Nathaniel Moran, Dr. Ingrid Skop, Chris Mitchell, Dr. A.J. Nolte

From the heart of our nation’s capital in Washington, DC., bringing compelling interviews, insightful analysis, taking you beyond the headlines and soundbites into conversations with our nation’s leaders and newsmakers, all from a biblical worldview. Washington Watch with Tony Perkins starts now.
Throughout this committee’s investigation, the Secretary in the State Department obstructed my access to witnesses and documents at every turn. It was their failure to produce documents and testimony that determined the timing of my Afghanistan report and today’s contempt markup.
That was chairman of the House Foreign affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, yesterday, where the Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to comply with the subpoena to testify before the committee. The House is now moving forward to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress. Welcome to Washington Watch.
I’m your host, Tony Perkins. We’ll get the latest on this matter from Texas Congressman Nathaniel Moran in just a moment. He’s a member of the House Foreign affairs Committee.
The House is wrapping up votes and he’ll be joining us momentarily. Also, the House just moments ago approved a short-term funding measure to keep the federal government operating until December the 20th. The measure now goes to the Senate.
As United Nations General Assembly gathers in New York, some world tyrants are taking turns swinging at Israel as if it were a piñata at an October 7th celebration.
And I would like to state very clearly and loudly here, the Israeli government, disregarding basic human rights, trampling on international law at every opportunity, is practicing ethnic cleansing, a clear genocide against a nation, a people, and occupying their lands step by step.
That was Turkey’s President Erdogan yesterday, speaking before the General Assembly. Later on Washington Watch, Regent University Professor AJ. Nolte joins me to talk about the blatant hypocrisy of Erdogan’s claims that Israel is engaged in genocide.
And we’ll talk about what Erdogan’s not so subtle intentions are for the region. Also, the conflict continues to intensify in the Middle East.
At 6:30 a.m. this morning, millions of Israelis took refuge in their bomb shelters, a Hezbollah long-range surface-to-surface missile was fired from the village of Nafahye in southern Lebanon. It was fired towards Tel Aviv. This is the first time in history that Hezbollah terrorists have fired at the city of Tel Aviv.
That was Israeli government spokesman David Mincer earlier today. The missile was reportedly targeting Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. In response, Israel has stepped up its air attacks.
Many are expecting Israeli troops to move into Lebanon. We’ll get a report from Jerusalem with CBN Middle East Bureau Chief, our friend Chris Mitchell, a little later. Yesterday on the program, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson joined us to discuss the politically charged hearing in the Senate Finance Committee entitled Chaos and Control, How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care.
Now, here’s an unsubstantiated claim made by the committee chairman, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, as he opened yesterday’s hearing.
Women are miscarrying, suffering life-threatening blood loss, losing their ability to bear future children, or dying because they were denied the emergency medical care that they needed.
Now, this seems to be based on the same false claims made by the vice president, Vice President Harris last week.
And now we know that at least two women, and those are only the stories we know, here in the state of Georgia, died, died, because of a Trump abortion ban.
Not only are these claims false, but the women referenced actually died due to the reckless, pro-abortion, anti-woman policies of the Biden-Harris administration. We’re going to talk about it with Dr. Ingrid Skop, Vice President, Director of Medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. The website, tonyperkins.com, be sure and visit it.
Lots of resources there for you. And as you can tell, there’s a lot to be praying about. And I invite you to join us in our nation’s capital, October the 3rd through the 6th for the Pray Vote Stand Summit, as we gather together to pray and prepare to pray for our nation as we approach an election that will determine the future of our country.
But, as I’ve said many times, the election will not solve the issues facing our nation. It could make it worse, but it will not solve it. The problems are much deeper.
And so we need to gather together to pray and seek God on behalf of our nation. To find out more, go to prayvotestand.org or text the word URGENT to 67742. House Republicans have laid the groundwork to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena from the House Foreign affairs Committee to testify regarding the Biden administration’s handling of the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
This comes as House Republicans also consider a separate resolution to condemn senior Biden administration officials, including President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the disaster’s Afghan withdrawal that led to ISIS-K suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members at Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021. Joining me from the cloakroom off of the House floor is Congressman Nathaniel Moran. He serves on three House committees, including the House Committee on Foreign affairs and the House Judiciary Committee.
He represents the first congressional district of Texas. Congressman Moran, welcome back to Washington Watch.
Thank you so much, Tony. It’s great to be with you. I’m sorry that I’m in the cloakroom, but we just got down with votes.
And I knew how important this topic was to talk about tonight. So thank you for having me even in this cloakroom setting.
Well, appreciate you joining us. Let’s talk about what you just voted on because I believe the House has moved forward, in fact, voting right now to hold the Biden administration accountable for Afghanistan.
Well, and I tell you, when we had the vote in our committee yesterday to vote to hold Blinken in contempt, this was a very important vote that we took because by doing so, we took a step to say, look, we needed to talk to the very top of the Secretary of State’s position, the very top of the State Department to get answers. Particularly, we needed answers from Secretary Blinken that nobody else could answer. Why was it that they didn’t evacuate non-combatants sooner?
Why didn’t they actually follow the plan that would have preserved a number of civilian deaths there in Afghanistan? Why did they wait so late to defend the Afghanistanis the way they should have, the way the generals and the Defense Department talked about doing? And quite frankly, why was it such a mess?
So, Congressman Moran, talk about what you had hoped to gain from testimony from Secretary Blinken. I mean, he’s obviously avoiding coming before the committee to testify on this. What are they hiding?
Well, you know, responsibility starts at the top, and Secretary Blinken is the last person in the chain that we had not been able to talk to, to get these final answers on the botched withdrawal. We talked to a number of military leaders about the plan for withdrawal. But when you talk about keeping the State Department officials there on the ground for as long as he did, we needed to know why.
Why was that happening? Why did they not evacuate those State Department officials earlier? Why did they keep the embassy open so long, even into the mid-August time period, before they started getting those civilians to safety, when it was clear that things were breaking down?
How did that play in to the vote that just took place on the House floor now to condemn the Biden administration for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan?
certainly, it was a critical part of the vote that we just took, and critical because when we talk about holding the chain of command responsible, it doesn’t just stop with the Secretary of State. It goes on up to Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden and the decisions they were making, that then they were consulting with, not just Blinken, but the military advisors on making those decisions. So there’s a number of people in that chain of command that need to be held accountable.
But it starts really, really at the top with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Congressman Moran, some would say, look, this is history. It’s old, we’re moving forward. Why are Republicans still focused on this?
I think the story is really important. Last month, we had a gold star ceremony where we had a number of the gold star families here and gave them the Congressional gold medal to present to them, those families that lost the 13 members of the Abbey Gate as a remembrance for the sacrifice and service that they gave to this country. It is so vitally important that we do not forget the sacrifice and service of our military members, but also of what we need to do better in the future.
If we don’t continue to tell that story, we know if it was just told once, we’re going to forget that and we’re not going to relearn the lessons of history and we’re not going to do better next time. We cannot forget the mistakes that were made in the Afghanistan withdrawal. It has crippled the trust across this globe that we had before that time.
As a result of that, we’ve seen the rise of the axis of totalitarianism and these tyrannical regimes across the world who were emboldened by the weak policies and the bias withdrawal in Afghanistan and now they’re pushing against our other allies across the globe.
Is this what happens with political objectives overtake military objectives?
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. When you’re making decisions clearly from a political lens and not from a policy lens, whether that’s defense policy or state policy or foreign policy, all the good policy would say, don’t do it this way. But the politics of the day, the emotion of the day, drove the Biden administration to make some very poor decisions in that moment.
And we are suffering years of consequences as a result of that. And we have lost trust with many nations across this world who do not believe that we’re going to keep our word to them when we give it.
Congressman Moran, you’re going to be leaving town. Congress is going to be adjourning to go back to their districts. Will not be back until after the election.
Do you anticipate that this effort to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress will continue?
Yeah, I do. But it was a great step for us to take before the October break and certainly before the November elections. And that’s the wrong word for me to use is break.
It’s not we’re going home to work hard in our districts. We’re going home to election. We’re going home to make sure that folks have the information they need to make the correct decisions when they go to the ballot box.
Informed voters are what we want on November the 5th.
When you come back, as of today, of course, I assume the Senate is going to follow through the continuing resolution passed the House, keeping the government functioning until, I shouldn’t say functioning, funded, I should say, until December the 20th. You come back in a lame duck session, you’re going to be confronted once again with a funding issue. What’s that going to look like?
It’s going to look like, unfortunately, what we’ve seen before. This is the same song, second verse, or maybe it’s the same song, 20th verse, that we’ve seen before. I’ll tell you, Tony, I did not vote for the appropriations package that just went through.
I did vote for the stopgap resolution last week that had the SAVE Act attached to it. That was a good enough policy that hopefully the leverage of keeping the Democrats in check would have forced them to pass that, make that law to get some election integrity as part of our laws strengthened. But this week, there just wasn’t enough good policy wins, and I don’t want to keep spending at the same levels.
We need to get back to regular order, pass our 12 appropriations bills. We’re going to get jammed up by the Senate in December again. Chuck Schumer’s already planning that.
He doesn’t care about the appropriations process at all. He cares about just him being able to dictate the terms of appropriations. And that is not the way we should be doing business.
Yeah, I think that’s no surprise. We’ve seen him do that over and over again. We may be up against the government shutdown in December, if that’s the same song and dance.
Congressman Nathaniel Moran, I want to thank you for joining us. Always great to see you. Thanks for joining us today.
My pleasure, Tony. Thank you so much.
All right. All right, folks, when we come back, I’ll correct the record on the Harris campaign’s talking point regarding two Georgia women who died, along with their babies, after taking dangerous abortion pills approved by the Biden administration to be sent across state lines in the mail without medical supervision. That’s next.
Don’t go away.
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Hello, I’m Jody Hyes, president of FRC Action. Here in America, we thank God for the right to vote. We can all agree on the importance of this upcoming election.
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So let’s be the best stewards possible and get the most out of our political contributions by uniting our efforts. For more information or to contribute, visit faithfamilyfreedomfund.org. Thank you so much and God bless you.
All of us are born with the desire to find truth and meaning.
While our answers to these questions may divide us, we are united in our need for the freedom to answer life’s biggest questions and make life’s biggest decisions for ourselves. That’s why religious freedom matters for everyone. Religious freedom matters because the powerful have long wanted to control those who are less powerful.
Religious freedom matters because the freedom of those who are different is often threatened by those who believe different is dangerous. At the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, we promote religious freedom for everyone because the only alternative is religious freedom for no one. We encourage Americans and the American government to engage and advocate for the persecuted.
And they do. We work every day to bring good news to the afflicted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. We do it because that’s what Jesus does.
We work to give freedom to others because we ourselves have been set free.
Thanks for tuning in on this Wednesday and being a part of the Washington Watch family. Always check out the resources we have available at tonyperkins.com. Also, if you’ve not yet downloaded the Stand Firm app, you can get Washington Watch right there in your pocket, no matter where you are.
That’s at the app store, the Stand Firm app. Vice President Kamala Harris, with help from the legacy media, of course, continues to push a campaign talking point that the deaths of two Georgia women who took abortion drugs in 2022 were caused by their state’s pro-life laws. Of course, trying to link that back to Donald Trump.
Now, this narrative ignores both the details of the medical care received by both women as well as the inherent dangers posed by chemical abortion drugs being sent through the mail as a result of the policies by the Biden-Harris administration. The pro-life medical community has been sounding the alarm regarding the dangers of the abortion drugs for years. Joining now to explain what is really taking place here is Dr. Ingrid Skop, Vice President of Medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and a board certified OB-GYN.
Dr. Skop, welcome to Washington Watch once again.
Thanks, Tony. I’m so glad to be with you to discuss this heartbreaking situation.
So lay out the facts for us in these tragic, tragic deaths that are being exploited by Democrats. We’ve seen the Vice President yesterday. This was in a Senate Finance Committee.
These were alluded to. Tell us what’s going on.
We learned of these women’s deaths in a recent ProPublica article, which, of course, immediately placed the blame on Georgia’s pro-life laws. But the reality is Amber Thurman died of sepsis following Mifepristone and Mesoprostol, which the FDA maintains a black box warning on Mifepristone, warning doctors that this drug can cause an unusual sepsis that can kill women. There have been dozens of women who have died that we know of from this virulent and aggressive infection.
Candy Miller also died following complications of these drugs in Georgia. And as you mentioned, the FDA has, over time, has progressively removed so many safeguards on these drugs that right now they can be ordered online, they can be delivered through the mail, and women get them, and then they are having a totally medically unsupervised, do-it-yourself abortion. And when complications happen and they’re frequent, at least one out of 20 women, these women have nowhere to turn.
So, explain the connection that Vice President Harris is trying to make with the pro-life laws in Georgia being responsible for these deaths since they took the dangerous abortion pill unsupervised.
Well, isn’t it ironic that the changes the FDA made were all prior to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. So, this was not, you know, allowing these drugs to be readily available was not a response to the Dobbs decision.
This was the plan all along, and they have never seemed to care about the women who’ve been harmed. They, in fact, they don’t look very hard for complications. In 2016, the FDA said, you know what, don’t even tell us about any complications from these drugs unless they kill the woman.
So, while not maintaining data, they’ve allowed these drugs to flood our country, and this all happened long before the Dobbs decision. But, of course, we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision that abortion advocates have pointed at these laws. They’ve misinformed the American public about the laws.
They’ve intentionally stirred up confusion and fear-mongering among doctors. They failed to explain the laws to doctors. And so, what we see is confusion on the ground, confusion with women.
At least part of what happened in these women not presenting for care in a timely manner may have been their misinformation that women would be prosecuted for seeking abortion. No, they just needed to present for care so they could be, receive the quality care that every single pro-life law allows. The ProPublica article, by trying to confuse, said that a DNC is illegal.
No, a DNC is just a method of providing medical care. What is illegal is ending human life electively in Georgia. So, this kind of confusion obviously may have led to some confusion with the doctors on the ground.
It’s not really clear, but the reality is the Georgia law allowed the doctors to do whatever they wanted to do. The women died from these dangerous drugs, and that was an action taken by the FDA long before the Dobbs decision.
So, Dr. Skop, part of that confusion, and we’ve heard this from the Vice President, we heard it again yesterday in this committee hearing in the Senate, that doctors in these pro-life states like Georgia are prohibited from doing miscarriage care. Speak to that.
It’s absolutely untrue, and a fifth grader who opened up these laws would immediately see that it says an exception is for miscarriage management, an exception is for ectopic management, and an abortion that is needed for the life of the mother. So it is absolutely clear, and I think it just shows honestly the desperation of pro-abortion ideologues, that they feel they have to lie so blatantly in order to deceive the American public. But it’s crucial that we get the truth out, because apparently, in some situations, doctors may have been convinced by reading the pro-abortion media, and they’ve never read the law.
But it is absolutely, doctors can do whatever they need to do to protect women’s lives, and they should continue to do that.
So, Dr. Skop, are you saying that the pro-abortion rhetoric, the rhetoric coming from the vice president and the Democratic Party, is actually causing women to die?
It is deadly. It’s the lies, not the laws, that are causing these deaths. And what a dangerous game they’re playing, that they would be willing to risk the lives of American women in order to promote their political ideology.
That is not surprising, but it is very troubling. That they would allow women and doctors to be confused just so that they can achieve their political objectives, even if it costs the lives of women, the very ones they say that they are for. Dr. Skop, I want to thank you for joining us.
Always great to see you, and I always appreciate your insight.
Thank you, Tony, so much for this opportunity to spread the truth.
And folks, I hope you’ll spread the truth as well. Tell other folks to tune in to Washington Watch so you can hear the truth and counter the legacy media. All right, don’t go away.
When we come back, we’re going to get an update from Jerusalem. We’re going to be checking in with Chris Mitchell, so don’t go away.
Everything we do begins as an idea. Before there can be acts of courage, there must be the belief that some things are worth sacrificing for. Before there can be marriage, there is the idea that man should not be alone.
Before there was freedom, there was the idea that individuals are created equal. It’s true that all ideas have consequences, but we’re less aware that all consequences are the fruit of ideas. Before there was murder, there was hate.
Before there was a Holocaust, there was the belief by some people that other people are undesirable. Our beliefs determine our behavior and our beliefs about life’s biggest questions determine our world view. Where did I come from?
Who decides what is right and wrong? What happens when I die? Our answers to these questions explain why people see the world so differently.
Debates about abortion are really disagreements about where life gets its value. Debates over sexuality and gender and marriage are really disagreements about whether the rules are made by us or for us. What we think of as political debates are often much more than that.
They are disagreements about the purpose of our lives and the source of truth. As Christians, our goal must be to think biblically about everything. Our goal is to help you see beyond red and blue, left and right, to see the battle of ideas at the root of it all.
Our goal is to equip Christians with a biblical worldview and help them advance and defend the faith in their families, communities and the public square. Cultural renewal doesn’t begin with campaigns and elections, it begins with individuals turning from lies to truth. But that won’t happen if people can’t recognize a lie and don’t believe truth exists.
We want to help you see the spiritual war behind the political war, the truth claims behind the press release in the forest and the trees.
This is Washington Watch, I’m Tony Perkins. Good to have you with us. The website tonyperkins.com.
Be sure and check it out. Israeli military officials confirmed today they shot down a Hezbollah missile fired at Tel Aviv. Now, this marks the first time the Iranian-backed terrorist group has fired a missile this deep into Israel.
The missile was reportedly directed at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. The Israeli military has now called up two brigades of reservists to send them to the northern border. Reports also indicate that thousands of militia fighters and mercenaries from three Arab countries are amassing near the Golan Heights in Syria.
Is a ground offensive next? Joining me now from Jerusalem with an update on the latest is Chris Mitchell, Middle East Bureau Chief for CBN News. Chris, welcome back to Washington Watch.
Great to be with you, Tony.
So, Israel has continued attacks throughout the day with the military saying it has struck about 280 sites in Lebanon by mid-afternoon. Tell us the latest now that it’s evening there in Israel.
Well, Tony, I think in the last three days or so, there’s been actually 2,000 strikes in all throughout Southern Lebanon as well as the Baka Valley. I think maybe the most telling thing that’s happened in the past, is the statement by the IDF Chief of Staff, Hersey Allevi, and he said, I’ll read just some of that to you. He said, we’ll continue.
We won’t stop. We’ll keep striking and hitting them everywhere to achieve this. We are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, and he’s talking to IDF soldiers, your maneuvering boots will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts with underground structure staging points.
So it really seems like they’re preparing everything they can. As you said, reservists have been called up, so it looks like the IDF is preparing for what may be a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.
Well, the actions that we’ve seen over the last week would suggest that they’re preparing for such an effort, having targeted command and control, the taking out most of the leadership of Hezbollah. I would think that they’re not going to fight to a standstill and just come back home, but they want to eliminate this threat on the northern border.
Exactly, and the goal right now of the government, and that was reiterated by Prime Minister Netanyahu just in the last few hours, was that they are not going to stop until the residents of the north, maybe 60,000 or more, can go back to their homes. Now, they have left since October 8th, when Hezbollah had began the firing of the rockets, over 9,000 by last count. So that seems like if that goal, if they want to achieve that goal, it seems like they’re going to have to go in and would have those boots on the ground.
And as you said, they really prepared the ground, the command and control. Most of the leadership of Hezbollah has been defeated. You add to that the pages and the beepers where literally thousands of Hezbollah operators have been disabled, some blinded, some without fingers, some have died in that attack.
And then the lack of communication between many of the Hezbollah because of their beepers. And then if you add in the last several days, they’ve eliminated tens of thousands of the rockets that Hezbollah has been stockpiling for the last 20 years. And you know that the last 20 years Israel has been targeting and preparing those targets for Hezbollah.
And it seems like they have incredible intelligence of where these missiles and rockets are.
Last night’s attempted counterattack by Hezbollah targeting Tel Aviv, the Tel Aviv suburbs, how is that interpreted? I mean, that’s the first time we’ve seen something that deep into Israel. Was that, you know, throwing deep, trying to do something?
Is it showing that they’re going to launch even greater attacks? Well, how is that being interpreted?
I think I would interpret it as throwing deep, you know, going down as far as Tel Aviv was maybe a week or two ago, a red line. And that would have been provoked the war. But I think the way that Hezbollah has been degraded so dramatically in the past two weeks, I think it was just throwing something long.
They could at least give a shot at the maasai headquarters in Tel Aviv. But I don’t think Israel saw it as a red line. I think they saw it really as just sort of more of a desperation.
They still are able to fire, you know, maybe a couple of hundred rockets per day. But most of them have been intercepted by the Iron Dome.
Now, the United Nations General Assembly is meeting in New York this week. The Prime Minister, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to travel to New York on Thursday, tomorrow, to be there. What do you anticipate his message being to the world?
I think his message is going to be, Israel has a right to defend itself. And he’s going to lay out the case. Hezbollah started this war on October 8th in support of Hamas and the Gaza Strip.
They fired nearly 9,000 rockets, 60,000 of their, and more of their citizens are no longer at home, no longer living their daily lives, no longer in their businesses. What other country would endure that without going on the offensive to try to eliminate that threat? So I think that’s going to be part of his advice, not advice, but his agenda, setting forth what Israel needs to do, just like any other nation would do.
All right, Chris Mitchell, that balcony you’re standing on looks very familiar. I think I’ve been there before.
You have indeed.
All right.
Thanks so much for staying up and joining us tonight. Always great to get a report from you. And we’ll continue to pray for all of our friends in Israel and throughout the Middle East.
Thanks, Tony.
And folks, we need to do that. We need to pray for the peace of Israel, the peace of Jerusalem, but for the whole region. Everyone benefits when there’s peace, and we need to be praying for that.
All right.
When we come back, United Nations yesterday, the Turkish president Erdogan called Israel’s response to the October 7th attack a genocide. Well, actually comparing the prime minister, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler. The hypocrisy is staggering.
And we’re going to talk about it after the break. Don’t go away. More Washington Watch.
straight ahead.
Join us October 3rd through the 6th, as we gather with spiritually active, governance-engaged conservatives from across America at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, DC. We’ll pray for our nation, engage in government and culture, and stand for biblical truth alongside Christian leaders, worldview experts, and government officials. We’ll discuss important issues like the sanctity of life, religious freedom, protecting students, strengthening families, praying for our nation, and how you can impact America’s future from a biblical worldview.
Our nation stands at a critical juncture, and we must ensure that the issues impacting faith, family, and freedom are understood and advanced. Register now at prayvotestand.org. That’s prayvotestand.org.
Jesus said in John 15, These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. In 2024, in these divided and uncertain times, how can this be possible? By abiding in him through his word.
At Family Research Council, we want to help you do that, which is the reason for the stand on the Word Bible reading plan. In just 10 to 15 minutes each day, you will have read the entire Bible in just two years. But more importantly, you will be abiding in him daily.
Find our Bible reading plan at frc.org/bible. And join Tony Perkins each weekday for a 10-minute devotional, inspired by the daily reading and designed to encourage you on this journey through the Bible. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
And remember, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
Research has found that there are 59 million American adults who are a lot like you. There are millions of people around the country who are born again, deeply committed to practicing their faith, and believe the Bible is the reliable word of God. But that’s not all.
They’re also engaged in our government. They’re voters. They’re more likely to be involved in their community, and they’re making a difference in elections.
The problem is that a lot of them feel alone, too. We want to change that. FRC wants to connect these 59 million Americans to speak the truth together, no matter the cost.
If you want to learn more about this group and what it means to be a spiritually active, governance-engaged conservative, or if you want to find out if you are one of these sage-cons yourself, join us. Go to frc.org/s-a-g-e-c-o-n, sage-con, to learn more. That’s s-a-g-e-c-o-n, sage-con, to learn more.
Welcome back to Washington Watch. Let me encourage you once again to join us, October the 3rd through the 6th, for the Pray Vote Stand Summit. If prayers were ever needed for our nation, it is now, and we’re gonna be crying out to God to rend the heavens and come down.
The election, we’re gonna be geared up for that, talking about the issues, and we’re encouraging everyone to vote, to be registered and to vote. But an election is not gonna solve America’s problem. We need God.
We need God to move in our nation again. So join us October 3rd through the 6th. You can text URGENT to 67742.
That’s URGENT to 67742 to find out how you could be a part of this event. Our word for today comes from 1 Kings chapter 6. Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon saying, concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in my statutes, execute my judgments, keep all my commandments and walk in them, then I will perform my word with you, which I spoke to your father David, and I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel.
The future of Israel didn’t depend on the temple Solomon built. As the prophet Jeremiah warned later, he said, do not trust in these lying words saying the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. Israel trusted in the temple as a religious form, but ignored God’s commandments.
It is not about the structure or religious routine. It is about our relationship with God. Today, many still rely on outward religion thinking it is enough.
But God’s call remains the same. He desires faithful obedience over empty rituals. Are you trusting in religious forms or living in relationship to Him?
To find out more about our journey through the Bible, text Bible to 67742.
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel’s war against the terrorist organization a genocide and compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
Seventy years ago, just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity.
This, quite frankly, is incredible. Although it fits a pattern from the Islamist leader of Turkey, who has long supported Hamas and even expressed sympathy for the October 7th terrorist attacks, but Erdogan’s position is ripe with both wise and hypocrisy. Not only does his government have a long history of relying on trade with the so-called genocidal state of Israel, but Erdogan himself has consistently denied actual genocides carried out by his own nation of Turkey.
Joining me now to discuss this is Dr. AJ. Nolte, chair of the Government Graduate Program and director of the International Development Program at Regent University. He’s also the director of the Institute for Israel Studies at Regent University.
Dr. Nolte, welcome back to Washington Watch.
Tony, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here again, and great to be on this, talking about this topic after the launch of our Israel Institute at Regent last week.
Am I accurate in saying there’s some hypocrisy on behalf of Erdogan?
I would say every word in that sentence is accurate, except perhaps the word some, it’s incredibly hypocritical for Erdogan to be saying this. Of course, you mentioned in your opening the Armenian genocide, Turkey has still not recognized. The attempt to ethnically cleanse really all of the Christian minorities from Turkey that’s been ongoing since late stages of the Ottoman Empire up through today, that is still ongoing with the Turkish government.
We also talked a little bit as we were prepping for this about what’s happening in Northeastern Syria where there was a government, or a group of an alliance of militias the US was supporting, that actually created a certain amount of stability and religious freedom. Erdogan, of course, is invading that area, and again, trying to drive out the Christians. There’s been this very consistent pattern of cleansing those who are religiously and ethnically different.
Not to mention, of course, the failure to recognize the existence of the Kurds as a separate people. So, you know, I would pose the question, are you better off as an Arab citizen of Israel or a Kurdish citizen of Turkey? And there’s no contest.
You’re better off as an Arab Israeli. So this is rank hypocrisy on Erdogan’s part.
I mean, you know, I don’t want to mix domestic with foreign policy, but we see the same thing on the left here, projecting what they’re doing on to others. Is there something behind this? Does Erdogan have a bigger agenda that he’s working on?
Absolutely. So there’s both a geopolitical agenda and then also Erdogan’s own sense of political legitimacy. So geopolitically, Erdogan sees Turkey as a rising power in the region, and he wants to assert himself.
And he wants to assert himself as not a client of Iran, nor as part of what I would call the Axis of Stability, or the Alliance for Stability, which would be the United States, the Gulf countries, and Israel and their allies. But he sees Turkey as a third force, and so he’s trying to position himself as a Sunni alternative to the Iranian Islamists. And that’s been a consistent approach of his.
And then domestically, Erdogan associates himself with the Ottoman legacy, the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, that existed before secularism came into Turkey. And he associates the failure of the Ottoman Empire as sort of a conspiracy and interest that worked to bring it down. And he sees Zionism and the Jews as part of that.
Matter of fact, one of the most popular Turkish television shows for a long time was a show called Payitaht Abd al-Hamid. And this is a show about Abd al-Hamid II of Turkey. And the main villain in the piece is Theodor Herzl.
The idea was that Herzl was sort of working with the resistance movements against Abd al-Hamid II to undermine Islam and undermine the Ottoman Empire. And of course Erdogan sees himself as Abd al-Hamid II. So it’s both a form of domestic legitimacy and also a form of geopolitical strategy where he’s trying to position himself as another defender of the Palestinian cause, another alternative to Iran, but also as a sort of restoration of the Ottoman legacy.
And of course in his mind that involves also combating, you know, quote-unquote, the scourge of Zionism.
Well, we see in his activities outside the boundaries of Turkey, the funding, mosque, and different activities, that would suggest that maybe he’s even trying to set up eventually the geographical boundaries of the old Ottoman Empire. Is that a stretch?
No, not at all, not at all. I think whether he’s envisioning direct Turkish rule over their territories or simply that Turkey will be the hegemon and sort of, you know, Ottoman by proxy, that is absolutely his goal. One of his former foreign ministers, a man by the name of Ahmet Davutoglu, actually talks about this explicitly and about how Turkey needs to be a geopolitical force in the Middle East.
Part of this is also a broader tilt. If you remember back when Erdogan was first elected, there were a lot of people that were very optimistic about him. They were hoping that he could be sort of the Muslim equivalent of a Christian Democrat.
He was very much tilting toward Europe, and that was the idea was that he was going to push for EU accession. I would say that has dramatically changed, and now he’s looking at Turkey as more of a Middle Eastern power. As a Middle Eastern power, that means both disrupting the sort of pro-Western US-led alliance and also countering Iran, although that’s more indirect and more long lines of we’re a Sunni power, they’re a Shia power.
So Dr. Nolte, how does that play out in the future as Turkey is a part of NATO? It looks like their objectives will be in conflict with NATO objectives.
Well, that is what we used to call before mass inflation, the $64,000 question. On the one, is it better off having Turkey inside the NATO tent, or are they more disruptive inside the tent than out? I don’t envy our next president having to think about that, but what I will say is this.
There are some areas on which it is strategically, Turkey views it as strategically in their interest to cooperate with NATO. They don’t necessarily want a more assertive Russian presence, although they will strategically compete with Russia in ways that the two of them competing over resources, they believe, drives out the West. That’s kind of what they’re doing in Syria.
And so Erdogan himself is playing a game with NATO where he wants to stay just enough on the positive side of the ledger that he won’t get kicked out and that he can use them as a shield against Russia, but also have the freedom to, as we would say, make mischief in the Middle East. And I think in the long run, that’s a very, very complex questioner for the Alliance. As determined, depends as much on what we think of as sort of the purpose of the NATO Alliance as it does on the relationship with Turkey.
Well, let’s look at it through the lens of the relationship with Israel and where the United States is obviously with Israel and most of the NATO countries. And here you have Erdogan bashing Israel. In fact, of course, he’s not alone.
I mean, Israel is like a pinata at the UN Assembly. Everybody is taking their swing at them. But if there’s some evidence to suggest, and I don’t know about Hamas, but I know other Islamic militants around the world are receiving equipment and material from Turkey.
At some point, this becomes a direct conflict.
Yes, absolutely. And it’s a question of how long you can let Turkey play both sides against the middle. I will say Turkey’s relationship with Israel is very complicated.
They had a reasonably warm relationship in the past, partially because they were both US allies and partially because both of them saw some of the more Arab nationals’ movements as threatening. That being said, the Turkish population, from what I understand and some of the research I’ve done, is very, very strongly anti-Semitic in a lot of dimensions. And so Erdogan is probably more reflective of the Turkish population’s views about Israel than some of the previous governments that had a more positive relationship with Israel.
And so I think the Israelis are also trying to figure out how far this is going to go, because on the one hand, there have been a lot of trade ties, there have been a lot of historic ties between Turkey and Israel, and there’s a hope to try to maintain that. But on the other hand, you have to look at what’s happening right in front of you, and this is certainly not a positive trajectory that Turkey is on from Israel’s perspective. So again, very, very complicated situation, and not trending in a positive direction if Erdogan and those who follow his policies are going to be in charge of Turkey.
What is driving the anti-Semitism? Is this a religious issue for them with the growing influence of Islam in Turkey?
That might be part of it. certainly, there has been a much, despite the attempts of the aggressively secular governments in Turkey to suppress it, they never really got a handle on Islam. They were never really able to sort of tame it and Turkify it, which is what they tried to do.
Religious freedom actually works much better than that type of oppression. And sometimes when you oppress a religion like that, it can become actually more extreme. I know that you and I have talked about that before.
That’s part of it. Also, Turkey actually has a real live deep state and has for a long time. And so because of that, there is a lot of conspiracy theory mentality that goes around.
And as you know from looking at history, conspiracy theories inevitably get the Jews roped in somehow. So I would say it’s fertile ground if you combine those two things. And it’s been growing, unfortunately, for a while.
So Dr. Nolte, I want to step back now beyond Turkey. To where we were four years ago, where we saw the historic Abraham Accords being launched in Israel, relationships being normalized with Arab countries, that was moving forward until the end of the Trump administration. Now that seems to be somewhat in and seem to be tattered somewhat.
Could that, if that’s resurrected, so to speak, bring back stability there in the Middle East, in your opinion?
Absolutely. I think advancing the Abraham Accords, there’s so much that those countries have in common. I called them the Alliance for Stability for a reason.
Geopolitically, there is a lot that they have in common. Also, it’s worth noting, there’s no love lost between the Gulf countries and the Turks. You know, the Turks during the Arab Spring were funding a lot of the Muslim Brotherhood type movements, and that antagonized many of the Gulf countries as a matter of fact, some of the Gulf countries are very clear-eyed about the neo-Ottoman ambitions of Erdogan.
And so even as Turkey is sort of moving in this direction, that’s yet another reason for these countries to draw closer to Israel because they have common interests.
certainly Iran drives them all together because that is a big threat to stability in the region. Compare, we just got a couple minutes left, the strength of Erdogan’s military. And I know he’s verbose, he is boisterous.
But does he really have something to back that up?
I would say the Turkish military, because of the NATO ties, has a better position than a lot of other militaries in the region. Probably not as good as the IDF. They might have more diverse capacities just because Israel’s military is so focused on its own defense, and Turkey is a little bit more focused beyond that.
That being said, one of the things that has happened during the Erdogan regime is a lot of purges of that professional military officer corps, as he’s wanting to put his own loyalists in. And so, on paper, it looks very good. In practice, it’s a little bit harder to tell.
So what should we be keeping our eye on?
Keep an eye on what’s happening in Turkey, keep an eye on Erdogan’s own position within Turkey. Keep an eye on what the Turks are doing abroad and what alliances they make in the region. Keep an eye on, particularly, if we start to see Iran weakened, does Turkey aggressively try to move into the gap and take some of those entities that have been proxies of Iran in the past and bring them into the Turkish orbit?
I would say that’s pretty likely that if, in fact, Iran’s position starts to weaken, Turkey will try to move into the gap there. And then, of course, that question of how the US should respond, do we want to keep Turkey inside the tent, or are they so hostile now that actually they’re moving outside of a country that we can really ally with?
That’s very interesting. Dr. AJ. Nolte, always great to talk with you.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
You bet. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. A lot to pray about as we see this anti-Semitism spread, but also the fact that none of the things are clear cut. They’re so intertwined and one move elicits another move.
Every reaction gets a reaction. All right, folks, let’s pray. Until next time, first, let me invite you once again to come to Pray Vote Stand Summit, October 3rd through the 6th.
I mean, every day, you hear why we need to be praying. All right, and I’m going to leave it on that note. As the Apostle Paul said, we’ve done everything we can do when we prayed, when we prepared and when we’ve taken our stand.
By all means, we’ve got to keep standing.
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