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Good morning.
It's Sunday, November 10th, 2024.
President-elect Donald Trump has won the state of Arizona, solidifying his Electoral College lead with 312 votes.
President Biden is promising a peaceful transfer of power and is scheduled to meet with the president-elect in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
It's unclear, though, what will happen with former President Trump's many outstanding legal cases, and some are suggesting that President Biden should pardon him.
We want to hear your perspective this morning.
Should Biden pardon Trump?
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans at 202-748-8001.
Independents can reach us at 202-748-8002.
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Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
And if you'd like to connect with us on social media, that's facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
Now, one of those calls for President Biden to pardon President-elect Donald Trump is coming from the National Review.
Here's an article here.
Biden should pardon Trump by Mark Antonio Wright.
It says, first here, highlighting this was written the day after the election, that Biden should invite Trump to the Oval Office for the traditional visit, which Biden has done, but then goes on to say, Biden should then move to use his constitutional authority to pardon Donald Trump of all pending federal charges and relieve special counsel Jack Smith of his duties.
He should then ask New York Governor Kathy Hochul to use her authority to pardon Trump for the crimes he was convicted of in New York State.
A bit more from that article.
Wise or not, a majority of the public chose to re-elect Donald Trump as the next President of the United States.
He deserves to enter that term in January 2025 with a slate wiped clean of the controversies of the previous era.
No good at all will come of an American president fulfilling his constitutional duties at home and abroad under the cloud of pending criminal prosecutions.
No good whatsoever will come of Trump himself ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges or by crossing the Rubicon in American life of self-pardoning.
Joe Biden has not often spent his time in office acting much like a statesman, but a pardon now of Donald Trump would be statesmanlike.
And such an act would go a long way towards ending the cycle of lawfare that, if left unchecked, will cause more harm and more damage to the body politic.
Now, White House Press Secretary Corinne Jean-Pierre was asked on Thursday about potential pardons in the last days of the administration, including pardons for not Trump, but Hunter Biden.
Does the president intend to pardon any administration officials or people that Trump has threatened with any sort of legal actions?
He's got 74 days, as you mentioned.
Yeah, I know pardons is going to be a big part of the questions that I get here over the next several weeks and a couple of months that we have.
I don't have anything to share or any thought process on pardons.
Once we have something to share, we certainly will share that.
Secondly, his son Hunter is also up for being sentenced next month.
Does the president have any intention of pardoning him?
We've been asked that question multiple times.
Our answer stands, which is no.
A bit more from that article in the National Review calling for President Biden to pardon former President Trump.
Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is the precedent here, and it's a good one.
Ford's presidential proclamation 4311 delivered in September 1974 was politically unpopular at the time.
It enraged Nixon's enemies, but it was the right thing to do.
Ford's pardon put a bandage on a festering national wound and closed the door on a regrettable era in our politics.
Donald Trump should accept such a pardon if offered by Joe Biden.
Trump should then find a way to, at least rhetorically, extend an olive branch to the outgoing president.
Now, here's a portion of President Ford's speech to the nation in September of 1974 on his decision to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon.
I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station.
The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons, but the law is a respecter of reality.
The facts, as I see them, are that a former president of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law,
would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society.
During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused, and our people would again be polarized in their opinions.
And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.
In the end, the courts might well hold that Richard Nixon had been denied due process, and the verdict of history would even more be inconclusive with respect to those charges arising out of the period of his presidency, of which I am presently aware.
But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles every decent and every compassionate person.
My concern is the immediate future of this great country.
Now, to your comments on whether or not Biden should pardon Trump.
On Facebook, Matthew Crowley says, Agree.
It's the will of the people and it's a smart move politically for Democrats.
The more they prosecute Trump, the more support he gets.
And then Magic MAGA says, What crimes did he do again that he needs a pardon for?
The way I see it, the Democrats need a pardon for falsifying charges against him.
Let's go to your calls now.
Vincent is in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Vincent.
Yes, good morning.
It's getting more difficult for me to watch and observe C-SPAN.
You folks and CNN, ABC, CBS, et cetera, first of all, you don't go straight to the call.
Vincent, do you have an idea of whether or not Biden should pardon Trump?
There is no, he doesn't need Biden doesn't need to pardon Trump because Trump's cases have already been thrown out.
And they held these cases.
They charged him two years ago with these bogus cases, and they have been thrown out.
He doesn't have to be able to do it.
What about his felony convictions?
Do you think Biden should pardon him for those?
Excuse me.
That's what when I say cases, I'm talking about the felony.
34 had been thrown out along with the vote of rogue tearing Jack Smith.
Okay.
And Jack Smith.
I think that's accurate, though.
Let's go to Mike in Montana on our line for independence.
Good morning, Mike.
Good morning, Kimberly.
Yes, you know, Biden can pardon Trump, and then Trump can pardon Biden.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Trump didn't do anything wrong.
He is probably one of the most perfect presidents we've ever had.
And that wouldn't be justice.
I think justice would be, you know, let's go, JC, justice and clawback.
I think justice would be to not pardon, but to prosecute people like Fauci and the Como brothers, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler.
And then I think we need a clawback.
I want to get back for real justice.
Let's get back all the stimulus money that was printed.
Let's get rid of the IRS because if we can print as much money as we want, why do we need the IRS?
Ridiculous.
It's only a tool of power.
Let's get rid of the IRS.
Let's claw back all the insider trading for Nancy Pelosi's squeaky clean group.
Remember, she said that her Congress is going to be the most squeaky clean Congress.
So, Mike, I want to hear a couple more folks' perspectives on whether or not Biden should pardon Trump.
So, let's hear from Tyrone in New York on our line for Democrats.
Tyrone, do you think that Biden should pardon Trump?
Tyrone, are you there?
Yes, I'm here.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Hello?
Yes.
No, they shouldn't pardon him, mainly because the Democratic Party needs to grow a spine.
You just have five instances where these people are saying it don't matter if he gives them a pardon.
Some of these people want to see us grind to dust.
They don't want us to exist.
But this mindset, you want to pardon this guy, the same guy that had this same type of ideology, whereas they want to get rid of the Democratic Party.
They don't want us to exist.
And if he pardons him, it's not going to settle anything.
It's only going to embolden these people to do worse.
They don't appreciate somebody that had good intention and want to see this country move forward.
Okay.
Let's hear from Rob in Escamba, Michigan on our line for independence.
Good morning, Rob.
Good morning.
On the subject at hand, yes, Biden should definitely issue a pardon.
I was a Trump supporter, but I think he ought to issue a pardon.
It establishes three things.
It becomes Biden's legacy.
He won't be remembered for anything else.
He'll look magnanimous in saying, let's bring the country back together.
Let's start healing.
The second thing it accomplishes is Trump, according to a legal friend of mine, Trump remains a felon.
He's a convicted felon, but who received a pardon.
The appeals process ends.
He can no longer challenge his convictions.
And the third thing is Biden can thumb his nose at the DNC.
But the argument is that, gee, he replaced the only person that ever defeated Trump and selected a candidate who her own party rejected with zero votes when she ran in the primary in 2020.
She didn't even get any support from her own party.
So it's a way of him to put a departing jab at the DNC, keep Trump as a felon, and look magnanimous himself.
And, Rob, what about the state-level cases?
There are state prosecutions ongoing in New York as well as Georgia.
What do you think should happen there?
I think he should utilize whatever political power he has and say, we're going to quash this.
He's getting a blanket pardon.
Let's get back to the business of running the country and stop the Banana Republic type of prosecutions at whatever level.
Okay.
Carol is in Missouri on our line for Republicans.
What do you think, Carol?
Should Biden pardon Trump?
I think that he should because the Democrats are the ones that caused all the trouble to put him there in the first place.
Have they ever looked at each case to see exactly what he's done?
Or they just, they've made up stuff.
They've charged him with stuff that the Democrats have done.
You know, here, you know, the Democrats are going crazy because he won, so they're counting the votes and counting the, they've said all kinds of stuff.
And the Democrats haven't gotten punished for anything.
But Trump just opens his mouth.
It's because he's so successful.
And it's so because he has changed, he changed the country.
Obama said Obama was in there and says he was going to change the country, and he sure did.
Now, Carol, what do you think would be the reaction if Biden does pardon Trump?
Well, what do you think the reaction would be in the country?
Well, I just think that it would be good for Biden to do it.
The only thing they've talked about is kill.
You can watch every show on Fox, CNN, and Biden goes on about kill.
And they have done nothing but try to destroy him.
That's exactly what they've done.
Let's go to a comment that we received via text from Kristen in Portland, Maine.
It seems apparent that Trump is going to get away with everything concerning his involvement with January 6 and stealing secret documents anyway.
Giving him a pardon at least would mean Donald Trump is acknowledging wrongdoing.
I'm not sure he'd accept a pardon.
Now let's hear from Jane in Louisiana on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Jane.
Hello.
Do you think Biden should pardon Trump?
Absolutely not.
Why not?
Well, because particularly the documents situation at Mar-a-Lago, it's very possible that he has tried to endanger our security by trying to sell these things.
Well, we will never know exactly what the special prosecutor knows if it gets pardoned.
The Georgia case with election interference is a singular case that needs to be at least prosecuted in court.
It's the nastiest form of manipulation.
Republicans know how to manipulate.
Basically, the fraud complaint, the fraud report cases have already been judged guilty, and so is the sexual assault.
I want to read a little bit more from that National Review article calling for President Biden to pardon President-elect Trump.
The writer's Mark Antonio Wright writes: I'm not naive enough to think that partisan rancor will not be a major factor in our national life in the next weeks and months and years.
But a newly elected president deserves a fresh start and a grown-up, gracious, and honorable approach to the peaceful transfer of power.
Trump didn't give his predecessor that courtesy the last time around, of course.
That's no reason, however, that Biden ought not rise above revenge to the level of the statesman.
Politico has an analysis of what may happen with Trump's legal cases, writing here, say goodbye to Trump's legal cases.
The criminal candidate will now effectively be his own judge and jury.
Donald Trump didn't just beat Kamala Harris.
He beat the system that tried to put him in jail.
He was already the first former president ever to be charged with and convicted of felonies.
Now he has become the first convicted felon ever to win a presidential election.
And his victory virtually guarantees that he will never face serious legal accountability for an avalanche of alleged wrongdoing.
Trump's imminent return to the White House shatters years of work by special counsel Jack Smith to convict Trump for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election and for the stockpile of classified documents he kept at his Florida estate.
It halts the prosecution he's facing in Georgia for his 2020 election plot as well.
It almost certainly allows Trump to postpone any sentence on his New York conviction for covering up a hush money scheme in 2016.
In short, the president-elect is now his own judge and jury, insulated from the criminal consequences he might have faced without the legal Forcefield of the Oval Office.
Now let's get back to your calls.
Robert is in Chesterfield, Virginia, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Robert.
Good morning.
It would be another big mistake that Biden would make to pardon him.
Biden made the big mistake of not keeping the border closed.
That's why they lost the election.
But the other reason they lost the election was because the liars, and I just can't believe the people that bought into that stuff.
Half of them was just sucked in, the others just didn't care.
But the thing of it is, what Biden should do, he's got the power to do it.
He ought to hold Trump up there, charge him with treason because that's what he committed.
Put him up against the wall and execute him.
Okay, we're not going to talk about executions here.
Ray is in Ithaca, New York, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ray.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I don't expect it to happen, but I think it would be a wonderful thing if it happened.
I think there would be some outrage on both sides.
But what would that, and you could also pardon Hunter at the same time?
I think in the long run, it would bring the country more together.
There was a lot of outrage.
I remember as a kid when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, but now it is seen almost universally that it was the right thing to do.
And I think this would go a long way in terms of we seem to be each other's throats.
And I think that's a terrible thing.
And people don't get along anymore.
And I think this would go a long way to just help the healing of the country.
Okay.
Ron is in Alton, Illinois, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ron.
Good morning.
No, I think he shouldn't pardon him.
He should be held accountable for all of his deeds.
Democrats are too nice.
They play too nice.
Republicans don't play nice.
They're thinking to shoot with another foot.
You think Trump would pardon him?
No, he would not.
So I don't think Biden shouldn't.
Trump lied about the people in Springfield, Ohio, with the other combo for that lie.
No.
Talk about people eating cats and dogs.
You know, he was lying.
And them people's life was turned upside down.
Was he held accountable for that?
No.
He gets a chance to walk away.
He gets a mulligan.
He gets a chance to walk away with everything.
Did he do?
No, do not pardon him.
Pardon Hunter.
That's what I would do.
Thank you.
Barbara is in Jeffersonville, Indiana on our line for independence.
Good morning, Barbara.
Good morning.
I think that Biden should not pardon Trump.
Trump did those crimes.
He means it at a time.
What makes him think that he's any special person than any other person out in the world because he's the former president and that he convicted all these crimes?
He's been publicly milling me on the internet for so many years now.
Him and he almost need to be held accountable for what they've done, what they've done to me.
They've done to my life.
They burnt my life.
I'm the public humiliating saint on TikTok.
I'm the FYP girl.
They can make fun of me.
They can call me names.
They can say, I need spanking.
I need daddy.
I need this.
They're disgusting pigs.
Okay.
Michael is in Ashburn, Virginia on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Michael.
Hey, good morning.
I think that Biden will pardon Trump.
It's not the outcome that I would prefer.
I would prefer that he goes back to court and is completely exonerated.
It's almost like settling with an insurance company.
Somebody brings a lawsuit against you.
They go to court.
They have to decide if it's worth it for the insurance company to find more court or they just settle.
And most of the time, people, when they look at a lawsuit, it almost brings guilt back to them.
So I would prefer if he actually went back to court, went through the process again, and had the charges completely overturned.
Now, Michael, there's quite a few cases.
There's the special counsel's cases regarding interference in the 2020 election, as well as the documents case.
There's the New York cases on the Hush Money trial, as well as fraud.
And then there's the Georgia case.
What do you think it would mean for former President-elect Trump to actually go back through all of those cases?
I think it's the right thing to do.
I really think it's the right thing to do.
And I don't think it's going to happen because I think Trump, I believe Biden is going to pardon him because he wants to validate all of these charges.
Like I said, settle.
Everything is going to be settled, and nobody's really ever going to know exactly what happened.
I think it should always go through the process because I think a lot of people see now that a lot of people don't really trust in the justice system anymore, and that's the problem today.
Don is in Grand Blanc, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Don.
Good morning, CFA, and good morning to America.
The election broke my heart seeing that the country actually put Trump back in office after everything we've seen over the last but Don, do you think that Biden should pardon Trump?
It's a hard question.
At this point, we all know that Trump is above the law.
And though pardon him, it makes no difference.
He's already going to pardon himself.
So let me ask the question.
Can he, Biden, pardon a criminal in a state case?
Thought he could only pardon him for federal cases.
He could only pardon him for federal cases, but the National Review article actually calls for President Biden to then direct the state, like New York Governor Kathy Hochul, to perhaps pardon him as well of some of those state charges.
Like the Republicans, I always say state rights.
I think Biden feels that this criminal deserves a pardon.
Give him a pardon.
Give him a pardon if he thinks that's the best thing for the country.
Because right now, I think the country is doomed for the next four years.
Last week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was running with Harris as the vice presidential candidate, talked about a path forward and finding common ground with people that disagree with him after he and Vice President Harris lost the presidential election.
But I will say and acknowledge this.
About one and a half million of our fellow Minnesotans voted for the other side in this election.
And while there might not be a place in our state for the most extreme elements of that agenda, there should be a place in our politics for everyone to be heard.
I think sometimes we can be quick to judge people who don't agree with us, to assume that they act out of cruelty or fear or self-interest.
I don't think that kind of judgment is helpful right now, and I don't think it's right.
I think we ought to swallow, and this is me in this as I'm speaking about myself, swallow a little bit of pride and look a little harder to find common ground with our neighbors who didn't vote like we did in this election.
Maybe we won't agree on every issue.
Hell, maybe we won't agree on any issue.
But maybe when the campaign signs come down, we all get a little break from the rhetoric in the TV ads and the fundraising texts, and I'm sorry about those.
Maybe when we get a little break from this campaign that we're in, we'll be able to look at each other and see not enemies but neighbors.
And maybe we'll be able to sit down over a coffee or a Diet Mountain Dew and just talk.
Talk about our kids.
Talk about the lives we want to build for them.
Talk about the things that really matter, how we treat each other, how we look out for each other, and how we support each other in difficult times.
For my part, I'm going to try even harder to do that as governor.
Nobody, not the DFLers, not Republicans, nobody has a monopoly on good intentions or good ideas.
And now that this election is behind us, I'm going to try even harder to keep an open mind, open heart, and really listen to folks who don't support me or my policies, to work with everyone in the legislature to seek compromise and common ground.
Because that's how we come back together after such a long time spent fighting each other.
Back to your calls.
Penelope is in Indiana on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Penelope.
Penelope, go ahead.
Honey, I put in a wrong number, honey.
I'm trying to change it.
Okay, we'll come back to you.
I'm waiting on him to put the number back up there, honey.
Okay.
Debbie is in Rochester, New York on our line for independence.
Good morning, Debbie.
Good morning.
I think that Trump should go straight to jail.
I can't believe all these people that are saying that Joe Biden should pardon Trump.
Pardon him for what?
He needs to go to jail and all these stupid people.
It is really, really the shock of my life to hear these people think that that man is acceptable to be the president of the United States.
What the hell is wrong with people?
Keep the language clean, Debbie.
John is in Weed, California on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Fine, thank you.
How are you?
Good.
Hey, listen, I don't think Biden should pardon Trump at all.
For the fact is, Trump didn't do anything wrong.
If you people think that paying somebody to keep their mouth shut for having sex with them is against the law, your low-information people should look at the law.
Okay.
There's a New York Post article about that case in particular with the headline, Judge in Trump's hush money trial considers tossing felony conviction after election win.
The Manhattan judge who oversaw Donald Trump's hush money criminal trial is expected to announce next week, that would be this week, if the president-elect's historic felony conviction will stand.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Meekum has already delayed sentencing by more than four months to come after the election and gave himself until next Tuesday to decide if the conviction should be tossed.
Trump's overwhelming election win will further embolden his legal team to make sure sentencing never happens.
That sentencing never happens, CNN Chief Legal Affairs correspondent Paula Reed noted late Wednesday.
Eve is in Grand Rapids, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Eve.
Good morning, Kimberly and C-SPAN.
I say H to the E double hockey stick for Trump.
You're just giving him just more power.
The thing about this is, Trump should be under jail.
He shouldn't be president.
Who are these people that say that he should be pardoned?
Pardon for what?
Some people go into the store and pick up something and they be put in jail.
And this man has done everything.
I will never ever forget the fact that he said the Saudis gave him a lot of money and he didn't care about Kachobe being chopped up and put in a suitcase.
Please, people, please, get a life.
Michael in Linden, Virginia sent us a text message.
It's a risk for the president to pardon the president-elect.
I imagine the president-elect rejecting the pardon and blaming all the prosecution on the president and the Democratic political party, kind of fueling the flames.
Or the pardon could be accepted with a band-aid effect.
Crystal ball question.
And then another text message.
Well, we already read that one from Kristen Important.
Let's hear from David in Crab Orchard, West Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, David.
Yeah, good morning.
Yeah, President Trump doesn't need a pardon.
American people, majority of them, have already pardoned him.
It's called an election.
It's called a landslide election.
He won the popular vote and he won the Electoral College.
And let it play out in court, and Congress needs to have a special prosecutor look into the warfare, legal warfare that they did to Trump.
And if Biden really wanted Harris to be president, he could make her president today.
He could resign, and she would be the 47th president.
Trump would be the 48th president.
She would serve two months, approximately.
Remember, the ninth president only served 30 days.
Have a nice day.
Mark is in Bolivar, Ohio on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning.
Probably for the good of the country, he probably should pardon Trump.
But personally, I hope he doesn't because I believe that all these cases were brought against them were political.
And that's pretty much what I have to say about that.
Okay.
David is in San Francisco on our line for independence.
Good morning, David.
Oh, morning.
Yeah, I am impressed by a couple of the female callers back.
They're dynamite.
I was just going to remind, pardons are an admission of guilt.
And that's in the legal sense.
And in a religious sense, a pardon comes after somebody begs forgiveness.
Now, has Trump admitted that he's guilty in order to deserve a pardon?
Or has Trump begged our forgiveness?
I think it's clear that Trump is, you know, 25th Amendment.
He's nuts.
He's over the wall, and we're stuck with Vance.
As to Vance, a little trick.
You remember how Trump ran to Florida and became a citizen of Florida with felonies?
Now, the state of Florida allowed him to vote.
Now, I would say that if Trump, if Biden had his guts about him or Congress had their guts about him, yank every delegate from Florida from the electoral vote.
That they committed fraud by allowing his vote into the pool.
I think that's a good solution.
Just yank every Florida electoral vote.
Okay.
Cheryl is in Brandon, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Cheryl.
Yeah, I don't think he should be pardoned.
It's horrible what our country's come to to have criminals on and up.
And then he's going to put more criminals in the White House.
Thank you for your time.
Stephanie is in Irving, Texas, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Stephanie.
Hi.
I don't think Biden has a straight of decency to pardon President Trump, but he should.
He started all of those false allegations and false lawsuits, so he should, but I don't think he has a straight of decency to do it.
Okay.
Thank you.
One of the outstanding cases is in New York and where an appeals court could determine whether Trump pays $500 million in civil judgments as president.
This is a story from the Washington Examiner.
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to be relieved from his criminal prosecutions as he makes his return to the Oval Office, but pending appeals in civil cases might be his only hope to break free from more than a half billion dollars in civil judgments against him.
Trump is poised to owe more than $500 million in penalties due to New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud case and two defamation lawsuits brought by former L magazine columnist Eugene Carroll.
Without speaking about the nearly $500 million civil fraud case she brought against Trump, James made general comments about Trump's election victory on Wednesday.
Let's listen to some of those comments.
I congratulate the president-elect Donald Trump.
And it's possible we will work with his administration.
But we will not compromise our values or our integrity or our principles.
We did not expect this result, but we are prepared to respond to this result.
And my office has been preparing for several months because we've been here before.
We faced this challenge before.
And we use the rule of law to fight back.
And we are prepared to fight back once again.
Because as the Attorney General of this great state, it is my job to protect and defend the rights of New Yorkers and the rule of law.
And I will not shrink from that responsibility.
One of the comments we've received on X from none, I know I will lose respect for the law and this country if he gets a pass.
Our question this hour, should Biden pardon President-elect Trump?
You can also reach us if you want to text us on 202-748-8003.
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Let's now hear from Darlene in Louisiana on our line for independence.
Good morning, Darlene.
Definitely no.
He is a player and he played the American people.
He's just a player and definitely a no.
And like the man said, we need to grow a spine.
And a definitely no on that, you crazy sickle Trump.
So, Darlene, do you think, what do you think it would do to the country, though, if he enters office with all of these charges hanging over his head and convictions?
I don't care because he already ruined the country anyway.
And that's, you know, it's already unlawful because he got away with it.
And all he has is crooks that's following him.
And what he did for January, January 6th, he got all those people to do the dirty work for him.
That's what he did.
So let's now hear from Bobby in Mayfield, Kentucky on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bobby.
Morning.
Do you think that Biden should pardon Trump?
Yes, I do, ma'am.
I sure do.
Because I watched on national TV the Capitol Police opening the doors and letting all them people in.
We don't actually know if they were Republicans or Democrats plan to be Republicans.
We don't actually know.
Okay, a couple of folks now have mentioned the January 6th defendants, and the New York Times reports that some of them are already angling for pardons from Trump.
The President-elect said during the campaign that he would grant clemency to some of those who took part in the assault by his supporters on the Capitol nearly four years ago.
The legal consequences of President-elect Donald J. Trump's victory start with the likelihood that the cases against him will sputter out, but could also extend to the cases of hundreds of his supporters who are being or have been prosecuted for storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to pardon some of the 1,500 people charged in connection with January 6th, sometimes suggesting that his clemency might extend to the leaders of far-right groups like the Proud Boys and to other defendants who assaulted police officers.
Alan is in Wilmington, Delaware on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Alan.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Absolutely not.
Should he be pardoned?
Actually, when you look at it, he's been pardoned by 70-plus million people who voted for him.
And having Biden pardon him in addition to that, it's absolutely ludicrous.
I mean, he has already done, I don't know how many different crimes that he should have been in prison for.
And the fact that the question is even asked: should Biden pardon him?
Absolutely not.
And Biden should not, and he should, as somebody just said, grow a spine and say no to him.
Absolutely not.
Will he be pardoned?
Kevin is in Attleboro, Massachusetts on our line for independence.
Good morning, Kevin.
Good morning.
I am an independent, but I say absolutely not.
To do that solidified that he is above the law and that just should not be allowed.
They reached out to him repeatedly after he left office.
You've got these documents, send them back.
And repeatedly, up until a year and a half later, he still had them.
And that's why they had to go and get them.
And then when they did the investigation, his own people that were working for him said that he told them to hide the documents.
And that's why they came after him.
For January 6th, he sat there.
I just heard somebody say, well, they opened the doors.
Well, maybe some of them did open the doors, but not all of the people working at the Capitol opened the doors.
And it got out of control.
And his own people, Republicans, contacted or tried to contact him and said, you need to stop.
You need to call these people off.
And the people working in the White House said he ignored them.
And when you told him, and he was watching on TV and took three hours while people were running for their lives, absolutely not.
He needs to be, oh, yeah, so the cases will go away.
The federal cases will go away.
But those other cases, absolutely not.
You cannot tell our young people that we have equal justice under law.
Yet, if you get to be the president and you commit all kinds of crimes, well, we're going to forgive you.
So, Kevin mentioned the documents case that Special Counsel Jack Smith was pursuing.
There's another article in Politico that Jack Smith has taken the first step to halt Trump's prosecution, citing the unprecedented circumstance of the criminal defendant's election as president.
Prosecutors got a judge to cancel upcoming deadlines.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has postponed a series of deadlines in the Washington, D.C. criminal case against Donald Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 election.
The move Friday was Smith's first public acknowledgement that the case cannot continue in light of Trump's imminent return to power.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutchkin promptly granted Smith's request for postponement.
She gave him a little more than three weeks to decide on his next steps.
In a terse one-page court filing, Smith acknowledged Trump's victory.
Tuesday has upended the case, prompting prosecutors to ask for more time to determine how to proceed.
Patrick is in Canton, Georgia, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Patrick.
Thank you.
You know, it's a hard answer for me because personally, I don't think that if it wasn't Donald Trump, he wouldn't have been brought up on all these legal cases.
But I think that for the pardon thing, I think the time to have done that would have been like two or three weeks before the election.
Joe Biden could have pardoned Donald Trump, and Kamala Harris could have taken the credit for that.
Maybe that would have swung someone that was never Trumpers over to her side, and she could have won the election.
And the other thing I wanted to say was about the documents case.
You know, it's just amazing to me.
People call in and say, oh, he should go to jail for the documents case.
But Joe Biden got away with having documents in his possession for years, and nobody wants to talk about that.
So, you know, I think it's a hard call.
I don't think it's going to happen.
I don't believe it will happen at this point.
But, like I said, the time to have done it would have been before the election, so Kamala Harris could have taken credit for that.
So, thank you very much.
Julie is in Lafayette, Indiana, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Julie.
Hi.
Yeah, I don't think you should pardon criminal activity, no matter who does it.
And I don't think that the president should be any exception, or the law doesn't mean anything.
And as far as the documents go, it wasn't the fact that both of them had documents, it was the fact that one of them refused to give the documents back after repeated requests.
So that's the part that some people that worship the guy want to just glaze over.
But honestly, we've just elected a thug.
I say, fine, you can't prosecute.
Don't pardon.
Wait four years and pick up where we left off because that's absolutely criminal and that cannot be ignored.
That's all I have to say.
Enwar is in Washington, D.C., on our line for independence.
Good morning, Anwar.
Good morning.
I have several thoughts I just want to make.
If we believe, again, that the law is level and for all people, then he absolutely should be charged.
Black people make up 10% of this population, but they make up 70% of those in prison.
When you have a man who says, find me 12,000 votes, we have that on tape.
When you have a man who authorizes a lynch mob, and people don't really understand that they brought a rope and a scaffold to the Capitol to hang his own vice president, Ann Pelosi, and he did nothing about that.
And when you have this same person decide that he's above the law and there's nothing we can do, and you want to validate that by giving him a pardon, that you cannot tell anyone in this country that they should abide by the law.
He should absolutely be put in jail.
And personally, he should have been put in jail by what he did with COVID.
We lost a million people, and I've heard 700,000 of them Trump could have saved had he been at least an honest person about what was going on.
This country really has forgotten those folks.
We've lost a lot of souls, and he's responsible for those.
That alone is a reason for him to be locked up.
Edward is in Belliot, Wisconsin, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Edward.
Good morning.
I just like to say Democrats amaze me.
Everybody knows by every legal standard that Hillary Clinton should have got 10 years in prison.
They let Joe Biden off for the same crime because he was mentally deficient, and yet he's still president.
The people that rioted the Capitol on January 6th are my heroes.
Do you think that Biden should pardon Trump?
No, I think he should fight all these bogus claims.
The people of January 6th stole the Capitol are my heroes, and everybody within also intelligence knows that that election was stolen.
Julio is in Brooksville, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Julio.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Good, thank you.
Anyways, Leteshaw James should be barred.
Jack Smith should be sued by Trump for the false affusations he put on him.
And for people to come out and say, Biden is God, that he's doing great, look at the things he's done.
Is he going to pardon Hunter?
You bet you he will.
And look at the stuff Hunter done.
But anyways, I was a Democrat, but I'm garbage now because he called half my family and half my friends garbage.
So that turned all of us garbage.
And any Democrat that thinks he's great by calling you garbage, you're garbage.
Have a good day.
Julio mentioned Hunter Biden.
Trump has revealed whether he'd consider pardoning Hunter Biden.
This is an article in Newsweek saying that former President Trump said on Thursday he would consider pardoning Hunter Biden if he wins the 2024 election.
I wouldn't take it off the books, Trump told the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview.
See, unlike Joe Biden, what they've done to me, where they've gone after me so viciously, Hunter Biden has been a bad boy.
All you had to do is see the laptop from hell, but I happen to think it's very bad for our country.
I could have gone after Hillary.
I could have gone after Hillary Clinton very easily.
And when they say lock her up, what did I do?
I always say take it easy, just relax.
We're winning.
I could have had her put in jail, and I decided I didn't want to do that.
I thought it would look terrible.
And that is on Hunter Biden.
Let's hear from Rich in Schenectady, New York, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Rich.
Yes, hello.
I'm just amazed.
I'm amazed at the ignorance of these people in this country.
I mean, this man is the biggest scammer, schemer that's ever took a breath of air.
It amazes me that these people want to let him go.
I mean, is he above the law?
Obviously, they think so.
How he, I just can't manage.
I just can't believe how these people just like they can't see through what this man, this man is like, so transparent.
And do you think that President Biden should pardon the president-elect?
Of course not.
That just tells everyone that he's above the law.
Why is he above the law?
He's not above the law.
He's a man.
He's not above the law.
He's just like anyone else.
He's just got a title, a title as the president of the United States.
That's all it is.
It's nothing.
The man is only a man.
And by letting this man go, just like I'm ashamed.
I'm ashamed to say I'm an American, and I have nothing else to say.
This country disgusts me.
Thomas is in 29 Palms, California, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Thomas.
Good morning, ma'am.
How are you today?
Thank you for taking my call.
And thanks for thanks to C-SPAN for all of the things that you do being absolutely non-policing.
There are a few points I would like to make and acknowledge setting points that I already listened to.
There was a call from San Francisco.
The caller said that he talked about how people earn forgiveness or pardon all this stuff.
Thomas, before you respond to the other callers, do you think that Biden should pardon President-elect Tronic?
I think so.
I say yes to that question.
Yes, definitely.
But I think what we should realize is that the election has spoken convincingly.
People knew of all of these problems and they still voted convincingly for the president-elect.
Tim Waltz made a very good point.
And we should realize as a nation that an eye for an eye would definitely leave everybody blind.
I think somebody should be an adult.
I think it's about time that we stop all of the bakery, all of this stuff that's going on, and let's just put this country back together.
Because this country is bigger than one party, it's bigger than any one person, and it's bigger than any one organization.
It's about time that all of this stuff.
I do understand, to be honest, if Trump was to lose these elections, there was never going to be peace.
I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be this peaceful after Tuesday.
But let's be honest, this country needs healing.
We need to be healed.
And all of this stuff, these comments people making, it's about time we all stop and take a deep breath and think about what Tim Waltz said.
He said there should be healing.
We can't all agree on everything, but we have a country to save.
And that's what I wanted to say.
Thank you, man.
Roseanne is in San Diego on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Roseanne.
Hi, thank you.
No, Biden should not pardon Trump because Trump deserves to go down in history as the criminals he obviously is.
He made a lot of crimes against the people of America.
And even though he won't be tried, he won't be convicted, he won't be sentenced, he should go down in history for being what he is, which is not honest.
I think that Biden should treat Trump exactly the way Trump treated Biden four years ago, which was pretty, pretty nasty.
You know, I think Biden is going overboard to be nice.
He doesn't need to be.
And Trump should have already been in jail.
He could have won the election anyway and governed from prison.
But all of that's over with now.
That's fine.
But he does not deserve a pardon at all.
That would be a betrayal to every single one of us who cares about this country.
So that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Lewis is in Pensakin, New Jersey on our line for independence.
Good morning, Lewis.
Good morning.
If I was Trump, I want to take the pardon because all these cases are going to be overturned.
I watched the appeal on C-SPAN, and those judges just attacked the prosecutor.
And as far as The felonies with that crazy lady, the judge gave unconstitutional instructions telling the jury that if one person finds him guilty on a charge, then he'll be found guilty on specific charges.
34 felonies.
They found him guilty on 34 felonies in less than a day.
Please, come on.
And Trump doesn't think he's above the law.
Thank you.
Shirley is in Greenfield, Tennessee, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Shirley.
Good morning.
You know, some people may disagree with me on this, but it seems like the root, with the exception of a few callers that I heard, it seems like the root of a lot of people's political polarization is causing a lot of animosity and end fighting.
I even had a Democrat friend of mine cuss me out because Trump won.
Personally, I think that whether people think Trump's guilty or not, in order to put the past behind us, Trump should go ahead and get pardoned by Biden.
But I also think that Trump should pardon Hunter.
I mean, he had just lost a brother.
You know, he hit rock bottom.
He messed up.
I think that if Biden had pardoned Trump and Trump does pardon Hunter, regardless of what anybody else thinks about it, when all the dust settles, it's going to let this country start healing moving forward and take the vicious political polarization out of all of this.
And let's just try to move forward, get our economy back together, and move forward to some civil governing.
I mean, that's my personal feeling on that.
John is in Arlington Heights, Illinois, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
It's good to see.
I love C-SPAN.
And some people might think C-SPAN is, you know, they don't know they wouldn't watch it or whatever, but because it's not exciting.
But I disagree.
C-SPAN is good to see this morning.
C-SPAN has jokes.
Pardon Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, he wouldn't pardon the exonerated five in New York.
He wanted them to, he wanted them to be executed.
And they was, you know, this is a guy.
You only pardon people.
And I'm old enough to remember Nixon.
You know, Nixon resigned.
And you have to, to be pardoned, you have to do some type of act of contrition to, you know, just get pardoned.
And if he had lost, he would have went to jail.
It's not like the president of the United States just used the government and sent soldiers to down Trump's house.
This was done in a legal way in Georgia, which is a red state.
In Florida, which is a red state, the prosecutor went to the people and he was indicted by a grand jury of his peers.
And what should happen, if Trump had lost, what would have happened is Jack Smith would have went and got that case in Florida reinstated and Eileen Cannon would have been removed.
So Trump is guilty.
And they should put a time clock on it.
And when Trump gets out of office, restart it.
But I don't think it's, even if you pardon him, it doesn't matter because Trump is going to commit more crimes.
So there'll be another opportunity to prosecute him because he's not going to stop committing crimes.
That's who he is.
He's a criminal and criminal's crime.
So he's going to commit more criminals in jail anyway for the whole idea of pardoning Donald Trump.
No, that just would embolden him.
And he doesn't do anything that what should happen is President Biden should pardon his son.
If he doesn't, I think that shows a weakness on Biden.
Hunter would never have been prosecuted for those crimes.
Nobody else has ever been prosecuted for such a low response.
So, John, we're just about out of time for this segment where we were discussing the National Review article suggesting that President Biden should pardon President-elect Donald Trump.
And after the break, we're going to have National Review's editor-in-chief Rich Lowry join us, along with the Nation magazine editorial director and publisher Katrina Vandenhoe, who will discuss those 2024 election results, as well as former President Trump's return to the White House.
We'll be right back.
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Tonight on Q&A, Stuart Eisenstadt, former domestic policy advisor to President Carter and U.S. ambassador to the European Union under President Clinton.
He shares his book, The Art of Diplomacy, in which he discusses his career and the impact the civil rights movement had on him.
We go to eat, and black students from North Carolina Central are sitting in.
You can look at the, you can Google this.
That's when the sit-in started in Queensboro and Durham.
And I said naively to my fraternity brother from New York, why are they doing this?
And he said, what universe do you live in?
It's because they can't be served.
And it was like somebody lifted a veil from me and I saw the world in a very different world.
I had gotten so used to the segregated world, I didn't question it.
I became very active in the civil rights movement in UNC.
And when I was with President Carter, we supported affirmative action and minority set-asides for black contractors.
So these kinds of transformative events when you're young can sometimes carry over into your career, and they certainly did for me.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to discuss the results of the 2024 election.
I'm joined now by Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the National Review, as well as Katrina Vandenhoe, who is editorial director and publisher of The Nation.
Good morning to you both.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'll ask you both to start.
Did the election results surprise you and why or why not?
Katrina.
So they surprised in the sense that I believed that there would be a surge of women protesting the rolling back of women's rights.
I think of reproductive rights as an economic issue, a kitchen table issue.
That surge actually happened in 2022 when women really came out in strength after Dobbs, the Supreme Court decision, and the independence broke for Democrats.
Why I wasn't surprised is, you know, I'm a Bernie Sanders Democrat and I believe in speaking to people's economic concerns where they are.
And you could see the anger in the country.
You could see that this was a change election, that they sought a lot of people, there's not never one cause, but a lot of people were seeking answers to the economic troubles, pain in their life, to the inflation.
And instead of running with a compelling economic populist, progressive populist message, Kamala Harris ran a fairly, you know, not to the base, but trying to carve out those independent suburban women with a hug Liz Cheney campaign.
When you saw that Cheney trip, three days spent with Liz Cheney, you could think of what else Kamala Harris might have done in those three days.
So I have to say as someone who edits a magazine which opposed NAFTA and some of the trade deals, which are the original sin in so many ways, which deindustrialized parts of this country, which enraged workers who felt left behind, I think that much more laser-like focus on the economy, on a change election, would have made a difference.
There's not one cause.
The numbers are pretty strong.
I don't believe Trump has a full-out mandate.
Down ballot, you saw initiatives that were certainly counter to Trump's policies, whether minimum wage or reproductive rights pass.
And some senators.
So I wouldn't say, you know, if it's 2%, it's a huge mandate.
But the popular vote can't question that.
And the electoral obviously went to President Trump.
But I do disagree, and I think there's a reckoning to be had about the campaign, kind of campaign Kamala Harris ran.
Rich, what's your take?
Well, I was a little surprised by the sweep of it, but I wasn't surprised that he won.
I favored him all year long just because the large conditions were obviously in his favor.
And he, look, people around him, he himself had this theory that you could go to the center on entitlements and on trade and then go further right on culture and you could broaden and deepen and diversify your coalition.
And that theory ended up being true.
And Donald Trump now, whether you like it or not, is clearly the defining political figure of our era.
And in terms of the Democratic recriminations, I think everyone has a point.
Everyone is to blame over on that side.
But ultimately, it all goes to Joe Biden, right?
He picked Kamal Harris, not an impressive vice president to begin with.
He misgoverned.
He didn't govern as a unifier or as a moderate or a centrist or someone who was competent.
And then he made this catastrophically irresponsible and selfish decision last year to run again.
When he was obviously in decline, everyone could see it.
All the polling showed it.
Democrats in the polling said it.
And the media and much of the Democratic elite, with some exceptions, went along with this absurd fiction that he could serve another five years as president, the rest of this year, and then four additional years.
And that fiction and lie really fell apart in the first debate.
And then they're stuck.
They can't have a competitive process, or it would have been very difficult to have one at that point.
He was at a 40% approval rating.
And then the choice is Kamala Harris.
It just wasn't an impressive candidate.
She wasn't confident.
She wasn't creative.
And she'd said all these things in 19 and 20, all these woke things that were just not survivable in a general election.
And she had to back off all those, making herself seem insincere, phony, and weak.
And then I think, in part as a function of that, she couldn't further back off of everything that happened the last three and a half years because that would be totally unsustainable.
So it was a choice to say, I was a little bit out of the loop.
You know, I wasn't involved in everything, or to say, I was always the last person in the room and I was responsible.
And that's what she did.
She achieved no separation from Joe Biden.
She hugged his policies and his record and incumbent president at a 40% approval rating.
So my hats off to Donald Trump for what he's achieved.
Yeah.
She hugged.
I was just going to say, my hat's off to Donald Trump, but he wouldn't have won if Joe Biden had been at 50% approval, but Joe Biden was at 40% approval and Kamala Harris achieved no separation.
No, I do think that the original sin was President Biden going back on his vow that he wouldn't run a second term.
I do think many of his policies, listen, it's a big word, time to stop using big words, but he broke with a kind of neoliberal consensus that had dominated Washington for years, whether it was Bill Clinton or George H.W. Its time had come.
And I think the investments he made in this country, the IRA, badly named, but will show up in communities in these next months and years.
And I think Kamala's campaign, the hugging, again, the alliance with neocons and dissing, in essence, dissing your base, was really key.
And I don't think we should get to it.
I don't think of these as recriminations, just to say I think it's about rethinking where the Democratic Party, the progressive community heads.
I want to listen to a little bit of President-elect Trump's victory speech on Wednesday morning, where he laid out some of his vision for America.
You know, we're the party of common sense.
We want to have borders.
We want to have security.
We want to have things be good, safe.
We want great education.
We want a strong and powerful military, and ideally, we don't have to use it.
You know, we had no wars for years.
We had no wars, except we defeated ISIS.
We defeated ISIS in record time.
But we had no wars.
They said, he will start a war.
I'm not going to start a war.
I'm going to stop wars.
But this is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
Together we're going to unlock America's glorious destiny.
We're going to achieve the most incredible future for our people.
Yesterday, as I stood at my last stop on the campaign trail, I'll never be doing a rally again.
Can you believe it?
I think we've done 900 rallies approximately from the can you imagine?
900, 901 something, a lot of rallies.
And it was sad.
Everybody was sad.
Many people, I said, this is our last rally.
But now we're going on to something that's far more important because the rallies were used for us to be put in this position where we can really help our country.
That's what we're going to do.
Now, Rich, one of the things that will help President-elect Trump achieve some of that agenda is Republican control of the Senate and what looks to be, we're still waiting to find out, Republican control of the House.
What are you expecting in terms of that agenda?
Well, we've already seen some of it out of the box.
He had a statement about cracking down on censorship on social media and the cooperation between the government and pressure on the government on social media companies to police their content in accord with what the government wants.
We'll see a lot of deregulations, extension of the tax credits, energy unleashed, big military buildup.
And he, you know, the first time around, the Senate, Republican Senate, really influenced him and could block him at times.
Now he's a total legend within the party and has an incredible grip on the party.
So I don't want to say he's going to get whatever he wants.
There are limits, but he's going to get a lot of it.
And just to that clip, the media coverage in this campaign was so stilted and biased.
Yeah, Trump insulted people, and he could be harsh and negative.
He also could be incredibly positive and optimistic, almost wildly so.
And I think one thing that happened in this campaign was he occupied the center in important respects.
Now, Katrina and I disagree on abortion.
I'm a big pro-lifer.
But even if you put that aside, just the merits of it, what's the more moderate position there?
We're going to have abortion all the way through nine months, and Catholic hospitals are going to have to perform them too, as Camilla Sarah said in an interview.
Or states should decide.
And I think some of the states have gone too far and we have to be very careful.
Just objectively, the more moderate position is Trump's.
Trans sports, you know, it's portrayed as Trump as this radical right-winger.
All he's saying is biological males shouldn't compete in female sports.
This is one of the most important ads in the whole cycle.
And 10 years ago, if you'd said that's a right-wing position, people would have thought you're crazy.
They said, no, that's a common sense position.
Everyone believes that.
But the Democrats have gone so left on this woke stuff.
And the poor Democrats, a couple of them have popped their heads above the parapet and said, maybe we just don't need to be quite so out there on some of this stuff.
And they've gotten shot at.
The Democratic chairman in Texas had to resign after saying we don't need to go quite so far in all this trans stuff because he's called a hater and a transophobe and all this.
So this kind of lockdown that the woke left has on the Democratic Party is a huge problem and it appeals to a certain segment of people.
Affluent white people.
We're getting a bunch of callers coming in.
And so Katrina, before we get to those calls, I want to ask you about a recent piece that you have in the nation, Executive Actions Biden Could Take.
We've talked about what Trump is likely going to do.
What do you think Biden should do in his remaining time in office?
Well, I feel very strongly about the futility and this disaster of U.S.-Cuba relations.
And I think, you know, there are no Castros, there are no Kennedys in government.
It's a very poor, destroyed country by the pandemic.
You can argue some of the country's own policies, but it's in crisis.
I think President Biden could take Cuba off the no-terrorism, the state terrorism list.
I think that he could do more.
I also think he could look at judicial vacancies and move really swiftly on that.
And, you know, there are pardons.
We were talking, you were talking about Hunter, Biden.
Well, Rich's magazine, I guess, endorsed Biden giving Hunter Biden.
The byline piece.
There are a lot of people.
My daughter's a criminal justice lawyer.
Katrina, just for clarity there, it was an op-ed in the National Review as opposed to there.
I respect that distinction.
We face that at the nation.
Wrongfully convicted people, those Trump has battered through his career.
But I think there's quite a bit that could be done through executive action.
Of course, it can get rolled back, but it's a signal.
I just want to say to Rich, the woke stuff, listen, it's social justice today.
It's overplayed by the media.
The numbers are small.
But the most interesting thing about Trump, I think, is he's going to be very disciplined.
He's brought in a chief of staff, first woman, who shows discipline.
He's learned from the first round not to bring in people who are not loyal to him.
But the thing that interests me is yesterday, I believe, Trump called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.
You know, a broken clock can be right twice.
I think that's the expression.
The idea that he would stop wars, not start wars.
Let's test him.
Let's see if he can resolve the situation in Ukraine, the Middle East, or talk about NATO in ways that won't be scoffed at, because I think we're at a real dangerous turning point of becoming this militarized country.
And the support people need in this country is going to evaporate into wars that we don't need.
It is not isolationism.
It is what is in the interest of America's security and the Harris Biden foreign policy about indispensable nation.
I think a lot of voters may not be their first issue, but they've seen multiple deployed men in their communities, and they're fed up with this idea that we're the policemen of the world.
There's an alternative course, and I think that's going to be important if, if, if Trump shows the way.
We're going to be taking your calls for Christina and Rich.
Our line for Democrats is 202-748-8000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
And before we get to those calls, let's listen to a portion of President Biden's remarks in the Rose Garden on Thursday on the peaceful transfer of power.
I also hope we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system.
It is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent.
And it can be trusted, win or lose.
I also hope we can restore the respect for all our election workers who busted their necks and took risks at the outset.
We should thank them.
Thank them for staffing voting sites, counting the votes, protecting the very integrity of the election.
Many of them are volunteers who do it simply out of love for their country.
And as they did, as they did their duty as citizens, I will do my duty as president.
I'll fulfill my oath, and I will honor the Constitution.
On January 20th, we'll have a peaceful transfer of power here in America.
Now to your calls.
Sandy is in Florida on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Sandy.
Hi.
How are you?
Good.
What's your question?
I don't have a question.
I just think that Biden should let all this go and that let Trump start new.
And I think we ought to forget all this garbage of he, she, the, and just move on and do what needs to be done to keep our country safe and make our country great again.
So Rich, why don't you respond and add any other detail you'd like to add regarding that call that was in your newspaper, in your magazine as an op-ed for President Biden to pardon former President Trump?
I'm not sure how likely that is.
It would not be taken kindly by President Trump, obviously, because there is a suggestion of guilt in the implication, strong implication of guilt in such pardon.
But I think the pardon that definitely will happen is of Hunter Biden.
And this will be self-dealing and kind of corrupt on a certain level, but very understandable on a human level.
So I think maybe the play that Biden is engaged in here is unwinding these investigations and prosecutions so Trump doesn't have to go in and do these hugely controversial firings right out of the top and squash these investigations.
At the same time, he pardons Hunter and hopes that Trump is glad that the prosecutions have been unwound and won't blow him out of the water over the Hunter pardon.
That's my guess, very speculative, but that's my guess of what's going on.
Katrina, what's your take on the idea of Biden pardoning president-elect?
I think it would rouse a tough spirit in much of the country.
There is a strong view that there's accountability and that justice is to be done.
So I don't see it in the cards.
I do see Hunter Biden for the reasons, main reason is a human reason.
But I certainly don't see Biden pardoning Trump.
And I'm not sure.
There are a lot of indictments.
So I think that's not, I don't see that in the cards.
I do, again, come back to the point Biden could give pardons to a lot of wrongfully convicted people who are languishing in our prisons.
Kyle is in Clearwater, Florida, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Kyle.
Good morning.
So I think Trump, different from the Trump campaign, was very effective because the election really became about lower propensity voters, lower information voters, and the attack on trans and the migrants are eating the dogs and cats and dogs and are raping your babies and Dems are commies that are trying to groom your babies.
I think what's more important to kind of post that is kids that came into the Trump era as toddlers have had 10 years of this, 10 years of MAGAism, 10 years of their parents fighting, their neighbors fighting about Trump.
Every day, everything is about Trump, and that is going to continue and continue.
So those 15-year-olds that have been so damaged by their damaged parents talking about their idolatry or hate of Trump is going to be amplified.
And what is going to happen to those children?
Children, there was a children are resilient creatures.
My daughter's about to have a baby.
That baby will see Trump, Trump, Trump.
I'm not sure Trump is going to do the big rallies.
He's going to have to govern.
Governing can be boring.
Will he not govern?
Then that's a sin, too.
I want to pick up on what you said about education.
You know, there's a lot of talk about social mobility, how good we are.
This country's failing on social mobility.
There's a lot of divide between educated and uneducated voters.
What about apprenticeships in this country?
It's something we see around the world.
Good jobs.
Not everyone four-year degree.
This is not about second-class citizenship.
It's about a reality that this world is facing.
And I think the jobs, unemployment, social mobility is a critical factor for a civilized society.
Let me just say party of common sense, as Trump said.
Well, I mean, the idea of deporting 11 million people, I mean, that's insane for economic reasons, obviously for moral reasons.
It's going to cause inflation.
You know, there are all kinds of factors.
That is not common sense.
I agree that we need a party that pays attention to the economic struggles, pain, and ambition of millions.
But, you know, they're going to have to hunker down and do some real work and not just rallies if that's going to happen.
Senator Bernie Sanders was exposing similar views on X and wrote, it should come as no great surprise that the Democratic Party, which has abandoned working class people, would find the working class has abandoned them.
First, it was the white working class.
Now it is Latino and black workers as well.
While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
And they're right.
Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?
Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?
Let's now...
Secular amen.
Alan is in Rhinelander, Wisconsin on our line for independence.
Good morning, Alan.
Hi, good morning.
So I've got a nuts and bolts piece of information, a critical error that the Democrats made.
In 2020, 40 million people who were losing sleep at night over their student loans voted for Joe Biden because he promised not only to cancel student loans, but to return bankruptcy to student loans.
He did neither of those things.
He faked it.
And interestingly, it was a billionaire liberal elite, Mary Swig, who whispered in Nancy Pelosi's ear and got Nancy Pelosi to turn against his very lame student loan cancellation initiative.
So that's 40 million people who put Biden into office, who Kamala completely abandoned and ignored.
And more importantly, the DNC has taken the return of bankruptcy protections out of their party platform.
Now, this is not something that I would imagine a friend of Lynn Rothschild, a billionaire Manhattan social person like Catherine might understand.
But I do know that Rich, you wrote an article calling for the return of bankruptcy to student loans a couple years ago.
So Alan, let's not attack our guests.
Also, her name is Katrina.
And Katrina, I'll let you respond first and then follow up with Rich.
Just very briefly, social mobility, you know, again, student loans, something the nation has supported even beyond what is on the table.
I believe there was Republican stops to it, you know, that it couldn't be moved as effectively as Democrats want it to be.
The issue of bankruptcy is something Senator Elizabeth Warren, and you may not like her, has really played a lead role on.
And it's very important for people who live paycheck to paycheck, week to week, to have the bankruptcy possibility.
That's not the great resolve and solution, but it's real.
And I think, just again, to come back to Bernie Sanders, the connection to working people, and you can throw around Rothschild, connection to working people is something that any ordinary person, any person can develop as they, you know, it's part of their.
So I, you know, Bernie Sanders is someone we endorsed in 2016.
I think he's, you know, an older person now, but still feisty and scrappy.
We need to find new Bernie Sanders of their generation, whether it's down ballot and states, a bench who will see the mobility as a serious issue and treat class concerns in the working class of all kinds as a real with dignity.
Rich, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this argument about what happened with Democrats and working class voters and also what, if anything, you think the president-elect might do on student loans.
Yes, so I do not recall that article the caller attributed to me, and I have a total different interpretation than he does.
Biden was obsessed with doing this.
It had to, it's a major spending program.
It should have been passed through Congress.
That's a fundamental of our system.
But he was so determined to do it, he dispensed with that and repeatedly attempted these lawless executive actions to forgive student loans.
And these are loans that people took out and should have to repay.
And it's also just a message to all the people who don't have four-year degrees, didn't do this, and are going to have to play a role in paying for this, that they don't matter as much as people who went to college.
And this is just a huge problem.
I agree with Katrina when she was talking about apprenticeships earlier.
A lot of people in the political elite, you mention young people, and they think of their own kids.
Oh, yeah, this is someone with a backpack going to Dartmouth.
That's not what most young people are.
You know, a lot are just high school grads who go into trades honest days' work, and they should be respected too.
And we don't do enough to do that.
And on Bernie and his interpretation of the election, I think he's more right than a lot of other Democrats.
I think a Bernie Sanders of 15, 20 years ago, obsessed with class to the exclusion of racial or woke concerns, skeptical of open borders.
That's an approach to be much better for Democrats than what they have now.
Now, the fact is, Biden was as far left as he could plausibly be on economics, given the constraints he had in Congress.
It wasn't popular.
It didn't work.
The spending helped.
It wasn't solely responsible.
It helped stoke the inflation that more than anything else sank him and Kamala Harris.
But the woke issues are just a killer.
Again, there's a reason Kamala Harris gained among a couple groups, you know, white college grads and seniors.
So Democrats are becoming, I emphasize becoming, that's a complicated picture, much more of an affluent white party.
And when you tell people that you're okay and you support biological males competing in female sports, doesn't matter if it's not happening very much, if you can't say you oppose that, a lot of people are going to think you're out of touch and completely crazy.
And again, the ad that hurt her most, the most effective and consequential political ad of this century, was the ad hitting her on that issue, and she could never compellingly respond.
So Rich, I want to stay with you for a text message we received from Sue in Oregon, Ohio, who says, I would like to know what will happen to JD Vance's Senate seat now that he'll be vice president.
Yeah, interesting question.
I believe Mike DeWine, the Republican governor, gets to appoint a replacement, and there's been jockeying for it.
And I think the vape Ramaswamy, more than a Trump position, I'm guessing, guessing, I don't have any inside information, would very much want that Senate seat.
And, you know, if Trump picks up the phone and calls Mike DeWine, there's a strong chance he could get it.
Could I just say for a moment, it was crushing to see Sherrod Brown, a very decent, longtime senator, congressperson from Ohio, go down.
I believe he's run three times for Senate, but this was the first during a presidential election with, and of course, Trump running.
But he was someone who cared deeply for the working class, stood for dignity, and understood his state.
And I think we need more Sherrod Browns.
And I think, Rich, you know, you're real smart, but the whole drive on the trans issue is ginned up to a large extent.
This is not a huge issue.
It's made into one by the millions poured into that ad about Kamala and trans issues.
I think it's competitive.
But if it's not a big issue, why couldn't Democrats just say, no, biological males shouldn't compete in female sports because it's such a rare thing?
Well, I think the ads were different.
They weren't about the sports issue as much as, you know, the protecting surgeries.
Trans.
So I do want to get back to the point.
By the way, there's no state where there's surgery below 18.
I think it's ginned up.
So let's get back to the callers.
I want to hear from Steve in Vallocia County, Florida, on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Steve.
Hello.
The reason why I called is because I think a lot of the Democrats' problem is that we let the right characterize us.
I'm like most voters that vote Democrat.
I believe in unrestricted free market capitalism.
I'm not a socialist.
I've worked full-time all my life.
I never wanted the government to support me.
And as far as all these isolated incidents that happen in the country that are pulled out and reframed as the front and center of the Democratic platform, like these buzzwords like woke, I mean, really, what does that even mean?
I think that that's a manufactured buzzword like socialism.
And I guess I, you know, the way that we are characterized and framed is nothing the way that Democratic voters are like.
And Rich Lowry, you're one of the people I'd like to sit down and have a cup of coffee with and just talk about as far as politics and how, you know, what happens in our lives, what, you know, develops our political feelings and everything instead of just hiding behind all these jargon phrases and buzzwords.
All right.
Well, let's let Rich respond to that.
Sure.
Well, the term woke, it's not as the Republicans came up with that term.
It came out of the academic complex.
It's a word Democrats, people on the left apply to themselves.
And if you look at the 2019 presidential race, 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden, traditional Democrat, I think he's gone too far left in terms of his presidency here.
But he said, I'm not going there.
You know, I think my old Democratic Party still exists.
And Kamala Harris and others raced down this track to embrace every wild left-wing position they could come up with, considering abolishing ICE, decriminalizing illegal crossings, Medicare for all.
What's radical about Medicare?
The police, all of this.
Well, ending private health insurance is not a position most people are going to support and not a Kamal Harris instantly backed off of it, right?
But anyway, she went down this track, and I didn't make her do that.
Republicans didn't do that.
She did it because she thought that was the future of the party.
Then she realized, no, it's not.
Then she was asked about all the stuff this time around, and most of it didn't even address herself.
Usually when you flip-flop on something, and I'm all in favor of changing positions on things.
I've changed over the years on things myself.
But you think it through and you come up with an explanation and explain people why you've changed.
And she couldn't do that.
Mr. Caller's larger point was this labeling of Democrats with these terms, the idea of woke and some of these buzzwords, as the caller mentioned, is being deployed unfairly against Democrats.
Similar to some of the complaints that you heard during the Biden administration from Republicans that many of these other buzzwords are being deployed against them.
How do we, if we, move beyond this?
Well, if Democrats don't want to be called woke, they shouldn't be woke, right?
They should be a moderate party.
And they should be able to say, again, Katrina, sorry, I'll just finish and I'll let you go, Katrina.
You know, Katrina and some colleagues say, oh, these are very rare cases.
Well, again, if they're rare and not important, just say you don't support them.
But they couldn't.
And she was just, again, I don't mean to be obsessed with the trans ad, but it's very important.
Colin Harris had no compelling explanation for where her position was or why she'd taken that radical position or how she changed, right?
She just had a shible of, oh, I'm going to follow the law.
Which people watched that and said that's not an answer.
And so often in her interviews, that's what happened.
I want to come back to your caller.
I do think that there's a demonization of issues, of people, that precludes having a serious debate about what the future of the short-term future, for example, of the Democratic Party or the country, or understanding that this issue of pushing out incumbents with nativist right issues is not just U.S.-based.
It's a global issue right now.
I think the fight over woke and what it means and who supports, it distracts from a politics of opportunity, well, a politics that is about issues that matter to people's lives.
And I think there's a lot of, I've seen, failure to deal with the trans issue on the part of Republicans because they're fearful about a changing country.
It's not going to overtake our country.
Trans is a social issue that demands attention.
The media, especially the Republican media in its different forms, gives it way too much attention.
Finally, your caller's point that he's not a socialist.
Well, I'm a Rooseveltian Democrat, and I think there are different kinds of capitalism.
There's a rapacious, predatory capitalism, which I think we'll see with Trump and his crypto people and others.
And there's a more humane kind of capitalism.
Many of my colleagues would disagree.
They're thinking about democratic socialism.
But I do think that we need a full debate about where we're heading as a country.
And that demands a lot of rethinking, which is tough for people in this country and others.
Jewel is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jewel.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, I was calling to, I'm hearing all the other callers, and I have a mixture of people that in my inner circle, some are Democratic, I'm independent, Democratic, Republican, and I'm hearing the fighting amongst everyone.
The problem is, I've watched the, I'm not political, and I hate it because it brings out the working people, but I've watched this election cycle.
And my thing is, I don't feel that the incoming president, the one that's coming in, Mr. Trump, is I don't feel safe.
Okay, a lot of us are talking and we don't feel safe.
Yes, I don't, there's some things I don't agree with both parties.
But at the end of the day, we're humans, right?
And we're supposed to be loving one another, because I'm a believer of Jesus Christ.
And I don't see that love with Trump, because all his rallies has been spewing hatred and demoralizing others.
And I don't know if there's going to be guardrails up for our safety.
And I just don't foresee it because he's going to be bringing in people that's going to be saying yes, yes, yes, for everything.
And there's going to be no guardrails.
You know, we had the prior generals and other people that were putting up guardrails.
They're all gone.
So, Joel, I want to give our guests a chance to respond.
But first, I want to read a statement from former Representative Liz Cheney, who was obviously campaigning with Vice President Harris towards the end of the campaign there.
Our nation's democratic system functioned.
This was the day after the election last night.
And we have a new president-elect.
All Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections.
We now have a special responsibility as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years.
Citizens across this country, our courts, members of the press, and those serving in our federal, state, and local governments must now be the guardrails of democracy.
Rich, both Liz Cheney and our caller there talking about guardrails or the lack thereof in the coming Trump administration.
Yeah, well, I agree with most of that statement from Liz Cheney.
But, you know, we were talking just a couple minutes ago about buzzwords.
They're simplistic and crude and defame one side.
A huge buzzword in this election was fascism, right?
This is what Liz Cheney was out there with Kamwell Harris making this case against Donald Trump.
And it's completely absurd on almost every level.
Fascists, you know, one thing they support is expansionist wars abroad, right?
Wars of territorial aggrandizement.
And as Katrina was saying at the, close to the top of the hour, she hopes Trump will actually be less hawkish than the traditional Republican.
And actually, that was the case in the first Trump term.
So this was an absurd smear against Trump.
Now, there are things he says that he shouldn't.
He does freak people out, and he shouldn't.
But the caller, who I really appreciate her sincerity, which came through in her call, these rallies were not as portrayed.
He would say harsh and negative things.
He'd also say wildly optimistic things about unifying the country and creating a new golden age.
It's just those were never in the headlines because the press was so slanted in this race and determined to defeat Donald Trump.
And it lost almost as much as Kamwell Harris did.
There were some pretty crazy things said at the rally, Rich.
I wanted to say the fascism that it was thrown around, it was thrown around pretty too often, though the great historian of fascism, Robert Paxton, came to believe that he was witnessing a kind of fascism.
Fascism is essentially corporate power fused with government state power.
You know, I found it interesting, I'm not denouncing it, that Elon Musk got on a call with Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine.
It's not clear where that's going to go, bringing in unofficial people, supporters on those calls.
But that's not the same thing.
We do know that the official people on calls isn't fascism.
That's no, no, no.
I'm just saying that the power of a Musk or some of the other oligarchs, you know, it's going to be very oligarchical in construct.
However, Project 2025, which many of the listeners may remember, is an outline, in effect, if Trump remains disciplined, to what we will witness.
And I think weaponizing or politicizing the civil service, the Justice Department, all of that is frightening.
And I think that is a blueprint if people want to check out what Trump and team intend to do.
So with the acknowledgement that during the campaign the president-elect distanced himself from Project 2025, Jewel, our last caller, did bring up this idea that there would no longer be guardrails around the president-elect.
Do you agree with that, Katrina?
And what do you think would be the response to that?
Well, I think you'll see sustained organizing.
And at the state level, taking it to the states as movements organizing, for example, if there are mass deportations.
And I think the progressives and other Democrats will be a phalanx against the excesses.
The Justice Department, obviously, is one where you could see an expansion of executive power and a rollback of rights.
On the other hand, I still maintain that if not a I do think there's a chance that we have a different kind of engagement with the world where we are not policing, we're not the indispensable nation, that there's an understanding America is one of many, or not one of many, one of several, restraint and realism better than this indispensable nation.
Gary is in Winterhaven, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Gary.
Yeah, I wanted to talk about the results of the election.
It's really simple why the Democrats lost.
First is the American people have a very low tolerance for economic pain.
They don't understand how things work, and they have short memories.
The economic pain of I hear a lot about Trump cheap gas, that it was the COVID lockdown and the laws of supply and demand.
It had nothing to do with Trump policy.
And then inflation coming off the COVID lockdowns, it didn't matter whether Trump won or Biden won, we were going to experience that.
Biden did a pretty good job, but he was straddled with economic pain.
And then people have short memories.
Trump lost in 2020 because we were suffering economic pain.
We were all in lockdown.
Biden lost in 2024 because of the effects of the lockdown.
We're still experiencing economic pain.
They're blaming the administration.
Rich, what's the point of this?
I think this is the last COVID election.
I think we forget the impact of COVID on our country, economy, and society.
And Rich, what do you think of that assessment?
We also saw in other countries around the world that whoever happened to be in power during this time of high inflation basically lost.
Yeah, no, I think there's a lot to that.
And I do think the woke stuff played a role, but the economy was the biggest issue.
And this is one reason I was bullish on Trump's chances all year long.
He's leading on the economy pretty consistently.
There's some polling three weeks out or so that showed Harris catching up on the economy, but then it seemed to widen again.
So it just seemed hard for me to believe he was going to lose, winning by about 10 points or more on the economy.
And Biden didn't cause the inflation solely, but his policies did make it worse with the overspending and just the denial eroded his credibility.
And then something that also played a big role that was entirely Biden's fault was the border.
He just blew up the border because he ripped up every Trump policy that had worked and that was humane and reasonable.
And he was warned, this is going to create a disaster.
You have millions of people flowing in.
And sure enough, he did.
And then for three and a half years, they just denied it.
They just said it's a crisis, not a problem, even though you had Democratic mayors across big cities in America saying, please make it stop.
We can't take this.
I know we're supposed to be a sanctuary city, but these 10,000 illegal immigrants have shown up and it's bankrupting us.
And finally, they did a little bit by convincing Mexico to do more to stop the flow and then promoting this pretty bogus Lankford so-called enforcement bill.
But Biden just did that for just no reason and to placate the left largely because the left doesn't really believe we have a moral right to exclude a certain class of people of asylum speakers across the border.
And this is something Trump will fix pretty quickly.
I mean, I think it's a fantasy that he's going to fix it quickly.
I think it's an ongoing embedded problem.
I think there's new thinking about how not to weaponize the border, but find a public safety approach.
It's been so criminalized and weaponized that it's not effective.
There are more people coming in.
And I think Trump, his policy is just not feasible for the economy, for morality, and for a real way forward.
There's a lot of thinking going on.
Remain in Mexico.
Remain in Mexico is totally sustainable, totally humane, and was working.
And Biden ended it for no reason, just for the sake of it.
Just because he didn't like Trump's policies and wanted to open up the border.
And the country has paid the price, and he's paid the price, and Comwell Harris has paid the price.
I think the border flow, as soon as Trump's inaugurated, it will go to zero, and then it'll tick up again and needs to reinstate this stuff.
So, Trina, you're going to be able to do that.
Getting the people who came legally last couple years is going to be difficult.
It's about the economy, too.
I mean, first of all, one thing we haven't talked about, which is interesting, are these trade deals, which really began a process of weakening the American working class, not as really helping the Mexican working class.
But on trade, it's going to be interesting to watch because Robert Lighthauser, who is the pick, I believe, is very close to the left's leading trade person, Laurie Wallach.
So, again, there's this transpartisan kind of alliance in that.
Rethinking about the border has to be humane, has to be effective, and has to be about public safety and security.
I do want to get back to our callers.
Let's hear from Jerry in Forked River, New Jersey, on our line for Republicans.
Go ahead, Jerry.
Morning.
I was just wondering, I saw in the CNN or MSNBC the head of this big Hispanic group, and he was saying that the Hispanics voted so highly because they, many of them, Cubans or whatever, came from actual communist countries.
And all this Trump is Hitler and communists and racist and misogynists and fascists, all those names.
He was saying that all these people that came from the communist countries saw that exactly what the left was saying, and they saw all the laws there, lock them up, lock them up.
He's a felon.
And they said they left countries that were doing that.
And now they see it happening here in America.
And they think that the left was the ones that are being communists.
Now, he also mentioned that Harris, when they were running, she had Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah, Julia Roberts, George Cloney, Stevie Wonder.
They're all millionaire or billionaires.
Now, when Trump had his, he had all his friends on.
Dana White, I mean, people that he's been friends with for 50 years.
So that also influenced them because most of America can't really relate to millionaires.
So Jerry, your point about Hispanic voters, I want to read an article here from the Miami Herald before we get Rich to respond.
The headline is, do Hispanic voters take Trump's immigration rhetoric personally?
Most say no in a poll.
Despite former President Donald Trump's continued rhetoric about immigration, particularly along the southern U.S. border, his support is growing among Hispanic, with most saying Trump's remarks are not about them.
According to their poll, Trump's remarks on immigration have long inflamed his opponents on the left and some influential voices on the right who have accused him of demonizing immigrants in order to score political points, with the bulk of his attention focused on the flow of undocumented immigrants coming into the United States from Latin America.
Rich, Jerry made the point that just some of these arguments about Trump just really did not land well with Hispanic voters.
What's your take?
Yeah, so she is discussing Cuban voters, and that might be true of Cuban voters, but this is much broader than that.
Cuban voters are a traditional Republican strength, and Trump has broadened out from that in a really amazing way.
I think the bargain Democrats, progressives, offer to Hispanics and other groups, hey, you can be an oppressed victim like everyone else.
And I think this is a statement a lot of Hispanic voters, no, we just want to be Americans.
We just want to be part of the mainstream.
And they are.
You look at the polling, they cared about some of it.
They cared about the economy more than white voters did.
So I think that was the overwhelming factor here.
Hispanic households have more people in them than any other group in the country.
So you have inflation, that's going to hurt them more.
And a lot of them are working class going paycheck for paycheck.
So it matters.
Katrina Kaitis.
I'll be done quickly, I promise.
And then also, I think the average Hispanic voter, if you said the choices between a FDR Democrat and a conservative Republican, they'd be with the FDR Democrat.
But that's not the Democratic Party anymore.
As we discussed, it is woke.
It's into these boutique social justice issues that appeal to affluent white people overwhelmingly.
And these folks, these working class Hispanics, are not woke.
They're patriotic.
They're culturally conservative.
They're religious.
And that stuff repels them.
So I think the economy and the wokeness of the Democratic Party drove these voters into Trump's arms.
Katrina, a quick response before we get back to the call.
I think that's a rank mischaracterization of the Democratic Party, but I do agree that it's a reprise of 2020 when the Democrats made the mistake of treating Latinos as a monolithic group.
The economy is critically important for that cohort, and I think Democrats need to press hard and think hard and look at that.
Althea's in Queens, New York on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Althea.
Alethea, excuse me.
Go ahead, Alethea.
All right, let's hear from Patrick in Florida on our line for independence.
Go ahead, Patrick.
Well, thanks for taking my call.
A couple of things.
One, Katrina, your woman's guest, said NAFTA was the downfall of American manufacturing.
Wow.
Actually, it was the 72 Israeli-Arab War where Richard Nixon said to Israel, keep all the land you want to, and we got the Arab oil embargo, which really hurt.
Second, to your male guests there, you say you're pro-life.
I was stationed in Germany.
You couldn't buy American chocolate bars, because I like to remind you when Trump complained that Germany would buy our food.
Because by German law, chocolate bars could only have three ingredients in them.
American chocolate wouldn't do that.
You couldn't get American beer over there, but by German law.
And the reason I say this is because I've called in twice about the Wall Street Journal having articles of the overuse of pesticide causing autism.
Wall Street Journal also.
Okay, you've raised a couple points there, Patrick.
I want to hear from Katrina on some of his comments around NAFTA.
And then, Rich, if you don't mind, I don't want to get into chocolate so much, but Trump has talked about some pretty broad-reaching tariffs that could affect our European allies.
Katrina?
You know, NAFTA, you began with NAFTA.
NAFTA is the original sin in many ways.
Listen, the left Democrats are not against trade or globalization.
It's for whom, by whom, and millions have been shafted as a result of these trade deals, and many have greatly benefited.
So I think that needs to be understood as one of the grievances that is driving this election, Drovet, and previous elections.
So that's my, I don't know, I haven't followed the link to 72 and the oil, but that's my, and I think the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party was right about the impact of these trade deals, not just on the economy, but on the workers who now are, you know, they are the heart and soul.
They remain the heart and soul, not just the white working class, but the working class, brown, black, of the Democratic Party.
And Rich, can you talk a little bit about some of these proposed tariffs that President-elect Trump has talked about?
Yeah, so first of all, I think the most important point is to realize, despite the depiction we get from the left and parts of the right now that America has just been economically devastated last 10, 15, 20 years, it's leapt ahead.
We've advanced much further than the EU has.
You take the poorest American state, West Virginia, on average incomes are higher than they are in advanced European countries.
So the picture has actually been one of progress in advance.
It doesn't mean that there aren't pockets of poverty and problems that we have.
And on trade, manufacturing, we employ manufacturing has become more productive, right?
And trade's been part of that, but advances in technology are a huge part of it as well.
We still make a lot of stuff.
You can just do it with fewer workers.
Now, Trump does not agree with what I just said, and that's why he's talked about tariffs.
This was the main affirmative policy stance he took in this election.
He was quite obsessed with it, and I think we'll see more tariffs, and it matters a lot what form they take, because just sweeping across the board on everyone 10, 20% tariffs, I think that will be quite counterproductive and potentially destructive.
If it's more, well, we're going to have reciprocal tariffs, you know, we're going to do to you what you do to us, that could actually unleash some useful deal making and see some countries reduce their tariffs and mean that we're not hurting ourselves as much as we would with across the board tariffs.
And just last point, you know, steel and things like that that we've had tariffs on, they're import inputs to U.S. manufacturing.
So yeah, you help the steel industry specifically with those tariffs, but you hurt all sorts of other manufacturers.
And that's kind of the story I think writ large on tariffs.
Let's get one more call in.
Stephen is in Pasadena, California on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Stephen.
Thank you.
Very long-winded.
Yeah, I'm a black American, and one of the reasons Donald Trump won so much of the black male support is because we know what it's like to be railroaded.
We've seen the Justice Department weaponize against him and do things that we never saw them do to anybody else.
And he's supposed to be coming to drain the swamp, right?
You don't come in and drain the swamp by giving pardons.
What Hunter Biden did, he deserved it.
And he already got away with the millions of dollars of money laundering that he could have gotten convicted under the REACOL act that would have tied him to Joe Biden.
He got away with that already.
Don't pardon him because if Trump took a poll, the majority of his voters would not want Hunter Biden to be pardoned.
Do not pardon Hunter Biden.
They would be bending over forward.
I'll let both of you respond to that and any closing remarks you have, Katrina.
Well, I think there are many others who could be pardoned.
And I wouldn't lift up Hunter Biden, though I do agree with Rich about the human quality of it.
I guess I'd say that, you know, we are analyzing this election in the weekend after.
I think we're going to learn a lot more.
I do hope that Trump stays true to his opposition to endless wars without victory, because I think this country is in rough shape.
I know, Rich, there are lots of possibilities, but the wars deplete.
The wars don't bring us true security.
We've provided Ukraine with $170 billion.
That's more than the Marine Corps in one year.
I'm not an isolationist.
I just think the military spending is out of control and we need human security.
And that's a different force and strength to think in it.
Rich, on Veterans Day, come in.
I think Trump was railroaded.
He would say I was targeted by my political opponents.
The media would say, what would fact check and say you're wrong?
That has been proven.
Well, surely Bragg and Fannie Willis were his political opponents, and so was the Biden Justice Department.
Jack Smith was working for the Biden Justice Department and tortured the laws to come up with these adventurous and novel theories for why Trump had violated the law.
So these cases were profoundly wrong.
And Trump would say, I'm going to target my political opponents.
People say, oh, that's terrible.
But he's usually saying it in the context they targeted me.
I don't think he should target his political opponents.
I think that would be wrong and really politically destructive.
And they're much more important things to focus on.
But my last point would be, this is a great and good country.
You know, Caller said 45 minutes ago, expressed a concern.
How are the children going to handle this?
Most people, they're not obsessed with this, right?
They go about their daily lives, interact with other Americans of all partisan brands and every color and creed with no problem whatsoever.
And that's what the country is.
So we kind of had this poisonous froth of political debate on top of a country where most people do not care about this and are not obsessed with it every minute the way we are.
And then I'll just finally say I would endorse the couple callers we've heard in this hour, or maybe a little earlier as well, just hailing C-SPAN to have Katrina and me on and just an unversal, almost unmoderated discussion, just letting us talk civilly and disagree and occasionally agree is a wonderful thing, and it's too bad we don't have more of it in the media.
So my hat's off to Katrina and C-SPAN, and I really enjoyed it.
Well, we'll end it there, Rich Lowry, who is the editor-in-chief of the National Review, and Katrina Van den Hoovel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine.
And thank you to everyone who called in this hour.
We're going to take more of your phone calls after the break in open forum.
You can start calling in now.
members will be on your screen.
For the past 10 years, Tess Owen has covered extremism, disinformation, and politics for several nationally known publications.
In the October 8, 2024 issue of New York Magazine, Ms. Owen wrote an article with the title, Inside the Patriot Wing.
She talked with several of the over 1,400 January 6th defendants who have been spending time in the District of Columbia jail about two miles from the U.S. Capitol.
This is her story of how she got to know several men who have been convicted of, in her words, violent crimes.
We asked Tess Owen, how did she get access to these folks behind bars and what are they saying?
Tess Owen, with her New York magazine article inside the Patriot Wing, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate return for the first time since the election for legislative business and votes as they also prepare for the upcoming 119th Congress in the new year.
House and Senate Republicans are holding leadership elections.
The House GOP will select their nominee for Speaker.
Senate Republicans will elect their new leader to replace Mitch McConnell in the Republican-majority-controlled Senate.
Also, newly elected House members and senators will be in D.C. for orientation.
Watch this week, live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app.
Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're in open forum and ready to hear your comments.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans at 202-748-8001.
Independents at 202-748-8002.
Before we get to your calls, the cast of Saturday Night Live has been riffing on Campaign 2024 all year long.
And last night, they gave remarks on the result of the presidential election in their cold open.
On Tuesday, Americans went to the polls and elected Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States.
To many people, including many people watching this show right now, the results were shocking and even horrifying.
Donald Trump, who tried to forcibly overturn the results of the last election, was returned to office by an overwhelming majority.
This is the same Donald Trump who openly called for vengeance against his political enemies.
Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, there are no guardrails.
Nothing to protect the people who are brave enough to speak out against him.
And that is why we at SNL would like to say to Donald Trump, we have been with you all along.
We have never wavered in our support of you, even when others doubted you.
Every single person on this stage believed in you.
Every single person on this stage voted for you.
Because we see ourselves in you.
We look at you and think, that's me.
That's the man I want my future children to look up to.
And Mr. Trump, Your Honor, we know that you say things that are controversial sometimes, but really you're just speaking the truth.
And I hate how the lame stream media, Michael Che, tries to spin it to make you look foolish.
So if you're keeping some sort of list of your enemies, then we should not be on that list.
Saturday Night Live's take on the election.
Let's hear your take on the election or other political stories you'd like to talk about, starting with Trina in Willingboro, New Jersey on our line for independence.
Good morning, Trina.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm sorry I missed the guests that you just had on, but I just want to say that Trump is a supposed billionaire.
I mean, he's worth a lot of money, but he's got a lot of debt.
Trump is transactional, and that's how he operates with people.
He's not a conservative.
Remember, he added $8 trillion to the debt and sank us into COVID without leadership.
So the question that I have to America and C-SPAN listeners is, how do we overcome as a country the sexism and misogyny in this country?
Because Harris was clearly the better candidate, but you didn't vote for her.
So I'm just disheartened a bit about how things went down.
But we got to pick up ourselves, dust ourselves off.
It told me a lot about what this America really is.
Thank you for taking my call.
Next up, Anita is in Montclair, New Jersey on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Anita.
How are you this morning?
Good, thank you.
Yes, I'm going to say this election, there's something wrong.
People don't want to hear this, but there's something wrong.
How in the heck did they start calling this election for this man before all the polls close?
You still have people in line voting.
All of a sudden, this man's at 266.
We as Americans are not crazy.
Something is wrong.
These Republicans, they can crawl all they want to.
This man is not fit to be president.
As time goes on and people start looking at the things, they think we don't know what we're talking about.
But I'm telling you, America is much better than this.
Again, America is much better than this.
And they need to look at Iliad Musk and his technologically capabilities because there's something definitely wrong.
But we as Americans, we always survive, we always win.
But we won't be winning with Trump because he's not going to be there.
Thanks for your time this day.
Have a blessed day.
Let's look now at a portion of Vice President Harris's concession speech last Wednesday at her alma mater, Howard University, here in Washington.
And here she addresses concerns that the nation is entering a dark time.
And I'll close with this.
There's an adage an historian once called a law of history.
True of every society across the ages.
The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.
I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case.
But here's the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.
The light.
The light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.
That work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States Of America.
Back to your calls in open form.
Odie is in Massachusetts on our line for Republicans.
Good morning.
Good morning, Odie.
Can you hear us?
Audi, excuse me.
Audi, are you there?
Yeah, can you hear me?
Yes, you're a little bit quiet, but go ahead.
Good morning.
Thank you, Mayor Washington Journal.
I would like to start off by saying it's hard to get too on this line.
And whenever I do get lying, I'll call it America, not a miracle.
So thank you to Chair Washington Journal for taking my call.
I would like to start off by saying I voted for Donald Trump.
I'm glad he's in there.
About time we got somebody that's there for the people.
Meeting more people like that once we're out of walking.
Audi, your line is very difficult to hear.
I just want to make sure that we get your point.
Can you speak a little bit closer into your phone?
Yeah.
Can you hear me now?
It's a little bit hard, but go ahead.
I'm sorry.
My phone's a little broken.
It's hard for Americans who are struggling to get a new phone.
Now that it costs more than $500 to get a new phone.
But my point is, is that I voted for Donald Trump.
I'm glad he's in there.
And I'll make my point short.
We have a lot of problems.
Venezuela is here.
Stock market lost $950 billion.
Migrants are taking over.
They were voted in to Democratic Party.
We don't need that.
And I say we make more history with this administration by throwing them out as fast as we can.
I'll say December 5th.
Also, I would like to say I have my taxes on, ready to go to vote for Donald Trump.
I flung that like I flamed a proud, law-by American taxpayer citizen I am.
I would like to say thank you for Donald Trump for running again, and I hope he turns this country around.
Thank you for taking my call.
All right.
Jim is in Key West, Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jim.
Good morning.
How are you today?
Doing well, thank you.
Okay, I've got a few things I want to say.
First of all, you know, I watched Joe Biden's speech Thursday.
And I mean, how often did he say he never had spoke to anybody about his kids or his brother's business?
I mean, and that was proven.
He just kept lying.
So that's why I had to vote for Trump.
And I have another problem.
I owned my own business for 30 years, retired about four years ago.
And I went one year to college, and I keep hearing people talk about the educated versus the uneducated.
And I guess I'm in the, I didn't get a college degree.
I owned my own business, again, for about 30 years.
And I'm living the American dream.
My wife and I, we worked our butts off for 30 years.
What kind of business is it, Jim?
I had a little family business.
It was a grocery store and a liquor store combined.
And my wife and all my kids had three kids.
We all worked there.
And we sold it.
Actually, we sold it four years ago.
And my capital gains cost me.
And I come from a family of seven.
My father had issues.
My mother was scraping all the time.
And we had to pay, and we paid our taxes and everything very legitimately.
And when I sold my business, I had to pay $360,000 in a capital gains tax, which for a middle-class guy, I was blown away when I first discovered that.
And that was only, thank God, that Trump was there because he lowered the capital gains by like 15 points or something.
So, I mean, that's another reason I voted for him.
Again, I had three children, put them through college, and now the Biden wants me to pay other people's educations.
So, I mean, that was another thing.
I have a daughter who was in sports.
She's too old now, but she's, I mean, God, if I had a daughter, you know, the woman on your previous show downplayed that men and women's sports.
It's not to be downplayed.
It's legit.
It's real.
So I have that to say.
And my last thing was with Bernie Sanders.
You know, Bernie had the Democrat that, you know, in 2020, they'd moved him out.
He was making the same move, and the Democrats moved him out.
As an independent, I was like astounded that a Democrat could stay in the party when they just, you know, first of all, they wouldn't let anybody else run in the primary against Joe.
And then they decided they didn't want who's making these decisions.
So as an independent, as far as I'm concerned, and I got to be perfectly honest, I've only voted for one guy who's won in the presidency.
And I'm 68 years old, and I've been voting for a long time.
And Trump's the only guy who I ever voted for who won.
So needless to say, I'm not that savvy when it comes to picking presidents.
But I really, I want to congratulate America.
I want to send out my condolences.
My daughter, who's, you know, 38, was crying when Trump won.
And she went to Georgetown.
And I have to pay that.
And I mean, come on, what's going on?
Hallelujah, man.
We've been happy ever since the vote, man.
We've been happy as can be.
So, Jim, what you're talking about is something I think a lot of families are experiencing where different members of the family supported different candidates.
How are you doing with your relationship with your daughter around this issue?
Well, she won't, we can't talk about it.
I have two sons, too, and they're Trump's, actually.
You know, they're Republicans.
I'm independent.
But it's kind of funny.
You know, I called her on the voting day and I reminded her, don't forget to vote tomorrow.
So anyway, yeah, it's not great, but I mean, we love each other, and it's not that bad.
Okay.
Next up, Alan is in Newberry Park, California on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Alan.
Yeah, thank you for letting me come on here for a moment or two.
I'm curious about something, though.
You know, the situation with the Supreme Court, basically, I mean, the way I'm looking at it anyway, has given the president almost supreme power.
That's what it apparently looks like to me anyway.
There's some Americans out there.
And if that's the case, making, you know, the Democrats, which I'm a Democrat now, is claiming that, you know, Trump could be a dictator.
Well, the fellows in charge right now, I think it's still Biden, would be the president of the United States and be the dictator right now, or the next person, which is the guy coming up there right now.
But Biden's in there right now.
And under his authority, according to the Supreme Court, if that's true, it put him behind bars right now for what happened on the 6th insurrection.
And another thing, real quickly, is a man has all these legal problems.
Who needs that kind of thing?
But the problem is he did these things.
And people out there are saying it's okay.
All the Christian people, all everybody as far as I look at.
Alan, in an earlier segment, we had an article from the National Review that was actually calling for President Biden to pardon President-elect Trump.
What do you think of that?
Well, that would be possible.
I mean, he could do that too, couldn't he?
In other words, he could do both.
So it's up to him what he wanted to do.
But, okay, fine.
There's his criminals that he apparently has done a lot of things that aren't really very good.
I'd say kind of icky.
And if you want to let him go on that, fine.
I don't even know if he ought to get into it, which is what he isn't doing and which the Denver Party isn't doing.
But before, before the election was kind of gone through right now, when we got Trump, maybe he should have done that.
Not pardoned him at all, but thrown him in jail or at least had something done about it.
This is wrong.
This is wrong.
Let's hear from Michelle in Whittier, California on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Michelle.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I was curious to find out about this immigration and if he's going to implement the co-op programs back in the high schools where I had back in the 70s and 80s, it was mandatory you went to work somewhere.
The school would help find you a job part-time if you weren't going to college.
And then you would have trades come to the schools, try to get the boys.
Back in those days, girls couldn't get into those classes.
But now things have changed.
And I'm just wondering if that would be implemented for this immigration issue.
Because if you remember, minimum wage jobs were stepping stone jobs.
They weren't something to live on.
And over the years, you saw that they changed the rules.
You can live at your parents' house till you're 25 for insurance.
In my day, you were out of the street at 18.
And I'm just curious to find out what his immigration, nasty deportation is going to do and if it would lead the co-op program be implemented back into the high schools.
Sorry, Michelle, I just want to make sure I understand.
Are you saying the co-op program would be used in tandem with these immigration proposals or two separate issues?
In tandem.
How so?
Because he's going to get deport these people, their minimum wage jobs.
We had those in high school.
Ah, I understand.
You think that there will be more employment opportunities for young people if there are fewer undocumented immigrants in the United States.
Yes.
I understand.
And housing prices would come down because back in those days you could get rent.
You know, you could rent a flat.
Everything was cheaper.
You could, you know, get a car insurance wasn't.
Okay.
Car insurance was never cheaper.
But the point I was trying to make is: do you think those plans would be implemented again?
We haven't seen those plans in high school for what, almost, what, 20, 30 years now.
Kids come out of high school, they think they're going to go to college, and then when they get out of college, they think they're going to get a job right off the bat.
You got to have experience.
What experience do you have?
You can't even balance a checkbook.
You know, that's all.
That's my main question: do you think they'll be implemented back again?
I guess we'll find out when we hear about his nominees for various positions in his incoming administration.
Let's go to Don in New Orleans on our line for independence.
Good morning, Don.
Yes, good morning.
Happy Veterans Day weekend.
And you know, it's funny how people say children should be thrown out when they're 18.
J.R. Ewing and Bobby Ewing on the show, Dallas, they stayed at South Fork and they were married, even on the younger wrestlers.
Jack Abbott stayed at home with their company, your boat, cosmetics.
They stayed at home with John Abbott.
Tracy and his other sister.
So I don't know why people think throwing children out in a market where families are smaller, but houses are bigger.
We're building MAC mansions, you know, 3,000 square foot palaces for families that are shrinking in size.
But I'm going to say this on my closing remark when we talk about the election.
In New Orleans, you know, New Orleans produces so many of the jobs, it's the economic engine of Louisiana, okay?
It's the economic engine of 40 million tourists in the state of Louisiana, 20 million come to New Orleans.
We love it.
We enjoy the hosting so many people and events.
But here's the thing: we're in a red Republican state, Mississippi, all this red around us.
That's fine.
I'm independent, so it doesn't bother me because I know it's about the dollar in most cases and the allocation of it.
But when I look at what states Tamla Harris won, she won California, Oregon, Washington on the West Coast.
Then she won mostly all of the, except for Michigan and maybe Wisconsin, but she won the Great Lakes states.
She won all of the Northeast and even down to the Mid-Atlantic, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, New York.
Those are heavy economic producing states.
But if you look at John Chester, who lost in Montana, Montana is the number one state that receives federal funding.
They receive more federal aid than they pay in taxes.
And many of those red states, except maybe Florida, Texas, are in a similar predicament with West Virginia receiving more in federal funding than it pays in taxes, Kentucky.
So, but the economic engines, you look at rare states like Atlanta.
Atlanta's in Georgia, which is reddish or purple.
But Atlanta is the economic engine of Georgia.
And you look at Houston as the economic engineer.
Don, I want to get to a couple of other folks in open forum.
Let's hear from Laura in Massachusetts on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Laura.
Hey, good morning.
So I just wanted to just make a few points.
So I voted for Kamala Harris, but I did it reluctantly.
I consider myself a progressive, and I really had to hold my nose to do it because of what the Biden administration has done in Gaza, how they lost my, you know, even thinking that they even care about the working class anymore.
You know, she kept using the word middle class, but never wanted to say the word poor people because it's almost like now it's repulsive, you know, for the elite Democratic Party now to even talk about poor people.
It's as if the Republicans went so far right and the Democrats went so far to the center right.
I mean, she's going around with Liz Cheney instead of Bernie Sanders.
So, I mean, I think the Democrats pretty much got what they deserve because, you know, the Republicans, especially the poor Republicans, the wealthy ones are happy because they're going to get all they want from their billionaire donors.
you know, which has been hijacked through Citizens United.
I mean, it's just appalling to see the money that was put into this, you know, both campaigns, just billions and billions of billions.
It's disgusting.
But they were able to buy the poor man's vote because those people are just so disgusted with all of it.
And they think Trump, you know, who's, I think, is, you know, still called the blue-collar billionaire, really cares about them when he's sitting in his McMansion in Florida.
You know, they're delusional thinking that.
And the problem is, too, they don't want to talk policies.
All they want to do is talk personalities, you know.
And that keeps the eye off the ball, right, of what is actually his intentions.
And his intentions are to try to dismantle social programs that actually could benefit them.
So they don't understand they're voting against themselves.
And it's unfortunate that corporate media, you know, just feeds into this.
You know, I see MSNBC and CNN, you know, trying to figure out what went wrong.
I mean, you know, you've got so many people at the top of the chain now who just don't even understand what the working class has been going through in this country.
Let's hear from Freddie in Burlington, North Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Freddie.
Hey, how are you doing today?
Thank you.
What I got to say is Joe Biden blew all the illegals in, and Donald Trump's going to fly them out.
And this about Trump being charged with all that stuff.
If you think two misdemeanors can turn into 32 felonies, you're going to reap what you sow.
So hopefully Donald Trump returned to favor and charged some of y'all the same way he did.
Okay.
President-elect Trump is in the process of forming his next administration and made some statements about that, ruling out, as is storian Axios reports, he rules out Haley and Pompeo for administration posts.
President-elect Trump said Saturday that two of his former officials, Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, would not be asked to join his second administration.
Here is the post on Truth Social showing that statement from President-elect Trump.
I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to join with the Trump administration, which is currently in formation.
I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously and would like to thank them for their service to our country, make America great again.
Back to that Axios article, Why This Matters, there's plenty of water under the bridge between Haley, Trump's former UN ambassador, and the president-elect after they clashed during the GOP primary.
Though she ultimately endorsed Trump, she rebuked him on the campaign trail as unhinged and toxic.
Trump had previously said that Haley would be on his team in some form after she vowed to vote for him.
And there was even speculation she might serve as the president-elect running, president-elect's running mate.
Haley issued a statement as well.
I was proud to work with President Trump defending America at the United Nations.
I wish him and all who serve great success in moving us forward to a stronger, safer America over the next four years.
Let's get back to your calls in open form.
Kathy is in Lincoln, Nebraska on our line for independence.
Good morning, Kathy.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
So several things here.
It feels like with the election and everything and the way things are going, I don't know, I hate to age myself, but it looks like Soil at Green.
If you ever watched that with back in the 70s, the rich were rich and the poor were poor, and that's the way it was.
And it kind of feels like that, that rich people in government and other places, they have no idea.
I would like to see or suggest, instead of having one person as a president, to have a cabinet, maybe a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent, or four, so that all of them would have to agree on everything as a team instead of giving all the power to one person that so many things can happen,
as we know, with rich one person.
Regarding Trump, I'm just not sure to change gears here.
I voted for Kamala because I wanted a woman.
I don't care who it was.
Men have always ran everything and think that they're the ones, the only one.
And I would like to see a woman at a chance of seeing what they could do with our country.
So far as COVID and Mr. Trump, as a president, you're supposed to protect and serve the people.
I do not see that Trump really, he was more interested in trying to get reelected, telling people to inject bleach.
My biggest thing with him is I was I had gotten COVID.
I have COVID.
It destroyed part of my brain, and I can barely function because Donald Trump was talking about injecting bleach and that the breeze in March was going to get rid of it and no one saved anybody.
It was terrible, all the people that died.
So there's nothing I can do.
I'm an older person.
I'm on Social Security and with having brain fog and other issues and living on $45 a week, I really don't think that anyone in government would understand how I feel.
And then right after COVID happened, I had gone to a dentist's office, and I'm not quite sure what happened there, but Kathy, I am going to go on to the next person.
Ray is in California on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Ray.
Good morning.
I agree with the previous caller about COVID.
One of the reasons I did not want to vote for Trump is that in January, he knew that the pandemic was going to be absolutely awful.
But then instead of doing something that would help people, he came out and said that it was a Democratic hoax and didn't do anything really until March.
And even his part of his own committee, Dr. Burks, said that between January and March, we could have saved about 200,000 people.
The other thing is that he came into office having been convicted of fraud, which had nothing to do with Democrats whatsoever.
He had a fraudulent Trump university and marketed it deceptively and had to pay $25 million.
The other thing is that I wonder how many of the children that they took from immigrants at the border, how many of them have never been reunited with their parents and will never be really reunited with their parents because the children didn't know who their parents were, the address and so forth.
And some of them were too young to even know their mother's name.
So I thought that was absolutely atrocious, absolutely.
So I'm wondering if anybody ever thought about a class action lawsuit to hold Trump responsible for trying to deceive people regarding the COVID pandemic since there were so many lives lost unnecessarily.
And even after March, when we finally started getting things going, he had the states competing with each other for things like personal protective equipment.
And I remember him saying, well, you know, I'm not a shipping company or something of that nature.
So I just don't think this man is fit to be in office.
He's done so many unethical things.
And I voted for Kamala Harris because how can we be the greatest country in the world when we have all these people living on the streets?
And she was talking about building a large number of housing for affordable housing.
All right.
Let's move on to the next person.
Let's hear from Anthony in Greentown, Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Anthony.
Good morning, Kimberly.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Since the results on Tuesday, I'm watching CNN and MSMBC, listening to certain respondents on C-SPAN.
I watch Washington Journal every morning.
The level of Trump derangement syndrome has now turned into Trump derangement depression.
And it's kind of funny to watch because these people, especially the media, have gone after Trump since he came down the escalator.
The FBI, the CIA, they've all conspired against him from the beginning with the Russia collusion nonsense, with the 51 guys, the CIA people who denounced Hanta Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation, all the law affairs that Letitia James and Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith that we've all designed and coordinated with the White House.
There's proof that they all met with White House Counsel and people in the DOJ actually work with Letitia James and Alan Bragg.
The people that have gone after Trump since day one, now they're getting their comeuppance.
And I'm happy to say I love listening to the Trump derangement depression because they got what they would gaslit into.
These people are too stupid to understand that the Biden administration used law fair against a fellow citizen and a political rival.
Anto Biden should be pardoned.
Trump should not be pardoned because he didn't do anything wrong.
Letitia James wrote a book, Get Trump.
They tried it from the beginning.
They lost.
Happy Sunday, everybody.
Next up, we have Gar in Decatur, Georgia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Garr.
Good morning, Tia.
First thing I like to say: strap on your belt because you're getting ready to go on a roller coaster ride.
It's going to be drama, drama, drama, because we know we got a drama queen in office.
We know it.
And ain't no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
And the thing about it, your guest was talking about woke.
Woke means to be aware.
And the Republicans, they put people to sleep.
That's how a guy with more crime than Al Capone, Billy the Kid, Barney and Clyde, Bill Cosby, Pete Diddy, more crimes than all them put together.
Put him in office.
So, you know, they woke put people to sleep.
Because woke means aware.
But so, like I said, can you put on your roller coaster belt because you get ready to go on a drama ride?
Thank you.
Jim is in Cairo, Missouri on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Jim.
Hello.
I am not surprised that America could not vote for a black female going back to the Obama presidency.
That was the genesis of Trump birtherism and the start of we got to take America back.
Well, back from who?
I would say the black people is their thought process.
Labeling immigrants as illegal immigrants is a prejudicial thing.
They present themselves at the border, get an asylum hearing.
They are not illegal.
If Trump tries to deport, well, those 20 million people that he talks about, what would happen to our GDP, our workforce that is too small to fill the jobs we have now?
His economic proposals, tariffs, you would think a business man would know how they work.
China does not write a check.
That comes out of our pockets.
Let's see.
Political influence for sale.
Elon Musk, perfect example.
Why would he want to mess around in politics?
He doesn't have enough money.
He needs another tax break.
Yes, I am depressed.
Good day.
Mike is in Houston, Texas, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Mike.
Good morning.
Good morning, thanks.
Well, in regard to illegal immigrants, asylum is, by definition, defined by going to the nearest adjacent country from which you are fleeing.
It is not to go choose a country on the other side of the globe and land on our border and have our travel, our TSA or the border agents act as TSA and travel agents.
So we are taking them in and paying and spending money that we do not have.
Back in 2000 or 1999, Newt and Bill Clinton balanced the budget.
The federal government was spending $2.2 trillion a year, and they balanced the budget.
Today, right now, we're spending $6.5 trillion.
Now, at some point, someone's going to have to start paying the rent, the interest on this.
And right now, it's what, about a trillion dollars a year.
So, someone's got to go to D.C. and reform those departments of paperwork that seem to be at every building.
I've been to D.C., and if you go there, just walk through the city and drive through it.
The federal buildings, who works there?
Department of Education, the Pentagon, the NIH, and all these buildings.
They need to be reformed.
Everybody, the people who work there are good people.
They love their families as much as I love mine.
Problem is, they have a better risk of dying at their desk than they do of getting fired.
Also, if Trump walked across the Hudson River, if he walked across it, some of the Democrat callers, I know they mean well and they're upset.
Some of them would actually say that he cannot swim.
I'm just stunned how much they look in the rearview mirror instead of looking at and trying to find ways to reform departments.
There are so many departments that overpromise and under-deliver and everything.
Department of Education.
Who do they teach there?
So literally, it's been discussed on the campaign trail and elsewhere that RFK Jr. might have a potential role in the Trump administration.
And one of the things he has said specifically is that he would want to eliminate many departments, including some components of the Department of Education and also potentially of USDA.
What do you think of those proposals if you've heard about them?
Well, and I think that what happens is it's a good idea.
A lot of the departments have overlapping roles, R-O-L-E-S roles.
And I think that there's just so much spending and so many people.
What I would be interested in is comparing, for example, the spending of these departments that you've described from 2010 or 2005 or even 2000 when the budget was balanced and compare the rate of increase over the past 20 years.
Because I assure you, the rate of increases, the rates of increase in these individual departments is substantial.
And I would even submit, let's look at all the money spent at the Pentagon because there are places that could be trimmed and the fact eliminated.
We have to look at how we're spending the money in these departments.
We spend a lot of money on the solar efforts, alternative energy, and we never hear a peep about the loss of SolarX and all those failed efforts for $754 million here and there.
We have to reform these things and audit them like we've never audited them before.
Okay.
Next up is Lisa in Victoria, Texas on our line for independence.
Good morning, Lisa.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I live in Texas and I am one of the border states.
And I just want people to try to understand real quick that we have grave concerns.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can hear you just fine.
Okay, I apologize.
I just want people to real quick stop and think about 2001 and how we were attacked.
And we down here feel like we are at great risk still because all these millions of people, the foreigners, and something else I want to say.
When President Trump was in office, he tried his best to address our economy, the deficit.
He's not perfect.
None of these politicians are.
I mean, my voice shakes as I talk because what concerns me is that I feel like our country's never going to be united.
And I'm going to blame some of this on the mainstream media because most of the media did nothing but harass him when he was in office.
When he was addressing COVID, they would get him off subject and talk about other things.
And let me just say this lastly.
Biden couldn't even talk to us.
He wouldn't even answer questions at news conferences.
Kamala couldn't even address things.
I want to end this with, our biggest concerns right now is the economy.
I do believe that people have the right to come to our country, but legally.
And then more than anything, as an independent and as American, I want to see this country united.
Thank you so much.
Jim is in Columbus, Ohio, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Jim.
Yes.
My column is Project 25.
Everybody had ought to read that.
If they read that, they would really be scared half to death.
And I am a senior citizen.
Today is my birthday, and I'm 80 years old.
Happy birthday.
Thank you.
And as far as I'm concerned, I think Donald Trump is too old to be in office.
You know, even though he has wisdom, still he's too old.
And I think Kamala Harris, as far as I'm concerned, I didn't know which one to vote for because I didn't want either one of them.
And I think people ought to look that we need something.
We need more.
We need younger people in office.
Really, to tell you the truth, I think before this is over, JD Vance is going to be our president within the next four years.
That's about all I have to say.
And thanks for taking my call, too.
Robert is in Maine on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Robert.
Good morning.
Yeah, I hear a lot of people that are really upset out there on both sides.
And I would like to see the temperature come down.
And I really blame a lot of it on the mainstream media.
I mean, it can't be denied.
We all know that.
But something I want to, and I mean this sincerely, if you're depressed, and it's continual, you really should seek help.
I mean, that's what professionals are for, because it's not normal to have such depression about, you know, political things.
I mean, we're going to, I'll get through this, but that's what I really hope that people that can't shake it, that they get the help they need.
That's all.
Keith is in Denver, Colorado on our line for independence.
Good morning, Keith.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, I've been listening to the calls this morning, and I'm pretty struck as to how four years ago, when Trump lost, all you heard was fraud.
These elections are rigged.
This is no good.
This is terrible.
All of these things.
Four years later, all the elections are great and there's no fraud and everything is good.
I think that the American people have to really take a look at how we're assessing this election, how we're assessing the previous elections, and how we assess elections going forward.
Biden was an awful candidate.
I don't think there's any question about that.
Some of the decisions that he made were bad.
And I think that the vice president suffered from that unpopularity.
But I also think to the point that a lot of people have said, the media has really been responsible for the Trump phenomenon.
He's an interesting story.
He tells all of these fantastic misrepresentations.
Everything is more stunning than the previous statement.
This issue about illegal immigration, I think, has been demagogued for years, and it's unfortunate.
And I think the more unfortunate thing is that you have poor people in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Louisiana, in these states, Kentucky, who looked at Trump.
Now, they're poor, and they think that Trump is going to deliver them from their poverty, or they just couldn't vote for this woman who didn't look like them.
I think that's the bigger concern that people going forward really should have.
They're going to be poor in four years.
They're going to be poor in eight years.
But they didn't want to give this woman a chance because of their own bias.
And that's unfortunate.
Okay.
Maria is in Illinois on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Maria.
Hi, good morning.
I just have two things to say.
Trump should be barred.
He should be behind bars and well as Biden.
Hunter.
Sorry, Biden, but Hunter should be not above the law as well as Trump.
Trump is not finished with this world, but he's going to take Jesus to take care of everything.
Trump should be behind bars like everybody else.
He's not above the law.
Okay.
Thomas is in Schaumburg, Illinois, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Thomas.
I just noticed something that over the last four elections that in 2012, the Democrats got 65.9 million votes.
2016, Clinton got 65.8 million.
In 2020, Biden got 81.2.
And this year, Harris got 68.6.
The Democrats are lamenting the fact that Harris couldn't maintain the level that Biden got.
I think this demonstrates very effectively that Trump won the last time because of the there's no way that that many new votes,
the total votes in 2020 was 20 million votes more than any of the last four elections.
It proves that to me that the extra votes that came in last the previous election were bogus.
All right.
Next up is Virginia in Riverside, California on our line for independence.
Good morning, Virginia.
Hi, I just wanted to question all of this talk about immigration, all about the vote from 2808, all of this.
I'm just concerned about Medicare and the Social Security system.
You know, I don't know if these people realize, and I don't know how many young and old are calling in, but I will tell you that out there.
Besides, you know, just disturbing our conversation.
Jimmy, your line is breaking up a little bit.
I'm not sure if you've moved away from your phone, but...
I'm right here.
Well, let's see if we can get it a little bit clearer.
Go ahead.
Yes, I was just disturbed about all of this talk, and I'm very concerned about his talk about throwing out Social Security, Medicare, a lot of programs that help everyone in the United States.
And there was talking about so many other things today.
And I don't think they even heard that he is in the process of tossing these things aside.
How are we going to survive?
Thank you.
Thomas is in Ann Arbor, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Hi there, Thomas.
Can you hear us?
Yes, I can hear you now.
Go ahead.
I don't understand how the people that voted for Trump realize what's in store for the next four years or might be the next eight.
Man is a criminal.
You might as well let any criminal out of penitentiary and run for president.
You know, Trump, Trump is a monster.
Okay?
I can't hear you.
I didn't say anything.
Oh, I thought your mouth.
That's all I had to say: is, you know, he's going to be, it's going to be like the man said, a roller coaster up and down.
And I think we'll have more down than we'll have ups.
Mark is in Missouri on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning.
I think the American people really should understand what's going on with the Democratic Party.
Mikamala Harris, we haven't heard much from her in the last couple of years that she was in office, or has while she's been in office.
She's been in South America recruiting people to come to the border and says that they will fast-track people into our country within three months.
That was our border bill.
That was on the border bill to fast-track illegals coming in to become citizens.
I think the American people need to know this.
Okay.
Claude is in San Diego, California on our line for independence.
Good morning, Claude.
Good morning.
I will say that the American people seem to have lost faith in the Democratic Party behind rig primaries and things like that, not just with this election.
But to jump off, a gentleman before called in and he said something about 20 million lost votes.
I will say that during the Hillary Clinton election, I noticed a lot of people sat out.
And then the 2020 election, a lot more people voted because the pandemic was an issue.
So I don't feel like there was 20 million lost votes.
I just feel like there was more motivation to vote, just like this election.
More people were motivated to vote because everybody's hurting.
The economy was the number one issue, and it seemed like Democrats have ignored it.
Okay.
Daniel is in Texas on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Daniel.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
Yes.
What's your comment, Daniel?
Okay.
Trump is in office for four years.
We had the best economy in the world.
We had the American Party going to Canada.
And he done the Russian Chinese pipeline.
So thing is, when Biden got in office, his first three days, he unplugged America.
I think we've lost your line there, Daniel.
Let's hear from Roland in Glen Burney, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Roland.
Yes, man.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, one question, you know, the press never insists on Trump or his answering is how many jobs exactly were created during Trump.
That's one question.
You know, Democrats sometimes, I mean, I feel like they, you know, they don't just press how many jobs were created during Trump.
They still cannot answer it till this day.
Trump inherited the Obama economy.
Okay, now back to the answer to calls.
Can anybody, any Republican, call from West Virginia and other states like that from the South and tell me what has changed from when Obiden was dead to when Trump was dead and through, you know, how has Trump benefited their lives?
West Virginia said, it's a sad case.
And nothing's going to change in West Virginia.
But they'll keep voting for Trump 100%.
The five ways to come up with excuses is the economy.
That's why they voted against this black woman, even though she's promising to help people like them.
Please, I want Republicans to answer me.
What's this change?
Why Mississippi, Alabama, always in that condition, you know, they are sorry I stayed, especially West Virginia.
Okay.
John is in Massachusetts on our line for independence.
Good morning, John.
Hi, it's funny how our taxes have gone to the upper echelons of the higher class, like the World Health Organization, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, your United Nations, all European countries who basically have colonized the world.
You got Anthony Sutton, who told you that the United States with arrests with the other countries were supporting communism and fascism.
So now we got Rothschild Zionism in Israel and a bunch of pedophiles at the higher echelons getting our taxes.
So why aren't these people in prison?
Since they're murdering people all over the planet, colored people can't have a place to go without some European bombing their country over their resources.
Let's get with it right now, man.
We're being colonized in this country, too.
So I think people should get up because there's two sides of the same fascist coin.
Trump and Biden are nothing but Zionists, Rothschild Zionists at that.
Not even the original people of the Bible.
So I want people to do some real research here.
All right, we'll have to end it there because we're out of time today.
Thanks to everybody who called in for Washington Journal.
We are going to be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern with another edition of Washington Journal.
Have a great day.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy.
From Washington and across the country.
Coming up Monday morning, reporter Patricia Keim shares her latest investigation for military.com on veterans' access to VA mental health care.
Then the CEO of the nonpartisan group Mission Roll Call, Jim Whaley.
He talks about his organization's polling of veterans across the country and their top issues.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN Now or online at c-span.org.
Next, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces that the Fed has again lowered its policy interest rate.
And then a look at the 2024 election results, including the demographic breakdown of the vote and other factors leading to Donald Trump's win.
And later, elected officials and education policy analysts discuss education reform and innovation.
Tonight, on Q&A, Stuart Eisenstadt, former domestic policy advisor to President Carter and U.S. ambassador to the European Union under President Clinton.
He shares his book, The Art of Diplomacy.
in which he discusses his career and the impact the civil rights movement had on him.
We go to eat, and black students from North Carolina Central are sitting in.
You can look at the, you can Google this.
That's when the sit-in started in Greensboro and Durham.
And I said naively to my fraternity brother from New York, why are they doing this?
And he said, what universe do you live in?
It's because they can't be served.
And it was like somebody lifted a veil from me and I saw the world in a very different world.
I had gotten so used to the segregated world, I didn't question it.
I became very active in the civil rights movement in UNC.
And when I was with President Carter, we supported affirmative action and minority set-asides for black contractors.
So these kinds of transformative events when you're young can sometimes carry over into your career and they certainly did for me.
Stuart Eisenstadt with his book, The Art of Diplomacy, tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.