SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow for this Friday. We appreciate everyone joining us right now. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I’d love to hear from you today. Again, 1-800-684-3110 to get your voice heard on the air. We are covering a breaking news item, and when we say breaking, we mean it was breaking. We had a different show planned and at the last second, President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social that kind of changed everything of what we were going to be talking about today.

As well, we will still talk a little bit later on with Rick Grenell about the tightening race in Los Angeles. But this is the current breaking news item right now as we know President Trump has entered the Situation Room. A statement came out, we'll read it to you. It says, "Iran must agree that they will never have a nuclear weapon or bomb. The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open. No tolls for unrestricted shipping traffic in both directions. All water mine bombs, if any, will be terminated. We have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines."

It goes on and on. But more importantly, they have been called into the Situation Room right now. It goes, "Other items of far less importance have already been agreed to." Again, this is essentially saying that all nukes have to be destroyed. "I'll be meeting now in the Situation Room to make a final determination. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Trump." Using the term "final determination," I think this is a big moment once again.

Will Haynes: This is what we talked about to some degree yesterday. How there were reports from Axios and others picked it up throughout the day that the parties that were negotiating, the Iranians and the U.S., had agreed to this memorandum of understanding. And what we even said yesterday is it is up to President Trump. He mentioned that he would make a decision in a few days based off what they had negotiated out.

It appears now that this meeting is happening in the Situation Room with his National Security team to make a final decision about that agreement. We talked about it yesterday. I want to get your phone calls. If the President is weighing the options right now, how do you feel about this? And we’ll get into more of what he said in that post of things that are the demands from the United States, and what we think will that be in this memorandum of understanding that is the baseline that they negotiate out into a final agreement.

Or is that what we still have to negotiate? Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. But this is happening in real-time, Logan. He is, if you look at the news channels, it says that they are meeting right now in the Situation Room. They are awaiting an update. This is happening, folks, as we are live today.

Logan Sekulow: One of the statements in this, or one of the passages in this statement, says, "Ships caught in the strait due to our amazing and unprecedented naval blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of heading home. Say hello to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, from your favorite President." Again, a little humor there. But realistically, this is what probably needs to be happening.

We know the economy has taken a pretty big hit. President Trump knows there needs to be some changes, some movement happening. So maybe, again, sometimes it feels like this show can be on repeat because it feels like we're close to a deal on any day. But this one, using the term "final determination," obviously that final determination could be that the war continues, it could be that we have a deal. So who knows what that looks like?

Could it be a distraction tactic? You never know with what goes on in Washington, D.C. But at least we have an update, and I want to hear from you about it right now. What do you think about this? What will make you happy? What will make you upset? Again, President Trump currently heading to the—in the Situation Room making that final determination. As President Trump has also said, the enriched materials will all be dismantled or destroyed. We'll go through a lot of what this all means in the next segment, but I want to hear from you.

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Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you. You're not calling yet though, because you just want all the information. But so many of you are watching right now. If you're joining us live, by the way, and you're brand new, because we know about half the people who watch live every day have never seen us before, welcome to the show. We do this show every day, Monday through Friday, noon to 1 p.m. Eastern time. So hit that subscribe button, join the well over half a million people that join us each and every day. So welcome to the show.

Will Haynes in studio. We've got special guest Rick Grenell joining us later on. But today, we are just going to go back to President Trump's statement, which just came out as they rushed to the Situation Room to make what they're calling the "final determination" on whether we have a deal with Iran. It was a lengthy statement on Truth Social. No character limits there, so he could go—

Will Haynes: Well, I mean, on X you don't really have character limits anymore. You can do articles.

Logan Sekulow: Yeah, it's too much.

Will Haynes: But it's a lot of words here. We've highlighted some of them though, Logan. I went through and took out kind of the bullet points of what this post says. And so here are what he's saying Iran must agree to: that they will never have a nuclear weapon or bomb. The Strait of Hormuz must be immediately opened with no tolls for unrestricted shipping traffic in both directions. All mines, sea mines, must be terminated.

The naval blockade will be lifted if Iran agrees to all this. The enriched uranium material, sometimes referred to as nuclear dust, which is buried deep underground, will be unearthed by the United States in close coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA, that's the International Atomic Energy Agency, and then destroyed. And no money will be exchanged. So no sanctions lifted, etc., until further notice.

That is what he is saying Iran must agree to. And they are meeting right now in the Situation Room to make a final determination. So that's where we're at, folks. That is what President Trump is saying Iran must agree to. What we don't know is if that is what he is saying they must agree to in a final deal, or if that is what is in the memorandum of understanding. That is what would give them 60 days of continued ceasefire to further negotiate out these points.

That's what I believe he's basically setting what the marker is, what the goalpost is. "Iran must agree to this if I were to agree to this further memorandum of understanding." But I think it's also good to see no money will be exchanged. That kind of pours water on all of the reporting that the United States is going to give 24 billion dollars in order to get here.

Logan Sekulow: I think that's huge and I think that's for a lot of people going to be a little bit of a sigh of relief thinking that in some ways you don't have IRGC that now comes out of this better than when they did. Now, President Trump is appearing on Lara Trump's broadcast later on in the week, but they've started to put out clips from it. And I think it maybe gives you a good little insight of what President Trump's thinking is right now when deciding what kind of deal we're going to make with Iran. So here, I'll play a little bite from it. This is bite one.

Lara Trump: Is there a line that they would cross for you to go on the offensive again militarily?

Donald Trump: Well, a deal that wasn't going to be good for us is the line, ultimately, because you know I'm playing it out and we're going to see. And that's what I do. I negotiate, they negotiate. They're very good negotiators, they're crafty. But in the end, we have all the cards because we've defeated them militarily. Look, they have no navy. Every ship—they have 159 ships, every one of them are at the bottom of the sea. Every single one, we take pictures of them.

We have people going down taking pictures of hundreds of ships. Their navy is totally gone, 100 percent. Their air force is totally gone, 100 percent. Their military, we've sort of left it alone because we think that their military is somewhat moderate. They have other people that aren't moderate, we've taken them out. We've taken different forms of leadership out. We've actually left their military alone. People would be surprised to hear that.

Logan Sekulow: Yeah, again, I'm surprised to hear that too. Left the military alone now. Well, in that you do have to separate what he's talking about there because the IRGC, in and of themselves, have their own military. It is—they have their own special forces units, they have their own air force, their own navy. And then there is the regular army of Iran of the Islamic Republic. And that's more what he's talking about. People that are in military service in Iran that aren't the hardliners, that aren't doing it to necessarily further their career within the government of the Islamic Republic.

Will Haynes: That is what the IRGC not only controls the Quds Forces, the special forces, all of these things, they also control vastly the economy there. So when you look at this, that there's very much a—almost a Soviet-style if you want to wrap your head around what the Islamic Republic of Iran is, it's this Soviet-style government where you have the authoritarian leadership, but then you have this bureaucratic technocratic state that is the IRGC that really controls everything.

And that is because the Islamic Republic was born out of a Marxist-style revolution. And so while they are theocratic and they have these wild theologies that go towards the apocalypse, they also have a lot of their roots in Marxism. And that is when you even the timeline, that's when a lot of other Marxist revolutions were going on around the world.

They were able to utilize that with the youth of the people of Iran during the day with this populist Marxist movement to get to where they are. And what—how did that play out? Exactly like a Soviet-style state where you have the IRGC that controls the economy, that picks and chooses the winners and the losers. And a lot of times the winners and losers, the losers are people that want to live a life.

The winners are those that want to go do terrorism around the world. So if you're able to separate the military in what he's saying, he is talking about regular people in military service for the regular army, not IRGC military. And that's where it can get confusing if you just hear the term military, like why would you leave them alone? In some degree, they're hoping, and there's been a hope for a long time, is that the military itself will turn on the government. And they are armed, they do have that ability, but they aren't the die-hards. They aren't the true believers in the revolution as the IRGC folks are.

Logan Sekulow: Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I do want to hear from you today. 1-800-684-3110 again. We had a show planned out and this made some big adjustments, as we know that this is a very big interest to all of you. And I want to know, do you want to see a war in Iran come to an end? Do you want a deal? And if that deal includes, by the way, no financial return to Iran, I think that's something you'd probably be happy about, but what do you think?

It’s an important time to call in. It's a Friday. I can take as many calls as I possibly can today at 1-800-684-3110. And I had great callers yesterday. Maybe I used them all up, Logan. Maybe they all are like, yeah, we already talked about it.

Will Haynes: I think the phone lines are broken, that's what I'm telling people right now. They all are watching on YouTube right now. They’re not wanting to join us. But I think I want to hear even if you thought about calling but someone said something similar yesterday, give us a call again because it's similar topics. We were at that point yesterday where they were saying the negotiators had come to an agreement on both sides. Now it's before the President. Do you think President Trump should move forward with an agreement with Iran? Do you trust him in this leadership to make the right decision?

Logan Sekulow: Phone lines again are open, as Will said, 1-800-684-3110. I also wanted to give you an opportunity right now. We’re wrapping up this week and honestly about to wrap up this month. It’s pretty crazy. We're already headed towards the end of this month. What day are we at? The 29th. I mean, that's pretty wild. 29th of May. This month has flown by. You can be a part of the ACLJ. It's a great time to do it as we head to the end of the month.

And the last days of the month are always very important in terms of fundraising. I don't know why, but it always seems like that's when people decide to get motivated and to donate. So if you've ever considered donating to the ACLJ, it's a good time to do it. You can also become an ACLJ Champion. People that are steady supporters of the organization, like a membership, you join, you can cancel anytime, but it's all donations so every month you'd have an automatic donation that would go out.

And what I like about ACLJ Champions is you guys determine what that means to you financially. So you could give five dollars, you give five thousand dollars, you can give whatever you want in between or above. A champion is a champion for us here. And now phone lines are completely jammed. So Will, you did a good job.

Will Haynes: Oh, thank you, Logan. I appreciate the kind words.

Logan Sekulow: You see, that's what we do on Friday here. We're nice to each other. Phone lines are open, but not really right now. But I want you to become an ACLJ Champion if you can right now. Just some of the very basic stuff we're doing right now. On Monday, we're filing our Federal Appeals Court defending Pro-Life centers. We are filing complaints with the HHS defending Pro-Life doctors right now. We're fighting the anti-Israel bias at the UN. We heard about what CC is doing right now too, but we're filing at the Human Rights Council and appealing a court ruling that really gutted a lot of those sanctions supporting Israel.

And our international advocacy for persecuted Christians has really expanded. We're defending clients in Pakistan on death row, what's going on in Nigeria. We've all heard about. The ACLJ team is worldwide. And I know it's a little easy to get stuck in your American mindset and I appreciate that. Look, we're the American Center. I understand that's the majority of the content we're going to talk to you about is what's happening here domestically. But the ACLJ is a worldwide effort.

We’re trying to get our message out to all ends of the earth and we can't do it without you. So I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org, become a champion if you can. We did lose a few phone lines, so we have three lines open right now. Some of y'all didn't make it, maybe you weren't kind to the phone screeners. I always say be kind. They hold your fate in their hands.

Will Haynes: Your fate of being on air.

Logan Sekulow: Glad you clarified that for folks, Logan. 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Rick Grenell's going to be joining us a little later, so also we're going to cover what's happening in Los Angeles. As we know, the election for mayor starting to actually heat up. But again, Rick always has some thoughts. We'll talk to him about some other topics as well. Phone lines are open for you. But again, last second before we head to break, which is only a two-minute break. Remember, we don't take these long eight-minute breaks you hear on terrestrial radio or twenty-minute breaks. Our longest break is two minutes, our shortest one is less than a minute. Be a part of the show today at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back.

Guest (Male): For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in court, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today, ACLJ.org.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are jammed right now, but they’ll open up. 1-800-684-3110. A lot of calls. Should we take some?

Will Haynes: Yeah, I think we should.

Logan Sekulow: Let's go to Jerry in Rhode Island. Jerry, go ahead.

Jerry: Hello boys, the phones are working. We're listening. The question posed was should we think it's going on or not. Those of us who've been listening long enough now know that Trump on his second term has rooted out the deep state and he's assembled a team that he trusts and therefore we trust. So they get all the information and we're trusting that they will make the right decision.

Logan Sekulow: Jerry, I think that we do have to at least go into this thinking that there are experts in the room who know maybe a little bit more than we know. But look, we also know that in Washington, D.C., people get influenced by what's happening in the polls. We know what they get influenced by what's happening on social media. It's not immune to that. But I agree with you that there are some level heads in the room hopefully who are addressing this correctly.

And that's why I've said, even just the little changes like there's going to be no financial incentive. I think if that stays true, that's a big deal. That is something we need to look at and go, okay, the media narrative was incorrect or they saw the blowback from people like you, Jerry, and people that listen and watch these kind of shows and say we don't want this to be happening. That would be, or even some of the other government officials, the senators, congressmen who said we cannot have a financially—we can't give them a financial win here in Iran.

Will Haynes: Right. But also to some degree, if there is to be a final deal and it is as good of a deal as they have no capacity to enrich uranium, they've given it all up, they will never have a nuclear weapon, the sanctions that are tied to that nuclear program will need to be lifted as a part of that. That is an appropriate exchange of you're giving up your entire program, the sanctions we put in place on your banking and your industry tied to that would be lifted.

And that would be them having access to money. And now the left will try to spin it as giving them money, but it is relief of sanctions if we get to that point. Now, I don't think that should be a precursor, lifting the sanctions before they agree to do that. That is what a lot of other presidents have tried to do before, saying, "Hey, we'll lift the sanctions, then we'll negotiate on your nuclear program." You're taking away the power you have over their economy if you relieve them of these sanctions before you even get to the point of dealing with their nuclear program.

But we also had Mama Bear on Rumble, who's a long-time watcher of the broadcast, said, "I trust him, but I'm confused by the path and the length of time he's allowing them to regroup and strike back." I think that is what a lot of people have issue with as well, is how long—the ceasefire was two weeks back April 2nd when it went into effect. We're now almost to June, almost two full months. It'll be two full months on Tuesday since this ceasefire began. And now we're talking about another 60 days under a memorandum of understanding.

I don't know that they have the capacity to regroup in the way that we think that they are. Many of the munitions facilities, even the way that they manufactured them, have been completely cut off. A lot of the ability for outside forces to get munitions in, so some of the other countries like China that have supplied them before, Russia, those kind of supply lines have been severed from this. So them rebuilding in that way isn't necessarily as big of a concern, as well as things like when you sink their entire navy, they can't just get battleships back into service immediately.

So I think the damage—I talked about this yesterday to some degree—13,000 targets were taken out just by the U.S. in Operation Epic Fury. Even if they are trying to rebuild and regroup, you can't do that in eight weeks. And another two months isn't going to really make that lasting of an impact on their regrouping in the way that would give them the ability to start launching the ballistic missiles immediately.

Logan Sekulow: A lot of you are just joining us right now. We just saw a spike in numbers on our live stream. So I want to make sure that we address what is going on, because I know a lot of you saw breaking news: President Trump rushed to the Situation Room. What's happening? President Trump put out a statement just before we went on air today, essentially saying he's headed to the Situation Room to make the final determination. I'm summarizing.

If you see on the screen, it's quite a lot of details. But it ends with, "We will be meeting now in the Situation Room to make a final determination." This is on the war in Iran. This is what came out on Truth Social this morning. So that is what the main topic is if you are tuning in just now and wanting to know what we're talking about with President Trump rushing to the Situation Room to have these final potential meetings.

I think that having a final meeting, even if it's not particularly personally the way I would have wanted this to go, I think having some sort of closure is important for the American people right now and maybe seeing some relief financially, whether it's gas prices, whatever, could at least let people breathe a little easier with what's happening in Iran. We actually have a call kind of related to that. Let's go to Trish in Texas. I know Trish speaks for a lot of people. Go ahead.

Trish: Well, let me preface this by saying I'm Republican, I'm Christian, raised Episcopalian, now Southern Baptist. There you go. I've supported in every way possible. But I'm to the point that if you even start talking about giving them money, I'm not talking about frozen savings, lifting sanctions after the fact, fine. That's the reward for them doing what they're supposed to be doing.

But if they get one dime to rebuild anything that we have bombed while President Trump is insistent on distraction, not fulfilling promises that he made to not only save but fix Social Security. I'm 69 years old, so Social Security is why, if we lose the House, the Senate, whatever we lose in the midterm, it will be because we have a President who is saying, "I don't care about the midterms." The midterms are important. I'm sorry, he is wrong. I beg to disagree. This Iranian thing has been going on for years and years, and this is probably not the last time we'll deal with it, either.

Logan Sekulow: Trish, I think you speak for a lot of people. That's why I wanted to make sure you got some airtime, and I appreciate you being respectful and kind. And look, I think you feel for a lot of people even who voted for President Trump, where there are concerns that are real. You didn't just go on here and just scream about something irrelevant or whatever it may be. I think a lot of us are looking to the midterms and going, okay, I do feel like we've kind of already accepted some kind of weird defeat for conservatism, and that's strange.

And some of that is coming from this. You can say, look, if President Trump wants to say that securing the country is better for him and better for all of us than any sort of election, I don't disagree with that as a holistic statement. It's just whether that is accurate. And that's a discussion point we can have. Phone lines are open for you. We’re about to head to our half-hour break here.

If you're listening on terrestrial radio, some of you don't get the full hour of the show. And that's fine, but really you're missing out on sort of the most fun part, and that part happens over on ACLJ.org, on YouTube, on Rumble, on Facebook. Wherever we live stream, that's where I want you to be part of the conversation. That's at 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern time. We're live, everybody.

So whether you're hearing us later on, that's fine. You can find us Monday through Friday doing that and archived wherever you get your podcasts. We're available there. The digital platforms are really growing. We want you to be a part of that family. Also, you get to watch us, talk to us, engage with us during the show, during the breaks, and be a part of the show. And in another way, if this is where we lose you, log on over to ACLJ.org. Look at all the incredible free resources we provide. But none of that is free without you supporting the work. So I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. Become a champion if you can, that's a monthly donor. And we'll be back in less than a minute. This is our short break coming right up.

Guest (Male): For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in court, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today, ACLJ.org.