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PANIC: USAID Official Orders Staff to Shred and Burn Documents.
SPEAKER 03 :
and leaked email USAID officials ordered to shred and burn documents.
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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 Sekula.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to Sekula. We got a great show lined up for you today. This is Logan Sekula. Will Haines joining me in studio. Give us a call. I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. Harry Hutchinson’s going to be joining us a bit later in the broadcast. But of course, we like to hear from you. If you’re joining us on YouTube or Rumble, make sure you’re subscribing. Make sure you’re following along. We are in the middle of our life and liberty drive right now. So we’re going to talk about that a little bit later in the broadcast. But we want to kick things off. with some news that’s coming out of the world of USAID. Of course, that has been something that Doge, the Elon Musk-run department, has taken a real shot at, if you will, in terms of… I mean, Elon called it a criminal organization with the amount of waste that was going on with USAID, whether you like it or not. There were some interesting documents that were leaked, including an email from a USAID official saying, hey… It’s going to be a busy day. Start shredding, start burning all the documents. Now, of course, there can be legitimate reasons for there to be a shred and burn day, if you will, as they are being essentially shut down and moved out of their offices. But they want to make sure, Will, this article says, the efforts triggered immediate alarm on Capitol Hill. where they need to make sure that the administration put some steps in to make sure they’re complying with law, because destroying some of these documents could be a big issue.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right, and there’s something called the Federal Records Act, which makes sure that the documents of the government belong to the people. Not necessarily just to those agencies and that they have to preserve this for transparency, for oversight, things of that nature. And so there is concern when all of a sudden an email goes out from the acting executive secretary, Erica Carr, that says this is going to be an all day event. So bring a lunch essentially and get ready. And when the shredder gets overworked or too backed up or needs a break, start putting stuff in burn bags, label it secret. And what do you do with burn bags? They’re paper bags that you burn so that you can get rid of documents. Now, there is already some Democrats actually on the Hill that are raising alarms about the Federal Records Act. But they’re going to take it, obviously, from the standpoint of, oh, this has got to be Elon Musk and Trump doing this. They’re trying to cover up their actions. Meanwhile, we know what Elon Musk and President Trump have said about this organization. So that raises alarm on the right that they’re trying to cover up something by burning these documents. The ACLJ’s attorneys are already working up a FOIA request on this. And when we get back in the next segment, we’ll even talk about who Erica Carr is. Is this someone that was put in place as acting executive secretary? Was it put in place newly by the Trump administration? Or is this someone that’s been around a while?
SPEAKER 03 :
Good tease there, Will. So you’ll see when you get back. Erica Carr, not to be confused with Eric Carr. maybe the greatest drummer of the rock band Kiss. So I just want to throw that out there, Eric Carr, the Fox, if you will. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. I’d love to hear from you today. We got some lines still open. We got up four lines open. Great time to give us a call. And we are just kicking off the Life and Liberty Drive for the month of March. We are what, 10 days in, 11 days in on this drive, 12 days in actually. on the Life and Liberty Drive. So almost halfway through, can you believe it? And just this week, we are deeply involved in the fight for religious freedom at home and abroad, and we need your help to keep us in the fight. We’re going to go through some of those really important issues that we are working on a little bit later in the show. But you know what we do here at the ACLJ, and you know the results that come from it. So I encourage you, if you like this broadcast, if you like what we do in the courts, we need your support. Again, it’s one of those special times of the month where you get your donations doubled. That’s right. There’s another donor. There’s a group of donors ready to unlock their donation at any amount. So if you give $100, that becomes $200. You get $1,000. That becomes $2,000. And of course, you can even do $5, $10, whatever you need to do. And while you’re at it, you can become an ACLJ champion. That’s someone that gives on a monthly basis. And when you become an ACLJ champion, your first donation, if it’s during our life in Liberty Drive, is also matched and doubled. And then later on, you can be one of those donors if you can. It’s ready to unlock the match. Join us right now, 1-800-684-3110. Still a couple lines open, and I’d like to hear from you. And go to ACLJ.org while we’re in break and take a look at the amazing work our team is doing. Welcome back to Secular. Like I said, phone lines are open. We are discussing this USAID email that went out and said, hey, prepare for a big day of burning, a big day of shredding of those documents after, of course, President Trump’s administration has pretty much ordered USAID. to effectively shut down. I mean, there’s certainly some things that are being exempt. And look, there’s a lot of great Christian ministries that are currently having discussions with the Trump administration about how to continue some of their funding, including Samaritan’s Purse and some of these others. And I do think there are necessary things that the U.S. should get involved in. But we know from what has been disclosed now through the Doge work, how much of this was going to waste, how much of it was not even going to legitimate organizations. So now they are cleaning up their books. But at the same time, you have… uh erica carr and a lot of others saying hey it’s time to get rid of these documents what does that mean does that mean they just need to clean out so i can get you know move out of the offices or is there something more nefarious we don’t know but what we do know is this at least triggered some alarms and you have an administration the trump administration and some democrats even saying hey we got to make sure that we’re complying here because it is not legal to just start destroying documents got to make sure things are backed up that there are
SPEAKER 10 :
digital copies that there are print copies still because like you said these are the documents of the people not the documents of some corporate business that’s right and obviously gregory meeks a democrat from new york who’s on the house foreign affairs committee he’s trying to spin it that this is president trump and elon doing something nefarious saying that uh burning and shredding USAID documents and personnel files seems like a great way to get rid of evidence of wrongdoing when you’re illegally dismantling the agency. I also feel like the converse to that is that burning and shredding documents seems like a great way to get rid of evidence when the grants and programs you were doling out weren’t necessarily on the up and up.
SPEAKER 03 :
Look, I mean, I got an idea. How about it? Let’s say you’re right. And you agree that you think that it’s President Trump and Elon doing this to hide their own stuff. Good. Let’s not shred all the documents in. Let’s not burn all the documents. How about we just agree to let’s not do that shred and burn day. I think that’s probably the easiest solution for everybody. So then these documents can be public record. We can see them. You can FOIA them. You can get the information out there instead of this idea where it has to be partisan. How about if it is partisan when you actually look into it? Fine. But I think we can all agree that just shredding and burning, not the best idea. You know, we’ve heard a lot of that before. We’ve seen it in history. We’ve seen it happen so many times and it never ends up good. So let’s not go there. There’s a lot of calls coming in on this. And I know we want to break in, Will, and talk about Erica Carr. You referenced that in the first segment that you had some more information. So you know who this person is that we’re dealing with.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. So Erica Carr is the acting executive secretary of USAID. And she has been in government in similar roles for quite a while. She was actually in the Office of Personnel Management, which is kind of like HR for the whole government between 2007 and 2009. So at the tail end of the George W. Bush administration and then through the early years of Obama. But then she moved over to USAID. under Obama’s first year in 2009. And then when President Biden began his term in 2021, she was appointed by Biden as the executive secretary to USAID in an acting capacity at that time before any sort of confirmation went forward. So she’s been in leadership at USAID for a while. So this isn’t a new person that was brought in by the Doge team or by the Trump administration to oversee the dismantling. This is someone who knows the ins and outs of this agency. And so when it’s coming from her, this directive, it does also raise more questions to me. When they’re saying get rid of what seems to be vast amounts of of documentation classified documentation many people may not even think that usaid would have a ton of classified information but they have classified safes now there’s a spokesperson saying that much of this is just paper copies of things that are stored on servers so we’re not getting rid of it all but at some point if it’s done in a way where it’s an all-day event, you’re shredding. The directive is shred as much as you can first and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder needs a break. It seems like you’re getting rid of everything.
SPEAKER 03 :
It starts to raise red flags, not just within it, but also for us who have been through this before. This starts to give you some moments of PTSD, maybe, of previous administrations, of things happening like this. We have some calls about that. Let’s go to Jerry, who’s calling in Rhode Island on line two. Jerry, you’re on the air.
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Hello, team. Will you remember this discussion five and six years ago when Grinnell first hanging out? We were talking about leaks. We were talking about the Peter Strzok cell phone with the girlfriend. Those long-term listeners, we know exactly what’s being inferred here. We’re destroying the evidence because we’ve got a new guy in charge. So this is nothing new.
SPEAKER 03 :
Jerry, I knew you were going to say that, and I feel the same way. It’s like I don’t want to hear those names again, your Lisa Page, your Peter Strzok, but it does give you sort of flashbacks. to those moments because you know it just felt so politically motivated and that’s why i’m even saying on this this way is if you’re saying hey the left is saying well this is cover trump covering himself and and elon covering themselves and then the the right is saying this is usaid covering themselves and not wanting to show the fine let’s not burn him let’s not destroy him Let’s take a look at what’s inside of them.
SPEAKER 10 :
I’ll even go back one step further, Jerry. In the case that the ACLJ fought very hard for for years to protect the Tea Party groups against the discrimination by the IRS and fighting back and eventually winning an order against the IRS. And Lois Lerner, who was the head of the nonprofit division, She lost two years worth of emails. In what two years were they? The very specific period of which that targeting began. So the Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, may try to make this a look what President Trump and the Doge team is doing. But those of us like Jerry, who’ve been around long enough, know that the people that end up destroying documents, deleting servers, losing emails and text messages, always seem to be the deep state actors that were up to no good. That’s just the bottom line. It doesn’t tend to be really people on the right, at least in modern times, that are doing this deep state swampy activity. to get get away with it and to destroy evidence it always seems to be those that are trying to create a stronger bureaucracy and weaponize government against the american people we got a lot of calls coming in i want to take more on this because i want to make sure we have time to also open it up for more discussion and maybe these calls will inspire you to call in as well and support the work and one of the things if you become an aclj champion
SPEAKER 03 :
you get bumped to the front of the line. And, you know, we’ve got people who’ve been on hold for 15 minutes or 15, 12 minutes already since the very beginning. But James in Connecticut, he’s only been on hold four minutes. He gets to jump to the front. James, thank you so much for being a champion and you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you, sir. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 03 :
I can hear you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Ah, great. Okay. The point that I was raising is that we cannot deal with the USAID as if they were going to cooperate with a request not to destroy. As a matter of fact, they could be doing that as we speak.
SPEAKER 03 :
Sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
The idea of making public the threat to destroy evidence is a serious matter, and I think the response to it has to be equally serious. Something on the…
SPEAKER 03 :
of the kind of ice james just because we are running out we’re running out of time this time again obviously i appreciate you being a champion but it has triggered some alerts to happen and they are trying to take care of this now again both sides in some ways saying you may be pointing fingers but it is being taken care of they have been though they were ordered to destroy a lot of these documents uh there has been like what they said a alarms triggered
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. And when you think about it, there is to some degree a necessity when you are being told to vacate your building because Customs and Border Patrol will be moving into the former headquarters of USAID. I’m certain that there is some things that will get shredded and burned as you move. And some of these, they say, are personnel files, things that probably aren’t necessary to transfer. Maybe they are, though. That’s the problem. When it’s done as an order of this is going to be an all-day event, get ready, buckle up, we’re going through everything, that’s where you start to get concerned, too, about other swampy deep state people, even if the order is on the up and up from the executive secretary.
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When we get back, we’re going to hear from Harry Hutchinson. He’s going to be joining us. We’re going to be talking about this topic as well as the tariffs that are coming in, obviously, and what that means for Canada. What it means is they’ve threatened to turn off the power and all those different things. And a report that actually shows inflation today. And what does it look like? Did inflation go up? Did inflation go down? Under the first few months of a Trump presidency. get to that when we get back but i encourage you right now to support the work of the aclj of course again i may sound like i’m on repeat i’m not we need your help help keep us in the fight have your gift double today look just a few of the things we are doing we’re defending a group of christians who’ve been criminally charged just for carrying a cross on the roadside today we will also file the supreme court to defend religious liberty in a major school choice case And of course, throughout Europe, we are aggressively advocating for Israel at the UN, at the ICC, and on Capitol Hill. Go to ACLJ.org. Be a part of it today. Welcome back to Seculo. We do have a lot of calls coming in. Harry Hutchinson’s joining us. Again, call us. We’ve got three lines open right now. 1-800-684-3110. The back half hour, I always try to take as many calls as I can. I’m actually going to kick off one of these with a call so people can get some of their frustrations out of the way. Let’s go to Robert in Maryland on line one.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. Hi, I was calling because I wanted to know if what documents do they want to shred and burn at the USAID? Is it documents that dealt with legitimate fundraising or legitimate grants for disaster relief? Or is it, you know, just shredding and burning documents that were a part of the waste, fraud and abuse? And what are the actual content of those documents? actually went to the Taliban, $15 million for condoms, $10 billion went to an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria. And those aren’t disaster-related relief. We know that those are terrorist organizations that hate the United States and every other person and country that’s not under Islamic Sharia law.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Robert, I think that’s precisely the question that a lot of people have right now. There are some legitimate reasons, like I said, to burn documents, to shred documents, especially if you’re moving out of an office space. Or look, you have a legal organization, you’re going to be shredding documents. Stuff happens. That’s part of doing business. However, when you start saying, hey, we’re having a full day of Shredfest, get ready. And not the Shredfest dialect. We’re not talking about, you know, rock and roll. We’re talking about get your shredders ready, and they may get so much that they may stop working. We’re planning on jams. And again, not the good kind of jams. We’re planning on shredder jams. Not Eric Carr jams. Not Eric Carr jams.
SPEAKER 10 :
Eric Carr jams, which are jammed shredders.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, we’re going to keep talking about this, Robert, but that’s precisely the reason we’re trying to step in and make sure we get the ACLJs on top of it, get the FOIA requests in. But yeah, we understand that that frustration is real, and you want to know what’s inside these documents.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. And it’s the contents of their classified safes. Right. So it’s classified documents. We don’t know what those documents say right now. Because HR and it has people’s social security numbers. That would just be privacy information, privacy reasons. But I don’t know that they would be considered classified documents. Also, why do they have hard copies? How about they just tell us, people?
SPEAKER 03 :
How about they just let us know? We’ll try to find out for you, Robert. Harry Hutchinson’s joining us because the inflation report came in, and look, is inflation up a little bit? Yeah, it’s up a little bit, but it’s actually up less than anticipated. So maybe we actually have a report saying that some of these moves, as people have pushed and said, You know, you voted for this. You voted for this. Look, egg price is still high. Look, I think most of us understood this was not going to be an overnight fix. That is not how the economy works. Just like you can’t really destroy an economy overnight. I don’t think you can also build back an economy overnight. Now, did President Trump say, you know, day one, maybe, you know, this campaign promises sometimes that gets a little hyperbolic. But we are talking about only 60 plus days into an administration here. And inflation, which was supposed to be coming in at around 3, 3.5%, 3.2% is what people thought, actually came in at 2.8% in the month of February, lower than expected. So yes, is that a minor win? It is a minor win, but it shows the trajectory that maybe we are headed on the right path and we’ve seen the first dip in inflation for the first time in quite some time, Harry.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think that’s precisely correct. So core inflation, for instance, slowed to the lowest reading since April of 2021. If you look at shelter costs, for instance, that was the smallest increase since December 2021. And thirdly, inflation-adjusted wage increases rose So in real terms, during the first full month of the Trump administration, the economy is actually doing better than expected. So I think that is the core takeaway from today’s news.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and Professor Hutchison also, when you look at 2.8%, a reminder for everyone that the way our economy is built and the pros and cons, and this is a much longer discussion you and I can have, but when there’s central banking and a Federal Reserve and fractional reserve systems and all the things that come along with that, the Federal Reserve is looking for inflation. We don’t have an economy based on deflationary periods. They have a target rate of 2%. That’s what they want inflation to be at the central bank, at the Federal Reserve. So when you see this 2.8% annual inflation rate, that’s very close to what the central bankers would be wanting. It’s not out of the norm. But I think it’s also important to remind people that getting inflation back in line doesn’t mean necessarily it can across some sectors that prices come down because inflation is an ever growing snowball effect. And when you have prices baked in, a lot of times it’s very difficult to. based off our economy to get things to return back where they were to counteract those periods of extreme high inflation that we saw under the Biden presidency when we were nine, 10% year over year.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think that is precisely correct. And so I think you are correct to point out that the inflation rate is coming down. That is important for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that that may lead to a reduction in interest rates. As interest rates come down, housing costs come down, and people can afford to purchase another house or a new house, perhaps for the first time in their working lives. So I think overall, this is relatively good news And it’s particularly good news against a backdrop of tariff increases or proposed tariff increases and some of the gloom and doom that is coming from CNN, the Associated Press, MSNBC, and other entities who have finally discovered something called inflation.
SPEAKER 03 :
And with the tariff situation, look, I mean, I was in an interview with Rand Paul yesterday. He’s concerned about it. There are conservatives, especially the more libertarian conservatives, who have concerns with the tariffs. But if you have the tariffs going in and then sort of inflation and you’re able to balance that off, then maybe it will prove the point.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think that’s true, and also tariffs will incentivize economic production to move to the United States. And so one of the things that we should keep in mind is, for instance, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, has imposed – he’s pulled it off – He’s pulled it back, but he imposed a surcharge on electricity sales to Michigan, New York, and Minnesota in retaliation to the tariffs that Donald Trump imposed on steel and aluminum. Canada is the largest exporter… to the United States of steel and aluminum. And so what President Trump is doing is incentivizing manufacturers to move to the United States. Now, I would also say that President Trump is gifted by virtue of the fact that he is dealing with someone like Doug Ford, who is not considered the brightest candle in Canada.
SPEAKER 03 :
also it’s another negotiation tactic and we know that from president trump we know that sometimes you gotta ask for something crazy do something kind of crazy to then work yourself back to an actual deal we’re seeing that even in ukraine we got news coming about that later on as you saw ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire now it is in russia’s court as expected we will see what happens with that we’ll discuss that a bit later on but hey we only have 20 seconds left and we have a second half hour so i want you to keep joining us if you’re not getting us on your local station go to aclj.org or youtube or rumble we’re there the salem news channel but also support the work of the aclj right now i gotta tell you more coming up about the amazing work we’re doing here during our life and liberty drive we have one minute break it’s the shortest break of the show this is the perfect time scan that qr code and make your donation today keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever this is seculo and now your host logan seculo told you it’d be a short break hopefully you went in there and made the donation at aclj.org if you haven’t yet though you know that break is short it’s almost too short it almost it hurts my flow will i’m sorry i can’t do anything about it but not enough time for me to like even have like a sip of a drink i feel like it’s it’s a minute You can’t take a sip of a drink in one minute. I feel like I can’t think for a minute. I got to stay focused here on what we’re doing. We got calls coming in at 1-800-684-3110. I want to hear from you. For those of you just joining us, we’re going to reset a little bit because you may have seen the titles. Maybe you’re watching on YouTube. Maybe you’re watching on Rumble. Just joining us, you saw the panic. USAID officials ordered staff to shred and burn documents. This comes from an email directly from the department saying, hey, prepare for a big day. Again, we don’t know what’s in these documents, but prepare for a big day of shredding. We’re going to stop these shredders. We’re going to like, we’re going to put so much paper in there. It is going to kill the motors.
SPEAKER 10 :
It almost seems like a cartoon, like in your head, like Looney Tunes, where the machine starts billowing smoke and alarms are going off. Yeah. But no, this is, this is reality. This is from the acting executive secretary, Erica. Carr. She is a longtime staffer at USAID. She joined USAID under Obama’s first year in 2009 and was actually elevated to acting executive secretary by President Biden in really the first month of his term in 2020. So this is not someone who has been put in place by the new administration to carry out these things. She is in this role still, unlike many that have left agencies or been asked to leave agencies. But the concern here is that, one, they have, I would argue that they have these classified documents to begin with. Because USAID, you would think, yes, there may be sensitive documents, there may be eyes-only documents. But getting up to classified, I’m sure there are sensitive things that go on in many of these countries. But you’d think more of the CIA or the FBI having that kind of necessity. But… There is concern from Democrats that are trying to say, ah, Trump is trying to cover up a crime of dismantling this agency. Meanwhile, those of us that have been around long enough know that those like Lois Lerner, Hillary Clinton, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, and the litany of deep state actors that have decided to obfuscate the truth. And in reality, by deleting… their emails their servers their text messages uh we know that this is a pattern that we’ve seen from the concerning actors at these agencies and even if it is on the up and up from the the executive secretary’s level yeah how easy when you have an all-day shred fest as you
SPEAKER 03 :
said yes that’s better than obfuscate start putting things in shredders that maybe lead to uh things that the american people would like to know about yeah maybe they want to know and maybe you want to know give us a call 1-800-684-3110 i want to take this next minute to tell you about our life and liberty drive i got a list here that our team put together of all the work that we’re doing not all the work we’re doing just some of the work they wanted me to highlight for you today i’m going to read some of this to you okay this is just right now keep us in the fight have your gifts doubled by going to aclj.org you scan that qr code But at home right now, we are defending a group of Christians who were criminally charged, and these Christians were just simply walking down the side of the road with a cross. You may remember Arthur Blessed. He passed away last year. It was sort of his MO. He walked that cross all over the world, and they were doing a very similar thing, walking across the roadside, were stopped. And again, this wasn’t like on a highway. They were stopped at a moment and really just prosecuted because of their faith, criminally charged for carrying a cross. Today, we also filed the Supreme Court to defend religious liberty in a major school choice case. You’ve heard about our school choice. We’re working on a series for you to really understand why it is necessary. There’s a state trying to ban Christian schools from receiving funding simply because they are Christians. We also sent demand letters to Columbia University, another college, to raise the alarm about how Jewish students and anyone who supports Israel were being violently attacked. And that’s just here in the States. Around the world? The ACLJ and the ECLJ, that’s the European Center, are aggressively advocating for Israel at the UN before the International Criminal Court and on Capitol Hill. And you may not know what we do at the UN and the ICC. You’re like, I don’t even think you guys should be involved in that. It is so important that we have a voice there and a voice for you and a voice for Israel. So right now, go to ACLJ.org, make that donation. We’re going to continue the show just after this. Welcome back to Secular. We do want to take your calls. We’re going to now move on and discuss and we’ll go back to it. If you’re on hold right now, we’ll go back to the calls and comments about the previous topic. But we do want to talk a little about what’s going on in the war in Russia and Ukraine as Ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire deal. Of course, this comes after a few weeks of very heated discussions between the United States and Ukraine. and some deal it was underreported how much though the u.s has actually sided and doubled down with their support for ukraine it keeps happening but of course what you see is that clip you see the clip of president trump jd vance fighting with uh zielinski in the oval office of course it was one of the crazier moments i’ve ever seen and it was you know very fun to watch if you will uh but so of course it’s going to be repeated probably for the rest of our lives but You now have a ceasefire, not only on the table, but signed by Ukraine. And now it is in the hands of Russia. And this could be the beginning of the end of the war legitimately. And this is something that President Trump vowed he would try to get done very quickly. And I think if this actually moves forward, because we do believe that the the deal structure isn’t really outside of Russia’s… It’s agreeable, potentially.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. And in reality, when Ukraine first was saying we wouldn’t agree to a ceasefire, to some degree now, the Trump administration, even CNN pointing this out, is that they’re calling Putin’s bluff because he had… kind of earlier said, I would agree to a ceasefire so we can work this out. Now that Ukraine, who was the one that was not necessarily in favor of that, is saying that they are agreeing to this. Now it is kind of the ball is in Putin’s court. And let’s play this soundbite from Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday. He was in Saudi Arabia. He was with the National Security Advisor, former Congressman Mike Waltz. And here’s what he had to say about them coming out of those negotiations and announcing that this ceasefire agreement was agreed to by the Ukrainians. This is bite three.
SPEAKER 01 :
Today we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that’s enduring and sustainable and accounts for their interests, their security, their ability to prosper as a nation. I want to personally thank, we both want to thank, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, His Majesty, for hosting us, for making this possible. They’ve been instrumental in this process and we’re very grateful to them for hosting us here today. And hopefully we’ll take this offer now to the Russians. And we hope that they’ll say yes, that they’ll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court. But again, the president’s objective here is, number one, above everything else, he wants the war to end. And I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard. We hope the Russians will reciprocate.
SPEAKER 10 :
Professor Hutchinson, I see this entire scenario unfolding where, one, the left was so upset because President Trump didn’t support Ukraine enough. And then they were outraged about the Zelensky meeting in the White House. But in reality… The unusual tactics, the outside-the-box thinking of President Trump doing something differently than just propping up a forever war in Europe this time seems to be moving the world closer to a more peaceful Europe in the very near term.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think that is correct, and so I think you are absolutely correct to focus on the fact that the Trump administration has engaged in outside-the-box thinking. That’s number one. Number two, we have to give the Trump administration credit for actually thinking as opposed to what was going on with respect to the prior administration. The prior administration apparently was prepared to support a forever war, meaning that it would be a drain, a permanent eternal drain on the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, Americans are hurting. Thirdly, I would suggest that the outline of the deal proposed by Secretary of State Rubio may indeed work, however I think one of the key issues will be what will Russia decide with respect to Ukrainian troops in Kursk, which is a Russian region, and I suspect that Russia would be prepared to accept a ceasefire in Ukraine, but not in Russia itself. Will the Ukrainians accept that? I don’t know. This is pure speculation on my part. But I have to give the Trump administration credit for making some positive steps. This is probably the first time we’ve seen positive steps with respect to the Ukrainian-Russian war in about three years. And I think it’s overdue. That’s right.
SPEAKER 10 :
I mean, I feel like we’ve only seen escalatory measures by the U.S. government throughout this entire war.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we’ve treated this war and like you said, almost like the Middle East. We’ve treated it where it does feel like it will be never ending, where it will keep going forever because this is going to be a conflict between Vladimir Putin and Zelensky for eternity. Now, some of that is because even the way we educated ourselves in this, some of it is a way that our kids like I told my son last night, hey, it looks like there’s a ceasefire. And he’s like, wow. He’s like, I didn’t even really. He’s 12. He’s like, I didn’t even think that that could happen. And that’s coming from a 12 year old. But again, remember, three years in the life of a 12 year old feels like an eternity. He’s been essentially living through an idea of Ukraine being at war at Russia for a quarter of his life. He feels that way. And I think a lot of us felt that way where you go, this now feels like because of the way we’re spending and because of the way the U S has gotten themselves involved, that it doesn’t feel unlike even what we did in Afghanistan or any of these places where the end game and the exit strategies were going to be a mess. You know, do I think we could have handled that a lot better in Afghanistan? Of course. But also do I think we should have been there for that long? Probably not as well. And again, It’s sort of the cycle in Americans’ minds. When something becomes pop culture, And these wars have become pop culture for us. They’ve become, you know, Zelensky going out and speaking at the Oscars or the Grammys, whatever it was. And then it becoming the talking point this week for celebrity culture was to kind of re-engage their blue and yellow flags. You know, that became another celebrity pop culture moment. And when that happens, it’s harder to move away from it because you can’t. Switch sides. You can’t have any sort of thought process. You can’t start thinking outside of the box. It’s good and bad. It doesn’t become gray. And for America’s involvement in some of these things, it’s always going to be a little gray, especially when it comes to us funding a lot of the chaos that’s happening. Do I think that there are times where there’s right and wrong? Yes. Do I think Russia is the aggressor here? Absolutely. Do I think it’s similar in Israel? Is Israel the right to defend themselves? Yes. Do I think that Hamas is the aggressor? Of course. That doesn’t mean that forever and ever we should be looking at the idea of just funding endless wars.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think you’re precisely correct, Logan. I think war, unfortunately, with respect to Ukraine and Russia, has become fashionable. And so you can demonstrate your moral superiority by supporting an endless war. But an endless war means endless carnage. It means that people will die. And at the end of the day, there is a small but ever-present risk of what? A nuclear Armageddon. And I think at the end of the day, the Americans should encourage both Russia and Ukraine to take a step back from the brink. That’s number one. Number two, it is imperative to remember that the United States and the American taxpayers have been carrying a large brunt of the burden of this particular conflict. And thirdly, we should keep in mind that there has been slippage or some would say corruption, which has undermined U.S. aid efforts in Ukraine. I would say that’s unfortunate. That doesn’t necessarily detract from the moral argument for supporting Ukraine, but we should be aware of it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, well, I mean, the Democrats’ support for Ukraine really became, like you said, a fashion statement, and it became something that you can’t talk to Vladimir Putin. You can’t talk to Russia. And Russia, I don’t know if you know about this, pretty big, pretty big player on the global stage to not talk to at all, even if you disagree with them. You know, as Rick Grinnell said, you show up as a diplomat. You’re not showing up as their friend. But for some reason, you can’t separate that. No one was talked to. in the Putin administration for years and years, since the beginning of the war. No one in the US had reached out and figured out a way to try to stop this until President Trump came in. Look, I don’t love the idea of meeting with Hamas, but it’s happening. And if you have a problem with them meeting with Hamas, or you don’t have a problem with that, but you have a problem with meeting with the Putin administration, again, you may say dictator, but also a global leader, One of the biggest. It’s an absurd situation that we’re in right now. And hopefully this begins the end. And we can actually see, like what Rubio said in all of this, just for death and destruction to end, it’s okay. Maybe we need to bring back a little bit. A little bit of that Quaker mentality. Let’s not support war just to support war. That’s why you elected someone who brought in people like Tulsi Gabbard. who are members of the military, but also do not want to see innocent people die. Do not want to see continual warfare. Go to ACLJ.org. We got one more segment coming up, and I want to hear from you. We got four lines open. 1-800-684-3110. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Oddly enough, we have our biggest amount of watchers right now at the end of this show. So if you’re brand new, you’re just joining us. We were talking about the USAID official that ordered that documents be shredded. And if the shredders break, throw them in burn bags. What are in those documents? We know they’re classified. That’s all we know. We’re trying to get to the bottom of the ACLJs getting involved right now with a FOIA request to hopefully make sure that’s stopped and find out what are in these documents. that are so quote unquote classified that they must be burned, that they must be shredded. And again, if the shredders break, throw them in a burn bag. But here we go. We’re right now in our life in Liberty Drive. Before I take these calls, I wanted to tell you that we could not do all the work we do without you. You may have heard me say this this month, but you know what? Just stick with me here for the next couple minutes because it’s an important time. None of this happens without you. And I know that sounds like, you know, hyperbolic conversation here. but it’s 100% true. The ACLJ’s backbone is individual donations, supporters, people that give one time a year, or maybe they give on a monthly basis and are ACLJ champions. But even that is only about 20,000 people that give on that monthly basis and become ACLJ champions automatically. Most of it comes in from individual donors during moments like this, where donations are doubled, where there’s another great group of donors who are ready to match. And that only happens for limited times. And one of those times is right now. We’re a worldwide organization. The ACLJ exists as the American Center for Law and Justice. It exists as this broadcast that reaches all around the world. Look on just YouTube, 468,000 of you subscribe. More watch every week. Millions watch every week. That is reaching more than a lot of your friends on cable news. We have more of an impact. producing this show that has no corporate overlord telling us what we can or cannot say. We just follow our beliefs and our beliefs hopefully reflect yours. And they reflect yours because you give and donate. So it’s a circle here. You get to be part of the fight. You get to join us in all of these things. I’m going to read you some of them that we’re doing right now, just here in our country. We’re defending a group of Christians, like I said, who are just carrying a cross. You know, the ACLJ’s original work, that is the kind of work that we did, and we still do it. You heard about the Beach Church that was under scrutiny just yesterday in California. We are on that to make sure they were able to do what they want to do. I still think those kind of cases, those kind of clients are incredibly important, and I want you to as well. Because you also have a state seeking to ban Christian schools from receiving funding because they’re Christian. That is a big school choice matter that we’re getting involved in. We’ve also supported Israel. And the support of Israel is under attack right now, even from the right, especially from some of these more fringe influencers, not even fringe influencers, some of the biggest influencers in the conservative world have now decided to turn their bark on Israel, but not us. We’ve even sent demand letters here locally to Columbia University and some of the other colleges to say, hey, Jewish students and anyone who supports Israel, they’re being violently attacked on your campus. You better make sure you’re doing something about it. And that’s just here in the States. And that’s just a very small amount of the work we’re doing here. We have hundreds and hundreds of cases, hundreds of lawyers that are on task right now. And we’re aggressively advocating for Israel also at the UN, which you may say, why are we at the UN? Because our voice is allowed through the ECLJ to be there. And you want your voice there. Even if you don’t agree with their even existence, you want your voice there. Same with the international criminal court. We can be there. It’s incredibly important. Of course, our work on Capitol Hill. And there’s so much happening. And I just want you to know, if you go to ACLJ.org right now, your gifts are doubled during our Life and Liberty Drive. Scan the QR code on your screen. Let our team know that you support them. When you do that, you’re also giving life to so many people who give their lives to do this incredible work, whose families are dedicated to this cause. It’s not easy. Not easy every day. We’re going to take some phone calls, and then we’re going to wrap up the show. Let’s go first to John, who’s calling in Illinois on line two. You’ve been holding for 40 minutes, John. I apologize, but I appreciate you holding.
SPEAKER 08 :
No problem, man. I just wanted to call. Can’t we get the National Guard or some military people over to these places and stop this shredding and burning? Come on, man. Let’s just storm the building and do what we got to do. You know they’re going to shred evidence. I mean, I’m done saying this.
SPEAKER 10 :
I mean, it does fire you up, John, and it’s concerning when you see this start happening and when we know the pattern of the deep state of destroying things. And I know that the USAID topic can be sensitive, especially for a lot of people of faith, because they see the programs that are highlighted by the media are ones of humanitarian or food rights. programs for famine countries. And in reality, much of that work will continue because the agency, they even said, we’re retaining food programs and health programs staff. So it’s not a complete shutdown in that sense. And we’ll see how it all pans out. But they are kind of going through zero-based budgeting, trying to figure out where to spend the money to be effective. And the concern here is when you see all of this and it’s in classified safes, is that since its inception in the 1960s, when John F. Kennedy signed an executive order to create the USAID, it has been criticized by many on both sides of the aisle as just being a front organization for the CIA, for having a mission to either control governments or topple governments. I mean, as recently as just a few years ago, there was a big story about that USAID created an app to be deployed in Cuba and to try and create an overthrow of the Castro regime. This wasn’t the CIA doing it. They were creating a Twitter like app to be deployed in Cuba. And so when you start to realize that a lot of the programs are almost intelligence mission based. And a lot of times working as a front for intelligence operations, it starts to give a bigger picture of why they would potentially be trying to shred documents. They didn’t want to get public because not all of the work is something, even those that believe in the humanitarian aid causes would, it would make you pause and be like, why is the aid organization overthrowing governments? Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
I want to make sure we have time to get to John in South Carolina real quick because we’ve got a whole little while. Hey, Chris, unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to get to you today. Call back tomorrow. John, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thanks. I appreciate it. With the shredding of the documents, and I know you have a FOIA request out there, but with the abnormal funding of the grant for Stacey Abrams from the Department of Energy and other such things coming out of USAID, would it be possible to get the federal government to Pam Bondi to file a charge of defrauding of the United States, the favorite charge of the Democrats used against Trump for impeachment. Do you really want to go down that road?
SPEAKER 10 :
I guess that’s probably the question, Will. Well, and part of the problem is that we kind of want lawfare to be done. You’ve normalized, don’t normalize it. The grant within the Stacey Abrams grant, that was a part of a law passed by Congress that then they had discretionary funds. Sometimes the fraud, isn’t fraud because it’s breaking the U.S. code and is a chargeable offense. But when you see the corruption, and even if they make a law to cover themselves, you can still end it and put an end to that practice going forward.
SPEAKER 03 :
We got 30 seconds left. Thank you so much for all of you who joined us today. If you’re brand new on our YouTube channel or you haven’t yet, hit that subscribe button. If you’re on Rumble, same thing. Facebook, X. Just follow us. Make sure you’re staying in touch. I gave you my big pitch already for the Life and Liberty Drive. You know what to do. I’m going to just pray that you decide to support us if you financially can. But a great way to do that for free is to just subscribe, join the email list, be a part of the ACLJ team. Look at our incredible content for free at ACLJ.org.
