SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. It is just Will and I today. We figured it would be me, you, and clips of President Trump giving the State of the Union, and clips of the alternate State of the Union. Some of those, when they claim that things are so bad and we need to be taking things so seriously, then you respond. Usually, I tease these, but I am just going to say it. We will show it later.

But then your response is to be on stage with a—what do you call, Will, a group of frogs?

Will: I would say a gaggle of frogs, but that is not the right term.

Logan Sekulow: A gaggle of inflatable frog-costumed people. While you are telling everyone the world is falling apart because of the current administration, it makes you question whether we should be taking any of this too seriously. Now, of course, this comes on the heels of a State of the Union address that lasted about two hours, right?

Will: Yes, an hour and 48 minutes, which is the record for the longest State of the Union.

Logan Sekulow: And President Trump warned that to the Olympic team as they were visiting, the hockey team, which to me was the highlight of the entire night, bringing out the Olympic gold medalists who won the hockey game. He gave one of them the Medal of Freedom, or said he would at some point. However, he warned them that this is going to be a very long speech, so get comfortable. And it was. We are going to go through some of the highlights.

I do not think there was anything necessarily wrong with this speech. I cannot point to a moment that I thought was bad. There were some tech issues early on. The mic was a little hot, so it was distorting and a little hard to listen to. President Trump had a few of his Trumpisms in maybe the first 10 to 15 minutes, and then it became a fairly standard State of the Union address with some surprises and highlights sprinkled in. But I would say a little less show in terms of the special guests and those things, though they did happen, than his previous ones. Maybe that is reading the room and understanding the seriousness of the moment right now. He definitely harped on the economy and the ending of many different wars or the de-escalation of many different wars.

Will: That is right. When I watched it, honestly, I thought the tone of the President was different than in any other speech I had really seen. It was not the amped-up rally-style speech and it was not just reading off the teleprompter and then meandering off the teleprompter as you see often in speeches. He stuck to the script pretty closely a couple of times.

As well as the programming, as we talked about yesterday, how he was using human faces and real people in the room to drive those points home. Honestly, I feel like the Democrats did not really know how to respond to some of the moments. So when they were faced with specific choices in that, they walked into rhetorical traps that happened throughout the night. I really cannot wait to play this one bite when we get back because it just was a moment that you are going to see in every single midterm ad.

Logan Sekulow: It was obviously one of the moments too where you look out at the crowd and notice that there were dozens of empty chairs. You do not usually see that at the State of the Union. Somewhat that played into President Trump's hand because some of the more moderate Democrats that did show up, or the loudmouth ones if you will, there were occasional moments that you did have a 95-plus percentile of the people standing up and applauding. I do not think that would have even happened if you had a full house.

Will: I also would point out that Congresswoman Kat Cammack from Florida, who Jordan had that panel with, she sat on the Democrat side specifically so that she could stand up. She filled out the room.

Logan Sekulow: I would have done it because there was a lot more room to sit. You could just have a lot of space. You are not crammed in. So many people were not there. Will and I go to the movies together, and look how far we have between us right now on purpose. When they said how you want to do this set, I said I need six feet between me and the next person.

Will: We need to be able to yell at each other to hear. Full wingspan. Here is my arm. Double, there you go. All right, we will be right back with more on Sekulow.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls today at 1-800-684-3110. Also, the phone lines are open. I want to hear from you. What do you think about the State of the Union? Did you watch? Did you not watch? I know a lot of friends who are more conservative who decided that they got a good idea from it and they would check out the highlights later on social media. They did not want to spend two hours on their Tuesday night away from their family. President Trump has in the past, and I am not sure about his specific State of the Unions, but he is not necessarily always the most family-friendly guy in terms of language and things, so there may be some parents that wanted to screen this before or watch it after their kids go to bed. What did you do? I would love to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110.

It did feel like obviously we are talking wartime things, so there was a lot of heaviness in the room at certain instances. You had moments like Erica Kirk being featured in the gallery, him speaking directly to her and about the assassination of her husband. I think that could not have come at a better time when the healing of that whole situation still is lingering over the country and has become more and more fractured and chaotic. But I think that it was appropriate to have her there. Again, I think that one actually got a pretty good standing ovation from the majority when he had a call to end political violence. That is something that we all stand against, political violence. We should be able to have these conversations across the room from each other, actually be able to debate and have discussions, and shake hands and be friends at the end. That has not been the nature of the beast for the last few years, or at least social media and the members sitting there would lead you to believe that.

But I was happy to see those applause breaks happen occasionally that would unite the room. I do, though, want to show where President Trump, knowing that this is how it goes now, that half the room stands, half the room sits, kind of backed some of these people into a corner. They could not really take the bait one way or the other, but it made for an interesting television moment.

Will: That is right. Let's go ahead and roll this for people because President Trump did a call to action so to speak and said basically, stand up and show your support if you agree with this basic principle. Let's play it, and if you are watching on YouTube, Rumble, or Salem News Channel, you will see the visual and we will talk about it afterwards. This is bite one from President Trump at the State of the Union last night.

Donald Trump: So tonight I am inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.

Will: So you see that visual where half the room stands and applauds and half the room sits down. Those that are remaining seated, I would hope they agree with the statement because they are elected by American citizens as their representative. It was a cleverly worded statement because it says the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. That should not be controversial as a statement.

Now, he knew it was a trap. He was baiting them. However, then I turned on CNN after the State of the Union was over to hear what some of their commentary was. The way that they framed that question, even with their panel when they were discussing it, and they had a focus group that they spoke with, they said, "And then he had that moment where he said stand up if you don't support illegal immigrants." That was not what the question was. So CNN even tried to spin it as this thing that he said, "Okay Republicans, you stand up because you don't support illegal immigrants, and Democrats you can stay seated." No, he said the duty of the government. You can stand up even if you have the most far-out-there left-wing ideology that illegal immigrants should be given very close to citizenship as soon as they get here. You could probably still stand and say the duty of the government is for the American people first. That is not controversial, and yet they fell into the trap. That is going to be used in every Super PAC ad. Every single candidate running against a Democrat is going to run that portion and say my candidate thinks that illegal immigrants are at least on par for protection of the U.S. government, if not more important. They would not stand and agree with this fundamental basic principle.

Logan Sekulow: I want to take some phone calls. Let's go to Michael who is calling from Florida on line one watching on YouTube. By the way, if you are one of the thousands of people watching on YouTube, you may have never seen us before. You may just be tuning in for the first time. I am not going to ask you to donate or support financially. I am going to ask you just to click that subscribe button. That helps us out a lot. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button, and throw the thumbs up. You can hype the video, I think is what it is called now. We appreciate all of the YouTube engagement and support. But let's go to Michael watching on YouTube in the great state of Florida. Go ahead.

Michael: Gentlemen, I didn't really think that anybody could do any better job than Marco did the other day, but let's face it, President Trump literally hit it out of the park last night. And it was just so funny to me, it almost seemed like an episode of Mean Girls on the left. Because when he asked that question, and clearly that's something that you've raised your hand to support and swear in with, and yet you sit?

Logan Sekulow: Of course Michael, it was a bit of a bait, bit of a trick question if you will, because he knows that he is not going to get many options where the left will stand up for anything President Trump is saying. It maybe happened twice. Maybe it happened majority for the Olympic team, and then again actually happened, maybe surprisingly, following the Erica Kirk scenario.

Will: The insider trading stock ban for members of Congress actually got quite a few members on the left, including Elizabeth Warren. That has been something she has talked about. It was funny to watch Nancy Pelosi try to spin that on CNN later that evening. She was a guest on that panel. But yes, as you said, there were moments. It was not completely that they had no soul like with the Olympic team. However, some of the other moments, the mother of the woman that was Ukrainian that was murdered in Charlotte, they stayed seated for that. There were so many other moments where there was no real reason that you could even politically say I am going to sit down because I do not agree with a policy or a statement here, but instead, I am sitting down just because I cannot stand the man who is saying it.

Logan Sekulow: Yeah, and again, it is nothing new. This has been kind of par for the course for probably since the founding of the country, where you have a really hard line between Republicans and Democrats and their willingness to either stand up or support or not support. But there were moments that you had that. Overall, you said do I think it was better than the Marco Rubio speech. It is very different. State of the Union is going to have a very different tone. It is always going to have a little bit more pizzazz to it. It is going to be a little bit more of a show. There are going to be those moments, the Medal of Freedom moments. There are going to be moments that people are addressed in the crowd. So I think that you cannot necessarily put apples to apples in those.

I do think in terms of a President Trump speech, I cannot think of, and maybe I missed some of it occasionally here and there, a big gaffe or a big moment that I walk away going that was a big negative. I think that is pretty rare for any president by the way. I do not think that is necessarily even rare for a Republican or Democrat. I think most of the time there is something that is misstated or you are doing a two-hour speech, it is not always going to be perfect. I do not know if it was the best one of the State of the Unions I have heard, but I did not walk away offended by it or there was nothing I walked away going, "Oh, they are going to have to answer to that." It felt pretty standard. I did not necessarily check the post-coverage because it was so late to be honest. I was ready to go to bed.

Will: To be honest, we see on CNN even their focus group and polling they did, we can play this later, but they saw that pre-speech—and this was their own internal polling—speech watchers said that his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. That was at 54%. So even their poll, which with the State of the Union is probably going to skew more conservative because if you absolutely cannot stand him you are not going to subject yourself to two hours of a speech unless you just want to rage-watch it. But 54% said his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. After the speech, their same group that they polled, it went up to 64%. So of the people that watched the speech, they liked what they saw. I would say criticisms on style and the length is hard for really anyone to just carve out two hours of that type of speech. But I do appreciate how it was vignetted, that you could pop in, turn on the State of the Union and see little stories with little policy perspectives and moments and watch two or three of them, and I feel like you still kind of understood the rest of it because it was celebratory. It was very American, America is doing well, we are back. It was not this negative, we are still destroyed, we are making our way back down.

Logan Sekulow: Now some members maybe want you to think that and got a little loud, and got a little aggressive. It at least added a little flare to the night. It's okay, everyone wants a good heckler once in a while, right? So we will get into that. We will play that when we get back. Hey, I did want you to take a look at the work of the ACLJ and what we are doing right now. You have heard about our work at the Supreme Court. I am going to dive into that a lot more coming up throughout the show. Go to ACLJ.org for more information and we will be right back in just a minute.

Welcome back to Sekulow. A lot of you are watching, many of you are calling in. We do have a few lines open still if you want to talk about the State of the Union. I would love to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. Leading in, my brother had a special on TBN. We are going to play some of those clips later in the show but because so many of you are watching right now and if you were watching during the break you saw a clip from that, we will play a little bit of that later on in the broadcast.

But right now, I want to hear from you because it went so late, there is typical where I flip around after the State of the Union. But we got kids, got to get up at 6:00 in the morning and get the kids to school. After a 10:00 PM ending of this event, I had to get the kids back because my son wanted to watch some of it also, he is older and in his teens, so he wanted to see the State of the Union to see how things were. So it was a late night for the Sekulow household. So I did not get to follow up with what was going on on CNN or any of the other outlets.

Will: You know, I think we should play this because you referenced it earlier. We needed to check in on some of the counter-programming because they had the State of the Swamp address that was happening, there was another one, and I said I was not going to watch them and I did not watch them. I had to check out Jordan on Praise.

Logan Sekulow: I texted you one this morning because first thing when I opened my eyes this morning, I checked out what was going on in the news. The most replies to this video were "is this AI?", "is this real?", "how could this possibly be real?" Again, let me paint a picture for you. Dozens of people that should have been in that room decided to protest because of how serious the nature is of what President Trump is saying and how much they vehemently disagree with him and think he is like sitting in the room with a fascist dictator. That is the premise, that these times in the world are so serious right now that we have to hold these counter-events because it is too hard for us to sit in the room with someone that we think is a fascist dictator. How are we going to counter-program that? Should we come up with something very serious, very heavy, somber? Sing some songs and really just get in that moment of maybe prayer for the country or intense thoughts for the country. They are giving some thoughts for the country. Lots of vibes. Lots of good vibes, bad vibes. There were vibes.

So when I did look to my social feeds this morning to see the counter—I did not even have to see it because it just showed up right in my feed. I did not have to go looking for this. So let's set up what this counter-event is and then the visual of this again, I have to reiterate, is real, is not AI, it is 100% legitimate.

Will: That is right. Let's go ahead and play this is from the Congresswoman Maxine Dexter. She is a Democrat from Oregon and here was her bold, oh so brave—hopefully those of you who are listening will tell you afterwards what you are missing out on, but you should see this. You should be watching on ACLJ.org. Here we go, bite 16.

Maxine Dexter: I am a mother, I am a physician, and I have a flag. And I am the proud representative for Oregon's 3rd Congressional District. Thank you. And tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade!

Logan Sekulow: You could not hear that clearer. She says, and tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful radical peaceful resistance. She has a big sign in front of her that says defiance. With the Portland Frog Brigade! If you were not watching this, what you are missing is about a half dozen—

Will: There are seven on stage and about six or seven off stage as well. Those guys did not get the top bell. They are the pre-show. They are like the Blue Man Group the tours. They did not get the main, they are not the main Blue Man Group.

Logan Sekulow: These are people in cartoon-style inflatable frog costumes. Cartoon frog costumes! Not even like a Mickey Mouse. We're talking about a blow-up frog. In those moments you do have to take a real step back and realize how much the seriousness of this and how much this is political theater and how disconnected they are that they think that this is what is going to go over with the American people. You're telling me that the world is crumbling, we're in the midst of a world war, that all of this is happening because of a fascist dictator, an authoritarian President Trump and all of this, and we're going to hold a protest, and your serious protest, which should be reaching outside of Portland—I understand this may work in Portland—is a dozen people in inflatable frog costumes. I do not care what it is she has to say, it is completely made invalid by the visual. Is it funny? Sure. Did I think this was supposed to be funny? I do not think so.

Will: That is right. When you see the visual and when you understand this is an elected member of Congress, if I were an extreme liberal in this Portland district, I would be outraged and say I want a new representative because you are telling me this man is literally Hitler? You have been telling me that for years, and the best you have got is frog costumes? They are such an unserious group of people, and that is why when people wonder why does Congress as a whole have such low approval ratings? Maybe it is because that is the best they got. The best that this member of Congress and this State of the Swamp speech and counter-programming could do is Frog Brigade. I looked up a group of frogs, not a gaggle, an army or colony of frogs, but this was a brigade.

Logan Sekulow: I would tell you this was more of a colony. Frog colony. And when you just hear that, you have to realize one of two things are true because of what they have projected that Donald Trump is. Either they are lying to the American people, which I believe that they are, because if he is as bad as they say he is, can you imagine during World War II if the resistance to the Axis powers were going around in frog costumes saying "I defy! I defy you Mussolini!"? Imagine this. It is so ridiculous. Or also, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a clinical thing at this point where your brain is unable to come up with rational things to push back, so this seems like a great idea. Again, it is silly, it is funny, as someone who likes a good silly funny, likes a good costume. I just find it to be so insincere when it matches what the content is. If you had a fun rally and this happened, a political rally, big show, sure, bring on the Frog Brigade, it does not bother me at all that these people exist. But when you bring it up during a time where you are literally questioning not only whether the President of the United States can be doing what he is doing, but you are calling him racist, you have people chanting that people are being murdered in the streets. If you truly sincerely believe that, this would not be the way you respond.

It is as simple as it can be. It is not about not having a bit of fun, a bit of whimsy in your life. You cannot be up on stage telling people how serious and dark it is. Maybe they remember that Biden speech and they go, we have to go the opposite of that one. We have to go the opposite of the Darth Vader speech and we have to go straight-up whimsy. We have to go frog costumes. Maybe there is somewhere in the middle. Maybe do what President Trump did, keep it kind of normal like he did this last time. We got a half hour more coming up. Some of you do not get us in your local market, you miss those Frog Brigades if you are just listening anyway. You should be joining us online, ACLJ.org. 12:00 to 1:00 PM Eastern time, we are live every day. You can find us there, you can also find us on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, wherever you get your pods. We will be right back.