SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. It is a Monday. I am going to take your calls right now at 1-800-684-3110. I want to hear from you. Once again, 1-800-684-3110. Will Haynes joins me in the studio. We are going to have a good show today. We have a lot of topics to cover.

Big breaking news this morning, though. President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social around 6:00 this morning. "I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.

"Based on the tenor and tone of these in-depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructures for a five-day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald Trump."

Essentially, he is calling for a ceasefire in Iran for the next five days as they work out what could be a potential plan. I do not know why this has been the deciding factor. Why did we decide that a ceasefire was even something that was on the table here? It could be that the American people seem to be weighing a little bit on it. It could be that he said this was going to be a shorter-term engagement.

Of course, we have not seen the regime change that was really necessary, I feel. There is some discussion there. Of course, we did see taking out a lot of the top leaders. Maybe they are being replaced by people who are better. But it does make you question the entire purpose of this as well.

Will Haynes: To be clear, this ceasefire is not a total ceasefire. This is specifically related to the threats that President Trump issued before the weekend that they were about to start striking the actual power plants within Iran, taking out even civilian infrastructure to put more pressure on the regime. Because of these talks that the President is referencing, they have put those plans on pause.

They are not going to attack the power grid and the infrastructure at this time while they go through these talks. We are not certain who they are talking to. We actually have some sound from the President that we will play in the next segment because he was leaving Palm Beach, headed to Memphis, Tennessee, today and spoke to reporters for about 20 minutes on the tarmac.

He says that they have reason to believe that the individuals they are talking to are not the so-called Ayatollah Supreme Leader, but that the individuals they are having these discussions with are in the position to make these types of claims and agreements with the United States. As he gets into it, there is a 15-point bulletin that they are working over that the U.S. is saying are our demands.

You have seen what we have done to your country, and they are making headway on many of those points. They are getting some movement with these Iranians they are talking with. I also think, remember, we have still been conducting this air campaign and are continuing to do that even during this ceasefire portion, this very narrow, specific to certain targets ceasefire.

There has not been an opportunity at this point for letting the people do what they need to do or letting the incoming Peshmerga from the Kurds or any of those forces do something because the aerial assault continues. At that point, that is not coordinated with another group to allow them to have free rein and take over.

Logan Sekulow: My concern is that we are going to get close to what would be a full new regime and a new situation for the Iranian people, and somehow we have gone this far and we do not take it where it needs to go, which is to bring in a new regime and a new power. I am concerned about striking any kind of deals until we really know where it goes.

But I am not the President of the United States. I am also not privy to the information they have. The phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I would love to hear from you. I can see in the comments that there are a lot of people weighing in on this war. There are a lot of people who are not fans, and many of them are our regular viewers who watch the show each and every day.

I would love to hear from you too. What do you think currently of how we are standing as America? We also have the updates on what is going on with the TSA and all that when we get back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. A lot of you are watching, and a lot of you are calling. Give me a call. It is Monday. Wake up! That is what I say, Will. I saw them all in there do the System of a Down response. Everyone did. I know you could not hear them, but I could see them all mouthing, "Why don't you put on a little makeup?" because you wanted to.

Phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. We are also kicking off this week—and what an appropriate way to start off this segment—with our Stop the Madness week here at the ACLJ. That is right. Of course, a lot of you have been celebrating the madness that has been going on for the last few weeks, and now your donations are doubled as we focus on some of the more ridiculous things that have been going on in the world, whether politics or the world of the ACLJ.

Stop the Madness. Again, your donations are doubled today. We are tipping off a week-long push to stop the madness. Do you get it? Go to ACLJ.org/madness and make your donation today. A lot of these things we are going to be taking all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. We are going to discuss that a bit more coming up in the next segment.

Of course, the breaking news out of Washington, D.C., this morning, and throughout the country, President Trump made his statement saying we are going to have a five-day essentially ceasefire over specific things in Iran. Of course, there has also been this whole conversation around the Strait of Hormuz, what that is going to look like, and how this could affect us.

We know gas prices—people are feeling it right now. I am feeling it. Everyone is feeling it when you go to the pump. I know the public perception of this war or this insurgence or this conflict, operation—whatever you want to call it—has people a bit on the fence, mainly because of the loss of American soldiers. I think that is a very valid reason to be concerned.

The price of gas has gone up significantly. You are talking about things that President Trump kind of pitched he wanted to do. Of course, I am maybe a bit more on the other side of this, saying I think we have gone this far at this point and I would like to see a free Iran. I am a little afraid we won't get there, but President Trump put out a statement saying this is going to happen.

At the same time, we know what a lot of you have been paying attention to as well is the chaos that has been happening at the major airports in the United States of America. That does not even include the tragedy that happened this morning overnight at LaGuardia where you had an airplane crash into a fire truck, killing both the pilot and co-pilot. Horrible tragedy. That airport was shut down for many hours.

Above and beyond that, you have had these record-breaking TSA lines due to the government shutdown that is currently happening where the Department of Homeland Security is not funded. These all kind of tie together because, again, what does it all come down to? The security of our homeland. The Department of Homeland Security, which all can kind of tie back to one historic event that happened 25 years ago.

September 11th happened 25 years ago, and here we are now, 25 years later, still feeling the fallout from that, whether that is what is going on in Iran or what is happening at the airports. At the airports, President Trump has deployed the ICE agents to now be at these U.S. airports to help out TSA. Allegedly, that is what they are saying. It started this morning. You see the pictures of the agents showing up.

Again, you also had over the weekend Elon Musk saying, "I am willing to pay all of the TSA salaries." Now, the legalities of that get a little hairy, but you are having people feel the frustration and then have to respond.

Will Haynes: Here is the reality of the ICE agents being deployed to the airports: they are not going to be the ones doing the screening, running the X-ray machines, or things like that. That takes special training and understanding. It is to support and supplement in other areas of the TSA roles where they can be helpful.

You are seeing 33%, a third of workers, call out at places like the Atlanta airport, some of the busiest airports in the country. I think it was close to 50% called out at Houston Hobby Airport. You are seeing a lot of employees who have now gone through this second brutal shutdown for them where they are not receiving pay. They have high-stress jobs.

Being a TSA agent or an air traffic controller or someone in these types of jobs, when all of a sudden you are having to think more about how I am going to make my rent or mortgage payment instead of keeping people safe and having American travel be secure—that is not a good place for the United States to be in. Then you add to that that we are in this conflict.

We know that we have seen four attempted terror attacks: the one in Austin, the one at Old Dominion, the one at the synagogue, and the one outside of the Mayor of New York's house.

Logan Sekulow: Then take it to just the Western world. London last night. There is a Jewish group, a charity that runs a nonprofit essentially, a Jewish charity that runs ambulances and emergency services. It is very popular around the world. In a very good area of London, but a primarily Jewish area of London, overnight the ambulances were all set ablaze by masked men.

Of course, there are a lot of people saying that there are people taking claim for it—the IRGC and other places that have started to already do that. But this is the truth of what is happening in the Western world right now. I think we are a little short-sighted to only think about America in that sense because, as we have seen, the influence of Europe and the influence of the United Kingdom, where they have been short-sighted in some of their decision-making, has affected the way it is treated in America.

Will Haynes: Once again, you are talking about London having that kind of arson attack. We are talking about what we have seen here. Our Department of Homeland Security, the executive branch agency that is supposed to keep us safe here at home, is defunded. We are talking about the Coast Guard, TSA, all of these levels of the Department of Homeland Security.

They call it a partial government shutdown. It is really just your safety and security shutdown that the Democrats do not even want to talk about. They do not even want to give any sort of room to negotiate this out. To what end? We have already seen the replacement of the Director of Homeland Security. They are not going to give a little bit of a victory lap like, "Oh, we won. We got rid of Kirstjen Nielsen. Let us now move on."

No, they are still keeping this shutdown with no real end in sight. We are at 40 days. I think this is interesting because this was from a radio show yesterday, Cats Roundtable, John Catsimatidis. This is on WABC. He had on the former Director of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, who was President Obama's Director of Homeland Security. Here is what he said. It is perfect timing because of the initiative we just launched this week.

Jeh Johnson (Audio clip): We have got to stop with these funding fights. They used to be annual. Now it is occurring several times a year, and I am afraid it is only going to get worse unless somebody through strong leadership intervenes and says, "Stop the madness."

Will Haynes: Exactly. Stop the madness. That is the week we have got going on here. I fully agree with the former Director of Homeland Security under President Obama. I never thought I would say that. But he, throughout these recent years, has shown that he really is rational about the way that Homeland Security should be run, and even calling out that these funding fights are ridiculous.

If you are going to constantly be in a situation where you do not know if your Department of Homeland Security is going to be funded or not, and you keep kicking the can down the road, forcing these government employees to come to work—they are going to start quitting in mass. You are already seeing that, seeing them call out sick.

But here is the other problem with it too. Now the Democrats are starting to say, "What if we just fund the TSA agents?" Now they are going from what used to be a whole government shutdown to agency-specific shutdowns. Now we are getting on to line items of payroll. They are going to start saying, "TSA, you are good. Everything else is still not funded."

You are going to completely take away... Congress is then going to become this ridiculous thing, which many may say it already is, but where they are just voting on every single line item of the government budget. Are we really going to turn our Congress into basically having to sign every single check down the entire trillions of dollars budget? That is absurd. That is madness. That cannot happen. But that is what we are headed to if we do not stop this.

Logan Sekulow: When I look at the reports that are coming in, again, from these airports, I see some of your comments saying this is just a little bit of discomfort due to the war. It is like no, no, no. There is that—that is like the gas prices issues—but what is happening in our homeland in terms of getting in and out of airports, these three-hour waits that you are seeing in places like Atlanta, that is controllable.

That is something that is being held up by Washington, D.C., bureaucracy. All it is is politics to get you frustrated enough to vote whatever way they want you to vote come the midterms in a few months. We saw it a year ago. They delayed it for a little bit, or six months ago, they delayed it for a little bit to know when they are going to put the pressure points on people.

Like you said, maybe they are going to just fix the TSA. Why? Because it is probably annoying them too because they are having to fly in and out of these airports themselves and sit in these lines. Maybe that is the only way you can talk to politicians—to actually make their lives a little bit more uncomfortable. Then changes can happen.

With that being said, phone lines are open for you. I will be honest. 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. We are going to continue this discussion. In the next segment, we will show you a cool video our team put together about one of our big cases currently against CNN. You are going to like that. That is going to the United States Supreme Court. You are not going to want to miss this presentation.

Of course, this is the kickoff to ACLJ's Stop the Madness week where your donations are doubled right now. So do it today. Have your donation doubled dollar for dollar. Help restore the truth and sanity to the media and stop the madness with us at ACLJ.org.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to take your phone calls. Some are coming in at 1-800-684-3110. Kicking off this week, of course, we were talking about a few topics. The first one that hit the news cycle this morning is President Trump essentially calling for a ceasefire in Iran. Now, this is a specific ceasefire. This is specifically towards all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructures for a five-day period due to the fact that they are having what they are saying are good and ongoing discussions and conversations.

For people who have been wanting that, maybe you could see this as a big positive that this is coming, again, from President Trump after another chaotic weekend which involved strikes on Israel, strikes throughout the Middle East, and of course even threats to the United States and the Western world. We saw what happened last night overnight in London.

That being said, there is obviously the conversation happening at the airports as the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down. We actually have a call related to that. I want to take this call and then I want you to hear about some of the new work the ACLJ is doing during our Stop the Madness week that we just kicked off. But I think Denise in Florida is a good place to go. Denise, go ahead.

Denise: I love your show. My son was deployed over by the Rio Grande. He is in the Coast Guard, and he is patrolling the waters over there with the cartel and the Mexican border. He is not getting paid. Thank God he is okay because he does not have a family or anything, but it is just deplorable what they are doing. He is working his butt off, and what are they doing? Why are they taxing these people who are trying to protect our country?

Logan Sekulow: I 100% agree with you, Denise. The fact that you think about the Coast Guard being under the Department of Homeland Security—it is a branch of the military. But it has been moved under that Homeland Security umbrella. The funding there, I think most people do not think of it as being a part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Think about how important the U.S. Coast Guard is to this country and to our safety. Whether it be, as Denise said, being over near the Rio Grande that monitors things that can be gone through the ocean to our homeland, you also think about how important it is in shipping routes and protecting the ports of this country and all of the layers that the Coast Guard provides: search and rescue, also just being there with all the technology that they have to ensure that threats do not get too close to the United States homeland through the ocean.

The U.S. is very blessed with having two large oceans on each side of us. We are very secure that we have from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific. That is our homeland. Not many countries have that much protection of a wall of ocean on both sides. But we do, and having a Coast Guard that is robust and able to protect our ocean borders, not just our land borders, is extremely, extremely important.

The fact that they are having to work—and you think about when you line-item something, the Coast Guard being not funded currently when we are in the middle of global warfare—is terrifying, to be honest. Of all of the things, the TSA and the Coast Guard, I feel like we have got to get this going right now. Quit playing politics not just for the paycheck of Denise's son here, but for the safety of our country and our borders.

And once again, they are doing a job that is a sacrifice to this country of being able to go out there and protect the homeland. That is a dangerous line of work. They are saying, "We will eventually pay you." What are we doing here?

Why also their fight that they held up this funding over was over the ICE issues of which our media loves to move on from. Who is talking about that now? They made their point. The Secretary is gone. But the fact that that was the entire reason for them going so hard against the Department of Homeland Security was the ICE activity in this country goes to show you too, no one is even talking about that anymore.

If you were to go and ask a Senator why are you holding this up, I do not even know they could give you a coherent answer across their entire caucus because that is not even what they are rallying around. Now they are talking about illegal wars. You would think they would want the Department of Homeland Security more now instead of beefing this up because President Trump has made us so unsafe. It is all ridiculous. It is all theater.

But you know who really loses? It is not just the people getting paid that aren't getting paid that are still having to work, but it is every American as well. They are putting your safety at risk by not funding this. It is ridiculous.

Absolutely. When the ACLJ gets into action, you know we will. One of the things that is currently driving a lot of people crazy is what is going on in the news media as well. We are part of a very interesting lawsuit right now that you are not going to want to miss this presentation on. This is the kickoff for Stop the Madness week. Each day we are going to cover something the ACLJ is doing. This one is directly tied to CNN and really something we have had an issue with for a very long time, which was can you really hold the media accountable for continually lying and provable lies. Take a look at this.

Logan Sekulow (Narrator): The ACLJ is at the center of one of the most historic defamation cases in modern American history: Dershowitz versus CNN, now before the United States Supreme Court. And the stakes could not be higher, not just for Professor Dershowitz, but for every American who deserves an honest press.

Here is what happened. On January 29th, 2020, Professor Dershowitz, a distinguished Harvard Law School professor emeritus and practicing attorney, appeared on the Senate floor to defend the Constitution and establish why the Constitution would not authorize a conviction of President Trump.

Professor Dershowitz served as part of a distinguished legal team alongside White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, now Attorney General Pam Bondi, my dad Jay Sekulow, and myself, among others. He made a careful, nuanced legal argument about what constitutes an impeachable offense.

Alan Dershowitz (Video clip): Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. And mostly you are right. Your election is in the public interest. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

Logan Sekulow (Narrator): He could not have been clearer. Yet within minutes, CNN went on air and told millions of viewers the exact opposite. Their commentators claimed that under the so-called Dershowitz doctrine, a president could commit bribery, extortion, and virtually any crime imagined without consequence. The problem? Dershowitz never said that.

Alan Dershowitz (Video clip): I never said, never suggested, and it was a total distortion, not misunderstanding, distortion of my point that I want—I think a president can do anything if he thinks his election is national. I never said it. It is nonsense, and your network should never have said that I said it repeatedly.

Logan Sekulow (Narrator): CNN had the full video. CNN had the full transcript. And CNN broadcasted a lie anyway. That is exactly why the ACLJ brought this case to the Supreme Court. We are asking the court to hold CNN accountable for deliberately distorting a verifiable, recorded public statement. Join the ACLJ in stopping this madness. Go to ACLJ.org/madness.

Logan Sekulow: We thought that was the perfect case to start this Stop the Madness week because it holds the media accountable for the lies and madness that they have been able to avoid any sort of accountability for so long since New York Times v. Sullivan was decided.

But that is directly what we are challenging, and you can join us at ACLJ.org/madness. Double your impact when you join us this week. We are going to stop the madness, folks. ACLJ.org/madness. We will be right back with more.