As a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
Coming up this morning on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
And then we'll look at the future of the Republican Party with former Pennsylvania Congressman Charlie Dent.
And then the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spikowski discusses the state of election integrity across the country.
Washington Journal starts now.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Monday, October 28th.
It's just over a week until Election Day 2024.
The campaigns are trying to convince undecided voters and to get their supporters motivated and out to the polls.
There have been rallies, campaign events, and interviews by the candidates and their surrogates.
We'll show you portions of those this morning and take your calls on campaign 2024.
Here's how to share your thoughts.
Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
You can send us a text at 202-748-8003.
Be sure to include your first name in your city-state.
You can also use social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
We're glad you're with us.
We'll start with former President Trump.
He was in Madison Square Garden in New York City last night, and he unveiled a new tax break policy for family caregivers.
If Kamala Harris gets four more years, our economy can never recover.
If I win, we will quickly build the greatest economy in the history of the world, which is what we had in our last term.
We will rapidly defeat inflation and we will very simply make America affordable again.
We're going to make it affordable.
I will massively cut taxes for workers and small businesses, and we will have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.
And no tax on social security benefits for our seniors.
And I'm announcing a new policy today that I will support a tax credit for family caregivers who take care of a parent or a loved one.
It's about time that they were recognized, right?
They add so much to our country and are never spoken of ever, ever, ever, but they're going to be spoken of now.
Thank you all very much.
That was last night.
You can watch the full rally as well as all of our other campaign events on our website at c-span.org.
We're taking your calls this morning, getting your thoughts on campaign 2024.
And we will go straight to Vice President Kamala Harris.
She was giving remarks at a black church in Philadelphia.
Here in Pennsylvania right now, each of us has an opportunity to make a difference.
Because in this moment, we do face a real question.
What kind of country do we want to live in?
That's before us right now.
What kind of country do we want for our children and our grandchildren?
A country of chaos, fate, fear, and hate, or a country of freedom, justice, and compassion.
And the great thing about living in a democracy is we the people have the choice to answer that question.
So let us answer not just with our words, but with our works.
Yes, with our prayers, but also with our pressing.
Yes, with our fate, and also our faith, but also our feet as we walk to the polls.
And yes, in these nine days, these next nine days will test us.
They will demand everything we've got.
But when I think about the days ahead and the God we serve, I am confident that his power will work through us.
Because, church, I know we were born for a time such as this.
And I have faith he is going to carry us forward and the road ahead won't be easy.
It will require perseverance and hard work.
But in times of uncertainty, scripture reminds us weeping may endure for a night.
But joy cometh in the morning.
The path may seem hard, the work may seem heavy, but joy cometh in the morning.
And church morning is on its way.
God bless you.
God bless America.
Let's go to the calls now to Bruce in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Democrat.
Hi, Bruce.
Hi, how are you?
Good.
Yes, I'm just appalled by the way Trump is running this campaign.
And it's just absolutely, absolutely appalling.
As far as I'm concerned, if he loses, he can just get a job at 7-Eleven selling skulls and lottery tickets and working for a Tamil Indian as his manager.
He is disgusting.
Thank you.
Here's David in Riverside, California, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mimi, and good morning, America.
We've been told that Donald Trump is the dangerous choice in this election, but Donald Trump's policies are mostly standard Republican ideas.
Kamala Harris is a San Francisco radical who is rated by nonpartisan GovTrack as the most liberal of all 100 U.S. senators, and she's an ardent supporter of the $92 trillion communist fantasy called the Green New Deal.
So the risky choice is Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump.
Yes, Trump has a big mouth, and he has said things he shouldn't say.
But Kamala is a clear and present danger to our country and who we've been throughout our history.
Now we're told vote for the first woman president, but she would also be the first communist president.
What made Ronald Reagan great was his brilliant ideas and his great courage.
As Ronald Reagan once said, it's not about left or right.
It's only about up or down.
And only Donald Trump will bring our country up.
Kamala Harris will make us all poor.
And that's the dominance of the government.
Sorry to cut you off, David, but I just wanted to ask you, since you brought up Ronald Reagan, what distinctions do you see between Ronald Reagan's policies and Trump's policies, if any?
I think the lower taxes.
Obviously, Reagan was one of the great presidents ever, but there are similarities.
They both got shot.
That's certainly a very similarity.
No, I was talking about policies, though.
Yeah, go ahead.
Oh, policy.
Well, the lower taxes and I guess the general belief in America, you know, they are real patriot Americans.
I think that would be a similarity.
But I think Kamala Harris is a genuine danger to America and people don't realize it.
All right.
And here's Stephen in Lexington, Kentucky, Independent.
Good morning, Stephen.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for having me, Mimi.
I've actually gone through all the political motions as a first-time voter back in the past.
I was a Republican.
And then as I aged and went to college, I'm a Democrat.
And then just recently, my wife and I, we officially registered as independents.
We were tired of both sides.
It just seems like we're on a merry-go-round going around and around and around with no real changes.
So that's the reason we did that.
I do want to say that I do see Kamala as the future.
You know, we've done the same dance with the same types of presidents, old white guys, usually.
And look how far they've gotten us.
You know, it's crazy here.
So it's time for something different, guys.
You know, this country deserves better.
This country deserves evolution.
This country deserves more compassion.
You know, a lot of these older people are so engraved with the past.
They don't like to let go of the past.
It's hard.
I get it.
It's hard.
You're used to doing the same things the same way.
You know, it works.
Why change?
But no, that's not the way life works.
Life changes.
You've got to change with it.
I'm going to do a real quick tangent.
I will say that I do feel confident that Kamala will get the popular vote.
However, it's looking like 2016 all over again, and the popular vote doesn't matter.
What matters is the Electoral College.
Okay?
So the Electoral College will decide all of this.
And at this point, with the Supreme Court being stacked on the Republican side, you could kind of see it play out.
You know, it's theatrical, really, how you could just see it play out.
So, yeah, I appreciate you giving me my thoughts.
All right, Stephen.
Give me a moment.
And here is something that's been making the rounds this morning.
The Washington Post says this.
Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico, quote, an island of garbage.
Later, Trump took the stage at Madison Square Garden and called the GOP the party of inclusion.
His campaign issued a statement disavowing the garbage comment.
Well, here's that speaker.
He's a podcast host and making that comment.
Believe it or not, people, I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms.
And by open arms, I mean like this.
It's wild.
And these Latinos, they love making babies too.
Just know that.
They do.
They do.
There's no pulling out.
They don't do that.
They come inside just like they did to our country.
Republicans of the party with a good sense of humor.
Free speech is under attack, people.
I host a show, and each week I get updates what words we're allowed to use and not use anymore.
It's happening right now the past few years.
It's a real thing.
And, you know, used to be able to tell people to Google stuff.
My mom's a boomer in the state of Ohio, and there's no convincing her of anything.
She's eating the cats.
She's eating the dogs.
They're eating the pets up there.
It is absolutely wild times.
It really, really is.
And, you know, there's a lot going on.
Like, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.
Yeah.
I think it's called Puerto Rico.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
We're getting there.
I was at Madison Square Garden last night, and back to the phones to Ryan, a Democrat in New Orleans.
Hi, Ryan.
Yes, how are you doing?
Mimi, I got two things to see.
I want to say God is looking at America and he's really just watching.
And when Donald Trump does get elected, he's going to set a plague down that you've never even seen before.
And I got one more thing to say, Mimi, to these black southerners, these black men, southerners, because a lot of black women is the black, stepping-fetching black men of the south that's voting for Donald Trump.
I want to see your grandfathers.
I'd be really, really upset with you.
Thank you very much.
Let's talk to Ronald next in Kaplan, Louisiana, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I got two things I want to bring up.
The best thing for people to do is go over early, turn off, get off the news channels and watch Halvart and Great American Family because you got Christmas movies and get all this politics out your mind because people are going to be going crazy after this election.
The next thing I want to bring up, I happen to notice all those news channels over the weekend about where Trump had his talking to me?
Yes, yes, we're listening, Ronald.
Go ahead.
Oh, okay.
Where Trump had his rally about that Nazis in 1939?
Well, first of all, it's called Madison Square Garden for a reason.
The old building in 1939 was like a box, all squared out.
This is the new Madison Square Garden.
Okay.
But the best part that they don't understand, those Nazis that were supposed to have been in that building in 1939, those were Democrats.
New York Times?
Ronald, have you already, are you voting?
Are you voting early?
What's your plan for election?
I wrote on Election Day.
Okay.
And here's William in Michigan, Democrat.
Hi, William.
Yes, all I wanted to say is Kristen's been looking for the Antichrist for years, and I think they found him in Donald Trump.
Thank you.
Jenny in Ohio, Republican.
Oh, I guess we don't have Jenny.
Let's go to Dan in New Jersey, Independent.
Clara?
Hi, Dan.
You're on.
Go ahead.
Oh, good.
I'm not a conspiracy kind of person.
I've been very reluctant, but I've never heard of any American president that has had secret conversations over years now, probably starting in the 1980s when he started making his money selling Russians, oligarchs, and stole their money from the Russian people, overpriced real estate.
He's doing that, and he's got that gig going, and he's talking to Putin and getting in with that thing.
And then he's before he's elected president, he's having Putin back him up with all the people that were indicted, Russian military officers indicted, trying to interfere and apparently successfully interfering just enough with our election to get him elected president.
And then, while he's president to have secret meetings that apparently don't, his Secretary of State and Secretaries of Defense and National Security Advisors, nobody knows what he's talking about.
What else could he be talking about?
He's made a deal, a deal probably for his own personal well-being and wealth with Putin.
And what he gets given Putin is the biggest thing that Putin ever wanted in his life, which is Ukraine and to ruin NATO.
Ukraine is the bottle-stopper of the poison of Russia to come west.
And he wants to remove, he's been trying ever since he got president.
He started undercutting the money that our policy, our Congress and our administration, including his own administration, was supposed to be backing NATO, backing Ukraine.
And he undermined that and has continued to.
And now he's finally, he's the only person with the foreign policy opinion that not to support NATO.
And they've given bogus reasons, one at a time, like we can't afford it.
And it's a foreign territorial war, which is.
We got your point, Dan.
And we are taking your calls.
Numbers are on your screen.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Vice President Kamala Harris was on social media yesterday announcing a new policy proposal focused on Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico is home to some of the most talented, innovative, and ambitious people in our nation.
And Puerto Ricans deserve a president who sees and invests in that strength.
As president, I will bring down the cost of housing, invest in small businesses and entrepreneurs, and fight to finally secure equal access to programs that strengthen the health care system and support children, seniors, and working people.
I will create a new Puerto Rico Opportunity Economy Task Force, where the federal government will work with the private sector, with nonprofits, and community leaders to foster economic growth and create thousands of new, good-paying jobs in Puerto Rico, including for our young people.
And I know that Puerto Rico's economic future depends on urgently rebuilding and modernizing the island's energy grid.
That's why I will cut red tape, ensure disaster recovery funds are used quickly and effectively, and work with leaders across the island to ensure all Puerto Ricans have access to reliable, affordable electricity.
And we'll hear from Melvin in Illinois, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
All right.
Good morning.
I would like to say something specific about Conger.
She set a record for VP for breaking the tasks in Congress.
She set a record over 32 times everything that Biden tried to put in.
The Republican Senate voted against them.
And so she set a record for that.
Everybody always talked about some of the things that she wanted to do.
Now, getting back to Donald Trump, the last time Donald Trump had a reading in advance of his income tax or anything, it was found out that he paid over $18,000 to shine on taxes and paid $750 in taxes here in the United States of America.
And that's one thing I don't understand.
The third thing I'm talking about is why he's not taking why aren't the candidates taking the physical and why aren't they showing their tax returns?
They're not doing either one because Trump just started that and they're not doing it anymore.
And the last thing I want to say.
Hold on, Melvin.
Vice President Harris did release her physical and her doctor's reports.
Yeah, I remember that part, but I'm saying, well, what happened with his?
He has not.
He won't.
And this is the third thing I'm talking about.
I was in the army.
I've been in Vietnam.
I was in 113th Airborne.
I hate to say this, and I don't really want to belittle what happened.
When Donald Trump got shot, usually when somebody gets shot at trying to get assassinated, the Secret Service cover him and issues him on out the way.
He sits there and sticks all his hand back up and waves his hand and stuff like they don't stop shooting.
They don't know whether assassin there or not.
When he goes to the hospital, he doesn't even ask them what's wrong with his deal.
The first thing he wants them to do is sign a non-disclosure.
Do anybody know how much he got hit in the ear or anything?
Tell nobody knows nothing about that.
Tell nobody know nothing about that.
But that's just about all I got to say.
All right, Melvin.
And here's Cliff in Henrietta, Oklahoma, Independent.
Good morning.
Cliff, are you there?
In Oklahoma?
George in Ohio, Republican line.
Good morning.
Yeah, me, me.
Oh, there you are.
You're doing a real good job.
I like the way you handle everything.
The thing about the Democrats, just like the previous caller, you know, I look, my mom was from Yugoslavia in World War II.
As a teenager, she was put in a concentration camp.
She knows all about Hitler.
If you look at Kamala Harris, look at her gestures and go look at a tape of Hitler.
It's identical.
They're the fascists.
They like to put it on the Republicans, but the Democrats have a background of doing this all the time on any election.
And these people get brainwashed.
She is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
If you look at her when the campaign started and look at her now, like in the Beyoncé was in Texas with her, and Beyonce was paid $10 million for three minutes of talking, didn't perform, and there was almost a riot at the end of that program, of that rally.
So, you know, she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
She has done nothing.
In Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, Democrats and Republicans and Independents need to read that.
Why do you think Joe Biden hired 87,000 IRS agents?
Because they're not spending the money on the citizens.
They're spending in the money just like with the hurricane effort, this FEMA.
They don't have any money.
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, General Welfare, and the use of the militia.
Read that.
People need to read that.
And here's Anthony in Las Vegas, Democrat.
Anthony.
Hi.
I'm a retired military person.
I've been 21 years in the military.
I joined during some of the most racist times of our country, and I thought we were progressing to a better stage.
But to see this man, Donald Trump, out there denigrating every race of brown people in this country, it's just unacceptable.
I can't understand it.
And I do have a question for Elon Musk.
Will you hire him to run one of your companies as a CEO?
And that's all I have.
Thank you for allowing me to speech.
Kurt in Browns Mills in New Jersey, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I got a twist on it.
You know, I mean, I'm an opinion expert.
And so if we, all us Americans that call in the C-SPAN got together, it'd be like the Jerry Springer show.
And I think that's kind of not a good idea.
So I just wanted to thank C-SPAN.
Mimi, you're probably the best talking head on TV that I can think of because we don't talk that much.
But I changed the channel and I want to watch my speech.
And it's uncut, unedited, without a bunch of opinions.
And I've become so fond of C-SPAN in recent days because of the just letting me watch and listen to whoever I want to listen to without being interrupted by a bunch of opinions.
And thank you, Mimi.
All right, Kurt.
Something that's making the rounds on social media that you should be aware of is a fake video.
Here's NBC News about it.
It says, viral video of ripped up Pennsylvania ballots is fake and Russian-made.
Intelligence agency says, it says that police and prosecutors in Pennsylvania conducted their own investigation and found that the video had been fabricated.
It's on your screen.
Just a reminder, what you're watching is fake.
It shows somebody opening ballots and looking at them and then ripping them up.
This is, it says this in the article, NBC News, Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent viral video that falsely showed a person tearing up ballots in Pennsylvania.
The FBI and two other federal agencies said, FBI and officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the U.S. intelligence community made their assessment based on available information and past activities from other Russian influence actors, including videos and disinformation efforts.
Quote, this Russian activity is part of Moscow's broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.
And JD Vance was asked about that on one of the Sunday talk shows, and here he is responding to that.
What price should Moscow pay for trying to manipulate American voters?
Well, look, I think a lot of countries are going to try to manipulate our voters.
They're going to try to manipulate our elections.
That's what they do.
I think the bigger question is what is in our best interest vis-a-vis Russia, not what price Russia should pay for putting out social media videos.
And I think what's in our best interest vis-a-vis Russia is in particular for them to stop supporting the Iranians as the Iranians engage in acts of aggression.
And I think when it comes to Europe, it's important for the killing to stop in Russia and Ukraine.
I don't think that we should set American foreign policy based on a foreign country spreading videos on social media.
I think we should set American foreign policy based on what's in our best interest as a United States.
You don't consider that election interference and crossing a red line?
I think it's bad.
I think it's bad.
But social media posts and social media videos, Margaret, you want us to go to war because the Russians made a ridiculous video or paid for it?
There are options other than war, as you know, sanctions, other measures.
I mean, this raises a difficult question, Margaret.
Manipulating voters is part of our democracy.
Everything that we've tried, a lot of the sanctions that we've tried, they've gone off like a wet firecracker.
We promised at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war that we would engage in financial nuclear war against the Russians.
Biden administration, Harris administration officials talked about how our sanctions would cripple their economy.
They didn't.
And so we have to be realistic about what America can accomplish, compare it against our national interests, and just be smart about this.
I don't think that we should overreact to anything.
What we should do is encourage our fellow Americans to be careful.
Don't trust everything that you see on social media.
And of course, we should push back where appropriate.
That was CBS's Face the Nation yesterday.
And this is Nick in Delhi Beach, Florida, Republican.
Hi, Nick.
Hi, good morning.
I'd like to make two quick points.
The first is Tony Hinchcliffe, who said about the island of Puerto Rico.
Tony Hinchcliffe is a comedian, and sometimes comedy is inappropriate.
Sometimes it's not done in the best taste, but that is comedy.
And Democrats, I'd like to just remind them that there was a time in this country where you could make jokes.
And he also made a joke about his mother eating cats and dogs.
I don't think his mother is eating cats and dogs.
Tony Hinchcliffe has a lot of money, so I think his mother eats pretty well.
So I think that was kind of another C-SPAN cheap shot.
Second point I would like to make is this narrative about Trump and Republicans being Nazis and being Hitler, Nazism.
There are a lot of big lies throughout American history that are pushed.
One is that Nazism is a right-wing agenda.
That is a lie.
Nazism, communism, fascism, whatever you want to call it, they are all left-wing agendas.
The historians got together 60, 70, 80 years ago and decided we cannot have the two greatest monsters of the 20th century both be left-wingers.
It's just like the lie that the country was built by slaves.
America was not built on the back of slaves.
That is a total lie.
America was not.
All right, Nick Curtis, Tampa Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I watched that part of that Trump rally yesterday.
And when I was watching it, all it was about just seems to be was nothing but bigotry.
And every time he turned around, that seems to be all that Donald Trump is about.
He is one of the biggest bigots that you've ever seen run for elected office.
And people are flocking to him like he's giving them candy every day.
I don't know why people are turned off by him, but they should be.
And it just seems like everybody that went to that rally yesterday, all they did was just went there and listened to him talk about how stupid he is.
Thank you.
Randy in Millington, Michigan, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mimi.
I'd like to start by thanking you and all the other men and women it takes to bring this great program to the nation.
You are doing us a great service.
I think one thing that's being missed, and this is just from personal experience with getting together with the family, and most of my brother-in-laws are all Trump supporters, but their wives aren't.
And their wives aren't talking about it in front of their husbands because I listened to them off to the side away from them wondering how they could convince their husbands that they shouldn't vote for them and that they're voting for Kamala.
So I really do think the polls are missing that.
And I still believe in the American spirit.
And the men and women that voted out the former President, and now who's turned into a clear and present danger of this nation, will come together and vote him, vote calmly, and finally put an end to this victory all that comes out of the mouth of the other candidate running.
I mean, let's face it, he's a 34-time convicted felon, and you want that to represent the country on the world stage.
That's not a good look for America, no matter who was the felon that's running for the office.
So, thank you very much for Randy.
Let's go to the Republican line, West Virginia.
Lloyd, you're next.
Good morning.
Morning.
I'd just like to say I'm a Republican.
I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, but I don't know why he wants it.
I mean, this country's in one hell of a mess from what the Democrats have done.
And all Kamala is interested in is being the first woman president of the United States and making a name for herself.
That's all she's interested in.
And she didn't do anything when she was vice president.
She's not going to do very little now.
And if Donald Trump gets it, I'm not going, I'd be glad.
But if he don't get it, I know it might be good for him because Benny won't get shot at least.
And he'll get out of the picture.
And I'm tired of hearing about Donald Trump being the big, bad boogeyman.
It's going to destroy the world.
And so it's not going to upset me too much if he don't get it.
But all they did is be like before.
They'll just tell a bunch of lies on him.
They'll try to impeach him.
He won't be able to get much done.
And so it's not going to upset me if he don't get it.
So I don't even know why he wants it.
That's about all I got to say.
Brian in Ohio, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Yes.
My name is Brian, and I'm calling in because of the fact that this abortion stuff that we're talking about, men need to stay out of the women's life and let them make their decisions if they're going to have an abortion or not.
And not only that, everyone thinks Donald Trump's so great.
Not only that, we need to think about all the laws and all the criminal acts that Donald Trump has done.
You know, it's not Joe Biden's fault that Donald Trump committed all these crimes.
And not only that, how about the immigrants that Donald Trump threatened to send out of here?
How can you vote for him knowing that there's a great chance that he's going to throw you and your family out of the United States?
The first immigrant that we need to throw out of here is Donald Trump's wife.
Thank you.
David, Stanford, Connecticut, Democrat.
Hi, David.
Hi, good morning.
I appreciate everything that you people do.
And sometimes it's hard to listen, but I listen because I want to hear both sides of the issue.
The question I have, or what baffles me, is during the whole, the people were in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, they spoke about the sanctity of life.
And I would think the sanctity of life also refers to people who are living.
And so these same people go and they applaud when they hear certain leaders talk so demeaningly and negatively and viciously about other people who are not like them.
So I'm baffled by where's the sanctity of life there.
And so it's like, I almost think the golden escalator is the modern version of the golden calf.
And then the other thing is, I think there's a great quote by the German philosopher Goethe, if that's the way I pronounce it, G-O-E-T-H-E.
I always have trouble pronouncing that.
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bill in Fairfax, Virginia, Independent Line.
You're next.
Yeah.
I formed an opinion about Donald Trump that he was the sociopath long before Mary Trump came out with her book.
But one of the, and you can read and check the box.
He has no conscience and everything like that.
But the problem I have is the people who are brainwashed by him.
I mean, it was ridiculous.
People in Congress showed up dressing like him at his trial in New York City.
I haven't seen that since Charles Manson's family, who everybody said was brainwashed.
And I would just like them to have this smell of coffee morning where they realize what's happened to them.
Thank you.
And let's talk to Charles, Tennessee, Democrat.
Good morning, Charles.
Yes, ma'am.
Thank you for taking my call.
And please give me just a moment.
A fellow a while ago said that the country would be in a hell of a mess.
Well, women are already in a hell of a mess.
Women are dying from this year, actually.
I want to say to the young men out here that's pushing Trump, one day you will probably get married, Pat Wobbly get buried.
What if she gets pregnant and you have to lay out there and watch her bleed out and die?
Well, you look at yourself when that happens, look at yourself.
This could be your sister doing this or somebody, some woman you love very much.
Women are, women won't have a change.
They just will not have a change under the Donald Trump administration.
And look at what the doctor said the other night.
Doctors are dropping out of health care for women and stuff.
You know, they're changing professions.
I don't blame them.
But this cannot be good.
You know, young black men or white or whatever, think what you very well may be doing to your sister.
And if you love the woman you find you love and get married, if this happens, she could very well die.
And please, please, young men, stop and thank what you're doing.
And older men, too, this could be your daughters that you're doing this to.
And the women's issue is just terrible right now.
This is terrible.
The man said that, you know, that we were in a hell of a mess.
Women are in a hell of a mess right now.
But I thank you, people.
This be the last talk I'll have before the election.
And good luck to Ms. Harris on her campaign.
And thank you, people, again for letting everybody express their opinion.
Thank you.
And Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance was on CNN's State of the Union yesterday, and he was asked about the warnings of John Kelly about Mr. Trump being a fascist.
I wanted to say two things in response.
So first of all, a lot of what John Kelly, pretty much all of what John Kelly accuses Donald Trump of saying, there were other people in the room, Mike Pence's former chief of staff, for example, who've explicitly said Donald Trump never said those things, right?
So one, once again.com is not going to support Trump because Mike Pence's former chief of staff said that Donald Trump didn't say those things, right?
So that's number one.
Number two, I actually think there's an interesting conversation here to have, Jake, which is why does John Kelly not support Donald Trump?
It's about policy.
It's not about personality.
He says he agrees with Trump on most policy.
No.
He agrees with Trump on most policy.
Disagrees with Trump on how Trump views his role and his and the fascism and the authoritarian.
I don't buy that, Jake.
I don't buy that.
Because if you actually look at John Kelly at folks like Liz Cheney, the fundamental disagreement they have with Donald Trump is even though they say that they're conservative, they're conservative in the sense that they want America to get involved in a ton of ridiculous military conflicts.
They want America to police the world, and Donald Trump wasn't.
John Kelly lost a son in Afghanistan.
Why are you saying that he like I've never heard John Kelly say whether he supports Iran or Afghanistan?
And I honor his son's sacrifice and I honor his family's sacrifice.
That doesn't mean he's not wrong about policy.
Specifically, what is he saying?
Is your argument that a person who lost a son in Afghanistan can't be wrong about public policy?
I'm asking you why bring that up.
Let's talk about public policy.
Because you have ever criticized his service because you're acting as if he is pro-war, and I've never heard him say whether or not he supported the war in Afghanistan or the war in Iraq.
He was a general carrying out order.
Because I know John Kelly's worldview, and I know the people who have attacked Donald Trump the most vociferously on foreign policy.
They'll say, well, he's a dictator when what they really mean is they won't listen.
Donald Trump wouldn't listen to the leadership of the military when they wanted him to start ridiculous conflicts.
That is a consistent theme.
And here's Debbie in Texas, Republican line.
Hi, Debbie.
Hi, good morning.
I don't even know where to start.
Kelly first was fired by Trump.
He has a vendetta.
I don't believe him.
And then the 34 fake felonies.
All of these are set up by the Democrats.
George Torres funded.
And just like with, I mean, all of it, they're not even, they want to put him in prison.
And these aren't even criminal charges that they've brought up.
And the rhetoric from the left is what the problem is.
They say that Trump is a threat.
Well, the best four years I had was when Trump was president.
And I saw everything go down.
Tunis, Biden, and Harris came into office.
They, day one, it was the executive order that said let these illegals in.
We're not talking about people that are here legally.
We're talking about people that come here illegally.
And they're destroying our country.
Everything is outpriced now.
They blame everyone but themselves.
Harris blames Trump for everything they did in their administration.
We had no new wars under President Trump.
And now we have, we're looking at World War III.
We cannot handle four years of Harris.
She won't even tell what her policies are because she knows her policies are the same as Joe Biden's.
And they put him out because of his polling, because he was polling so low because the people do not agree with where he was putting the country.
And she's the same way, maybe even worse.
And Trump, they give him time, but the media, they're going to destroy him.
The Democrats are going to destroy him.
And these people that they talk about us calling us names, but yet they're the ones that fall for all this misleading things that they say.
They sit here and they listen to CNN or MSDNC or wherever, and they talk about, I just, I'm overwhelmed with where everyone's going with this election.
She did not.
Harris had not received one vote, and she will continue.
She will continue what's going on, but she'll make it worse.
We will never have another fair.
Our country will be destroyed.
And Richard is in Kingsport, Tennessee, Independent Line.
Hi, Mimi.
I'm like Debbie.
I don't know where to start.
I will be voting against the Democrat policies.
And even though I'm a Constitution Party member, I have to register a popular vote.
And as far as I hope you will play the clip of George Lopez at the Tim Wallace rally yesterday making racist jokes about Mexicans.
And he's being defended because he is a Mexican.
Therefore, it's okay for him to make racist jokes at a Democrat rally.
But that's on record.
The video is there.
Please show it.
You had a caller recently when you were the host call up.
This is how unhinged this election has gotten.
And everybody I talk to just can't wait for it to be over.
You had a caller say that Trump wants to eradicate the government and eliminate public education.
And things like that.
Just the media, my next point is about the media, the corruption in the media, to give examples from all of the major, most of the best-known names who are media, big names for CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, et cetera.
And even the fact checkers during the debate who were later found to be wrong, and retractions have been issued when it's too late.
I mean, this is really, I have a journalism degree.
I worked for a newspaper, worked for a newspaper for a short time during college.
I taught journalism classes.
I've never seen anything like this.
But my main point is always about abortion.
And just quickly, the comment about women dying due to these abortion policies, that is not true.
That's not happening.
Also, the talk about the big lie is that this is not a human being being aborted.
We have had over 60 million abortions since 1973.
And that's what the Democrats have hung their hat on.
They are now officially the abortion party and proudly proclaiming it.
Walls and Harris will not make a definite, they will not own up to any limitations.
It will be abortion on demand at any stage if they have their way.
Thanks.
And here's another Richard in Pennsylvania, Democrat.
Hi, Richard.
Hey, how you doing?
Good.
Hey, I'm a Democrat all my life.
Obviously, I'm not a kid anymore.
But I'm voting Republican, and I'm voting for Trump.
And the big reason, or one of the reasons, is I watched a little bit of Kamala baby in Philadelphia.
And I watched the Democrats behind her when she stood and told everybody that she's going to fix everything that they brought into this country.
She's going to do something about work.
She's going to do something about the illegals.
I mean, it's like it's a little ridiculous.
And another thing, as far as Kelly goes, he worked with Biden for a long time.
Now he's mad because he got fired and he looks the stupid he is.
You mean he worked for Trump for a long time.
Oh, I'm sorry.
What did I say?
Yeah, no, it's okay.
Yeah, he worked for him.
He was the longest serving chief of staff at about a year and a half.
Yeah, and you know, and it seems like I think he was a little myth, which generals, I was in the military.
I didn't have any doings with generals, but I know the higher up they get, the goofier they are.
So, Richard, I want to ask you, since you said you were a Democrat, did you vote for Biden in 2020?
No.
You voted for Trump?
Yes.
And then before that, in 2016, did you vote for Trump as well?
Yes.
And I'll be very honest with you.
I got out of Vietnam.
I turned 21 there.
I come home.
I signed up to vote.
I've never voted a straight party ticket in my whole life.
And I'm 78 now.
So anyway, it was good talking to you.
Nice talking to you, Richard.
Judy in San Diego, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
A few points.
At the MSG, the Madison Square Garden yesterday, that comedian, Tony, he should have been yanked off the stage for his comments, which were not funny at all.
And Trump and the Republicans would get more votes if they would support women's right to choose.
The government should never be involved in this situation at any level at all.
And I think that Harris is a follower.
She'll be told what to do behind the scenes and she'll do it.
I hate to use the word deep state, but I believe that's what they will tell her what to do, and she'll do it.
And the undecided voters, for them, when Trump makes negative remarks, it can antagonize the undecided voters who may vote for Harris just because of that.
So I think that— Yeah, so Judy, what are you thinking?
As I'm a Republican, have you, do you want to share with us who you're going to vote for?
Of course I'll share it.
I'm voting for Trump.
Of course I'll share it.
But I'm not a single issue voter.
Even though I believe in women's right to choose, of course, 100%, that's a single issue.
And I'm not a single-issue voter.
I want to vote for the greater good of the country, which I think Trump does.
He already did it in four years.
And I just, he already will make real changes, and Harris will stay the same.
And one more thing about Harris.
I think that in the vice president position, I do believe that position was given to her on a silver platter.
And now the presidential nominee has been given to her on another silver platter.
So I also think Harris is not genuine.
I find her phony, and I think a lot of people can see right through her.
And that's all, that's what I have to say.
All right, Judy.
And Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, VP vice presidential candidate for the Democratic ticket, was in an event at Las Vegas speaking to Native American supporters there.
We're running, as you might see.
Somebody said it looks like you're running like everything's on the line.
We are, because everything's on the line.
I'm proud to be on this ticket with Kamala Harris.
She's, as she tells her story, for her entire career, she's had one client, the people.
She stood with women and children against predators and abusers, worked for seniors and workers against the fraudsters and big corporations.
She worked for families and communities against transnational gangs and drug traffickers.
And when people came to her and asked for help, she never asked them if they were Republican or Democrats.
The only thing she asked was, how can I help?
Kamala and I recognize the promises that this country has made.
We will safeguard and strengthen the bonds between our nations, uphold our trust and treaty obligations, honor tribal sovereignty, promote tribal consultation, and ensure tribal self-determination.
And let's just be very clear.
If our tribal nations are doing well, the rest of the nation is doing well.
I have the privilege of being governor of Minnesota to work with our 11 sovereign nations, seven Anishinaabe and Four Dakota.
In Minnesota, we've laid out a national model for how state government can work with and consult with tribes, respect their sovereignty by codifying into law government-to-government relationship with tribal governments in our law.
In my conversations with Native people, I have an overwhelming call for a fresh start, one that taps into the ambitions and dreams of all Americans.
Kamala Harris is offering a new way forward.
Here's Joe in Louisville, Kentucky, a Democrat.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I think, really, we need to remember history, okay?
If you've read any history of Donald Trump, if you've read any history of Kamala Harris, you have to come up with, look, Harris is a much better fit as a candidate for the United States.
Donald Trump's history from Trump University to his foundation, where he was, you know, with the university, he was fined $25 million for basically ripping off students.
But his whole history has been, me, what can I get?
And I don't think Kamala Harris has been that way.
She's been somebody that has gone out and really helped the people.
And I really think Trump's, you know, you've got so many Republicans that work for him saying, look, the guy is unfit to be president, including General Milley and John Killey and many others of his staff.
And it just doesn't make sense to me that these people are all wrong.
And then you've had the court where he was promoting the big lie about the election, that he was cheated out of winning in 2020, which is, you know, crazy.
And most Americans knew it.
Yet Republicans in Congress went off, which tells you something about their character.
So I don't see how, you know, really Americans can vote for somebody with the character of Donald Trump.
And here's Pat in Idaho, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I have always been a dedicated Democrat until I saw the way the Democrats were treating Donald Trump when he got elected as president.
I understood that he wasn't really a politician or anything, but more of a businessman.
But I always felt it was wrong the way they would accuse him of stuff.
Nothing ever came out.
All this time he was president, and it was a waste of Congress.
There was so much issues there that needed to be fixed.
And they spent the whole time trying to impeach him.
I mean, it was one thing after the next.
So when they put Biden there, I mean, to run for president, I really felt insulted because here's a man, vice president.
He wasn't much of a vice president.
He always, Obama always had to take him out of stuff that he would say, you know.
And his age, that's the first thing I said.
He's too old to run for president.
And I was correct.
I mean, look what happened.
Now they put Kamala on there.
I would love to see a woman president.
I think it would be fabulous to have a woman president, but she's not qualified for that.
Did you feel that Hillary Clinton was qualified?
Well, Hillary Clinton was a lot better than Kamala, yes, by far.
I mean, she had a lot of experience on many issues.
So did Nikki Haley, I believe, would have been a good candidate to be president.
Kamala hasn't, she hasn't really come up on the ranks.
I think a lot of this has been given to her.
I think the Democratic Party was looking at has put a woman in color and maybe she could beat Trump.
All right, Pat.
Well, regarding the gender gap, this is CBS News.
It says that Harris Trump poll has closer look inside a gender gap as Trump-Harris draw even.
Here is the latest on that.
It says 55% of women for Harris, 43% for Trump.
Then the reverse is true.
45% of men, 54% for Harris.
It says, men are more likely to say efforts in the U.S. to promote gender equality have gone too far of late.
When they do, they're voting overwhelmingly for Trump.
And women are more apt to say that those efforts haven't gone far enough.
Voters who say this are overwhelmingly for Harris.
Violet in San Joaquinto, California, Democrat.
Hi.
I've been listening to the callers this morning and it just kind of shocks me how many people are buying all of these lies about Harris instead of actually looking at her record.
And I can't say this enough.
Vice Presidents do not and cannot set policies.
So, whatever she supposedly did or didn't do over the past three and a half years, it's not her responsibility.
I also really want people to stop talking so much about Trump and start talking about who Kamala Harris is, her vast intelligence experience, and qualifications, and her detailed policy proposals, which have been available for many months.
The way Trump has been declining, it's difficult to believe he will last four years in office.
Vance will take over, and that is a terrifying prospect because he is bought and paid for by Peter Thiel and the Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025 is not for Trump, it's for Vance.
It could conceivably stay in office for up to 12 years, assuming we are still a democracy by then.
Thanks.
And Leah, Anderson, South Carolina, Republican, you're next.
Yes, all we hear from the Democratic side is abortion.
And if you're at the Christian Fay, in the beginning, when God, with his spectacular mind, created the woman's body, he even knew how to create her cycle.
It was sacred.
It was then and it is now.
Abortion is nothing but a weapon of murder.
Why don't they speak about the thousands of women that have to seek counseling because they had abortions and it has just bared on their conscience?
Like, what if what would my child be like now?
They don't speak of that.
And coming up, we'll have former GOP Congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania.
He's a Harris supporter and now a senior advisor to the group called Our Republican Legacy.
We'll discuss campaign 2024 and the future of the Republican Party.
And later, Heritage Foundation's Hans Von Spokowski discusses concerns about election security, the voting process, and the accuracy of this year's elections.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Charlie Dent.
He's a senior advisor to the group called Our Republican Legacy, also a former U.S. Representative, a Republican from Pennsylvania.
Charlie Dent, welcome to the program.
Thanks, Mimi.
Great to be with you.
So you're an advisor to the group called Our Republican Legacy.
What is it?
What are the mission?
What's the mission?
And how are you funded?
Yeah, we're a 501c4 organization.
We are not a lobbying group.
We're not really even advocating for against anyone in a particular election.
What we do, we are a group of, I'll say, dispirited Republicans who want a better direction for the Republican Party.
We want to create an alternative narrative to MAGA.
We think too often that those of us in the party who want a different direction have been far too quiet.
And so what we've done is we've laid out five core principles, five core principles that we think have guided the Republican Party in the past and should guide it going forward.
Those principles being the Constitution.
We believe in the rule of law.
We believe in the peaceful transfer of power.
We think January 6th was an abomination.
We believe in the Union.
Abraham Lincoln was our founder.
And his objective, of course, was to keep this great country together.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump and many of the MAGA movement want to divide it further.
We also believe in a peace through strength of foreign policy that embraces allies, rejects autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
So we're in a very different place than the MAGA movement.
We think there should be constructive international engagement.
We are also for free markets.
Now, we're not talking about going back to 1850 or 1920s.
We understand you need modern, reasonable regulation, but at the same time, we think things like these absurd across-the-board destructive tariffs would really wreak havoc on the country and our economy and are not in keeping with the tradition of where we as Republicans should be.
And finally, fiscal discipline.
We think we have to start having that conversation once again in this country.
We will talk about tariffs and fiscal discipline.
When was the organization created?
Oh, it was created, I believe, back in April or March.
That's when it was first created.
Our former senators, Jack Danforth, Alan Simpson, and Bill Cohen.
Danforth of Missouri, Simpson of Wyoming, and Cohen of Maine are our original founders.
And we thought it was time to really create a strong voice as an alternative to MAGA.
The Republican Party is divided.
It's not evenly divided, but it is divided.
There are many Republicans who do not like the direction, and we want a different direction.
I mean, what's the ultimate goal?
Are you going to try to run another candidate for president in the next cycle?
We haven't even gone there.
What we are trying to do is just create a groundswell of support.
We're looking not just at this election, we're looking beyond this election, frankly, about how do we get this Republican Party into a better place.
The principles I just laid out, you know, we believe have sustained the party for 170 years.
You know, MAGA has been around for under 10 years.
Their roots are rather shallow.
Ours are rather deep.
Now, no one's naive here.
We understand that we're not going to go back to where we were.
But we need to get to a better place.
And so we want to help shape this conversation going forward for those of us in the party who have stood for certain principles, that those principles will still be respected and, frankly, driving what should be the Republican Party.
This isolationism, nativism, protectionism, I think many of us think this is a dead end.
But what caused that?
I mean, given the deep roots, as you say, of the Republican Party, what caused it to go in the, quote, MAGA direction?
Well, there's a lot of anger in the country, and there always have been some dark elements within our nation.
And sadly, I think Donald Trump in many ways helps bring that out with his incendiary rhetoric.
He talks to people in ways that he kind of, frankly, will bring out the worst in some people.
There's no restraint.
And we've always had these isolationist and protectionist tendencies in this country.
This is nothing new.
But what's happened is he's the first Republican president who has actually embraced those.
And I think that's part of the reason why the party has shifted, because the leader of the party, and that is Donald Trump, has taken these positions.
And frankly, what we need is an alternative voice.
We need Republican voters to hear something different than what they are hearing today.
You have announced that you have voted early in Pennsylvania and you have voted for Vice President Harris.
Elaborate a little bit on that.
Was that a vote against Trump or do you believe more firmly in her policies than his?
No, it was more of a rejection of Donald Trump.
I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
I wrote in Evan McMullen.
And in 2020, I voted Joe Biden because I just wanted to return to normalcy.
And I said at the time I didn't expect to agree with Joe Biden on many of his policies, but at least he was going to bring back some sense of normalcy and stability to the White House.
And in the case of Kamala Harris, look, she is trying to pivot to the center, and I hope she does embrace that going forward.
We'll see.
I will certainly have policy differences, but she is a decent, honorable person, and I think we'll put the interests of the country ahead of her own.
So the Vice President is making a speech at the National Mall tomorrow.
We'll be covering that here on C-SPAN.
But what would you like her to address?
What is it that she needs to say that will get Republicans like yourself that are not comfortable with Donald Trump?
Well, I think what she needs to say is that this pivot towards the center is real, that it is sincere.
And I think there are a lot of Republicans out there who say, okay, she's from San Francisco.
She's taken positions that many of us have disagreed with.
In Pennsylvania, for example, she was opposed to fracking.
Now she's obviously changed her position.
And there are other issues where she has maybe gone too far to the left and made statements in the 2019 campaign.
I think she has to continue to demonstrate that she will try to govern from the center and resist the urges of many of the extreme elements within her own party.
I know that's very difficult, but I think she needs to do that.
Now, some will say that might quiet her base, but her base is motivated to beat Donald Trump more than anything else.
So I think she has a tremendous opportunity, not having gone through a primary, to be able to govern from the center, which is what many Americans want right now.
They're tired of these rather shrill, extreme voices.
And there are a lot of Republicans out there who do not like Donald Trump, but are just nervous that the vice president will be pulled further to the left by those more extreme elements in her party.
So she's got to assure those voters that she's going to govern from the center.
Well, one of the big issues is the economy.
And you mentioned tariffs.
You wrote an opinion piece in the Hill with this headline, Donald Trump's Tariff Plan Could Bring Us Back to the 1930s.
Right.
Explain that.
Well, if you remember in the 1930s, in 1930, a law was passed, Smoot Hawley, that imposed broad tariffs across the board.
It was passed at a time not long after the stock market crashed in 1929, and actually the market was beginning to recover.
Smoot Hawley passed in the market tank.
Global trade just dropped from, it crashed from $3 trillion to $1 trillion.
Just about every economist of every stripe will tell you that Smoot Hawley exacerbated the Great Depression.
It made it much worse.
I would argue something similar could happen now, that if we had across-the-board tariffs, as Donald Trump is talking about, 10 to 20 percent on just about everything, 60 percent on goods from China, he's using it across the board, which means the price of everything goes up.
One, it's inflationary.
Two, you know, it's going to harm American manufacturers and American growers.
And I'll give you an example from Pennsylvania.
Go to Hershey.
I represented that community.
You know, they made, at peak production, 70 million Hershey kisses a day, which is a lot of loving.
So that's a lot of chocolate.
Well, how do you make chocolate?
You have to get cocoa.
Well, last I checked, we don't grow it in the United States.
We have to import it from West Africa.
Well, the price just went up 20%.
Okay, so there's no substitute.
So that's just one example.
I could find, you know, people like coffee.
Well, you know, we have to import that too.
Your cup of coffee just went up in price.
You like a banana?
Same thing.
I'm just saying everything's going to go up.
And let's take it to the Chips Act.
We want to make semiconductors.
This country is making a commitment to compete with China.
A lot of those big machines are made by a Dutch company to make these chips.
They cost a few hundred million dollars a pop.
Well, the price just went up 20 percent.
I mean, this is real stuff.
It's going to affect American manufacturers because a lot of what we import is used for making things.
And so this is what we have to deal with.
So ultimately, consumers will pay more.
You know, they'll pay for in a lot of ways.
And we're going to lose jobs over this.
And it's going to particularly have a devastating effect on manufacturers.
And of course, the farmers and the ranchers are very worried because when Trump talks about punishing John Deere and slapping big tariffs on Mexico, well, what are the Mexicans going to do?
They're going to retaliate against American corn and other agricultural products.
And that's what we saw with the Chinese when Trump did all the China tariffs back in the first administration.
We ended up paying more out in subsidies to farmers than we collected in tariff revenue.
Now, look, I get it.
There are times you should use tariffs and countervailing duties if there is slave labor involved, if there are unfair trade practices, dumping, illegal subsidies.
I get it.
Targeted.
But across the board, devastating.
And I think most of us will get that.
By the way, in the Great Depression, you know, we ran trade surpluses, but we had unemployment rates over 20 percent.
It really didn't feel that good.
If you'd like to join the conversation with our guest, Charlie Dent, you can do so.
Our lines are bipartisan.
So Republicans are on 2028-8001.
Democrats are 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
A lot has been made of former people that have worked in the Trump administration not endorsing him.
John Kelly, his former chief of staff, saying that he praised Hitler and has his textbook fascist.
The flip side of that is people saying, well, he was fired and he's got an axe to grind.
JD Vance has said it's because they couldn't control him and they didn't share the same worldview.
What's your response to that?
Well, first, John Kelly is an extraordinary American, a four-star Marine general.
I think that man, you know, for him to come out and say the things he said wasn't easy because these are military guys and they try to avoid getting in the political fray.
I believe everything John Kelly has said.
I think John Kelly was doing his duty as a chief of staff and as a Homeland Security Secretary, doing his best.
And he witnessed up close and personal what many of us have seen in our interactions with the former president, that he's unfit and he is at times unstable.
And, you know, we've all seen the narcissism, the ADD, the impulse control issues, the temper, a lack of interest in policy.
And these are the kinds of things that John Kelly has talked about.
And he saw it probably more than anybody else.
So, I mean, we should believe him.
Not just him, believe him.
Believe Rex Tillerson.
Believe Mark Esper, John Bolton, McMaster, Mattis, all these people who worked around him, at least the first few I mentioned, have been quite public in their concerns.
And it's obvious why they're concerned.
I mean, he's embraced Vladimir Putin.
He's embraced Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un.
But explain the word embraced.
What do you mean by that?
Well, he seems to be much more comfortable talking to these autocrats than he is with allies.
There was this lack of, you know, in other words, he didn't distinguish between friend and foe.
You know, he was more critical of Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau than he was of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
I mean, you know, we have allies and friends and shared interests and values.
You'd think we would embrace them more than people who are trying to undermine American foreign policy interests all around the globe.
I mean, that's what I find so stunning.
I think that's probably what those individuals found stunning too.
All right.
Let's talk to callers and start with Bob in Atlanta, Republican.
Good morning, Bob.
Good morning.
Thank you for your program.
Sir, I served in the military and I'm 78 years old.
I just got one question for you.
Are you a communist?
No, absolutely not.
Are you, sir?
Well, Kamala Harris is so far to the left, you can't even see her.
Okay, we'll get a response.
Well, look, I get it.
You know, I have policy disagreements with Kamala Harris, just as you do, sir.
But, you know, sometimes elections are not about right or left in terms of policy.
Maybe it's sometimes about right or wrong.
I think one candidate here has demonstrated his unfitness repeatedly.
And the other, whatever you think of her policy positions, it strikes me as normal and honorable.
And I hate to say it, but that's where we are right now.
And I'm going to choose honorable over dishonorable.
Here's Mark in Austin, Texas, Democrat.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning, Mimi.
How are you doing?
Good.
I'd just like to ask, I'm a convicted fellow, Mr. Dan.
How is it that I can't vote, but Donald Trump can, and he's also a convicted fellow.
Could you please answer that question for us?
Well, that's a good question, actually.
That's a great question.
Now, he's been convicted, Trump, but he's not yet been sentenced, so I don't know when that sentence takes effect.
Now, he's a resident of the state of Florida, and I think these rules on felons' voting is really determined at the state level.
As you know, election laws govern at the state level, and so I'm not sure where Florida's law is on that.
I think it might be a bit more permissive, though, than is the case in Texas.
So it's a matter of, it's a function of state law, sir.
And let's talk to Derek in Lakeland, Minnesota, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
All right, I have a couple points here.
I want to walk down memory lane with you, Charlie.
We had a governor that name is Tim Wallace, who's the vice presidential candidate.
He said that he was going to make one Minnesota and bring everybody together, just like Joe Biden said in saying that he'll bring normalcy and save the soul of the nation.
Well, let's see what happens.
Minneapolis burned.
We surrendered a police station.
We now took total control of our legislature, so we now have a brand new flag that nobody likes.
So they switched their whole flag.
Joe Biden, which you said you voted for for those reasons, he has bragged that he's the most progressive presidential president ever.
So that didn't really work up.
Now you're doubling down, and you're saying that Harris is the one that's going to come to the center.
Well, let me give you some news on that, buddy.
They've said they want to make Washington, D.C. a state to get two more senators.
They said they wanted to make Puerto Rico a state, get two more senators.
They want to jam-pack and add Supreme Court justices to pack the court.
They want to end the filibuster.
Is that normalcy?
Is that going to the center?
You're a useful idiot.
Hey, and good morning to you, too, sir.
Let me just take a few of these issues.
Look, I'm for divided government for a good reason, to put a check on both parties, frankly.
I think that would be the best thing that we could have happen in this country.
You can talk about a number of policy positions.
I agree with you on some.
Others I disagree with.
But the point I've made is that this country, my party, the Republican Party, needs to move away from this type of MAGA movement.
It is alienating much of the country and, frankly, a lot of Republican voters.
That's where we need to get back to something that I think is grounded in principle: things that our founder, Abraham Lincoln, and many of the others who led this party over the years will be proud of.
And that's where we should be looking forward.
And, you know, and again, I don't agree with the Democrats on a lot of these policies, some of which you mentioned.
But at the same time, we got to get to a better place as a party.
And I don't think Trump's the right guy.
And I'll just remind our callers that we don't take personal attacks on our guests.
We don't allow those.
James in Buffalo, Kentucky, Republican.
Good morning.
Yes, ma'am.
Thank you for taking my call, and I really enjoy your show.
As for this fella here, he has no clue what he's talking about when it comes to the economy.
He's a rhino, and he's a disgrace to the Republican people.
James, James, let's stick with the policies.
What policies are you talking about?
Well, I'll give you an example.
I grew up in San Francisco, and Harris, when she was there, she made a mess out of things.
Her and Nancy Plowski.
Nancy Plosky's district was falling apart the whole time.
She's more worried about going to a luncheon and getting her hair done.
This guy here has no clue what he's talking about.
It's amazing that he got himself in office.
That's the only thing that he did.
Created a suit and tie, got him in office.
A lot of vitriol from Republican callers there, Charlie.
Yeah, well, hey, that's life.
You know, just a couple things.
What I find right now is if a person doesn't agree with you on a particular policy, you know, he didn't argue with me about the tariffs.
He just calls you a rhino.
I mean, that's, you know, he calls you a squish and bedwetter.
I mean, okay, great.
You know, we're all rhinos now, okay?
If you don't agree with Donald Trump, you're a rhino.
And so, you know, who cares?
I mean, so some of these folks out there, you know, just simply don't have the capacity to make an argument.
So they've just embraced whatever Trump says, whatever it is.
If he changes his opinion tomorrow, they'll change their opinion as well, not all of them, but many of them.
But there are a lot of people who are voting for the former president.
I know them.
They're friends.
And they're uncomfortable, many of them.
But they want to hear something different.
They want something better for the party.
Now, there have been Republicans in this cycle who were vocal critics of the former president and then ended up endorsing him anyway.
For instance, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, they have endorsed former President Trump.
Well, you know, they're doing their duty as functionaries of the party.
They're both sitting governors.
And, you know, and I get that they feel they have to do that.
I suspect they too want a different direction for the party.
I mean, Governor DeWine has been very powerful in his condemnations of what Trump and others have been saying about people eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, which is a fabrication.
It's not true.
And Sununu was a strong supporter of Nikki Haley.
He wants a different direction for the party.
But I think some of them are trying to protect their options going forward within the party if they want to run for something.
But of course, in Trump world, if you're not 100% there, they're never going to be with you.
So if they ask my opinion, I would say don't try to split the difference.
Take a strong stand.
It's pretty hard to walk back some of the things some of the folks have said.
If Nikki Haley was the Republican candidate, would you be voting for her?
Yes, absolutely.
I voted for her in the primary.
And absolutely.
And frankly, she'd be winning this election right now if she were the candidate.
Joyce in New York, Democrat.
Hi, Joyce.
Yes, good morning.
Question for Mr. Dent.
How long do you think it would take to rebuild the Republican Party moving forward?
I mean, how much if Trump gets back in, how much damage do you think he'll do to the rhinos?
Well, rebuilding a party is never easy, or we've gone through a bit of a political realignment, as you can see.
But rebuilding a party is going to take work.
It's going to take time.
It's going to take an effort to, again, get back to something, guiding principles and values.
And we have to have those conversations once again.
And part of the challenge, too, is some of the think tanks out there, and I'll pick on one of them, like Heritage, was always known as one of the strong conservative think tanks.
And now many of them have just kind of just gone all in.
And they basically have changed their values.
They've adjusted their values to suit Donald Trump.
And I think we have to get back to more principles-based conversations.
That's the only thing I can think of that will help us.
But that's going to take time.
It's going to take a bit of a movement.
And truthfully, how much losing can my party take?
I mean, I've said one thing about Donald Trump.
He has made losing great again.
And what I mean by that, since 2016, the Republican Party lost, they lost the House in 2018.
They lost the Senate in 2020 as well as the presidency.
In 2022, Republicans significantly underperformed.
And Donald Trump has been leading this party, and now he's the nominee.
And I would argue, if we had any other nominee, anybody, like Nikki Haley, for example, Republicans would be walking away with this election.
And parties exist for a reason, to win.
And why do they want to win?
So they can govern.
So if the party continues to lose, well, maybe that will force the types of changes that I'm talking about.
And Jeff and Kent, Ohio, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mimi.
Good morning, Charlie.
I just, when I listen to Mr. Dent, I can't help but think about all the things in the past that the Uniparty, both the Republicans and the Democrats, have done.
NAFTA, that hollowed out our middle class and hollowed out our nation's smaller towns.
Millions and millions of people streaming across the border at taxpayers' expense, impacting our great cities and our small towns.
Troops in over 168 countries, military people all over the world, billions in offshore wars while our people are sleeping under overpasses.
My point would be, Charlie, that I'm not sure, I know you don't like this guy, but I can tell you right now, there's a group of us in America that have simply had enough of our towns and our people being fleeced by a uniparty.
And from what I see, Charlie, you represent that Uniparty, and people are simply tired of it.
And I am a lifelong Democrat.
And Charlie, I don't know you, and I don't have any animosity towards you.
Let's get a response.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, a uniparty.
Well, I don't really think there is a uniparty, with all due respect to the caller.
There really isn't.
And hey, I am concerned about the border, too.
And by the way, I was one of the original co-sponsors of the Secure Effense Act of 2005 or 2006 that actually authorized that 700 miles of pedestrian and vehicular barriers all along the southern border.
So I strongly believe in border security, and I certainly think the Biden administration was very slow getting to that issue.
But bottom line is, you know, I'm not, you know, our communities have struggled for a variety of reasons.
And, you know, you can, and we can have this great debate about what should the role of the United States be in this world.
I mean, yeah, we can walk off the stage, as the caller suggests.
Well, we'll cede it all to China.
And then China will set the rules.
And then we'll be listening to the Chinese, if that's what you really want, sir.
If you want the Chinese to basically lead this global order along with their friends, the Russians and the Iranians, okay.
I mean, you think we're going to have a better world?
You think it might be better if the United States and our friends and allies in Europe and in Asia and Japan and Australia and Korea, South Korea and elsewhere?
I mean, I think that order is much better for Americans than the one that I think you are leading us towards, sir.
And here's Rick in Colorado, Republican.
Hi, Rick.
Hi.
You know, you act like the mega party is a few people.
Have you seen Trump's rallies?
How many people show up to his rallies?
I would say that the Republican Party has left you.
And most of the people that are Republicans now are the mega party.
It's the future.
I mean, you either want our country to be taken over by other people or you don't.
You say that China is going to take us over if Trump gets elected.
Sir, I think you're very wrong on that.
Well, can I respond?
Well, first, sir, I was responding to a question where that gentleman seemed to suggest that our engagement throughout the world is what's costing this country terribly.
In other words, he wants us to retreat, bring them all home.
I said, okay, you can bring them home.
But you're creating a vacuum.
Who's going to fill the vacuum?
Are we naive enough to think it's not going to be the Chinese or the Russians or some other country that's hostile to our interests?
Do we think this is going to be a better world?
And I could say, whatever the faults of this international order that was established after the Second World War, you know, there has not been great power conflict.
We have not gone to war with this.
We didn't go to war with the Soviet Union.
We somehow kept the peace.
Had there been wars, absolutely.
But there was not great power conflict.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember, at least my parents' generation.
Remember, we're part of World War II.
And I don't know that we want to go back to great power conflict like that again.
So I guess what I'm saying, sir, is that if your view is if we just draw up the walls, put up the walls.
That was the America First agenda back in the 1930s.
Stay out of it.
Hitler won't cause us any problems.
Well, he did.
He declared war on us, as I recall, not the other way around.
And so let's think about this very clearly.
If we want to let these autocrats in countries that are hostile to us determine the international order, that will have an immediate effect on the American economy and we as Americans.
If we think we're going to all be as prosperous as we always were, well, I got news for you.
It isn't going to happen.
Charlie Dunt, there's an article from Reuters in August with the headline, How Trump's Intimidation Tactics Have Reshaped the Republican Party.
It says that he's purged his Republican Party of lawmakers and officials deemed as disloyal.
Do you, I mean, you're a Republican.
Do you feel the threat of intimidation, of revenge, anything like that?
Not really.
I mean, although he certainly talks about it, you know, he talks about going after all his enemies.
That's a pretty long list.
He's going to be awfully busy going after his enemies.
But no, I mean, I don't feel, I personally don't feel it.
But I think, you know, disloyalty, I mean, what does that mean?
Disloyal to what?
To whom?
To him?
Okay.
Disloyal to him?
I mean, this is, I mean, I think that's a sad state of affairs in this country where we can't even have debates about policy anymore.
It's hard to have debates about policy.
It's about whether or not you're loyal to him.
If you disagree with me, I somehow disapprove of you, and I'll use the arms of the Justice Department to go after you.
I mean, this is America.
We don't do that here.
And here's Keith in Hawthorne, Nevada, Independent.
Hi, Keith.
Hi, good morning.
Yes, actually, Congressman, the Constitution says either foreign or domestic, there are enemies within, and that's what Donald Trump is talking about, is the domestic enemies of America.
They hate the Constitution.
They are un-American in that regard.
That's what he's talking about.
He's talking about?
I mean, who are the enemies within?
I'm talking about all the neocons.
Maybe you're part of it.
I'm not a neoclassic.
New Gingrich said live on television many years ago, he said, the reason why the left and the people of the deep state hate Trump is because he's never been initiated into the dark arts.
And also, I want to just mention his hand is protecting the people.
What are the dark arts?
I mean, I'm talking about the secret societies that control much of the world that we're dealing with now with the think tanks, the Rockefeller Institution, the billionaires that rule the world with the Rothschilds and stuff.
So that's on your dollar bill.
There's a pyramid, the all-seeing eye.
That's all Masonic and it's literally satanic.
Sorry, Keith.
Thank you.
Cuckoo.
That's all wild conspiracy theory stuff.
You know, he's going about the billionaires.
Well, you know, Elon Musk is standing up there on the stage with Donald Trump.
I mean, okay.
I mean, it's not a conspiracy theory.
He is.
I mean, Donald Trump has billionaire support.
He's a billionaire himself.
I mean, this guy's talking about billionaires in this conspiracy.
Well, which ones?
Which ones?
Connie in Dover and New Hampshire, Democrat.
Good morning.
Ah, good morning.
So I have, you know, I was looking at the differences between Biden has a 3.4% unemployment rate at the end of his term and Trump had 6.4% unemployment rate.
And I was like, I don't understand why people don't note that when they're saying, you know, everything was better under Trump.
You know, almost a million people died from COVID.
He put his son-in-law in charge of put his son-in-law in charge of COVID response and nothing happened for months and months.
And so I was watching the interview from Fox, and when they didn't show Trump saying that about the enemies within, I thought, well, no wonder they don't know, because not only are there misinformation delivered, there's also an omission of information.
And so I just, you know, I don't know how to overcome the differences.
And just anyhow, I mean, you know, everybody cares about employment.
That's how we build our nation.
All right, Connie.
Yeah.
Well, look, look, there's a lot of economic discomfort in this country, mostly because prices have gone up significantly and very dramatically a couple years ago, especially on food.
Food prices went up at a record rate.
And of course, housing prices are also very high with interest rates high and there's not enough supply of housing.
There are a lot of people who are feeling the pain, even though you're right, unemployment levels are low and other economic indicators are strong.
But people feel like their money isn't getting them as far as it did.
And that's why there's the economic angst, and that is a real issue.
So the question is, what are you going to do about it?
And so let's have a policy conversation.
Look, each candidate maybe has put forward policies that could be construed as inflationary, but none probably more than Trump's on tariffs.
That would actually add to inflationary pressure fairly significantly.
So, you know, I wish I had a simple, easy answer for you on the economy, but there is real economic angst in the country, and that's driving a lot of the motivations of many, many voters who might be uncomfortable with both candidates, frankly.
On this program on Friday, we had Gannon University American Political History professor Jeffrey Bloodworth, and he was talking about the rural-urban divide in Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt states and how it's impacting the Republican Party.
I'll play it and then get your response.
You know, we have a rural-urban divide.
We have an urban America, you know, dominated by people like myself, the knowledge worker elites.
I mean, the economy is working really well for us.
And so, you know, what many people in my demographic, when we hear the different left or right populists, we think, well, what's the problem?
Our lives are good.
And out in rural America, where the economy is not working for the same number of people, they are more open to both populace of the left and right.
I mean, Bernie Sanders did well, you know, better than Hillary Clinton did in Rust Belt areas.
He won Michigan in the 2016 primaries, for instance.
And so Pennsylvania points to the at least near-term future of an American politics that's defined by a rural-urban divide between the college and the non-college.
And I would argue non-college Americans, and I can fully understand this, what they're saying is that they want the American dream to work for them as well.
This is not every Trump voter, as we heard from the caller in Georgia.
There's lots of social conservatives out there.
Their economic concerns are, you know, that's different.
They have a different reason for voting for Trump than others.
But in Pennsylvania, what we see with the state moving towards the Republicans, it's in small towns and small cities that are not enjoying the fruits of prosperity in the same way that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
I mean, we see this in Wisconsin and Michigan.
We see this across the nation.
To get out of this hyper-partisan spiral, I think what we need is we need to have a more shared prosperity.
Your kids should not have to move to a big city in order to get ahead.
We need small cities in small-town America to enjoy the fruits of the prosperity the same way that big cities do.
Knowledge worker elites kind of have to look in the mirror and say, you know what, maybe the economy works well for me, but it also should work well for people without a four-year college degree.
What do you think, Charlie Dent?
I think that the caller is the speaker was correct in that the dividing line in American politics right now, it's maybe less about race and gender and maybe more about educational attainment levels, those with college degrees and those without.
And he's right that there are a lot of people who feel left out in this economy.
They want something better.
And that's why I think we need to do more to help people with non-college degrees have access to more jobs.
I mean, we basically tell people, you can't apply for a job because you have a college degree, even in jobs that we really don't need a college degree.
So we need to do that, and we need to continue to invest in, I'll say, these smaller markets, these middle markets.
Absolutely.
I don't like seeing kids leave their homes and go, hey, by the way, this isn't a new phenomenon.
I graduated college in 1982 when unemployment rates in Pennsylvania over 12%.
And in my area, the steel industry was collapsing at that particular moment.
We've seen it before.
And this has been going on for a while, but the point is, you've got to stick around.
We've got to invest.
And I'm pleased with the CHIPS Act.
Much of the significant amount of that investment is not going into those knowledge areas in those big cities, but being spread around the country, which I do think is encouraging.
Let's talk to Suzanne.
She's in Annville, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Suzanne, are you there?
Hi.
I'm here.
Hey, I just wanted to say that Mr. Dent used to be my congressman when he was in Congress.
And even at that time, Charlie, you weren't really in my, I guess the difference for me is between Republican and conservative.
And you've never been a conservative to represent my views as a conservative Republican.
So now, so I, I'll be honest with you, I never voted for you because of that because you were not a conservative Republican.
But my question is, even if you don't like Trump, and I understand that, his personality, I get it, okay?
However, why would you vote for the opposition who is so anti-Republican and in my book, anti-conservative, just don't vote for president?
That's what I did when you were up for election.
I didn't vote for the Democrat against you because I didn't share their values either.
However, I just don't understand why you would vote for the opposition.
Suzanne, give us an example of what you mean by him not being a conservative.
Well, his stance on abortion, and I'm extremely pro-life, and he is not.
And that happens to be the one issue that I vote.
You're the one-issue voter.
I'm one of these white suburban masters-educated women who is staunchly pro-life, and that is very important to me.
All right, we got it.
Got it.
Yeah, look, I appreciate your call.
And, you know, her definition clearly of a conservative is somebody who's right to life.
And I was, you know, I was, I supported women's right to an abortion.
I did.
And I was one of the few.
Now, post-Dobbs, that position isn't looking so radical.
In fact, it's embraced by, in my district, by the way, I never won an election in my district by less than 10 points.
I usually won by anywhere from 10 to 20 points.
So somehow I survived.
I was a more center-right type of member of Congress, and that's how I presented myself.
And so, you know, obviously some people on the far right didn't like that.
You know, the far left thought I was a right-wing nut.
That's what the far left thought.
The far right thought I was, you know, as a total squish and rhino and a left-winger.
But, you know, most of the country, most of my constituents, you know, thought I was sort of, you know, center, center-right.
And so, and I somehow prevailed.
But she brought up the abortion issue.
And frankly, I think this is a real challenge for the Republican Party.
It is an issue where it is a liability.
The party no longer knows how to speak about this issue.
You know, we're told it's a communications problem.
I would argue it's not a communications problem at all or a messaging problem.
It's a policy problem.
They have to figure out the policy.
And frankly, what some of the states have done, in Texas and others, where they've gone to these bans, and there are near-total bans with no exceptions except for the life of the mother.
Well, that enjoys the support of maybe 5% of the American people.
And if Donald Trump loses this election, that will probably be a significant part of the reason why.
Here's Liam in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Democrat.
Hi, Liam.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mr. Day.
Good morning.
I called this morning watching this segment because you was getting a lot of income.
And I wanted to lift you up to let you know I have observed you from time to time.
And when you come on television, and you're right in my wheelhouse.
You know, we don't govern from the far edges of the left or the right.
We have to come together in the center.
I love the way you have, over the years that I have observed you, have gone through a pragmatic process of trying to solve problems.
You know, what the problem is, what is our solutions, and trying to bring everybody to the table because we all can't get what we all want.
You know, but we can get something for everybody for the bigger good of our country, and that's how I see you.
So you're going to be.
All right.
We got it, Liam.
Thank you very much.
You're very kind, Liam.
Thank you for those nice remarks.
But I think you're right about something, Liam, that we as a country, we need to get back to pragmatic governance.
People want us to solve problems.
They don't want us to ignore them.
I mean, it's hard, you know, I witnessed this during my time in Congress.
It seemed like so much of the time in my last few years we spent just trying to get the basics done.
Can we fund the government for three months at the current level?
I mean, this was dramatic.
Or can we make sure the country doesn't default on its obligations with a debt ceiling?
And we spent months and months and months dealing with these issues of fundamental governance.
It prevented us from actually doing things that people want us to address.
But when you have a lot of people in the Congress who are really good at telling you all the things they can never do, can't get the yes, well, then we got a problem.
So at some point, people have to get the yes, at least enough of them, to at least advance the interests of the nation, whatever they may be.
All right, Charlie Dent, former Republican U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, he's a senior advisor for the group Our Republican Legacy.
You can find out more about them at ourrepublicanlegacy.com.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.
Great to be with you.
And later on, Washington Journal, Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spockowski discusses concerns about election security, the voting process, and the accuracy of this year's elections.
But up first, more of your calls and comments in Open Forum.
The numbers are on your screen.
We'll be right back.
Max Boot, in his 836-page book titled Reagan, His Life and Legend, says that his is the first definitive biography of the 40th president.
Boot suggests that Edmund Morris, president's official biographer, quote, appeared to be so flummoxed by the complexities of Reagan's character that he produced Dutch, a memoir of Ronald Reagan that was widely criticized in spite of its acute insights.
Unquote.
Max Boot also points out in his introduction, I am fortunate that Ronald Reagan's story can now be told as never before because we possess far more archival sources and far more historical perspective.
Author Max Boot with his book Reagan, His Life and Legend, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
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Washington Journal continues.
And we are back with Open Forum.
The numbers are Republicans: 202748-8001.
It's 202-74848-8000 for Democrats and 202-748-8002 for Independents.
For your schedule, later today at 7 p.m., we'll have Independent Senator Angus King facing his Republican and Democratic challengers, David Costello and Demi Kazunas, in a debate to be Maine's next U.S. Senator.
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It's also going to be on our app, C-SPANNO, and online at c-span.org.
And we will get straight to your calls and start with Diane in Maryland, a Republican.
Hi, Diane.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I agree with your guest, you know, to an extent.
I'm at the feeling now, it's like we have three parties: we have Democrat, we have Republican, and we have MEGA.
But as far as President Trump's past people, there's a long list of people that do not support him and have had nothing nice to say about him.
I mean, besides Mike Pence, Mark Mealy, there's his first Secretary of State, his first, even Nikki Haley had put stuff about him and changed her mind.
H.R. McMaster, who was the National Security Advisor.
There's a long list of people that were in the White House.
And Trump did pass an executive amendment.
Was it F Executive Order F, they were calling it, you know, about the civil servant job, which is part of this Project 2020.
Schedule.
Schedule F.
Yes.
Yes.
So, Diane, how yeah, how are you feeling about your Senate candidates?
Are you going to be voting for Larry Hogan?
I'm porn.
I really like Larry Hogan, but I'm, on the other hand, I'm concerned with giving the Senate control, you know, the Republicans control of the Senate.
I've got my ballot, I've mail-in ballot, I filled out everything except for that.
I keep teetering back and forth.
I don't care for also Brooks.
And I really like Hogan.
He did a good job when he was governor here in a Democratic state.
He was Republican for two terms, which is unusual for Republicans anywhere.
A lot of analysts are saying that it's looking like the Republicans will take control of the Senate.
Anyway, I mean, even without Maryland.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I've heard that, and they think it might flip-flop where the Democrats will get the House and the Republicans will get the Senate.
I do think whatever happens, we need a balance.
One side needs to be Democrat and one side should be Republican just to help keep things in check.
That's one of the reasons why when they did the Constitution and when they put this country together, they had, you know, they set it up so that it was hard for any one person to control things, one party.
I think they need to do things more bipartisan and work things out, not, you know, it's my way or the highway, which is the feeling I get with actually both parties have done it.
All right, let's talk to Sue in Flat Rock, Indiana, Democrat.
Hi.
I would like to say that I would never vote for a man or a woman who aligns themselves with hate groups.
Now, Donald Trump did say during a debate with President Biden to the Proud Boys, stand down and stand by.
Do you remember January the 6th, 2021, the attack on the Capitol?
In order for our government to work for all people, the states need to vote out MAGA people, House Freedom Caucus, better known as Tea Party, and any other party that does not care about gun control, women's rights, the border.
I also would like to say this message will go for the Democrats too.
It is time for the Republicans, in particular, the Republicans, to take back their party.
One last comment.
John McCain was a hero, and I don't care what Donald Trump said.
He was a hero.
Thank you for listening to me.
Andy in Lewiston, California, Independent Line.
Yes, good morning.
Refreshing.
The last caller.
Very refreshing to see some Republicans who get it.
This MAGA drive.
And Trump, who obviously is just the scum of what we have here in America.
We have a wonderful country.
Yet, we've had an individual who, through his cons and such, made it to the top and therefore has created a platform for this scum to come up.
And your guest, I commend him for his honesty and his bravery.
His fellow Republicans should take his example and get some courage.
These guys like Lindsey Graham and Marjorie Greene, who kind of represent this radical group, we really need to get them out of this country so that we can become a United States again.
All right, and we are in open forum.
If you'd like to call in, you can do so in the next, I guess, 15, 18 minutes or so.
The numbers are 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and 202748-8002 for Independents.
NBC News here has latest updates on early voting.
So here's mail-in and early in-person votes cast nationally at just over 43 million.
Of those, 42% are registered Democrats, 40% registered Republicans, and about 18% other.
Let's talk to Paul in Birmingham, Alabama, Republican.
Hi, Paul.
Hi, how are you doing?
Good.
Ma'am, here's the issue: the problem with your last guest, Chris Dent.
He and all the Republicans, and probably Charlie Dent, probably all the Democrats, almost none of them are concerned about balancing the budget.
They're just concerned about funding the government.
We need to do what we can to fund that government.
Not balance the budget.
We have $35 trillion in debt.
We have a $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit.
And most of your colleagues don't even realize this.
And most of the politicians don't even talk about it.
It was hardly been mentioned during any of the debates.
So we need to shift further to the right, become fiscally conservative, balance the budget.
That is the biggest problem we're facing right now as a nation.
Okay, and Paul, how do you recommend doing that?
We've got to cut the expenses.
We keep on growing and growing the government.
Shrink the government.
The government is not effective.
They don't provide very good services.
So shrink it.
That's what Donald Trump wants to do.
Do you think that there should still be tax cuts?
Because Trump wants to do that as well.
Let's put it this way.
Joe Biden and a lot of the leftists in the country keep on saying, pay your fair share.
The rich need to pay their fair share.
Well, unfortunately, the rich are paying almost all of the taxes.
41% of the country pays no federal income taxes.
So how is that fair?
It's a lot easier to make a case that you're not paying your fair share if you're paying zero rather than paying almost all of the federal income taxes.
All right.
And here's Tony in McNeil, Arkansas, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I have a two-part question.
The mega-Republicans, they don't understand when Trump was elected, he inherited the policies of Obama, President Obama.
Then, you know, they should ask theirself how is it that Mike Pence and George W. Bush are not endorsing Trump?
Thank you.
Let's talk to Russell, Winchester, Virginia, Independent.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning, Mimi.
Good morning, America.
I don't really care if you like Donald Trump or if you dislike Donald Trump.
To me, all you have to do is look at January 6th when you had a commander-in-chief who refused to send help when the U.S. Capitol was under assault.
This tells you the man is completely unfit for office.
I was out for a walk the other day, and we have a national cemetery here in our little town.
And I walked through there and looked at all the Civil War statues.
There was a burial place for people from Ohio, from Illinois, honorable people that stood up for the Constitution when we needed it.
And I'm asking this of the Republicans today: stop this insanity.
Vote out Trump.
Vote out the enablers.
Let's get America back on track.
Thank you.
Susan, a Republican in Stewartsville, New Jersey.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking me.
I'm looking for some insight on if you have any info about election integrity.
Over the past maybe three or four days, I'm having anxiety.
I'm hearing how a judge in Virginia is allowing, well, it's only 1,600 non-documented, I hate calling people illegal, but they're non-documented people here, the right to vote.
Now, I'm born here the way I've been taught.
You need to be 18.
You need to be a citizen.
Whether you're born here or not, you need to have proper paperwork in order to vote at our poll, at our citizens.
Susan, let me just give you a little bit of information on that Virginia case.
That is in the post.
It's on the Metro section.
It says, appeal by Virginia to purge rolls is rejected.
Fourth Circuit upholds ruling blocking removal of suspected non-citizens.
So what this is about is the governor of Virginia has started to purge the voter rolls of those suspected of being non-citizens.
The problem is that it is within 90 days of an election.
And there is a federal law that states you can't do that because it doesn't give people the opportunity to prove that that's not true or to appeal that decision.
They will be taken off the voter rolls and they will not be able to vote.
So that's kind of what's happening.
It's not that a judge is saying that it's okay for non-citizens to vote.
Does that clear things up?
A little bit.
I'm a nurse, so a lot of this is over my head.
And I just feel like where are we if we're going to allow things like this to happen?
But I'm glad you cleared it up.
And I just hope everything is peaceful and safe on November 5th.
And another thing, Susan, is we are having another segment in about 10 minutes, so don't go away, about election integrity with somebody from the Heritage Foundation.
Okay, so make sure you watch that.
Thanks for taking me.
All right.
Carrie in Maryland, Democrat.
Hi, Carrie.
Carrie, are you there?
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Good morning.
I'm Carrie.
How are you today?
Good.
Good.
I'm calling because everyone's talking about inflation and we should, but no one is speaking about the children that are being taken to these rallies.
Children who are watching television.
Their minds are being equipped with this vigoral anger, hatred.
And you want to know why they're picking up guns?
Because your leaders in the other party, which is Republican, they are doing nothing but putting hatred into the hearts and minds of these little people.
We need to be thinking about them.
And yes, this country is on the wrong track.
We are all responsible to some degree.
Check out who you're voting for all the way down the ballot.
So for me, we need to get the country back.
We're living in a great country.
Everybody should be welcome.
That's all I have to say.
And God bless all of us.
Bernie in New Carlisle, Ohio, Independent.
You're next.
Well, good beautiful morning to you, Mimi, and America.
And I always got a kick out of people saying, thank you for taking my call.
And I always feel like saying, you're welcome for dining over and over and over again so I can get in.
Anyhow, two things.
When Representative Dent was there, can you hear me?
Yes, go right ahead.
Oh, okay.
When Representative Dent was there, the topic was the future of the Republican Party.
I don't know what the future is, but I know right now I consider the Republican Party a criminal organization because of all the voter suppression things going on around our country.
The fake electors on and on and on, purging the voter rolls and letting people not know until the last minute so they can't even re-register, et cetera, et cetera.
Secondly, I have this question.
If there's anyone out there in the legal realms, prosecutors or whatever, who could tell me why Donald Trump is running around a free man with 34 felonies on his record.
Two young men who came to my home recently, both of whom had what I would call a minor felony thing happen.
Both of them spent several weeks in jail and then were released until they could go to court.
And why is Donald Trump running around the world?
I'd like to know.
And down in Florida, the judge down there who dismissed the papers case.
Ivan Cannon.
Yeah, Trump gets away with things of this nature that are just beyond the pale for him.
And last but not least, character to me is one of the number one issues of our president.
And Donald Trump's character has been one of divisiveness, been one of violence.
I can see why Lindsey Graham maybe has changed his stripes because he probably got threats.
His family probably got threats because these people are absolutely activated by Donald Trump to be violent and to threaten people.
Just look at people working in the polls that are being threatened.
It's amazing.
Thank goodness what happened to Rudy Giuliani happened, so that he's going to be a very poor man for doing what he did that threatened the lives of two poll workers in Georgia.
So I just know our country is not where it needs to be.
I made a sign for the front of my home, and it just says, it quotes Rodney King from way back in 1992.
Can't we all just get along?
Steve, an Indianapolis, Republican.
Good morning, Steve.
Good morning, Mimi.
Yeah, I've been sitting here just listening to these Democrats talk, and I really don't have any idea if they even follow anything other than stupidity.
I am just amazed at what they do and what they say.
And most of them are from California or something like that.
Well, give me an example, Steve, of what you're calling something stupid that they're saying.
Well, like, oh, we got to get rid of Trump.
He's the devil.
Whoa, Get a life.
Look at what you're backing.
You're backing the Democrats that ain't got enough sense to pour this out of a boot.
Oliver in Spokane, Washington, Democrat.
Hi, Oliver.
Yes, how are you doing?
Good.
Basically, I have three points I want to look at here.
Okay, Donald Trump and his dad were sued for not rent to minorities.
Then again, he loses universal line to people.
And so, boys, race, look at what he did to the Central Park Vibe.
Then we come again to what he said about President Barack Obama.
And look at all the racist things he's been said lately.
I'm wondering when somebody's going to quote him on this.
He said that the illegal agents is taking away the blacks and his bank jobs.
So what he's saying to the LCA worried about him taking white jobs.
He ain't worried about him taking Arab jobs, Jilipinos and Onium.
If anybody pays this man, he is racist to the court.
Not only is he passed, and that's all I want to say, but he got a vendetta against the American government.
All the money that the government sued him and his dad out of, and when he losing Trump, you know, why do you think he has charged Secret Service members more than what it costs when they stayed in his place?
The man is no good.
We need to wake up.
Thank you.
Here's Sue in Alpena, Michigan, Independent.
Good morning, Amy.
Good morning, America.
I've got a couple of things that I want to share with everybody.
You know, part of the problem with a Trump, typical Trump voter, is they attack, attack, attack.
And they get that after Trump himself.
You know, we're independent.
We can think for ourselves.
We like some of his policies.
Some of his policies we don't like, but we don't attack, attack, attack.
And even in my family, the untruths that are going around, like Trump donated $25 million to North Carolina.
And that's not the truth.
And then their defense says, well, that's your opinion.
Seems like facts don't matter at all.
And I'm talking about policy.
Now, Harris is too liberal for me because I am an independent.
But Trump's office, you know, his four years in office were not that great.
He, you know, with the deficit, it went up like crazy.
You know, it went from 14.4 to 21.6.
The murder rate rose.
The number of people that lack health insurance rose.
The trade deficit was ridiculous.
And we're giving these farmers all these subsidies.
So, you know, I don't understand.
And that was three years in his office.
And then the last year with a pandemic, that was a nightmare.
So, you know, I think that we need to talk about facts, not how stupid somebody is.
Because I didn't notice that a lot of the callers that call in, you know, it's like name calling.
Talk about policy.
You know, that's what we want.
Got it, Sue.
And also for your schedule, coming up in about 45 minutes right after this program here on C-SPAN, you'll hear from Doug Emhoff.
He's currently the second gentleman.
And the co-authors of the book, Remember the First Ladies, will discuss the possibility of Mr. M. Hoff becoming the first First Gentleman.
And that event is hosted by American University.
And you'll see that live right after this program.
And here's Paul in Naples, Florida, Republican.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm calling in.
I've listened to some of the people, you know, discussing what their ideas are and everything.
And don't get me wrong, I got relatives in Ohio and California, and they've been there since the 50s and 40s.
So, I mean, my parents moved here to Naples back in the 60s.
And, you know, things have gradually progressed with more wealth, people buying property and doing stuff.
But, you know, with a lot of these people that do have businesses and they go ahead and supply more jobs because if they can get tax breaks, they can build their businesses bigger, hire more people to have jobs.
I'm just not for all these jobs being given to immigrants.
All these jobs are being filled by people that aren't American residents.
I mean, you know, it's kind of like we're backing up.
Everything is given to them.
You know, it's, I don't see how we're going forward with this, you know.
And you know, the other thing, if you came down the escalator back when you back when Donald Trump came down, they were going after him before.
And that's all it's been for the last eight years.
They've been going after this guy.
They didn't go after Joe Biden when all the facts were there.
I mean, and conspiracies actually turned out to be true with the guy, you know.
So, you know, we all do well to help other countries.
And I always used to hear my parents say, they used to say stuff like, you know, we help all these other countries, but what do they do for us?
My parents are gone.
They've passed on.
And I always used to hear them as a young kid.
I'm going to be 60.
And I hear these people saying this, that we help all these other countries.
And then none of these other countries help us.
But yet we're supposed to, you know, endure, you know, all the debt of everybody else.
Got it.
Richard in Millsboro, Delaware.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
I just wanted to say that I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I'm voting for Harris.
I think that character is a big issue with the Office of the President, especially.
It sets an example for the rest of the country.
And, you know, I think that there's no question that Harris has won the contest, hands down in that regard.
And Donald Trump has been a kind man and a crook for his entire career, frankly.
I just don't see how he can possibly avoid being tagged with that kind of reputation.
All right, Richard.
And up next, here on Washington Journal, the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky discusses concerns about election security, the voting process, and the accuracy of this year's elections.
Stay with us.
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Washington Journal continues.
And joining us now to talk about Campaign 2024 and election integrity is Hans von Spokowski.
He is Initiative Manager and Senior Legal Fellow for Election Law Reform at the Heritage Foundation.
Welcome to the program.
Mamie, thanks for having me.
So it's been four years since the 2020 election.
To what degree do you think that elections are more accurate and secure?
Generally, overall, we're in better shape than we were in 2020.
And one of the good things that came out of that election was it made a lot of state legislators realize that there were vulnerabilities in the system they ought to fix.
And so there were a series of reforms passed in many states.
And a number of states improved the security and integrity of their election process.
No, about 43 million people have voted already for early either mail-in or in person.
Do you support that?
Do you support the ability for there to be early voting?
I support the ability of early voting.
just think it shouldn't extend too far before the election you know I think so how much Yeah.
Yeah, I think the maximum ought to be about two weeks.
Polling actually shows that a majority of Americans agree with that.
They like early voting.
They don't think it should happen two months before the election, before debates have occurred, before some of the news that sometimes comes out right before Election Day.
So yeah, early voting is not a problem.
Are there states two months before?
Well, the longest is about 45 days.
That's about a month and a half.
Yeah, about a month and a half.
I caution people about voting through the mail.
Yeah, that's a very convenient way to vote.
But given the fact that just about a month and a half ago, the two leading organizations for election officials in the country, bipartisans, the National Association of Secretaries of State, National Association of State Election Directors, they actually wrote a joint letter to the Postal Service complaining about the mishandling of absentee ballots, election-related mail, during the primary season.
And their biggest complaint was delays in the delivery of the mail such that absentee ballots got in too late to be counted.
So what I would urge people to do is if you want to vote before the election, vote early in person.
You know, that's the best way of guaranteeing your vote is going to count.
If you have to vote with an absentee ballot because you're too physically disabled to make it in, be sure you do it very early and check with election officials before Election Day to make sure they've actually received it.
And do you think that it should be counted based on the postmark or based on when it's received?
No, I think it's a mistake for states to allow ballots to come in after Election Day.
The rule traditionally always was the absentee ballot has to be in the hands of election officials on Election Day.
I think there are many good, wise policy reasons to keep that rule in place.
Now, the Heritage Foundation has a website with a database set up.
It's called The Sampling of Recent Election Fraud Cases from Across the United States, and it's got some numbers here.
For instance, 1,561 proven instances of voter fraud, 1325 criminal convictions, there's civil penalties.
Explain these numbers.
Explain the data behind them based over what time period and how many votes.
That's about 20 years.
But remember, it's not a comprehensive list.
You know, it's a sampling of cases.
Oftentimes, prosecutions aren't necessarily reported if it's a local county DA doing that.
And it's hard to keep track of what's happening in the 3,000 counties across the country.
So this includes local as well as state and federal?
That's right.
Now, we don't put a case into the database unless it is a proven case.
So there's no, he said, she said, claims in there.
It's only if someone has been convicted in a court of law, a judge has ordered a new election, or perhaps there's been an official finding, as you may recall, happened in 2018 in North Carolina when the State Board of Elections there overturned a congressional race because of absentee ballot fraud.
But remember, this also doesn't catch cases where prosecutors don't prosecute.
And I can cite you many instances, including my own personal experience as an election official at a county level, of criminal referrals to DAs that they just didn't do anything about.
And if you'd like to join our conversation with our guest, Hans von Spikowski of the Heritage Foundation, you can do that.
Our lines are Republicans 202748-8001, Democrats 202748, 8000, and Independents 202748-8002.
You can start calling in now.
To what extent do you think non-citizen voting is taking place, and what evidence can you cite?
We don't know the extent of the problem.
We do know there are various surveys that have been done in which individuals admit that they are not a citizen and that they are registered to vote or been voting.
Just recently, a number of states have been checking finally their DMV records.
So these are individuals who self-identified as the fact that they were not U.S. citizens when they went to get a driver's license.
Texas has removed about 6,500.
Virginia, about 6,300.
Over the weekend, Iowa reported about 2,000 suspected aliens on the voter rolls.
Alabama, over 3,000.
So the numbers, after a while, start building up.
In Virginia, actually, since 2014, they've removed about 11,000 aliens from the voter rolls.
Now, folks may think that's not a large number in a state with several million registered voters.
But keep in mind in Virginia, for example, within the last decade and a half, they've had two Attorney General's races decided by less than 1,000 votes.
And just a couple of years ago, control of the state house came down to one race because the two parties were evenly divided and it was a tied election.
Well, let's talk about that Virginia case.
This is from the Justice Department.
It says that the DOJ sues Virginia for violating federal law's prohibition on systematic efforts to remove voters within 90 days of an election.
Now, these are voters that are being removed on suspected that they are non-citizens.
And what the federal law states is that it's too close to an election, and people can't appeal that decision or prove that they are, in fact, eligible to vote in time to vote.
Well, that's your take on that.
That's not correct.
First of all, the court in that case is misinterpreting that federal law.
It's the National Voter Registration Act, which I was responsible for enforcing when I worked at the Justice Department.
That 90-day provision applies to individuals who were eligible to register when they registered.
How can you then take them off the rolls if they become ineligible?
The judge is misapplying it because it does not apply to an alien who was never eligible, not only not eligible to register in the first place, but in fact, by registering to vote, that individual was committing a felony under federal law.
And the idea that someone would not be able to vote if, for example, the state made a mistake.
And remember, these are individuals who self-identified as not being U.S. citizens when they went to get their driver's license.
Under the provisional balloting requirement of the Help America Vote Act, if you show up at a polling place, it doesn't matter whether what the reason is that you've been deleted from the voter registration roll.
If you show up and you assert that you are an eligible voter and that you were registered to vote, they have to provide you with a provisional ballot.
You vote it, and after Election Day, election officials then investigate.
And if they've made a mistake, your ballot gets counted.
So there is an opportunity for individuals to correct a mistake, and they still will be able to vote.
They won't be disenfranchised.
But the point here is, judge made an error.
That 90-day provision does not apply to aliens.
All right, and let's talk to callers now.
Jim is up first, a Democrat in Illinois.
Good morning, Jim.
Yes, good morning.
I just have a question.
Do you believe the 2020 election was legit Biden winning?
Well, that election is over with.
Joe Biden was declared the winner.
There's no point now in going back to that.
My concern is the upcoming election and future elections and making sure that every voter, I don't care which party they affiliate with, who's eligible is able to vote and that their votes are not voided, for example, by people who are not U.S. citizens registering and voting.
I mean, I think given that you are very concerned with election integrity, to say the 2020 vote was fair and free and the results were accurate, are you not able to say that?
I'm saying that the election was decided.
There were problems.
There were problems in some states that I don't think were properly taken care of.
But overall, the election went through the way it was supposed to, and we had a winner.
And anyone who goes back now arguing about that, you're wasting your time.
What you should be concerned with is making sure that our current laws and regulations are the best that they can be to make sure every eligible individual is able to vote and do so in an honest election.
Gordon in Chesapeake, Virginia, Republican, good morning.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to get a comment from your guest on the recent Pennsylvania ruling where they are no longer, at least I believe they're no longer verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.
Well, actually, I'm not sure that's correct.
They are supposed to be verifying signatures, and the court there, the state Supreme Court, also said that people have to comply with both the signature requirement and the date requirement on absentee ballots.
I should mention something that just happened, which is that one of the counties there, Lancaster County, just reported last week that they had gotten over 2,000 very suspicious voter registrations, which they believe were fraudulent, and that's something they are investigating, which is a good thing that they caught it.
But I worry about incidents like that.
Here is James in Atlanta, Independent.
Hi, James.
Hey, I agree.
We shouldn't go back to former elections.
They should look forward.
One of the things former President Trump has said is if he loses this election, it means the election was rigged.
I want to get your thoughts on that.
I'm sorry, the question is: what was it?
That former President Trump had said if he loses, then the election was rigged.
And he wants your thoughts.
Well, my thoughts are that I will wait and see what happens on Election Day and look at the evidence that comes out over whether or not there are problems and whether any claims of problems, whether there's credible evidence to support them.
And let's talk to Bob in Procterville, Ohio, Republican.
Good morning.
Morning.
My name is Bob, and I'm a Republican, but generally I vote for the person based on what I feel their policies are and not so much the rhetoric that I hear in the campaigns.
And, you know, regardless of who you're voting for, what I would wish we could have in this day and age is that each candidate be responsible to talk about what they want to do only and not what the other person wants to do so we can stop this name-calling.
Because I think the name-calling, whether it's true or not, influences people without any proof of what they're saying is even true.
But I like your show, but I've seen I hear a lot of callers that are calling and they're just so biased.
You know, my goal for America is we all come together, we unite our differences, and work it out.
We give in.
Let's get a reaction, Bob.
Oh, look, I agree with that.
I mean, I think I would like to see candidates dealing with substantive issues.
You know, what are their solutions to the many problems we face?
What are they going to do about it?
But look, folks, folks who hope that we're not going to have the kind of attacks and name-calling.
Unfortunately, that's been going on since we became a country.
If you look at the early presidential elections in this country and the kind of attacks that were being mounted by Jefferson, Adams, and many other candidates on each other, our election today sometimes seems clean in comparison to that.
So we have a long history of it.
It's unfortunate.
And I wish, in fact, we could really stick to the issues.
And that's the way campaigns were waged.
But it's never really happened that way.
I'm not sure it ever will.
Here's a Democrat in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Gene, you're on.
Oh, yes.
I was calling because there's so much heretic, all this stuff going on.
I've never seen it all days of my life.
They're just fighting against each other.
It's not right.
God, I don't like this other.
I look at how they just calling, like you said, name each other.
If you're going to be a representative, someone they need to learn how to represent it right.
People get confused.
They don't know who to hell because there's so much stuff going on.
I never seen nothing like this all days in my life.
And I pray, I pray to God that God will get the right one to fit in there.
And that's all I got to say.
Hans, there's a video going around social media about somebody opening up ballots in Pennsylvania and ripping them up.
That it is not true.
It is fabricated.
Our intelligence agencies have said that this is from Russia.
Senator JD Vance was asked about it on CBS, and he essentially dismissed taking action against Russia for that, saying, quote, that's what they do.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, he's right about that's what they do.
I mean, the Russians, since the Cold War, have done whatever they can to interfere in our elections.
There are many instances of that happening during that time, even during the Reagan elections.
The difference is that today, technology makes that even easier if and when we can actually find and indict individuals for that, as happened recently.
As you know, the Justice Department recently filed indictments against several Russians who were masquerading as Belgian bankers.
If we can indict them and go after them, fine.
But the problem is when you have hackers working in places like China and Russia, unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do about it.
And here is Frank in Chatham, New Jersey, Republican.
Yes, good morning, Mimi.
Thank you.
Thank you, Hans, for having the facts on the matter with the voter rolls there in Virginia.
The media can just switch one word like they planted in there, suspected, which changes the whole outlook.
So I'm glad that you pointed that out.
And then I do agree with a lot of the calls this morning that we do have to unite as a country, all Americans, but it's very difficult when one party is calling another candidate Hitler and that he's a con man and a crook when there's no facts behind that because they've been investigating for 10 years.
He would be in jail already, but he's not.
So I just appreciate the facts coming out, and I wish everybody would do more due diligence.
Thank you, Hans.
Thank you.
Well, my reaction to that is to, I'm tired of hearing this word fascist, okay?
It is an insult to the people who actually suffered under real fascism, like my mother, who grew up in Nazi Germany.
And if you want to disagree with a candidate on the issues, if you think what they're proposing is really bad, that's fine.
But those kind of labels are historically wrong.
They're historically inaccurate.
And frankly, I think they're actually kind of insulting to the intelligence of the American public.
And I frankly wish that that kind of thing would stop.
What's your reaction to General Kelly's remarks that Trump was praising Hitler and saying positive things about him?
Well, I frankly don't believe that.
There's been a lot of things that have come out from people who they all come out at the last moment, all of a sudden now, right before the election, and there's no way to actually verify or confirm or check any of that.
That's a hard to believe.
Recently on this program, we had Ken Block, who was hired to investigate voter fraud claims for the Trump administration.
He wrote a book about it, and here is a portion, and then I'll get your response.
There's reporting this morning in the Washington Times that the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxon is asking the Homeland Security Department to verify the citizenship status of more than 450,000 names on the state's voter roll saying that while the vast majority are likely eligible to vote, he wants to weed out those who aren't.
How difficult is that type of request?
It's incredibly difficult.
The only database that potentially could be used to help identify someone who is not here legally is owned by the Department of Homeland Security.
But you still have a problem with names and dates of birth and how do you know for sure that it's the same person.
It's very challenging to identify a unique individual in a database of names and dates of birth.
I have yet to see any hard evidence that there are lots of votes being cast by people not here legally.
I think that the Attorney General is engaging in some political theater.
And look, there's nothing illegal about engaging in political theater.
However, when that theater causes people to seriously doubt the outcome of elections, that's where we have to sort of take a step backwards and soberly look at what the claims are.
Well, he's right about that.
It's very difficult to verify citizenship of registered voters.
That's in fact why Texas and Florida have both sued the Department of Homeland Security because DHS is refusing a requirement of federal law.
Federal law says they have to provide access to their database to state officials and they're not doing it.
The biggest issue here, this could all be resolved easily if states were allowed to put in requirements to provide proof of citizenship when you register to vote.
As you know, there was a federal bill to do that recently, debated in Congress, the SAVE Act, and on a party-line basis, it was stopped.
It passed the House.
There's no way it'll get a vote in the Senate.
And that would easily solve this problem.
And what are the ways that you can prove that you're a citizen?
Well, for example, a number of years ago, Kansas proposed a statute on this.
They had a dozen different ways to do it.
Everything from passports to birth certificates to school records.
There were a whole series of documents you could use to do it.
And they put a school record will show that you're certain kinds of school records, yes.
And then they put in an administrative grandfather clause at the end so that you could get, if you needed, an administrative hearing if you were unable to meet any of the many different ways to do it.
It's no different from the fact that in many states now you have to show an ID to vote.
That's a good requirement.
And all the claims that were made that ID requirements would prevent people from voting have been disproven.
It's not true.
And the same would happen with requiring proof of citizenship.
Here's Rose, who's calling from Herndon, Virginia, Independent Line.
Hi, Rose.
Good morning.
So your guest states that the Fourth Circuit ruling misinterprets the law and claims that the individuals in question who were removed from the rolls illegally registered to vote.
However, isn't it possible that the individuals in question obtained driver's licenses before becoming citizens?
My knowledge is that when you become a U.S. citizen, one of the common things you do after that is you register to vote.
And often people becoming citizens hold much more sanctity in that process to those of us who are born in the United States.
And therefore, if that is the case and the people are legally registered to vote, then wouldn't that 90, then wouldn't the Fourth Circuit's decision be proper interpretation of the law?
Well, the point is that the 90-day provision doesn't apply to this situation.
But second, my understanding is that Virginia is basing this on individuals who, when they went and got their Virginia driver's license, they self-identified as being not a U.S. citizen, but registered to vote despite that.
That was a felony violation of both state law and federal law.
Hans, explain that, because what Rose was asking was: if you got your driver's license, you were not a citizen.
You check the box, I'm not a citizen.
Right.
Then you became a citizen and then registered to vote.
Isn't that possible?
That is, but that's not what's going on here.
My understanding in the Virginia situation is that these were people who registered to vote at the same time they got their driver's license.
And look, if that's the case, if they didn't register to vote until after they became a U.S. citizen, well, then they don't have a problem.
And they can easily resolve or remedy any question that they may get because they have their naturalization papers and they can easily show they are a U.S. citizen, just like my parents were able to do.
And they would do that at the polls?
Or, I mean, would they have a certain amount of time?
They're going to get notification from election officials.
Look, can I give you an actual example of this?
Sure.
Look, 10 years ago, I was on the election board of Fairfax County, Virginia, largest county in the state.
We checked DMV records and we found almost 300 individuals who were registered to vote, even though at the time they registered and got their driver's license, they presented documentation.
They were not U.S. citizens.
About half of them had actually voted in the elections.
We didn't just take them off the rolls.
We investigated every single case, contacted every single voter to confirm that, in fact, they were not U.S. citizens, and we got confirmation.
So we took them off the rolls, the almost 300 aliens.
But this also illustrates another problem.
We also sent their files to the local DA and to the U.S. Justice Department for investigation and possible prosecution because they had illegally registered, and about half of them had illegally voted.
Neither the local DA nor the U.S. Justice Department did anything about it.
Elise in New York, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I would just like to say that it is clear that this interview is causing a lot of anxiety and fear of voter fraud that does not exist.
There are steep penalties, which include deportation, confinement to prison sentences for a person to vote who is not a citizen.
And I doubt that people will seriously risk their freedom and deportation in order to vote in an election.
The numbers are so small.
Most of these theories have been debunked.
This person who's being interviewed, he has been denied a placement several times with the FDC because of his partisanship and the fact that he is purposely trying to mislead the population on an area that does not exist.
It's so minimal, the numbers involved in this alleged voter fraud.
It's just.
All right, Elise, we'll get a response.
Well, my response is there's a great new website at the Public Interest Legal Foundation in which they are detailing elections across the country, recent elections that were decided either in a tied vote or one vote.
So unfortunately, it doesn't take a lot of fraud to make the difference.
I'm not saying and have never said we have massive fraud in the United States.
But we do have enough fraud that we should be concerned about it.
And again, if you doubt that, one, look at our election fraud database, or second, look at some recent elections.
A election in Texas, a judicial election, was just overturned by a judge.
A million votes were cast.
The winner, the winning margin was less than 500 votes.
The judge overturned it after finding 1,400 illegal votes, including over 1,000 people who registered to vote as if they lived in that district but didn't actually live there.
And that, in fact, shows the problem here.
As the Supreme Court said back in 2008 when it upheld Indiana's voter ID law, fraud can make the difference in a close election and we have close elections all the time.
And that is the issue when we have close elections, even a little bit of fraud can make a difference.
We have a question for you on Project 2025 from Steve on X, who says, to which chapter or chapters in Project 2025 did your guests contribute or get credited as an author of?
Sure.
Well, for folks who don't know what Project 2025 is, although given the publicity, they probably do, the Heritage Foundation, once again, put together a policy book called Mandate for Leadership.
First time we did this was 40 years ago when Ronald Reagan was elected.
And it's 900 pages, and there's a chapter on every major government agency and department, Department of Defense, Justice, et cetera.
It outlines the reforms that are needed in those departments and how they can and should be run.
I wrote the chapter on the Federal Election Commission because I was a commissioner there for two years.
And in fact, we gathered together individuals who had worked in multiple prior administrations because we wanted people who had worked in those departments who knew how those departments work to write the chapters.
So I wrote the chapter about the FEC, the Federal Election Commission.
That's the independent agency that enforces our federal laws on the raising and spending of money in federal campaigns.
So that's the organization that right now, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are filing all the reports with on how much money they are raising and spending in this presidential election.
And let's talk to Michael in Michigan, a Republican.
Hi, Michael.
Hi, how are you doing today?
Good.
I got a question for Hans.
I was wondering if he had done any investigation into the Jocelyn Benson here in the Secretary of State of Michigan that has all these people on the voter rolls that know they're not supposed to be on the voter rolls, but she refuses to take them off of the voter rolls until after the election.
So these people are on there.
Thumb on their votes.
It's the same Jocelyn Benson that sent everybody in the state of Michigan the last election a ballot to their house, whether they were dead or alive or what.
Everybody got a ballot.
Now I was wondering if he knew anything about that.
Well, I have to say I know a lot about Jocelyn Benson and I know, for example, that for the last five years she has been the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
They actually did an intense audit and scrutiny of the voter rolls in Michigan and they found and confirmed 26,000 individuals who were decedents but were still on the rolls and they sent that information to Jocelyn Benson.
She didn't contest the validity of the information but she refused to take these individuals off and off the rolls and she's been fighting that ever since.
So that's an unfortunate comment on the quality of her leadership as a Secretary of State in Michigan.
Typically, Hans, how do people that have died get off the rolls?
Well, the best thing that states ought to be doing is one, they need to be constantly checking their own state department's Department of Vital Records, right?
Because the Department of Vital Records records the deaths of everyone in your state.
But the problem is people move out of the state, they may die elsewhere, and you're not going to have that record in your state's department's records.
For that, you've got to go to the Social Security Administration.
They have a master death index in which they record deaths from across the country.
You've got to be checking both of those databases regularly to find people who are decedents.
And if you don't do that, then you're going to unfortunately leave people who have died on the voter rolls, which is what's happened in Michigan.
And does that happen in, I mean, how many states is that happening in?
Well, it depends on the states.
Look, one of the issues that everybody, I think, needs to understand is that the situation is different in every state across the country.
States are responsible for maintaining and administering elections.
And so the quality of how they do it varies greatly across the nation.
For folks who are interested in this particular issue, three years ago at the Heritage Foundation, we launched an election integrity scorecard.
So it actually rates every single state, and it's based on 50 best practices criteria.
So if you want to know what the status is of your state, you can go to our map, you can pull up that state, and it'll present our complete analysis.
And that includes, for example, do they check and verify information with the Social Security Administration?
Let's talk to Tina in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Independent.
Hi, Tina.
Hi, good morning.
I've got three questions for your presenter.
First, you talked about a North Carolina case that was fraud.
Was that Republican or Democrat?
Did Mark Meadows, is he allowed to vote?
Because he committed voter fraud by voting in two states.
And here in our state, Mike Rogers is not even, he doesn't live here.
So the voter fraud seems to very much be coming more from Republicans than Democrats.
Thank you.
What do you think?
Well, that's actually not true.
Unfortunately, election fraud is a bipartisan effort.
If you look at our database, you will find both Republicans and Democrats who've been convicted of committing election fraud.
And look, often you'll find in these cases, it's not one party stealing from another, but many of these cases involve primary elections when people within the same party were stealing votes from other individuals in their own party.
So this is not a one-sided affair.
It's something that unfortunately people who are interested in winning elections or gaming the system will engage in regardless of their party affiliation.
She asked about Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff voting in two states.
Do you know anything about that?
I don't know the details of that case.
I will say, though, that if you look at our database, you will find convictions for individuals who illegally registered and voted in more than one state.
Kenneth in Arkansas, Democrat, good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I have a comment to make here.
First of all, I'm looking at this gentleman here.
See, attorneys are schooled to argue both sides of a case.
And what this man has just said, that he didn't believe that the chief of staff said certain things about Mr. Trump.
And Mr. Trump said these things.
That general did not allow Mr. Trump.
And this man has the nerve to come on national TV and say that he does not believe the chief of staff.
He lost all credibility.
But let me show you one other thing.
The Heritage Foundation submitted those judges for the Supreme Court.
And they testified before Congress and said they would not touch Roe.
And they lied under oath.
Now, what is he going to do about that?
I want to know.
Is that, or is he thinking about that other organization that can't come to me?
Does Heritage get involved in recommending judges for the Supreme Court?
Well, we were asked for recommendations, and we published a list.
Okay, we did not do something privately.
We very publicly came up with a list of people that we recommended that we thought would be good judges, not on a political basis, because we don't want judges that rule based on their politics and whatever their political objectives are.
We want judges who uphold the Constitution and apply the rule of law, even if the results politically people may not like.
If they don't like the results politically, well, the answer to that is then legislative action.
You know, if you don't like a particular law, don't ask a court to overturn it unless that law is unconstitutional.
If you don't like particular law, then go to the legislature and get them to change it, amend it, repeal it.
And that's the kind of judges that we think ought to be in the federal courts.
Maverick on X is asking you to comment on the fake elector scheme.
And isn't that a form of voter fraud?
Absolutely not.
It wasn't fake electors.
It was contingent electors.
And in fact, there was nothing illegal about that.
There was nothing criminal about that.
The contingent electors were set up in case either a state legislature or a court found that the election had been wrongly decided.
And if you believe that that was criminally illegal, well, then John F. Kennedy should have been prosecuted in 1960.
Because in 1960, there was a dispute over who had won Hawaii.
Initially, Nixon was declared the winner by the governor.
A lawsuit was filed by the Kennedy campaign.
They set up alternate contingent electors in case the court ruled in their favor.
And in fact, that happened and eventually it was changed.
And Hawaii was certified for Kennedy.
They had to set up contingent electors.
Why?
Because the electors are mandated by law to meet in December and cast their votes.
And if they aren't available and ready to vote at that meeting, well, then there's nothing you can do about it.
So that is not an illegal scheme.
It's been done before, and no one considered it a criminal violation of the law.
Fran in Alabama, Republican, you're next.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My question to Hans is this.
Was it a crime or illegal or to be investigated about the former President Trump who asked the Georgia Secretary of State to give him over 11,000 votes?
Well, I've actually read the transcript of the phone call and it has not been reported correctly.
If you read what was actually said in that phone call, the president obviously believed that there were ballots that had been counted from ineligible voters, individuals who were not entitled to vote, and that there were ballots that had not been counted but that had been cast by individuals who were eligible.
And he wasn't telling Brad Raffensburger, the Secretary of State, to come up with fake or fraudulent votes.
What he was asking him to do was to deal with that issue.
Ballots that he thought should not have been counted because the voters who cast them were ineligible and ballots, ballots that were counted, but ballots that were not counted from eligible voters.
So he wasn't urging any kind of illegal action by the Secretary of State.
And just to follow up on Mark Meadows, here's what we were able to find on that, that North Carolina officials did not charge Mark Meadows with voter fraud.
That's from about two years ago.
It says that the investigation began after the New Yorker magazine reported that Mark Meadows, former Republican congressman from North Carolina, registered to vote weeks before the 2020 election at a mobile home in Macon County where he had allegedly never lived or even visited.
The article quoted the unnamed former owner of the property as saying that Meadows had never visited or spent a night in there and that his wife reserved the house for two months at some point within the past few years, but only spent one or two nights there.
That's what's going on with Mark Meadows.
And here's Bobby in Franklin, Massachusetts, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm a little concerned with Hans being somebody that we're looking to for advice.
I mean, he's obviously biased, and that concerns me because he's saying that there's a real concern about voter fraud when, and he says it can be Googled or looked up when the fact of the matter is, if you do look it up, it's very rare and almost never has happened.
He's from the Heritage Foundation, which also shows that he is biased.
I mean, his comments about fascism, that's biased because it is fascism when you're spewing hate rhetoric constantly towards your opponents, threatening to lock everybody up, getting revenge.
How can that not be considered fascism?
Okay, we'll get our response, Bobby.
Well, my mother grew up under fascism, so I think I know what it means.
And it means a dictatorship type government that completely controls your lives, has a secret police that will go after you, a justice system that will prosecute you for being a political opponent.
That is not the situation we have in this country today.
And anyone who makes that claim is just wrong about that.
As for the other, you know, it wasn't really a question, comments, you know, those kind of personal attacks, that's one of the problems we have in this country today, is that we can't seem to have disagreements about substantive issues on a civil basis.
Instead, you have to go after the other person personally, you know, insulting them, calling them names, saying that they are evil, terrible persons.
I don't say that about my opponents on issues.
I think they're misguided.
I think they have the wrong policy ideas.
But if we could get back to substantive issues, such as how to make sure we have fair, honest elections for everyone, we would be much better off in this country.
What do you make of Mr. Trump's comments on the enemy from within and then naming prominent Democrats as that enemy?
That's the kind of rhetoric we've heard for years in our political campaigns.
You don't think he's being serious?
I think someone just did an article about how, for example, Republican presidents have been called fascists the last like five or six.
That's just part of the unfortunate rhetoric that we have in political campaigns these days.
Here's Rob in Chicago, Independent.
Hi, Rob.
Hi, Ralph.
Yes.
Why are we using computerized voting machines when there are vulnerabilities and they could be compromised?
Well, I will tell you that my recommendations to states is to use Opti-scan paper ballots.
You know, that's the best way for people to vote.
As you know, those are paper ballots.
You fill in the bubble next to the person's name.
It's just like a SAT type test.
Now, you then run it through a computer scanner before it drops into the ballot box.
The advantage of that is that you have the speed of a computer counting the ballot.
But if any questions arise about the computer software used or anything like that, what have you got?
You have the paper ballots.
They can be hand counted.
You can make sure that that count agrees with what the scanner said when it counted the votes.
That way you've got an audit trail.
And that, to me, is the best way of conducting an election.
And David, Pauling in New York, Independent Line.
Hi, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I would just like to ask your guests if Donald Trump has denied many times having knowledge of Project 2025.
I'm wondering, is that possible, being his name is mentioned all over that thing?
I've read a bunch of it, and it's scary.
I don't believe it's fascist, but I think this is knocking on the door of it.
It's the way it impresses me.
Thank you.
I'll take my message off the air.
All right.
Donald Trump had nothing to do with putting together Project 2025, which is simply a 900-page policy manual.
Like I said, the first time we ever did this was when Ronald Reagan was elected.