Join Logan Sekulow and his team as they tackle the aftermath of a terrorist attack against the National Guard in Washington D.C., reportedly carried out by an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. With input from guest Rick Grinnell, we explore the ramifications of lax vetting processes that have come into sharp focus. President Trump’s response—halting all asylum claims—sparks a discussion about immigration reform and the steps needed to ensure security without closing doors to those in need. This episode provides a comprehensive overview of current tensions in U.S. immigration policies and the urgent need for systemic improvements.
SPEAKER 03 :
On today’s show, President Trump halts all asylum claims after terror attack.
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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 03 :
Welcome to Sekulow. Will Haines in studio with me as well. This is Logan Sekulow. Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us a little bit later. Of course, it is the Monday after Thanksgiving. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving week and weekend. I know we were off for a couple days there, but we all got to go rest, have a little break, if you will. But I do want to say first, before we even get to this show, a sincere and big thank you to everyone that donated during our November drive. Of course, it’s December. We are going to be kicking it off again with another new drive because this is the most important month of the year, and Giving Tuesday is tomorrow, so we want you to be a part of the team. But we did surpass expectations, beat budget for the month. That is a big deal. We know right now that money is tight for a lot of people, so it means you put your money where what you care about. What you care about is a lot of the issues the ACLJ works on, and of course this broadcast. as well. And we really do appreciate that. So I wanted to say first, thank you. Of course, we can’t start this show without talking about what was the big news over the weekend, which of course was the terrorist attack that happened, I believe, on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where two members of the National Guard from West Virginia were shot. by a terrorist from Afghanistan who was here as part of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, was one of the refugees, and it has actually caused a bit of an uproar, because now President Trump has said, we’re gonna put a pause on all asylum decisions until we have a better vetting process. Of course, this all happened during the really botched and failed Afghan withdrawal, which of course we all remember back from just a few years ago. We made a documentary series on it. We made a Christmas movie that had to do with it. of what that looked like for the fallout for some of the soldiers. And we, of course, have been talking about it ever since. And now we are seeing some of those consequences of that action or inaction, if you will, that came in. Of course, we say President Trump said we’re going to put a pause on. Of course, that is not exactly the way he puts it. I had a lot of interesting comments over the last few days from President Trump. And we’re going to keep talking about that, Will, but this is obviously all in the wake of what ended up being, sadly, a casualty event.
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That’s right. It was a horrific tragedy that happened just the day before Thanksgiving where this individual, Ramanola Lakhawal, came from Washington State, drove all the way to Washington, D.C. to carry out this terror by shooting two members of the National Guard, one of which has passed away as a result of the injuries. And what we’re seeing now is more scrutiny on this program, Operation Allies Welcome, which was initiated by President Biden after that botched withdrawal. And we all remember the imagery. People, planefuls of people were coming to the United States, unvetted, brought straight here to get out of Afghanistan because of the chaos that the Biden administration caused. 190,000 Afghans have resettled under both Operation Allies Welcome and Enduring Welcome, which was the follow-up program. And now we’re starting to see what, We brought up you in that series that you hosted, Revenge of the Taliban. We were already concerned that when you saw this influx without proper vetting, that this kind of thing would eventually happen. And now, unfortunately, we are seeing this happen. There’s reports, and we’ll get into these details, but… More than 5,000 Afghans that have come under this program have been flagged for terrorist-related activity. The U.S. Customs and Immigration Naturalization Services put out a list of individuals that came out of this program that have committed violence, crime, unspeakable things since coming to the United States. And this is just another in the list of horrible things that happened because the policy was not well thought through and the chaos that ensued brought all these people to the country without proper vetting.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely. There is a lot of chaos, as Will said. When it comes to this, it is a big concern. We need to always be welcoming when there are true asylum cases. We need to be able to figure out what those are. And I believe now maybe we will be putting in those situations. What I don’t want is it to be just a full stop and it’s another one of these immigration issues that becomes politicized. What it needs to become is actually just done well, where we have a real vetting system. Now, it doesn’t mean when someone gets here, they can’t get radicalized as well, as we know that’s happening in mass scales all over the country, whether that is this issue, the anti-Semitism, all the things that have happened over the last few years, that it’s not just about the asylum seeker. So we’re going to talk about that and more. Give me a call, 1-800-684-3110. I’m asking if you are watching online on YouTube right now or on Rumble, put in the comments something, even if it’s just, hey, let me know where you’re watching from. I like to know that. Of course, you can respond to the polls. You can interact, be a part of that conversation. It’s a great way to continue the conversation beyond just our broadcast. It’s a whole community of people that talk, and it’s a great way to see like-minded and sometimes not so like-minded people on our website. Again, that’s on our YouTube channel, which is over… nearly 550 000 strong almost uh which is amazing to have that many people just on one platform so thank you so much for joining us there but let me know where you’re watching from i always like to see that as well as if the phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110 we got to restate what’s going on because i think this was news that broke it obviously broke over the weekend a lot of people a lot of you were celebrating thanksgiving as i hope you were um And maybe you did not get to see some of this news. Of course, everyone pretty much saw on Wednesday that terrorist attack that happened in Washington, D.C. is two members of the West Virginia National Guard. One was sadly killed. Another one is still critical, was were shot by what was a former refugee seeking asylum from Afghanistan during the Afghanistan withdrawal. And you look. We can’t paint this picture as all these refugees, everyone that came from Afghanistan. We did a whole documentary on it. There were plenty of people, including states like Oklahoma, that were very welcoming to Afghanistan refugees. And I think that’s good. I think we need to make sure we still protect them in America and that we have these places for asylum seekers. But when you had so many thousands upon thousands and thousands of people… Loading up, dangerously loading up airplane loads where they didn’t have seats. They were sitting on the floor trying to get, you remember those horrific pictures, people trying to just grab onto the wings that flew away as we saw America leaving, leaving it in the hands of the Taliban. what that was going to look like. They kind of could see the future. They could see it. So, you know, there’s a lot of good people who did want to get out for the right reasons. But of course, there have been thousands that have been flagged for terror activities. And now you have this one which committed terrorist activities against members of our National Guard. So what does that look like? What does that look like for the future of asylum and a future for asylum seekers? President Trump said he plans on a big shutdown for quite a while. I think that’s unfortunate that we have to get to that point where we aren’t able to offer asylum seekers a place here in America. We should get back to that point as soon, I believe, as soon as we can. But I know that this is something that needs to be looked into a lot further if you’re talking about people coming by the thousands. And they’re coming over and potentially, like I said, even being radicalized once they arrive or many years after it. You could say they came in, they liked what Biden was doing, and they didn’t care for what President Trump was doing. Maybe they got politicized. Maybe something else happened. Beyond that, we don’t know. These are all just speculations. At this point, we have to look at what the future holds for asylum seekers, as well as the entire immigration debate, which has come up obviously over and over and over again during President Trump’s second term here. And I do think that President Trump does himself no favors when some of the ways he’s been speaking recently. over the last few weeks, whether that’s using insults, whether that’s using beyond insults, using things that we can’t say on the air necessarily, using words that I think people would find inappropriate, not even just for an adult, but maybe for the President of the United States certainly, that it overshadows whatever good he’s doing because it looks so bad from a visual point of view. Now, some of that’s from frustration. Some of it’s from frustration because moments like this happen that should not be happening in the streets of America. And I understand that. I understand when you put your National Guardsmen in the streets of America, Washington, D.C., and you want them to go clean up the streets and protect crime, that you’re not thinking about the fact that we legally allowed in a group of people who potentially should have been flagged for terrorist activity before they were allowed in.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and this is the problem. So what the president has done now is ordered that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is a branch under Department of Homeland Security, will no longer approve or deny asylum claims right now. So the pause is on the decision process. Those people that work in there can continue the work, the vetting under the protocols that exist currently. But once they get up to the line of approve or deny, All those decisions are put on hold. And it’s not just for those that have come from Afghanistan. It’s for all asylum seekers. And this has been a problem that we saw the way that both the Biden administration and really even the Obama administration before that used the asylum process improperly. It was used instead of using the traditional immigration pathway to citizenship or pathway to immigration status in the United States. People started coming to the United States and immediately claiming asylum. And that’s a different process. It sets them apart. They get a court date. They get resources, legal resources to try and get through this to see if they indeed are worthy of being granted asylum in the United States. Then we saw that people would skip their court dates. They’d use that as a tool to be let go from a normal border patrol operation and then just infiltrate into the country and just disseminate throughout it. This is a different part of that same problem. That’s why he put the pause on all decisions. But this is where… We were concerned about those people whose lives would be in danger because they helped fight with Americans. The translators that went through so much whose families were targeted. We were saying you’re leaving people behind because of the chaos and the lack of vetting. They were just filling up airplanes with people from Afghanistan. that may have never even been a part of helping the United States, that may have been Taliban themselves, may have been another al-Qaeda group or something. And that was what we said, this is going to come back and haunt the United States. And now we’re seeing the fruit of that. And unfortunately, you have a National Guardsman that has been killed. You have one that is in critical condition. You have another case where someone was arrested last week as well, came here under the same program, and was constructing a bomb and was going to use this bomb in Fort Worth, Texas. He’s been arrested on terrorism charges. This is another person through that same program. There’s also reports that up to 5,000 people who have come in under this program have been flagged for, after they’ve gotten here, potential problematic information in their background or things that they’re doing once they get here as potentially having ties to terrorism that’s the problem when you’re letting in a hundred thousand plus people with 260 000 still waiting for some sort of uh permission to come over is that if the vetting protocols are completely absent Then you can’t even trust that those people that were vetted were properly vetted to be here. And then they’re already in the country. They’re inside the United States. They can get away. They don’t have to go to their hearings if they are malicious actors.
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And this is what you end up seeing. We saw 13 murdered during the Kabul withdrawal. And of course now, and that was of military service people. Now we can add another one and another one very in critical shape to terrorist activity directly involved from the Afghanistan withdrawal. And as Will said, we were very, everyone was very moved by this. And when it happened, it’s easy to think about this as multiple years ago. Now it was 2021. We’re talking about almost five years ago now, four and a half years ago from when that happened. But President Trump was actually warning about this back in 2017. that it could get to this place. I think we should listen to him bite six.
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The consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9-11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan. because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th.
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That could sound like it was from today and actually it was from eight years ago when the president was in his first term as president of the United States, warning why a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan could result in a disaster. And of course, what happened? President Trump was no longer the president. Biden said, let’s get out of Afghanistan, did it in a way that was unacceptable. And we can remember the horrific footage from that. And it resulted in multiple service members dying, being murdered in terrorist attacks, thousands of people clinging to their lives as we left Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban, all of the military weaponry. And then now we’re seeing the fruits of that labor, sadly, multiple years later. Now, President Trump is the president again. He’s trying to do what he can do, try to clean up the streets, trying to make things better. But, of course, with that, you are putting service people in interesting situations where they’re going to have to be confronted with this. And what does that look like if you’re one of these National Guard service people moving forward? How do they protect themselves as well from this? these individual, often individualized militants who could come in and just do this. I mean, we saw uproars of this happening in so many places. We saw Christmas markets last night in Europe and in different places that were overrun with kind of extremist activities that were starting, not necessarily only terrorist activities, but just disruptive activities, protests to the point of absurdity that were allowing to happen throughout the world. And I’m sorry, my voice is going a little bit here. But phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I want to hear from you. A lot of you are commenting. I appreciate that. If you are commenting, you want to call in, this is a good time to do it. Hey, tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. So the next 36 hours is a big time for charitable giving. You don’t have to wait until then. I’m going to encourage you right now to support the work of the ACLJ by making a tax-deductible donation, of course, to support the legal work and support the media side of the organizations. You really turned it up in November. We appreciate it, and all donations are still matched now. So do it right now. Have your tax-deductible gift during our year-end drive that is happening right now, our year-end drive. Scan the QR code that’s on your screen. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Of course, this all does tie back in to just, you know, a week or two ago, you had that video message that came from a lot of senators, Mark Kelly, from a lot of them saying, hey, it’s okay to start defying illegal orders. Of course, then when pushed about what those illegal orders are, they couldn’t decide it, and they said, you know, we don’t know what those illegal orders are. You had a lot of people on the left saying, hey… That’s part of the code of conduct when you say you’re not supposed to do that. Of course, we agree with that. You’re not supposed to violate or you’re not supposed to participate in what would be illegal activity. Now, what they meant was pretty much any activity that may be coming from President Trump and the Trump administration that you may disagree with or that maybe somewhere down the road. And administration may deem illegal. And this is where it gets very hairy. And we saw this from Mark Kelly just yesterday, who was making the rounds again talking about this. You’d think they would have cleared up their narrative at this point. And they kind of have cleared up the narrative, but they have not gotten it right yet. Because when you really look at what they’re pushing, they are pushing a… theory, a concept that sometime down the road you may be pushed to do something you don’t agree with, and therefore in the future you’ll be held accountable for it being illegal. So we’re going to get to that bite here in just a second. You’ll hear from them. What do you think about that situation? Of course, we’re going to continue that conversation going on about the National Guard situation and the shootings there. That’s at 1-800-684-3110. Yeah, and I want to tie this all together for everyone.
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Because I think the story is that we talked about the asylum pause and the attack on the National Guardsmen ties in with actually what they are doing here. And we’re going to play Mark Kelly, who was on with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press in just a moment. But the senator and his other colleagues that put this video out, I’m honestly surprised the story lasted through Thanksgiving until I realized what their plan is. This is my theory on their plan. They had this coordinated video they put out and they all hit the Sunday shows and they all, they didn’t do it well explaining, but their entire goal was to try to say, we don’t know what the illegal order could be. That was their goal then because they are setting up and you can mark this day down. This is their impeachment drive. As soon as they retake Congress, if they do in the midterms, They are going to try to go after the president and the secretary of defense for what they’re going to claim are war crimes or illegal orders. They already, they floated out about the National Guard being used in the United States. Alyssa Slotkin telegraphed saying, one day, you know, if something’s going on, there may be shooting and how are these National Guard members going to respond? That was days before a terror attack on someone. And one, the National Guard is highly trained and they understand much more than what the Senator was giving them credit for of how to respond in that situation. But immediately, what was the narrative from the left on the National Guard attack? It wasn’t, this is horrific, this is a terror attack. It was, they shouldn’t have even been there. The president shouldn’t have even sent them. Even though even Mariel Bowser gave credit for the cleanup in crime that was happening once the federal resources surged in D.C. But they shouldn’t even been there. No, the true narrative is it unvetted migrants and asylum seekers from afghanistan should never have been here that is the true they shouldn’t have been there not our national guard that is cleaning up dc which desperately needed it but they got that and now it gave them an opportunity to continue and then you get an anonymous source story from the washington post about an alleged illegal order of which the white house and the secretary of defense secretary of war have denied But it gives Mark Kelly an opportunity to go back on Meet the Press and continue this narrative as they build towards what, mark my words, is another impeachment. Let’s listen to him on with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press just yesterday. Bite one.
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Go to the judge, advocate generals, the lawyers and have a discussion about it. If you don’t have time, you just say simply, I’m not going to do that. That’s against the law.
SPEAKER 07 :
It puts a lot of burden on the troops to make a decision in real time.
SPEAKER 05 :
It puts a tremendous amount of burden on officers in the military, but that is their responsibility. And they can figure out, you know, a reasonable person can tell something that is legal and something that is illegal.
SPEAKER 07 :
So would you refuse these specific orders to strike drug boats if you were still in uniform?
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the difference between the initial strike and what is being reported as a second strike. And those things are different. I think this administration has tied themselves in knots, the explanations that we have received on how this is all legal. And I was saying weeks ago, my concern is with the service members. that we’re going to put these individuals in a really, really tough place. And they may find out down the road that they did something that is illegal. It is not fair to them. That’s why we need presidents and secretary of defense who understand the Constitution, who understand the rule of law, and have more respect for the Constitution and the country and service members than… The wins of a president.
SPEAKER 03 :
Again, just putting it right back. putting it right back on the service people saying, you know, it’s a lot of pressure on them, but they know what’s right and wrong. They’ll figure it out. Of course, then when he’s pressured and said, would you not have attacked these drug boats? Well, I would have attacked the first one, but maybe not the second one. I don’t know. How is this legal? We don’t really know. And of course, this has been something that has been controversial, of course, when it comes to going after these drug runners, if you will, throughout the country and throughout Venezuela and everywhere else where it’s coming from. However, I do think if you were to take a poll on the American people, the concern would not be there. The concern for are we legally or illegally going after the mass drug importation of America, which we know has gotten better, by the way. We have seen it in real time. We have seen the drug crisis being really mitigated quite a bit, specifically in terms of fentanyl, over the last year. that the American people are really gonna turn to the servicemen and go, you did the wrong thing. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s how this works. I think they’re putting, they’re betting on the wrong topic. They’re betting on a topic that has destroyed families across this country. And if there is a way to stop the influx of drugs into the United States of America, you better believe the American people are not going to stand by and just say, oh, well, you know, it’s a tough decision. Hopefully they defy those orders. I think you would see a very different response from the actual people who are making these decisions. The problem, as Will said, is that isn’t necessarily the people who are going to be making the political decisions. Those aren’t necessarily the ones who are going to be going after the president of the United States potentially moving forward. As Will said, it does seem like that this feels like what will end up being another impeachment trial at some point later on because they can, and after the midterms, maybe there’s an ability to do so.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and here’s also the problem and how reckless this is of Senator Kelly, who did serve our country, who should know better, is that the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that you actually are to infer that your orders are legal. If you refuse an order, You’re subject to court martial. And what he said to them was, if you think, I mean, you can go to the judge advocate general and talk about it. But if you don’t have time, just simply say, I’m not going to do that. He’s putting them in worse shape. They’re going to have to go before a court martial. Now, the judge may, if there is an illegal order they refuse to do. then could absolve them of that. But they are then have to defend themselves in a court martial because they’re defying orders. And he’s saying, let’s just start this happening. You know, that is what undermines the commander in chief clause of the United States Constitution. He should not be saying this.
SPEAKER 03 :
Second half hour coming up. I want you to join us live. Don’t wait until later on a podcast or whatever it may be. If you don’t get on your local station, find us broadcasting live right now. ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble. We are broadcasting. Catch us later, of course, on the podcast feed. And I want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. Let’s kick off December Strong at ACLJ.org. Be right back.
SPEAKER 04 :
Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever. This is Seculo. And now your host, Logan Sekula.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to Sekula. We got a packed second half hour coming up for you. And it starts right now, of course, it’s December. December 1st in 2025. I can’t believe we’re here. Headed towards the very end of the year. And of course, with the ACLJ, this is the most important month of the year. November ended up being really record-breaking for us, so I really appreciate it. I know it is tough for a lot of people financially right now, so I’m not asking you to stretch. I’m asking those who can and are willing to support this work to do so. And of course, all donations are matched right now through the end of the month. Be a part of it right now during our year-end drive. I’m going to really encourage you to do so. Tomorrow’s Giving Tuesday. We love to break the record on Giving Tuesday. But we could say we’ll start it off a little early. Let’s just say Giving Tuesday lasts for… a little bit through Monday, and also into Giving Tuesday. How about that? Sounds good? Scan the QR code. Be a part of it today. We know it’s a big day for charitable giving. It’s a big day for you to support a lot of great organizations, and we hope that you include us in that as well. Have your gifts doubled today at ACLJ.org for those that will unlock their donations. I believe it’s up to a million dollars. You can be a part of that right now. It’s very easy to do it. That is at ACLJ.org. Do that today. Of course, we’re going to be taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110 as we are talking about the big push President Trump is making to really restrict asylum seekers right now. As we know that that terrorist attack that happened on Wednesday was done by someone who sought asylum during the Afghanistan withdrawal. Of course, a very different situation as thousands upon thousands of people were flooding into the country. And we know that the mass majority of them Probably ended up being good citizens, ended up being people that really helped out. But there are people who certainly slipped through. And what does that look like? President Trump essentially said, we are going to pause on everything and reevaluate how we handle asylum seekers. Now, I hope this is something that can go rather quickly. He does not seem to be. I could very much see President Trump saying, hey, I got about three years left. I’ll just push this at least for two plus years, and then it’s not my problem anymore. Will that be the case? Who knows? But if he’s saying things like it’s not going to be open for a very, very long time, which is essentially what he said, I think we can at least infer that it’s going to be some time before we see asylum seekers back allowed. There are certain people who… Look, there are countries that very much need it. So I’m not that person who is anti-immigration or anti-asylum. But you have a situation where our service members are being murdered in cold blood on the streets of Washington, D.C., near the White House. I assume and understand that something has to get done.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and when you also look at some of the issues that have stemmed from this, I mean, even the Department of Homeland Security put up a whole thread on X about members that have come through this program that you don’t hear a lot about, but that have caused havoc or committed crime, some very egregious crimes against children that have happened after coming through, after being not vetted properly. But… I mean, there was two individuals that plotted a terrorist attack in Oklahoma City on Election Day of last year that were picked up. They had pledged allegiance to ISIS and they had been granted legal status by the Obama by the Biden administration. Then you had someone who got in a shootout with police in Fairfax, Virginia. during a routine traffic stop where he said, I should have served with the expletive Taliban and returned fire. This individual was ultimately killed in the shootout with police. But it goes on and on. And there’s a list of these individuals, not just the ones that killed the National Guardsmen that we saw last week. And this is the issue that people are having. And so it can’t just be a pause on asylum. It has to also be a retooling and figuring out how to properly do this. Because the problem is now the asylum program in and of itself is taboo and thought of as something that is not properly run. And that’s because of how it was used. It was abused by people coming here and by the administration to let more people in, not for the structure it was originally meant for.
SPEAKER 03 :
We do have a lot more coming up. Rick Grinnell’s going to be joining us in the next segment. And towards the end of the show, I’d like to hear from you as much as possible. So I want you to call in, get on hold, 1-800-684-3110. If you have a point of view on this, I’d love to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. You’re going to hear about it a lot. I’m going to keep telling you. Support the work of the ACLJ. We had a record break in November. Let’s do it again in December, even more so as we head into Giving Tuesday, one of the biggest days of our year during the ACLJ’s year-end drive. Be a part of it today. That’s at ACLJ.org. Scan that QR code you see on the screen. We’ll be right back with Rick Grinnell. Welcome back to Secular. We’re just doing a last second here check with Rick Grinnell before we have him on. Just one moment, but we’ll give you a call. I’d love to hear from you in the next segment. We already got four lines lit up right now, but we still got, that means we got two empty right now. 1-800-684-3110. We just lost all of them, Will. What did you do?
SPEAKER 06 :
You scared them, Logan. You said, look, we’ve got these folks on the line. And they’re like, eh, not today, Logan.
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t know who’s screening the calls. I can’t tell. So you know what? Maybe I’ll blame them. The faceless person that’s over in the corner. I don’t know who it may be. 1-800-684-3110. Put. Give us a call. I’d love to hear from you. Of course, we are talking about the big news that came out of Washington, D.C. over the weekend. The sad news, of course, that tragically we had a member of the National Guard pass away, murdered. Cold blood on the streets of Washington, D.C. And then later on, we have another one who is currently in critical condition, all due to the current influx that we had in 2021. And look, we did a documentary series called Revenge of the Taliban. We recorded it in real time. And you can still watch it. It’s still available on our YouTube channel. And it had people like Rick Grinnell in it. It had a lot of people who are now involved, Tulsi Gabbard, so many faces that you’d be familiar with now, Mike Waltz, all chiming in in real time what was going on basically from the beginning of the war on terror up until that pullout of Afghanistan. And it really affected a lot of us deeply. You can hear in our voices the seriousness that came upon a lot of us, all when it really had to do with these servicemen who sadly were murdered in a terrorist attack. And now here we are, four or five years later, another terrorist attack has happened directly related to the Afghanistan withdrawal. So it’s a bit like history repeating itself. And Rick Grinnell’s joining us right now. Rick, you were involved in that video that we had, involved in that documentary series we did so many years ago now. As it was unfolding, warning! that this could happen. This was, of course, the very early days of the Biden administration saying the influx of what was going to happen, and it didn’t have to do with the people who were seeking asylum for the right reasons, but we knew when we saw thousands upon thousands of people that the vetting could not be what it needed to be. And sadly, years later, we are now seeing the fruits of that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I remember speaking to you all about this situation back in 2021, where I came forward and said, look, I’ve got friends and former colleagues in Germany who are telling me that the vetting is not happening, that they’re being pushed by the Biden people to rush through, to use a hunch when they’re interviewing somebody if they don’t have enough information. Imagine that directive of you are going to interview people coming out of a war zone. And if they don’t have proper paperwork, if you don’t have enough information about them, just use your hunch on whether or not they should come into the United States. That’s outrageous. But that was being done by the Biden team. And I heard this over and over multiple times from my colleagues in Frankfurt when I was ambassador to Germany. We have a very large consulate in Frankfurt. That’s a place where we do a lot of the vetting. I remember even telling you all that there were some stories that I was hearing from individuals that there would be plane loads of Afghans coming from Kuwait that would touch down in Germany to refuel and then go on to the United States. And there was no vetting. State Department didn’t know, DHS did not know who exactly was on that flight other than a bunch of Afghans trying to get out of Afghanistan. They were pushed right into the United States, unvetted. And I think this is a big problem because we have hundreds of millions of people that are trying to come into our country. We are very generous when it comes to visas, immigration services, even citizenship. America is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration, but we have to vet. Otherwise, we don’t know who’s coming in and it creates huge problems for the people inside the United States already, Americans who are here.
SPEAKER 06 :
Rick, I see this story and this tragedy that unfortunately took place right before Thanksgiving, as well as when you see the members of Congress that are still trying to push this illegal orators narrative. They were so gutsy as to say in the wake of this, well, the National Guard should have never been there. This tragedy should have never happened. Ignoring the fact that what we’ve been saying for years now is that many of these asylum seekers should never have been here. And there wouldn’t need to be this issue of protecting the capital city and being concerned about asylum seekers if the protocols and the program was not abused the way it was under the Biden administration. It wasn’t just… Those from Afghanistan that weren’t vetted. They use the asylum program to allow mass influx of migrants from the southern border improperly. And now you have you’ve turned the nation into thinking that the asylum program in and of itself is a bad thing. It now is tarnished because of the way it was used against the American immigration system by the Biden administration. And we’ve seen that play out with the crime from the southern border. And now, unfortunately, this tragic terror attack that we saw the day before Thanksgiving and a host of other criminal activity and terroristic threats that have come out of a group of people that were unvetted from Afghanistan. And I just wanted your take on that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Look, I think we have a lot of politicians and people in the media and do-gooder types that are talking about these issues without understanding the facts. So let me just be very basic about this, which is a point that I made earlier. We have so many people that are trying to come into the United States. The lines are long. If you’ve ever been at one of our embassies overseas, it’s hard to get an appointment because so many people want to come into the United States. And do we need to do a faster and better job? Yes. But we also need to do a thorough job. And so it’s very difficult to ask someone on the front line of visa services, which is usually a first tour State Department Foreign Service Officer, to make judgments without having facts. I think the applicant is required to bring forward the facts, enough facts so that we can make a decision. Again, because we have so many people in line that wanna come in, we get to be picky. We get to pick and choose who comes in. And by the way, let me be also very clear. We are letting millions of people into our country who are vetted. We are able to do this. All we’re saying right now is take a breath, make sure that our frontline visa services and frontline DHS officials have enough information that they’re being properly vetted. If you don’t, then just deny these people coming in and just simply say, you don’t have enough information. We can’t make a good determination. So we’re gonna move to the next person in line who does have enough information, who will get in. We’re not trying to say no visas, no immigrants coming into this country legally. Again, we are the most generous country when it comes to welcoming people to the United States. That will continue. We will continue to do that. But for anyone suggesting that we should let people in who are not properly vetted, shame on them. They don’t understand the consequences. And what we just saw last weekend is clear that we must do a better job.
SPEAKER 06 :
Rick, we now know that the president has ordered a pause on the decisions of the asylum program. They can still do the work under Citizenship and Immigration Services, but they cannot approve or deny asylum applications until he is the president said for a very long time. So obviously there is work that needs to be done to clean up the mess that the Biden administration did. And honestly, for years of bureaucrats that have used our laws and systems to push their policy objectives instead of actually making the law work for those in need, those that are actually seeking asylum. But with about two minutes left here, what do you think needs to be done in able to to even salvage? the generosity of the United States as we are faced with such an issue that we currently have right now?
SPEAKER 02 :
Look, thank God that President Trump has the courage to step in and fix these problems because the vetting is a serious problem. The Biden team told people to rush, told our bureaucrats, our American workers to rush immigrants in without proper identification without proper information. And that’s got to stop. We have to have a system where we’re vetting people properly and taking the hits from the media that says somehow you’re cruel or mean. Not every single person has a right to come into the united states again the line is so long we have to make decisions about who gets in and who doesn’t because we cannot let every single person into the country who wants to be here we wouldn’t have a country hundreds of millions of people want to come to the united states still And so having rules, regulations, and a process, that’s a no-brainer. I just feel like we need to have an educated political class and media to understand what they’re saying and doing because they don’t understand the implications of their arguments. Having people vetted is common sense. Thank God President Trump is doing it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you, Rick, for joining us today. I always appreciate hearing your voice and what you have to say about this. Of course, you’ve been involved in such a deep level. Look, I’m glad a lot of people watching this broadcast are able to get a very different point of view and get a more educated point of view because you’re a member of our team here. And because you are a member of the ACLJ or an ACLJ champion, know that it goes a long way in terms of having incredible voices like Rick on from our media team and, of course, on our legal team as well at ACLJ.org. You can make your donation today. We’ll be right back with your calls and comments at 1-800- 684-3110. Call me right now to get on the air. Last chance. Welcome back to Secula. Last segment of the day. And guess what? We maybe had a glitch. Maybe not. I don’t know. All of our calls are emptied out. We got six lines open. So if you’ve ever wanted to be on the air… Now’s your time. Open call Monday. Right now. Wowzer. What are you wowsing me for? Open call. Call whatever. Any topic, Logan? Not any topic. You can do all the topics we’ve talked about this week so far. That’s what we do on Friday.
SPEAKER 06 :
Talking about the hysteria about Lane Kiffin going to LSU. Saw that. Yeah, I mean, that’s crazy.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know. People were texting me as if I cared. You don’t? People were like, man, Logan, can you believe it about Lane Kiffin? And I’m like… He sure, what a name. I wish I had a name like Lane Kiffin. That’s a good, that guy, there’s no other job for him. got to be a football coach yeah you can’t be anything else like or it’s like just a weird or you’re like a ballroom dancer oh like how about ladies and gentlemen lane kiffin like or a magician or maybe even a magician well the way he disappeared out of oxford mississippi to go to baton rouge was kind of like a magician i said magician twice i mean magician or a figure skater yeah i feel like lane kiffin’s a good figure skating name i like it like there’s uh Who’s the one who lives here? Scott Hamilton. Scott Hamilton. Not as good of a name as Lane Kiffin. I would trust a figure skater named Lane Kiffin to do the triple axel, but I don’t know. I’m looking at the Winter Games right now, Will. I’ve been paying attention. Have you been following the Winter Games? I haven’t, no. Yeah, it’s starting to heat up. Oh my goodness. 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air today. One person just keeps asking me to put on sunglasses. They like the one time you did the show with the sunglasses on. One day I wore sunglasses. They ask every day. I leave them in the car, folks. I don’t wear my sunglasses inside most of the time.
SPEAKER 06 :
The reason you had to do that is you didn’t have your regular glasses.
SPEAKER 03 :
I left my regular glasses. And I don’t know if you know this. Without my glasses, I can see nothing. Right. So it’d be very bad. Yeah, a lot of people say that I answered all their questions. That’s why they all hung up. I’m sure that’s why. They felt very educated and informed after Rick Grinnell. You did a great job, Logan. I would say you and Rick more than me at that point. But of course, that’s where it is. We are going to be taking your calls. A couple are getting screened right now at 1-800-684-3110. Look, Will wanted to walk us through something.
SPEAKER 06 :
I did want to give a few updates for those of you, especially that follow the legal work of the ACLJ. We’ve got a lot more that we’re going to be talking about this week and next week. As our attorneys, you may think a lot of jobs slow down at the end of the year. People think, ah, I’ll handle that in quarter one. A lot of our legal work really heats up during the winter, to borrow Logan’s joke from earlier. But we are currently preparing for an oral argument in Massachusetts. We are still fighting the state in defending pregnancy resource centers with their smear campaign, their advertising campaign, bashing and defaming and going after using the budget and the taxpayer dollars to go after pregnancy resource centers. We have an oral argument. coming up in January. So just a few weeks away, our attorneys are preparing for that with everything that’s going on with the holiday. We have a status conference in early January with our street preachers in Chicago. where we had to sue Chicago because they were targeting street preachers going after their First Amendment protected activities. And so not only did we defend them in court, but then we filed a federal lawsuit against the city. And we have a status conference in the first few weeks of January there as well. We have a lot of others we could go over, but I also want to remind people, That right now, our attorneys are finalizing our brief to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking them to take this case where we are fighting to protect Calvary Chapel of San Jose against the ridiculous, the insane fines levied by the state of California trying to take… $1.2 million of tithe money. Think about it that way as well. You think of church money, that is coming from the individuals that give faithfully to their church to further the work of the gospel, the outreach, the ministry in California. We know that the whole world needs it, but we know California needs the gospel desperately in this country. And when you have the government trying to say, you know what? We like a little bit of that too. We know that these orders were overturned, that they were considered unconstitutional, but we are still going after this fine to the tune of $1.2 million. And that is why we’re taking Gavin Newsom, the state of California, city of San Jose, to the Supreme Court saying, no, enough. You cannot seek this anymore.
SPEAKER 03 :
Like we said, a million dollars for the state of California is nothing. You know, that’ll be spent tomorrow if they get that million dollars. But for a church, a million dollars is life or death, if you will, for a lot of churches. They’re not surviving on this. So to still be imparting these million dollar fines when you are talking about five, six years later, four or five years post pandemic that we are living in, of course. It’s sad that they’ve considered, you know, continue to do this. But the ACLJ is there. The legal team is there. And of course, the legal team can’t be there without you, because I like to say we hire the best of the best. And I really believe that. And that’s when we can, obviously. And it’s a competitive field. If you went to law school, often you want to leave law school, I don’t know, for a pretty high paying career. So with that, to be competitive, we have to offer competitive salaries, whether that’s for our media team, whether it’s for our legal team, whatever it is here. You know, they understand they’re working for the ACLJ. It’s a very different world. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t want to get the best attorneys we could possibly get. It doesn’t mean I don’t want the best media people we could possibly get. course we do of course we want the best equipment we want to make sure that all of it is done top notch a plus and none of that happens without support from you because we don’t charge legal fees to our clients it’s zero dollars for them we don’t put our content behind a paywall you know all of this content is available to you for absolutely free we want you to share it with people You know, I saw in the news over the weekend that there’s three or four kind of, actually over a thousand artists, but three or four that you would really know of, some of which I’m a fan of, musicians who said, we’re no longer gonna stream our music in Israel. So if you, we’re trying to get our labels to pull and geo-block Israel from being able to listen to our music. Of course, who does that hurt? That hurts Israeli citizens. And what it really does though, and this is where it’s crazy to me, because when I look at what we try to do, I try to reach everyone with what we do. And those are people who agree with us, people that disagree with us. If you’re going to try to change hearts and minds, you’ve got to be able to be out there, be in the world and talking to people all over the place. That’s why we’re on YouTube. That’s why we’re on Rumble. That’s why we’re literally everywhere you could possibly be on terrestrial radio. I want to make sure our message is heard from as many people as possible. And what that does is say, okay, I’m so-and-so artist. I don’t want my music heard by regular, ordinary, everyday Israelis. Therefore, my message is not going to get to them. And even if I disagree, obviously I do disagree with a lot of their messages, That is definitely a racist moment here. That is definitely a nationalist moment saying, oh, my music can’t even be heard by, I don’t know, the nearly 50% of the people that are in Israel that probably don’t even support. They probably are on your side. But that doesn’t matter because we’re painted with such a broad brush. And again, some of these artists are people who I think make incredible music and who I really respect, but they don’t understand that simply. And the ACLJ and what we do here is exactly the opposite. Who do I hope this reaches? I hope right now you’re watching and you disagree with everything I said, but you’ve watched this for an hour because you like the show. And maybe, just maybe, something was said affects you, changes your heart, changes your mind. Or maybe you’re watching and you agree with everything I said. And if you’re one of those people, I really do hope you support the work of the ACLJ. We only got 50 seconds left. in today’s show. It’s kicking off our year-end Freedom Drive. Of course, it’s Monday, but we’re saying it’s already Giving Tuesday on the graphics, so it’s the year-end drive. You know what? We’ll make Giving Tuesday 36 hours this year. Be a part of it today. It’s a big day for organizations that need your support. Of course, all donations are tax-deductible, and your gifts are doubled right now. That means they’re being matched by another ACLJ donor or ACLJ champion at any level, like up to a million dollars. So whether that’s $5 or $5,000, you can do it right now and have your gifts effectively doubled. It’s really amazing. I want to apologize to Bonnie. I wasn’t able to get to you today. Sorry about that here on the phones. And with that, that’s going to do it for today’s show. We’ll talk to you tomorrow. Go to ACLJ.org.
