In an unexpected turn of events, renowned commentator Bill Maher agrees with Ted Cruz’s critique of rising anti-Semitism on the left. This episode of Sekulow dives deep into this shocking alignment, exploring the broader implications on American politics. Join us as we discuss the growing anti-Semitic rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum, how it has begun to infiltrate the mainstream, and the vital importance of addressing this issue head-on.
SPEAKER 07 :
Today on Sekulow, it’s shocking. Bill Maher claims that Ted Cruz is right about the left.
SPEAKER 08 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments. Or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your hosts…
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Seculo. Will Haines here. Joining me in studio is Jordan Seculo. And we’ve got a lot to cover today. We do. We’ll be having our Director of Government Affairs from our D.C. office, Mark Kelly, on later in the broadcast to give you a timeline about what tonight’s vote in the House looks like, as well as how quickly these things could start to reopen. We also have CeCe Heil as well as Gregor Papunic from our ECLJ office joining us again today for more updates on our international work. But Jordan, we want to get to this first because… We’ve been hearing a lot of things that make sense from Bill Maher lately. And this just happened on one of his most recent episodes of his broadcast on HBO. And he had friend of yours, longtime friend, Jared Moskowitz.
SPEAKER 05 :
Fraternity brother of mine from back when we were 18, 19 years old, Jared Moskowitz, who is a Democrat congressman from Florida. He’s also someone who has served under the DeSantis administration as the emergency management director. You may have remembered him joining us on the broadcast during the COVID epidemic. Usually that emergency services manager there in Florida is handling storms, not pandemics, but he did that. So he’s worked for Republican administrations, very conservative Republican administrations before. And he was key when we brought the hostage families to Capitol Hill in setting up meetings with Democrats who wanted to be briefed as well, pro-Israel Democrats. And I will tell you that that group is getting smaller and smaller. And even in that room, just to know on that issue, the care in that room, were members who we were arguing against in the impeachment trial so i mean some you know tough arguments right but but could come together when you’re talking about an issue of of basically a group of people uh uh being called yet again to be annihilated that’s right or pushed out of a country even we’re hearing rhetoric in the united states of saying The Jews need to get out of the United States. They need to get out of the power structure. This is a place, they’re not white, and only white people should be in charge. I mean, really horrible, racist stuff that is seeping into mainstream American politics. Already on the left, unfortunately, extremely, it’s seeped into the highest levels. And now we’re seeing it at the grassroots level on the right and in the talking head level.
SPEAKER 07 :
Let’s go ahead and play. This is Bill Maher’s portion. When we get back from the break, we’ll play what Jared Moskowitz had to say in response to this, which is almost equally as shocking when you think of the current climate in Washington, D.C. But let’s go ahead and play bite one from Bill Maher just a couple days ago on Real Talk.
SPEAKER 04 :
The entire Republican establishment lined up against this. I’m not sure you could say that about the Democratic establishment. I mean, Ted Cruz, you know, we’ve had on this show, and I certainly have had my differences, but I’m glad to talk to everybody on this show. He was very good on this. He said, the danger I want to highlight tonight is anti-Semitism. In the last six months, I’ve seen it on the rise in a way I’ve never seen it before on the right. Here’s the interesting thing I thought he said. He said about a decade ago, anti-Semitism began rising on the left and the Democratic Party did nothing. And the decade that followed, it has consumed the Democratic Party. I’m not so sure he’s not right about that. I’m not so sure the Democratic politicians are more afraid to challenge their left, who think Hamas is terrific, than the Republicans are.
SPEAKER 07 :
And we will play the response from Jared Moskowitz about this as well. But Jordan, that’s what we’re seeing. And we’re actually at a moment when this is an important conversation, because on the right, you’re starting to see not just in the shadows anymore, but it to creep up in the mainstream like it did, as Bill Maher references a decade ago in the left. And we know the playbook of the anti-Semites if they have their way.
SPEAKER 05 :
And it’s not just about Israel now. It’s about Jews in America. And as someone who, again, my dad’s family and I had a bar mitzvah. My nephew just had his bar mitzvah. And though some of us have become Christians, others are Orthodox Jews in our family. When it starts happening in the United States of America and you see calls from people who used to be so outside the mainstream that if you met with them, you had to apologize to the world for even meeting with them, calling for Jews to be expelled from the power structures of the United States. And, you know, that is just scary rhetoric when it becomes normalized in politics. We want your thoughts. 1-800-684-3110.
SPEAKER 07 :
back to seculo get your phone calls in at 1-800-684-3110 that’s 1-800-684-3110 as we talk about what we’re hearing from bill maher we’re about to play with jared moskowitz a representative from florida about the growing anti-semitism now we’re starting to see on the right and this is uh should be of concern to anyone who’s a conservative a christian an american It really flies in the face of what this country was founded on. We’ll even get to some of Ted Cruz’s comments that played that as well.
SPEAKER 05 :
There’s two reasons why for most of our audience to care about this. One, there is obviously the Christian connection to Israel and the fact that the Israeli government, unlike those in the past, protect Christian holy sites from destruction. We know what would happen if Islamic radicals took control of Jerusalem. Our holy sites, our ability to go on Christian pilgrimage and to walk the same steps as Jesus Christ would no longer exist. It would be destroyed, just like we’ve seen al-Qaeda do it. And we’ve seen those churches destroyed by ISIS throughout Syria and in the Levant. Also, a secondary part, of course, so that’s your faith. Secondary part, take your faith out of it. The United States has to have an ally in the most turbulent part of the world that understands Western values. That is an actual democratic society. And that’s what Israel is. So you don’t have to like all of Israel’s politicians. You don’t have to like that. That’s different than saying, well, Israel means Jews. That means Jews in America too. And Jews cause all the problems in the wars though. I don’t exactly know how you make those connections. It’s such a small group of people. When you look at the world and you look at how many Muslims there are, how many Christians there are, and then to how many Jews, I think it’s like 15 million in the entire world. There’s over a billion Protestants, over a billion Catholics. More than that, I think Muslims, if you separate Catholics and Protestants out, are the largest single group. So, I mean, in the billions number. And you’re talking about you’re going to blame all of your problems on 15 million people in the entire world, 7 million of which live in a very tiny country so that they can have their own homeland that you don’t have to be worried about the majority government saying one day, whether they’re on the right or the left, we don’t want you here anymore.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. And let’s go ahead and play Congressman Jared Moskowitz comments. He’s from Florida. And this is his response to where Bill Maher had said, you know, I think it’s interesting what Ted Cruz has to say that I’m seeing all of this anti-Semitism in the right and that the Democrat Party has already been infiltrated with it. Let’s go ahead and play bite four from Jared Moskowitz.
SPEAKER 06 :
Ted Cruz is right. I agree 100% with Ted Cruz. The difference is they have hindsight. They saw what happened to us. And our party has been consumed by it. People would say, look, you could be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. And I would say, theoretically, you could. They’re just not. When you’re holding signs on college campuses saying, go back to Poland, that doesn’t sound like anything to do with Israel. When you see a Jewish student walking on campus, you don’t know that he’s a Netanyahu supporter, but they were surrounding him because he had a Jewish star, right? And so this has consumed us, and it is dividing us in elections. It has run through the whole party. We have tried to not talk about it. We’ve tried to tamp it down, but it is everywhere. It is moving swiftly.
SPEAKER 07 :
I want to point out something that Congressman Moskowitz said there at the end. He said, we’ve tried not to talk about it. We’ve tried to tamp it down, but it’s moving everywhere and it’s moving swiftly. I want to point out a problem right now with what’s going on in conservative America. Yesterday, when we talked about the left pushing back against Chuck Schumer and saying he should resign.
SPEAKER 05 :
Which most of our audience would have no say in because they’re not on the left.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly. We had more than double the viewership. When we’re talking about this issue, And we see this all the time on YouTube, Rumble. The viewership is like half. We’re not going to stop talking about it because we know this is important. And this is a fight that’s going on within the conservative sphere right now. And we have to push back. But it’s very telling that there are people that either don’t want to talk about it so they won’t watch it. Or there are people that disagree, so they turn it off. And that’s why we can’t stop confronting this because you see other conservative institutions that are imploding, that are struggling right now because of this very debate. And it shouldn’t even be a debate going on within conservative ideology.
SPEAKER 05 :
The idea that, you know, Free speech is speech and awful can be lawful. Doesn’t mean you have to accept it. Doesn’t mean you have to say, well, just because they have a right to say it, they’re right. It doesn’t mean they’re right or correct. Just because it’s not illegal to say something doesn’t mean what you’re saying is even accurate. It doesn’t mean what you’re saying is something that should be accepted or widely even, I think like even going down that path. and of course then you’re steps away from also encouraging violence when people hear these kind of things I have to tell people this first not just because I have a personal relationship with Jared that’s not just politics I’m not going to get into great detail about what he shared with me, but please pray for his family for making statements like he did, that Ted Cruz is right, that there’s a serious problem on the right and the left didn’t deal with it quick enough. And as Jared said, on the right, we have an opportunity to deal with this. and not just be silent and not just be quiet and then not end up with mayors of New York City who are so radical, who started the groups that are the most radical anti-Jewish groups on campus, and he created one. I mean, the Students for Justice in Palestine. And the idea, again, as a Democrat congressman, he is facing very real threats for the one issue that used to unite Republicans and Democrats was that we have to have a strong ally in the Middle East so that we don’t have to fight every battle in the Middle East that can be on the tip of the spear against terrorism. And that’s what Israel has always been. It’s also been a strategic partner with our military in testing new devices to protect US troops like the Iron Dome and these systems. They’re deployed first in Israel to see if they can be deployed on the battlefield or even in your hometown to protect you. and protect your family and Israel is able to actually deploy them in real time live fire from enemies they’ve had to respond to Iran and by the way President Trump because he’s got people around him who are solid people like Marco Rubio and others has not you know this is not anytime those people have gotten near him he has pushed them away that’s he’s been a strong ally of Israel So I want to make that clear. Where we’re seeing this as an issue is in younger staffers in Washington, D.C. on the Republican side. On the Democrat side, it’s their elected officials. So that’s what Jared was saying. On the Democrat side, it’s the people who have actually been elected to office. That’s a much bigger problem because that’s harder to deal with. When you know that you’ve got young people who are interested in the country, they want to work in Washington, they want to work in politics, we have to be able to get the message to them that, that one, racism is wrong. And I don’t care what your faith is or your politics are. And there’s different ways, again, to combat it. But the best way to combat it is in your communities. It’s not the government having to do everything. It’s communities having to do it. And to say, again, acknowledge that you have these issues. and then try to understand why. Is it really just because some kid is interesting to listen to online? Because if that’s all it takes to turn people into anti-Semites in the United States of America, then you realize how serious the problem is, and it’s one we can’t ignore, that if we don’t talk about, the Republican Party will be a party that you’ll be uncomfortable with as well. And you know what? The left… They love this. The left loves that their leaders are now able to espouse, you know, from the river to the sea, which means destroying Israel in Congress, and that on the right, On the far right in kind of the United States political system, and I mean elected right. I don’t mean far right like radical groups who don’t have any representation in Washington. I mean the Republican Party, that these young staffers are starting to agree with them on that. Well, they think this is wonderful because you can take that issue that used to unite Washington and say we must have this strong ally and say, you know what? Let’s question. Tucker Carlson said, what has Israel ever done for the United States of America? What is Israel? They are literally the testing ground for protecting our military. Their intelligence, again, on Islamic terrorism that they have been fighting since their existence. They don’t ask us to come and fight their battles, if you notice, like so many other countries do. And yet… We focus all of this time on, again, 15 million people around the world, 7 million in Israel, which by the way, 20% of the population there are Arab Muslims who love living there and do not want to live in Gaza or the West Bank or even in the UAE.
SPEAKER 07 :
And Jordan, one of the biggest problems as well is when you take the fact that Jared Moskowitz and Bill Maher are talking about Ted Cruz being right. Tucker Carlson also interviewed Ted Cruz and was aggressive went after him hard in that interview, but then treated with kid gloves, Nick Fuentes, and people are saying, well, no, he’s just asking questions. He treated them differently because he has an agenda.
SPEAKER 05 :
If you’re doing it just to get people to watch your segments, it’s the most disgraceful and disgusting because whether or not you actually believe it or not, and they all like to say, oh, but even my, you know, some of my best friends are Jewish. So you’re doing this just for clicks. You’re trying to make their life miserable so that they have to have more security at their places of worship, at their schools, because you can get more clicks if you talk about Jews. And again, I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. Give us a call.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to Seculo. I also want to remind people before we get into the content of this next segment that it is grandparents week here during our freedom drive of November and where we are honoring the legacy that grandparents have and that they give to their grandchildren. And it is one of the foundational building blocks of this country is the family is the values we pass down from generation to generation. And knowing that some of the clients we even fought for in the early days are now grandparents.
SPEAKER 05 :
Who were high school students.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly. And are still fighting for those same values and still honoring that tradition. And so we are wanting to honor those grandparents. We know that have been fighting along with us for a long time, as well as if you are a grandparent that is a champion. We are calling you ACLJ Grand Champions this week to honor you as well. And you can become a grand champion. Have your gift doubled and become a monthly donor at aclj.org slash champions, or you can donate a one-time gift at aclj.org slash freedom. But Jordan, we’re going to have to break away from our talk earlier and move to Washington, D.C., because there’s a lot happening.
SPEAKER 05 :
I want to go to our government affairs director, Mark Kelly, because people see the votes, they saw the Senate vote, and they kind of think, okay, is the shutdown over? And then you hear, not yet, there’s got to be more votes. And we want to take this and kind of break it down for you into what will likely happen today and then this week, and then kind of when the government opens and when things go back to normal. So, Mark, let’s start with this. The Senate has done its work for now. Is that correct? Yes, that’s right. So we move now to the House of Representatives. But very interesting, the majority for the Republicans shrinks before the next time they vote to even start debate on this final piece to reopen the government. Some of it which just kicks the can down the road until January. Some of it which extends a year. We’ll explain that in a bit. And we’ve explained that earlier this week too, but we can go over it again. But Explain to people that kind of the numbers of where Republicans are right now.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, the House had three current vacancies. One was an election that took place a few weeks ago in Arizona, and that member will be sworn in when the House reconvenes today at 4 o’clock, and that will take the numbers to 219 to 214. And what that effectively means is the Republicans can lose two votes, two of their members can vote no on any bill, which would make it a 217-216 vote. So their effective majority becomes two seats at 4 o’clock today.
SPEAKER 05 :
So you got a two-seat majority, very slim. But on this vote, while we expect maybe one or two Republican defections at most, you also believe, Mark, that there will be a handful of Democrats that do support reopening the government this way?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, I do think it’ll be a small number. There are a handful of Democrats who are sitting in districts that Donald Trump won. There’s a retiring member, for example, in Maine who actually voted for the bill back in September, Jared Golden. So there are a handful of Democrats who Republicans will believe will come along on final passage. As you know, Jordan, there are some procedural things they need to do first. There’s typically a partisan vote on what’s called a rule in the House, which is how the House moves to consider a bill. That will take place first. And that’s usually a straight party line vote. So Republicans will need their members here to get onto this bill. But on final passage, they think there could be A few Democrats that join them.
SPEAKER 05 :
As it stands, as we’re on the show right now. So right now it’s Eastern time. It’s about 1225 p.m. Eastern time. What what are we looking for for that vote? How long will that debate be? I mean, we’re looking for days of debate or or could we actually see, you know, final passage on this getting to the president tonight or signed tomorrow morning early?
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. The House Rules Committee came back yesterday and had an almost six-hour session to get this ready for the House floor today. They’ll do the swearing-in around 4 o’clock, and then they’ll move straight into consideration of this rule. That’ll take about an hour. That debate is an hour. And then they’ll have a series of votes. There’s usually a procedural vote before they get to that vote. That will wrap up around 5.30 or 6, and then they’ll move into one hour of debate on the actual debate. continuing resolution, this spending bill. And they expect to wrap up sometime between 7 and 7.30. They’ll have that last series of votes and be done by 8 o’clock tonight. And then there’s some paperwork that has to take place before they can send it over to the White House. It’s possible the president could still sign it late tonight or first thing tomorrow.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so then for the people out there who listen, support us, who have not gotten their paychecks and their back pay and things like that, how long does that usually take? Because I know even before the president signs it, the government can start saying, okay, here’s your reopening plan. But are people, once this passes, can they kind of breathe a sign of relief and think, well, at least the next paycheck they’re supposed to get is going to be there?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. What will happen next is the OMB will issue a very short memo that says essentially to the agencies, go ahead and reopen. That means that the heads of those agencies can direct their payroll people to start processing. That doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s going to happen. And then they’ll – Call in all those workers that have been furloughed. You know, 25% or so were furloughed. Most of the federal employees were working without a paycheck. Those people will be called back as well. But those plans are in place and they’re ready to implement them. I’m sure the memos have already been written. They just can’t issue them yet.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, so this is very good news for those who are in the federal bureaucracy who have been hurting. It’s good news for the country because even like flights, I mean, it looks like if this goes through, Margaret, because a lot of people are concerned about Thanksgiving travel, that the FAA will be able to get things back up and running to normal, which wasn’t, you know, it’s not great anyways, but it’s better than it is right now, before Thanksgiving travel. So that’s huge. But we also know that most of this is going to have to be fought out again over the next two months.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. The FAA has said it’ll take about a week to resume normal operations. So that should be just in time for kind of next weekend when people start flying for Thanksgiving. But yes, three of the bills are full year bills that are going to be taken care of. But there are still nine other annual spending bills that Congress is supposed to get done. That will expire. This continuing resolution will expire at the end of January. There is a desire amongst many senators and House members to do full year spending bills. I don’t think there’s an expectation that all 12, you know, all 12, three plus additional ones, the nine additional ones will get done on time. But there is a desire to get the rest of those done as soon as they can so that we’re not back at this again in February.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I was going to ask that question, Mark. What are the odds, if you were making odds on this, that during a midterm election year that the Democrats are willing to shut down the government just a few months before people have to go vote for them potentially when the rest of the CR expires on January 31st?
SPEAKER 01 :
I think it depends a lot on the progress over the next couple of months to see what they’d be willing to do in January. But I think They’ve gone down this road once. I’m not sure how much will there’s going to be to do it again, but you never know.
SPEAKER 05 :
I don’t want to rub it in their face, Mark, but at the same time, at the end of the day, if you’re a Democrat, what did you get from this? If this all passes, I mean, I guess you got that some of this will be re-debated in January, but this is the largest government shutdown ever. Did they get anything in return for it?
SPEAKER 01 :
They got to talk about health care. I think some of their members would say they got some advantages in the elections that took place last week. But on paper, they got nothing other than putting pain on the American people during this shutdown.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, that’s what’s key. They hurt the American people. They hurt the American economy. For their policy purposes, they got to talk about things. They maybe get to vote on things that the Republican majorities are not going to support anyways. But again, they’re willing to do the longest shutdown ever. And eventually they cave and they fold and they should take the blame. The blame should be on the left because this was a clean CR. We’ll be right back on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 08 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Sekulow. Will Haines here, joined by Jordan Sekulow in studio. We’ve got a jam-packed back half hour coming up. We’ll have Gregor Papunic from our ECLJ, as well as CeCe Heil from here in our offices here, both to talk about the international work that the ACLJ does and that is important to so many of you. We’re talking about persecution. We’re going to be talking about the right to life and things of that nature. I did want to go to a call real quick, Jordan. This is related to what we started the broadcast with, talking about this rise of anti-Semitism that had already taken over the left and the DNC and is now starting to rear its ugly head in the Republican Party and starting to make waves. And I’m going to go to Joel on line two from California. Joel, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi, how are you? Doing well. Good. You know… As a Jewish believer in Jesus, I think one of the reasons why sometimes your viewership is down when you cover subjects like anti-Semitism is people are afraid. If I look around, there are more people that want me dead because I’m Jewish than want me alive in this country already.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, Joel, unfortunately, I don’t think you’re wrong on a lot of levels of what we’ve seen over the past few years. When you look at what was taking place on the college campuses, the firebombing in Colorado of a very peaceful demonstration for hostages. I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong, Joel. But here’s the other key here, Jordan. We know that these shows won’t get as many viewers on social media, on Rumble and YouTube, but we’re not going to stop doing them because that’s what we do here at the ACLJ. We will take on the hard things. We will call it out. We’ll use our experts, our attorneys, our international teams to fight it wherever we can, Joel. So that is what we do here. We are not going to quit or be quiet because the mob on the left and some in the right don’t want us talking about this. We won’t stop.
SPEAKER 05 :
And those on the right are just walking blindly into the swords. And I say it this way. On the left, it’s been more of an influence of the Islamic kind of hatred of Israel and the Jewish state of Israel. And on the right, it’s a little bit more of they play more to like anti-Semitism and Jews at home and running all the businesses and companies, the same kind of things we’ve heard for decades. The blood libels, right? But who’s next with those radical Muslims if the Jews are no longer there? Everyone listening to this show, for the most part, if you’re a Christian, you’re next. Now, there’s a lot more of us, so the Jews go first, but then it’s you. So you’re playing right into their trap, which is going to be a trap of, it’s a convert or die, ultimately. I mean, that’s what they do around the world. And we see that in Christian communities. We’re going to be talking about that in a second around the world.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s exactly what you were fighting for in D.C.
SPEAKER 05 :
last week. Sometimes they give you the choice. Right. to convert instead of dying at that moment. But oftentimes, you don’t even get that choice because they come in on Christmas Day and burn down the church and lock the doors. So they didn’t give anybody even a chance to renounce their faith, which most of those people, which I would say don’t. But, you know, I’m saying this is what happens next. with these radicals they will come and think about those in Germany who wrote that it was Bonhoeffer himself who wrote they came first for them we didn’t say anything then they came for us and there was no one left to talk Hey, who is us?
SPEAKER 07 :
The church. That’s right. And when you think about Nigeria, something that there was a great success of getting the Trump administration to recognize and put them back on the country of particular concern list that we’ve been fighting for at least since 2010 on that issue, making ground on it. That is radical Islam. taking on Christians and massacring them. And that’s a genocide happening there. And as Bill Maher said, unfortunately to quote him as much more times, why don’t you see it in the media? Because it’s not going after the Jews. And another thing, when they did talk about it after that CPC list came out, They were trying to blame these Christian people that went into the White House and put pressure. You know who that was? Jordan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s why you support the ACLJ. C.C. Howell was about to be on. Ben Sisney was with us. That was us. They blame us for saying, hey, we want to protect these Christians. Nigeria needs to do its job and protect its citizens. Back on Sekulow in just a second. Support our work. ACLJ.org. Donate today.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to Sekulow. Will Haynes joined in studio by Jordan Sekulow as well as Greg Gore, who you saw on the broadcast yesterday in C.C. Heil, Senior Counsel with the ACLJ. Jordan, I think we should lead this off by playing a bite from Ted Cruz that we didn’t get to.
SPEAKER 05 :
Actually, Senator Cruz, who’s on Eastern Time, Central Time here when we’re in our studios in Nashville, he texted to me directly, and it was a clip out of remarks he’d made just late last week at the Federalist Society Convention in Washington, D.C. while I was at the CPAC at Mar-a-Lago talking about these issues as well of persecution. And he brought up directly, which I think was great, the rise in – anti-Semitism on not just the left but on the right and he spoke to it directly and he quoted even you know our founding fathers and maybe the most key founding father in pushing back on these ideas of anti-Semitism back this is going back now to you know 1700s
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and Jordan, I think as well, when we play this, that’s why we’re in this freedom drive at ACLJ. It’s not just freedom here as well. It’s freedom in Europe. It’s freedom across the world because we believe in these ideals that you have the right to freedom of faith, to worship,
SPEAKER 05 :
Especially in the Western world and much of Europe. This idea is that the government is not going to tell you what you have to believe or not believe. You can choose what faith or no faith at all. You can change your faiths. And that should not make you at all some kind of target of the government or insecure in your own community. That the police will protect you and your decisions and the freedom that you have.
SPEAKER 07 :
Jordan, I think that’s why the ACLJ is so well positioned to fight this here in America, as we see the Democrat Party adopt what some liberal societies in Europe have been doing, the secularist movements for a long time.
SPEAKER 05 :
In the Western world, it just wasn’t in the United States of America.
SPEAKER 07 :
As it comes here, we are ready to fight it because of the work of Gregor and ACLJ. So let’s play Ted Cruz bite one.
SPEAKER 09 :
Washington assured the Hebrew congregation that our young and yet principled nation, quote, gives to bigotry, no sanction. To persecution, no assistance. And he promised, quote, that the children of the stock of Abraham shall sit in safety under their own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make them afraid.
SPEAKER 05 :
So this is George quoting George Washington. This idea that, so it’s always been a discussion, but they knew they were creating a country that was initially, the people who came here were fleeing religious persecution. And it didn’t matter what kind of Christian persecution they were facing as kind of offshoots of other Christian faiths, that this has always been a place where people came seeking refuge A lot of times because of their religious convictions and I want to go to Gregor because Gregor we talked about how we’ve seen a rise in this in Europe more so that we’re now kind of experiencing inside the United States. Talk to people about the rise in anti-Semitism inside European countries where I think France has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe and you see again a lot of these communities living in fear.
SPEAKER 03 :
Indeed, I mean, we couldn’t believe it would come back. In fact, antisemitism is now back in Europe with an ugly face, mainly from the left, you know, and the conflict in Israel is just increasing it. And so we see now, I mean, I’m living in the Jewish quarter in Strasbourg, and we have, down to my own apartment, often there is the army, army protecting the neighborhood. So, I mean, we live with the army protecting us. When I go to church for Christmas, for example, we have as well as the army protecting us during the big celebration, which means that the Jews are attacked and the Christians as well. So we are both attacked under danger. We are both, unfortunately, We must be under protection. You have in France every day churches being attacked, destroyed, burned. We know about Notre Dame who was burned. But there are plenty of churches attacked, desecrated, and this is just a hatred against God. And it goes against the Jews, it goes against the Christians, because it goes against God. and this is the reason we are facing that. It’s really something we want, and this is one of the actions of the ECJ, is to have the governments at the national level and also at the EU level much more aware, because we are always speaking about Islamophobia. But I mean, nothing is done, you know, to protect enough the churches and to protect enough also the Christians. So we want, I mean, we need to protect freedom, not only of religion, but even our own safety in Europe.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, it’s interesting to me because I live in a country, and I don’t think this is a bad thing if we get this right, that seven years after 9-11, attacked by radical Islam, this loss of life, that the country would elect someone named Barack Hussein Obama, who did spend some of his life… going to schools at Islamic madrasas because we’re a country that says we’re not going to identify you with how you might have been raised or your faith background as everything you believe you’re still an individual person so we did that and then you see what’s happened though in New York In New York, they’ve elected a mayor who’s taking it a step further. It’s not just background. He’s literally been an activist against Jews. He’s an enemy. He wants to defund the boycott, divestment, sanction movement. He’s part of those groups. He started those groups on his college campus. And so that takes a step further when you’re actively electing someone who is saying, yes, this is what I believe. and so if you can get to New York City from what happened in 9-11 in 2001 to 2025 and electing someone who is spreading the same kind of message maybe a little more toned down than those who carried out the attacks 9-11 but the same kind of rhetoric against Jews and against also American institutions and western institutions maybe America we see how we’re very we’re able to kind of like forget and move on because we see that as like our toughness right that might also be a weakness in the sense that we don’t really think about what you know we have the decision here to choose our leaders and and you can choose really bad leaders and that puts you on a path that is very dangerous and what do we see around the world you know we talk about christian persecution That’s the next level. It’s not just burning down the place of worship or defacing the place of worship or maybe punching someone in the street. It’s taking out the entire village.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. And I actually want to take this call real quick because it ties into that and to why we have to fight in other countries as well, not just in Europe and the United States. But Warren is calling on line three from Idaho. Warren, you’re on Sekulow. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thanks, guys. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate you guys and wish I had more to give monthly and encourage everybody else. But getting to the anti-Semitism, it’s proving that the Bible is true, that the world would turn against the Jewish people and Israel, and they’re going to come against the Christians, and we’re already seeing it in Nigeria. And then just looking at, see what just happened with the riots at Berkeley, where it And we need to, like you’re saying, we have to push back because it’s easy. But we’re watching it happen across the world, like the Bible says.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I think we have a unique responsibility. As Americans, if we’re involved in the conservative or Republican movements in the United States, that if we see our activist base, especially younger activist base, it’s wonderful to bring young people on. It’s not wonderful to bring young people on who are bringing… hate with them that they think is okay in kind of a groupthink mentality. And so, you know, if we’re going to be leaders inside those movements, we have to say, we have to confront that early so that we don’t end up how Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat congressman, a friend of mine, said on Bill Maher, he said, you know, you guys still have the opportunity to get this kind of figured out. On the left, inside the Democrat party, we’re already electing these people. So we’re at the point now where it’s the staffer level. Let’s make sure they get them educated. We’ve got to explain to them why this anti-Semitism leads to, again, it’s not just about anti-Semitism. It leads to violence. It leads to people being killed. And ultimately, the Christians come next. And I bet most of those staffer kids… identify with the christian faith that’s right and i think what we will do in the next segment is we’ll continue this discussion about the persecution and why yes we know about this our european office we talk a lot about christian persecution here for you but the eclj office has some true experts. They’re of course better suited regionally as well to go in and work with people on a daily basis in some of the hardest places in the world. And I want Gregor to be able to tell you about that and the team. It’s not just about those of us you see on these broadcasts or if you go to the ECLJ’s website and people you see there. It’s also the teams that we have built to combat persecution abroad. That’s right.
SPEAKER 07 :
And that’s why we have this Freedom Drive. And that’s why we’re showing you all this and why we have Gregor here And it’s a wonderful opportunity to have him in our studio in the United States because he’s normally hard at work in France and around Europe and around the world. But we can show you why those experts that know what’s going on in places like Nigeria and other countries that we have to point out and call out and try to get it to stop there. We also know where the rhetoric and the hate that starts to bubble up in Europe, in the United States. We know where it goes and we won’t stop fighting at home and abroad. Give today to the ACLJ during our ACLJ Freedom Drive and have your donation doubled. ACLJ.org slash freedom. Welcome to Sekulow, final segment of the broadcast. And I’m going to pitch it right to you, Jordan, because we were just talking about how the ECLJ fights not just in Europe to affect policy and change and law there, but also around the world through our work at the UN and direct intervention in many places. So I want to pitch to you on that so we can hear from Gregor.
SPEAKER 05 :
I wanted you to explain. We have experts on your team in the Arabic-speaking world who speak the language who understand the issues on the ground have the contacts so that again when we talk about christian persecution happening internationally this is not all coming for the aclj but the european center for law and justice you’ve built a team that can go into places and find and get the truth get the information to know how we can help people and and you and And it’s a great thing that we’ve been able to build that team that has those kind of resources. And it’s because of the supporters out there who donate to the ACLJ so that we can fund the ACLJ, who can then go and get these experts working with us to speak to the people directly.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, Jordan, we have true experts on the persecution of Christians on what we call the MENA region, which is Middle East, Northern Africa region. So here, I would say, as the European Centre, we are really at the forefront of the Northern African, Assyria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, So we, for us, they are our direct neighbors. So we go on the ground. We just done a mission in Morocco to meet with all Christians, sub-Saharan Christians, Moroccan Christians, For example, in Morocco, you cannot be recognized as a Christian in Morocco. There are only foreign Christians officially. So all Moroccans who converted to Christianity are illegal and they must behave as Muslims. So we are working with them. We push the issue. We make it known. We push it as you in parliament. We want to use our situation, our place to work and to defend the Christians in all those countries, especially in the MENA region, which is our direct neighbors, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria. They closed all churches in Algeria. Nobody cares about it. So we want the persecution of Christians. at our borders in Europe, to be known in Brussels, to be known in our main cities and capital. We want our governments in Europe, we want the EU, the Commission, to wait strongly, to use our diplomatic force, strength, our economy, to impose respect for the minorities in those countries. And so this is really our strategy, to have this matter becoming a real important political issue in Europe, in Brussels. And so we are working in all those countries. We have great colleagues. I’m thinking of one of them. He spent five years of his life in Egypt. He married a Coptic lady, so he knows perfectly the country. We only work with persons who know the ground. We go on the ground. We go in the countries and we do this legal work and political work and mediatic work.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and I think that that shows the reach as well. When we talk about the ECLJ here to our audience, it is important to show it isn’t just several lawyers, several French lawyers in one office that are writing briefs or things of that nature, that it’s a robust operation. Yeah. that has experts and knows not just the ways to communicate, but also the customs and the traditions and ways to affect change that we are sometimes isolated from here in the United States and don’t have to think about as often. But as you mentioned, they’re your neighbors. Most people don’t think about Morocco being right beneath France, just a very narrow strip of sea that separates you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, they are right here. So we know the communities, and we work with all Dimitrian Christians. So we work with the evangelicals, converts, we work with the Catholics, with the various Orthodox. So we have access, we know them, we have built trust with them, and we want to serve them. We want to serve them, and we want, as I said, European governments to wait in. Because it’s not possible, you know, that nobody says anything about Algeria closing 50 churches. Nobody cares the fact that there are over 300 Christians, foreign Christians expelled from Turkey in the last three years, including American citizens. only because they are evangelicals, because they may be doing some Christian advocacy or proletarization. And so nobody cares. So we want to have those issues very known. And so we act in the European Court of Human Rights to defend the Christians. Christian churches in Turkey are expropriated. We see the government trying to take the properties of the communities. We see the collapse of the number of Christians in countries like Turkey. So we have many cases at the European Court of Human Rights. We support many cases at the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey in support of the Christians. So this is all the work. We are also doing work in other countries. In Algeria it has been said, Pakistan and so forth. So it’s really also through our UN status, so as an NGO recognized as the United Nations, we can also work worldwide.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so it’s worldwide. I just want to explain that it’s worldwide at the UN. Then you’ve got the regional institutions, the European institutions that are based in Strasbourg and Brussels. You’ve got what’s happening then domestically in these countries. And of course, then what’s happening so domestically in European countries with the rise of the immigration that’s shifted a lot of this situation. This kind of taught about should these Islamic communities be able to run their own courts and legal systems inside Western Europe at the same time dealing with what is happening to the Christians in those countries who aren’t getting the same status that the Muslims are in Europe that they that they are not prioritized it’s something actually we’re working on Gregor next with this coalition we built with CPAC so after the CPC designation of Nigeria the next thing the U.S. is looking at pushing the U.S. to do on the South African farmers model is saying we need to prioritize refugee status for Christians who are being persecuted CeCe been talking about that there’s a couple ways there’s something called refugee status there’s parole as well legal processes the president can issue an executive order and say you know what we need to focus on bringing 5,000 or 10,000 of people who we know are not going to survive because of their Christian faith and prioritize them in the refugee process the United States that’s the next kind of step we’re working on and I have Great faith that when this gets to President Trump’s desk and the language that’s been created, we know he will take action to protect the most vulnerable inside the United States and around the world.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. So it’s not just advocacy. We do advocacy and we do it very, very well. And that brings change. But we also say, here are some action items that we can do. And just like you said, if it’s humanitarian parole, advocacy. you know here you have these christians that are literally being slaughtered what can we do in the united states to help them we can offer asylum options and so that’s that’s a practical step and that’s what we do again not just advocacy we do that so well through the eclj and around the world but we take practical steps to actually effectuate change
SPEAKER 07 :
Folks, thank you so much for watching today. We had a lot of information, whether it be from Washington, D.C., with our government affairs department, showing what the timeline is and to get relief to Americans that are really struggling as a result of the Democrat-led shutdown, as well as our fight against anti-Semitism both here. And as you heard, around the world through our European Center for Law and Justice. Thank you, Gregor, for joining us in studio today. And thank you, CeCe. But folks, now is the time to support the ACLJ through our ACLJ Freedom Drive. Your gift is doubled. Go to ACLJ.org slash freedom. And we also want to thank our grandparents this week during Grandparents Week.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. And for those grandparents as grand champions, support the work of the ACLJ. This is a time to make that donation, that monthly donation, the amount you’re comfortable with. Do that at ACLJ.org right now. Become a grand champion. Thank you.
