SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. It is a Friday. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Going off the air yesterday, just shortly after we went off the air, the first of the two terrorist attacks happened yesterday. One was completely thwarted, one sadly had a loss of life. Let's talk about those so you have an understanding of what we're talking about. Of course, a lot of you may have heard of the potential attack in Michigan where a car was driven into a large synagogue. You could consider this to be like a megachurch of a synagogue. It had 10,000 plus members. It is a really big reform synagogue reaching a lot of young people.

He drove in with weaponry and a school. With weaponry and explosive devices. Thankfully, there was a very well-trained team, security teams, not unlike what happened at Lakewood Church last year, who were able to neutralize that threat pretty quickly.

Will: That's right, Logan. As we heard from the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, this morning, if this attack had been successful in Michigan, it would have been the likes of a Sandy Hook type situation. It was young children, a very heavily armed with explosives attacker. It would have been extremely devastating not just for that community, but for the entire country.

The second one also happened at Old Dominion University. This was an individual that went into specifically an ROTC classroom and confirmed with a student there. He said, "Is this one of the ROTC classes?" They said yes, and then he began to open fire killing the professor who is a decorated military veteran, Lieutenant Colonel, had served in multiple campaigns in Iraq and was killed by someone whom had previously been convicted of terrorism.

Logan Sekulow: Let's slow this one down because where the other one was taken care of and we're very thankful for that, university professors and teachers in general, we know, are under a big threat right now. I taught last year and I'll be honest that it rarely left my mind that the security cannot really be high enough. I mean, they have a great security team, but you're talking about individual classrooms. You know the size of these schools. Doors are left open. There is a lot going on to get in and out of these rooms.

A lot of times it sounds bad, but you start feeling as a professor or you start feeling as even the students that you're just like a sitting duck in this moment. What do you do in these situations? I feel so bad for the teacher who lost his life and for the students who have to deal with this.

But this was one of those attackers that did not have to happen. This was someone we had apprehended. We knew the issues. They had already been working with terrorist regimes. This again is a moment where we have to start re-evaluating how our prison system works.

Will: This individual had previously been convicted of support of ISIS, wanting to carry out an ISIS attack here in the United States. He had purchased a rifle back in the time to carry out an attack. But he went to prison, was convicted in 2017 or late 2016, and sentenced in 2017.

The government, the Justice Department under the Trump administration at the time, was wanting 20 years. The judge in this case cut that almost in half, gave the individual an 11-year sentence plus time served for being in jail during the trial. Then he was released almost two years early from that sentence. That was December of 2024. Just over a year later, that individual carried out what they had wanted to do all along.

Logan Sekulow: This was a person who was killed by another student actually, an ROTC student. It also shows that we are thankful we have some training there as well. We have a packed show. Jordan's here also. We have a lot of guests. You are going to want to stay tuned. Don't go anywhere.

We will be taking calls but only in the first few segments. If you want to call in about this or any of the other issues happening this week, you have to do it right now. 1-800-684-3110. Call in now as we are wrapping up our Global Impact Week. Seven days of Global Impact where we have been showcasing all the work we have been doing around the world. Be a part of that today at ACLJ.org.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We do want to give you an update of what was going on with those two terror attacks that happened yesterday. One in Michigan. Of course, that was the one that was going to be at what would be considered a megachurch version of a synagogue with a large school.

Jordan Sekulow: This is a very nice area. It is about 25 miles from Detroit. It is where most auto executives live. It is a beautiful area in Bloomfield Hills Township and this was in West Bloomfield. A quarter of the population there is Jewish. Out of the 65,000 people who live in this very nice community, they are very much a part of the community. They probably felt relatively safe because they have been in this community for so long. They have had the security that they have needed.

Still, this was right on the edge of a massacre because you had a preschool, so very young children. There were 150, so it is a big preschool. This is on the size of a very large synagogue and the work that they do with the education too.

I just want to say this. I think that one of the issues is not just the fact that we are in a conflict with Iran. I think that is part of it. But I think when the rhetoric from the left, the rhetoric from the Candace Owens-Tucker Carlson right, and then the targeted work that Islamic radical groups and Iran do online to reach people, you have three different avenues to try and convert people into carrying out attacks to kill Jews and to kill Americans. You have the leftist version, the right-wing version, and then you have the religious version. That is a dangerous combination because you are talking about the most radicalized people on every political side in the United States, but also religiously.

Will: They do not care who carries out these attacks ultimately if it is a liberal leftist, a right-winger, or a devoted Muslim who is radicalized. They do not care so long as Jews and Americans die. Jordan, to that point, what we saw yesterday was horrific. We are thankful that the security at that synagogue was able to neutralize that threat quickly.

Tragically at Old Dominion University, which the high school I went to was right down the street. It is blocks from ODU. I have many friends that attended university there. The fact that they were even able to minimize what could have been much worse as a classroom was opened fire upon, those heroic ROTC members at ODU were able to take him down. Tragically their professor was killed, but they minimized what could have been much worse.

When you talk about that, all the accounts point to one thing. The one at ODU had already been convicted of supporting ISIS. We know that ideology there, radical Islam. The individual in Michigan, the media is already trying to put out almost a mea culpa for the person that he had family that died in airstrikes in Lebanon and he is a naturalized individual from Lebanon. He was taking out his anger on a synagogue once again.

That is that twisted mentality. But at the same time, when you have on the same day that this happened, this is what Candace Owens put up about the airstrike that hit that school in Iran. She responded to something that the Tucker Carlson network had put up by saying this, "It was not a mistake. Israel is required to mass murder children because they worship Baal. Trump does as he is instructed by Jared Kushner and Bibi Netanyahu."

When you have that on the same day that an attack on an American synagogue happens, no matter the religion, there should not be an attack on a house of worship. On that same day that she puts that up, this happens. The Iranians that have been so good at their propaganda on places like X are celebrating that now the American conservative right has voices like this doing their hard work for them.

Jordan Sekulow: It is a lot easier for a conservative who listens to Candace Owens and likes what she has to say to accept a statement like that than it would be if it was coming from the new Ayatollah who may not be even awake or alive. When it comes from her, it is a very different kind of message because it is a fellow American, it is someone they trust, they listen to every day, and they feel like they have this personal relationship with.

When you say that a group of people or Jews are required to just kill children because they worship Baal, this again is blood libel. The worst of the worst blood libel that was out in Europe. This was during the time in Spain. This goes back thousands of years when you have seen the beginning of any kind of persecution of Jews. It started with that kind of blood libel that they killed children and they drink their blood. That is literally what she is now posting on X as something that is totally normal.

They cannot say that as a military, by the way, conducted with the US, that they had made a mistake or that it is part of the fog of war. When you go in with this much firepower, there are going to be casualties of citizens that are non-combatants. But overall do you see the Iranian people rejecting what we are doing? Do you see Iranian people in America rejecting what is going on right now? No. They understand that there will have to be loss of life unfortunately to see a change in leadership in Iran that ultimately the people there will have to bring about.

Logan Sekulow: When you have a moment where you have a DHS that is also not being funded properly, it gets very concerning. Will and I went to see Matisyahu last week, probably the most known Jewish musician. I am not going to lie to you and tell you that we did not have a question of whether we should go. Eventually we decided to go. I am wearing the shirt now.

The amount of security—this was in Nashville, Tennessee—the amount of extra security they had put made me feel better, but it was so sad that it had to happen. We were in New York City over the last couple days. We went to places that are predominantly known where Jewish people are, different famous restaurants, different areas of the city where there are a lot of Jewish people who are very publicly Jewish. These are orthodox Jews or even mainstream Jews that wear yarmulkes and you see them around town.

I am not going to lie to you and say that in the current situation, though it felt good to see them all out and to be around Jewish people, that there was not in the back of your head thinking, "Are we just asking for it at this point?" That is not where we should be in America. Certainly not where we should be in Nashville, Tennessee or in New York City.

Nashville is a multicultural city, but a city that was the birthplace of American Zionism. A lot of it happened right here in Nashville because of a little man you may know of named Johnny Cash who really brought Christianity and the support of Israel together in the 70s. Then you have an area like New York City where there are the most Jewish people outside of Israel living. I am still having to walk around being concerned about the safety of my family and the safety of all these people around me just because I am eating at a Jewish delicatessen or I am walking through a district that is primarily Jewish.

It is a really bizarre world to be living in right now and I do not know if you fully can grasp it if you are not visiting these areas. The shocking part is it is not unwarranted. This is not an unwarranted fear. Two attacks happened yesterday for this reason. A bomb was nearly put off from ISIS-inspired teenagers while we were there. It just did not go off because they failed at putting it together correctly.

Will: They had all the components. It is not like this was a dummy. This was just, thank God, you had a great NYPD and a great moment of a failure that this would happen. These are not unwarranted concerns and then you have the DHS defunded. You have the Department of Homeland Security not able to operate.

Logan Sekulow: I want to play this real quick. This is from Chris Hayes and Katie Tur on MSNow and they are talking about the Department of Homeland Security being defunded, something we spent a lot of time on yesterday. The Democrats in the Senate once again blocked a test vote for moving forward. Let's go ahead and play bite seven on their take on the DHS.

Chris Hayes: I think if you think about the nature of focus is that it can only be in one place. That is definitionally how focus works. If you look at the Department of Homeland Security as an entity, and to a certain extent the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security which was created in the aftermath of 9/11 quite famously as a response to what was perceived as the failures that led to 9/11. There is no way that anyone plausibly could say that it has the focus on stopping terrorist attacks. Its focus is on immigration and mass deportation. That is not even a controversial statement. That's just descriptively it is the case that what that agency has turned itself to do is to do that.

Katie Tur: Well, they're trying to link that with stopping terrorism.

Chris Hayes: Yes, but descriptively it is the case that what that agency has turned itself to do is to do that.

Logan Sekulow: That is the most ridiculous commentary I have ever heard in my life because Immigration and Customs Enforcement, yeah, their focus is on just that. That is one division that is under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. They have thousands of staff that then could focus on terror working with the FBI, working with the Department of Justice and all that combined.

What I would say to MSNow and Chris Hayes is that anytime they announce that they are going after Muslim terror groups, then MSNow and Chris Hayes will say they are acting Islamophobic. You cannot win with the left on MSNow. It just does not work. They're going to hit you every way and they do it in a really dumb way because he knows that ICE is just a component of DHS.

Jake Tapper had a pretty good statement. He actually said it is time for the right and the left to both fully come out. It is time to just say we are done with going around the issue here. Condemn what is happening right now. We have to do it. And that was coming from CNN. Maybe it is coming from a new CNN. 1-800-684-3110 and we have some special guests coming up.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are only going to be able to take your calls really in this segment and possibly in the next, so give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. Again, I want to give you a little bit of preview of what is coming up in the back half hour. We're going to keep talking about the terror attacks and some of the new information that has come out. Of course, the motivations are now clear.

The clip I want to play with you from Jake Tapper is from before he had the information. We did not know the background of the people. That is one of the topics of conversation we have had here, which is you used to be able to jump to a conclusion in some ways. If there was a terror attack on a Jewish community center, sadly you could probably start to picture what that looked like. That has changed.

We will have that momentarily. I do want to quickly bring up, because we are in our seven days of Global Impact, something that the ACLJ is doing today to fight back against a lot of the rhetoric that is awful that you are seeing around the world. Some of that, as we have known for decades, begins at the UN.

Right now, the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, as what her official title is, was put on a sanctions list. Many people were connected with their work at the ICC targeting lawfare against Israel. At the beginning of this administration, President Trump put these people through executive order and through the State Department on sanctioned entities lists.

The Special Rapporteur is using her daughter to sue the government to get these sanctions removed, saying it creates a hardship on their family. Basically, "My mom is doing something awful, but it is really hard on us." It would be like trying to petition the court to have a criminal parent out of jail because they cannot work and make money for the family. This is something that this individual posted in the aftermath of October 7th. I want everyone to see this. This is one of the reasons why this individual was sanctioned.

This is a tweet that was put on X by this individual and it was in response to a statement that was published in a French newspaper about Emmanuel Macron saying that this was the biggest anti-Semitic massacre of our century, talking about October 7th. Pretty non-controversial factual statement. Her response: "The quote 'biggest anti-Semitic massacre of our century?' No, Mr. Macron. The victims of October 7th were not killed because of their Judaism, but in reaction to Israel's oppression. France and the international community did nothing to prevent it. My respects to the victims."

She is trying to completely rewrite history of what happened on October 7th. She is suing through her daughter to get those sanctions removed. We are filing a very important brief today in support of the government's position that the President and the Department of State can use these tools in their toolbox without someone going to court and getting it overturned.

There is a reason that this type of rhetoric is being sanctioned and her work in lawfare against Israel, our ally, is being sanctioned and should continue to be. Jordan, we are filing an important brief today to ensure that stands.

Jordan Sekulow: This is so key that we are engaged in this battle because this is part of the war, the rhetoric. When you have rhetoric like that at the UN, you are spreading that out to the world as if it is okay to say that this has nothing to do with them being Jews and justifying the attack. This is a UN employee who is supposed to specialize on reporting on human rights.

How about the human rights violations carried out by Hamas on a daily basis? Did she do many reports on that? I have a feeling no. Instead, she is justifying this attack by saying they were attacking Israel because they are the oppressors and occupiers, they happen to be Jews.

When you use this rhetoric, she's talking to the radical Islamic community. Then you take the rhetoric of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson that they are putting out on the same day these attacks are occurring. Then you take rhetoric on the left in America, the AOCs of the world and throw in Ilhan Omar and the squad. You go from elected Democrats to influential Republican voices on the conservative far right. Then you've got the UN. That is a dangerous combination Logan, of rhetoric that turns into violence.

Logan Sekulow: It is happening in real time. This is not something that is theoretical. This is actual violence that is happening in the streets of America. Around the world, sadly, we may become a little immune to it because we know there have been these sort of attacks throughout Europe and throughout the Middle East. Now it is here.

It feels like it has been ramping up a lot more over the last few months as the conservative far right has decided to embrace this kind of hate as well. I am about to play you a clip from Jake Tapper. Again, this was as things were unfolding yesterday. This was when it was happening in real time and you can tell in his voice. This is from CNN. MSNBC is never really going to be this honest. But at least you have some people who are willing to say these things. Here is Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday.

Jake Tapper: We are seeing the real-life consequences to the elevation and platforming and legitimizing of anti-Semitic voices. To be crystal clear, we do not know the motivations of the attacker, this would-be mass murderer of Jews. We do not know their political views. But the Overton window, the measure of acceptable discourse, has opened to some of the most hateful anti-Semitic voices out there on the left and the right.

Logan Sekulow: He goes even more into how we have seen now the expansion of it. He even said it started with the left wing, but now we have seen it not just creep into the right, we have seen it take a loud voice in the right. Again, they will say it is just Israel, it is not the Jewish people, but we know that is not true. You know why? Because you see what they post. You see the way they talk. They've combined it and all of a sudden you have a threat where you are concerned to go outside.

Will: A lot of conservative outlets have shared this clip and are taking the wrong message from it. They are trying to say he says we do not know the motivations of the attacker at this point and adds to that and says we do not know his political ideology. A lot of people on the right have used that to pounce and say Jake Tapper is trying to cover up.

We know the motivation and now we also know who the individual was. At the time when that was being reported as it was ongoing, 100% I agree with Jake Tapper because the problem is now the voices are so loud on the right that are saying some of the most despicable things. Like Candace Owens saying that it was not an accident hitting a girl's school in Iran saying it is required of Israel to sacrifice children. Those are the voices on the right.

Logan Sekulow: When it is a radical Islam attack, you go, "Well, it is in the doctrine of radical Islam to not be supportive of Americans or Jews." When it is the right, it is almost more extreme because it is this completely made up conspiracy theory.

Now we have a second half hour coming up. Jordan's got a guest coming on, I've got a guest coming on. My guest was stuck in space for almost a full year, Butch Wilmore. He is going to be joining us in the last segment of the show. Jordan, who is your guest?

Jordan Sekulow: It is the Attorney General candidate in Oklahoma, John Echols. He's also going to update us on who is going to fill that Senate seat that Markwayne Mullin is going to be departing. Big second half hour coming up. ACLJ.org if you do not get it on your station.