This week on Sekula, we address the evolving media landscape, particularly how historical events like the Holocaust are being discussed in modern media. Secretary Rubio’s candid interaction with CBS brings the debate on free speech to the forefront. We’ll also uncover alarming findings about military spending misallocations that are affecting soldiers’ welfare in the U.S. All this and more, with expert insights from our panel.
SPEAKER 05 :
With free speech under attack, Secretary Rubio blasts CBS in live interview.
SPEAKER 10 :
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 05 :
Welcome to Sekula. We’ve got a great show lined up for you today. Hope you had a good Monday so far. Will Haines is joining me in studio. Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem and actually former CBS News executive. We don’t talk about that that much. But we’re bringing him on today to talk about the news that came out over the weekend. I guess it was just yesterday. Secretary Rubio was on CBS News. And an incredible moment happened with Margaret Brennan. Another moment. I know you may say, hey, is this a replay? Is this what we’re talking about back from the Vance days? No, no, no. This is brand new. And this was a conversation between Marco Rubio, again, and Margaret Brennan. She’s talking about, if you hear it well, they can give some context before we actually play the clip. She’s talking about JD Vance making an appearance in Germany at a conference.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s right. He was at the Munich security conference and he had strong words actually for European leaders in attendance, blasting them for censorship, limiting of free speech, and really saying that there was a threat from within, not external actors, but a threat from within against the shared values that America has with Europe and And that got a lot of pushback from more of the progressives within European society. And then Margaret Brennan was asking Secretary Rubio his thoughts on this yesterday morning. Let’s go ahead and play the fight.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, sorry. I got to jump the gun. You got to build up to this. Because… This again is Margaret Brennan saying, okay, here are some thoughts before, and she gives sort of a leading question, a question to try to, almost a gotcha moment to try to get some sort of stumbling. But the problem with the press right now is they really don’t know the facts. They really don’t know what they’re talking about. And I think it’s very, very clear that Margaret Brennan from Face the Nation maybe didn’t spend a whole lot of time in social studies, didn’t spend a whole lot of time in history class because we’re talking about things that are under 100 years old. This was happening in many people that are still alive’s generation. So let’s hear her thoughts on Germany. And then you get to hear Secretary Rubio’s response.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, not an accurate reflection of history, as again, she claims that free speech is what was weaponized will to conduct the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. The foundation of it, not exactly accurate. The free speech is where things land. And of course, again, trying to tie whatever the conservatives are doing in America. I feel like the Nazi term had finally calmed down and now we clearly see it being rigged back up.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s right. They’re trying to find any way they can to use this as slander against the administration. But you also start to think, why is someone who enjoys the freedom of the press under our constitution going after the freedom of speech that’s in the very same amendment
SPEAKER 05 :
under the bill of rights that protects her job allegedly when you start looking at this it doesn’t make sense but we’re going to dig more into it in the next segment yeah absolutely give us a call if you have thoughts on this as well 1-800-684-3110 1-800-684-3110 make sure you’re sharing this with your friends hit that subscribe button because we got a packed show as i said jeff balaban’s gonna be joining us a member of our team from aclj jerusalem but also a former cbs news executive You also may have seen President Trump yesterday taking laps in the Beast at the Daytona 500. Maybe they’ll go after him for that. They’re like, historically, NASCAR has been known for not great things. You know, of course, now the great American race. What’d you think about it? 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Again, we’re going to take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Of course, the top topic we are discussing is Margaret Brennan from Face the Nation really leading in. I mean, if you look at the quote, she even says to Marco Rubio, she’s like, you know that. You know that he met with extremist groups. You know this. And again, trying to get him to go, yeah, you know, you’re right. But of course, he was able to call out face the nation because that’s the kind of, um, administration we have right now with this kind of strong leadership we have right now. It’s not willing to take anything given from the mainstream media, make you admit to something you don’t feel comfortable with or something that’s blatantly false. Of course, we all know the history of Nazi Germany, where it came from, how it started. That’s pretty well documented. Uh, on this but of course they’re saying it was the weaponization of free speech is what caused a genocide of the Jewish people and other minority groups and orientations and everything that was happening in Nazi Germany during that time but of course they have to figure out a way to tie it in to whatever’s happening in modern day America because how could you not how could you not tie those things together and of course you have Margaret Brennan probably the most times she’s been said on any of one’s broadcasts Just due to just a few weeks ago, of course, we all remember the moment with J.D. Vance that happened where J.D. Vance kind of schooled her on what was going on in terms of the vetting process.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s right. And so she is getting a lot of eyeballs. I don’t know how many people watch Face the Nation when it’s on on the Sunday shows anymore.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s on in a lot of hospitals.
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s on in a lot of waiting rooms. I feel like it’s just there. But she is getting this attention because it clearly seems like she has some sort of resentment against J.D. Vance, probably back to the comment where he said, I don’t really care, Margaret. And what we see here, though, is a rewriting of history, a elitist, liberal-minded media that is no longer curious about truth, They are only concerned about pushing an agenda. And that’s where it gets very dangerous, in my opinion, because under the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. Typically, in a freedom-minded world, the freedom of speech of the citizens and the freedom of the press, you can’t separate. They’re in the same clause under the First Amendment. However… Our media, the mainstream media, the corporate media, is not acting like a free press. They are only parroting narratives that make progressives in this country happy. And so when it gets to things like a narrative about Nazism that they’ve come up with ever since the election, they’re not going to let that go. So it should seem counterproductive, right? for her to try to make claims like free speech gave rise to the Holocaust. When in reality that she should be saying, we need more speech to counteract hateful, dangerous speech as those of us that are freedom loving and first amendment loving Americans and organizations like the ACLJ that fight to protect the freedom of speech in the first amendment. That’s what we believe, but clearly not the media. Yeah, we should play these clips here in a second.
SPEAKER 05 :
We’ll hear both of them. I also, you know, this is not the rhetoric. Honestly, if you’re a Democrat, you want people to be hearing right now. I actually saw a very interesting interview with Jon Stewart interviewing Jen Psaki this weekend. I know that’s not exactly who you think I’ll be listening to, but I’m always curious what everyone from all sides are saying. And Jen Psaki actually made a pretty good statement specifically saying that the Democrats in the last election were kind of speaking from an ivory tower or speaking down to a lot of people. uh she said that getting connected with uh liz cheney was a mistake that of course she was happy that she endorsed her but having her out there having a leading republican plus leading republican with ties to the uh you know george w bush administration and with dick cheney wasn’t going to win over anyone and uh you know some critical mistakes that are happening he said we kind of got to get it down now look i think you see that with president trump appearing uh Like I said, even on the Daytona 500 yesterday, you know, leading, doing what a lot of us would love to do if you were the president. That’s, I think, the fun part about this presidency. It’s a lot of the fun that you kind of like dream up when you’re a kid. Like when I’m president, I’m going to take a lapse around the, I’m going to be the pace car at the Daytona 500 in my beast, in the big car. And, you know, I’m going to have my granddaughter out there and waving to the crowd. And it’s going to be a great moment. Of course, then the race was delayed for like, you know, seven hours but that that was beside the point it happens the crowd went nuts it does it rains in daytona i mean which is a great song we need to write that country song it rains in daytona someone make that while we’re sitting here yeah exactly it’s just a sad song about nascar yeah it always rains in daytona it’s a heartbreaking song really uh let’s go ahead though quickly we’ll take a call and then i want to play these clips so for those of you just joining us we can reset uh let’s go to phil who’s calling in florida online to phil you’re on the air
SPEAKER 13 :
Oh, yes, the point that they make is great, that it is censorship that brought about the Nazis. It was not free speech. My great-uncle, who was awarded an Iron Cross in the First World War, he went back there with his wife, which is my great-aunt, and they were talking, and he was almost… If Hitler would have won that particular election, race, he would have been thrown in jail because of one of those brown shirts who was a friend of my
SPEAKER 05 :
of his sister came and warned him uh that if that happened get out of town and leave the country immediately i mean one of the phil one of the the people that we talk about a lot and you hear now news a lot there was a movie about him was uh bonhoeffer just this year i mean that’s what that story is someone that spoke out against the nazi regime publicly and was ended up killed for it was end up uh hanged
SPEAKER 09 :
What’s so bizarre is that free speech has almost now become a euphemism for conservative speech. They don’t like the fact that people can have a different opinion than them. So they think the true free speech is only if you fit within their ideology. And they call everything else free speech. free speech that they don’t like because they see it as dangerous harmful to their ideology when instead of having robust discussion about differences and moving forward you have them just blasting it and then try to spin up a weird tale that Free speech, which they mean hateful speech, is what caused genocide in the Holocaust. But in reality, there was no free speech. There was no free press in Nazi Germany.
SPEAKER 05 :
Let’s run it back. Let’s play the clip again. This is just from yesterday. This is with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation talking to Secretary Marco Rubio about J.D. Vance’s trip to… to Germany. I want to make sure we have some context when you lead into this. I know some of you have seen this already, but a lot are just joining us right now. We can tell with the numbers. So I want to make sure you’re properly set up. So let’s do this by two.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.
SPEAKER 05 :
So yeah, he definitely schools her on what happened there. I want to now play JD Vance at that conference. You have a bit of a context, Will.
SPEAKER 09 :
What was this conference, just so people know? This was the Munich Security Conference. So it’s a frequent event. World leaders come around and they get there and they talk about the big global threats. And what JD Vance’s different take was, was that it’s not just Russia, it’s not just China that we need to be concerned about. It’s actually the threat to our shared values that we’re seeing being eroded in what were being eroded in America under the previous administration, but what he sees being eroded in Europe. So let’s go ahead and play bite five from Vice President Vance.
SPEAKER 08 :
The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think when you hear those clips and you hear what Margaret Brennan was saying, that’s why we have to be here. ACLJ still got to be strong in these moments because there’s a lot of people who want to undo everything that’s happening right now. All the positive that’s happening right now, whether that’s defending life, whether that’s defending Israel, because that’s really what we’re talking about. When you look at what the topics are that are at hand, these are the topic points of today. whether it is the support for the unborn, whether it is the support for the state of Israel. We saw a lot of movement happening over the weekend, and we’ll talk to Jeff Balaban a little bit about that as well. But look, we are now midway through the month of February, and we could really use your support. So I’m going to encourage you right now as we head to break here in just a moment before we move on into our next segment to give to the ACLJ. There’s a lot of ways you can do it, but the easiest way is just go to ACLJ.org, click that donate button. If you want to, you can become an ACLJ champion. That’s someone that gives on a monthly basis. And that’s a great thing to do because that gives us a baseline. For everyone who joins and becomes a membership, we have an idea of what kind of donations could be coming in so we can set our budgets correctly. If you want to be a champion of life, liberty, and freedom, and everything that we hold dear here, all of our ACLJ values, around the world, by the way, represented around the world, we have ACLJ offices here, in Europe, in Israel, I’m going to encourage you to go to ACLJ.org and do that right now. Become an ACLJ champion. Join the over 20,000 people that have done that. It really, really helps us out. So do it again at ACLJ.org. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Before we move on to another topic, and we’ll come back to this one as well, I wanted to take the calls that are coming in about it. Of course, we were talking about that moment with Margaret Brenner and Secretary Rubio, where she claimed that the Holocaust and the invasion of Nazi Germany was due to too much free speech. Let’s go to Jean in Nevada on line one. Jean, Eugene, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, I just wanted to, you know, I was observational in watching that interview. One thing that was clear that Margaret Brennan, you can see her body language is just seething whenever she interviews anyone from the Trump administration or any Republican officeholder. But it was amazing the way she segued into the Nazi analogy there. when interviewing Secretary Rubio. And this is their stock and trade now. They pull out the Nazi analogy. They’ve done it the entire presidential campaign and everything else. It’s just a sad state of affairs for CBS News. It’s now a basket case, journalistically. And we got a former…
SPEAKER 05 :
cbs news uh executive joining us in the next few segments and gene i feel that way too because honestly after the landslide election is what you could say the victory for president trump they quickly backed off of the nazi rhetoric we actually saw that i can’t believe i’m saying this out loud but they you know even kamala harris was like there will be the smooth transition of power we’re going to sit down and meet with the trump administration of course this was the person she was calling hitler days before So if you really believe these people were Nazis, you wouldn’t go, OK, we’re just going to sit back and meet with them. That’s how we’re going to do it. But you have members of the press that are still going to stick to this talking point because they know it tickles the ears of their favorite viewers. And then, of course, get some attention. But I don’t think when you have someone as skilled as Marco Rubio on who’s who’s been doing this for decades now on the air.
SPEAKER 09 :
not going to get away with it with the leading of course you know this you know that it is uh the rhetoric that they’re saying you know this marco rubio just admit it admit that what they’re saying is nazi propaganda that is not the way it’s going to run and what happens as soon as marco rubio does a master class of showing how to handle this type of hostile interview politico just sent out a push notification right before we went on air It says it’s becoming clear that Secretary Rubio is secretary in name only. And then it goes on to say that he’s reversed a lot of positions. So clearly he’s just a puppet of what he used to be when he was senator. So here’s the game plan for everybody watching at home. Someone in the administration shows how strong and smart they are on the puppet media of the left.
SPEAKER 05 :
and all the other attack dogs have to go out and discredit them and say look they aren’t a free thinker they aren’t they aren’t really as smart as they look they’re just a puppet of trump it’s disgusting i also hate the idea that armed legacy media pretends like they don’t understand how an administration works and that you are serving at the pleasure of the president you are making decisions based on the agenda set forth by the president sure you have your own thoughts you’re there to advise and to give your own opinions and all of that But I saw that one of my friends, family friends was talking about how they were disappointed with some of RFK’s changes in his opinions. It’s like, no, you don’t understand how any of this works. You don’t understand that. Sure. He picked RFK to come in to be the HHS secretary. That doesn’t mean he has no oversight of it anymore. It doesn’t mean the president who was the one elected doesn’t have oversight anymore.
SPEAKER 09 :
But you know what? Here’s the actual truth about it, Logan, is that that’s the way the left wants it to be. The left wants it to be what they had under Biden for the last four years. I’m surprised we didn’t see articles that said when you saw the decline of President Biden, Look, we don’t even really need a president because the cabinet members and the bureaucrats are doing such a great job without having a president as an overseer, as someone who gives direction and gives advice and gives agenda items. That is actually what they want. They want it to be the cabinet members, the undersecretaries and the bureaucrats that we’re trying to root out. with the doge programs that are going on and the cutting and slashing of wasteful spending that’s what we want the left and the media they want what Biden did yeah that was the perfect presidency for them we’re going to move on to that topic here in just a minute because I see some questions coming in specifically about that let’s first go to Terry in Pennsylvania who’s watching on rumble kind of wrap up this portion of the conversation about that CBS news moment go ahead Terry
SPEAKER 12 :
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I think an important thing to keep in mind in this free speech debate or discussion is that if you think about it, Joseph Goebbels really got so many Jews killed during World War II and the Holocaust. Can you imagine if he had unfettered free speech with Twitter?
SPEAKER 05 :
He could have killed every Jew, right? I’m not sure where you’re going with this, Terry, but I do understand the thoughts of saying, you know, this is the free speech is not what caused this.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Yeah. It’s he’s basically pointing out the absurdity of Brennan’s comment.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right.
SPEAKER 09 :
That if it was that the free speech is reality because we didn’t have more free speech in Nazi Germany. They were limited in their capacity. That’s the absurdity of it is that it wouldn’t reality. It was authoritarian authority.
SPEAKER 05 :
dictatorship that controlled media controlled speech and had a genocidal hateful ideology that wanted to do nothing but kill juice and i gotta say terry i appreciate you watching i appreciate you watching on rumble that’s why it’s important look i’m i have no interest in rumble i mean i love rumble they’re great they’ve been awesome to us we’ve worked with the movies but you know i’m not an owner of rumble maybe a little bit stuck uh they provided a free speech platform when free speech was really under attack. Now we’ve seen big tech have to back off of that, be a little bit more open to these conversations. We even saw YouTube putting out statements saying, hey, you guys can talk about abortion now, positive, negative. You can actually have those discussions again. because we saw such a clamp down on free speech for so many years. So I want to give a shout out to our friends at Rumble, to Chris and Claudio and that whole team, because they took a risk and have had some consequences based on that risk to make sure there is a free speech platform that’s available to thousands and thousands of people. So if you watch on Rumble, I wanted to say thank you, because it is important. I do see some comments coming in, Will, people saying, please, Logan, never do your Margaret Brenner oppression again. So I will never do that again. I take feedback. Unlike some people, I take feedback. That feedback said, don’t do it again.
SPEAKER 09 :
But don’t let that commenter limit your free speech. If you want to do the Margaret Brennan impression, Logan, you are free to do it. Now, there could be consequences of your speech of people not watching.
SPEAKER 05 :
anymore. I’m not that familiar with her work, though, so that’s sort of the problem. Maybe my impression is just not quite there yet. We’re going to move on and talk, Will, about what’s going on with spending. We’ve got a second half hour coming up, and I think you’re going to want to stay tuned. It’s a very short break that’s about to happen. Let’s go quickly take Ida. And Ida, you’re going to set up our next segment for us. Ida, go ahead. Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I’m just curious. We were talking about Doge going to IRS and making some changes and What about those 87,000 IRS agents that were just hired by Biden? Yes, well, well, well.
SPEAKER 09 :
There is some interesting news on that, Ida. And one is that there’s as many as 15,000 IRS employees that were on a provisional basis that they will be terminating. So there’s 15,000 out of your 87,000. There’s also news that Homeland Security, so Secretary Noem, has requested IRS agents be deputized to use in the crackdown on illegal immigration. So some of them may keep their job, but instead of auditing American taxpayers, they’re going to be auditing the border.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, we are going to continue on that conversation because there’s also some pretty alarming facts coming out. We’re finding out how we are treating our own, not just veterans, but how we are treating our active duty military. You may remember a few years ago, we discussed the fact that they were sending our active duty military on food stamps. We said, you know what? If government spending is going anywhere, maybe it should be funding, you know, I don’t know, the health and wellness of our troops. Maybe that’s when we could all get behind. Well, there’s some kind of more news that has come out of that type of subject. You’re not going to want to miss this. prepare to be outraged. We’re back for the second half hour of Sekulow. Make sure you get us on your, whether you’re watching on ACLJ.org or on YouTube or Rumble. We are there broadcasting live every day from 12 to 1 p.m. And of course, archived later on on the ACLJ podcast. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 10 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
SPEAKER 05 :
and now your host logan secular lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110 again 1-800-684-3110 will i know we wanted to discuss some people are joining us about the situation with secretary rubio we’ve discussed that for the last half hour we’re going to get back to that with jeff balaban coming up in the next segment he was a former cbs news executive he can give you exactly how things run there and what happened will i wanted to briefly pivot because You were blown up with text messages because of some news that came out. And again, it’s sort of the egregious nature of what’s happening and when the dollars and cents are getting exposed.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s right. This is a story that came out of Military.com. They cover basically everything that goes on in the armed forces. It’s a news site. There was a story that came out. And here’s the headline. Over $151 million taken from soldiers’ paychecks for food costs spent elsewhere by the Army. Basically, when you break it down, if you live in barracks or on base, they automatically deduct basic allowance for subsistence payments. $460 a month automatically taken out of enlisted soldiers’ paychecks. They only make about $30,000 a year. So when you break it down after taxes and this… a separate tax on the soldiers, they’re only walking away with less than half of their paycheck. But here’s the real egregious problem. One, it’s egregious that we’re only paying enlisted soldiers $30,000 a year and then we’re charging them for their food. Yeah, taking back. That’s already absurd that the United States of America is doing that when we have an $800 billion defense budget. But you go down and it shows that they weren’t spending all this money that when you look at the bases that were analyzed, Fort Stewart in Georgia, they collected $17 million from their soldiers and only spent $2.1 million on food. Fort Drum in New York, $18.2 million collected. Money spent on food, $3.9 million. And it goes down the list. Fort Carson in Colorado took $22 million from soldiers, only spent $5 million on food. And they even had food shortage problems at Fort Carson. We’re going to put up on screen for you watching. Here’s what they served some soldiers. That’s lima beans and toast because they were having food shortage problems. You wonder why there’s a recruitment problem with our United States military? It’s because we are stealing food. from enlisted soldiers. And what did they do with the surplus? So let’s see, at Fort Carson, when they were just feeding them lima beans and toast and only spent 5 million of the 22 million collected, they return it to a general fund to be spent elsewhere by the Department of Defense. So not only are we only paying our enlisted soldiers $30,000 a year, not only are we taxing them for the food that they eat instead of providing the food for them at that point, but then they’re taking what they don’t spend on the food and they’re spending it on other things in the military. That should be criminal. It is definitely waste, fraud, and abuse. And if you think that the Department of Defense is the only executive branch or only branch of the government that is operating this way, then you’re wrong. This type of shenanigans are taking place across the board. But how can we as a country look ourselves in the mirror and be okay with this going on?
SPEAKER 05 :
We can’t. We got to figure out a way to help in these situations and what we can do and how we can pressure the government. Because when you have our most valuable players, if you will, most valuable Americans, our American military out there and given lima beans and toast like they’re in the wartime from 100 years ago, as it looks like. I mean, it looks absolutely ridiculous as this is what we’ve done. When we know where wasteful spending is happening, we know where costs are being cut. It seems like the American military is always the one who takes the hit in this. And as you said, they only get paid $30,000 a year, then they’re deducting hundreds of dollars for their food. This is not, look, we’re not for government waste or government spending, but if you’re going to do it, how about we do it for them first? the people that need it the most, the people that are out there on the front lines for you and for all of us to stay safe. It doesn’t feel like that big of a stretch. We’re going to continue on the conversation about that topic. I’m sure a lot of you have a lot of points of view. We’ve got a lot of military who listen. 1-800-684-3110. Get in line right now because after Jeff Balabon in the next segment, I want to take as many calls as we can. We’ve got four lines open. 1-800-684-3110. I’m also going to encourage you right now to become an ACLJ champion. That’s a monthly recurring donor to the ACLJ. Really helps us out. Helps us start a baseline. ACLJ.org. Help us protect your values. ACLJ.org slash champions. Welcome back to Secula. We have Jeff Balaban joining us, a member of the team, and heads up ACLJ Jerusalem. But we’re having Jeff on, though it definitely ties in to what is happening in Israel. Because, Jeff, a lot of people don’t know your history in the world of business news and of of what’s going on and you are really a high level executive here at cbs at cbs news where this moment happened let’s before we get to you jeff i think we got to reset it for people who are just joining us right now let’s play that clip one more time this is the clip again from face the nation just yesterday take a listen
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.
SPEAKER 05 :
And you have those kind of moments that happen. And again, Jeff Balaban’s joining us. You know him on this broadcast, the head of ACLJ Jerusalem, but Jeff was the senior vice president at CBS and head of communications of CBS News. So someone who knows the insides of what happens in these kind of news bureaus and how this is all taken. Jeff, I’d love to get your thoughts.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, it’s not as though CBS News was ever a right-wing news organization. Even when I was there, CBS News leaned left. And I would say leaned profoundly left. But what’s happened since then, I know that they really, like many places in corporate America, they imported a DEI mentality. And a colleague of mine who was… Also at CBS at the time I was there has written about this because he was there after I left that things went from bad to much, much worse. And on this specific issue, let me be very clear. It’s not only that it wasn’t free speech. It was worse than that. What Brendan’s really showing is the danger of a media that aligns too closely to a political agenda, because that’s what we really had. In Hitler’s Germany, what you had was a media that was not free at all. It was a media that just was lockstep and under the thumb of a totalitarian regime. And they used the media to demonize different peoples, including the Jews, to the point where it became acceptable to exterminate those people. And so it’s not free speech. It is a media that is used by a totalitarian regime. And unfortunately, Margaret Brennan gets it exactly reversed. And it’s very unfortunate. I’m actually ashamed for CBS News. And I’m not sure if there’s been a sufficient response from CBS News directly for this statement. It goes against everything that any journalism organization should stand for in the United States of America.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and Jeff, as I like to point out here at the ACLJ, we do stand for true free speech and true freedom of the press, the First Amendment. These things are very important to our republic. But when you look deeper at what Margaret Brennan is saying there, it almost becomes clear that this Orwellian wordplay that’s been taking place with progressives for decades, but even more recently with the rise of combating misinformation and things of that nature, that she’s using free speech as a euphemism for either conservative speech that she likes to equate with nazism because that’s what we saw during the last election cycle or just a euphemism of all hateful speech that even using free speech isn’t true what she’s talking about she is talking about speech she doesn’t like which in reality that is the point of the first amendment is that people are going to say things you don’t like and what is your best weapon against that more speech but they should be concerned about cracking down on free speech because their very liberty as a free press should be determinative about protecting that first amendment am i wrong on this
SPEAKER 07 :
No, you’re entirely right. And not only is my background in media, my background is as a lawyer. And obviously at ACLJ, we work in this space very much. And so the liberties, you know, you can’t segment out one of the Bill of Rights and take it out of its context. The Bill of Rights is the DNA for a free America. It’s a DNA for the greatness of America. And what they’ve done is, yes, they’ve subverted the meanings of words. That’s why they say speech is violence. And now free speech is becoming a tagline. And it’s not just the media who are doing the opposite of their jobs. They’re becoming lackeys of a political agenda. You look at the judges that the left has appointed, Democrats have appointed. Judges are also talking about the Constitution. The way Democrats in Congress talk about the Constitution as though it’s getting in the way of America being great, as opposed to it’s the last line of defense for our society against the ravages of totalitarianism. So this is the exact opposite. You’re right, William. They’re using words to mean the opposite. And they’re trying to take everything that’s good and turn it into evil. And it’s extremely dangerous.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, absolutely. Phone lines are open also for you. If you feel inspired after hearing this from Jeff, I want you to call in at 1-800-684-3110 and the next segment we’ll take some more calls. But Jeff, I think that’s why it’s also important that there is alternative media options like what we do here at the ACLJ. It’s what we do on the secular broadcast because we can get worldwide. with our shows we can go anywhere in the world if you have an internet connection as long as the government allows it in the area which you know most areas they do uh you know there’s certain specific countries that don’t of course we need to fight against that but in areas where they have some form of free speech we’re able to be there because you hear this kind of rhetoric coming out of uh you’d say that the mainstream media the legacy media uh And now we’re finally having an opportunity as those of us have been creating alternative media for years and years and years to make a big impact in the work of the ACLJ. That has been a huge arm of it. That’s why we have people like you, Jeff, who are not only legal experts and can run things like ACLJ Jerusalem, but also have a background that’s incredible in terms of media. When I’m looking into our control room right now, there are people who have worked on Fox news, who’ve worked on CNN, who’ve worked on some of the biggest shows on the planet and
SPEAKER 07 :
we’re able to recruit this incredible team to put together these shows because we know how important it is to have a media outlet you can trust 100 you know the the part of the the when the world went nuts about you know the left went nuts when elon musk uh bought twitter is because twitter is being used just to promote a certain kind of speech and tamp down other speech now while it’s true that more free speech means more obnoxious ideas you can’t have a government deciding which ideas or beliefs That’s the heart of freedom, is that you should be allowed to have your ideas and speech. And the only way to get to a free society is to allow for people to have a marketplace of ideas. That’s the big concept. And instead of shutting me down and saying, we’re incredibly tolerant of every idea that’s exactly our own, which is really what the left does. We are, you know, you’re intolerant if you disagree with us. We are tolerant because we allow everyone to agree with us. And so the advent of these kinds of media and the democratization of media outlets like ACLJ, and of course, the show is an essential part, just like the legal activity, just like the diplomacy that we do. The show is an essential part of communicating the truth to Americans.
SPEAKER 05 :
And if you’re one of the thousands of people watching right now live or then the hundreds of thousands that watch later on, whether on the podcast feed or on YouTube or on Rumble or ACLJ.org, I encourage you right now, when you’re considering making a donation, know that it goes to fund this show as well. It’s a hard thing to fundraise on. I’ll be honest when we tell people about this, because I don’t think you understand the scope of what we’re doing here. I always say, I wish I could turn the camera on. You could see this incredible team because we put together a top notch team that could put on an incredible show for you each and every day. And this show is obviously to, as we say in the beginning, to inform and engage, to get you activated, to give you the tools to be able to go and defend yourself as well, or to be there for you when you need us. So I encourage you when you’re considering, oh, well, maybe I don’t care that much as much about the legal side of the ACLJ. Maybe I just like the show because it keeps me updated. I like them as my news source. That’s a great way to support the work as well, because we are not funded by major sponsors. We are only funded by individual donors who give. So people like you who are listening right now. Go to ACLJ.org, make that donation today, and it’s great because you know that you’re supporting an incredible team here. You heard Jeff Balaban. We’re able to talk about the hypocrisy going on at CBS. We have a former CBS executive on our team that you get to hear on the show each week. You hear Rick Grinnell. You heard, until just last week, Tulsi Gabbard. an incredible amount of people and then you go behind the scenes and there’s incredible people working behind the scenes uh people that came from some of your favorite shows uh on legacy media if you will um and some of the ones that are our friends and it’s really been amazing to put together this team and to see the impact we’ll be able to make and Jeff I did want to give a quick update on Israel what’s going on obviously over the weekend there was some movement we were unsure what was going to happen but how are things looking
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I mean, everything remains in a very tense state right now because obviously the president, President Trump, threw down the gauntlet to the bad guys. And now the question is, what will Israel do? Israel obviously has the military power to devastate its enemies. But Israel is always very, very ginger about it. It’s hard to say that because the world keeps on saying the opposite. And so Israel is now really confronted with it’s time to call an end to this nonsense, get all the hostages back and finish this up. So we’re watching real time as decisions are being made in terms of ramping up military activity.
SPEAKER 05 :
Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, Jeff, today. We really appreciate it. As I said earlier, phone lines are open for your calls. Looks like we have about two lines open right now, 1-800-684-3110. We’ll get to your calls coming up in the next segment, whether that is what’s going on in Israel, whether that’s what’s happening with that CBS story, or again, how we are treating our own military as Will brought up, the fact that they are having their pay deducted to feed them and feed them poorly of course these people that only make about thirty thousand dollars a year to protect us as a nation so what can we do to help we’re going to work on that here at the aclj and again i encourage you we got to have the resources to protect all the agendas and all of the plans that you want to see this country have so i encourage you go to aclj.org right now become an aclj champion if you can Welcome back to Secular. We’re going to take your phone calls now, and we got two lines still open at 1-800-684-3110. Let’s go to a caller that we take quite a bit, Bill in Wyoming. Bill, let’s see. You’re on the air. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hi. Thanks for taking my call. You’re talking to a very angry veteran. Now, it’s been some time since I’ve been stationed abroad, but I’m talking about this business about the payments. Now, Bill, My memory is that we did pay for our food when I was in the service at the different facilities. And if we had to be compensated, it would be because of the fact that they had to, like, upgrade the facilities, the service better, or get our pop machines in, if you know what I mean. Something like that. But the thing of it is, is that if they had no capability of doing that, they would give us a payment for so we can eat elsewhere, or if we were married, we were paid to compensate for that. This is ridiculous. I don’t see why they should have to take that kind of money out of all paychecks.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, Bill, I think we felt that way as well. Will was sending me a lot of texts over the weekend about the way that we’re treating our troops has always been questionable at best. But when these kind of moments get exposed, we got to be able to act quickly and fix any problems we see. If you have a Department of Government Efficiency, get in there and say, you know what? We know we want to cut spending, but there are some places where spending is OK. And maybe we should be we can allocate enough funds to feed our military to Instead of all of the craziness that’s happening all around the world that we’re funding.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and reality is, if you’re our age, you know, many of your peers that have gone overseas and fought in a war of very bloody. violent war in Afghanistan or Iraq. I have close friends of mine, family members that chose to serve, a very close family member that had a very thriving career and decided to drop that to go serve our country. And you see the horrors that they endured in this war, fighting sacrificially for our country to protect Americans. And knowing the baggage that many veterans bring home and struggle with, and we’ve had the discussions about the appropriate mental health care that our veterans are receiving or the lack thereof. And just to see that it’s not even the veterans that they’re leaving behind. They’re forcing the low-level enlistees to pay automatically deducted $460 per month out of their paycheck that is then gone to allegedly feed them. But the bulk of that is going back to the Pentagon to spend elsewhere. That is a tax, an extra tax that we don’t have to pay. The soldiers themselves are paying. That’s devastating to me.
SPEAKER 05 :
If you maybe have a student in a private school, a lot of times there’s meal plans that you can sign up for. And those meal plans are, yes, they can be $400, $500, $1,000 for the semester. to feed five days a week real food, not lima beans and toast. So you know that those funds are being misused because you could be able to do a similar situation. By the way, I think we should just be able to cover it. I think we should financially say as taxpayers, there are things taxes should go to. That’s one of them. Easy. I don’t think you have a lot of pushback on that. And if you did, then maybe you need to question some of your elected officials. Because if we’re going to have any government spending, which of course you’re going to, That’s one of the top ones we should be doing. Phone lines are open. This is kind of your last chance to call in 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. If you’re watching online right now, thousands of you are. I’m gonna encourage you, if you’re brand new to YouTube or Rumble, hit that subscribe button. It really does help us out a lot. Over 465,000 of you join us on YouTube alone. So know that you’re making a huge impact and difference. If you’re brand new and you’re not really feeling like donating yet, you wanna get to know us, It’s a great way to support the work, support what we do here, support these kind of messages, help it get into the algorithm for other people. Subscribe now on either YouTube or Rumble. Let’s go ahead and take another phone call. Chuck’s calling in Virginia on line one, listening on ACLJ.org or watching on ACLJ.org. Great place you can do it or get the new ACLJ app. I see some people in the comments talking about the app. It’s available right now in the app store. Chuck, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m a Cold War vet. I did 11 years in the Army. I was a dining facility officer twice, both CONUS in the United States and in Germany. And what you see on that plate is a failure, an absolute failure of the chain of command. The only way that should ever have occurred is if… They’re in a wartime, constrained environment.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, exactly. If you thought this was in a tent somewhere, in a situation where they had limited rations and everything like that. But no, you could see this is like on a tray in a cafeteria.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s right. And Chuck, that’s in the United States. That’s on Fort Carson in Colorado. It’s not even overseas where maybe they had some disrupted supply chain.
SPEAKER 05 :
Go to the grocery store.
SPEAKER 09 :
That is… year in the united states and it makes it even worse not that they were over budget it’s the fact that that base itself collected in in the last fiscal year 22 million dollars from soldiers and only spent five million of it specifically for this Specifically from that paycheck system, they collected $22 million and only spent on food $5 million of it for the soldiers. And when you take the top line number across the bases that were analyzed, it’s not every base, $151 million that were taken from soldiers were spent elsewhere. That is unfathomable. That is a huge failure. And once again, it’s why such change has been called for from the Trump administration, from Secretary Pete Hegseth, and from agencies like Doge, is to get this fixed. The priorities are misplaced and have been for a long time by bureaucrats, leadership in these agencies that are too focused on where they can spend money
SPEAKER 05 :
instead of focusing on the mission yeah so when you see your friends posting on social media how dare they cut USAID and USAID and look they’re going to stop feeding children in other countries they’re going to stop feeding look I’m we all know that’s just liberal propaganda talking point so that’s not actually what’s happening at all but how about you have that as your counter-argument immediately how about we start feeding our own nation’s military our young people who decide to serve our nation voluntarily to put their life on the line should we start there Maybe that’s where the funds could go. See what they say back. And we got to figure out how we can help support this and get this help push through because we need this to be fixed. And we have to bring it to light because it may not be the number one story you’re going to hear. That is why there’s great options like us here at the ACLJ and on the secular broadcast, because we’re able to bring these to your attention. And then the ACLJ team is able to get into action. So we get our legal team involved. We get everyone involved, media, legal, all sides to really represent your point of view, your wants, your needs. And of course, we can represent you as well. So if you ever need legal help and it’s within our scope, all you have to do is go to ACLJ.org slash help. Fill out a quick form. And again, if it’s within the scope of the work that we do here, you get attached to a lawyer immediately at absolutely no cost. But it’s only at no cost because people like you who are watching and enjoying this show… give and support we’re not funded by big sponsors even if you’re hearing those sponsors on the radio if you’re listening on radio not much if any of that goes to us that goes to your local station or to your network and it certainly is not enough money to fund the entire operation that we have here that all comes from you our listeners our viewers our supporters our aclj champions You’ve got to protect the unborn. You’ve got to uphold liberty. You’ve got to defend Israel. All of these things need your support urgently. Make your tax-deductible donation right now. And if you can, I encourage you, kick off February, become an ACLJ champion, and say, hey, I’m going to give monthly on a recurring basis. Of course, you can cancel at any time. But do that on ACLJ.org or scan the QR code, and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
