going to go to dinner with Kash Patel, for instance. is one of those fun things that you get to do, because we’re both living in the same city. But I guarantee within the first five minutes of both of us getting together, he’s gonna say, isn’t the city terrible? We gotta get out. He wants to get back to Vegas at some point, you know, when his service is over. But this is not a city that I think most Americans would recognize if you came here and you worked as a part of it. It’s very swampy. Although Donald Trump is really changing the place. A lot of people, the budgets are being cut. A lot of people who are extra add-ons are getting cut. And that just saves American tax dollars. And one of the things that I try to stay focused on is the rest of America that’s working so hard having to pay for all of this. when you’re in Washington and you hear people being let go and people freaking out. I just had this issue on Facebook where a friend of mine was complaining about somebody from the Intel world that was getting cut. And I just had to share the budget of what today’s Intel community budget is compared to just like 10 years ago, and it’s almost doubled. So the growth in Washington, D.C. is out of control. I think people like Pete Hegseth are focused on trying to fix it. And of course, the typical reporters in Washington are going to scream and holler about those of us that are trying to fix the problems.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and I think to that point exactly, Rick, is that it very similarly what you’re doing at the Kennedy Center and what the Secretary of Defense is trying to do at the Department of Defense. And you can go on and on throughout these agencies or departments. But what what Secretary Hegseth has said the entire time is that he is standing up for the warfighter. And what it feels like, all these bureaucracies across the board, the only thing that they were focused on was not their core mission of what they were doing, but of spending money. How can we deplete our budget so that we can ask for more the next year from Congress, get that, and then spend that again? And so you get bloat, you get these budgets and personnel and everything doubling, tripling in some cases so rapidly. And it doesn’t add value to the American people, to the safety of America. Depending on what you’re looking at, the mission has creeped from the Kennedy Center, a place for the arts and celebrating that in America, to spending money. You talked about having no cash reserves there. You’re in financial dire straits at the Kennedy Center. I would say the same thing about the Pentagon if you can’t pass an audit. And so really these stories are linked because immediately people start going to the press and leaking why not because they’re concerned about the war fighters or the arts in dc but because they’re concerned about the budget and being able to spend more and and really give no benefit or return to the american people
SPEAKER 01 :
Look, I think one thing that our listeners know more than anything is in their community, the status quo has a lot of cheerleaders. And if you try to change the status quo, the first people who scream and holler are the ones that are benefiting from the status quo. We see that with tariffs. We see that with budget cuts. We see it all over Washington, D.C., But I think the public policy officials have to really ask themselves, is the status quo working for the majority of people? And I think the answer when it comes to the tariffs is no, it hasn’t been working. Young people are having a real hard time finding the means to buy a house. And if that is the case in America, the American dream is slipping away for a whole generation of people. And so we can’t do that. We’ve gotta be able to bring back manufacturing, bring back the idea that we are making things. When it comes to the status quo for Pete Hegseth, we can’t be spending as much money as we are on other people’s defense. and then watching a $36 trillion national debt for American Americans. I think the same thing at the Kennedy Center. When it comes to the status quo, you know, conservatives have never felt welcomed here. And we need to be able to have institutions like the Kennedy Center, which is the world’s greatest arts institute, have programming where everyone is welcomed and no one is booed because everyone is welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Rick, thank you so much for joining us today. Happy Easter. And we’ll talk to you again later on in the week. But we appreciate all you do for us here at the ACLJ and for our country at the same time. You’re very busy. And it’s not lost on us that you still take the time to talk to our audience, the members of the ACLJ, and those that really want to learn from the great work you do and the great insight that you have. So thank you, Rick. When we come back, we will be joined by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He will be giving us some updates on the Iran negotiations that are going on. But we have a lot that you can learn also at ACLJ.org. Go to ACLJ.org, read the articles, learn about the great work we do, and please donate during our Life and Liberty Drive at ACLJ.org. Every donation is doubled during this drive.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to Secula. We are joined by Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo, via phone today. Secretary Pompeo, second round of talks just happened between the United States and Iran. This happened over the weekend in Rome. The talks now move to what is being called expert level in the coming days. To you, is the deal looking more likely or less likely? And of course, look, I think we’ve all had that discussion here, whether we think this is a good thing or not. But is that progress?
SPEAKER 04 :
Thanks for having me on today. Look, I think having this conversation is useful. I hope we’ll get after it quickly. It sounds like that’s President Trump’s plan. We should get to the end of this before too long. Everyone knows precisely how this is going to play out in terms of where the relative risks are. The fact that the technical teams are now taking the field suggests to me that it is a pretty serious conversation. But second, once the technical begins, it gets really hard because you ultimately have to rock in the hard place. There’s no binary. There’s nothing other than either you can enrich uranium or you can’t. And no technical exports can kill the lily on that. And I suspect these will become not technical issues, but political issues that are going to be really hard to overcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mr. Secretary, you’ve written quite a bit in this past week, both for ACLJ.org, why we must prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions. So everyone can go read that up at ACLJ.org, but also in the free press, talking about what the United States should get in a potential nuclear agreement. And you kind of narrowed it down to three categories. I just wonder if you could kind of break that down for us briefly and why you think these are the key categories to getting to a deal if there is one to be had.
SPEAKER 04 :
I hope your audience will go to ACLJ.org and read the piece that I wrote.
SPEAKER 07 :
I think we may have temporarily lost Secretary Pompeo, but of course he was saying to go to ACLJ.org. We got you back. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
Great. Great. Look, I hope they’ll go to ACLJ.org and read the piece because it talks about the centrality of getting this right for America. The risk to the United States is very, very real. There are three things that have to be achieved in Indiana. First is the complete verifiable dismantlement of the entirety of their nuclear program. They may well be further along than we even know. And so you’ve got to get in there and see everything, which includes no notice anywhere inspections. And that’ll be a technical issue that gets discussed that I’m guessing will be really hard for the Iranians to concede to. Second, we shouldn’t forget October 7th was an Iranian-sponsored terror attack. And so the Iranians also have to push back against their proxies and not provide them with resources and funding. So that’d be the second important piece of it. And then thirdly, an Iranian regime that is still hostile to Israel and still hostile to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Oman and all the other nations in the region is a dangerous nation for the United States. Those are our friends, our commercial partners, our security partners, they’ve got to give up the stated intention of destroying each of these and taking over political control of each of those places. If those three things can be achieved, then goodness knows, sign me up for a deal.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mr. Secretary, we know that over the past four years especially, well, one, before that, we knew that maximum pressure worked. We knew that it deprived them of funds to be able to engage in more proxy attacks against our allies and partners in the region. And we also know that it limited their capacity to be able to invest in furthering this technology. And then we saw four years of just taking the reins off and letting Iran get the cash they needed to continue proxy wars, terror attacks, and increase this entire nuclear program. uh we we also know that especially for this president that war should be the last option that he’s not uh trigger happy wanting to jump into a war especially one that could have huge ramifications globally uh but is there is there a path where there’s either a deal or is it end up one way or the other we have to stop iran from getting this technology and this capability
SPEAKER 04 :
Look, I think there’s been a false choice presented from John Kerry onward, which was a deal or war. I don’t think those are the two mutually exclusive conclusions. I think in the event that the Iranians won’t agree to what we’ve described, you can go back to a model that looks like what we did for the first four years. which is to deny them the ability to advance their nuclear program, deny them the ability to pay Hezbollah soldiers or Hamas terrorists. Those are the things that present risk to the regime and over time can get you the outcome you’re looking for without a conflict. And there are also things short of what I’ll describe as total war. There are actually other things that the United States and our Israeli friends can do to set their program back. And so I don’t think we should just tell ourselves, gosh, if you can’t get a deal, we’re going to have World War III. I’ve heard that from the deep state for a long time. If we don’t surrender, there’ll be World War III. We took out General Soleimani. They said there’d be World War III. There wasn’t. I think it’s very likely the United States has the power to deter Iran from doing precisely that, even if we come after their program.
SPEAKER 07 :
As we wrap up, Secretary Pompeo, I think that was a very important point you just made about there not only being two options, war or negotiation, that sometimes you can figure out something in the middle, that sometimes things can get done. You brought up Soleimani, and those are obviously big things that you took care of and took a lot of risk on yourself for that. And we all know that and we all appreciate that. But Secretary Pompeo, I think that is something that our crowd and our audience, and look, I think most of the people listening don’t really see that third option that you’ve presented or maybe haven’t been thinking about it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, I think that’s right. I think it’s been ingrained war ordeal. I think we should remember that the deterrence model, the peace through strength model works, and President Trump is perfectly positioned to actually achieve that without going to war with Iran.
SPEAKER 07 :
All right, thank you so much for joining us. As always, Secretary Pompeo, we appreciate your specialty and really just your thoughts and guidance here. And we always appreciate that. I did want to take the next two and a half minutes as we end this show today on this Monday. Of course, for all of our Catholic listeners and friends, obviously they’re talking about the passing of the Pope. And we’re going to talk about what that means. I’m sure as it gets closer to a naming of a new Pope, there’s a whole process. You may ask why it matters. It does matter on a global scale. And the ACLJ is involved in the global church everywhere. And yesterday was obviously Easter Sunday, Resurrection Day. A lot of Christians around the world who gathered with their family and friends, including my family, but a lot of you were not able to. A lot of Christians are being persecuted for their faith, are not allowed to live openly with their faith. And that is happening in our country and around the world. Churches are trying to get shut down in places like California. Street preachers are getting shut down in Chicago. But we’re there at the ACLJ to defend them, as well as those who are losing their life for their faith all over the world. So remember when America, we may have some of these issues that come up. The ACLJ gets involved. A lot of times it’s handled civilly, through the law, through the media. But there are still areas in this world where you cannot openly live as a Christian. We’re there. So now I’m going to encourage you for the next minute and a half, to really consider supporting the work of the ACLJ as we are only nine days away from the end of our life and liberty drive. This is the last nine days to have your donations doubled. We are mobilizing our offices across the world, whether that’s Christians here, whether that’s for people in Pakistan, and whether that’s through the halls of the UN, we are engaged in these court cases also from coast to coast. Like I said, people are getting banned from doing their home Bible studies, people who are prohibited from praying, publicly we are defending preachers we’re getting criminal charges in chicago just for street preaching and really their first amendment rights being trampled on your donations though right now that is how we help these people we don’t ask them for any money and we want to be there for you when you need it as well your donations are literally helping us protect religious freedom around the globe so here we are Only nine days left to have your gift doubled, and we need your support. If you’re watching right now, you can scan the QR code on your screen. Just if you have an iPhone or Android, just open up your camera and scan it, or just go to aclj.org, very easy, or download the ACLJ app. Make your donation today, and you can become an ACLJ champion, someone that gives on a monthly basis, and your first donation will be doubled still during this life at Liberty Drive. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for supporting the work of the ACLJ. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.
