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Coming up live on Washington Journal, your calls and comments and news of the day.
Later, CBS News congressional correspondent Scott McFarlane will talk about the week ahead in Washington.
Then Washington Times White House reporter Jeff Mordock on the latest news on the president-elect's transition, including his picks for cabinet.
Washington Journal starts now.
It's Monday, November 18th, 2024.
A three-hour Washington Journal is ahead.
We begin on President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks for his second administration.
The incoming president unveiling more appointments over the weekend, including Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright for Energy Secretary.
This morning, we begin by asking you, what do you think will be the most important cabinet post in a second Trump administration?
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And a very good Monday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
I want to show you some of the headlines in this morning's major national papers on Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet in his second administration.
This is Peter Baker writing for the New York Times the headline, Trump swings a wrecking ball at the status quo, startling picks seen as a government stress test.
In USA Today, it is Susan Page.
Her column, Trump Signals Combat Ahead, is the headline.
And Stephen Dinan writes in the Washington Times today in Trump's cabinet loyalty tops experience.
He writes that it's his cabinet this time around, a severe detour from his approach in 2017 when his picks included the head of ExxonMobil, two four-star Marine Corps generals, a former cabinet secretary, and several business tycoons.
Stephen Dinen writes, Mr. Trump felt burned by many of those picks, figuring they were more hindrance than help towards his MAGA makeover.
This time, he's chosen people he expects to be loyal as he carries out an unprecedented government house cleaning.
Asking you this morning what you think will be the most important cabinet position in a second Trump administration.
Again, phone lines split as usual by political party.
The numbers are on your screen.
We'll show you from the New York Times their tracker on the cabinet-level posts.
These are the Senate confirmation required posts.
It's about half of those positions have been named at this point.
We're still waiting on positions, including the Labor Secretary, Treasury Secretary, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Education, Housing and Urban Affairs, CDC, Surgeon General, the Small Business Administration, the Trade Representative, the Office of Management and Budget, and a few others.
But about half those posts have been named at this point, confirmation battles ahead for some of them.
Lots of talk on the Sunday shows about what that could include.
And we'll bring it to you this morning.
But we mostly want to hear from you, asking you to look ahead.
What will be the most important cabinet position?
Louis is up first in Highland Park, Illinois, a Democrat.
Louie, good morning.
Good morning.
I think it's an excellent question.
To me, the most important appointee would be health and human services.
As we can see, that happened to America in the last pandemic.
It almost crippled us.
We're very thankful to Dr. Fauci and his staff and all the people involved in health that saved our country from total devastation.
And the other side of it, we have stupid people who are like Donald Trump, who are walking around in public without a mask, spreading the virus, making our country more fallible, more dangerous.
So, Louie, are you happy with the idea of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary?
Absolutely not.
The man has no scientific background, has no way to understand data, and he's going to be in charge of literally thousands and thousands of health care professionals who are supposed to take care of this country and keep us safe.
Absolutely not.
No Kennedy.
That's Louis in Highland Park, Illinois.
As we said, plenty of discussion on the Sunday shows.
It was most of the discussion yesterday on Donald Trump's cabinet picks.
This was Deborah Burks, Donald Trump's COVID response coordinator in his first term.
She was reacting on Face to Nation yesterday on CBS to President Trump's pick, President-elect Trump's pick, of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This is what she had to say.
I think when we talk about things in public health, we don't acknowledge the concerns.
Because when my children went to school, there was maybe one in a thousand kids with autism diagnosed autisms.
Now it's three per 100.
So every mom is seeing a classroom of kindergartners where one of the children has autism.
That's scary to moms and dads.
They want to know why.
So it's not good enough for us to just say vaccines don't cause autism.
It's us finding what is the cause of autism.
Well, everyone would absolutely agree that it is ridiculous that there isn't a lot of research and established causation for autism.
But what he has said in the past is that autism is caused by vaccines.
And there's no scientific basis for that conclusion, as I understand it.
That's correct.
And so that's why when he talks about transparency, I'm actually excited that in a Senate hearing, he would bring forward his data and the questions that come from the senators would bring forth their data.
What I know for sure is he's a very smart man who can bring his data and his evidence base forward and we can have a discussion that many Americans believe already is a problem.
So, until we can have that transparency and that open discussion from both sides, I know the members have incredible staffers who will bring great questions from their constituents.
And that hearing would be a way for Americans to really see the data that you're talking about.
That was from Face the Nation yesterday, Deborah Burke's going on that program.
And the conversation around Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues in the pages of the New York Times today.
One of the opinion pieces that they run is from Rachel Bedard, a medical researcher.
The headline of the piece, What Kennedy Gets Right About American Healthcare.
Here's a little bit from that piece.
She said, I believe there is a healthcare agenda that finds common ground between people like myself, a medical researcher, clinician, and Mr. Kennedy.
There are seeds of truth to some of what Mr. Kennedy says, and we can't spend four years simply fighting his agenda.
Non-cooperation won't protect the integrity of the American public health or advance its interests.
Rather, there's an opportunity to leverage Mr. Kennedy's skepticism and relative political independence for good, she writes, to turn his most valid criticisms of the American health care system into constructive reforms.
For instance, she writes, there's been no meaningful public reckoning from the federal government on the success and failures of the nation's pandemic response.
The lack of effort to build consensus about what the country did well and what to avoid next time is a missed opportunity to bring closure to a difficult era while preparing for the next pandemic.
More from Rachel Bedard from the pages in the New York Times today.
That's just one of the cabinet positions.
We're simply asking you this morning, what do you think will be the most important cabinet position in a second Trump administration?
Robin in Maryland, good morning, Republican.
Good morning.
I can't decide between Department of Defense and Homeland Security.
I think both of the choices were excellent.
Pete Hegstett is a true patriot.
He loves America.
He has two bronze stars.
I think he did a great job.
I think he's going to do a great job.
And the current head of the DOD went AWOL for five days and lied to his boss about where he was.
So I certainly think Pete Hegstett's going to be a great choice.
Christy Noam, I think she's great.
I am very happy that she's going to head up DHS.
Our current head of the DHS lied to us, told us that the border was secure.
We have millions and millions of illegals coming over.
And we've been told there's nothing to worry about.
There's no problem there.
I think Christy's going to be a great choice.
And I just wanted to mention, someone had talked about how Trump didn't wear masks.
Well, keep in mind that anything other than a N95 or KN95 mask had no value whatsoever.
So where we were all told we had to wear masks, those masks did absolutely no good whatsoever.
So thanks very much for taking my call.
That's Robin in Maryland this morning.
This is Pennsylvania, Ridgeway, Pennsylvania.
Steve, good morning, Republican.
What's the most important cabinet post?
Good morning.
I think it's kind of a hard stretch to say what is the most important.
You know, the Department of Homeland Security could certainly be cut completely as far as I'm concerned.
Combating terrorism with another gigantic bureaucratic nightmare of a department is a waste of time, effort, and money.
But I want to talk about the first caller talked about the experience or lack of experience by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a second, if I may.
When you look at the current Secretary of DHS, I think his name is Xavier Pasera.
I might have his last name spelled wrong.
Pasera's correct.
But he is nothing but a career politician.
You know, he has, if you want to talk about an unqualified person, if all we do is the heads of departments be nothing but career politicians, then we're going to get exactly what we deserve.
We need a shake-up.
Donald Trump and company are going to shake it up.
And we're going to see where it falls out.
If it falls out good, well, then, you know, Trump, he's done after this term.
So that's the end of his presidency.
But perhaps some American people will start looking at things a little bit differently than business as usual.
Steve, what do you think about the Senate confirmation process and how much pushback Donald Trump's nominees would get in a Republican-controlled Senate?
Well, I think they should be.
If they just rubber stamp everything, then that's not the solution either.
They have to, there are some legitimate questions that have to be asked and have to be answered.
So you would not be in favor of recess appointments, this idea of appointments that would go till the end of the 119th Congress, not a full presidential term, but avoiding the Senate confirmation process?
Well, then I would, if it draws, starts to draw out, then I would support recess appointments.
If it draws out for that length of time, that it handcuffs the president and his administration, then I would support recess appointments.
That's Steve this morning out of Pennsylvania.
More from the Sunday show.
CNN State of the Union had one of those senators who would vote on the confirmation process.
It is Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
John Fetterman saying Democrats should stop freaking out about some of these appointees.
Here's part of that discussion.
Well, I mean, there's some that I would absolutely be excited to vote for, like my colleague from Florida or the representative from New York, of course.
And then there's others that are just absolute trolls, just like Gates and those things.
And that's why, you know, Democrats, you know, like Trump gets the kind of thing, I mean, he gets the kind of thing that he wanted, you know, like the freak out and all of those things.
And he hasn't even been, it's still not even Thanksgiving yet.
And if we're having meltdowns, you know, every tweet or every appointment and all those things, I mean, it's going to be four years.
And just the last time, I think, the last time I was on your network, I was warning about the jackpot.
And I use that metaphor of the slut machine, 777.
And if Trump wins, then it's likely that's going to happen.
He's going to get the House.
You know, we're going to have the Senate and the other presidency.
And the real jackpot is the Supreme Court.
And that's been very clear that that's a strong conservative slant.
So they can run the table right now.
And at least for the next two years, those are the things, if you really want to be concerned about that, that they have the absolute ability to run the table, at least for the next two years.
And that's what I think we should all be concerned on, not small tweets or random kinds of appointments.
Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania on CNN yesterday, back to your phone calls, asking you simply, what's the most important cabinet post in a second Trump administration?
Ann Maryland Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
Yes.
I was calling about vaccines.
I taught school for many years, and there are some great concerns, not just for children, but for everyone.
But these children in elementary school, preschool, need their vaccines.
They need more than just the vitamin C, which is not strong enough to help them within their immune system or inside their immune system.
And as a result, I'm just giving one feeling about one of these candidates.
As a result, this person who comes from a well-known family name is using his family name just to be in a position that will be detrimental to children who will attend school for the first time, children who need to have these kinds of things in their immune system to strengthen them so that they can go on with the life's journey, not only to school, but for whatever work they desire later.
I am 74.
Thank God I was given that opportunity.
Right now, it's as if everybody is being cut off from being given an opportunity to live well, healthy, and to find a better way in life with their jobs and schooling.
I understand that this is what they want to do, but I cannot believe that I live in a position or in a time like this within this country to have these people to come here just because they're angry with certain other people.
Those other persons, Democrats, were not liberals.
Republicans were not too conservative.
I like both sides of it.
Unfortunately, these people don't like any side.
They just want to destroy people.
I'm sorry, this is what we're going to see in our lifetime at this point.
I cannot believe that this country comes to this, but I will still help to make this country better.
Thank you.
It's Anne and Maryland.
This is Charles in Charleston, Arkansas.
Republican, good morning.
This is not strong enough.
Charles, you with us?
Yes.
Go ahead, sir.
Yes.
The question is, what is the most important cabinet position?
And I say that the most important position is Matt Gates as Attorney General, simply because we have three branches of government.
We have executive, legislative, and judicial, and we must fill the judicial, which is very important.
And that is all I have to say.
That's Charles in Charlestown.
This is another Charles in Texas Democrat.
Good morning.
Hello.
Go ahead, Charles.
The Treasury Department.
Because if you let Donald Trump control who controls that money in the Treasury Department, you can guarantee all he can think about is money and power.
His family is going to eat the United States up because money is going to be diverted in different places, and you'll never know it.
If I'm not mistaken, it is one when his last election that he was in, someone diverted some money, money come up missing in the Treasury Department.
They never did find out where it went.
So if Trump can control that Treasury Department, look for him and his family.
If he ain't being there, he will be before you leave out again.
If people don't believe that, there's something wrong with him.
Thank you.
Wall Street Journal today focusing on the jockeying to lead the Treasury Department.
We have yet to hear who Donald Trump will name for that post.
But this is what they write.
A messy fight over who should be president-elect Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary has played out privately at Mar-a-Lago in recent days, and it all spilled into public view this weekend.
Two of Donald Trump's most powerful allies, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., used social media to signal their support for billionaire businessman Howard Luttnick to lead Treasury as Trump continues to deliberate on that crucial post.
Musk's support for Luttnick even went as far as to discredit another finalist for the job, investor Scott Besant, who Trump has expressed great admiration for and who is considered a top contender.
Late Friday, it appeared Luttnick had begun to fall out of the running for the job.
People familiar with the matter said, prompting Musk and Kennedy to make their cases in public over the weekend.
The last-minute burst of public support for Luttnick, the chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald puts pressure on Donald Trump to choose him.
The Wall Street Journal with the back and forth palace intrigue right now on that position.
Peter in Reading, Pennsylvania, Independent, good morning.
Good morning.
My name is Peter, and I'm calling from Reading, Pennsylvania.
You know, as I sit here and I listen to this nightmare of people he picked I'm an Uber driver, and Trump had a rally here in my town.
And I was so disgusted because I happened to pick up a Trump campaign worker.
And I said to him point blank, I said, you know, your boss is a racist and a bigot, but that's okay.
We survived 400 years of this.
And with Matt Gates and this other clown for defense secretary, it was a major, wasn't even in top in the top echelon of the military.
I'm a Navy veteran.
When I served aboard the USS Coral C, I did not expect to see my country blown apart like this.
That's all I got.
That's Peter in Pennsylvania.
You mentioned Matt Gates as Attorney General.
It was on Fox News yesterday that Speaker Johnson was asked about that post, about that nomination.
He talked about Matt Gates and the ethics investigation that ended when Matt Gates resigned from Congress to take up this Attorney General position to prepare for it.
At least this is some of what Speaker Johnson had to say.
Yeah, so I don't know anything about the contents of the report because the way the rules work, of course, the Speaker of the House can't put a thumb on the scale or be involved in an ethics committee report.
What I do know is that the comments about this being there's a precedent for releasing reports is not exactly accurate.
Yeah, there are two breaches of the tradition in the past under very extraordinary circumstances.
I don't think this meets that criteria.
Look, Matt Gates is a colleague of mine.
We've been serving together for more than eight years.
He's one of the brightest minds in Washington or anywhere for that matter.
And he knows everything about how the Department of Justice has been weaponized and misused.
And he will be a reformer.
And I think that's why the establishment in Washington is so shaken up about this pick.
But with regard to the report, there's a very important reason for the tradition and the rule that we always have almost always followed.
And that is that we don't issue investigations and ethics reports on people who are not members of Congress.
I'm afraid that that would open a Pandora's box because the jurisdiction of the ethics committee is limited to those who are serving in the institution.
That's its very purpose.
And I think this would be a breach of protocol that could be dangerous for us going forward in the future.
Speaker Mike Johnson on Fox News Sunday yesterday.
This is Thomas in Tuckerton, New Jersey, Republican.
Thomas, our question this morning, what's going to be the most important cabinet post in a second Trump administration?
Well, listen, the last health person at Roundta for four years, you know, I'm concerned.
I'm for JFK Jr. to go into it.
The only reason I'm for him, listen, I didn't realize that our products that we're eating, that we're serving our kids, our grandkids, are poisoning our youth today.
And us, myself, you know, I like fruit loose, and I stopped eating them because what's in it and all the things that are in it.
The last four years, none of this was pointed out to us that we are being poisoned.
So if he's aware of what's going on in all our food products, you know, I would like to see him in it because I have nobody else talking about it.
You know, let's give the guy a shot.
I mean, all I could say is, you know, it's the only way this can help us.
Everybody's eating our food products and we're all being poisoned.
We're getting cancer, heart problems.
Now we've got to go to the doctors.
Well, listen, you have these problems.
We're going to give you this medication.
You know what?
I went off with all my medications and I'm doing better now.
And let me tell you one thing.
Matt Gates, you know, I'm a little bit leery about this guy.
I think they should just push him to the side because he's kind of a little bit radical for me.
You know, and I know Speaker Johnson, he worked with him for eight years.
You know, I work with a lot of people that I can't stand, but I'm not going to put them down.
But I'm just going to say, Matt Gate needs to be pushed aside and just pick somebody else.
Thomas, what line of work are you in?
Actually, I work for Donald Trump for a year.
I'm a doorman at one of the casinos in Atlantic City.
And, you know, he was the great boss to me.
Every time my contract came up for renewal, he didn't fight.
He said, just give them what they need.
And I worked for the guy, and he said, tip us very old.
He loves his doorman.
He loves his entry-level people working.
And again, he even said he doesn't like other billionaires.
So, you know, with him and Elon Musk, I got to watch Elon Musk too.
You got to keep an eye on him.
You know.
Thomas, did you ever have a conversation with Donald Trump as a doorman at one of his casinos?
Many times, many times.
Many times.
And he was a good tipper?
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It was four doorman.
Every time we come in, he goes, what's up now?
I go, well, Mr. Trump at four doorman.
Each of us, you got to give us $400.
He goes, oh, but he would go in, do his thing, then come out, and he would take care of us.
You know, he would talk to us for like 15, 20 minutes, letting us know what's going on in the city, in the hotel, and what can we do to better the hotel or to bring better people into the hotel.
It really, you know, you have to get to know the person in the person.
But then again, this is 25 years ago.
It's a different Donald Trump today.
You know, it's like everybody changes.
You know, how do you think he's different today?
What's the biggest difference today versus that Donald Trump you knew 25 years ago?
25 years ago, he's very egotistical, and I'm going to be honest about that, but he cares about people.
People don't understand that.
And today, you know, he's more of a Christian than he was before.
He wasn't a praying president when he went in.
Now he's a praying president for all those Christians.
That's Thomas in New Jersey.
This is James in Alabama.
Good morning, line for Democrats.
Yeah, if I was Trump, I wouldn't do, I would run my whole cabinet off of it.
I wouldn't even have no go through the Senate.
I'd just make them all acting.
And I'd run this four years with acting.
And James.
You say that as a Democrat?
Yes.
If I was him, I'd just put them all upon it.
I'd pawn everyone up.
I wouldn't have none of them going from the Senate.
Thank y'all, y'all.
Have a good day.
It's James in Alabama.
This is Robert here in D.C., Independent.
Good morning.
Yeah, thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, I'd like to, so I agree with the previous call on the Treasury Department because I remember that when Trump was in office on the first term, and I was concerned that he was looking at the money, because if you leave the White House, and on the right is the Department of the Treasury, and on the left is the World Bank.
And so I remember that as a point of reference and historical reference, from what I understand and being here in D.C., that when Bush Sr. was in office, I remember that, you remember when the, you remember the savings and loan scandal of 1991?
And at that time, it wasn't found out exactly what happened to that money because the money just all of a sudden just evaporated out of the banks.
And I think it was like about $150 billion.
So then Bush said that, well, the FDIC is going to bail out the banks.
And so, strangely enough, the FDIC was bankrupt to a tune of $148 billion.
Then, so Robert, bring me to 2024, actually, 2025, and the most important position right now.
Yeah, but we're talking about the presidential.
And as far as what could happen, because you remember the last time, even when Trump was in the office, right, when everybody got their stimulus.
Now, okay, everybody got their money.
So money can go into your bank account and then money can also evaporate out of your account like it did with the savings and loans back in 1991.
And that was then that was under Bush.
But then when the money also got missing out of the World Bank, and that was for the people that were slated for India.
And I was downtown at that day and saw the protest where they literally blocked down all the Pennsylvania Avenue.
And they say, well, what happened to our money?
So the problem of the treasury, like the earlier caller did say, and that is the most important part, what I think that right now is.
Robert, thanks for the call from here in D.C. More from the pages of today's papers on Donald Trump's cabinet picks.
Again, he's about halfway through his cabinet level picks.
It's about 12 right now of the 25 positions that require confirmation or that would be in the cabinet.
Not all of the 25 require confirmation hearings.
But this is the story from the opinion pages today of USA Today.
It's Dace Potus, whose headline of his piece, RFK Jr. Tulsi Gabbard, the cabinet lacks conservatives.
Between RFK Jr., who just last year sought the Democratic nomination for president, and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman, Donald Trump nominated for director of national intelligence.
We're seeing the construction of an administration that is not being filled with conservatives, he writes.
Many of Trump's nominees are devoid of conservative principles, unqualified, or simply ridiculous.
The only quality that seems to matter for a place in this administration is a love of Trump, he writes, even if it's a newfound one.
If you want to read more, USA Today.
This is Greg in Ohio, Democrat.
Good morning.
I look at it holistically, not what's the most important pick, but who is being picked.
Trump professes that he is going to make America great for all people.
He's down with all people.
But if you look at his cabinet picks, it doesn't look very diverse to me.
And he claims that he had the most votes from African Americans and Hispanics, but I don't see any of those people in his cabinet.
And this is what is very perplexing.
And I'll just look at the Secretary of Defense, who was a company commander in a National Guard who is in charge of the entire United States military.
That blows my mind.
That pick alone.
It already proves that the United States voters are unconcerned about a person's character or the life experience.
It's irrelevant to them.
These Republicans, MAGA people, they're going to push these people through because they're scared of Donald Trump.
And that's the bottom line.
Greg, this is one of the headlines from Newsweek.
Donald Trump's cabinet is on track to be the least diverse in this century.
And once again, he touted that he's going to make America great for all people, really.
And I'll use Tim Scott, for example.
I'm going to clean it up.
I really want to say something else.
But he was his number one fan.
Where's Tim Scott getting appointed to?
Nothing.
And how about Donaldson?
Nothing.
So that should tell you something right there.
That's great.
Donald Trump is disgusting.
That's Greg in Ohio.
One more from that Newsweek piece, their chart.
Obviously, Donald Trump has not finished making all his picks for his next administration, but comparing his first administration back in 2016, his original picks, the number of white men in the first cabinet of each president, this was Donald Trump in 2016, 18 in his cabinet compared to Joe Biden in 2020 at seven.
Barack Obama at eight in 2008.
George W. Bush back in 2000, it was at 11.
Again, that chart showing the number of white men in the first cabinet of each president.
This is Vincent, Houston, Texas, Independent.
Good morning.
How are you doing today?
I am an independent, and I have never voted for a party ever in my life.
I vote for the person.
I voted for Obama.
I voted for Clinton.
And yes, I did vote for Donald Trump.
What's bothering me about some of the callers and some of the things that are being said about Donald Trump's cabinet is what president has ever put people in his cabinet that's going to go against him?
I can't think of any.
I don't agree with all his cabinet appointees so far.
But what if they do good?
What if the tide has turned and they do something that everybody's going to like?
That'll never happen.
But if they do good for the country, what's the problem?
I'm married to an American black woman.
I'm a Houston retired firefighter, and my family's from Sicily.
The race thing is out of hand, and it's never going to stop until we get along and we quit trying to make things out of a race.
It blows my mind.
We're supposed to get the country closer, and everything is negative no matter what this man does.
And I've heard a lot about people talking about the age of some of them.
The people that wrote the Constitution of the United States, the average age of those men in Philadelphia was 42 years old.
So let's get some young blood up there to do some things and maybe get rid of some of the people that have been there for 40 years and have done absolutely nothing.
Vincent, are you worried about Donald Trump's age to be the oldest president to hold office in his second term?
Not at all because I don't know a lot of people his age that are as active as he is, that can play golf like he does, and stay up till three and four in the morning and wake back up and go to work.
There's a big difference between people his age that have to sleep half the day and people his age that can go to work and grind things out when they need to.
That's a big joke and people know it.
Vincent, let me bounce this off you.
Peter Baker, front page of today's New York Times, this is two paragraphs of how he describes what's happening right now.
I want to get your reaction.
Donald Trump has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation's capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves onto it.
Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter.
Mr. Trump has said that real power is the ability to engender fear and he seems to have achieved that.
Mr. Trump's early transition moves, moves, his early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system.
If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so that he can install his appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the founders more than two centuries ago.
And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments that they would lead.
Your reaction, Vincent?
Well, number one, him doing that is silly, and he loves the shock effect of doing stuff just to see how people react to it.
I don't agree with it at all, but I do agree if he does shake things up and if it does work out, then what are people going to say?
And as far I live in Houston, and as far as the illegal migrants coming over here, I see it.
I live it.
I can't go to a gas station or my wife without getting harassed by 20 people living on the streets.
She gets scared, so I go and get her gas out.
And I have one thing to say about this, and this is really rude.
It might not rude, but it might change the way people think.
The people that are against him deporting people, I don't want anybody ever to lose a child.
My brother did, and he's never been the same.
But if it happened to one of these people that are against it, if it happened to their daughters, I guarantee you they change their minds.
That's Vincent in Houston, Texas.
We'll stay in Texas.
Head to Waco.
Teresa, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I think that the RFK nomination is absolutely on point.
I mean, Secretary Buchera or whatever his name is, he has a child in healthcare.
Buchera.
He has no background in health care or anything.
He's a lawyer.
He's a lawyer and he's a retired politician.
So RFK at least studied with other doctors and scientists.
He has a background.
He knows.
He's still, he's not taking away vaccines from anyone.
He just wants people to be informed.
And as far as Pete Hegseth, Pete Heckseth is a two-time Bronze Star recipient.
He's been in combat infantry.
I mean, he's served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and Gitmo.
I mean, he has qualifications.
He knows what's going on on the ground.
And as far as diversity, really, this is where it got us.
Diversity from, what is it, Biden's cabinet?
No, no, no, no.
We don't need, we got to diverse.
We got the first woman ever in history to be a White House chief of staff.
That's diversity.
Everybody knows it.
They know they're going to have a better, everything's going to be better under Trump, regardless of who he picks.
Elon Musk, he's doing this for free.
A lot of these people are not getting paid because they love our country.
They want our country to do better.
And that's all they want.
That's all they want.
Get us on track.
I can't wait to see what Elon and Vivek uncover about all the waste, fraud, and abuse that's been going on for decades in Washington, D.C.
That will stop a lot of the garbage.
People will see exactly what our money has been going to, and it has not been anything that any American would approve or anybody in the world for that matter.
It's just foolishness.
I agree with all of his picks.
Go, Trump.
It's the Department of Government Efficiency that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are set to lead in a second Trump administration.
Vivek Ramaswamy was on Fox News yesterday talking about what those efforts will include.
This is some of what he had to say.
The dirty little secret right now, Maria, is the people we elect to run the government, they're not the ones who actually run the government.
It's the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state.
That was created through executive action.
It's going to be fixed through executive action.
Think about the Supreme Court's environment over the last several years.
They've held that many of those regulations are unconstitutional at a large scale.
Rescind those regulations, pull those regs back, and then that gives us the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state.
And the beauty of all of this is that can be achieved just through executive action without Congress.
Score some early wins, and then you look at those bigger portions of the federal budget that need to be addressed one by one.
So, I think that's one way to think about this: how can the President of the United States, who's been elected with a historic mandate, actually do the thing that the voters have voted for?
They haven't voted for incremental change here this time, Maria.
We have voted for sweeping change, and the voters actually deserve to get it.
And we're focused on how to do that as early and as quickly as possible.
So, President-elect Trump just said on that soundbite that you're going to make recommendations.
So, you're going to make recommendations in terms of where to cut after all that you've just said.
Then what?
Look, we're not going to be cutting ribbons.
We're going to be cutting costs.
And so, those recommendations are going to be on a real-time basis.
Are you expecting to close down entire agencies like President Trump has talked about the Department of Education, for example?
Are you going to be closing down departments?
We expect mass reductions.
We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.
We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.
We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government.
So, yes, we expect all of the above.
And I think people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we're able to move with some of those changes, given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us.
Bhavek Ramaswamy on Fox News yesterday, the Wall Street Journal today, with a look at the civilian workforce in the federal government, some numbers and a few charts to show you from that.
There are about 2.3 million Americans working for the federal government in civilian jobs.
The story notes that the Department of Veterans Affairs has the most civilian workers, mainly because it operates hundreds of hospitals and clinics.
Homeland Security, created in 2002, is now the third largest agency.
The Education Department, with 4,425 workers, is the smallest agency in the chart there showing the agencies by size, Veterans Affairs here: 486,522 workers.
In terms of payroll, the amount spent on the annual payroll for federal civilian workers was about $213 billion as of March 2024.
The story notes that workers in the Education Department had a median salary of $118,000 a year.
That's the highest.
The lowest median salary below $60,000 was in the Treasury Department with a lot of clerical jobs.
The median salary there, $59,500.
That story in today's Wall Street Journal, if you want to take a look at the size and money spent on the federal civilian workforce.
This is Frank in Santa Ana, California, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I think the most important candidate pick was the President of the United States because he gets to pick them all.
We have somebody up there.
I've never voted for a Republican in my life until this year.
The Democratic Party has left me.
I have, you know, they're picking on Kennedy.
My God, if 10% of this stuff is what he's been talking about, I had no idea all this stuff was going on about the serial and all this stuff.
If 10% of the stuff is true about the kids and not just that, the Education Department, I mean, we're now 28th or 27th in the world.
Randy Weingart, like I said, these are all Democrats, and they all got the swamp up there in Washington, D.C., it needs a vacuum cleaner to suck these people out.
So, Frank, what made you not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, not vote for Donald Trump in 2020, but then vote for him on a third try in 2024?
Well, this is it right here: the immigration.
It got so out of control, the people do not care about our country any longer.
We have, in our country, millions of poor people that are not going to be taken care of because now we have to take care of millions and millions of, not just poor people, gang members, rapists, and murderers.
That, to me, turned this whole thing upside down.
But one more thing, John, if you don't mind.
There is not one cabinet member right now that he has picked that couldn't debate the president of the United States right now, who is basically senile.
And I voted for him last time.
And that our party kept telling everybody, oh, no, he's fine.
He's fine.
I remember watching Maureen Joe, which I watch on a regular basis.
I don't watch it anymore.
He told, I'm going to have a talk with America and tell you this is the sharpest man in the room.
And then two days later, they're kicking him out on a Saturday afternoon, and no one says a word on the show or nothing.
This is a rouge.
This whole thing has been, I basically have woken up.
I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime.
How phony they've been talking to us about everything that's going on.
We're 37.
I saw that one.
I'm sorry, John.
I'm going on here.
I saw that the congressman from Florida.
I was watching your show.
He held up a bag of nuts about the size of a cereal box, smaller than that.
And he asked the people in the military, how much does this cost?
And they couldn't tell him.
They said, I don't know, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000.
No, $90,000.
So this is where the money's going to come from.
Not just in the office space in Washington, D.C., all this stuff is a vacuum cleaner, a big section.
And then maybe we can get this country on the right track.
And we have a, I'm sorry, thank you.
No, got your point, Frank, from Santa Ana, California.
I was just going to mention, you mentioned President Biden.
I wanted to let you know where he is today with Brazil preparing to host the Group of 20 summit at Imperior.
The Associated Press writes unlikely that the leading rich and developing nations will sign a meaningful declaration regarding geopolitics.
The meeting today and tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro is overshadowed by two major wars and Donald Trump's recent election victory.
President Biden is at that Group of 20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil today, set to meet with other leaders this morning.
Some of the arrivals are taking place right now at the G20.
That's the pool camera there showing some of those arrivals.
We're waiting to see when President Biden will show up.
We'll try to get that to you so you can watch live from Brazil as we continue this discussion this morning, asking you about Donald Trump's second administration.
What is the most important cabinet post?
Mark in Amanda, Ohio, Republican.
Good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Yeah, John, thanks for taking my call.
I think the most important, there's a lot of important cabinet positions, but I think the most important at the present time is the Secretary of State.
Rubio, once he's confirmed, he will have to negotiate with Ukraine, with Russia, with Iran, with China, with North Korea.
And the less goes on, and he will have a great backup in President Trump.
And we're on the precipice of World War III.
You know, the Biden-Harris administration did a terrible job.
What a waste of money, effort, lives.
13 lives lost in Afghanistan.
You can't replace all that.
$35 trillion in debt, and what do we have to show for it?
I mean, it's crazy.
And the last caller, he was so right.
I like to listen to this show because you get a lot of different aspects more than talk radio and so forth.
And you do a good job, John, as well.
Mark, what do you, you talk about foreign policy being important to you in the next administration.
What do you think about Elise Stefanik, Congresswoman from New York, as UN ambassador?
I think that's a good pick.
In fact, I think all the picks, I'm kind of leery about Pete Hegseth.
I'm kind of leery of that one.
I don't know if he's got the experience.
I know he was two, I think, two bronze stars and so forth.
I'm kind of leery of that one.
Everybody else that I see, You know, I like Matt Gates might have a hard time getting approved, but everybody else in Kennedy, you know, Kennedy is a Democrat.
And the Democrat Party didn't let him participate in primaries.
I mean, the Democratic Party is, they should be investigated.
The whole party needs to be investigated.
See what's going on with this media, mass media and everything.
They've led the United States to where we are today.
That's Mark in Ohio.
You mentioned Pete Hegseth and his nomination to head the Pentagon as Defense Secretary.
That also discussed yesterday in detail in several of the Sunday shows.
This is ABC's This Week.
Senator-elect Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan was asked about it.
Here's some of what she had to say.
Because I was at the Pentagon on Thursday, and there is absolute hallway, constant chatter and conversation and concern from senior women officers.
But also, I've heard from folks who I've recommended to service academies, young women who are just starting out their career saying, am I going to actually be able to accomplish what I want to accomplish here?
So I don't think it's an understatement to say that there is real stress in the horse right now.
But there is a lot of power.
The Secretary of Defense is designed to be a very important job.
So who we put in there is extremely, extremely critical, again, to our security and to who we are as a nation.
So there is deep concern, but also a deep opportunity to sort of make sure we are putting only qualified people in these jobs.
Hegseth has also said that any general that was involved in any of the DEI woke crap has got to go.
Do you expect Donald Trump to fire top generals who he considers woke or those close to former Chairman Mark Miller?
I mean, I don't think you have to fire the rest.
Yeah, I don't think you have to interpret anything.
I think they've been very clear that they're putting together some sort of panel that's going to look at generals, people who have served their nation their entire lives over multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican, in combat.
They are now openly talking about dismissing them like some sort of kangaroo court.
You can imagine the stress in the Pentagon about that, but also on the future of who we are as a military, right?
Our military and the role of the military is in the Constitution for a reason.
And I think we're really at risk of politicizing the military in a way that we can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Congresswoman and now Senator-elect Alyssa Slotkin yesterday on ABC, taking your phone calls this morning, this Monday morning on the Washington Journal.
About 15 minutes left here, simply asking you, what is your most important cabinet position in a second Trump administration?
What do you think?
That's our question in this opening hour this morning.
This is Tom out of Pittsburgh, California.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, Don.
First of all, thank you for taking my call.
As far as any cabinet position, a president has a right to nominate anybody he wants to, but there are checks and balances to any of these positions.
That is the reason why before they're confirmed, they go before the Senate or they go before a committee that asks some questions that would define what makes you qualified to run this particular cabinet position.
Now, a lot of the people that I see that Trump is nominating, are they necessarily qualified or is he creating some kind of yes, you know, yes man type of things?
And that's the only part that kind of bothers me.
Let them go through the procedure.
Let them go before the committee.
This is what I'm nominating for this particular cabinet position.
And let them be investigated as they all have to be.
Then are they qualified to run these particular cabinet positions?
If they show they're qualified, fine.
If not, then, like in a lot of cases, then Donald Trump has to come up with another person.
Tom, there's another avenue that's at least being talked about or explored, a recess appointment to allow Donald Trump to appoint these cabinet positions without going through a Senate confirmation process.
Okay, well, okay, if you want to put, that goes back to the, what, the eighth, the 19th or 18th century when you couldn't get Congress to reconvene.
This is not, this is the 21st century.
And if this is the case, I don't agree with this.
That should have been repealed a long time ago.
No, there is a process where the cabinet has to be a, there has to be a process.
And if he does that, then it's basically he wants to, he's basically running a KAG.
It sounds like, you know, almost, I hate to say a KAG report, but I'm going to put anybody who I want to, and I don't care what the American people say.
On recess appointments, Peter Baker writes in the New York Times today, under the rules, a recess appointment can stay in place until the end of the next congressional session, meaning until December of 2026, or almost two years.
And he writes, given Mr. Trump's historically short patience with his appointees, that means he could have people in key departments for as long as he typically might have them without ever being subject to a Senate confirmation.
He notes that the average tenure for a cabinet secretary in Mr. Trump's first term other than Treasury, Commerce, and HUD, was 1.8 years.
And for the key security agencies, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, the average term for a appointee was 10.5 months.
This is Diane McLean, Virginia Republican.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
First of all, I just got to say I think anyone who is going to say Americans are stupid and don't know policy should be watching your show.
I learned so much about what our public is thinking and feeling, and I'm grateful to everybody from every side who calls in.
Thank you.
For me, the most important role right now is actually Treasury, because without proper leadership there, everything else is going to go to hell.
I'm so worried about our deficits, all of that.
I'm worried about the immense amount of fraud that is at Social Security Administration.
I would like them to really delve into that.
I know SSA is not under Treasury, but I do think that they are funded by Treasury, and SSA just considers their main role is to dispense funds, and funds are going all over the world that aren't necessarily to American citizens.
So I think if they could just get a handle on so much of our fraud that is in our government, we could see immense savings.
And I hope the person they do install in Treasury has their eye on all of these balls because they're funding these programs.
They need to really know what they're funding.
Diane, you got an eye on Treasury.
Any thoughts on some of the folks whose names have been floated for Treasury and specifically Elon Musk and RFK signaling their support publicly before Donald Trump even makes his decision for Howard Luttnick?
Well, the players keep changing is my issue.
So I really am not going to put my chips on any one person just yet until I have a better sense of who's actually emerging.
So I'm not going to comment on that.
But, you know, I do think there are many, many qualified people in our country out there.
Diane, thanks for that.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board taking this up.
They will comment on that.
The lead editorial today, Disruption Won't Work at Treasury.
Musk giving bad advice to Donald Trump on financial policymaking is their view on it.
If you want to read that, it's in today's Wall Street Journal.
This is Juan in Upper Derby, Pennsylvania, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I think the most important appointment is Matt Gates for the Justice Department because he's going to create the framework for what the former president wants, whether it's retribution, whether it's de-weaponizing the Justice Department and whatever follows through with the other security agencies.
You know, the crime in D.C. is totally out of control.
And the theft has gone beyond limits.
And we really need the folks he has elected.
Matt Gates is going to crack the whip, just like he did Kevin McCarthy.
He's not afraid to do the right thing.
And he's going to listen and do what President Trump does.
Wan De.
Do you get to D.C. much?
Do you think the Attorney General has much control over crime in D.C.?
D.C. has its own police department here and court system here.
Well, they're talking that the president is going to fire Mayor Bowser, and he's going to basically federalize the D.C. police department.
There's certain things a president can do under the Constitution because D.C. does not have statehood.
You think that's going to happen?
I think so.
I think it is going to happen.
It is in the plans.
And Matt Gates is going to play a big role in that.
And that's why he wants Matt Gates.
So it is the most important position.
I feel.
I think the other candidates will balance out, including Pete Hagisid, that everybody's talking about will balance out.
But Matt Gates, the Attorney General of the United States, just like Mayor A.G. Garland, is going to be one of the most important positions in the administration.
That's Juan in Pennsylvania this morning.
One more senator who was on the Sunday shows yesterday who will have a vote on these nominations and the confirmation process if they do take that route.
Chris Koons, the Democrat from Delaware, he touched on Matt Gaetz in the process as well.
This is about two minutes of what he had to say yesterday.
And the whole point of a confirmation process is to have meetings with those who've been nominated to run incredibly significant and powerful agencies and get clarity on their views, their experience, and their character.
That's why, frankly, there's been both great consternation in the Senate about Matt Gates being nominated to be the next Attorney General because of real concerns about his character.
And there's generally been real positivity about Senator Marco Rubio being nominated to be the next Secretary of State.
Senator Rubio has served in a leading role on the Intelligence Committee on the Foreign Relations Committee for 14 years.
He's a conservative Republican.
He and I differ on some key policies.
But he's someone I've worked with, legislated with, traveled with.
Matt Gates, on the other hand, is someone who just resigned in order to avoid the public release of a bipartisan report of the House Ethics Committee that might very well have cast very damning allegations against his character and conduct in the Congress.
Yeah, we don't know what it says.
As I said earlier, Mike Clarum, I mean, the DOJ decided not to charge him in February of last year.
But to that House ethics issue, you have obviously called for it to be released.
You're not the only one.
There are Republicans, including John Cornyn on the Senate and Judiciary Committee with you as well, saying that he'd be open to a subpoena.
Do you think there would be bipartisan support from the committee to do what you needed to do to get your hands on that report?
Yes, and to be clear about what Speaker Johnson said before, the Ethics Committee loses its jurisdiction to discipline a member when they're no longer a member.
On several occasions in the past, the House Ethics Committee has released a report when someone, as Matt Gates just did, resigned at the last moment in order to avoid the release of a report.
Some might say, why is it relevant now?
It's relevant because the Senate has a constitutional role.
It's called our advice and consent role to make sure that a president-elect mostly gets their choice, their nominees, but doesn't get to put people in who are unqualified or who lack the requisite character and capabilities to lead an incredibly important agency like the Department of Justice.
Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons yesterday on Fox, taking your phone calls this morning.
A couple minutes left in this first segment today, but we will continue this conversation about nomination appointments later in our program.
Hope you keep watching.
This is David in Flint, Michigan, a Democrat.
Go ahead.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Yeah, I think Max Gate is about the worst of his picks, but to be honest with you, we Democrats, we hate every pick he's picked.
They're unqualified people.
Somebody said he picked a guy on Fox News because he looks nice.
Somebody else said he picked a lady to be over the, I've been reading up on he picked a woman to be over the FBI that's a Russian sympathizer from Hawaii.
And it's just horrible.
David, one of the picks that has gotten at least some support from Democrats is Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.
Yeah, I agree with Michael Rubio because although I don't like him, but I think he's smart and I think he's been in government.
Do you want to finish your comment, David?
We lost you for a second.
Oh, yeah, I think Michael Rubio is good.
I'm not worried about him.
But the other picks are so outlandish until it has our half of the country, the Democrats, we are worried.
Then he's talking about going after the generals that gave their life for the United States.
Him and Steve Bannon and all them want to lock these people up.
It's just got the country in an uproar.
I'll just be glad when this four years, I hope I'm still alive.
I'm 71.
I'll be glad when this four years is over and we can get a decent president again.
Thank you.
That's David in Michigan.
One last call in this segment is George in Philadelphia.
Go ahead.
How are you doing, sir?
Doing well.
I'm talking about the person who running with charge of the Defense Department.
He will cut out all the females in the service.
Now, who are going to do the jobs?
Like the women's working on submarines who got very high-qualified security clearance and who fly bombers, fireplanes, everything else.
We don't have the manpower.
And 95% of the people are on drugs.
That's George in Pennsylvania, our last caller in this first segment today.
Stick around.
More to talk about.
Coming up next, it's CBS Congressional Correspondent Scott McFarlane.
Join us to discuss the week ahead in Washington and on Capitol Hill.
And later, it's the Washington Times Jeff Murdoch on President Trump's cabinet choices and Washington's reaction.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in.
House Democrats will hold their leadership elections for the 119th Congress, and orientation continues for the newly elected House members.
The House will revote on legislation that ends the tax-exempt status of terrorists supporting organizations, which failed last week.
And the Senate will vote on more of President Biden's remaining judicial nominations.
On Tuesday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell testifies before a House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Disaster Readiness and Response.
Then, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testify on worldwide threats to the U.S. First on Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee, then Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Watch this week, live on the C-SPAN networks, or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video 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.
On Mondays when Congress is in session, we like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington to do that.
This morning, we're joined once again by Scott McFarlane, congressional correspondent with CBS News.
And Scott McFarlane, last week, we were focused on Republican leadership elections for the 119th Congress.
This week, House Democrats have their turn at leadership elections to pick their leaders.
What are we expecting?
Any uncertainties at this point?
At this moment of unique instability here in Washington, these leadership elections are actually quite stable.
Democrats made that sea change a couple years ago when Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer stepped back after a generation in leadership, and the new generation appears to still have the galvanized support of their membership.
It's Hakeem Jeffries of New York will be the House Democratic leader.
The number two will be Catherine Clark of Massachusetts.
Number three will be Pete Aguilar of California.
They've been in place the last two years and what House Democrats have been telling us repeatedly since November 5th is they didn't suffer losses overall in this election, unlike the Senate, unlike the White House.
There's a bit of stability coast to coast and how House Democrats perform.
They wanted to get the majority.
They're going to come up short, but they didn't suffer the wounds suffered by the rest of the party nationwide.
And they're quite bullish on some of the successes they had in some spots in America.
House Democrats did really well in New York State.
They flipped three Republican seats blue despite the headwinds of this election, which speaks well to the Democratic leader who, of course, John is from New York.
When it comes to a minority leader in the House, what makes a good minority leader?
What is Hakeem Jeffries brought to that job in the time since he stepped in and taken over that position?
First of all, when you are in the minority in the U.S. House, you really do not have any ability to control what's on the House floor.
That's completely out of your hands.
So you have two skills.
You have the ability to message, to communicate, to tell America why things should be different.
And you have the ability to get at congressional hearings some arguments before the public when the minority asks their questions of witnesses and gives their statements.
Pretty limited bandwidth of power.
But over the last year, Hakeem Jeffries has wielded power I can't remember another minority leader wielding.
The Republicans have been so stalemated, so gridlocked by that incredibly narrow majority that they've been unable to pass basic things like keeping the government open, spending bills, raising the debt ceiling to avoid a calamity, doing the basic blocking and tackling of government.
Hakeem Jeffries has had to intervene and come in with a whole bunch of his votes to get government to actually function.
We'll see if he's willing to do that in an all-Republican-controlled Washington, not a divided-controlled Washington next year.
But also an incredibly small margin separating Republicans and Democrats in the House.
Once again, we don't know the final numbers, but we're waiting to see those final couple of seats.
Take us over to the Senate side, Senate Democrats, their leadership team.
What do we know at this point?
Still a bit of stability in the leadership ranks.
We're not sure just yet until there are final projections made in Pennsylvania, whether it's a 53-47 Senate, if you include the Independents who caucus with the Democrats, or somehow, against expectations, 52-48.
Either way, Democrats who've been running the Senate for a while now become the minority party.
A little more leverage the minority has in the Senate.
You do have the ability to impact what happens on the Senate floor.
You have the ability to hold up some of what the president or the Senate leadership wants to do.
But every indication is that the leadership stays the same.
It's Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, both of whom are using this final bit of runway they have to try to be impactful.
Chuck Schumer has been trying to confirm some more of President Biden's judicial nominations.
And there was Dick Durbin last week, John, trying to press as the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman to get all those Matt Gates ethics files over to the Senate for their confirmation hearings.
He has the ability as the Democratic majority whip right now and ultimately the Democratic chair of this committee until January 3rd to try to push some levers.
What is John Thune's relationship with Chuck Schumer?
We're so used to Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer.
What do we need to know about that?
Oh, we're going to find that out, aren't we?
20 years together.
I mean, John Thune started in the U.S. Senate in 2005, so this is his 20th year with Chuck Schumer.
Chuck Schumer issued a statement of support for John Thune, congratulating him on his election as a Republican leader.
That may just be traditional Senate collegiality.
We're about to find that out.
John Thun has never been, never come across as somebody who has been particularly antagonistic towards Chuck Schumer, nor vice versa, but the roles sure are changing.
I think that's one of the big questions to answer over the next six months.
On roles changing, we talked about Nancy Pelosi stepping away from leadership, Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries coming in.
Now we have Mitch McConnell stepping away after a very long time as the leader of Senate Republicans, John Thune stepping in.
But Mitch McConnell's term runs through 2026.
What is his role going to be now that he's not one of the first people to speak at the beginning of the day in the Senate?
Where does he fit in now as just another senator?
This is so untraditional, isn't it?
I mean, think of the last sets of speakers of the House who, when they left that position, left the House altogether.
Dennis Haster, John Boehner, Paul Ryan gone.
These are the types of things that have been tradition.
Nancy Pelosi has been this Democratic backbencher, but hasn't really carried it that way.
She's been a force on cable and network television, giving her opinions.
She was potentially pivotal in President Biden's decision to stand down as Democratic nominee for the White House and remains this impactful operator working alongside the rest of her caucus and the leadership.
That's untraditional.
They may still be trying to navigate that.
Now you have Mitch McConnell, who will be a rank-and-file senator with a vote.
How does that work in concert with Jon Thune?
It's going to be fascinating to find out, but I also note, who are the dissenting voices in the Republican conference for some of the more controversial things Donald Trump wants to do?
We've seen in President-elect Trump's first term, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were dissenting voices.
Does Mitch McConnell join that group?
On some things, because he's had criticisms of Donald Trump in the past, and the Senate Republicans can lose only three Republican votes and get that majority for things Donald Trump wants to do.
If Mitch McConnell sometimes joins the caucus of dissenters, there's very little margin for error.
Scott McFarland with us until about 8.40 this morning, taking your phone calls about a lot of issues in Washington.
The week ahead in Washington is how we usually describe this Monday morning segment.
202-748-8000 for Democrats, Colin.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
As folks are calling in, besides leadership elections, what else is on the agenda this week?
Let's start with what happens late today.
The House and Rules Committee is taking up this matter of whether to find, as a U.S. House of Representatives, the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, in contempt of Congress.
The Republican-led U.S. House has had concerns with how Anthony Blinken has responded to their committee investigating the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
There's been a back and forth between the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Secretary Blinken.
It will culminate with some vote this week likely to find him in contempt.
Doesn't mean in the final days of this administration the Attorney General would prosecute Anthony Blinken for contempt of Congress.
It may be more of a political matter, but it's one the House Republicans want to dispense with while they can, while the Biden administration is still in power.
Also, at some point, the Congress is going to have to refill the Small Business Administration's disaster loan fund.
That thing was tapped out by Hurricane Selene and Hurricane Maria.
They're out of money.
They've been raising red flags at the administration for a month now, that they're out of money for the small businesses and homeowners who need emergency loans to rebuild.
Congress has got to get about refilling those coffers.
Some of the disaster state senators and Congress members have been raising alarms about this.
The administration did so earlier this morning.
Congress won't tend to that today or tomorrow, but they'll have to tend to it soon.
And where are we on government funding?
It's always an issue at the end of the year, correct?
December 20th is the deadline.
There are very few legislative days left between now and then, so they'll have to get after that.
They're not going to pass all the appropriations bills robustly in the traditional way.
They'll need another short-term continuing resolution to keep the government functioning for a matter of months until they can go back toward it again in 2025.
It's a matter of whether they kick the can to about March or try to kick it all the way to September and give either President-elect Trump an ability to weigh in on this early or give him some time and space from this issue to do other things and wait till September.
Is there an effort by Democrats, though, while they still control two of the levers of power, the Senate and the White House, to try to move some sort of government spending bill or have more of Joe Biden's fingerprint on what happens in this next spending bill?
Or at this point, is it just lame ducks all around?
They have the capacity to impact, and they may take this last opportunity with any levers of power to do so.
Some of the things Democrats have told me they're interested in securing.
How about more disaster relief funding?
How about some federal commitments to pay for Baltimore Bridge rebuilding?
A commitment, not the money yet, but let's make sure the federal government signs on the dotted line that it will help fund the rebuild of the key bridge.
There are other things that they have interests in that they want to secure.
But as has been the case for the last two years, John, they may have to provide the votes to pass this thing in the U.S. House.
They have an awful lot of leverage for now.
Question from Jimbo out of California.
Can Mr. McFarland speculate as to what the Republican-held Congress will be able to accomplish in the first 100 days, with the exception of the extension of the Trump tax cuts.
But you can throw that in there as well.
Plenty to talk about.
Oh, Jimbo saw my answer coming and warded it off at the last second.
Yeah, those tax cuts are something the House Speaker has said will be part of their 100-day or first 100-day plan.
So yeah, you're right there.
They seem to be in unison on doing what they can as a chamber to get those things extended.
What else?
Well, there's been a lot of talk from the incoming administration about border issues, deportations, removal of some number of migrants, criminal actors or otherwise.
That takes money.
That takes manpower.
That takes more money and more manpower than may be in place right now.
So you'd look for the House Republican Conference to pass some type of appropriation funding for border initiatives and border efforts.
And though this very narrow majority in the U.S. House for Republicans has splintered on so many things, every little thing seems to break off just a few folks, and that makes it an untenable majority.
They may be lined up on that.
Let me go to Nancy in Connecticut Line for Democrats.
Nancy, you're on with Scott McFarland.
Hi, good morning.
Over the last two weeks, Trump and the GOP have not said a word, a word about the economy, not a word about lowering inflation, not about a word stopping price gouging, nothing about affordable housing for the American people, nothing about lowering the rent.
Just as Trump did during his campaign, he never had detailed issues about these things.
All he told his supporters was, I'll fix it.
So I was just curious about your opinion on that, how he's not addressing all these issues of, I think, why the American people voted for him.
Thank you.
Nancy's picking up on a point that a number of Democrats have alerted me to, that if this is a priority and a mandate to come in and deal with those pernicious issues of food prices, housing prices, you want to note the order in which he has rolled out his potential nominees for his cabinet.
He's talked about his Attorney General candidate, his U.N. Ambassador, Secretary of State, but there have been no moves publicly to name somebody for the Secretary of the Treasury or the consumer watchdog groups or the Housing and Urban Development Department.
It would seem that if you're trying to triage most important issues, and if inflation and prices is the most important issue, you'd want to start there with your Treasury, your tax-based, consumer-based agencies, and housing-based agencies.
That has not happened.
That may be a political reality Nancy is flagging for the rest of the nation.
If he doesn't get around to doing that soon, it is a statement of values and priorities.
James in Fairfax asks Scott about the January 6th criminals and pardons.
He's been reporting on this consistently and for many years at this point.
What's the latest on that?
Yeah, James, it's a question we're all watching because it's in kinetic motion as we speak.
There's a growing number of January 6th defendants who have gone to the courts and asked for the rest of their proceedings, their sentencings, their conferences, their plea hearings, to be delayed until after January 20th, citing specifically that Trump has pledged pardons.
So far, in the overwhelming number of those requests, judges have said no.
That's speculative.
We're not postponing your criminal cases on a potential promise of a politician for pardons.
But those defendants are making an unequivocal argument that there are pardons to be expected, that pardons have been promised, and that there's an expectation from those defendants some pardons are coming.
But there's an issue here that is transcendent on the issue of January 6th, that Trump hasn't specified if everybody from January 6th gets a pardon or if only certain parts of the population of January 6th defendants are going to get pardons.
Those who pleaded guilty, those convicted at trial, those who cases are still pending.
He hasn't put layers here and to say this group gets them, this group won't.
So that's the big question between now and January 20th: is it everybody?
Is it some?
Ultimately, is it anybody?
What has Matt Gaetz said on this topic?
Matt Gaetz is one of the few members of Congress who's actually been outside the Washington, D.C. jail at the nightly vigil protest on behalf of the January 6th defendants.
That's still going on?
It goes on every night.
It's been going on for multiple years now.
Holidays, Sundays, rainy days, snowy days, they're out there.
Matt Gaetz has paid a pilgrimage there before, and he has been particularly unambiguous with his arguments that he believes the Department of Justice is overreached in the January 6th cases.
In all of them, in the January 6th cases, it's kind of a big umbrella.
I recognize that.
He also hasn't specified if there are some that are worthy and meritorious, or if all of them are unworthy and non-meritorious.
That's really the big issue that I see as somebody who's covered January 6th since the start.
Those who criticize the prosecutions, those who defend the defendants, haven't really delineated if there's anybody who was justifiably prosecuted or if there's a subset of people who stand out from the others.
If there's any contrasts among this big population, we're about to find out what the Trump administration says about this because come January 20th, there's an awful lot of people in prison or who have family members who've been convicted who are expecting pardons.
Out of curiosity, who runs that nightly vigil?
The nightly vigil is run by the wife of the first January 6th defendant convicted at trial, a Texas man who was the first to go to trial and first to be convicted by a jury, and the mother of Ashley Babbitt, who was in that crowd and was shot breaching the window to the House Speaker's lobby.
The two of them, along with some volunteers, have been tireless in running this vigil.
Where did they set up?
Is it on the courthouse grounds?
It's at the jail.
So there's a protest space literally on the curb of a driveway at the jail that they've cordoned off.
It's streamed to a pretty large audience.
Where's the D.C. jail?
D.C. Jail is not far from Capitol Hill and the U.S. Capitol itself, ironically.
It's in southeast Washington, D.C., near the old football stadium where the Washington football team used to play.
More calls.
This is Mike Waiting in North Carolina Republican.
Mike, good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, I like to just comment a little bit about the hit piece here network done on 60 Minutes on all of Trump's cabinet pics.
You never did contradict any of Biden's pics like what does Pete Bootjudge have his experience?
He was a mayor.
He didn't have nothing about transportation.
And of course, Rachel Levine, we'll leave that one alone.
But you talk about the cost of illegal immigration.
You know, you talk about it's going to cost a lot to deport them and everything.
There's already 1.2 million removal orders, and this administration has not carried out none of them.
And it's just, and you go see how much annually a year, how much illegal immigration immigrants from housing, food, schooling, everything, health is almost a half a trillion dollars.
This here eliminate, getting them moved out of this country is going to cost taxpayers less when it comes to it.
It's Mike in North Carolina.
A lot there, what do you want to pick up?
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there.
He mentions the cost of illegal immigration deportation.
It does cost money to get more border agents and more immigrations and customs enforcement agents and to run whatever program is going to be run.
There may be a cost savings that helps offset that.
In fact, there may be such a cost savings that it ends up paying for that.
It still needs Congress to do some mechanization of the laws and the appropriations process to get that through.
And I think the argument I'm making here is that Congress might have an easy time getting the appropriations and the mechanization in place to make removals happen.
This is one of the things where Congress, the Republican majority in the House, the incoming Republican majority in the Senate, and the incoming White House seem synchronized in lockstep on that.
This may be one of the easier things they do in the initial weeks and months.
And about cabinet appointments, I'm not sure what piece he's referring to about cabinet appointments, but there'll be some share of criticism of cabinet appointments by any president and the opposing party in the U.S. Senate.
This question from X, a bit of a deeper cut.
It's about the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
Chris, wanting to know what's going to happen with the race between Debbie Dingell and Jasmine Crockett.
Why is this something to watch?
Why is it important?
Yeah, it is a deep dive.
The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, was asked about this very race during a press conference on Friday.
This is a relatively, relatively junior member of the U.S. House, Jasmine Crockett, running against a more senior member of the U.S. House, Debbie Dingle, in Michigan.
The wife of the late John Dingell.
The wife of the legend John Dingell, who was the dean of the U.S. House for quite a while.
This type of generational battle, if you call it a generational battle, is not uncommon in Congress.
Congresswoman Crockett has been a particularly effective communicator with a rather large following.
Congresswoman Dingell has also been a mainstay of Democratic House members on the cable TV and communications circuit.
Should be an interesting race, but also one that may reveal some fault lines inside the Democratic caucus.
We'll find out.
15 minutes left with Scott McFarland this morning and taking your calls on phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, Independents.
But I did want to ask you about this story because I saw you put it up from last week, I think it was November the 9th, how the birthplace of Grover Cleveland honors his unusual legacy and what the impact has been of the election of Donald Trump.
I know it's not the week ahead on Capitol Hill, but I really want you to explain it.
So Grover Cleveland's the only other president who was elected twice in non-consecutive terms.
And the 22nd and 24th president lost the battle to the 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison.
Came back, won the presidency back, and shares that connected tissue with Donald Trump now.
Grover Cleveland is the proud son of Caldwell, New Jersey, which is a college town, a suburb of New York City, a distant suburb.
And they have this historic site, his birthplace home, which is operated as a museum and educational center.
It's across the street from an Exxon station and a Dunkin' Donuts, which is true Caldwell, New Jersey, by the way.
Everything is kind of jammed into the small town.
But Grover Cleveland also has some other things in common with Donald Trump.
I mean, he was somebody who came to politics from the outside.
He has some differences from Donald Trump.
Grover Cleveland was a reluctant candidate for president, didn't want to do it, especially the second time, but managed to vanquish his previous defeat.
We'll see if there are any more similarities that reveal themselves over the next four years.
NJ.gov is where you can go to learn about the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Historical Site, the Division of Parks and Forestry in the state of New Jersey.
A picture of his birthplace there.
Scott McFarland with us this morning.
Terry's next in Boone, Iowa, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just want to ask Scott here if he considers himself a fair and impartial journalist.
We do our best, Terry.
That's my first question.
You can ask me that question.
I think he is, Terry, and he's been on this program several times and happy to answer questions from you, our viewers, but I'm happy to let you see.
We do our best.
We are imperfect vessels.
We do our best.
This is difficult work.
It may not look difficult, but obviously there are competing factions on every issue we cover, covering politics.
You're going to get competing factions on pretty much everything you touch.
Imperfect vessels, but we're trying our best.
This is, actually, let me dig down on that a little bit of what changes for the congressional press corps in such a time of change on Capitol Hill, Senate leadership changing.
Obviously, the White House has changed, and that impacts what's happening on Capitol Hill.
What does it mean for you folks who day to day try to cover these folks and everything from where you go or who you talk to?
Congress is one of those unique things to cover as a journalist where you are guaranteed every two years to lose.
dozens of sources and dozens of relationships through retirements or through defeats at the ballot box.
So when we watch all those senior members of Congress retire and call it a day, we recognize that those relationships we formed and the information we glean from them is about to walk out the door too.
We see new members coming in like was last week with orientation.
These dozens of folks elected from across the country, big towns, small towns, old, young, rich political backgrounds and newcomers.
These are people we have to learn.
We have to learn their tendencies.
We have to learn their interests, their issues, and learn to build relationships so that we're better journalists.
It's a constant cycle of new people coming in and out.
That's a challenge.
But there is some stability here, as I mentioned earlier.
The congressional leadership is poised to stay the same.
So we have a sense of how they function, a sense of how they operate, what their tendencies are, where they are, what committees they prioritize.
Some of that is simplified, but for those of us covering politics, is always the mindset.
You're going to have to continue to churn to find new threats.
Who of those new members coming in most intrigues or interests you?
We like the distinctive backstories.
I mean, those who are, some of those coming in, John, have had years, if not decades, of experience in state legislatures, come in here, very seasoned legislators, and know through muscle memory how to function as an advocate for their district and as a combatant in the legislative space.
But there are those who come from different backgrounds who are fascinating.
There's a electrical construction contractor, family business owner from Scranton named Rob Bresnahan, who'll now represent northeastern Pennsylvania.
This is his first job in politics.
And oh, by the way, he's joining the major leagues coming into Congress.
Let's see how he carries that.
It could be fascinating to watch.
There's Latifa Simon, who was elected to succeed Barbara Lee in Oakland, California, in a Democratic district in the Bay Area.
She was born legally blind, is the widowed mother of a teenage daughter who she now has to move to Washington, D.C. for this new work.
And she's a one-time protege of Vice President Harris.
So she comes in here with a unique backstory.
Let's see how she advocates for her district, considering all that.
And then, oh, by the way, there's Shamari Figures of rural Alabama, a one-time Obama administration appointee, used to function in the Justice Department during the Biden administration.
He's coming in to represent rural Alabama, somebody who has equity in Democratic administrations of the past.
Let's see what kind of dissenting voice or collaborative voice he is with Republican leadership and this incoming administration.
Lots to dig into, lots of storylines, and you can watch it all as it plays out on the floor of the House and Senate on C-SPAN.
This is Sophia in New York City, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
What's your question, Sophia?
You're on with Scott McFarlane.
Yes, good morning, John.
Good morning, Steve.
Today's my birthday.
I am 74 today.
Happy birthday, Sophia.
I've been talking to you since eight, nine years.
I never, I always call every month.
Scott, I'm worried.
Jon Stewart, he left.
Chris Wallace at CNN, he had one more week to go.
I voted for Mr. Trump.
I never thought it would go this far.
All the people that make us laugh and joke, they leave me.
I hope Stephen Colbert don't leave neither.
I have nothing much to say.
I try to stay positive.
Try to stay from negative people, everything negative, everything negative.
I wanted it to stay out of it.
And I guess I got too excited.
You know, now when I see Mr. Trump, I flipped the channels, the face.
I don't know what it is.
Well, Sophia, Sophia, I don't want you to get too upset on your birthday.
It's your birthday, Sophia.
Happy birthday.
Scott McFarland, what do you want to pick up on?
This brings me back to Terry's question from Boone, Iowa.
What he asks does resonate with me.
He asks, are you a fair and impartial journalist?
Are you sure about that?
We get that question a lot.
And Sophia is kind of the mirror image of this, concerned that people are departing the stage when Donald Trump takes office January 20th.
People don't want to be part of being public figures, media, or talking about things involving politics.
Both of those are symptomatic of something.
And they're fair questions.
But it's also symptomatic of people consuming news out of a silo, where they don't become accustomed to hearing contrarian voices or objective fact on all matters.
And certainly some of us are guilty of that ourselves, of going to news silos.
I'm a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
I listen to Philadelphia Eagles talk only.
I don't want to hear how good the Lions and Cowboys and 49ers are this year.
I just want to hear about my team.
If you're only consuming news out of a silo, you leave yourself vulnerable to not getting deeper, more introspective, and more, I guess, more universal facts and opinions and thoughts and analysis.
So we encourage people when administrations change, when majorities change, to ensure that their media diet is healthy and robust and full.
And so when you hear a dissenting voice or a dissenting opinion or a dissenting report that goes counter to your worldview and your aspirations, you don't think it to be biased and unfair, that you think it's journalism and fact.
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable, because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them.
What's your advice to a reporter who will be starting on Capitol Hill in January of 2025?
This is going to be tireless.
The enterprise of covering the Trump administration the first time required people to be tireless.
Covering the second one appears like it's going to require the same amount of tirelessness.
In terms of things that are happening at all hours of the day?
Yeah.
I think the 24-7 nature of it, where news can break at Saturday morning at 6 a.m. when you're hoping to go to your kids' soccer game or Sunday afternoon when you're hoping to sit down with a cocktail and watch a football game.
This is a much different type of rhythm to it.
In Capitol Hill, though, it still brings that unique aspect that no other, I think, governmental beat or journalistic beat has, where everybody is approachable.
Everybody can be held to account.
Everybody walks through public hallways and can be asked a question.
The congressional beat is so inviting to so many people for that reason.
There are 535 members of Congress.
You can approach any one of them.
You can approach Speaker Johnson.
You can approach Speaker Johnson.
You can approach the Senate Majority Leader.
You can approach the rank and file newcomer from Iowa, from Florida, from Texas, and ask a question.
And get an answer or get a non-answer, but either way, get something revelatory to help with your journalism.
Never been more important to be on the stage, to stay out there and ask hard questions.
And if Sophia's birthday could be salvaged by this, I could tell you there's a lot of good people who ask hard questions and do good journalism who are very much staying with it.
Martha's Vineyard, this is Barbara.
Good morning.
You're next.
You're on with Scott McFarland.
Good morning, guys.
Scott, you're just a jewel in the crown of CBS, is all I can say.
Your clarity of communication and your user, what do they call it?
You know, GUI, you're, oh, no, bedside matter, headside matter, we'll call it.
Okay, fantastic.
Just don't change anything.
Now listen to me, young man, young man.
I'm 77.
I'm the perfect follow-on caller to our previous 74-year-old.
I invented an epitaph for this election, and here it is.
Poll, P-O-L-L, is a four-letter word, but so is data.
So I think you get my point.
And all I want to say is that I'm watching this thing called The Diplomat on Netflix that is just spectacular.
But I'm beginning to think that Trump 2.0 might start to give it some competition for drama here.
Because if the senators, you know, just say no to the insane ones and put them all through rigorous public questioning, it will add to my last point, which is this.
The way that I've helped myself get through this is to visualize this entire show from other countries that are struggling against autocracy themselves.
And we are providing what's called a masterclass in defeating autocracy through the use of media and in spite of and with using correct use of the social media.
I recently went over to Blue Sky.
So welcome to Fact Land, people.
It's called Blue Sky Platform.
And we just, it's just the last other thing is to keep repeating that sequence of, I see the presidency like a ping-pong match where it goes back and forth over the net.
And, you know, just to see what we have done here in America in terms of who we've elected president and what we've accomplished in spite of the ping-pongness of this game is just unbelievable, unbelievable accomplishments tapped off by Mr. Modesty himself, Momiston, Joe Biden.
And when people get what all these extraordinary things that's happened and they've, you know, kick in with infrastructure and everything else, you know, we'll look back at this time and we will put our feet up and watch a football game.
Okay, I'm done.
Barbara, you mentioned Joe Biden.
I just wanted to note that he's at the G20 conference this morning in Brazil.
I think he's arrived within just the past couple of minutes here.
We'll be there today and tomorrow.
But a lot there from Barbara.
What do you want to pick up on?
First of all, thank you, Barbara.
Two dynamics that I think are most interesting to watch these next few months as the ping-pong match you described begins.
How different is this second Trump term now that he's a lame duck without the impetus of reelection or the need to be politically active to secure reelection?
Does that change how any of this manifests itself over the next few years?
That'll be fascinating.
But also, it does feel like they're priming the pump for some very dramatic, potentially dramatic confirmation hearings.
And I'm not sure that Donald Trump has shied away from the dramatic theater of politics whenever it comes up, if that's something he may in fact want or is averse to.
We'll figure that out.
Let's see how he reacts if there are dramatic confirmation hearings for some of his picks, if he embraces that or tries to tamp it down.
Who's the most interesting, what is the most interesting pick left in your mind that hasn't been named so far?
We're about halfway through his picks.
As was alluded to earlier by Nancy from Connecticut, at some point, a Treasury Secretary choice has got to be announced for a campaign and an administration that ran on the idea that inflation and costs and runaway costs and economic issues are primal with voters.
That's got to come soon, and it's going to be a choice that'll be inspected quite a bit.
Got time for just a couple more phone calls here.
John, Texas Independent, go ahead.
Thanks for waiting.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks for taking my call.
So you see the mainstream media complaining about Trump's plan.
All the presidents, they removed millions, Obama, Clinton, Bush.
It seems only Biden didn't know.
So why is Trump's plan to remove people who are broken the law any different?
Because there are millions of people who are trying to do it the right way.
They're on the line.
And that's affecting their process.
They're needed to suffer.
So, I mean, what is any different that Trump is doing that the other administration Biden done?
I mean, why is that a major issue that he's trying to remove?
I mean, everywhere in most of the G20 countries, they remove people who are overstates.
John, got your point.
Scott McFarlane.
I'm not sure there's going to be a formidable or successful political resistance to this at all.
I mean, I saw Democratic candidates for the U.S. House, Democratic candidates for the U.S. House from Long Island through the Midwest to the West Coast campaign on border security issues, trying to win on that issue as well.
I think what we're trying to make clear here, and we were earlier in the program, is that it will require some money or some action from Congress to do the things Trump has pledged to do.
I don't know that there's going to be hurdles that they can't surmount in the process.
The funding will likely be there.
The language needed, if necessary, will likely be there.
I'm not sure the political resistance is strong at all.
Based on John's question, I want to make sure that's clear that I think there is a consensus that Congress is going to be behind this.
75 seconds left.
What didn't we get to that you're going to be watching for this week?
This week, let's keep an eye on those prosecutions for the Capitol riot.
Does any judge say, you know what, let's pause these things until January 20th?
Because, yeah, there is an increasing talk of pardons.
So far, judges have deflected those requests.
Let's see if one of them changes.
Because if so, others may come as well.
But also, I think any more statements President-elect gives about what he's going to do on these issues of Matt Gates for Attorney General, Pete Hegseth for Department of Defense Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for intelligence chair, he's getting some pushback, including inside his own party, to some of this.
Let's see how he counterpunches.
Scott McFarland, CBS News congressional correspondent, always do appreciate your time.
Thanks so much.
We know you got other hits to go to.
We'll let you get to them.
It's been a pleasure.
I want to show viewers for just a second, Joe Biden at the G20 summit.
He is greeting leaders there.
Has just arrived.
That's in Brazil today.
We'll talk more about it in our open forum.
But coming up next this morning, it's Jeff Murdoch of the Washington Times.
Delve a little bit deeper into those cabinet picks, and we'll have that discussion right after the break.
Stick around.
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Washington Journal continues.
For a focus now on President-elect Trump's cabinet picks and what comes next, we're joined by Washington Times White House reporter Jeff Murdoch.
And first, just bring us up to speed on what happened over the weekend, what's left that we're waiting for to see.
So what happened over the weekend is President-elect Trump focused on two key things, his energy policy and his communications team.
For energy policy, the most important pick there is Doug Burnham to be his Department of Interior, Secretary of the Department of Interior.
It's an interesting pick because Doug Burnham has been very critical of the Biden administration policy of capping drilling within the U.S.
He has talked about how opening lands up in North Dakota has really brought back the North Dakota economy.
And he's going to come in to implement, you know, President Trump, his phrase is drill, baby, drill.
Doug Burnham's very on board with that.
He will obviously be championing that policy.
The president-elect has also created a National Energy Council, which is new, which is going to focus on trying to generate, you know, generate new energy, increase drilling, transportation, everything that impacts how the U.S. drills, transports, sells energy overseas.
This council will overlook.
Has Secretary of Interior, if confirmed, Doug Burnham will also be leading that.
Now, the other focus he did, the president-elected, is his communications team.
He appointed Stephen Chung, who has been a spokesperson on all three of his presidential campaigns, to be his communications director.
And Caroline Leavitt has his press secretary, making her the youngest press secretary.
And she's been the press secretary for this 2024 campaign.
What should we know about Caroline Leavitt?
We're going to be seeing a lot more of her, obviously, in the White House, the Brady briefing room.
Exactly.
That's going to be her responsibility as press secretary.
She's going to be the public face of the administration.
And also, she's going to be conducting the daily briefings.
Now, it'll be interesting to see how many daily White House briefings this administration has.
Under the first Trump administration, there were not a lot of daily White House briefings.
The Biden administration has brought that back.
They have them every day the president is in town.
Obviously, the president in South America today, there isn't one.
But for the most part, they've had them on a daily basis.
It'll be really interesting to see what happens when the second Trump administration comes in.
Caroline Leavitt, 27 years old.
Do you expect Donald Trump to make appearances in the White House briefing room as much as he did in the first administration?
I don't, and it'll be interesting to see.
I don't know because he goes on, when he takes trips or when he leaves the White House to go to Marine One to take it to Joint Base Andrews, he always stops and talks to the press.
So that kind of doesn't really need to be in the briefing room because he's not shy about standing there taking questions.
And in the first administration, he was often very late for things because he stood there and took all of our questions.
So if he feels, and it seemed like towards the end of the first administration, they felt that having Trump come out and answer questions on his way to Marine One or when he's deboarding Air Force One after a stop and answering reporters' questions or poll reporters' questions was a sufficient substitute for having him in the briefing room.
So it'll be interesting to see that sort of shifted at the end of the first Trump administration if they continue that through his second administration.
Coming back to the cabinet picks, we're about halfway through what we're expecting from the president.
We're less than two weeks away from Election Day at this point.
Are these coming unusually fast?
Yes, they are.
And I think what it is, is I think the president-elect learned a lot from his first time where it took him a long time to put nominees up.
And then the Senate also, there were a lot of delays.
And some of these positions, it almost took a year to fill.
And I think he learned a lesson from that last time.
And he's trying to move at a fast pace.
And it looks like from what he's been talking about, he's had four years to think about who he wants if he returns to the White House.
So he's put a lot of thought into this.
And you can see it with how quickly these picks have come.
So what's your take?
Who's got the toughest path?
Who's got the easiest path?
I think the toughest path is obviously Matt Gates.
One thing I want to point out before we get into the individuals is there's three threads that run through all of these candidates that he has nominated.
One is loyalty to the president-elect.
Every one of them has expressed their loyalty.
Two is a lack of management experience.
You know, Christy Noam is a great example.
The South Dakota government employs 12,000 people.
She's now going to be in charge of a department with 260,000 people.
Homeland Security.
Homeland Security, yes.
And that is the most, and the 12,000 is the most management experience we've seen from any of these nominees.
The third is they've all been heavy critics of this administration.
I'm sorry, excuse me, of the departments they're going to run.
The current administration, I meant to say.
They've been heavy critics of how these departments have run.
A great example is Pete Hegseth, who was nominated to be Defense Secretary and run the Department of Defense, has been extremely critical.
Matt of saying that under Biden, the Department of Defense has been too focused on his words, woke initiatives, trying to bring in diversity while eroding the military's values, again, his words.
You've got Matt Gates, who has called for abolishing the DOJ and the FBI.
So I think that's really interesting to point out that all three threads run through everybody the president has nominated so far.
Now, back to answering your question.
I think the toughest goes to Matt Gaetz.
He's embroiled in some sexual misconduct allegation.
There's a House ethics report coming out.
Could be very damning.
Do you think that report's going to come out?
I think at some point it will.
Everything on the hill gets leaked at some point.
Everybody's like, when it'll come out, it comes out eventually.
So we've got that.
It's interesting because Mike Johnson is refusing.
So how it's going to come out is what I said.
It's going to end up in the desk of some staffer who's going to call a news network and leak it to them.
It'll come out.
But yes, Mike Johnson, Mike Johnson's argument for not releasing it is Matt Gates resigned the day after he was nominated, which headed off the release of that ethics report.
And Mike Johnson's argument is we only have jurisdiction if they're an active member of Congress.
If he's no longer a member of Congress, that sets a dangerous precedent that we're now releasing ethics reports of what essentially amounts to a private citizen.
So I think that is very, I think that's going to be difficult.
Also, he doesn't have any prosecutorial experience.
You know, it's a position, and that goes back to what I was saying about earlier one of the threads is the lack of management experience.
He practiced law for two years right out of law school at a law firm in Florida, and then he went into politics.
I'm not even sure how much he's really practiced as a lawyer.
That's a question a lot of people have asked.
But he definitely does not have, you know, for a position where you're in charge of prosecuting people on behalf of the federal government, he does not have that prosecutorial experience.
And then who's got the easiest path?
I would say Doug Collins at the Veterans Administration.
He's got friends up on the Hill.
You know, it's a position where he's talked about reform.
There's bipartisan support for reforming the VA.
There always has been.
And there's really nothing controversial about him.
And that's the largest of the government agencies by civilian employees, some 450,000 civilian employees because it runs all of these veterans hospitals.
Doug Collins, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, not South Carolina.
Yes.
So I expect he'll have the easiest pass because it's one of the few things everybody can still agree on at this point in Washington is that the VA is in need of reform.
And like I said, he's made a lot of connections during his time on the Hill.
Taking your phone calls with Jeff Murdoch this morning, talking about Donald Trump's cabinet picks, the path ahead, phone lines, as usual.
Democrats, it's 202-748-8,000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
As folks are calling in, can you just explain recess nominations, recess appointments, and that process right now?
I think recess appointments is going to be the most interesting thing we see over the next couple of months.
And what recess appointments is, is the president has the authority, it's in the Constitution, to adjourn Congress, and when Congress is on recess, he can fill appointments.
It's an older, it's an older part of the Constitution because it goes back from when people were traveling by horse and buggy, and it took them months to get back to Washington from their home district.
Now, so what that would essentially do is it would give the president unlimited authority to appoint whoever he wanted to whatever position he wanted without consent of the Senate because the Senate's job is to consent and advise, and they do that by holding confirmation hearings.
Some of these confirmation hearings are going to be extremely messy.
Like I said, we've talked about Matt Gaetz, who's embroiled.
I mean, we've got three nominees embroiled in sexual misconduct scandals or allegations.
Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., and Matt Gates.
Those could get very messy.
If nothing, they could get embarrassing.
An easy way to avoid that is through recess appointments, which is adjourning, as I said earlier, adjourning Congress and then having the president appoint whoever he wants.
It's an extreme test of presidential authority.
President-elect Trump has talked about it.
He has not laid out a plan of how he would do it.
Mike Johnson would need to be on board with this, although we haven't seen any signs that Mike Johnson would oppose anything the president wanted to do.
One of the things I think is really interesting is back in 2013, President Obama tried this, and he made a couple of recess appointments during the holiday.
The Republican Congress tried to push back by having pro forma sessions.
It went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court swatted Obama down, telling him that this was unconstitutional, because as long as they were having the pro forma sessions, that counted as them being in session.
Now, a couple of things about that.
Even though they swatted Obama down, they did not define where the powers end in terms of making recess appointments.
So that's still vague and nebulous out there.
And if this goes to another Supreme Court, you've got a Supreme Court that leans conservative.
President-elect Trump has put three people on that court.
You know, likely they would be on his side.
Who gets to decide if the Senate goes into recess and how long the recess is?
It would be the president would.
That's the authority in the Constitution through, obviously, Congress adjourning them, and that would also affect the Senate.
So it's a combination of the President and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Paul is in Indianapolis, Indiana, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I worked in the federal government and the Department of Defense for many years, and I think maybe you're under, or rather you're overestimating the importance of the secretaries when it comes to management.
It was my experience over like 25 years that the secretary, the top guy, basically set the policy, or at least tried to.
And most of the actual management was done by the permanent senior executive service type of career civil servants who were right up under the secretary that did the actual management.
Plus, I think that the real problem that Trump has is that most of the people in D.C. are denizens of the bubble, so to speak.
They all believe that they know what the policy ought to be.
And if the president-elect doesn't do it their way, they need to resist him.
And you saw that a lot in his first administration.
You saw it in Bush's administration.
You saw it in Reagan's administration, especially in the IRS.
And my most, the deepest experience I have with people outside DOD was State Department.
They just simply believe that the State Department knows what the foreign policy ought to be.
If the president doesn't do it, he's wrong.
And that they need to block it.
And you see that even down to the GS7 level.
So I think that the real challenge for these new secretaries is whether or not they can convince these permanent civil servants to actually do what the people elected the president-elect to do.
Paul, thanks for the call from Indianapolis.
To his point, I think we're going to see a dramatic rethinking of the federal government in which, because he is right, prior to coming into this current administration, the secretary sort of set the agenda, but it was up to the government workers to carry it out.
And we have seen time and time again where we've had government workers, you know, career employees, go against the secretary, dispute the secretary.
A lot of this happened when Bill Barr was running the Justice Department, and they know that time is on their side, because at some point, the secretary or the cabinet head they disagree with will be gone, and they will still have their job.
And one of the ways I think in which the Trump administration is going to is going to change that and rethink how we look at the federal government is by thinning out the workforce and thinning out a lot of these career bureaucrats and career employees who've been there for a long time.
And that will give the cabinet head or the secretary more power to carry out their agenda, obviously, which is obviously Trump's agenda.
You know, a great example of that is the Department of Government Efficiency launched by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk.
There's a lot in this government that they could cut.
And I find it interesting that when you see Ramaswamy talk, he's talked about way more than Musk has in the public sector, talk about it.
He seems to be going back to jobs and cuts.
And it's fascinating to me for a couple of reasons because one, it looks at that, it looks at, it shows that they look at thinning out the government workforce as a way to achieve the president's agenda.
But also, you're not going to get to what they want to cut, which is $2 trillion.
You're not going to get that by just laying off workers.
I think, and I had the statistic in a story recently, if you laid off 20% of the government workforce, you're saving probably about $7.6 billion.
That does not cut.
That's a rounding error for the federal government.
That's hardly anything.
That's not going to get you to the $2 trillion you want to get.
So I find it interesting that that's what they're focused on is job cuts.
But if they want the cuts, they want to achieve the cuts that they plan to achieve, they're going to have to do way more than that.
And I know they've thrown out ideas.
It'll be interesting to see what they can and can't do.
One of the things I want to point that I think has kind of gotten lost in the discussion about the DOGE is Trump is the fourth president to try this.
And it has never really worked.
Who are the others?
Ronald Reagan formed the Grace Commission led by businessman W.R., I'm sorry, Peter Grace, excuse me.
And he recommended he had 2,500 recommendations and how to improve the government, cut costs, and improve efficiency.
None of those were enacted.
Clinton had his own commission about improving government efficiency and cutting government waste.
They did have some layoffs.
They did improve some automation of the government.
Most of that never, most of those jobs, most of those layoffs eventually came back.
It was a drop in the bucket compared to what needed to be done.
Obama formed Simpson Bowles, which was a bipartisan commission of 18 members.
And all that was was just infighting about how, where cuts should come, how cuts should be made.
And in the end, they had to have 14 of those 18 members agree on the recommendations.
They could only get 11.
And there was so much infighting in the commission that Congress didn't want to touch it because Congress deemed their recommendations to be too toxic.
So they never went anywhere.
So I'm really be interested to see if Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have learned anything or have looked at those three other commissions to how to avoid the pitfalls that they're going to, that these are going to avoid.
Because one of the things, to cut departments, which they're talking about, Ramaswamy's come out and said that there's a lot of authorized government agencies, programs that have been out there that have since lapsed and we should do away with them.
But to cut those, you need Congress to cut them.
Everything they want to do with the exception of layoffs, they're going to need congressional approval.
And I just don't see them getting that.
You mentioned Vivek Ramaswami has talked about this a decent amount in the week or so since we first learned about it.
He was on Fox News yesterday.
This is a minute and a half.
Let me just show viewers what he said.
The dirty little secret right now, Maria, is the people we elect to run the government, they're not the ones who actually run the government.
It's the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state.
That was created through executive action.
It's going to be fixed through executive action.
Think about the Supreme Court's environment over the last several years.
They've held that many of those regulations are unconstitutional at a large scale.
Rescind those regulations, pull those regs back, and then that gives us the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state.
And the beauty of all of this is that can be achieved just through executive action without Congress.
Score some early wins, and then you look at those bigger portions of the federal budget that need to be addressed one by one.
So I think that's one way to think about this: how can the president of the United States, who's been elected with a historic mandate, actually do the thing that the voters have voted for?
They haven't voted for incremental change here this time, Maria.
We have voted for sweeping change, and the voters actually deserve to get it.
And we're focused on how to do that as early and as quickly as possible.
So President-elect Trump just said on that soundbite that you're going to make recommendations.
So you're going to make recommendations in terms of where to cut after all that you've just said.
Then what?
Look, we're not going to be cutting ribbons.
We're going to be cutting costs.
And so those recommendations are going to be on a real-time basis.
Are you expecting to close down entire agencies?
Like President Trump has talked about the Department of Education, for example.
Are you going to be closing down departments?
We expect mass reductions.
We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.
We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.
We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government.
So yes, we expect all of the above.
And I think people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we're able to move with some of those changes, given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us.
Jeff Murdoch, one thing I keyed on there was he said we expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.
He did not say we expect certain departments to be deleted outright.
Right.
And there's agencies under which each department's that they could cut.
But again, he's going to need congressional approval of Congress.
And all of those agencies, everything is funded through Congress.
They control the purse strings.
And even with a Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House, it's still going to be a tough ask.
The current Republicans on the Senate and the House ran on reducing inflation.
They ran on cutting back, cutting down on illegal immigration.
They ran on crime.
This is not the Tea Party Republicans from a decade ago where they ran on government reform and cutting costs.
It's a completely, and I think we're going to have as much resistance from Republicans because these Republicans play Santa Claus almost as much as the Democrats.
And you don't want to go back to your district and there's a program that has funded, that has brought money to your district or has a satellite office in your district and say you had to cut that and people lost their jobs.
That's not going to play well.
And I think they're going to be surprised for how much resistance they see within their own party.
Alex out of Minnesota, Republican, good morning.
You're on with Jeff Murdoch.
Hey, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I hope you can hear me.
So first of all, just real quick on cutting the government.
I think they can just move civil servants to other locations they might not want to go to, like Guam, and that would cause them to resign.
So instead, do a little from the executive branch.
But what I really want to talk about was quickly Matt Case.
And I think one thing that needs to be pointed out is how much Trump's own Department of Justice really undercut him and also just was politicized to support the left.
I'll just give one really quick example.
If you spare it with me, feel free to fact check it.
So there was one of the business people who was involved with Hunter Biden was arrested for international bribery.
And in 2018, he stood trial and he was convicted.
In that trial, there was an email that referenced Hunter Biden as one of the people he was doing business with.
And the DOJ in the Southern District of New York chose to redact Hunter Biden's name out of evidence.
And then when the laptop came out, you could see the email they were referring to.
And it was Hunter Biden.
And the reason that they're bringing this up is because the DOJ's choice to redact Hunter Biden's name out for political reasons, they even say that in the transcript, that put the country on the path to the whole issue with the laptop and its authenticity.
And it really sacrificed the credibility of the intelligence community and the Department of Justice just because they were playing politics.
And we need to keep in mind that this was the Department of Justice under, I believe, probably Bill Barr at the time, playing politics to support the left or to protect the Bidens.
And this is what happened.
And this is why I think so many people in the country feel that the more that people oppose folks like Matt Case, no matter what their background is, the more they want someone like that because they know that there are deep, deep problems and things that have been covered up.
And they want someone who will take an adversarial position and get those things rooted out.
And I would appreciate you all fact checking me if it's not true.
I mean, it's 100% true.
Jeff Murdoch.
Let me let Jeff Murdoch jump in.
Well, I'd like to, he's right about in terms of people do want somebody.
You know, Trump ran on a, he won the popular vote.
He got the House.
He got the Senate.
He has a mandate.
There's no other way to look at that.
And people are, to his point, they are frustrated with how some of these departments have run.
And they want to bring people in here who are going to clean house and over overhaul because they feel that they've gotten too political and that they're making political decisions.
And that goes back to what I said earlier, that one of the common threads that runs through all of these candidates is the fact that they have been very, very strong critics of the departments that they're about to lead.
Take me to today's lead story in the Washington Times.
Trust issue impairs FBI vetting of nominees, the exclusive story by you and your colleague Kerry Pickett.
Basically, what it is, so the nominees will have to go through an FBI background check.
There's no constitutional requirement that the FBI has to do it.
They've just been doing it since I believe Truman, or I'm sorry, excuse me, Eisenhower was in office.
And it's just something that they've been doing.
And these have gotten increasingly political.
And what we have found is an FBI whistleblower saying that they are looking for reasons to turn down nominees.
And one thing I want to mention is there's over 4,000 people who get nominated by the president that require Senate confirmation.
We think of the Attorney General, we think of the Health and Human Services Director, but we don't, which is something we should get into at some point too.
But what we don't think of is that there's U.S. attorneys, there's judges, there's career appointees.
There's all kinds of people who require Senate confirmation.
And what we have found from this whistleblower is what they're talking is what's happening is these people that they're looking for reasons to either slow walk or hold back some of these nominees.
And they're looking for things like, did they attend a Trump rally?
Were they online complaining about COVID restrictions?
Things like that.
That they're looking for things that show that they have a conservative bent and using that has a disqualifying factor in the background checks, either to slow walk it or to spike it altogether.
What determines whether somebody passes or fails a background check?
Well, it goes into, well, they look for a lot of things.
They're going to look for anything, questionable judgment.
They're going to look for any crime that they have committed.
And it goes up to a section in the FBI called SCCD, SECD.
And what they do is that they sort of make the determination.
And then it still obviously has to go to the Senate for approval, but they will make the determination on whether or not somebody can get a security clearance.
And this was a problem actually in the first Trump administration: that there were 25 people who did not get security clearances.
And we've never gotten the full story on that.
The debate was there was a whistleblower within the White House who said, well, these 25 people didn't qualify.
There was one, we still know to this day who it is, but there was one high-level official that they said had three to four real serious red flags that they were concerned about.
But if you, the White House have always said that these things were blown out of proportion.
And since we don't know what the red flags were, we don't know who the person is, it's hard to say what the truth is.
Do you think we will find out who those people were and what those red flags were once Donald Trump comes back for a second administration and has the levers of power over those things?
I think we're going to get a lot of disclosures on a lot of things.
A lot of things that stymied the president the first time.
I think we will see a lot of disclosures about that.
I think he's going to release everything.
I think some of that's the point of putting Matt Gates at the Justice Department.
Always a lot to talk about when you're on.
A lot of callers, too.
Jared, California, Democrat.
Thanks for waiting.
Yes, this is Jared from California.
Thanks, John, for taking my call.
My thing is, Donald Trump is at different kinds of people.
He had Spanish people, black people.
Well, my question is: why is he only selecting white people to be in his cabinet?
And another thing, one more thing: why do we have to have all these sexual assault people being heads of cabinets?
You know, and it's just wrong to have those people with those type of records running the country.
All right, John, thanks for taking my call, man.
It's Jared in California.
I'll just show this one Newsweek headline that we showed earlier.
Donald Trump's cabinet is on track to be the least diverse in this century.
Jeff Murdoch.
It's true.
But the president's argument is that these people have diverse experience, that he's not plucking people who were the number two at their department and then putting them in the top role.
That he's bringing people from outside, business executives, a talk show host, a governors, and he's trying to argue that the diversity is not under race or gender, but under experience, is what the president is arguing.
But yes, they're all white.
They're all roughly around the same age.
There's not, in terms of what we traditionally think of diversity, there's not a lot.
I do want to address what the caller said about the sexual misconduct allegations.
We've got three nominees, and I don't recall any period in this town where we've ever had three nominees for level positions with very serious sexual misconduct allegations lodged against them: Pete Hegseth, Matt Gates, and RFK Jr.
And it'll be real interesting to see how that plays out and how seriously some people in the Senate take this and what we learn about these investigations as we move forward, as the confirmation process moves forward.
I just wanted to note one paragraph from your White House correspondent colleague Peter Baker in the New York Times.
He says this: in the past, none of these selections, the ones that you were just referring to, would have passed muster in Washington, where a failure to pay employment taxes for a nanny used to be enough to disqualify a cabinet nominee.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, has bully passed the old red lines opening or opting for nominees who are so provocative that even some fellow Republicans wondered whether he is trolling them.
Yeah, then that's a great point.
And I think some of this is: you know, is he trying to test The loyalty and how compliant his Senate is going to be before he moves forward with other things.
It's kind of interesting to me that the president, as I said, is coming in with Amanda.
He's built a lot of political capital.
I'm somewhat surprised he's going to try to use up a lot of that on Matt Gates.
You know, there's other people you could put in the position who don't have the baggage Matt Gates does that could carry out his agenda.
But all three of them, we're going to learn a lot about.
One of the things that's interesting, nobody seemed to know anything about the Pete Hegseth sexual assault allegation until he was the nominee.
Now all of a sudden that came out.
And that is a seven-year-old allegation that sort of was brushed under the rug because he was not in the public eye.
He's now, well, I mean, he was a talksure host on Fox News, so I don't listen to his not in the public eye, but not in the political arena.
And now he's in the political arena.
That's coming out.
And you wonder, not just with him, but with all some of these other nominees, what else is out there that we just haven't heard because these people have not been in the spotlight to the extent they're about to be.
Great Falls, Virginia, Ian, Independent, good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Thanks for waiting.
Hey there, yes.
Hey, you know, I would argue that our government is a lot more entrepreneurial and market-driven than a lot of people would understand.
I think there's a lot of tension in what President Trump, the pillars that got him into office.
He said, you know, there was a big concern about all these entitlement and social programs that are actually very popular.
I mean, that's just one example of the benefits of government.
But, you know, as far as the market-driven stuff, Mr. Musk has greatly, greatly benefited from, you know, government programs and different stimulus monies for himself and his companies.
It's kind of ironic that he's going to be heading this agency.
But I would say, you know, let's cut back the entitlement programs.
Let's deport all the illegals and let's get these boomers back into these jobs and have them start working to contribute to this great new economy we're going to have.
Jeff Murdock, what do you want to pick up on?
So a couple of things.
His point about cutting the government, Musk and Ramaswamy have talked about slashing $2 trillion from the Fed.
Right now, the federal government budget is $6.7 trillion.
In 2019, it was recently 2012, it's not that long ago, our budget was $4 trillion.
And people weren't dying in the streets.
The government seemed to function fine.
So we definitely have $2 trillion we can cut from this government.
Again, the question is: where is the will to do it from anybody beyond Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy?
That'll be very interesting to see where that goes.
One of the things that I think is going to be their biggest challenge, the easiest, the lowest hanging fruit is the money the government just wastes on studies that go nowhere.
You know, for example, they spent several million dollars on a study, I believe it was out of a university in North Carolina, to teach monkeys how to gamble.
And this is a real thing.
That's a real thing.
You can look that up.
That's a real thing.
And it was an HHS study to determine what is the risk factor that impacts people's brains that make them gambling addicts.
And the solution is that, and there's photos from this of like monkeys holding cards with like poker chips in front of them.
There's another study out there that cost, you can look this up too.
I'm looking for the picture.
Yeah.
Transgender monkeys, where they took male monkeys, again, another HHS study, and this was a couple billion dollars.
H8, where they took, they took money, they took male monkeys and they pumped them up with female hormones to see if men pumped with female hormones are more susceptible to HIV.
And this cost a lot of money.
And then in doing the study, they realized the recessed monkeys, the type of monkeys they were using in that study, were not susceptible to HIV at all, basically rendering the study a complete waste.
The monkeys gambling, I was just able to find a Johns Hopkins headline on it.
Gambling monkeys like big bets.
The study finds scientists locate the area of the brain linked to high-risk behavior, a possible step towards improved treatments for destructive, risky behaviors in humans.
The Johns Hopkins University headline on it.
But the study that you're referring to, I'm assuming.
Yes, that's exactly the study.
I think I said it was in North Carolina, but yes, you're right, it was John Hopkins.
That was a mistake on my part, but yes.
Taking your phone calls, just about five minutes left with Jeff Murdoch of the Washington Times.
Want to ask, before we do run out of time, what changes in the White House briefing room for you and your colleagues in a second Trump administration?
Have you been told about any changes?
We have not been told about any changes.
You know, Carolyn Leavitt has just been in the job.
It was announced Friday night.
So we've had the weekend, so we haven't had a time to see what she's going to do, how she's going to handle the position.
It's a position where a lot of people under Trump in the first administration did not have a lot of success.
He churned through press secretaries until he got to Sarah Sanders.
And I was interested on your end of who gets seats in the White House briefing room, who gets access to the White House briefing room.
What are you thinking on that front from the seats looking forward, not looking forward back?
Well, I think, well, so the WHCA, the White House Correspondents Association, they set up who has seats and where everybody's seats.
And it's something that outlets pay into.
So your seat is pretty much guaranteed.
Where the real challenge is going to come in is who they, there's always a lot of people standing on the side who are not from, who are from smaller outlets, maybe podcasters.
They've, under the Biden administration, they were coming in, they were asking questions.
There were a couple of issues.
The Biden administration sought to crack down on that by making everybody you needed to have a White House hard pass to start coming to the briefings.
Or if you didn't, you had to put in for it and they would have somebody escort you to the briefing.
Visiting reporters.
You got to do that.
Yes, exactly.
You were very limited in what you could do.
Whereas before, if you had a day pass, you could come in, you could grab a seat back where the reporters sit, where I have my desk, all of that, and just spend your day working there.
You really can't do that anymore because of some changes, because of some issues.
So it'd be interesting to see if they are more easier on who they grant press passes to, who they, you know, if outlets we don't traditionally think of as news outlets are coming in.
And then on top of that, if they get questions.
One of the big criticisms of Corine Jinpierre and the Biden administration is the way the White House briefing room is set up.
The first three rows go to the legacy meeting, the media.
The first rows are all the news outlets, Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC.
And then you go back, and it's Wall Street Journal, New York Times.
Corine has been very shy about going past the third row in the briefing room.
And that has cut off a lot of outlets from asking questions.
And that has been a recurring problem that's been brought to her attention for three years.
And there's never been a change.
There's no will to change it on behalf of this administration.
I'll be real interested to see how much Carolyn Leavitt moves around the briefing room if she starts to ask, get reporters and take their questions in the fourth row or the fifth row.
Taking your phone calls, taking your questions.
This is Keith in Denver, Colorado.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
So I look at these cabinet nominees.
Tulsi Gabbert, Matt Gates, E-Texis, and R.F. K. Jr.
And I have to say, it appears to me that these threats of a recess appointments are in fact Trump acting as dictator before day one.
I also think it's a prime example of a cacistocracy, which is government by the worst.
And my question is: What will the anti-woke agenda, how will that impact?
Because what will be the litmus test?
How does it implement?
And what is woke?
Keith, let me take your question in the time we have left.
And just for callers who may be confused, behind Jeff Murdoch is our screen.
There's a camera on the roof.
We have one that's faced towards the Capitol and one that faces towards Union Station.
I've never actually seen somebody step in front of that camera, but they did while you were talking last time.
I guess somebody's on the roof doing some work and stepped right in front of the camera.
So for viewers who might be confused, that's what you just saw.
Jeff Murdoch, you've got the final minute and a half here.
Go ahead.
One thing I want to say is he brought up Christine Home.
We've talked a lot about the baggage of Pete Heckseth, Matt Gates, and RFK Jr.
She's got a lot of baggage too.
It'll be interesting to see how strong the fight is, but we're not even talking about her because we're so focused on everybody else.
Jeff Murdoch is a White House correspondent for the Washington Times.
You're familiar with his work if you read the front page of the Washington Times.
He often appears there, and we always appreciate your time.
Thank you, John.
I really appreciate it.
Coming up next, more of your phone calls.
It's our open forum.
The numbers we'll put on your screen for you.
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, go ahead and start calling in.
And while we wait for your phone calls, we'll show you a bit from yesterday.
Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest.
Biden flew from Lima, Peru, to one of the largest cities in the Amazon.
Manaus is the name of Brazil.
He met with local leaders there working to preserve the rainforest.
Take a listen to that event.
Today, I'm proud to be here.
The first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest to recommit to protecting the rainforest like this one.
Most powerful solutions we have to fight climate change is all around us.
The world's forest.
Trees breathe carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
And yet each minute, the world is chopping down the equivalent of 10 soccer fields worth of forest each minute.
That's why we've been the leader internationally in the fight to end and reverse deforestation by 2030.
That's why we've led by example at home, conserving an area of the U.S. lands and waters larger, larger than the state of the nation of Uruguay.
We've done it by fighting for tribal partners, lifting them up, indigenous communities, and the most impacted by deforestation and climate change.
Today's announcement will support Indigenous communities to do the same here in the Amazon.
We all know there's much more we can do and must do at home and abroad.
That's why today I issued an official proclamation to support the conservation of nature around the world.
Because the fight to protect our planet is literally a fight for humanity for generations to come.
It may be the only existential threat to all our nations and to all humanity that exists.
With today's proclamation, I'm proud to announce: first, the United States Development Finance Corporation will mobilize hundreds of millions of dollars in partnership with a Brazilian company to reforest the Amazon.
Second, we're launching a Brazil Restoration and Bioeconomy Finance Coalition to mobilize at least $10 billion by 2030 to restore and protect 20,000 square miles of land.
And third, I'm announcing an additional $50 million to the Amazon fund that's already given $50 million.
Fourth, we'll provide the funding to help launch President Lula's important new initiative, the Tropical Forest Forever Fund.
It's in the interest of all of us.
The United States benefits from that as much as any other country does, including here in Brazil.
Moses are proud to support bipartisan legislation to launch a new foundation for international conservation that would leverage public funds to mobilize billions more in private capital.
The fight against climate change has been a defining cause of my presidency.
My administration first rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change.
We've launched 150 nations-strong global methane pledge.
We delivered a record climate financing to developing countries.
We pledged that we would deliver $11 billion per year by 2024.
I'm pleased to announce today that we not only kept that promise, we've surpassed it.
Washington Journal continues.
Just over a half an hour left in our program today, and we will end in open forum.
Any public policy issue, any political issue, any state issue that you want to talk about, phone lines are yours to do so.
It is 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
As you're calling in this morning, did want to note some programming notes today on the C-SPAN networks, including going on in just a couple minutes here over on C-SPAN 2.
Former Trump administration Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is giving an address to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a discussion on economic and political freedom.
That's what's going to be happening on C-SPAN 2 as we finish up today in open forum.
Take your pick.
Either one is a good program for you to watch if you want to call in.
Phone lines are open for you to do so.
Nancy's up first out of Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Democrat, go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I've only lived in Altoona for four years, but I am amazed at what I'm finding out: that we have the fifth worst tap water in the country, okay, in this state of Pennsylvania, as well as Pennsylvania's breast cancer and thyroid cancer rates are higher than the national average.
With all of the fracking and everything and the drill baby drill, my biggest concern is for the future of people's grandchildren and the future for our planet, okay, because we're obviously at a very crucial time, and he's putting somebody in charge of the EPA that has a very bad voting record.
And I just, it's very dismaying to think what's going on in our country right now, to be honest with you.
I just, I'm just, I don't recognize the country.
What do you know about Lee Zeldin, who's been announced to be Donald Trump's EPA administrator?
Just said he has a very, very anti-the environment voting record.
That's what I know.
Okay, so that's my concern.
And these are things that I've discovered as a senior living here in Pennsylvania the last four years.
I mean, frack, baby, frack, drill, baby, drill.
And people, when I talk to people and I network and I do talk to people in the community, they are totally not aware that we have the fifth worst tap water in the country.
And please check me because it's true, okay?
Because of all the industry.
So what is the legacy for people that have grandchildren and the future for people when this type of thing is going to happen, you know, not just in Pennsylvania, but in other states?
And I've also heard that they're going to reopen the nuclear power plant, which is not near where I live, but the Three Mile Island.
So it's just, I'm just aghast, frankly, you know.
Nancy, thanks for the call from Altoona.
Lee Zeldin, this is the New York Times brief wrap-up of his tenure.
Former congressman from Long Island, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022.
Mr. Zeldon is an avid supporter of Mr. Trump, who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election during Mr. Zeldin's tenure in the House of Representatives.
He voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times and clean air legislation at least half a dozen times, according to a scorecard put together by the League of Conservation Voters.
And the other nominee who will have a big say over energy and environmental issues, it's the energy secretary.
We found out this weekend Chris Wright is the nominee for that post.
Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy.
There's the picture of him in the Wall Street Journal.
He was front and center for the fracking revolution, the Wall Street Journal writes, that reshaped the country as a band of scrappy wildcatters that reinvigorated U.S. oil and gas production to record heights.
His $2.8 billion company, Liberty Energy, pumps water and sand underground to frack customers.
Wells, his selection elevates, as they write, a pugnacious branch of the oil and gas industry that is skeptical of climate change science and mostly hasn't pledged to build out low-carbon energy businesses, unlike the giants, ExxonMobil and Chevron.
Back to the phones.
This is David, Independence Louisiana Independent.
Go ahead.
Good morning, Mr. John.
This is the original deplorable citizen, Citizen Dave.
And I live in a double wide out next to the garbage dump.
If I was in a little music group, the name of the group would be Poor White Trash.
But guess who's Tangerine Gula is going to be president?
Hey, look, you cut me off the last three calls, brother, but I'm going to save you the trouble.
See you next time, Brother John.
Thanks, David, in Independence, Louisiana.
This is Renee in Westchester, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi.
I'm just calling in to say what I expect out of my President of the United States of America for him to respect the Constitution, him to protect the Constitution.
I want someone that, regardless, I'm a Democrat, whether they're Republican or Democrat, to go in, take care of business.
I don't want four years of clowning, of clown, I don't know, and someone using the White House to get back at people pissed off because they said something against them or spoke against them.
That's what people, that's what happens when you run for president.
You're going to have people for you.
You're going to have people against you.
And also, as far as his picks, there's a lot of people in the Republican Party that are well-educated, experienced people.
And there's a lot of other people that he can pick for some of these cabinet positions.
And I feel that he should pick, you know, somebody that's experienced and not just because they're loyal and they don't have the proper experience.
I just put in that category, Renee.
I'm just saying, Marco Rubio is fine because he is experienced.
But I'm just saying some of these people, like that guy for Attorney General, someone who's worked as a prosecutor and maybe on the state level or somewhere have worked as Attorney General or something.
I don't, but someone with experience and not because, and they're telling him things because they're the truth, like Sessions, he was extremely nasty and cruel to that man.
And I'm just saying, you have Republicans that are qualified and with experience, and those are the people he should be using.
You know, not these people because they're friends and they tell him what he wants to hear and all that.
You know, the people who voted for Trump, I just hope that everything goes well and works out well because we're all citizens of the United States of America and everybody should want the best.
That's Renee, Democrat in Pennsylvania.
This is Dean Republican in Muncie, Indiana.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I'm calling to address the speech that President Biden read at the Amazon rainforest.
You know, I understand there's a lot of things that we need to do in other countries.
But what's going on right now in our county, the northern part, is they're installing solar fields.
Well, I want the public to know that they're chopping down millions of trees to get access to the sun for a solar field.
Now, how is that benefiting us?
It's not.
Here we're over there phasing the rainforest as we're destroying the forest in the United States.
And it really gets my goat.
And I witnessed it.
It's a quarter of a mile from my property.
And I've seen them cut down over 500 trees.
They don't log them.
They just push them over and let them rot.
They need the access for the sun to hit the solar panels.
That's horrible.
We're not gaining anything.
And before I hang up, I want to compliment you on veterans today.
That was the best I ever seen anybody from Worcester Street Journal handle an issue.
You were great.
Appreciate that, Dean.
That's Dean in Indiana.
This is Jay in Mississippi, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mr. John.
How are you doing today?
Doing well.
My comment is this.
Donald Trump is not in office yet, and they already, the news media is the same old playbook.
Now, look like y'all should have learned something from the last time.
Aster Bridge and Trump went in big again.
Now, something else, they complain about all his cabinet picks.
Well, he could nominate Jesus Christ.
And a lot of Democrats and these left-lane liberals would have a problem with that.
What cabinet posts would you put Jesus Christ in, Jay?
Oh, I would put him in.
That's kind of a crazy question, but I would put him in the maybe I'd replace Gates and put him as in that position because, you know, everybody's calling in got problems with all these.
You know, Jesus, one time, it was a woman who was caught in adultery.
And he bent down and told everybody, who has anybody that has no sand cast the first stone?
And he turned around and was all gone.
So that could be a good moral for today.
Have a good day to you now.
It's Jay in the Magnolia State.
Darren is in the centennial state.
Colorado Springs, good morning.
Hey, good morning, Jerem.
I also wanted to say ditto on your Veterans Day show.
I thought you did a great job.
There's a lot of good folks sharing their family stories for Veterans Day.
It always happens on Veterans Day.
We get that every year, Darren.
Yeah, I'm a veteran.
I really do appreciate it.
I also appreciate you wrote, you read what was under the Statue of Liberty, and I'm almost brought a tear to my eye.
So I wish people think how this deportation plan of Trump is going to go.
And, you know, if he's building this Christian coalition, we've got, what, four sex offenders?
We've got Trump a convicted sex offender and three trying to get cabinet positions.
So I don't want to hear all of us talking about these Christian values in the Republican Party.
Thanks.
That's Darren in Colorado.
Alex in Lake Forest, California, Republican.
Good morning.
Yeah, thanks for taking my call.
I just have a couple comments.
One, it seems that most of the states that have no voter ID have gone the way of the Republic or gone the way of the Democrats.
And it's really kind of concerning the fact that some of the states are still counting and things are swaying towards Democrats when Republicans had an actual were actually winning.
And it's been, what, 13 days, almost two weeks since that started.
Another point I have is for Joe to be talking about climate change in the Amazon when at the same time okaying nuclear weapons for Ukraine is kind of a bit insane at this point.
It's almost like he's starting World War III, but thinking going to the Amazon is going to help anybody or anything if World War III starts.
It's kind of concerning to me.
And thanks for taking my call.
That news coming out yesterday, the Associated Press story on it, President Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer-range weapons as Russia deploys thousands of North Korean troops to reinforce its war, according to a U.S. official and three other people familiar with that matter.
The decision allowing Kyiv to use the ATACMs, as they called, for attacks farther inside Russia comes as President Vladimir Putin positions his North Korean troops along Ukraine's northern border to try to reclaim hundreds of miles seized by Ukrainian forces.
That's the Associated Press headline on it.
This is Nikki in New York, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for the man on the roof.
You ought to submit that.
I'll be honest, I've never seen that before, Nikki, since we've had the cameras up there.
So that's why I felt like I needed to explain it.
No, you did a good job.
But another thing you did, John, you anticipated what will occur.
I believe the press corps will be decimated, and there will be only certain agreeable interviewers for the Baltrans Press Corps because I would like to compare.
I'm independent, but I would like to compare what happened 100 years ago.
The first thing you do is you attack the media.
You shut the media down.
If you're a dictator, that's your playbook.
The second thing you do is you attack the people who are responsible for law and order, and you replace them with stooges.
I mean, if you want to kill something, you don't have to shoot it.
You can kill it from the United States.
Do you think it's possible to shut down the media in this country?
Not with social media today.
I don't believe so.
No.
Unless you see, but there.
Oh, I want to, I just want to compare what happened 100 years ago, the difference between Mein Kampf and Project 2025, so to speak.
You got a comparison there.
Adolf Hitler was a convicted criminal, convicted of treason, spent time in prison where he wrote Mein Kampf.
Now you have another convicted criminal in the White House.
Got your point, Nikki.
We'll hold off on the Nazi comparisons this morning.
Let's go to Stephen in Quincy, Illinois.
Good morning.
Good morning.
President-elect Trump has announced he's going to appoint Matt Gates, the congressman from Florida, as his attorney general.
It is well known and factual that several years ago, Congressman Gates had sexual intercourse with a girl who was a junior in high school.
It is also factual that about a year ago, Gates on the House of Representatives floor circulated and showed pictures of him naked with another woman.
So, Stephen, some of these things are being investigated.
We haven't seen a report yet.
When you say it's factual, we haven't seen the reports on it.
We know what these investigations are about.
But as far as I know, there has not been a report released confirming that yet.
The girl's attorney has released information that this is the case.
So this just isn't hearsay.
Are you still there?
I'm listening to you, Stephen.
Yeah.
So how does this all come out in the confirmation process?
Why in the world did the people in his congression district re-elect him?
There's something wrong here, sir.
That's all I can say.
And thank you for listening to me.
That's Stephen in Illinois.
This is Gordon in Kansas City, Kansas.
Good morning, Republican.
Morning, John.
Thanks for taking my call.
Would you take press secretary job if they offered it to you?
Would I take the job, Gordon?
Yes.
I don't think anybody cares about what job I have, Gordon.
Would you take the job?
I think that you would make an excellent press secretary because you know all the ins and outs.
That lesbian that we've had for four years, she didn't know anything.
Anyway, I called to talk to Scott McFarland because CBS, NBC, and ABC are going to be in court for the next two years for slander and libel against our president.
And I want him to pay out more than Fox had to pay out for talking about the voting machines.
That's Gordon in Kansas.
This is Ann in Burnham Wood, Wisconsin.
Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, I just wonder why I see that Trump and his people don't want to sign that ethics pledge that is legally required for the transition.
And if they're not willing to do that, why are there no repercussions?
It seems like we have these rules that are in place.
They ignore them.
And they just that seems to be okay with everybody.
I don't, then why do we have these rules in place?
That's my question.
Thank you.
Mike, Wahoo, Nebraska.
Republican, good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
How are you?
How are you doing, man?
It's good.
But it's raining.
Anyhow, let's get on with the subject.
Yeah, the Obama administration's plan again backfired to get Harris president, okay?
It really did.
They had this plan from 2020, you know, and they knew Biden was going to go out, you know.
And Harris had backfired on him.
You know what I mean?
You still on?
I'm listening, Mike.
So what happens?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Anyhow, it's still on.
The Obama administration tried to pull a fast one.
Yeah, and not only CBS and ABC and them got to go to court.
MSNBC, CNN, they're going to have a seat at the table, too.
This is getting ridiculous, this Trump derangement syndrome.
We ought to send MSNBC some puppies and kittens, okay?
All right.
This is Kenneth in Michigan.
Independent, good morning.
Good morning.
I'd like to congratulate your chief executive officer for jumping from CNN to C-SPAN.
I hope he carries the same thing with him.
Also, ever since Trump was elected, he turned from a Nazi into a clown.
That's good.
A clown will put a smile on your face, and everybody should be smiling.
Thank you.
All right.
Sharon, Beaverton, Oregon, Democrat, good morning.
Hi.
Obviously, as a Democrat, I was not happy with the results of the elections, and many of my friends aren't.
But what I decided was to accept the results that now Trump is president.
And he is telling us what he's going to do.
Even the people you had on earlier said that the first thing that's going to get done is the same tax cut, reinstating the tax cut that really helped the 1%.
Then his second thing that's really important is to cut the deficit.
Well, by reinstating the 1% tax cut, which didn't help me as an ex-teacher and a retiree very much, but it helped Elon Musk a lot and Trump a lot and Mitch McConnell a lot.
That squeezes the revenue for programs.
So the next thing he says he's going to do is we've got to cut the deficit.
And you even heard in your people earlier the word entitlement.
They use the word entitlement because the biggest part of the budget, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
So what's going to happen?
And I told my friends that are grieving, the people that are crowing now need Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid much more than I do.
They voted for them.
There's going to be a rude awakening two years from now when suddenly we have to get this deficit in control.
All the money, the revenue is gone.
You can only bleed the middle class and the poor so much for revenue.
And then they say we have to cut Social Security.
We have to cut Medicare.
We have to cut Medicaid.
And some of your callers that are calling now, I can't wait to hear the phone calls.
Why do you think that's where they'll go?
It's long been called the third rail politics.
People don't touch it because how can they not?
How can they not?
Because if you're going to cut the deficit, if you've squeezed off, I'm a teacher.
I'm logic.
I'm practical.
I'm pragmatic.
The negative word they called Kamala.
If you squeeze off the revenue and you have no more revenue and your biggest programs, and the Republicans aren't going to cut the military-industrial complex, the next thing is the only thing that's going to take it down.
When that guy was talking about the money, the monkey study or whatever, a million bucks.
That doesn't cut the deficit.
To cut the deficit, you're going to have to go after the big programs.
And those big programs, as you say, Medicare and Medicaid is currently about $1.8 trillion in the U.S. budget.
Social Security, $1.5 trillion.
Defense and war spending, about $1 trillion.
Interest on the debt, also just about $1 trillion.
The U.S. tax revenue this year, $5 trillion, and spending is about $7.2 trillion.
That's Sharon in Oregon.
About 10 minutes left in our program this morning.
This is Faye in Ithaca, New York.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, John.
Just to let you know, my phone sometimes cuts me off.
So if that happens, it's not because I hung up.
That's okay, Faye.
What's on your mind this morning?
So, John, I've been trying to get through for two months now.
First, I just want to repeat what I said last time about clemency because we need to free Leonard Poltaire.
He's a Native American prisoner now for decades.
If you could have Deb Holland on soon to talk about clemencies in general and also to talk about Leonard Peltaire.
Now, the second thing, John, is I'm a Democrat.
I voted for Kamala Harris.
There's a lot to say, and I'm not going to be able to have time to say it right now because I might get cut off by my phone.
I am scared to death, John, for our country.
I am shocked that someone like Donald Trump could get into office again.
This is not healthy.
He is a very unhealthy man.
He's putting in people that should not be in public office.
I mean, he should not be in public office.
Mitch McConnell has damaged this country severely, and he's not going to be looked good at in history.
John, I'm a very kind person.
I have a good heart.
I don't say things just willy-lily.
I do my homework.
I watch a lot of good news networks, which is too long to talk about here.
But we are in a lot of trouble, John.
I am scared to death.
I'm scared to death.
They're going to go after PBS or go after your channel, go after news networks that are fair or BBC.
You know, I am really scared to death.
We are in a lot of trouble, John.
There's so many smart people out there.
Why aren't they, you know, calling in?
Why aren't they coming out?
People in government who know what trouble we are in right now.
I can't stress that enough.
I can't go into details because I'll get cut off.
I mean, there's just this, this is, I'm just hurting as an American.
Why?
We're going to suffer so much, John.
This is not, this is not a healthy administration.
This administration should never have been allowed.
And there should be, where are the safeguards?
That's what concerns.
Where are the safeguards?
I mean, to even put this in recess is absurd.
That's Faye in New York.
This is Phil in Minnesota, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
You know something?
I'm not afraid, nor will I be intimidated, because it amazes me that people don't actually see how weak he is because there's nothing more that he can do for the congressman and the senators.
So, yes, for the first six months to one year, he can run right.
But he can't do enough.
But it just amazes me, John, to see how weak that people don't see how actually weak he is because they want to tell him no.
You think they want to give up their seats for him?
I don't think it's going to.
It doesn't work that way.
You remember Bess Truman?
She said, if you want a friend in Washington, D.C., you get a dog.
John, you take care of yourself, take care of your family, and tell your workers I said hello.
Phil, before you go, what do you mean there's nothing more he can do for them?
What do you mean by that?
He can only serve, he can only serve one term.
They're going to come to Mr. President.
I'm sorry, but you don't have my vote.
That's what I believe is going to happen to him.
And you have to understand with this individual, everything is smoke and mirrors.
And I'm a very old, cynical soul.
Nothing interferes with my logic.
So you take care of yourself, take care of your family, and take care of your workers.
And you have a nice day, sir.
Thank you, sir.
From Minnesota.
This is Wendy in Milwaukee.
Republican, good morning.
Yes.
Hi.
I just want to say that I'm in liberal Milwaukee, but I don't belong here.
I will be going back to South Florida as soon as my lease ends.
First of all, the American people were sick and tired of what has gone on.
Now, I feel compassion for Latino people.
I love Latin people.
I don't deport them, okay?
But we had 15 U.S. service people blowing to pieces.
That was the first disaster.
Then Ukraine got invaded.
Now, some lady in a lady at the store said to me a year and a half ago, well, that's not President Biden's fault.
I'm like, the people here are, as my mom says, who voted for Kamala Harris.
My parents are all Democrats.
My relatives, they're all liberal.
And my mom even says that they're not very aware of the world here in Milwaukee.
They're liberal.
So the American people, including me, partially, are tired of what has been going on where the whole shift of everything was people were concerned about the other countries.
For instance, President Obama was more concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt than he was about building up our country.
It's a basic concept.
It's not complicated.
We're not tired.
If you don't like Wisconsin, why did you move to Wisconsin in the first place?
Oh, no.
No, I don't.
No, I've been, I grew up here.
I came home when my dad died in 2016.
And then I came back during COVID for some reason.
And I was in a different neighborhood that was a little bit more active and more, you know, and then I'm this COVID.
Wisconsin isn't the same.
It's changed.
There's been a shifting of people and things have changed.
I know there's just drastic change.
How is it that?
How is it that your entire family, as you describe it, are liberals and you became a conservative?
Well, because I've been in the real world and I've been on my own.
No one has ever paid my bills.
I have been married twice, and my ex-husband's a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale.
He has a drug problem.
But my mom even admits my dad was my dad, was a gentleman, and they don't make him like that anymore.
My dad took care of the family.
My dad took care of my mom.
And when they got divorced after 50 years of marriage, my mom said, wow, I didn't know that someone could attack me verbally.
Yeah.
So I've been in the real world seeing real world issues.
And then a friend of mine in Miami, I was kind of like, yeah, basically that's what it is.
I was appalled.
What line of work are you in, Wendy?
My background was: I came out of high school.
I went to college, worked my way through college.
I did like accounting, bookkeeping.
I went to college.
I served in the military for four years.
I have like a legal, paralegal background, you know, working in business, worked in private industry, worked for very wealthy people.
Then after years go on, I had my own businesses.
I've transitioned into that because you can't get a job.
You can't get a job anymore.
I predicted that.
I warned people.
I said, you've got to be careful with opening up the border too much because your kids are not going to get a job.
I predicted this.
I told people, and some people caught on to what I was saying here.
I did do Airbnb for, I buy real estate now, so I did Airbnb for about four years, and I sold my property, and I'm waiting.
I was going to buy property in Tennessee.
I was looking for real estate, and I said, let's just hold off.
So I'm kind of looking for business opportunities because it's hard to, you know, like just get anything.
You can't even get a part-time job.
I mean, I came home to Milwaukee, and you can't get a part-time job here.
That's Wendy in Milwaukee.
This is Caitlin in Marietta, Georgia.
Democrat, good morning.
Morning.
I just have to say first that I think that there's a lot of opportunity in Milwaukee.
I've got friends with them who live there.
But besides the point, I'm a Democrat from Georgia.
I voted for Kamala Harris.
I will say that I'm really disappointed in the Democratic Party.
I think that Kamala had a short time to get people, voters on her side.
I think that instead of having, you know, like rap artists at the conventions, we should have been talking about policy.
We should have been discussing things that we were going to change.
We should have been talking about things that would make a difference for the American people.
And we didn't do that.
And so I think it's really disheartening.
I think it's really scary.
I think Trump is essentially just a criminal running the country now.
And I believe that Elon Musk and Trump are going to eventually butt heads.
I think that he's already feeling pressure from people like Eon, Elon, and his cabinet.
And I believe it's going to be really detrimental to the society here.
It's Caitlin in Georgia and Ken's in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Republican, good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning.
One of your callers, the Independent is no longer descriptive because you either supported Kamala or you supported Trump.
And I think you should then get more of a 50-50 on the calls.
So I just make that suggestion.
The people calling in, trying to re-litigate the election, is obviously tying up most of the conversation on the real world And how the Trump administration can advance in spite of the fact that the propaganda of the media and the Democrat Party is full-blown.
I mean, you don't learn anything from most of the callers, and you let people talk about Trump being Hitler and Nazis, even though you say, I'm not going to hear that this day, because it's all about still attacking our leadership.
We hired a leader, we hired a president as the people, and now we're allowing the sabotage to continue just like it did in Trump's first term.
So, the idea that we spend all of our time attacking, no, nobody investigated Obama's gay affairs, nobody investigated the transgender of Michelle,
which affairs, all of that, this stuff that you let on with somebody calling in saying seven years ago, Hitset had a sexual encounter that got settled and the attacks that gone that are all that's being talked about on Yates and Robert Kennedy and all of that.
All right, that's Ken in Oklahoma, our last caller in today's Washington Journal.
But stick around throughout the day, more programming on the C-SPAN networks, the House and Senate are in this week.
And of course, we'll be back here tomorrow morning.
It's 7 a.m. Eastern.
It is 4 a.m. Pacific.
In the meantime, have a great Monday.
Congress returns later today for their final week of work before their break for the Thanksgiving holiday.
On Tuesday, House Democrats will hold leadership elections for the next Congress.
And newly elected House members are back in Washington, D.C. for more orientation sessions, including selecting their Capitol Hill offices by lottery.
Both the House and Senate continue talks ahead of another government funding deadline and must pass additional federal spending by December 20th to avert a shutdown.
As for the floor schedule, the House is back later today at noon Eastern.
Members will consider foreign policy, several bills under suspension of the rules, including legislation banning the U.S. government from contracting with any person that has business operations with the current Venezuelan government.
Also, a bill to increase transparency of mail-in ballots by requiring ballot envelopes to have tracking barcodes.
The Senate returns later today at 3 p.m. Eastern.
Senators will vote at 5:30 to confirm Embry Kidd to be a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the 11th Circuit, which hears federal appeals from district courts in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.
Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN, the Senate on C-SPAN 2, and watch all of our congressional coverage online at c-span.org or on our free video app, C-SPAN Now.