Wednesday, February 4, 2026
The Briefing with Albert Mohler
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
4.8 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Part I (00:14 – 17:44)
President Trump Said the Silent Thing Out Loud: The Strange World of International Law
- Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality’ by The New York Times (David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs)
Do You Remember When the Obama Administration Walked Back on the Monroe Doctrine? Even Liberal Administrations are Fuzzy on International Law
- The US Renounces the Monroe Doctrine?. by The Diplomat (Zachary Keck)
Every Nation Will Give An Account Before the Lord: The Bible Makes Clear That Both Individuals and Nations Will Face God’s Judgement
Part IV (21:33 – 23:26)
We are Bound by God’s Law, Not By Our Own Morality: It’s Our Task to Remember That Truth
Part V (23:26 – 26:23)
The Psychologizing of ‘Mattering’ – You Won’t Believe It Until You See It in Writing
- The Retirement Crisis No One Warns You About: Mattering by The Wall Street Journal (Jennifer Breheny Wallace)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Wednesday, February 4, 2026. I'm Albert Moller, and this is The Briefing, |
| 0:10.0 | a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Just a few days ago, there were |
| 0:16.0 | a lot of headlines about an interview that President Donald Trump gave with the New York Times. |
| 0:21.7 | The New York Times itself ran a headline that stated, quote, |
| 0:24.8 | Trump asserts his global power has one limit himself. |
| 0:29.4 | Now, the president actually said out loud something that comes down basically to that. |
| 0:34.5 | So, as the Times tells us, quote, ask in a wide-ranging interview with the New York |
| 0:39.4 | Times, if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said, yeah, there's one thing, |
| 0:45.1 | my own morality, my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me. So let me repeat it. The president |
| 0:51.5 | said, yeah, there's one thing, my own morality, my own mind, |
| 0:57.5 | it's the only thing that can stop me. I don't need international law, he added, I'm not looking |
| 1:02.2 | to hurt people. The Times then said, when pressed further about whether his administration |
| 1:07.6 | needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, I do, but he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States. |
| 1:17.1 | He went on to say, quote, it depends what your definition of international law is, end quote. |
| 1:23.6 | Okay. So that was enough to throw all kinds of people all over the globe into an absolute frenzy of response and apoplexy. They were having fits of response to this. And honestly, this is strange language coming from any sitting president of the United States. It's very, very unusual for a head of state of any |
| 1:46.3 | modern nation, certainly a NATO nation, member state, certainly the president of the United States, |
| 1:52.6 | very unusual to have a president talk with this kind of bold language. And I think as in so many |
| 1:59.3 | cases, well, I waited a few days simply because I wanted to see what the response to this was, because that would be a big part of our worldview consideration. |
| 2:07.8 | So let's just say that the response to this has been, on the one hand, a bit predictable. |
| 2:15.2 | On the other hand, almost not exist not existent okay so what are we talking |
| 2:19.4 | about here number one the president was asked about what kind of external constraints would |
| 2:25.4 | apply to his executive power and in particular his powers commander in chief and the president's |
... |
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