- Well, welcome to The 700 Club.

If you're watching theNational Championship,

I'm sure you're happy thatthe victor was Clemson.

- Yeah.- Tiny Clemson

beat the giant, and of course,

we're always in favor of

David versus Goliath.

And you know, Alabama went down in flames.

- Yeah, I didn't watch the game,

but I heard it was really--- Oh, you missed it,

well I...- I know.

- The first half, Clemson was just...

That quarterback set high school records.

There's never beenanybody that's had as many

hundreds of thousands,or hundreds of yards

of offense as he has.

They say he's a true freshman.

The thing about Clemson,their assistant staff

has been on scene for years,

whereas with Alabama,you know, Saban is so...

He gets raided all thetime, because people

want to hire his assistants.

- Sure.

- So the guys in charge arenot quite as experienced,

but it was an amazing display of defense

on the part of Clemson and offense.

It was remarkable.

You didn't see any of it?- I should have watched.

- Yeah, I thought you were a football fan.

- Well, I'm a Green Bay fan, I don't

just watch college football.- Green Bay, these are

colleges, for heaven's sake.

(laughing)

All right, well, how'sGreen Bay doing then?

- Not well.

(laughs)

- Right, well, the Bears,they got that poor kicker,

they went to boing, boing, but he'll be

known for the boing boing.- Yeah.

- Anyhow, that's football.

That's what's reallyimportant in the world,

and yet, at the same time, our government

is going into many more days of shutdown,

and the standoff as to whether or not

we're going to defend our southern border.

The President's gonna give a speech

from the Oval Office tonight,

and then he's going togo down to the border

and he's gonna show some pictures.

He's going straight to the American people

to say look, here is an emergency.

Now, from a legal standpoint,

as Commander-in-Chief,he has an absolute right

to declare a national emergency,

and this is not something that'ssubject to judicial review.

People talk about well,it'll be a court challenge.

Court, any court that would try to

limit the power of thePresident in something like this

would be completely out of line.

It would be totally outof line for any judiciary

to get involved.

It's supposed to bedealt with with Congress,

and of course, Congresswould come out and say

well, we don't agree with it,

but there's an item in the budget

for military construction,

barracks for troops,

Army bases, but he cansay I'm really gonna

build some construction--

- And reallocate that a little bit.

- Reallocate, and he has the privilege

of doing that, but theCongress would try to stop him.

But they're certainly notgonna give him any money

to fulfill those desires.

So anyhow, the governmentshutdown continues

and Terry's got more.

- Yeah, well all of thiscomes as the shutdown

enters its 18th day,and thousands of workers

aren't gonna be gettingtheir paychecks on Friday.

Abigail Robertson brings usthe latest from Washington.

- Millions will watchtonight as President Trump

lays out his latest planfor border security,

and the money needed to pay for it.

That audience will likelyinclude many of the

federal employees acrossthe country whose bills

are stacking up as they waitfor their next paycheck.

Like it or not, Democratssay the President's

5 1/2 billion dollar demand

has made pawns of federal workers.

- We oughta have thatargument on the substance,

and not be held hostage,

800,000 federal employees.

- [Abigail] The actingWhite House Chief of Staff

says the President's requestis only one side of the coin.

- Keep in mind, it takestwo to tango in this town.

I could just as easily saythat it's the Democrats'

refusal to give the necessarymoney for border security

that is the cause of the shutdown.

- [Abigail] If it's awall Democrats don't want,

President Trump is readyto call it something else.

- If I have a steel wall, oryou could call it a steel fence

but it'll be more powerfulthan any of the concrete walls

that we're talking about.

It's possible that it will look better.

- [Abigail] If that doesn't work,

the President could try another option.

- [Abigail] Doing sowould allow the President

to tap into $10 billion of unused funds

set aside for the Army Corps of Engineers.

- He could technically go down that route.

He would have to actuallyexplain the statute

that he's using the emergency for.

- [Abigail] Although theNational Emergencies Act

has been on the book formore than four decades,

CBN News Chief PoliticalAnalyst, David Brody,

says the President would stillneed congressional buy-in.

- Here's a bit of the rub.

Congress, if they didn'twant him to invoke

this national emergency,would be able to overturn it,

basically say no, Mr.President, you can't do it

if you can pass a joint resolution,

both the House and the Senate.

That means the language has to be the same

in the Democrat House andthe Republican Senate,

and good luck with that.

- [Abigail] On Monday'sFaith Nation program,

Indiana Republican senator, Mike Braun,

said the President wouldlikely find support

from that side of the aisle.

- If he declared a national emergency

and thought it needed tobe done in that fashion,

most of us would be for it because

it looks like the other side is

doing everything it can to do nothing.

- [Abigail] There's still the human side

to all of this back and forth.

- Our mortgage, our gas, electric,

trash, water bill.

- [Abigail] Three weeks in,workers like Marilyn Carrothers

are resorting to payingbills with credit cards.

- Creditors may make anextension, but if you

go past that extension,

it's gonna affect your credit.

- [Abigail] Carrothers is left wondering

who will pay the interest fees

if she doesn't get a paycheck.

- We want to go back to work.

We need to go back to workbecause we have bills to pay.

- [Abigail] PresidentTrump says he can relate

to the people missing paychecks,

but he believes theywill make adjustments.

- [Abigail] In Congress, some 40 lawmakers

requested their salaries bewithheld during the shutdown.

- I hope that we can continue to fight for

additional border security dollars.

That's what we need todo, but I don't think

shutting down the government'sthe right way to do it.

- Vulnerable Republicansenators like Cory Gardner

are starting to splitfrom party leadership,

calling for the government to reopen,

with or without fundingfor the border wall.

The biggest question remains.

Will either side give or mightthe President act on his own,

which could lead to biggerfights down the road.

While most federal employeeswill receive back pay

once the government reopens,

some lower paid contract employees,

such as janitors, food, andsecurity service workers,

may never see any compensationfrom their lost paychecks.

Reporting from Capitol Hill,

Abigail Robertson, CBN News.

- Thanks, Abigail, it's a sad situation.

You know, a house dividedagainst itself cannot stand.

A kingdom divided againstitself can't stand.

This is a little petty nonsense,

a little bit of money,but now the President

has finally gotten ita little bit broader.

He says okay, I need money for judges.

Those judges have got to try these cases.

We don't have enough of them.

Okay, I need more guards

at the border, and that's okay.

I've gotta have somehousing for these detainees

as they come across, and

I'm gonna try to process all this.

Now that, he's got a specific budget

for this, that, and theother, and that'll work.

And you take that away fromall this wall thing and you say

look, we've got to do somesecurity on our border.

We cannot have drug addicts,

we cannot have gangmembers, we cannot have

terrorists from the MiddleEast coming across our border.

That's fine, but he's asking for,

if you break it down into these things,

then how in the world isCongress going to say no?

And I think the Presidentis gonna lay that case out,

but if you're like me,I think it's so small

in relation to the multi-trillion dollar

budget we've got in this country,

and a few billion dollars,there's so many more

important things wecould spend the money on.

Well, you can see the President's address

at 9:00 p.m. tonight onthe CBN News Channel.

You can find out where you can see

the news channel in your city.

Go to cbnnews.com, and in other news,

Turkey's President, Erdogan,

snubbed US National SecurityAdvisor, John Bolton today.

John Jessup has more on that.

- That's right, Pat,Bolton seeking assurances

Turkey won't attack the Kurds

after the US pull out from Syria,

had planned to meet withErdogan today in Ankara.

But the Turkish Presidenttold American officials

he had other commitments.

As CBN Middle East BureauChief, Chris Mitchell, reports,

Bolton's mission is something Erdogan

just doesn't want to commit to.

- [Chris] Turkey's President,Recep Tayyip Erdogan,

publicly blasted USNational Security Advisor,

John Bolton, in front of the Parliament.

- [Translator] It's notpossible for us to accept,

to swallow the message JohnBolton gave from Israel.

- Bolton is visiting theregion to assure allies

that the US is not abandoning them.

While visiting Jerusalem,he said defending Israel

and other allies who foughtagainst ISIS was guaranteed.

He wanted assurances from Turkey

that they would not harm the Kurds.

- [Translator] John Bolton hasmade a very serious mistake.

Whoever thinks like this is also mistaken.

We can't make anyconcessions in this regard,

and those involved in a terror corridor

will receive the necessary punishment.

- [Chris] On CBN's Faith Nation program,

Chief InternationalCorrespondent Gary Lane

said everyone is vying for power.

- Everyone is jockeying forposition in Syria at this time

because the war is winding down.

ISIS has pretty much been defeated.

So have other militant groups.

- [Chris] Initially, President Trump said

he would pull 2000 US troopsout of Syria within 30 days.

But after strong objection from

Middle East allies andothers, he's backed down.

"We will be leaving at a proper pace,

while at the same timecontinuing to fight ISIS,

and doing all else thatis prudent and necessary."

But Lane said there's a lot of concern

over leaving Turkey in charge.

- The Kurds are wondering,are you a reliable ally,

United States, if youwithdraw these troops

and the training that we've received,

that buffer that helped,that we've received over time

in the last couple of years?

Where are we going to be, and where are

the Christians going to be?

- [Chris] But senior Kurdishofficial, Badran Jia Kurd,

said the Kurds haven'theard directly from the US,

only through the media.

- [Translator] We'rewaiting for clarification

from the US administrationregarding these statements.

This shows that the US hasa plan in this direction,

but it's not clear to us,but now there's a reality

that Bolton acknowledged thatTurkey is killing the Kurds,

and are annihilating them,and Bolton wants guarantees.

- [Chris] Turkey has foughtthe Kurds for decades.

Erdogan said it's a lie that Turkey would

target the Kurds in Syria, but said

the military preparations to attack

what he calls Kurdish terrorgroups are nearly complete.

It's not clear how Erdogan's declaration

will affect the pullout,but for now it appears

that US troops aren't going anywhere.

Chris Mitchell, CBN News, Jerusalem.

- Thanks, Chris.

Pat, back to you.

- Ladies and gentlemen, Iwant to tell you something

that'd be so simple forthe President can do.

A few years ago, there was a Lord Balfour

who made a declaration calledthe Balfour Declaration,

said it is his Majesty'sgovernment's opinion

that there should be a homelandfor the Jews in Palestine.

Now, there are 36 million Kurds.

36 million.

They occupy northern Iraq,

they occupy northern Syria,

and of course, there's someof them in southern Turkey.

Now, the ones that are innorthern Iraq and in Syria

already have formed a government.

It is called Kurdistan.

Now, all Trump has got to do is say

we recognize

the government of Kurdistan

as the legitimate home

of the 36 million Kurdish people.

It's the only people group in the world

of that size that doesn'thave its own country.

Now it would be so easy to do.

Then he can say I'm directingmy Secretary of Defense

to send the appropriateweapons to those Kurds

to defend themselves.

These Peshmerga have worked beside us

in fighting all the wayup and down the line

from Saddam Hussein on.

Now, there's one group called the PKK,

that are Marxist terrorists.

We don't need to help them,and the Turks don't like them,

we don't like them, sothat's the end of them.

But the main Turkish group, if there was a

Trump declaration that we,

as the United States, want to declare

a homeland for the Kurd,

now he wouldn't have tohave Senate approval,

he wouldn't have to fight it with anybody,

it was something, a strokeof the pen, he could do it,

and suddenly you've got 36million people with a homeland.

And then he has a buffer against ISIS.

He has a buffer against the

encroachment of the Russians.

He's got a buffer against the growth of

that terrible,

well, the people in Damascus,

who've been laying waste to Syria,

and he has a buffer against the Iranians

coming in to take over Iraq.

I mean, it's so simple.

But he's got to do it, it would be

just a stroke of the pen, he could do it.

What I'm talking about,he doesn't have to get

congressional approval, he doesn't have to

sign a treaty, don't make it a treaty.

Just make it a declaration.

Suddenly there is a Trump Declaration,

like the Balfour Declaration,

and he would then be

acclaimed as a herothrough the whole world.

Now, ladies and gentlemen,that's the answer.

But otherwise, those Kurdsare gonna be decimated.

Once, if we walk out of there,

the Turks will just move in and

massacre these wonderful people

who want to be friendly,democratic with the United States.

I mean, they want arepresentative form of government.

Their capital of Erbil

is a model of order and democracy.

It's a wonderful people.

We just pray, you all pray about that one.

Now, John, we've got some more things

about the businesses ofAmerica, what you got?

- That's right, in financial news,

Amazon has overtaken Microsoft

to become the world's mostvaluable publicly traded company.

On Monday, Amazon shares went up 3%,

giving the online retailer a market value

of $797 billion.

Microsoft couldn't keep up, increasing

only by one percentage point,

leaving it in secondplace at $784 billion.

Well, a teen traffickingvictim serving a life sentence

for murder is now lookingforward to a life of freedom.

On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam

granted clemency to30-year-old Cyntoia Brown.

Now she's creditingthe Lord for giving her

"his saving grace and a second chance."

Brown's lawyers say she wasforced into the sex trade

when she was only 16.

That's when this man, JohnnyAllen, bought her for sex.

She said she feared forher life, then shot him.

She was sentenced to atleast 51 years in prison.

By many accounts, Brownmade changes in prison,

deciding to become a devoted Christian,

and is now close to finishingher Bachelor's degree

from Lipscomb, a Christian university.

At a hearing in May, she explained.

- It was so necessary to change.

It wasn't so much of a choice.

But I had to.

- Cyntoia's transformation isnothing short of a miracle.

To watch her go from whereshe was to where she is

is the most amazing thing.

- Anti-trafficking groups like Exodus Cry,

the National Center onSexual Exploitation,

and Shared Hope, allapplauded the Governor's move,

and Southern Baptist leader, Russell Moore

called Brown's clemencyan important development.

Brown is expected to bereleased from prison in August,

after serving 15 years behind bars.

Well, Clemson shocked numberone Alabama last night,

rolling over the Crimson Tide

by a score of 44 to 16, to win the

NCAA college footballNational Championship.

Alabama was favored towin, but Clemson's defense

stopped the high scoring Tide,

and even scored the game's first touchdown

with a interception return.

Number two Clemson had acommanding 31-16 lead by the half,

and the Tide was never able to come back.

Clemson is the first team to win the

college football playoffswith a 15-0 record.

And a hearty congratulationsto both teams.

Pat, back to you.

- And once again wecongratulate Dabo Swinney.

You know, he's got a funny name.

When he was a boy, thepeople he was growing up with

in South Carolina saidthey called him Da Boy.

Da Boy.- Yes.

- And that's where he got the name Dabo.

- You're gonna remember that.

- Yeah, Da Boy, so anyhow,he's a very humble man,

nice guy, everybody likes him,

and congratulations to Clemson.

- [Terry] Absolutely.