We turn our attention to international matters, examining the escalating tensions in Syria with the Druze community caught in crossfire. Our correspondent from Jerusalem provides an in-depth analysis of what these developments mean for US-Israel relations and how they might reshape the political discourse in the region. Additionally, our discussion touches on the controversial remarks seen in New York’s mayoral race, where issues of global Intifada and their implications on American soil are put under the microscope.
SPEAKER 09 :
We got breaking news this morning. President Trump responds publicly to MAGA with a scorching social media post.
SPEAKER 07 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome to Sekulow. We got some breaking news we’re going to cover here in just a moment. We just opened phone lines at 1-800-684-3110. My brother Jordan Sekulow is in studio with us today, as well as Will Haynes and Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem will be joining us a little bit later. There’s a lot breaking though right now, including President Trump. took to his social media platform, The Truth Social, just this morning, I believe, or overnight, the overnight hours, yeah, and essentially said, hey, if you have a problem with some of the Jeffrey Epstein things, if you’re still one of the people pushing that, I’m kind of done. I mean, in some ways, when we can read the whole thing, kind of don’t consider yourself a supporter of me anymore. It’s a pretty radical statement, I’ll be honest, because this is something that I see the comments come in. I understand there are things that are much more important in the world happening right now on the world stage, whether that is Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, Texas, what’s going on there, all of the cleanup efforts from all of the natural disasters that have happened, the fires, the hurricanes. So I get it. On the list of things present in the United States, you probably don’t want to be dealing with a whole litany of people coming at you about Jeffrey Epstein. But here we are. And look, it is something that they ran on. They talked about. If you put in Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, you expect that there would have been something. I’m going to read you some of this, and then I’m going to get feedback from Jordan and from Will. It says, the radical left… I’ve got to edit some of this because of language, as you’d expect from President Trump. The radical left… uh democrats have hit or have hit pay dirt again just like the fake and fully discredited steel dossier i mean this is a lot to read i’m just going to skip forward in this uh you know he goes on saying the new scam is that if we ever call the jeffrey epstein hoax and my past supporters have bought into this blank hook line and sinker they have learned their they haven’t learned their lesson they probably never will and they’ve been conned by the lunatic left for eight years and again goes on and on keeps talking about this being a hoax for Jeffrey Epstein look say what you want about that situation we know that this has been a PR nightmare with a bunch of self-inflicted wounds and here we are
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, can I just say, I think that from the get-go of this, it doesn’t make any sense about how it was handled. I mean, I think if you’re a supporter of President Trump, you can honestly say that. You could say, why was this put out without more of a strategy? There’s just not much of a strategy behind this, except for what you’re going to talk about, the biggest conspiracy scandal ever.
SPEAKER 09 :
that’s kind of rocked the country and that has had legs too i mean it’s continued on i mean he’s dead he’s been dead for many years and it continues to go on and on and on whether that was footage coming out of the island whether is that yeah all of the swirl around it why come out with anything definitive without a plan yeah because you had dan bongino and you had kash patel saying we know without without a doubt and here’s the footage to prove it and the footage to prove it
SPEAKER 10 :
was less than convincing for most people oh I mean when you listen I’m not a professional editor but the internet’s very quick on these things yeah and you give them a video even if even if the edits weren’t deceptive even if the conspiracy isn’t there there is nothing there I think that you had to roll this out better I mean you had a duty to your own people and I think casting them aside in a week is also probably listen I don’t know if we make it through the summer and we’re still talking about this but Epstein has created its own industry.
SPEAKER 09 :
And when we’re talking about people that are bringing this up, you’re talking about Mike Johnson. You’re talking about some of these names. It’s not necessarily only fringe. The fringe MAGA.
SPEAKER 10 :
But people that don’t want to be talking about it have to talk about it.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah. So if it’s not just them. And then now the liberal press and the liberal social commentary is obviously jumping on this. This also comes from Elon saying, hey, the reason it wasn’t released was because certain names are on that list. Remember, that happened just a few weeks ago, which does seem to spiral a lot of this back into the public sphere.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s right, and what you have to also look at here is that Jordan talked about the rollout was messy. I know we’re coming up on a break here with only about 30 seconds left, but when you look at all of this and the way it was rolled out, there are much easier ways also to both talk to your base and say things like, we’ve seen from what the previous FBI did, there wasn’t much there, but we’re going to continue investigating. It just seemed like it was a mess to begin with.
SPEAKER 09 :
He feels like, hey, I don’t have to run for re-election, so what do I care? If I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t have to. The President of the United States. Phone lines are open for you. 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back to talk it all and restate it. Welcome back to Secular. A bunch of you are joining us right now because we had some technical glitches at the very beginning of the show on YouTube and on Rumble. So I apologize for that. So we’re going to restate what is happening. It is some breaking news. President Trump dropped a pretty fiery statement this morning going after what have been some of his most ardent supporters. And of course, now you have people even like Mike Johnson having to come out and say, hey, I think we should be having hearings and know more about what’s going on in the Epstein case. Again, that’s not even a subject that Jordan and I were just talking about it. that we like talking about. This is not on brand for what we do here at the ACLJ, but President Trump decided to make this statement this morning. And with that, it becomes breaking news item once again. You know, sort of the old adage of no sound, no story. I don’t think that comes easily for President Trump and the Trump administration. CNN, in fact, was inferring, hey, maybe this is Trump actually saying, I would like a clean break from a lot of these more fringe MAGA movement type people and move to a more traditional conservative Republican sort of pathway. And look, you can say with his support of Israel, with his support of even some of the now Ukraine, that maybe we’re seeing that. We are seeing this move of President Trump to say, I control the narrative. I’m moving more to a, not a moderate conservative, but more a traditional conservative. You don’t want to say this, and it’s going to make a lot of people mad, but a George W. Bush kind of conservative. That is a potential that could be happening. That was a conversation happening when he dropped this sort of long post, really, referring to the Jeffrey Epstein situation as a hoax and conflating it with the Steele dossier.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and I think one of the reasons, one, sometimes President Trump speaks simplistically, and especially when he ties things together and talks about that. And then people are taking that and being like, wait a second, but he was in prison and Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison. How is that a hoax if they’re in prison? I think… we need to take a step back and start defining some terms here. What he’s referring to the hoax is things that are maybe specifically like a list of clients or the black book that people like to talk about of his contacts, which once again, just having contacts of people doesn’t necessarily mean that you were doing nefarious things for them, not to cover for Jeffrey Epstein’s contact list. But when you look at this, why was he in prison? And what had he been convicted of before and why was Ghislaine Maxwell in prison? That, on its surface, you can understand that that’s what the FBI had evidence of and what they were prosecuting them for. And that when he was charged with and she was charged with trafficking, the trafficking statute, Jordan… doesn’t necessarily mean that you are doing that for other people it’s an enhanced crime when you are having a a list of of people in in many victims as well as for this purpose and gallain maxwell aiding in that it doesn’t necessarily mean that he was the person that procured people for other people sometimes you are get a trafficking charge when you are the person that is utilizing that
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, and these are extreme charges we saw recently with the cases that have been in the news. It’s very difficult to do because it’s a high bar and it should be a high bar. But when we talk about human trafficking in the broader terms, we’re talking about drug cartels, organized crime. And in this instance, and I mean, I’m careful because it’s not so done that like nothing’s ever going to be, but there wasn’t like a mess. It wasn’t like you took down a cartel. There weren’t… Well, there were… But there also weren’t like a hundred arrests. It was the one bad actor along with him. So, kind of like talking to Will said, this is… Small scale, when you’re talking about what your highway patrol are looking for when they found 20 people in the back of a truck, that’s human trafficking. That’s how we think of human trafficking.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, that’s not always how it is.
SPEAKER 10 :
In an organized way. They were likely dealing, if they were doing this, they were dealing with those bad actors. But those bad actors would be a uniquely kind of separate entity. Listen, I don’t know if you ever get all the info on this, but what I’m interested in is how strong his statements are.
SPEAKER 09 :
To say he doesn’t want people’s support anymore. When I look at something like the JFK files, what people want is a release that doesn’t exist, which is here’s one paragraph that says, here’s who actually did it. And that doesn’t probably exist. That’s not how the government works. So likely when they say, where’s the list of Jeffrey Epstein? I’m sure they could compile something, but I don’t think there was a one shade.
SPEAKER 10 :
You can’t just say, because you’ve had any interactions. And I think this is where Trump gets upset.
SPEAKER 09 :
Most people had interactions with him. New York social life.
SPEAKER 10 :
New York social life of kind of close to billionaires at that time period on up. They were around each other.
SPEAKER 09 :
He had plenty of comedians that talked about going over to his house and it was just like, yeah, it was weird, but we got out of there. Not unlike other situations. Not unlike the list that came out, honestly, during the Diddy trial. It was like people’s names that were thrown in there. There’s people like, I was at one thing and left it 15 minutes in.
SPEAKER 10 :
There were people that fled the country during that trial who have now can return because they were worried about being called forward. Because again, and we have no idea what they’re actually, but what was being said that people were doing was extreme and in this case the fact that moore hasn’t i mean i think that the prince andrew thing is the probably the biggest other part of this you’re never going to get to and so what i don’t understand is the rollout that’s what a lot of people are talking about feels like you can’t trust the people that are saying why did like yeah who is advising The team here, I don’t know if the president would have gotten word of this. And again, people put this on President Trump, like he owns this issue. I think where he owns it more is that he embraces the people who talk about it. He wasn’t really ever talking about it, to what I remember. This was not like a major thing to him. He might have occasionally been like, yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, if anyone would know, it’s Will.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I mean, and that was a thing. It did become a part of kind of the campaign this last time of like, you know, we think we need to release this. And that was responding to the base. But I think why, once again, back to Logan’s point about people want like… a paragraph that lays it out one that’s not how investigative product works but let’s take a look at the entire thing one we know that Jeffrey Epstein got preferential treatment from prosecutors 20 plus years ago in Florida he got a sweetheart deal was able to continue to work he got to go home but was in prison then the FBI decides to go back after him again and that’s when he died in prison and then Ghislaine Maxwell is arrested on the same issue If the FBI and the DOJ that had already given him preferential treatment was all of a sudden going to have this big expose. No, I think that those investigators, which during that time, we’ve talked about corruption at the FBI, issues at the FBI. If they were looking for a broader conspiracy, then maybe there would be documents there. If they weren’t, if they were just trying to go after one individual… then when they say we don’t have information about this other stuff, That’s likely true because we know that what’s the job of Pam Bondi and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino right now? Cleaning up the DOJ and the FBI. So if they don’t have it now, their PR rollout, as you said, awful because they gave a false promise of I’m going to get you all this. And then they’re like, we don’t have it. Instead, say, you know what? We don’t have it because that’s what we’re trying to do. Clean up the FBI. So now we’re going to go look for it. You could say that.
SPEAKER 10 :
I don’t think that you ever had to say that. definitively that you exactly knew a hundred percent what happened on a video that if it’s that edited and if they don’t have that minute they could they could go to that and say listen there’s still a missing minute we don’t know about there’s still questions that a lot of people are going to have and we’re not we’re not case closed we’re not right that’s where i think it it upset people is not to come out and say we don’t have that information yet or we don’t have that we can we can produce Yes, and I think there has to be a better level of protection. If you’re the president of the United States, your people have got to protect you better and prep you. So Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, if you really wanted to ultimately put this out, you’d want their full of buy-in, not to where they felt like they were being drudged through to make these comments or having to threaten to walk away from their job because of what it will do. I don’t know if the calculation was correct on how – the legs of this, but all you had to do was realize that this guy’s name has been in the top of people’s top 20 list of issues to talk about, things that are on podcasts. And seeing those most ardent supporters. I don’t know if I’ve listed Joe Rogan where it doesn’t come up once.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, seeing those most ardent supporters, including the podcast or all the way to even some of the people that are on Capitol Hill. To turn on President Trump on this and turn on the Trump administration on this, it also gave fodder to liberal media, to you could even say celebrity media. Now all of a sudden they care about Jeffrey Epstein. That is sort of the weird part about it is I see a lot of my, a lot of the actors I follow and they’re starting to talk about it now.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and even Hakeem Jeffries in the House, the Democrat leader, is making this his soapbox issue. Yeah. Where were they for four years under President Biden if this was something so important and they thought they could get out? No, it’s a political game. And I think that’s why President Trump is so mad about it is because he’s seeing it being utilized by his enemies. And what does President Trump actually want to talk about? Things he’s doing. Accomplishments he’s doing. And so that’s why I think he goes out there and issues a pretty strongly worded statement of like, just get away from this because he’s seeing what Hakeem Jeffries, even like The Daily Show is buying. Now, CNN is basically Epstein Network at this point because they’re seeing it as an opportunity to drive a wedge in conservatives. And that’s what’s a big problem.
SPEAKER 09 :
And ratings. All right. Hey, we’ll be back in just a minute. I did want to… quickly divert here i know we’re on this topic but it’s also the 35 years of justice drive all donations made today and throughout the month are doubled and they’re in celebration of 35 years of the aclj We’re going to go through a list of a lot of things we’ve been doing right now, the fight for life, the fight for Israel, and so much more when we have a little bit more time in the next segment. And then Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem is going to be joining us. But we couldn’t do any of this without you. To have the resources we need to continue these fights, we need you to help engage. Go to ACLJ.org, scan that QR code. Be right back. Welcome back to Secular. Not to divert from the main topic, but we do want to tell you an update on a big ACLJ success story. And it is something that we’ve been working on hard. And I know that Jordan and the team, the legal team, has been focused on a lot of the legal work we do here. Yesterday, we spent a lot of time talking about the media, which is always important. It’s always important for us to be front and center in the media. Millions of people watch this show each and every day. We appreciate all of you who do. But it’s just one part of sort of the two-pronged effort that always happens here at the ACLJ. The media side, which is what we do here every day. And then the legal side, Jordan’s been running. So let’s talk about that, Will, because there is some news.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s right, and we will get to phone calls as well if you want to call also 1-800-684-3110. But Jordan, this is something that’s kind of been overshadowed by a lot of the political things going on. But yesterday, Court of Appeals upheld a an abortion ban in West Virginia and this had to do specifically with the abortion pill West Virginia had included that in its state ban once again when these issues went back to the states after the overturning of Roe versus Wade through the Dobbs decision and the manufacturer of mifepristone, GenBioPros went after the state suing it, basically saying, we’re FDA approved, you can’t regulate or deny our drug in your state. And what we saw yesterday at the Court of Appeals is that it upheld that West Virginia can do just that. And we filed alongside an amicus brief in this, helping support the case of the state. This is now the second court win, if you will, that we’re seeing with the ACLJ fighting alongside, this time not representing West Virginia, but supporting their arguments with our amicus as we fight with our good friend J.B. McCuskey, the Attorney General of West Virginia, against leftist policies trying to dictate how West Virginia can operate.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, and I speak to this, I think that when you look at the bigger abortion issue and the bigger battle for life, you have to, you could take the big kind of broad stroke defunding Planned Parenthood, but then you have to go into the states, right, and actually legislate this and defend this in court on a different scale, which is the industry around abortion. And you’re talking about big pharma. You talk about all these industries that are… This is why when you put out a ban on abortion or the funding to Planned Parenthood, you have to be ready for a full-scale battle. Because it’s not just, oh, you’ve got pro-abortion groups on the other side of this. No, you have industries… on the other side of this, that they make their money off of selling pharmaceuticals that end human life. And this is one of those. And the idea here is that while something might be legal, by the FDA, does a state have to approve its use? And I think that after Dobbs and after the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the answer is no. And this gives the ability to, again, actually have these conversations and these battles at the state and local level where they should be instead of Washington DC. And that’s what the judges here decided to do is that the state, the federal government does broad things And then the state actually has to implement it and protect its people and decide what’s the best use. And remember this pill started being really, I’d say overused likely during COVID because it became an easy way for them to prescribe an abortion without having to actually carry out the procedure. And so, listen, we know that these battles can get complicated, but I think you have to look at it from the bigger picture for life, is that you can pass all these laws, you can give states all the ability to do things. If they don’t actually go in and do it and then defend it in court, you actually haven’t won.
SPEAKER 09 :
And for 35 years, we’ve been fighting this battle. And that’s why when we talk about 35 years of justice and our 35 years of justice drive, we’re also talking about justice for the unborn, justice for pro-life pregnancy resource centers. We’ve been battling against Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry for so long with the focus of the states. Now we’re focused on the states. The fight has multiplied times 50. So you got to think about that. Originally, we were just fighting Roe versus Wade, if you will. And we’d always would talk about, you know, all these little state initiatives were great, but they didn’t really mean a whole lot because you had that federal approval of abortion. That’s changed. Now that’s changed and all of those little cases that at one point were sort of theoretical or on paper, all those trigger laws, it all changed a couple years ago. But what that really meant was not that they went away, that it 50 times started happening more and more. We need your support now more than ever and really could help expand our resources in that life fight. So right now I encourage you to go to aclj.org slash 3535. or scan the QR code, just go to aclj.org. We always want to make sure we provide all the great content that’s there, tons of great content for absolutely free, and we appreciate you checking it out. But of course, if you give right now, your giving and your donations are doubled during this drive.
SPEAKER 10 :
I would say this too, on all the issues that we work on at the ACLJ, this is the one where legally we always can utilize more resources. Because this is a good example of it. On the one hand, you’re going after the interest group, you know, Planned Parenthood and court. Then you’re going after states because states themselves are doing these campaigns going after pregnancy centers like we’ve seen in Massachusetts, like we’ve seen in California. So then you’re taking on massive states. And then in this case, you’re taking on Big Pharma. These are not, again, just simple, easy, well, we won the war, so we’re going to win all the battles. And while you might feel like we won the war with the overturning of Roe versus Wade, it really just actually started. Yeah, and it got even more… And actually, all it did was level the playing field for us to where we could go in and we could have legislation in states that were predominantly pro-life, and then we could defend that in court. I mean, that’s really all it gave us the opportunity to do. And so to build on it, if you really do believe it’s a life or death matter, there’s never… enough resources I mean we’re dealing with an industry that gets 500 million dollars just from the federal government and that’s not including by the way what this biotech company got and we tried to stop it and look what happened Right. We’re in it though. You got to keep up the fight and the resources can always be utilized. I will tell you, the attorneys that focus on that matter for us, there is always more to do. And so if there’s an opportunity to increase one area, which I think, again, if it’s a life or death issue. this is the one. And I think these are good examples of all the different kinds of people you have to go to court with and the different kind of adversaries you have when you jump into an issue that is dealing with people’s corporate bottom line.
SPEAKER 08 :
And this is something, once again, this is a win in an appeals court with the state of West Virginia being able to uphold this ban. But at the same time, we’re fighting in Massachusetts on two different cases, one being the defunding of Planned Parenthood, which… In the updated TRO, the temporary restraining order, the judge even gave a hat tip to what she’s thinking, saying that it’s likely that the plaintiffs will succeed on some of their constitutional claims about defunding Planned Parenthood. that their money can’t be taken away. It’s now a constitutional right. So we’re going to keep fighting there, but we’re also fighting against the state and Wren. That’s that pro-abortion advocacy group that we’re conspiring against pregnancy resource centers, Logan. So the fight is across the board in many different states, and it’s in ways we never could have imagined, even just a few years ago, that we would be having to fight.
SPEAKER 09 :
Phone lines are completely jammed right now, but we will take your calls and comments coming up in the next segment and in the next half hour. And Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem is going to be joining us. So you’ve heard about the ACLJ’s fight for life. We’re also going to keep the discussion going about the President Trump post that he did this morning, kind of calling out, going after a lot of his most ardent supporters who are now upset about the lack of care to the Jeffrey Epstein situation. We have a lot of calls. There are full banker calls. So in the next segment, we’ll try to get to some of those. We’ll try to get some of those throughout the show. And again, we’re also going to head over to ACLJ Jerusalem because it’s always important to know what’s happening, not only the fight for life, but also what’s happening for the support of Israel. These are sometimes not the most popular topics to talk about, but that is why we’re here at the ACLJ to talk about some of those topics that don’t really come up on the mainstream news as much anymore, that have become a little more decisive or divisive. Right now, support the work of the ACLJ, ACLJ.org. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 07 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, this is Jordan Sekulow. You got a pitch there. All right. Hey, this is Logan Sekulow. Jordan’s here, too. We’re going to be taking your calls and comments coming up right now. Because, look, the top topic of the day is that President Trump has really called out A lot of the MAGA base, if you will. I mean, I hate to be that broad with it. I don’t want your support anymore. Pretty much said, you’re no longer my friend. He broke up with you because you still care about the Jeffrey Epstein quote unquote hoax. Now, again, if you were in that sort of podcast realm, if you’re in that sort of Rogany realm, this is not something you’re going to want to hear. And he put on a very long statement about this. We’ll discuss that. We can go through that statement, but really, we gave you the good cliff notes. It’s a little confusing. It’s a little confusing. It has some profanities in it, as you’d expect. Which, by the way, profanity is no longer cool, according to some of the news. They said President Trump took away cursing. Cursing used to be cool.
SPEAKER 01 :
He ruined it.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right, let’s go to Mary Ellen, who’s calling from Illinois in line one. You’re on the air. You can’t get a win.
SPEAKER 04 :
hello well first of all look back at that way it was rolled out in the dead of night on a holiday weekend no comment no signatures no pressers sent to Axios of all places. So I figured President Trump had to be behind it, and they weren’t signing their name to it. Okay, now I learn a lot from Mike Benz on the Internet, you know, about the CIA, and we hear a lot about Jeffrey Epstein’s history. Well, okay, we also know the FBI… has no access to the CIA files. But we also know the Trump administration, I mean, the Biden administration spent four years, I would believe, erasing everything. So I believe Pam has nothing. But President Trump could easily get out there and say, look, I don’t want to compromise national security. I’m in the middle of negotiations. We’ve got to fight one. You know, it’s like instead of digging his heels in, and now everybody’s going to say, okay, so the rich, the powerful, and the famous, now they have one level of justice and we’re in the other level.
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s not a great look. I think a lot of people feel that way. It’s not a great look, whether you agree with President Trump or not.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I mean, the president, I think at the end of the day, this isn’t his issue, right? This isn’t his issue. He also ran on ending wars about making the economy better, right? So what I think, and to Jordan’s point, Because it’s not his issue, he doesn’t understand how many people really do care about it. But I think the other problem you’re seeing is that unless every single theory about the case is proven to be exactly as people think it is, they won’t be satisfied. So no matter what, even if it was a half measure, like, oh, look, he had some dirt on these people, he was doing this, whatever, if that came out, but it wasn’t the specific people that they believe, then I don’t think anyone would ever be satisfied. So once again, kind of is the danger in politics of tiptoeing into speculative theories where there is clear that there’s bad wrongdoing. This person clearly was an abuser and a bad person. Right.
SPEAKER 10 :
whole botched investigation with weird deals in the past like you said 20 years ago and you’ve got this the tape and a suicide you know prison suicide and a place that most people said that was nearly impossible to do um so when you put it all together of course it’s it’s always going to be tough for people except there’s no there there yeah when you just say nothing to see here well you’ve been telling us for years that there is something to see here right uh you know you had a lot of people talking hoax yeah And I think that confuses it more because he’s not saying that Jeffrey Epstein is a hoax. He said, you know, this is a horrible guy. This is a bad guy. Why are we still talking about this guy? He shouldn’t be this big of a…
SPEAKER 09 :
topic in history if not just a footnote yeah and i think that does show it wasn’t the president’s number one issue it was a lot of his supporters and i don’t want it to be his number one issue for that matter no but there’s also ways to handle it they’re probably gonna handle a little better all right we got two lines open you can give us a call at 1-800-684-3110 jeff alibon aclj jerusalem is going to be talking to us next always important to have the aclj office in jerusalem We’re talking about the most controversial topics today. We’re going from Jeffrey Epstein to Israel to abortion. We’re covering them all. All right. Look, we appreciate your support. Always here for the ACLJ. So I encourage you to do that right now. Make a donation during this drive right now. 35 years we’re celebrating here. Fighting for you and fighting for life, fighting for Israel and so much more. We’ll be right back with more on Sekulow. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Seculo. There has been some breaking news this morning, not just out of America, but what’s going on in Israel. There’s been some attacks in Damascus and Syria. And this has got a little bit of attention, but I definitely wanted to check in with Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem. Jeff, just kind of give us an update here because it isn’t dominating our news cycle right now. We’re not seeing it a lot, but the images that have come out look pretty intense.
SPEAKER 05 :
both Israel and Syria have a minority population of the Druze religion. The Druze religion spun off of Islam, and it’s its own faith, and they’re extremely loyal here in Israel. They serve in the army, and they’re very loyal to whatever government they have if the government treats them well. Well, In Syria now, the new rulers of Syria are not treating them well. Apparently, there seems to be a lot of savagery and massacres against Druze. And so they’ve come, the Druze community in Israel has asked the state of Israel to help support them against the current rulers of Syria. Now, this implicates America as well. America… is very happy with the fact that the current rulers of Syria, the temporary rulers of Syria, we’ll see how long they last, are blocking Iran’s access to Hezbollah. And now Israel also likes that. But of course, neither Israel and we hope America will really tolerate the religious abuse and massacres of the Jews minority. So this is very important to the Jews here in Israel. And this now implicates the question for Israel is how much will they support the the Druze community. And right now they are supporting. And of course, there’s a lot of international dialogue because the United States has a stake in this as well in terms of stability of the region.
SPEAKER 08 :
I know that a lot of eyes around the world will be on this, even if this doesn’t break through necessarily in American headlines as much. We’ll see some stories on it, but kind of a lesser conflict that’s starting out. But Jeff, I know that you’ve had some meetings on this in Israel. And what are you hearing just kind of on the ground as you’re back in Jerusalem about this situation and kind of what we should be looking out for here in America?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I did. I had a significant briefing today with military involved in this decision-making and also advising. And it does seem clear that there is an interest in… Israel very much has an interest in not just the humanitarian interest, which it has, but also an interest in protecting the Jews population. Now, the Jews already… There are reports that Jews fighters have left from Israel and gone over the border on their own, not… under IDF command to wage war. And the question is, how much is the IDF going to support it? There definitely is an interest in stability in Syria, but right now it’s a very unstable situation. And it does seem that there is a necessity of supporting the Druze population. Look, to me, taking a big step back just in terms of my view of this, this shows you the problem with these borders that were drawn in the region. The Jewish territory was cut into a tiny piece, and right now there’s a huge Sunni Muslim versus Shia fight that’s been going on for a long time, and all these minority communities, Christians of various sorts in various places in Lebanon and elsewhere, Druze and others, the Kurds, they’re caught up in this giant war that the Muslims keep on having. And since it does seem to me that there’s a path forward, maybe that this president, because he’s so bold, can help with this prime minister, and they seem to be a great team, in restructuring even the borders here to have more permanence and safety and security for the minorities, including the many, many Christians who are under dire attack in the countries they live in under Muslim control.
SPEAKER 08 :
Jeff, I want to shift topics a little bit back to U.S. focus, as you are back in Jerusalem, though. But we’ve been talking about the issues surrounding this mayoral candidate, Zoran Mamdani, in New York. And there’s a report from Politico. And I just think the headline in the lead sentence of this report is so telling about and unfortunate about where we are. This says… Mandani expected to clarify his position on, quote, globalize the Intifada. That’s the headline. Then the first sentence, Zoran Mandami plans to clarify his stance on the use of the phrase, quote, globalize the Intifada as soon as this week. as he consolidates support in his bid to be New York City mayor. I don’t think I’ve come up with that idea. It’s got to take, as soon as this week, may take a little bit longer, depending on what the focus groups tell us, if it’s going to isolate anyone too much about how we can either support and or distance ourselves from terrorism. I just want to get your thoughts on that and where we’re at.
SPEAKER 05 :
Globalizing the Intifada literally means whether or not there should be murder, rape, torture, kidnapping in America, in New York. But he’s not sure whether or not he can come out against it because so much of his base either supports exactly that or has been led over the last number of years to believe that all of these chants, like river to the sea and others which are actually genocidal chance or the use of the phrase resistance or jihad as though it’s something other than brutal bloody murder of civilians they’ve made excuses when it was about israel and jews well globalize the intifada means make it global And Intifada is a violent uprising. And we saw it first coming to public display in the 80s and 90s, where it was bus bombs all over Israel and shootings and stabbings and car rammings. And that’s the Intifada. And they are calling for that around the world, including America. And this candidate for mayor of New York isn’t sure what position he should take.
SPEAKER 09 :
ask you that, Jeff, as someone who is a New Yorker and spends a lot of your time there. We see the headlines of Madani. We see, obviously, Cuomo now saying he’s stepping into the race, and not just to talk about politics, but stepping into the race as an independent, maybe seeing that there is that. It also just feels like New York did not run the best crop of people for this time around because you feel like If you had someone who was more in line, I mean, obviously, if Cuomo did not have a lot of the baggage that he comes with, maybe he would have done better, felt like he was doing better. And then all of a sudden, you have someone who can rile up young people, and it felt like game over very quickly.
SPEAKER 1 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, first of all, don’t blame me. I moved out of New York City and I live in New York or I split my time, obviously. We have a place in New York, but not in the city. Nonetheless, I’m very close to the city. And it’s just another sign of how the national discourse has gone completely insane. I mean, what they call the Overton window, which is, you know, what you’re allowed to discuss in regular everyday politics is now talking about genocide approvingly of genocide of the Jews. And by the way, I’ll bring another element into this. There was a poll that was done this week about Trump’s popularity in New York, and it turns out, I know this surprises a lot of people, that New York Jews, which is the biggest population outside of Israel, there’s no city with more Jews, in fact, than new york by far uh 57 approve of trump which is more than any other religious group in new york and any other ethnicity in new york and so a lot of it has to do with you know i spend my time here in israel so many people are saying it feels so much safer in israel than it does in new york these days and that’s in the middle of a war And that is the way it feels.
SPEAKER 09 :
One of the most big real wars that Israel has been a part of in our lifetime. And it feels that way. I feel bad for that. Cause you’re right. New York. I mean, it used to be, it is still a hub for Judaism hub for Jewish people. If you go certain neighborhoods, it does. It feels like you are in those areas in a good way. Like, I’ve always enjoyed that part of it. So to see such a mass voting group come out and support someone who is saying things that are this intense, including, by the way, like you said, 50% of plus Jewish people in New York are supporting President Trump. But there is still that group. especially maybe the celebrity circle, that seems to still not be taking these kind of words seriously. You know, we got to get behind this guy because he’s young and he’s successful and he doesn’t like what Israel’s doing and therefore he must be our hero, even if we’re Jewish.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I don’t know if you saw this report. Somebody dug up from Donnie’s father, who was a well-published author and academic, and he actually wrote an argument praising suicide bombing the suicide bombing you know it’s it’s as though it’s it’s a it’s a good thing because they’re putting their lives on the line for a cause yeah that cause is the extermination of the jewish people it’s not really a great thing to be a nazi suicide bomber and that’s what his father you’re a suicide bomber your your job is to kill other people right regardless of even like their their religious about me obviously they’re very specific in that uh but in general you think that’d be enough to go you know maybe this isn’t the right guy
SPEAKER 09 :
But no, here we are. Jeff, I always appreciate you joining us. Anything else people need to know as we head into just our last segment of the day, we’re going to take a lot of calls. But I know that there’s a lot of updates from Israel, and it’s why we have the ACLJ Jerusalem office. It’s why you’re there. It’s not just to make sure that we get updates from you each and every day, but to make sure that their influence, our viewership, our listenership, our supporters, that their influence is heard as well.
SPEAKER 05 :
Sure. I mean, they want to know what our view is, how this activity with the Jews might affect U.S.-Israel relations. It really is a two-way street. We’re here to bring it back to America, but also to help the Israelis understand what’s happening in Washington.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Jeff, so much for joining us. I would encourage you, if you support Israel, you know that we’re one of those organizations that unabashedly, unashamed to support Israel and been that way since our inception. So if you’re looking for places to put your financial resources, and look, there have been a lot that have wavered on this issue. I encourage you right now, go to ACLJ.org, scan the QR code that’s on your screen. Your donation is going to be doubled this month because great ACLJ supporters and champions have said, we’re going to unlock any sort of matching donation that comes in during this month. And we are celebrating because it is 35 years of justice, but we’re just getting started to get us to the next 35 years, which will take us to 75 years old. How do you feel about that?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, we would be older than that. We would be? Yes. In 35 years? In 35 years, we would be older than 75.
SPEAKER 09 :
Let’s check the math on that.
SPEAKER 08 :
My math is wrong. Yeah, I was about to say.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right. Phone lines are open for you. 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Will’s got a finance degree. There you go. And, you know, I’m saying, just saying. Again, phone lines are open for you. I want to hear from you. Give us a call. And while we do have this last break of the day, make that decision to support the ACLJ and become a champion. We’ll be right back. the room we have heard from my brother Jordan Sekulow very loud music Jordan Sekulow we’ve had Will Haynes we’ve heard from Jeff Balabot we’ve heard from some of you and now we’re going to turn our attention to our phone callers and so many of you calling in some about the Epstein situation some about Israel and New York and a lot of others we’re going to get to all of them Anthony in Florida and by the way you still got a couple minutes to get on hold 1-800-684-3110 Anthony in Florida you’ve been on hold for 45 minutes know that I appreciate that but go ahead
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, you know, I support you guys because you counter the anti-constitution leftist union. So all kudos to you guys. Now, my question is a prominent attorney who defended Trump, who’s not a Republican, but he said that he saw the list. He saw the names on the list, but he can’t say who they are. My question to you guys is, it wasn’t a mystery what was happening on that island uh give it some guys some people were i was exclude some people from not being ignorant but come on guys i mean really was that so much of a mystery what this this pervert was uh holding on that island it’s bewildering so i’ll fill me in guys i appreciate it i actually do want to correct you on one thing anthony
SPEAKER 08 :
Dershowitz actually said, you’re talking about Alan Dershowitz, he actually said Epstein never created a client list. So there is one thing where he has said he knows a lot more information. He defended Jeffrey Epstein, actually. It was one of the attorneys. But I do want to clarify that, is that he actually told many people that Epstein never created a client list. And they could put together a list. Right. Now, that’s the other issue is that sometimes when the news that there’s become shorthand or these things like there is a list of clients. One is that that is just shorthand for if he was doing this as almost a business or a blackmail operation or these things that there would be that information somewhere. Right. But once again, there’s still a lot of unknown. And if once again, the FBI was only investigating Jeffrey Epstein and not other people, then their evidence would be limited to what they were investigating in theory, as well as. If this isn’t something they had evidence of or they didn’t want there to be evidence of, it’s not surprising that it would not be in the DOJ. And that goes back to the poor PR rollout by the attorney general and everyone getting out there and saying, we’re going to release this info and even doing that binder facade and saying, here’s what we’ve got. But then it being kind of a nothing burger, because maybe it is a nothing burger as far as the evidence of the DOJ goes.
SPEAKER 10 :
then then that’s what you’re here with and that is why people are upset and i understand that evidence is only criminal conduct that they can prosecute when they don’t feel like there’s any more lane to go down on actually prosecuting an act there’s nothing else for them to do so they aren’t there just to uncover mysteries Now, could you order that they do a deeper dive into their investigation or into the evidence that came about? Sure, but that’s really not their job if there’s no more criminal prosecution.
SPEAKER 09 :
We got another call related to this. I’d like to jump to Debbie in South Carolina who is watching on our website on ACLJ.org, which is a great place if you’re like stumbling around trying to figure out where they broadcast. You can always go to ACLJ.org or the ACLJ app. The show’s there live and later on. Debbie, go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you. Okay, so I was listening to the dialogue on the Epstein case, and someone said, oh, well, this is just a political issue. No, it is not just a political issue. It’s not even just a legal issue. This is a moral issue. I have thousands of mega friends that I am on a podcast with, and the two things that we are most upset about is, number one, no one has been brought to justice yet. And number two, the victims, what about them? Don’t trivialize the victims.
SPEAKER 08 :
Debbie, I will cut you off there because Jeffrey Epstein is dead. And Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison. And the assumption is lost on people that Jeffrey Epstein was participating in this behavior. That’s why a lot of the evidence cannot be released is because it’s images and photos of him engaging in the behavior that he was about to go to trial for. And he’s dead. So I think there is some justice there because even the victims that came forward, they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein. So that also can’t be lost when people say, well, why was he on trial? Why is Ghislaine in prison? Because they were criminals and they were doing abhorrent, immoral things and should serve justice for that. And so I think that that shouldn’t be lost either, is that he’s no longer on this earth, and I think he has a lot worse punishment going on than an earthly prison would give him for his immoral behavior. And she is currently in jail.
SPEAKER 10 :
I think this is where it becomes a problem, though, when you call it a hoax. Because when we talked about the Russia investigation, we were talking about the entire thing was a hoax from the start. The entire hypothesis, the whole thesis of that was Donald Trump is a Russian agent. So you start from zero.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, I think President Trump just throws out that hoax word and he thinks it means something to people that it maybe doesn’t.
SPEAKER 10 :
I take it more extreme. Because when we were talking about things that were hoaxes, we were talking about from the start, there was nothing there. And this is different because from the start, there was criminal conduct. And so you had a guy facing basically life in prison. She’s got a 20 year sentence. And of course, can they testify to others?
SPEAKER 09 :
I mean, he’s not here anymore. Let’s try to get to these two last calls. Alex calling line one. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi guys. Thanks for being there. I want to make my, make two points and make them very quickly. Okay. Um, in reference to, um, if you guys were president, if you guys were advisors to the president, how would you tell the president to quickly put this to death? And yes, the moral point is important, but, I’d really like to see us just get beyond this, and it’s not disrespect to the victims, okay? Those people need to be respected. They need justice.
SPEAKER 09 :
I’m only cutting you off because we’re running out of time. I think Jordan’s advice of saying, hey, it’s not over. There’s still investigations going on, would have probably been the easiest way to really not be the focus. It’s when you came out and said, it’s on my desk. It doesn’t exist. It was a PR blunder that kept going. And honestly, even with President Trump this morning, it still seems to be going. I want to take one more call and then we’ll wrap it up for the day. This one is from Warren, who is talking about the New York elections and everything. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thanks for the call, guys. Real quick, most people don’t realize, and I’m not saying they all believe in global intifada, but with Mamdami, there’s so many small cities In the United States, they have Muslim mayors, and they’ve even posted, not them, but all over social media how they want to take over America and bring that here, and people need to wake up and realize what’s happening.
SPEAKER 09 :
Warren, thank you for calling. We appreciate your thoughts on that. I think with Mondami, you have a very interesting moment because you have a young, charismatic guy who’s going on and even getting a pushback from the Democrats, but winning pretty decisively. So we’ll see what happens going on. But I mean, it’s looking in his favor, but we’ll see. With that being said, we got 45 seconds left. This is the time. to support the work of the ACLJ. Jordan, I’ll let you do this pitch here as well because it’s 35 years we’ve been celebrating and we got to keep going.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, that’s right. We talked about today one of the issues involving protection of the unborn. And these issues, I can’t say enough that the resources can always be utilized. There’s always more battles we can fight in and we can engage in if we have the resources to do so. And so go to ACLJ.org, donate today. This is a great time to donate because of the match, so your donation gets doubled. But I’m just telling you, from the resource perspective, there’s always more we can do in these battles. Go to ACLJ.org and donate today.
