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Coming up on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live.
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Washington Journal starts now.
Good morning.
It's Tuesday, November 19th.
Yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump confirmed that he would declare a national emergency and use the military to carry out mass deportations of migrants living in the U.S. without legal permission.
We want to get your thoughts on that this morning.
Here's how to call us.
If you support the use of the military for mass deportations, call 202-748-8000.
If you're opposed, the number is 202-748-8001.
We have a line set aside for undocumented immigrants.
Call 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text to 202-748-8003.
Include your first name in your city-state.
And you can post your comments on social media.
It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
We'll start with the USA Today with the headline: Trump vows to declare a national emergency, use military for mass deportations.
Here's what the article said.
President-elect Donald Trump said Monday that he would declare a national emergency and use the military to execute his mass deportation plans.
Conservative activist Tom Fitton said earlier this month on social media that, quote, reports are incoming that Trump is preparing to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden administration, the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.
Trump reposted Fitton's post Monday with the comment: true in all caps with three exclamation marks.
During his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised a mass deportation that would round up immigrants around the country who have violated the law.
The article continues: Multiple presidential administrations have used the U.S. military in border enforcement, but U.S. law strictly prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
And President Trump's borders are Tom Homan was on Fox News last week and talked about the mass deportation plans.
President Trump has made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first.
And that's what the focus would be.
There's over 1.5 convicted criminal aliens in this country with final orders removal that we're going to be looking for.
There's thousands of gang members, gang members, we're going to be looking for it.
Now, I'm going to say, if you're in the country illegally, you shouldn't feel comfortable.
Absolutely not.
I won't feel comfortable if I'm in the country illegally.
If I'm in some other country illegally, I'm not going to be comfortable.
You shouldn't be comfortable either, because when you enter this country illegally, you have committed a crime.
You are a criminal, and you're not off the table.
And here is what Talking Point Memos Josh Kavinsky wrote yesterday, quote, deploying the military along the U.S.-Mexico border would be extreme, but would remain within the bounds of a core military mission.
The Pentagon already provides support to the Border Patrol and other agencies that monitor the southern border.
But using the military to conduct mass deportations, a law enforcement task that takes place in the interior, would involve U.S. soldiers deploying across the country, a breach without any recent precedent in American history.
And we are taking your calls this morning on that topic.
And we'll start with Michael, who's calling us from Huntington, West Virginia, on the line for oppose.
Hi, Michael.
Hey, Mimi, this is Michael.
I don't, I called on the oppose line, but it should be Smithfield, North Carolina.
They may have misunderstood the zip code.
Okay, go ahead, Michael.
But I do think it's impossible.
I mean, we went through this, seems like eight years ago or six years ago, with the same rhetoric that there was going to be millions of people deported back to where?
Where are they going to deport them to?
And it's impossible to pay for this and have the manpower.
We've discussed this before, you know, and the House got involved, and we had a lot of House and Senate members in Washington speak their mind about it.
And I heard people in government say it's people to actually work in government for the U.S. government in Washington.
And they said it was impossible six years ago.
So what's changed?
I don't think it's even feasible.
And what it would do to the families and to the economy.
And here in North Carolina, we rely on all kinds of help, you know, with farming and all the fast food restaurants.
All right, Michael.
And here's some members of Congress on X. First, here's Marjorie Taylor Green, and she says, in 63 days, we will secure our borders and start the largest mass deportation operation in history.
If you're in this country, illegally pack your bags, you're going back.
This is Representative Pat Fallon, who says, for four years, Americans have been put at greater risk by foreign gang members and the flow of fentanyl across our border.
The border crisis is a national security threat.
President Trump's right to declare a national emergency and begin widespread deportations of criminal illegals.
Representative Chip Roy says our starting place for deportation should be for any individuals who come here illegally or were released into the U.S. illegally, illegitimately, by the Harris Biden-Mayorkist regime.
They need to be removed.
They need to be deported.
That is the right starting place.
Andy Biggs says the country delivered a mandate.
America wants mass deportations of the illegal aliens who have invaded our country.
We must carry out the will of the American people.
President Trump and Border Czar Tom Homan are the men for the job.
And here is on the Democratic side, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett says, here's what this will look like.
Our military being turned on Americans.
Citizens will be caught up in an operation this large.
And Representative Gwen Moore says mass deportations aren't just inhumane, they'd devastate America's agricultural industry.
Combined with its tariffs, Trump has a recipe for economic disaster.
Farmers, workers, and consumers are all going to pay the price.
And Debbie Powell from Florida says Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order allowing military force for mass deportations.
Many Miami-Dade businesses, nurseries, tourism, restaurants, ALFs, healthcare rely on undocumented workers.
Will he enforce this in his own state or will he protect his friends?
And we'll hear from Rob, who's in Port Crane, New York.
Good morning, Rob.
Good morning.
Boy, I'll tell you, when you come up with Jasmine Crockett, the quote, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
That woman's just a hood rat.
I've seen her during some of these House committee things, and she's just so disrespectful and she's stupid.
Absolutely stupid.
So getting back to the topic, Rob.
Yes, Joe Biden invited these invaders to come here.
He helped them come here with the CBP one and two phone apps.
You know, this is horrible.
And there's 20 million illegals running around here.
They're raping and killing women and kids.
Doesn't anybody care about that on the Democratic side?
I don't get it.
I really don't.
Because I see what's happening here.
Right here in upstate New York, we had a guy from Peru that murdered 23 people.
He was up here running around living in Endicott, New York.
You know, how many more of them are here?
And then in New York City, we hear about all these gang members every single day.
Another one picked up with an AR-15.
Rob, so the question being: do you support the military being involved in mass deportations?
Would you be okay with the military deploying to Port Crane, New York, where you are?
Absolutely.
Yeah, why not?
Somebody's got to do something about this, you know.
But if any of the Trump staffers are listening, I got a proposal for you.
How about we have something turn in your neighbors?
If you think someone's illegal in your neighborhood, turn them in.
If they are, you get $10,000.
If they're on a terrorist terrorist list, you get $50,000.
And if they're not wrong?
I'm sorry?
And if you turn in your neighbors and they're not illegal?
So?
You did what I was doing?
Should you be prosecuted for that?
Or should we just all be pro.
Got it.
Stephen in Lexington, Kentucky.
Good morning.
Wow, that last caller is crazy.
I mean, yeah, that guy is extreme.
I mean, maybe even fascist.
But I would say that I do not support this.
This is very detrimental.
Literally taking the military to the United States, rounding up people.
I mean, do we not remember the Japanese Americans that were rounded up during the World War?
It's crazy.
It's fascist.
It's dictatorship.
It's he okay.
What he needs to do, and he needs to start with the problem, which is people that have been here a long time.
Think of people in Miami and Texas, the DACA people.
Like, what?
You're just going to go straight to deporting people.
People have been here for decades sometimes, you know, haven't had a clear path to citizenship because the United States makes it so difficult.
So, Stephen, they've said the ones convicted of crimes would be the focus.
Would you be in favor of that?
What about the citizens?
No, I would not.
What about the citizens of the United States that do crimes every day?
There are more of those people than immigrants.
There are more American citizens creating crimes, not doing stuff legally.
What about those people?
Why don't we deport them?
I don't understand.
But where would you deport an American citizen, though?
So what?
If they're an American citizen and do something illegal, I mean, let's just incarcerate them forever then.
Like, if that, that's the, they're just going to the extreme.
It's nuts.
You're okay.
One thing is the military and then this economy is just going to fall.
Every job that Americans don't want to do is done by an illegal immigrant, usually.
And they're doing it for pennies to make their lives better.
I can't see Joe Schmo from New York going to go process some meat in Arkansas.
Like, what are you guys doing?
You're going to ruin the economy.
You're going to ruin the American dream.
Rounding up people, grandmas that have been here for years.
I have a personal friend that's a DACA kid, and he could be affected by this.
It's asinine.
So, what they need to do is find amnesty for some of these individuals.
All right, Stevenson.
Alex in Bear, Delaware.
Good morning.
Hi, how are you doing?
I'm doing okay.
Go right ahead, Alex.
Yeah, I just want to talk to these people who's saying what it would cost to deport all these people.
I'm going to tell them what's wrong with you.
It costs way more money to keep these people here than to deport them.
And another thing, Obama deported 3 million people out of there, and no one, none of these Democrats saying a word about that.
And what's going on here?
I don't understand what's going on about this.
And Alex about using the military, then.
What do you think of that?
Oh, yeah.
Use anything you can use.
Get them out of here as quick as you can.
What's wrong with that?
I don't understand it.
They're ruining this country, and everybody knows it.
That's why he got voted in office, mainly, because of these immigrants, illegal immigrants.
Biden said when he was running for office, surge the border.
He was right on the TV when the debate saying that.
What's wrong with these people calling in here?
They're a bunch of hypocrites.
Obama deported 3 million people out of this country.
And they ain't saying a word about that.
And Alex brought up the cost.
So this is a CBS News article.
It says, Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants would cost hundreds of billions.
CBS News analysis shows it says in reading Pennsylvania last week, Trump drew fervent applause from a rally crowd.
This is during the campaign.
After saying he would, quote, get these people out and deport them so rapidly.
It says, immigration researchers, lawyers, and economists have pointed to immense constitutional, humanitarian, and economic problems posed by Trump's oft-repeated pledge.
But beyond the anticipated damage to immigrant families, communities, and local economies, the roundup and deportation of some 11 million people is near impossible to bankroll, according to an analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data by CBS News.
Even if Congress approved the hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, deporting every undocumented immigrant living in the U.S. would take far longer than four years, the analysis finds.
It says apprehending and deporting just 1 million people could cost taxpayers about $20 billion.
Deporting 11 million people over four years would cost more than 20 times what the nation spent a year over the last five years on deporting people living in the U.S. Most of that would be new funding that would have to be approved by a majority of both chambers of Congress.
That's on CBS News, and this is Judy in Louisville, Kentucky.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I have a different bend on this.
First of all, the military is 49% black and brown.
I don't think they want to go out and just start arresting people.
But the whole ruse is just a ruse.
They're not going to deport them.
They're going to do exactly what Miller wanted done.
They're going to put them in pens and they're going to kill them and then cremate them because it's cheaper.
There's a math problem in a book.
The Nazis used it.
That's what they did.
So people need to really, really think.
They're not going to deport them.
They're just going to, no matter, and it's based on your skin color, not irrelegally.
Can you prove who you are?
Do you have your birth certificate with you?
Do you have your cards with you?
No.
You just get rounded up.
And that includes black people, too.
So they're not exclusive.
All right, Judy.
And here's Matthew and Frederick Maryland.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Are we teaching history in high schools, in middle schools?
Where did this happen not very long ago?
Running up people from their homes.
Oh, they are coming for the illegals, illegal criminals, not me.
Oh, then it would turn into illegals.
Oh, they are coming for illegals, not me.
Then eventually it would be trying on American civilians.
Where did we hear this kind of tactics before in history, in world history?
So this is why we are actually talking about beware of what happened to other people.
Beware of what's happening in other countries, in other times, in history.
So please, let us be alert and make sure that Americans fight against this.
Thank you very much.
And here is Pablo in Fairfax, Virginia.
Pablo, you're undocumented?
Hey, good morning, Mimi.
No, I'm not.
Why would you say that?
Because you're calling on the undocumented line.
Oh, is that right?
No, I was calling on the, what do you call it?
The independent line.
No, no, no.
We don't have an independent line this time.
We changed it up.
But anyway, go ahead.
Well, let me turn on the line.
Thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, go ahead.
Let me tell you, I'm hearing a lot of this interesting rhetoric in here from both sides.
This is my second time I called.
First time I called, I told you I was a Democrat my entire life and I went to Trump this past election and I'll tell you why.
And I'm going to go into the deportation of illegals.
Obviously, America was built on immigrant label where everyone except indigenous folks in America is coming from an immigrant.
Everyone understands that.
However, I believe that there is a difference between someone doing it right, doing it legally, and coming to the country, making sure that you are vetted, making sure that you are coming to become a positive factor in America and building this wonderful country, where the issue is obviously where the illegal people come.
And I've seen it.
I come from a different country and I've seen other, how that can have a very, very negative effect on a country.
And because you're bringing crime, you're bringing drugs, you're bringing all that stuff that you already hear all the time.
My point is that about deportation, there's a lot of checks and balances.
There's no way that Trump is going to start rounding up people like Hitler did or like anyone else did.
As someone that has been in contact with my fellow Republicans and have seen both sides of the aisle, there's no way a Republican or a conservative person is going to allow the rounding up of legal immigrants.
For God's sake, I just wanted to ask you about the use of the military.
Well, I mean, who else is going to round people up?
Technically, I don't think the police has the power, the legal power, to go knocking on the door and rounding people up.
And then we have obviously...
So you would rather it be the military?
Knocking on the doors, maybe kicking down doors?
Would you be okay with that?
See, I highly doubt that that's going to come to fruition because the very fact that Donald Trump and his cabinet, they're focusing at the beginning, they're focusing on the criminal elements.
Some of these folks that are already in jail for violent crimes.
The incoming orders are, Pablo, sorry to cut you off, is saying that anybody, when you say we're just going to focus on the criminals, he's saying that anybody that's here in the country illegally is a criminal because you've broken our immigration laws.
So really, it's anybody that's here undocumented.
Well, what I'm hearing from, number one, there's no way that we have the Fourth Amendment, we have the Fifth Amendment, we have many other fail-safes in our country, thankfully, because of the framers of the Constitution, that would not provide that liberty for someone in the military to do that.
All right, Pablo, I got to move on and let's take a look at what Tom Hohmann said on Fox News last week, encouraging self-deportation for criminals and non-criminals.
Already working on a plan.
I'll be going down to Mar-a-Lago this week to put the final touches on plan.
But yeah, we're going to take the handcuffs off ICE.
AICE knows who they're looking for.
They just haven't been able to arrest them because Secretary Mayorkas has told them to tone down the arrest.
No, he says you can't arrest anybody unless they've been convicted of a serious crime.
We know right now, looking at the data from the Trump administration, the Biden administration, the removal of criminal aliens has decreased 74%.
So we have plenty of targets to all the arrests.
ICE knows who they are.
So, yeah, we're going to take handcuffs off ICE.
We're going to do the job, secure the country, protect the American communities, and arrest the bad guys first.
So this is going to be something that's pretty resource-intensive.
This is what Politico wrote about it.
Finding, detaining, and removing those people would be resource-intensive, said John Sandwick, acting director of ICE from 2013 to 2014.
Detention capacity alone would be a costly and immediate challenge.
Lawmakers need to appropriate the funding, and even if they do, the administration we need to hire, vet, and train more officers.
No easy feat.
The new Congress takes over on January the 3rd.
Will you be working with them in preparation for taking over the reins on the 20th?
We have to because we've got to have the resources to do the job.
So I've been asked a thousand times, how many people can you remove the first year?
Well, how many agents do I have?
Can we bring rehired agents back?
The ones that return, bring them back and rehire them.
How many buses do I have?
How much money do I have for airplanes, right?
Can DOD assist?
Because DOD can take off our plate.
So there's a lot of what-ifs.
I don't know what the current budget is right now.
I don't have insight in what currently ICE and CBP has for budget.
How much money can be reprogrammed?
I can tell you this: President Trump's committed to whatever he can to get us the money we need.
That was Tom Homan talking about the scope and cost of the mass deportation plan.
And here is Becky in Ohio.
Hi, Becky.
Hi.
I support them to take them out only because there's been so many women murdered, killed, raped, children.
I can't.
I'm raising my five grandchildren because of fentanyl.
Okay.
These people come here, bring their drugs here, these illegals.
They did say they want to take them out first.
They need to take all these bad ones out.
They said they are not going to break up the families.
The kids can go home with their family.
That's how it should be.
They came here illegal.
So, Becky, I wanted to show you something real quick.
This is from the CPB.
This is cpb.gov about total criminal convictions by type of non-citizens.
So this is anybody that's a non-citizen, not necessarily here illegally.
And it says homicide and manslaughter.
So that's here.
It is.
So if we start looking at FY21, and you're looking at 60, 62, 29, and 29 year to date for FY29.
The biggest one here for criminality is illegal entry.
So if you've come into the country, these are the biggest numbers here.
You also have illegal drug possession, trafficking, and then driving under the influence are some of the ones with the larger numbers.
Sexual offenses, here are the numbers.
Year to date, 284 for non-citizens.
And here's Glenn, Lakeland, Florida.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Good morning.
I don't think that's a good idea because what we're doing here, you're going to waste the resources of the U.S. military, National Guard, and active duty personnel, and you're going to reduce the readiness of our military in case we got to go to war.
We have to engage in battle with a foreign country as an enemy.
Why would we waste our time in the years doing that?
Because to me, that doesn't make any sense.
And you're talking about rounding up millions of people.
It's going to take years to do so.
And that means that we have to go to war.
We have to go to certain engagements.
We're not going to have those resources available.
We're not going to have the personnel to do it because you're going to waste all your time trying to do this.
And I have a bigger question to ask.
If we in this country do exactly what he wants to do, and you have all these people rounded up, illegal aliens are going to also include American citizens that are legal, dreamers and everybody else, and they go to different countries they've never been to before.
Who's going to replace them in the fields to get the crops out of the fields in order to put them in the grocery stores for people to eat?
Who's going to replace those folks?
Because once they're gone, and these are jobs that Americans don't want to do, who's going to replace them?
Because what you're thinking about, we're going to keep so many in the country so they can do the hard labor work.
That's not what this is about.
So if you choose to do that, that means you've got to replace those workers with people of Americans to do the work.
And I'm going to tell you right now, black Americans are not going to do this work.
These are not black jobs.
So white people in this country, if you think that you're going to replace Hispanics and illegal immigrants with black people to do the work, and we go back in the fields, you forget about that.
So get ready to get back, look ready to go in the fields and do the work when they're gone that you don't want to do.
That's the reality of this situation.
And it may not be something they're talking about right now, but they are going to have to replace those workers.
So get ready and get in the field and go to work.
All right, Glenn.
And this is Representative Yvette Clark, who says deploying the military to carry out a mass deportation would be an egregious and dehumanizing act against immigrants trying only to better their families' lives.
This scheme is cruel, un-American, and an abuse of power that can only bring a moral and economic catastrophe.
Doug, in Virginia, what do you think should the military be used for mass deportations?
I don't have a problem with it.
I am retired in the military.
I don't understand one thing right off the bat that this country doesn't understand.
Undocumented or illegal is not acceptable in this country.
If you don't think it's ever happened before, you need to look up 1954, 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
You couldn't even use the term for it.
It was Operation Wetback to put 1.5 million people out of this country that were illegally here.
No country in the world will allow you to cross their borders illegally.
Why don't we change our law so if you come across here, you go to jail for six, seven months without seeing a lawyer?
That's what Mexican law is: if we cross into Mexico illegally, we need to stop the rhetoric in this country about it.
It's a racial issue.
It's, oh, the Hispanics are bad.
It's not that.
They can get a green card and come across legally.
So, Doug, I want to ask you, since you said you're a military vet, the previous caller, Glenn, said that this using the military this way would reduce our readiness.
We would have less troops available to go to war if that was necessary overseas.
What do you think of that?
Number one, we need to stop making wars.
But number two, we need to have our military stronger than what it is.
Young people today do not have any pride in this country.
They could care less about going to the military.
Where else can you go in at 18 years old and at 28 retire with a full medical and full retirement and pride of doing something for your country?
So then, Doug.
Country don't want their kids going to war.
Oh, they'll get killed.
They get killed on the streets as it is more and larger numbers than they are.
So, Doug, do you think that this maybe using them for mass deportations would help with recruitment, or do you think it would harm recruitment?
I think we need the recruitment's already screwed.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
We need to go back using the draft.
What is wrong with everybody in this country when you graduate, go in the military for two years?
All right, Doug.
Let's talk to Ricardo, Oakland Gardens, New York.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mimi.
Wow, just hearing all of this rhetoric from the people who are supporting undocumented immigrants is just unbelievable and really toxic.
You know, luckily, I am Peruvian and I can hear very luckily via visa.
So I'm very lucky with that.
But we've got to understand also that our countries, man, they're not really working with their own citizens in our own countries, and we're very lucky to come here.
Now, of course, some people do come here undocumentedly to do it by any means necessary, right?
But we really don't focus much on the large population of citizens who are in our welfare system who are committing large crimes.
Why do they get a pass?
You know, why do they get a pass?
People say it's not a racial thing.
It absolutely is a racial thing.
It sounds like I'm better than thou.
So I'm really disgusted by what a lot of people say.
As far as the military going into and handling deportations, I think it's really, I think it's very threatening.
And I think the resources are not being properly placed in the proper places with immigration.
I just don't think it's right.
It sounds like a dictatorship.
I mean, it's really, really scary.
All right.
And this is Dennis in Hudson, Indiana.
Good morning.
Yeah, I get a question for all these Democrats, bleeding heart liberals that are calling in.
They would think that all of these illegals that are in this country working, in order to get a job, they have to prove that they're an American citizen, which means what?
Oh, they had to steal somebody's identity.
No, not in all cases.
Hold on, Dennis.
That's not in all cases.
If an employer doesn't ask you for any proof, you can work.
Well, then that employer needs to go to prison then for the rest of their lives.
So that's not being enforced right now.
Well, I wonder why under the Biden.
They need to be thrown out to the last man, woman, and child.
Then we need to put on border to stop them from reentering.
And if they try to come back in, shoot them and stack their bodies up in the desert.
Okay.
Ray in Aurora, Colorado.
Good morning.
Mimi, am I coming in clear?
Yes, you are.
Okay, good.
All right.
I definitely oppose using the military any kind of detail to the extent that they should be used.
They should be used at the border, but not to some extreme degree that's going to throw our system into chaos.
I think this is the wrong approach.
I mean, you're fading out, Ray.
Sorry.
You started out strong, but you're fading out.
Try again.
Okay.
All right.
Is this better?
Yeah, go ahead.
Okay.
Well, first of all, people saying that all you need to do is get a green card.
Well, it'd be easy to get a green card if there were no tax.
So that's one thing you need to look at.
Another thing is all the regulations that make it very, very complicated.
What you really need to do is change the law.
And that's Congress talking.
I'm telling you, you need to change the law to make it easier to come in legally.
Because I believe that the complexities are the primary source of illegal immigration.
Okay, got it.
And Steve in Massachusetts, good morning, Steve.
Good morning, Mimi.
Hey, I think that what we should do is cut the head off the snake.
And what they need to do is they need to drone the cartel that are making $10,000 on every illegal immigrant that's coming over the border.
If it's $10,000, that's $100 million.
I'm sure it's a lot more than that.
Plus, they make them carry drugs and whatnot that come in this country.
That I had a son that was 33 years old that died from fentanyl.
He was a Marine mechanic.
And you know what?
What do we have?
Venezuelans doing that now or Peruvians.
And five airplanes crash a day from fentanyl.
That's how many people die per day.
And we need to cut the head off the snake and we need to get these people out of our country for our grandchildren that this country is going to change.
So, Steve, I just want to ask you, you know, you talked about the fentanyl issue of fentanyl coming across the border.
As far as those that are already here, do you think that they're involved in trafficking fentanyl and that removing them would help with that issue?
Talk about how that's related.
How'd they get here?
How did the cartel?
What?
They just bring them in?
They just let them come on in.
And when's it going to stop, Mimi?
When is enough enough?
Why do we worry about Russia going into Ukraine?
They should just let them into Ukraine.
Okay?
Why is our border not important?
But other people's borders are.
All right, Steve.
And this is Johnny in Granite Falls, Washington.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Absolutely not.
I oppose turning the military loose on the American people because that's what's going to happen.
This is just one more step in Donald Trump trying to take over the country in ways that are not healthy.
And I did want to make a comment about, you know, saying that immigrants are the people that are killing and doing all these horrible things to people.
I personally have been threatened twice in my life, and they have not been immigrants, believe me.
They've been good old American citizens.
So I think that kind of fear-mongering is just not a good thing.
And this is Matt, Boston Spa, New York.
Good morning, Matt.
Hey, yeah, you know, I'm not a Donald Trump fan actually.
I'm against that, but it's right in the words illegal immigrants.
If it's illegal, then they shouldn't be here.
They should be illegally or not illegally.
That's simple.
But on top of it, why did JD Vance call Donald Trump Hitler?
That's a very scary point for me.
Thank you.
And this is Talking Point Memos Josh Kovinsky.
He says this: Fenton referenced invoking a national emergency to use military assets.
But it's not clear that the National Emergencies Act is the provision that would allow Trump to use the military for anything at all.
In 2019, Trump invoked it to gain access to funding to build sections of a wall along the southern border.
The National Emergencies Act is not what's been keeping national security and military law attorneys up at night.
Rather, it's the Insurrection Act that has caused the most worry.
Under that law, Trump has broad, virtually unchecked ability to deploy troops domestically.
He considered invoking it in response to the 2020 George Floyd protests, purportedly asking at one point why soldiers don't, quote, just shoot protesters.
That's in Talking Point memo, and this is Rich in Hickory Hills, Illinois.
Good morning, Rich.
Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my call.
You know, I went to get my real ID made the other day.
And to get my ID made, I needed to have a birth certificate and these other documents.
And so when I go in there to get it, because I did not have the original copy, they wouldn't accept my identification.
And it occurred to me that, you know, we put a convicted felon into the White House, and we're going to trust this form of government so that if somebody stopped me on the street and I didn't have my original copy of my birth certificate to prove who I was, you know, I would be considered undocumented.
I didn't have the proper document.
And they could detain me, incarcerate me.
And somehow through the miracle of government bureaucracy, my identification that I showed got lost.
So, Rich, what do you think of those that are in the country illegally that it's confirmed that they're in the country illegally?
Do you think that there should be a mass deportation of those individuals?
I think that using the military to do such a thing is something that this is why people would refer to Donald Trump as an Adolf Hitler.
That's what he did.
He was using his round troops, and they were government people to do this, to carry that out.
I mean, this is why you're opening this up for.
And for people that when we talk about this form of government, it's his way of trying to circumvent our government out of the loop.
What he's actually doing is give me the power.
I'm going to go in here and I'm going to do this.
And, oh, we're going to do it right.
My God, the man, doing it right in his idea, is sort of like, yeah, no, I've been, you know, my involvement with the government.
And like I say, there's the right way, the wrong way, and the government's way.
And that may not be either one.
Got it.
Laura in Spokane, Washington.
Good morning, Laura.
Good morning, Mimi.
I support the idea of getting these illegal immigrants out of our country because of the 350,000 babies and children that, border babies and children, that are being used for sex trafficking, organ harvesting, and slavery in our country.
And that is set up by the cartels.
It's sanctioned and supported by the Democratic Party.
And these are babies and children.
And Laura, do you support the military being deployed domestically then to round up anybody that's illegal, to deport them?
Yes, I do.
Yes, I do.
Because we have to get this stop.
I mean, those children are innocent.
They are the tiny voices that nobody ever talks about.
But they've been, I mean, it's not okay to have this going on in our country sanctioned by a political party and protected.
I mean, and it's a big-time business and it's horrific.
And we've got to remember that.
That's what Holman and the rest of them are going after, to try to rescue these kids.
All right, Laura, and this is Ron in Seffner, Florida.
Good morning.
Good morning.
So I oppose it.
And what it all comes down to, what I think is it's racial.
It's racism.
Me being somebody that resembles somebody that's from Mexico, I'm Native American, and I hear this all the time, whether it's social media or in person.
Go back to where you came from.
Go back to Mexico.
And so my whole question with that is: if this plays into effect, is it going to turn into racial profiling?
How are they going to determine who's who?
Here in Florida, most of what you consider, I mean, who looks like Mexican, everybody's either island people, Puerto Rican, Puerto Rico, and so forth.
But my whole thing is, how are they going to determine who is who?
All right.
And this is Harold in Pennsylvania.
Hi, Harold.
Hello.
Yeah, I support it because they can use the troops as security.
They're not going to go in busting doors down like everybody thinks.
They're not going to be hurting anybody.
It's there for security.
And plus, yes, they should.
They're here illegally.
I work with a lot of them that came legally.
Yes, it takes for them because it takes like five, six years sometimes until they become a citizen, but they're for it too to get them out because all they're doing is wasting more money.
Harold, I want to ask you, because we've got a text from Richard in Las Vegas, and I want you to respond to this because Richard says, when Obama deported an increased number of illegal immigrants, he did not need to use the military.
He received cooperation from state and local officials, as well as the public.
Imagine all of us together trying to uphold our laws.
So what do you make of this?
How would you respond to Richard saying, you know what, Obama deported more people than Trump did in his first term?
He didn't need the military.
Of all the governors and that, that helped them do it.
They didn't have people fighting.
I'm telling them, no, you cannot come in.
We're going to protect all the illegals.
We need everybody to work together because this is hurting our country.
We're probably paying a lot more money than what CBS is saying about the deporting them to keep them because everybody's hurting from it.
It's sad, but we've got to deal with it.
Okay, and here's Paul in Sparta, Wisconsin.
Good morning, Paul.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I live out in the woods here, and I'm surrounded by dairy farms.
Can you imagine how much your milk's going to cost you when you decide to ship all the illegals that are working on these farms back to wherever they're from?
And my wife is an immigrant.
And my two sons are in the military.
Are they going to come and send their mom home?
I mean, these people are absolutely insane.
It's going to cost us.
But, Paul, is your wife here illegally?
No, ma'am, but she's a naturalized citizen, which Stephen Miller has said he wants to go after, too.
You said he wants to go after naturalized American citizens?
Yes, ma'am.
He has said that in a speech that he wants to end that program and take those people, too.
Okay, let's look that up because that does sound a little strange.
This is Victor in Westwood, New Jersey.
Good morning, Victor.
Yes, how you doing?
Good.
Listen, I'm a Marine Corps veteran.
My two brothers were.
My father served.
And my parents are immigrants from Italy.
And they came here the right way.
They came to Ellis Island.
One of them was born in 1912, one 1923.
I firmly believe that Trump should deploy troops, and he's going to deploy them on the border.
He's not going to put them in every state to state.
He's going to put them on a border, stop the cartels, stop the illegal immigrants from coming over.
And at the same time, he's going to deploy ICE to go after all the illegal immigrants.
No, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
They are, yes, you're right that they are supporting at the border.
So we do have U.S. military at the border, but we're talking about mass deportations.
So we're talking about them being used in the interior of the country to deport illegal immigrants that are here.
I don't believe Trump's going to do that.
I really don't.
I think it's ridiculous.
And I am a Trump supporter.
I firmly believe he's going to use them more at the border than anything.
I think people are panicking and they're taking all his words out of context as usual because they're trying to bash him.
He's going to get this country back on track.
And we need this because people like Lake and Riley and it's just insane what's going on.
It's got to stop.
They've got to stop the masses coming in.
They left this border open for four years.
It's ridiculous.
It's got to end because all it does is cause all this aggravation and people suffering.
It's just got to stop.
And I think he's going to use ICE more than anything to round up these people that are felons, murderers, rapists.
And yes, I really believe he's going to stick the military at the border more than anything because the border is hundreds of miles long.
He's going to use them there more than anything.
And that's my comments on this thing.
Let's go to Rosankey, Texas to Jim.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good.
How's it going, Jim?
Very good.
I'm against the mass deportion, deporting people, but they need to be here illegally.
I mean, legally.
I'm prior military.
If they sent me down there, I was not a police officer.
I was a firefighter.
I was in the military to do my job during wartime.
This is not wartime.
The other thing, Trump needs to think about where he's coming from.
He needs to get a cup of coffee.
They went to his resort and they found illegals there doing the labor-type jobs.
Who do you think is going to be doing the lawns, washing the dishes, cleaning the rooms?
He needs to clean himself up.
You know, this is not about, you know, if we got rid of everyone that did labor-type jobs, we'd be hurting.
And Stephan in Cleveland, Ohio.
Good morning, Stephan.
Good morning.
I don't understand why people are against it.
I mean, you just can't have unchecked, background check people just coming through the border.
And as far as the cost, Elon is going to get rid of two-thirds of the government.
Well, wasteful government, the port that they have in the budget.
So I think it'll offset it.
But you have to get rid of these people like Lincoln Riley and all these other people that are getting murdered.
How do you think those parents feel about undocumented illegal aliens coming in the country?
But you're okay with the military doing that?
Well, I look at it like this.
They're sending all this money over to Ukraine.
The Biden administration just authorized tactical missiles to be used.
Russia is preparing to go to war with NATO.
They're mass-producing shelter fallouts.
In Switzerland, they're telling people how to survive during the fallout.
So they're preparing for the next step.
Now, America has all this money to spend over there, sending all this money over there to Israel for these endless wars.
And the money they're using to housing the immigrants.
Poor Mayor Adams, He's already projected a $9 billion budget for housing, feeding them.
Well, what are we supposed to do?
Just keep housing and feeding them.
And in Chicago, the same thing.
And Jesse in Chalamar, Florida.
Good morning.
Yes, ma'am.
To me, this is just an economic issue.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all to me to remove people from our workforce who are contributing to our economy, let alone the cost of removing those people.
But if you've got people in there who are working and contributing to our economy, you're going to that plus putting the tax on imports is going to drive our economy to ruin.
So to me, this is not a ratio or anything else like that.
It's strictly the economy.
You're going to run the United States economy if you do the things that Trump has in mind.
And Mark in Middletown, Ohio.
Good morning.
Hi.
I support it because you look like a place in Springfield, Ohio.
What are they contributing to?
They know right where they're at, and they're the best trained.
They can go and get them right out.
No problem.
And they're not going to go bother nobody with the mortgage or paying taxes.
So they already know who they're looking for: the people in the hotels.
They're going to create places for the veterans to stay.
And that's what I got to say about that.
All right.
And caller was talking about Stephen Miller about denaturalization.
So going after naturalized U.S. citizens.
He did post on X, this is from October 11th.
It says, yes, we started a denaturalization project under Trump in 2025.
Expect it to be turbocharged.
We'll find out more about that for you as well.
And this is Anthony in Greenville, Mississippi.
Good morning.
Yes, ma'am.
How are you?
I'm doing okay, Anthony.
Go right ahead.
Okay, then I'm listening to everything the people are saying.
Don't you believe in God?
When the children of Israel, they had an exodus.
God made them move from a place of poverty and suffering to make them move to a better life, call it exodus.
Exodus can't be opposed by no government, no politician, or nothing.
It's the power of God.
Now, if you want on that, no citizens call rural citizenship.
No border should be nowhere to throw down the Berlin Wall.
No border should be nowhere to deny people from moving, migrating to other countries.
Thank you.
CJ in Virginia, good morning.
Hey, how are you?
I think, Mimi, if you would do the whole country a favor, you and all your cohorts should just sell what kind of medications are you on to put up with the likes of Nicole in Chandler, Arizona.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I wanted to make my comment.
It's about immigration.
People act like this just came up yesterday.
This issue has been going on a long time, and the Democrats and the Republicans have failed to do anything about it over many decades.
And they know what to do.
We are smart.
We've been, we've got all the PhDs and all the think tanks, and we already know what to do.
But when it comes time to make those decisions, the lawmakers and the Congress always block each other.
The Republicans don't want the Democrats to win on this.
And then in the next session, the Democrats don't want the Republicans to win on this.
We've been dealing with this a long time, so we know the answers.
We just had the bipartisan bill, which actually addressed the true issues, allotting the amount of money that's needed to adjudicate all of the illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, and also the legal immigrants.
We need more money to process all these people according to our laws.
But now the trumpeters, what I call them, they want to ignore the law of America and just make some new laws and go in and do something real erratic and immediate and just to shock everybody.
But when we do our, what we should be doing is handling things like intelligent people who can discuss the issue and come up with a proper and a respectable answer on how to handle it.
And they don't want to do that now.
And they just want to go and start grabbing people out their houses and let everything go out of control.
That's why the laws are there already and things have been kept to a certain way.
But ultimately, if you want to spend money to get the military and this and that and to build all these detention centers, just put that money where it should be going so that we can adjudicate things properly.
So it doesn't take seven years for your case to be heard because there's not enough judges and there's not enough border workers.
We already know what to do.
We know how to pay to get ICE and have more people on ICE.
But instead of doing that, you want to go get the military and make everybody afraid and start being like an authoritarian dictator over everybody.
All right, Nicole.
And this is Ed in Florida.
Hi, Ed.
Greetings from the free state of Florida.
I served in the military on the DMC on the border of North and South Korea.
We lost troops over there.
Hi, Ed.
Ed, you got to mute your TV and just talk in the phone.
Secondly, when we came back from the DMZ in Korea, we went to riots in Birmingham, Alabama.
And secondly, when we're Willie in Jackson, Mississippi.
Hi, Willie.
Hi, long time no talk.
You're looking good this morning.
I appreciate you taking my call.
I oppose mass deportation for several reasons that people, this is the question I want to ask with these smart MAGA nuts.
Are you going to deport the 150,000 Ukrainians, Iranians, and Chinamen that came to the southern border also?
You're going to get them first?
You're going to get the people to come through New York on a visa and overstay their visa from all those European countries?
You're going to get them first.
Are you going to get those people first?
Are you going to go look those people up?
See, all these people with all these big schemes and ideas and how they need to deport people, somebody's the boogeyman.
You need to get your facts together.
You need to find out what's really going on.
Why don't they deport you?
If you're European American and you commit a crime and your people and your ancestors is from Sweden, anywhere in Europe.
Do you feel that you need to be deported because of what your people done?
You see how ignorant and how silly it is, but I'm going to tell you something.
It's going to be, it's going to take about three years.
And all these people that's supporting this criminal, you are going to get it first.
And we sitting right watching, looking and seeing who's supporting him and who's boasting, don't come to us.
Don't come to me because I don't have nothing for you.
I don't have nothing for you.
So when you start your deportation, you start with those 150,000 people that came in over the last two years through the southern border from Ukraine, China, and Irene.
All right, Willie.
Up next, a discussion on how foreign policy will change under the new Trump administration with Brad Bowman from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Mara Rudman from the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
And later, changes are coming for federal workers as well come January.
Bad conversation with Eric Katz, Senior Correspondent for Government Executive.
We'll be right back.
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Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're discussing foreign policy in the upcoming Trump administration.
Our guests are Mara Rudman, Miller Center Professor at the University of Virginia, and Bradley Bowman, Center on Military and Political Power, Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Welcome to both of you.
Mara, I'll start with you.
What do you see as the biggest top-line differences between President Biden and President-elect Trump on foreign policy?
So I would look at foreign policy as national security writ large.
And the biggest difference I see right now is President-elect Trump's willingness to interest in appointing people who I do not think have front and center the national security interests of the United States in a way that is sustainable.
And I think, for example, of his Secretary of Defense nominee, Pete Hexketh, who causes me great concern.
What do you think, Brad?
Top-line differences between Biden and Trump?
I think one of the main differences that we will see in a second Trump term will be a different approach to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I expect that we'll see the Trump administration implement a renewed max pressure campaign that seeks to restore sanctions and some of the key elements of the max pressure campaign in the past, and also a max support campaign for the Iranian people, viewing that regime as the leading threat to Middle East security and U.S. interests there, and believing that the Iranian people have the same right to freedom and liberty that we have here in the United States and that they deserve our support.
I think that'll be a key difference.
So we'll talk about both those things.
But first, Mara, do you think that there's a Trump doctrine when it comes to foreign policy?
Is there a cohesive foreign policy approach?
No.
I'm not sure that there's a Trump doctrine about much other than Donald Trump's interest in Donald Trump.
And his interests in what way?
In his own personal brand, in his own ability to do as much as he can for himself and for his family.
But I don't think there's a doctrine in terms of the United States and the world which, to my mind, requires being able to work with others, to work in alliance, to work with other democracies to, again, strengthen the United States, to strengthen U.S. security.
I view that as pretty critical, and I don't see that as within President-elect Trump's capacity.
Do you agree, Brad Bolin, about there not being a cohesive foreign policy approach?
I think sometimes these things, as we were talking about earlier, only emerge in hindsight when you're looking back.
You know, we talk about a Truman doctrine and things like that with the benefit of decades of study and learning.
I feel that maybe it's too early to talk about any sort of Trump doctrine in details.
What they're saying now is peace through strength.
And that's obviously a term going back to the Romans, I think.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
And I think there's good ideas behind that.
I think American strength and international leadership is a source for good.
I think when we are weak, that is destabilizing.
So at the most broad level, I think peace through strength is a good thing, but the devil's in the details in terms of how you implement that.
Because I would just say, because peace through strength, every administration would view that.
I can't think of an administration who wouldn't have that as a basic tenant and the whole challenge is in how you execute.
Devil's in the details.
Exactly.
And Brad, we do have the first Trump administration to look back on and see if there was any kind of maybe foreign policy approach.
He's been called isolationist.
Do you think that that's fair?
I think there have been at times been those who've been advising President Trump in his first term that were indeed isolationist.
You see some individuals that are posturing themselves for positions in a second Trump term that have positions that I would say are contrary to the American interest in terms of viewing forward military posture, American military posture as the problem, rather than something to help secure our interest.
And so I'm of the view that American leadership in international engagement and strength is a good thing.
And I think President Trump will, it's important who he picks for his advisors because as we learned from H.R. McMaster's book, you know, and he's chair of our center and I was honored to have an event with him.
You know, who's advising the president really matters.
And there are some significant differences between some of President Trump's selections for key positions in the first term versus what we're seeing now.
And I think that tells us a little bit where he may go in the second term.
There's also some real differences just among those he's selected thus far for his second term.
I would say between some more traditional internationalists like Senator Rubio, I would put in that category, and his vice president or his Secretary of Defense nominee.
So even within this term, the upcoming presidency, I think we can see some differences.
So let's drill down on that.
You had mentioned Pete Hegseth for defense.
Why is that giving you concern?
Because I don't believe that from what I've read of his public statements that he understands or supports, even though he served in the military, the idea that military officials take an oath to the Constitution and not to a president and that they have an obligation to follow the Constitution and to reject, for example, unlawful orders.
And the past positions he's taken, I think, are contrary, quite contrary to that.
And I'm making those comments, putting aside what are very serious allegations about his personal behavior.
When a Secretary of Defense, he would be a role model for those, for both the civil service in the Pentagon and for those in the military.
And that has been a problem, sexual assault in the military.
So yes, I see your point there.
What about Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence?
Well, I will just say I rarely agree with Wall Street Journal editorials.
And so it was interesting to me to see their editorial this morning raising questions and concerns about her.
I think in some ways her selection for DNI has almost gone under the radar because of the number of other nominations that came out at the same time.
But I think she's quite a dangerous individual.
Why is that?
Because her public commentary has been The kindest thing I can say is all over the place, but certainly at a variety of different extremes.
When in the position of director of national intelligence, you want someone who is steady, who is consistent, who is careful with their public statements and choices of words, given the nature of the very sensitive information that they have, that they have access to.
And also, they're in the role of ensuring looking at what information the president gets in things like the president's daily brief.
And so you need someone with superior judgment and unquestioned integrity.
And I think she has neither of those.
What do you think, Bradley Bowman?
You know, I worked in the U.S. Senate for nine years advising members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee.
I've been through more than my fair share of nomination hearings.
And I just have deep respect for the Article I branch of our government, for Congress and its role in providing advice and consent to nominees.
And I think Pete Hegseth was chosen by President-elect Trump because of his military service and his role as a TV personality.
But these allegations that have emerged are very, very serious.
And if I were a Senate staffer, I would want to make sure I gave my boss the details on this.
And if some of these are true, some of these allegations are true, then those would be disqualifying.
When you're leading an organization like the Department of Defense that is wonderfully diverse and reflects the diversity of our nation, you can't have an individual that's engaging in the kinds of activities that we want to prevent in our Department of Defense.
I think it's as simple as that.
And besides those character issues, which I understand that you're saying are disqualifying, it's true.
What about his management experience?
Remind us how large the Department of Defense is and their budget.
I think it's ginormous, it's a technical term, filled with some of our best citizens, DOD civilians and military personnel.
And I respect his willingness to raise his right hand, serve our nation in uniform.
I respect his willingness to deploy.
But he does not have experience managing large organizations.
I think the next two years are going to be pivotal for our country in terms of addressing the threat from China and Russia and Iran and North Korea.
And you really need someone in that position who can make the bureaucracy bend to the goals set forth to make our country more secure.
And so to me, all those things being equal, which they never are, you want someone with some experience managing large organizations.
And if you've got a question about foreign policy, would like to join the conversation with our guests, Mara Rudman and Brad Bowman, you can do so.
Our lines are Democrats 202748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002.
Mara Rudman, I want to ask about NATO, the G-20.
Biden has been there the past few days.
What do you see as Trump's view of those international alliances?
Yeah.
In a word, I would characterize his view as problematic.
And I think that is because that goes to a little bit of what I was commenting on earlier, that I don't think, frankly, either domestically or internationally, that President Trump appreciates the importance of alliances, of friendships, of working with those, of making sure that the United States is able to lead on its own when it must, but work with others in every opportunity where it can.
So why is that important in your view?
That's important because to ensure the it's it is it is very similar to to how I would say we conduct our personal lives in the sense that you want your family to be safe and secure.
You want to live in a safe and secure community.
You want to be able to depend on your neighbors in times of emergency.
That just having your home on your own without knowing the people who live around you, without being able to work well with them, is not going to make you as safe and secure.
And NATO is the premier neighborhood for the United States in terms of like-minded allies who share common purposes and goals.
And ultimately, it's going to enhance our security and frankly do so at a lower cost than if we had to do it all on our own, both in terms of the personal treasure of our armed forces and the amount of financial resources as well.
NATO is a very good deal for the United States and for our safety and security.
Do you agree with that, Brent?
I do.
I think NATO is a leading grand strategic asset for the United States.
I think China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are working together more than we've seen in a long, long time.
As anyone who's spent a little time on the playground knows, when the bullies come around the corner, it's good to have friends.
And most of the threats we confront, most of the challenges we confront, we cannot resolve alone.
This is a time where we need allies more than ever.
And so if we have this kind of weird domestic political impulse where we're kind of dissing our friends at the moment we need them most, that would be very short-sighted.
I want to ask you about Ukraine.
As you know, President Biden did okay.
He greenlighted Ukraine being able to use long-range missiles into Russia.
These are attack-ems.
So remind us about those weapons, what they're capable of, and why do you think they've been greenlighted now?
Well, you know, this is, you know, I try to call balls and strikes, and with the Biden administration, I give them great credit for making the case to the American people why it's in our interest to support Ukraine and why a victory there by Putin would be a disaster for us.
And I also give them credit for one of the most unprecedented security assistance campaigns in recent American history in terms of providing the Ukrainian people a Louisville slug or a baseball bat over the back fence to brutalize the home invader.
That's Putin, so that he reconsiders his line of work.
But there has been this kind of no-maybe yes dynamic since February 2022 where they asked for a particular weapon system, Patriot Air Missile Defense Systems.
The initial answer is no.
And then months or weeks later, it's maybe.
And then it's yes.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians are fighting and dying to defend their homes and the Russians are advancing.
And so this is something, this permission to use ATAC'ems to target Russian forces attacking Ukraine has been on the table for a long, long time.
And I think it's unfortunate that President Biden has taken so long to provide this permission because all the Russians have done is simply move their forces a little further back as they continue to pummel Ukrainian men, women, and children in their homes.
So these missiles, to answer your question, these are ground-launched, short-range ballistic missiles that can precisely hit their targets and prevent or make it more difficult for Russian forces to attack Ukrainian men, women, and children in their homes.
And these are for the use in Kursk, which is where those North Korean forces happen to be.
So what's that dynamic?
Yeah, so I mean, the big idea here for Kyiv is that they didn't want to be playing solely defense.
They wanted to go on the offense to increase the strength of their negotiating position if and when Russia and Ukraine ever go to the negotiating table.
And so they wanted to have this some presence in Russia that could be used in those negotiations.
I mean, let's not miss the fact.
I would encourage the viewers to not miss the fact that this is the largest war in Europe since World War II.
And we have Putin engaging in this naked aggression and he's being supported by China, Iran, and North Korea in very tangible ways.
So we talk about axis of aggressors.
This is not something we talk about in fancy classrooms in the Ivy League.
This is happening now, and these are our adversaries cooperating, making each other each more effective in their respective theaters of aggression.
I want to ask you about the war in Gaza and Lebanon.
Now, given the relationship between President-elect Trump and Netanyahu, what do you expect is going to change in the Middle East?
I'm not sure.
I think that President Trump is facing a much more challenging Middle East.
And I think part of that, frankly, goes to what his policies were with Iran.
And so while to Brad's comments earlier about Iran, I share the views on kind of what the overall intent is.
My concern is the ability to execute because of the nature of the relationship that has really grown and been further leveraged between Iran and Russia and China and North Korea with the array of interests, the ways in which Saudi Arabia, a key player in the region, along with the Emirates and others, are leveraging the relationships with China vis-a-vis the United States.
And I think that President-elect Trump will face that and have to deal with that.
You have the Saudis in an incredible leveraging position.
And with respect to Gaza and Lebanon, this applies because the Saudis have in the past not been particularly concerned to call it straight about the Palestinians and the future of Palestinians.
They are now.
And I think that the crown prince in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whatever his personal views might be, recognizes that he, and he has made public statements about the importance of having a pathway forward for Palestinians and that being the price of Saudis' interactions with Israel.
So all of these dynamics play into what is possible, regardless of the strength of the relationship between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump.
I think they're both going to have a lot of reevaluation to do on how to bring these conflicts to a close.
Let's bring callers into the conversation and we'll start with Anita in Michigan.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
I want to know what will both guests, what the Democrats and Republicans do in terms of Africa.
You know, I've watched other shows like the BBC News, PBS, and even NHK in Japan, and where there has been a push to make sure that there is a great, I guess, contact with the nations of Africa.
I've heard the fact that, you know, I don't think that President Trump or elect Trump is going to do much of anything because what we talk about is Gaza, Israel, Russia.
Russia controls, I guess, the French-speaking nations of Africa.
When you talk to many Africans these days, they can speak Chinese Mandarin.
You know, Japan has said that they want to do more, to be more involved in Africa.
And the one thing I'm concerned about is that the Democrats, they're more concerned about promoting gay sex and abortion, especially when the Kenyan president came to Africa, came to America.
I'm sorry.
But the Republicans just seem to be not aware that there's a whole continent out there.
And China has made crystal clear that they want to control all the natural resources and make a whole bunch of money because it had that, I guess, silk road all the way from China down to Africa.
All right, Anita, we'll get an answer.
Go ahead.
Sure.
Thanks, Anita.
You raised some important points about the importance of the entire African continent and the challenges I would say that both Democratic and Republican administrations have had in addressing effectively U.S. interests in Africa in the continent and relationships.
I would say I would hope those who are concerned about the United States position in the world vis-a-vis China should be focused not only on the Middle East, but also on the African continent and on Latin America.
Because China, regardless of what you think about its internal politics and dynamics, has been visionary in its approach.
Visionary is a positive word, I recognize, but they have been strategic is probably a better word.
Anita referenced the Belt and Road Initiative, but in how they have built out and worked rapidly to ensure secure supply chains for key minerals that the entire world needs, that China largely controls because of how much they control in key parts of the African continent and the Latin American continent.
And Russia has been quite aggressive in terms of its militia control, whereas the United States and the amount of resources we put in to dealing effectively with and providing opportunities throughout the African continent and Latin America has lagged behind.
And I also want to be clear, that's not about, in my mind, you know, while diplomacy from the State Department is important, foreign assistance is important, it's really about business opportunities and figuring out how to use the various levers that the United States has at its disposal through the Department of Commerce,
through what's called the Development Finance Corporation, to really think through what are strategic opportunities that can better place us and advance us in key African countries and throughout Latin America.
And that is part of being able to have an effective national security position vis-a-vis China and Russia.
Here's Yvonne in Deerfield Beach, Florida, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm calling because I have a couple of comments, actually.
And one is, I thought Tulsi Gabbin was like the queen de la crome when she was a Democrat.
And now all of the Democrats are bashing her and talking about how unqualified she is, so forth and so on.
I didn't hear any of that when she held office in Hawaii.
Only when she left the Democrat Party have they been going off on her like they have been.
Also, Trump was in office for four years and he never took a salary.
So when I heard her say how he wants to benefit himself and his family, I don't understand how he's getting so benefited from not taking a salary for four years and all that hell that he went through.
Also, he listened to everything that was told to him the first four years from all of the bureaucrats and all of what the old school folks told him that they knew best.
He listened to that and all they did was try to sabotage him.
So now he's in there and he's doing things his way.
I think that if Trump nominated Abraham Lincoln for vice president, you people would have something negative to say.
All right, Yvonne.
On Tulsi Gabbard first.
So there are a lot of criticisms.
I disagree with Yvonne.
I think she wouldn't be surprised to hear that about the views that Democrats had about Tulsi Gabbard, about the concerns about her that preceded even her run for president in the Democratic primaries.
She was a volatile figure then, and there is a lot of concern about her among Democrats at that time.
And I would just note that it's Democrats and Republicans alike who are raising these concerns now.
I referenced Yvonne, the Wall Street Journal editorial earlier today.
So I think this is an area where there are bipartisan concerns about her.
And about Mr. Trump benefiting himself, how would he do that?
How would he use foreign policy to benefit himself and his family?
Sure.
Well, I would point, though Yvonne makes a point that he didn't take a salary, look at how his personal wealth and income increased both during the time of his presidency and after.
And while it may not be transparent because he did not reveal his tax returns as every other president has done, he had the Trump Hotel that was right near the White House.
You saw the number of foreign dignitaries who stayed there.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has established a private equity fund that has huge investments from countries that Jared Kushner was dealing with directly.
And so if you look at the personal wealth of the family and of President Trump, he certainly advances himself that way.
Here's Chris in Boston, Democrat.
Hi, Chris.
Hello.
Yeah, anybody who knows anything about the Middle East knows that the FDD is nothing more than a lobbying outfit for pro-Israeli interests masquerading as a 501c3.
And the proof of that is that they recently hired Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus of the Israeli Defense Forces as an advisor, arguably a member of a genocidal organization.
Would your guests care to comment on that?
Yes, absolutely.
Go ahead, Brad Butler.
Thanks for the call.
Some strong accusations there.
I'm actually proud to work at FDD.
We are a 501c3, sir, as you said.
And one of the reasons I'm proud to work there is that we don't take any foreign government funding.
Not every think tank in Washington can say that.
I wouldn't be at FDD if we took foreign government funding.
I'm an American.
I'm a proud American.
I'm interested in the success of our country.
Because I'm interested in the success of our country.
I know that we need friends and allies.
As I said earlier, and Israel is one of our best allies in the world.
And all of Israel's enemies are America's enemies.
And we have no more motivated and capable ally than Israel than going after that subset of enemies.
Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus does work for us.
He's left his previous position.
He expresses his opinions.
He's a friend.
But FDD is independent, is an independent American research institute.
And sir, your accusations of genocide against Israel are not based in fact.
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that is enemies of the United States, of Israel and Jews everywhere, read their original charter, conducted the worst single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
And Israel has been taking action since then to try to prevent that from happening.
So I think the word genocidal, sir, would be more appropriately applied to Hamas, which is a bloodthirsty, brutal foreign terrorist organization.
Thank you.
And I would just say I agree with what Brad has laid out.
I may not agree with some of the personal, some of the specific positions put out in various ways by FDD.
I know Jonathan Conricus because I traveled in Israel in December when he was with the IDF as a public spokesperson.
I can tell you he and I don't agree on much, but the assertions about him are terribly unfair, as are those about FDD.
Brad Bohman, I want to ask you about the topic we were talking about earlier this morning, which was the use of military for mass deportations in this country.
You are a former military officer.
I want to ask you, first, your reaction to the U.S. military being used internally in the country, and what impact do you think that would have, how it would work?
So this is a softball.
So, you know, this will feel like I'm evading it.
I don't feel like I don't want to.
You know, there's a lot of people who call themselves conservatives these days.
And my view on being a conservative at the most basic level, it is someone who respects the law, respects the rule of law, respects institutions, norms, and mores, and is reluctant to see rapid departures from those because they understand based on an informed view of history and human nature that it's much easier to destroy than to build.
And so I think that's why a lot of conservatives have a problem with illegal immigration because it's a disrespect for our country.
It's a disrespect when you enter this country illegally.
It's a disrespect for our home, for our country, and for our laws.
And so I understand the conservative impulse to want to be able to control our border.
If we can't control our border, then are we really a nation state?
So I respect that, but I also think that if one is going to try to remove people who are here illegally, starting with those who have violated additional laws, how you do it matters.
How you do it matters, and it needs to be done in a way that's consistent with our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our laws.
And the world will be watching.
The world will be watching.
Do you believe that using the military is not consistent with our laws?
You know, I'm not a military lawyer, but I think this process should be conducted via the law, and it should be led by civilian agencies and civilian law enforcement.
And we should be very reluctant to bring the military into this.
Why should we be reluctant?
Because the primary purpose of the U.S. military is to defend us against foreign threats.
And, you know, when I taught at West Point, when I served in the military, we swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution against foreign threats and domestic threats to the Constitution.
But I think how Americans view the military and the civil-military relationship is very, very important.
And we need to be very, very careful to avoid anything that would increase, make the military partisan or make it viewed as a tool of one party or the other.
We don't serve a person, we don't serve a party, we serve the Constitution, and we need to protect that because that's one of the things that makes our country what it is, and we should be very careful to avoid anything that would endanger that.
Mara Redman, you worked for the Obama administration, who did carry out a lot of deportations.
Tell us about the experience at that point and the relationship with the countries that those individuals are being deported to.
Sure.
Well, and to be clear, I worked for President Obama.
I was at the White House for a limited period of time and then worked primarily in Middle East regional work.
So I was not directly involved in this work.
But I would hearken back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of the importance of relationships you have with different countries throughout the world.
And so in this case, our relationships with Latin America, where folks are leaving the countries they're in or taking extraordinarily dangerous routes through various parts of Central America, goes to the level of desperation people have.
I agree with what Brad said about the concerns within the United States.
And frankly, I think I have some conservatism by his definition of the term.
And I know a lot of folks on the Democratic side do as well.
The issue is what you can do in part to solve what is a very serious problem for the United States.
What tools do you have?
What can we do to improve the ability for folks to stay in the countries that they're in to help in terms of our relationships with other countries in Latin America at the same time that we're working to make sure that those who have violated our laws do not stay in this country?
So the kinds of relationships you have matter a great deal.
Let's talk to Curtis in Lorton, Virginia, Independent.
Hey, how you doing?
It's Chris.
I'm an African-American 28-year-old, 19-year birthdays today, but I just had a few points for the gentle lady and gentlemen.
First off, do we think that U.S. foreign policy will increase on our media sources, our mainstream media sources?
And if that is due to the Trump term, what do you think the reasons for that are?
And if not, what is the reason behind that as well?
And then for the senior director, gentlemen, thank you very much for your service.
And then I would just like to say, what do you think Trump's stance on foreign policy or Russian Ukraine situation will bring or will do with our political conventions with bringing Russia back to certain political conventions like the GA and certain things of that nature?
That's for the gentleman.
And then for the gentle lady in Israel, religious location, do you think that that will have anything to do with the ceasefire in that location at any point in time as far as getting that resolved?
Just how Trump, he was a big piece in that area when he was trying to get things back to those citizens to try and mediate in that area before he had left.
Wait, wait, Chris, what did you mean about religious locations in Israel?
Kind of how he went to Jerusalem.
Okay, moving the capital to Jerusalem?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.
Since that he had going on, Renee went there and met with Netanyahu and kind of transitioned the capital, I believe it was, before he had left office.
I'm not familiar.
I'm not too sure.
But lastly, for both individuals on the show, I just wanted to ask, with our foreign policy leadership changing, do you think that our foreign trade policies will ramp up as well, especially with other organizations like BRIC or excuse me, BRICS coming into this new, I wouldn't say legislation, but idealization of a one-dollar currency.
Does that have anything to do with our dollar?
And do you think that President Trump can influence our Chris?
Are you just getting help on some sort of term paper here?
It's like, is this like a college thing that you're going to need to schedule a second half?
She is from the University of Virginia, and I know that.
No, no, no, no.
I'm just joking with you.
Happy birthday.
We'll get you some answers.
Chris, thanks.
Yeah, we need to schedule lunch and we can go through all this, but happy birthday.
I'll take just maybe two of them.
So the Russia, Ukraine, I heard that in the mix there.
You've heard me say already, I think there's a core American interest in helping Ukraine.
I think the world is watching.
And if Pyongyang, Tehran, or Beijing conclude, made a good show of it for two or three years and lost interest and abandoned Ukraine, then that's going to affect their perception of American will to defend our core interests and will increase the likelihood that we will see aggression elsewhere, including in the Taiwan Strait.
And I think we would deeply regret that.
So what happens in Ukraine matters for Europe and American interest there, but also matters elsewhere.
And so I think we have a vital interest.
And by the way, we're spending less than 3% in security assistance helping Ukraine compared to what we spent on the Pentagon over the same time period, and that is a bargain.
On the issue of Jerusalem, I would just say that, you know, it's been a little bit interesting to me for those who have concern about Israel moving its capital to Jerusalem.
I mean, Jews first made their home in what we now call the state of Israel 3,500 years ago, so they're not exactly interlopers here.
And so I think that was the right move.
And anyone who suggests otherwise maybe needs to go back and look at their history books.
So first of all, happy birthday, Chris.
I'm going to disagree a little bit here with what Brad said.
Israel has claimed Jerusalem as its capital since its earliest days, which 1948 is when it was founded.
I think the religious doctrine about Jerusalem is a different one, Brad.
And what President Trump did was to change the United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
And the issues with that have been that the United States had previously, under Democratic and Republican administrations, held back recognition of Jerusalem as the capital, along with many other countries in the world,
because they knew that Jerusalem, the old city of Jerusalem, where I have been many times, is actually a shared religious, incredibly important religious site for Jews, for Muslims, and for Christians, and was a key issue for any kind of pathway to a Palestinian state, because it has also long been the central point for Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza,
as well as the many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.
So, on that point, I think it's a difficult issue.
I don't think that President Trump showed particular leadership.
I think what he did was dangerous and has further exacerbated some of the challenges on the ground in Jerusalem.
I do want to just point out, though, on foreign trade, Chris, I think you made some important points.
And that's part of the place where I'd like to see the United States, again, regardless of Democratic or Republican administrations, really improve our ability to interact with the rest of the world through a variety of different trade mechanisms and more effectively compete with what China is doing.
I respect the response, but just, you know, the law said that the U.S. law passed by Congress signed into law said that the capital should be moved to Jerusalem, and there was a waiver that successive presidents exercise.
And President Trump simply decided to not use that waiver.
And you say it's an important place for the three great monotheistic faiths.
I agree.
And the embassy has been moved, and what you said continues to be the case.
So it wasn't detrimental to that.
And Palestinians have had many, many opportunities through the years for a two-state solution.
And that solution is farther now away because of what happened on October 7th.
And we can't blame Israel for that.
Sorry, I just cannot allow that to stand because I was working in Congress for the House Foreign Affairs Committee when that legislation passed.
And then Prime Minister Yitak Rabin, who was assassinated by extremists who are now supporting Prime Minister Netanyahu, did not want that legislation to pass.
It was against his interest for it to pass at that time.
He asked for it not to.
And so that part of the reason that every president has had, before President Trump issued waivers, was to follow what was in the United States' interest and Israel's interest at the time.
So it's just an unfair characterization for us.
Interesting.
Lisa in Florida on the line for Republicans.
Go ahead, Lisa.
Yes, good morning, y'all.
As far as far as foreign policy goes, I think Trump kept us safe.
Biden's about to get us into World War III, totally bypassing Congress.
And it just seems to me that elite people don't understand us.
What we want as Americans is peace, and we want Trump to do exactly what he does.
He doesn't want the same old DC swamp critters that are part of the bureaucracy.
Also, you talk about these so-called sexual allegations against Texas.
Congress has a $17 million slush fund for their sexual allegations.
They're hypocrites.
You know, show us theirs.
All right, Lisa.
Let's get a response on what do you think that Trump kept us safe and Biden was going to lead us into World War III.
How do you respond to that?
I think the world is a difficult place and a dangerous place.
I think it was dangerous under President Trump.
I think it's been challenging for President Biden as well.
I think it's why it's important that the United States, frankly, come together, see the importance of alliances, invest in our national security resources writ large.
I hope President Trump does those things.
I am concerned about his ability to do that.
Yes, so I mean to keep us safe, I think we need to dramatically increase defense spending.
Anyone who's spent too much time listening to Bernie Sanders lately would say, what the heck are you talking about?
Well, if you look at the Pentagon's own numbers, we're spending 3% of our gross domestic product right now on defense.
That is near post-World War II lows.
The only time we've spent less on defense since 1940, the year before World War II started, was the few years right before the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
So there's this dramatic dissonance between the commission that you served on saying the threats we confronted are more serious than anything since 1945.
Both our threats are so serious.
Why are we spending near post-World War II lows and measured as gross domestic product?
Here's Jill on the line for Democrats in Columbus, Ohio.
Hi, Jill.
Hi.
Now, thank you for letting me call.
The reason I'm calling is I'm really concerned about Ukraine.
I'm concerned about Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin.
I don't know what Putin has on Trump.
I don't know if it's blackmail or if it's financial, but I'm really concerned about him becoming president because I feel like our foreign policy is going to be dictated by Putin, not by an American.
And I'm really concerned when you look at his staff announcements with Tulsi Gabbard.
I mean, she's obviously pro-Russia.
She believes everything that Putin says, she does, including her trip in Syria.
And she also supports dictators.
And I'm baffled that they're going to put her and the director of national intelligence, our regular allies we have out there, NATO.
Are they going to withhold intelligence information now?
Because if we do have any assets that give us information on Russia, they're not going to want to give that to us because if she asks for it, her staff has to give it to her.
And I'm concerned that she's going to tell Putin, oh, guess what?
These are your spies that are spying on you.
And then, of course, he'll do more murders.
And another thing I'm concerned about, too, is the anti-Semitism in the United States.
Well, let's go ahead and take up the situation with Putin and Tulsi Gabbard.
Putin is an autocratic thug.
He's no friend of America and no threat of her interests.
He's got a KGB background.
I work at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
I'm on the side of Abraham Lincoln, that government of, by, and for the people is a good thing.
I think we should be confident that our form of government is better.
And when you have something good, it doesn't defend itself, you have to defend it.
And we have Ukraine that is on the frontier of freedom fighting for their political lives against a naked aggression, and we should support them.
I think President Trump is not the first politician that thinks that their personal charm can, you know, George W. Bush had a moment like that where they thought, you know, he could win over a dictator.
KGB, Putin is a trained KGB operative.
And we need to be very, very careful.
And we need to see our enemies and our allies clearly and understand that his interests are not ours.
This concept that our allies might be reluctant to share intelligence with us for fear of, you know, as a caller said, Tulsi Gabbard's too close to Putin.
President-elect Trump is too close to Putin, in her opinion.
What do you think of that?
I think some of Tulsi Gabbard's comments related to Syria and Russia are concerning.
I'm sure those will be topics of questions in the hearing.
Certainly, if I were advising a member, I would advise them to ask about that.
I think that we are safer because of intelligence sharing with our allies.
And if our allies come to believe, I know we are, and if our allies come to believe that the information that they share with us may be leaked, then they're going to be less likely to share that intelligence with us and Americans will be less safe as a result.
Can I just add briefly, Tavabeh, I agree with everything that Brad said.
I'd also add that I think it is a challenge that we have in the president-elect someone who has shown himself to be very susceptible to personal flattery and the strength of autocratic leaders in doing that.
He praised Victor Orban of Hungary.
He clearly has a close relationship with Putin.
I think what I would say to Jill is just I'm not concerned only about Putin.
I'm concerned about the ability of foreign leaders to flatter the president of the United States and to change his perspectives on different things that are critically important to the United States based on how they appeal to him personally.
Let's circle back to, you mentioned Iran early in this segment.
And on two things, what are you expecting future President Trump to do on the nuclear weapons program in Iran?
And secondly, their support for or their ability to support terror organizations in the Middle East.
Thank you.
You know, Iran, we published, me and my colleague Org Kittry and Benin Pentalibu published a major report a month or so ago on this.
Iran is inching its nuclear weapons program forward.
And what had happened for many months after October 7th was Israel was confronting attacks from Iranian terror proxies while all the counterpunches coming from Israel were going at the terror proxies and not the puppet master in Tehran.
So they were kind of smiling and then moving down toward a nuclear weapon capability.
I think it is America cannot permit this leading state sponsor of terrorism to acquire the world's most dangerous weapon.
We have to watch it closely.
And we will not have the kind of stability that we want in the Middle East, in my opinion, until you have a new government in Iran.
That is not me calling for using the U.S. military for regime change.
That is me calling for instituting a max pressure campaign, economic, diplomatic, and then providing maximum support to the Iranian people so they can finally have a government that's more interested in their welfare rather than exporting terrorism.
How do you have a maximum economic impact, a maximum pressure impact on Iran without working with allies?
And if it requires working with allies, how do you propose that happen?
Max pressure will be more effective if we work with allies, undoubtedly including the Europeans.
Of course.
Of course.
We're going to be more, and almost everything that you and I would want to do in foreign policy, we're going to be more effective if we work with our allies.
I think it would be a false choice to suggest otherwise.
Let's go to Annapolis, Maryland, Independent Line.
Ned, hello.
Hi.
The last few callers, and thank you for allowing me to call in.
The last few callers really covered everything I wanted to say.
And the 28-year-old gentleman about four callers ago stole my thunder.
I'm going to sue him for plagiarism.
No.
Quite seriously, quick questions.
Are we already in World War III and the challenge is trying to nip it in the bud like the West failed in the 1930s?
The other question, what can President Biden do between now and the end of his office to support Ukraine?
Crazy idea.
I want to entertain you, but I think we should be doing field training exercises in Western Ukraine, over by Louviv.
And that does two things.
It sends a strong signal to Russia, and it places President Trump in the position where he has to visibly to abandon Ukraine.
Thank you for your time.
We are not in World War III now, thankfully, as I would define it.
But I believe there's a real risk of it.
And I don't say that quickly or reluctantly, I mean, hastily.
But again, if you look at the bipartisan, congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy Commission you served on, you all concluded that there's risk for near-term great power war, and we're unprepared.
I agree with you.
You're exactly right.
And that's why I think the next two years are so important.
And that's why I think the dissonance between what we should be spending on defense and what we are is so dangerous.
Because even if we're spending a perfect amount on defense right now, as you know, well, that's not going to result in fielded combat capabilities for years to come.
And so I think our adversary is on a war footing, and we're not, and we need to change that fast.
And here is Carol.
Carol is in New York, Republican.
Okay, Bowman, the hypocrisy is just incredible.
Iran's new leader reached out to the U.S. and Israel started an incursion.
And just like the playground example you gave, Israel does not want Iran and U.S. to be friendly because it's not in their interest.
And you always go back to January 7th, but for years I've watched on TV these teenage boys throwing rocks at the IDF.
They come over, they shoot them, and they take off on their jeeps.
And why is it okay for Russia?
Why is it not okay for Russia to take land, but Israel can keep expanding the settlements?
And you keep saying Israel is a democracy.
Democracies don't occupy other nations.
Democracies don't kick out the press.
Democracies don't cause genocide.
And when we were trying to get out of occupation from the British, you know what they called us?
Terrorists.
When the Trail of Terrors occurred, you know what President Jackson called the Indians?
Terrorists.
So Carol, just I want to clarify what you said something in the beginning about Iran.
You said the leader of Iran reached out to the U.S., yes.
They said they wanted to have better relations with the U.S.
And right after they said that, Israel started an incursion because Israel does not want Iran and the U.S. to be friendly because it's not good for Israel.
Thank you for the call.
I think maybe there's some sloppy historical analogies there and maybe a little conspiracy theory mixed in.
The bottom line is if you look at the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, Central Command, they've been consistent through the years through commanders that the leading threat to regional security and American interests there is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.
They are horrific on human rights.
So if you believe in women's rights, minority rights, our Bill of Rights, things like that, then you should be very upset with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which hangs people, tortures people, brutalizes people.
And you've seen what they've done to Iranian women who simply want to be able to live their lives and exercise their individual liberty.
So I hope you would bring the same standards of human rights that you've expressed concern about to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
You said January 7th, I think you meant October 7th, and October 7th was the worst single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
I think anyone, any human being of decency should say that that is unacceptable, should never happen again.
We can criticize or evaluate what Israel has done since then, but we should all be able to agree on the horrors of October 7th.
Is there any communication between the government of Iran and the United States government, or is it only through other intermediaries like through Qatar or through the Revolution?
It is through intermediaries.
I'm smiling slightly because President-elect Trump's current best buddy, Alon Musk, was reported to have met directly with Iranian officials at, I believe, at the UN sometime within the last couple of weeks, which was eyebrow-raising for others given what you asked about kind of U.S. policy in terms of direct interactions with Iran.
In my view, kind of an old school, you hear there's one president at a time.
And so, you know, yes, there will be conversations when you have a president-elected and his or her team coming into office, but we have to be very careful to make clear that we're not presenting someone as a government official when the president is not even in office yet.
And Iran, this is an old tried and true playbook for the Islamic Program of Iran.
Whenever they're feeling pressure, they offer negotiations because they want to reduce that pressure.
So, you know, fool me once, fool me twice.
We've seen this before from Tehran.
John is in New Jersey, Independent Line.
Hi.
I'm thrilled at listening to this serious and substantive and courteous discussion of really serious issues.
I'd like your guests' advice for all of us out here on where to get a clearer picture of what's really going on in the government in a palatable way or in an accessible way for the general public that isn't like a competition between two parties creating, trying to create anger among the voting public.
Thanks a lot.
So I'll take a stab, and I should also cite back to Chris whose birthday it was because he asked about media sources and neither of us got to that.
And it troubles me because I think so much of media sources at this point is siloed out to different audiences and there's few opportunities to hear the kinds of exchanges that John was talking about.
I appreciate the fact that C-SPAN provides that opportunity.
I actually think what Brad said about Senate hearings on confirmations will be an important opportunity, likely televised by C-SPAN and probably by others, understanding there'll be a lot of partisan back and forth, but particularly on the national security nominees, I think you're going to see people on both sides of the aisle ask some tough questions, given the folks that have been nominated and given the state of the world right now.
And so I would encourage folks to tune in to those hearings and listen closely.
Listen underneath the partisan rhetoric that you hear to the serious questions that convey the serious jobs these people have to do.
I agree.
I agree with that.
And we're in a particularly partisan, tribalistic moment in our history and our American politics where too many of us are confusing citizens of good faith with whom we disagree as enemies.
I never use the word enemy for a fellow citizen with whom I disagree.
We have plenty of enemies in the world.
We don't have to invent them at home.
Our adversaries want us divided.
They want us at each other's throats, so we're divided, distracted, so that our governance model looks less favorable compared to their autocratic and authoritarian models.
So I think if you're concerned about national security, the first place you have to start is trying to build domestic unity.
And if the next administration pursues excessively partisan or extreme policies, then we're going to see the Democrats making big gains in the midterm election, and it'll be a short-lived run.
And so they have a political interest in not going to the streams, and I think we have a national interest in trying to identify centrist policies that can enjoy bipartisan long-term support.
I agree and endorse everything that Brad said.
I would also add, just on media sources, that people need to be very concerned about what they're listening to because our foreign adversaries very much want to exacerbate the divides.
They are going to use and they can manipulate social media for those ants, and they have.
I agree.
I agree.
We published a major monograph, Cognitive Combat, China, Russia, Iran chapters, and the deep research we did there substantiates exactly what you said.
And I would say, respectfully, the viewers, if you know, good job watching C-SPAN.
But if you're watching only other one source of news, then I think you're making yourself susceptible to manipulation by foreign actors who want to deceive you, want to degrade our democracy, and want to distract us.
All right, that's Bradley Bowman, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Center on Military and Political Power, Senior Director.
And Mara Rudman is Miller Center Professor at the University of Virginia.
Thank you both for being here.
Thank you.
Later.
Sorry.
A conversation with Eric Katz, senior correspondent for government executive on how the size and scope of the federal workforce could be changed under the new Trump administration.
More of your phone calls after the break in open forum.
You can start calling in now.
And while you're dialing in, we'll show you a portion of President Biden's remarks from the G20 summit yesterday, where he called for a global pact to combat hunger, send more aid to Gaza, and an end to hostilities in the Middle East.
And Ukraine, take a listen.
We all have to work to end the conflicts and crises that are eroding progress to improve security around the world.
Ukraine.
The United States strongly supports Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Everyone around this table, in my view, should as well.
And by the way, Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine led to the highest recorded food crisis in all history.
And Gaza, as I've said before, Israel has a right to defend itself after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
But how it defends itself, even as Hamas cruelty highs months earlier, matters a great deal.
The United States has led the world in humanitarian aid to Gaza.
And we're going to keep pushing to accelerate a ceasefire deal that ensures Israel's security of the French hostages home and ends the suffering of the Palestinian people and children.
I ask everyone here to increase their pressure on Hamas, who is currently refusing this deal.
And on Sudan, we receive one of the world's most serious humanitarian crises, hating many people on the brink of famine.
This deserves our collective outrage and our collective attention.
External actors must stop armies in general and speak with one voice to tell them, stop tearing your country apart.
Stop blocking days of Sudanese people.
Stop the violence.
Let me close with this.
As you know, this is my last G20 summit.
We've made progress together, but I urge you to keep going.
I'm sure you will, regardless of my urge or not.
This group has immense power to usher in a new era of sustainable development to go from billions to trillions and assistance to those in most in need.
This all may sound lofty, but this group can lay the foundation to make that achievable.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to the rest of our discussion.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're in Washington.
Sorry, we're in Open Forum here on Washington Journal for the next half hour and taking your calls on anything public affairs related, politics related, anything happening with the transition.
Phil, you're up first in Jupiter, Florida, Independent.
Hi, thanks for C-SPAN and taking my call.
I was hoping to get in on the last segment.
I would like to continue the discussion on the U.S. funding of Israel's war in Palestine, number one, and if possible, U.S. funding of NATO's war in Ukraine.
I think that the American people— You said NATO's war in Ukraine?
Or U.S. funding of the war in Ukraine, excuse me.
But I would like to go back to Israel, and I want to tie this back to our economy.
You know, that every dollar, you know, that we're allocating to funding these wars is for the most part being borrowed from the Fed, and that does affect our economy.
But I do, you know, as far as inflation and all, but before that, I want to say that I wish you would have somebody like Allison Weir of If Americans New,
KNEW.org on the panel, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the panel to talk about the U.S. funding of the war in Ukraine and how that all started back in 2014.
But the other thing is Allison Weir of If Americans New, K-N-E-W.org, talks about the history of how Palestine did become Israel.
And it's a shame you don't have her on the program.
I'm saying this more for your listeners than the viewers.
And I don't think we're getting the full history.
We appreciate the input.
And here's Deborah in Burlington, Vermont, Republican.
Republican, sorry about that.
Maybe I called on the wrong line.
Okay.
I just wanted to say I am really alarmed to hear the amount of people who are advocating for turning in your neighbors and your citizens and think that military deployment on U.S. soil is a good idea.
It sounds like Stalinist tactics, and it's extremely scary.
All right.
And in Wisconsin, on the line for Democrats, James, you're next.
Yes, I think people listening should be aware that I did read a book on this and that the CIA, when it was set up, people's argument was the CIA would be valuable because it could make our foreign policy much better than our State Department, our Congress, and the White House.
And so now we're kind of seeing these guests we had on here today are trying to fulfill that idea that the CIA is better qualified to decide foreign policy.
And look at Russia.
They have the KGB running their country.
We don't want the CIA valuable, but we don't want them making our foreign policy.
Thank you.
And on the line for independence in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bobby.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Excuse me.
I think it's been lost in a shuffle, and it was about the Melendez brothers out in California.
So folks that are not aware of that, they were the brothers that cold-heartedly shot their mother and father in cold blood.
They were considering or may be considering changing their sentence because of a Netflix special, and also that they were very good prisoners.
But the bottom line is they shot their parents in cold blood.
Number one, it was premeditated.
Number two, I realized that there was a problem with the dad, was a sex offender, a sex fiend, and they decided to kill both their mother and their father.
And when they came in, they shot them both.
And then they went back out again.
And at that moment in time, they could have rationalized and say, look what we just did, because their mother was still alive.
No, they reloaded, went back in, and shot their mother.
And I would just say to them, one question.
Was your mother's eyes, the woman that brought you to this life, the mother that raised you as babies, the mother that took care of you to your adolescent age, were her eyes open when she saw you actually kill her at that point?
All right, Bobby.
This is Joe in St. Clair, Michigan, Republican.
Good morning.
Morning.
You have had, you do a good job, by the way.
You have had on the show people talking about farm workers, immigration, who's going to harvest the crops.
I farmed 1,200 acres of vegetables.
Did.
I'm retired now.
I had 212 employees.
About 190 of them were Hispanic or Haitian.
When anyone gets hired in this country, including you, Mimi, you have to fill out an I-9 form.
If you pull it up on your computer, you'll be able to read the form.
You have to provide proof that you belong in this country, whether it be a passport, whether it be a birth certificate, whether it be a green card.
If the employer questions any of your evidence that you give him, he's guilty of discrimination.
So whatever, if they give you a green card that the ink is still wet on, you cannot scrutinize that card.
Also, no farmer is going to plant a crop and put a million and a half dollars out into the field without a stable source of labor to harvest that crop.
You can't entirely illegal.
So, Joe, would you be in favor then of e-Verify being the law of the land?
Absolutely.
When we hire people, we use a program called H-2A.
It would be nice if you could have a show and get an H-2A expert on there to talk.
You have to buy a permit from the government.
They don't tell you that they're going to allow you to bring in H-2A workers until your crop is already planted.
You don't know until you've got a programme.
So, what do you think should be done, Joe, as far as the agricultural workers that are not legally able to work in this country?
Let's put it that way, that are being hired, that are working.
What should happen to them and what should happen to their employers?
Well, if an employee gives me phony documentation and I'm going to get charged with discrimination for scrutinizing it, then I have to take it at face value, whatever he gives me.
The right thing to do is to use the H-2A program.
Now, just so you know, the H-2A program, the requirement to pay people in the state of Michigan is $18.50 an hour, plus you have to pay their travel expenses from wherever they come from, and you must provide them with a house.
So, you end up, your cost ends up being about $22.50 an hour for each employee.
Do you think, Joe, given your experience with agricultural work and having your own farm, that once a deportation plan gets underway, do you think food prices will go up?
No, because there's not that much food grown in America anymore.
Most of the food we get comes from Mexico, from Chile, from Honduras.
Mexico can take over for the American farmer with the exception of a few crops.
Kate in Michigan, Line for Democrats.
You're next.
Well, good morning.
That was a great call.
And I don't know what I was going to say.
I listen to C-SPAN all the time.
There's always all kinds of things I want to say.
But I worked in migrant camps.
I was a social worker.
I'm 71 years old.
And so I know that side of it, too.
I've seen how people have to live.
And then many of them have settled in our community.
And they're so welcome.
And we celebrate our Hispanic community here.
And it's worked out really well.
But the one thing I just kind of wanted to say was that listening to all this and watching the footage this morning and seeing the boardrooms and there are no women.
Well, so Kate, I just wanted to ask you about the migrant camps that you worked in.
Can you explain where they were, why the migrants were there, and what's the status of those migrants?
Had they crossed the border illegally?
Are they asylum claimants?
Actually, to tell you the truth, I worked with them for 40 years, but I never quite understood how it all worked.
And I knew that we had families in Head Start that didn't speak English, and we had to get interpreters, but I didn't quite know how all that was.
And you would go into restaurants, and the people working in the restaurants all speak Spanish.
So as far as the laws and all that, I'm not real sure.
But I just, yeah, I just know that it was really harsh conditions, and I wouldn't want to do it.
Hard work, and those people are wonderful people.
I always loved it when I had a family in Head Start because they would do all the things that you wanted them to do, you know, get their kids shots and things like that.
So anyway, my call I wanted to promote.
All right, Kate.
And this is, is it Naya in Georgia, Independent Line?
Yes, it is.
Go right ahead.
Okay, in your last segment, when the young 28-year-old African-American man called in, question on foreign policy.
You're doing it again.
You're smiling and carrying on.
African-American people do critically think.
And for you all to sit at the table and laugh and giggle me, you question you about.
No, no, no.
And I'm sorry you took it like that, Naya.
No.
It's not that because it was how long he went on and all the different topics he talked about.
So sorry you took it that way.
Harold in Sandusky, Ohio, Republican.
Hi.
My wife's family were illegal immigrants.
They came into the States in about 1990.
And I'm an African-American man.
They didn't know much about the culture.
They asked me if my penis was purple because I was so dark skinned.
Tina in Huntington, Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
Hi, good morning.
You won't have to worry about that with me.
I think that was outrageous, and I apologize for her behavior.
I just like to make a statement.
Back in the 80s, I lived in Miami, and I was in high school.
And, you know, senior skip days, we'd head to the beach.
And I will never forget the sight of the little rubber mask coming over with 10, 15 immigrants on it.
And I will never forget the day that my father pulled me out of high school because I was thrown down the steps by an immigrant.
I am all for illegal immigration.
I am all for the lottery system.
We need smart, innovative, hard workers, people that will contribute to not only our way of life, and that is a very important aspect, our way of life.
We shouldn't have to learn Spanish.
They should have to learn English.
I have no problem with it, but these illegal immigrants are taking over the benefits that Americans need.
I know people in my area that eat one meal a day because they have cut their benefits so severely to feed the immigrants.
It's not fair.
These are our tax dollars.
Our tax dollars are to be given to the American citizen, not that one person or that group that crossed illegally.
And I hear people saying they're not illegal.
They're not illegal.
The minute they crossed over and not through the port of entry, they became illegal.
And then you have those that came over pregnant and gave birth to a child in America.
And the Constitution used to say that if your parents were illegal, therefore that child was illegal.
It no longer says that.
Wait a minute, Tina.
You're saying that there was something in the Constitution that was changed later?
Yes, back in the 80s, we studied this in American history.
In the Constitution, it says that if you come to, it said, if you come to America and you, and I'm going to call it an anchor baby, I know that's not politically correct, but I'm going to call it an anchor baby.
If you have a child in America, that child, since it was born on American soil, is American, when in fact it is supposed to be a citizen of the country, not for legal citizens, for illegal citizens.
So let's say we have a couple from Venezuela come over.
They give birth.
That child should be a Venezuelan, should not be an American.
All right, Tina.
And this is Chuck in Charleston, West Virginia.
Democrat, good morning.
Yes, good morning.
It's been 64 days since my last call.
Thank you for counting.
Yeah, one thing I want to just mention first is that, you know, I still think you waste too much time on people that won't mute their TVs.
I mean, as soon as you hear that TV in the background, you really ought to just move on to the next caller.
But having said that, about 7.30 this morning during your first listener, viewer call in the segment, I think it was around 7.30 a guy called in, and I think I'm quoting him correctly when he said that the illegals ought to be deported.
And if they try to get back into the United States, they should be shot and their bodies should be stacked in the desert.
And that really threw me for a loop.
And I thought to myself, is this what we've become as a nation?
I think of all the people, you know, all the people that spend their whole days watching Fox and Newsmax and One American News, not to mention having their ears glued to conservative talk radio all day with Dennis Prager and Dan Bongino and everything like that, and keeping them in this, in this state of perpetual rage.
And now, with the election of Donald Trump, it's like they've brought out the worst, ugliest instincts in apparently most of the American people.
And I just had to say that one remark by the guy around 7.30 this morning just pretty much horrified me.
And that's all I have to say.
All right, Chuck, onto the Republican line in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Fred, you're next.
Hey, I just wanted to follow up with the fellow that was talking about e-Verify.
And maybe this is a segue from your immediately previous caller.
Here, the federal government sets up a huge program to track illegal aliens and ensure that they are legal through e-Verify.
And then they ignore the whole program.
And so people get cynical about the whole federal government having passing all these laws and methodologies to track these people.
So, Fred, E-Verify hasn't actually been passed yet by Congress.
So I believe Speaker Johnson does want to bring that up.
It is part of HR 2, if you remember that border deal that passed the House but did not pass the Senate.
Yeah.
Well, e-Verify has been around for a while.
So I'm pretty ignorant about what its legal legislative status is, but certainly it's been around and it's administered as a program because we have some agricultural lands in Louisiana and trying to find employees to work on the work.
And even we've had people say we're not going to submit any of this paperwork.
So I'm just bringing to your attention the concerns that that previous caller had about how these programs get administered and they need to be administered appropriately.
And that's why American citizens get cynical about this stuff.
All right.
Walter, South Carolina, Independent Line.
Hi, this is Walter.
What I want to say is obviously from the accent, you can see that I'm an immigrant.
Last handy and I immigrated to this country.
Walter, you still there?
At the time, we were not allowed to fly over Africa.
So we had the ability a few years ago to take a cruise up the west coast of Africa because we'd never been allowed to go there before.
And my overwhelming impression was how integrated the Chinese had become in South and Central and Western Africa.
They build railroads, which don't work, and then they leave.
They don't employ the local Africans, so there's no financial benefit to them.
And this continues the whole way up the coast of the, especially the west coast of Africa.
The United States is out of the game there.
There is absolutely no influence, and all the influence is basically Chinese and Russian.
And in Southwest Africa, which is called Southeast Africa, now Namibia, there are tremendous mineral resources.
80 to 85 percent of those resources are shipped from Namibia back to China.
And so the United States needs to get on board because we are losing it in Africa.
And I'm very proud to be Americans, but having come from South Africa, we can see what kind of changes are occurring.
And Walter, when you say the United States needs to get on board, what are you recommending for?
Okay, maybe he didn't hear me.
Lee in Palm Springs, California, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just want to say about immigration.
I've been in the hospitality business all my life.
I have very few of my dishwashers, my janitors, even my service people and my managers were white.
They were Hispanics.
And I'm in California.
And I don't know what we would do.
I want to say it to the man who said he had Hispanics on his farm.
And I don't know of too many white people who are going to go around picking crops like they do in California here.
We couldn't have the agriculture we have if it wasn't for our Hispanic people.
Bless their hearts.
I don't know why white people, and I'm white, think that we are better because we don't get down to their levels.
I don't understand it.
Anyway, thank you.
And on the Republican line in Georgia, James, you're next.
Good morning.
I tried to get in with your two calls, your two guests, and it seems that both of them was concerned about Tulsa Gabba being put into the Trump administration.
They seemed to think that she was a poo puppet.
But nobody said anything about what Mark Miller said to his counterpart in China, that if President Trump tried to do anything, he would let them know in advance, which in my mind is treason.
You didn't correct them.
You didn't bring it up.
None of your callers that called in brought it up.
So I'm just wondering now, I mean, is this all about what the Democrats want?
It seems to me is one-sided.
And lastly, I want to say about the illegal, your last caller just called in.
If you, your people, need to work, get them a green car and let them come to the United States and work.
What we are concerned about is you got people over here that the American people don't know how they got here.
All we want is a process.
So if you want those people to work, get them a green car and we know who they are.
Sean in Alexandria, Virginia, Independent.
Hi, good morning.
I've been listening to you for like the past couple of days.
I appreciate the takes.
For me, I'm a young man, you know, in my 20s, coming from the military and then also in law enforcement.
But the biggest thing is, you know, I think there has to be like a balance as far as immigration goes.
I love when people come here, but I love it when they come here the right way.
It's disheartening as someone who served the country and has served the community.
You know, my wife is from out of the country.
She came here the right way, and we invested and spent thousands of dollars to do it the right way.
So when we see people that, you know, come for whatever the case may be, I understand everybody's situation is different.
But when we have people that come and they don't do it the right way and they're getting things for free and things like that, it's kind of disheartening.
So I think that we should allow people here, but we have to do it the right way.
And it's illegal immigrants for a reason because it is indeed illegal for you to come across the border.
We can't just walk into someone else's country and just decide to stay there.
In any other country, that's not how it works.
So I think that we should just establish something, give people the opportunity to do it the right way, but go about it by a case-by-case basis.
All right, Sean.
And the line for Democrats in Louisville, Kentucky.
Patty, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good.
I call just the tail end of everything.
I've been on here about 15 minutes, but it's about the immigration.
I saw a thing on the news today where Donald Trump had retweeted something about the military using the military to go after the illegal immigrants.
Yes.
And it was somebody else's post, but he reposted it and then wrote above it true himself.
And this is really worrying me because I don't know that we've ever had the military come up against American citizens.
And I know that some of these places where they're going to go, these families probably have one illegal immigrant in their family.
You know, and it worries me because what's going to happen if the military does this and they come up against resistance?
Are they going to start shooting American citizens?
I mean, I'm really concerned about this.
All right, Patty.
And a couple of items for your schedule for later today at 10 a.m.
So in about half an hour, Visa and MasterCard make up the vast majority of debit and credit card networks in the U.S. and globally.
This morning, MasterCard President Linda Kirkpatrick, Visa Senior Advisor Bill Sheedy, and others will testify on the lack of competition in the credit card market and its impact on consumers.
That's the Senate Judiciary Committee.
You can watch that live at 10 a.m. Eastern over on C-SPAN 3.
And also today on C-SPAN 3, FEMA Administrator Deanne Chriswell testifies on the agency's response to recent hurricanes.
That's the House Oversight and Accountability.
That hearing is live.
We'll have that at 2 p.m. Eastern, also on C-SPAN 3.
Both of those are on C-SPAN now, our app, and online at c-span.org.
And Lee in Grand Gorge, New York, Republican, good morning.
Good morning.
I want to just say that after holding back weapons to Ukraine over three years, in Biden's last few weeks, he approved U.S. supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine to attack Russia.
We know Biden is not in charge anymore.
Who in the deep state is making the decision to cause chaos before Trump's inauguration?
Thank you.
Harry in Norcross, Georgia, Independent.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning, C-SPAN.
Thank you.
I just got a couple things right quick.
Number one, for everybody who calls in and says, why are we sending all our money over to Ukraine and to, well, regrettably, to Israel?
We're not sending money over there.
We're sending weapons.
Those weapons are manufactured in this country and make thousands of jobs in the United States.
So, you know, kind of figure it out, people.
The other thing, if you understood macroeconomics, you know that every president, his work doesn't really come into view until after about 18 months of for the economy to catch up with what he's doing.
And so the inflation that you've been feeling was caused by Trump's tariffs and his tax cuts.
Doesn't have anything to do with Joe Biden.
Okay.
All right, Harry.
And up next, we'll have a conversation with Eric Katz, a senior correspondent for government executive, on how the size and scope of the federal government, federal workforce, could be changed under the new Trump administration.
That's next.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Eric Katz.
He's senior correspondent for government executive.
We're talking about the future of the federal workforce in the next Trump administration.
Eric, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
So just tell us about your publication, Government Executive, and what you cover.
So we cover the management and oversight of federal agencies.
We cover what federal agencies are actually doing and how that infects their employees.
We can cover congressional oversight of federal agencies.
And yeah, we're read all over Washington.
Well, let's hop right in.
Your article has the headline: Trump vows to quote, dismantle the federal bureaucracy and restructure agencies with new Musk-led Commission.
First, talk about how President-elect Trump is talking about the federal bureaucracy and what his plans are.
So he's coming in with a promise to shrink the size of the federal government and the employees who work for it.
He did something.
He talked similarly in 2016 after being elected.
He actually oversaw a slight growth in the federal workforce, although most agencies saw their employees actually shed employees.
So what he's talking about now is slashing the agency budgets, slashing regulations, slashing what agencies actually carry out, and in so doing, eliminating many federal jobs.
So has he talked about actually cutting programs, or is there a plan as to how many federal workers he wants to cut?
It's not really precise.
He hasn't talked about too many programs he wants to eliminate.
He's talked about getting rid of the Department of Education.
That would require act of Congress.
So unclear whether that would actually happen.
And let's talk about that a little bit.
Because Vivekwan Ramaswamy did say that entire agencies could get deleted.
That was his word.
But if they wanted to close down an agency, and that money's already been allocated by Congress, what would happen to that funding?
Or like talk us through that process.
So if the funding is there from congressional appropriation, that money, the president doesn't have that much discretion in revoking that.
The president-elect has talked about using the Impoundment Act, which is a decades-old law that would give the president more flexibility in withholding funds, and maybe he could use that.
But the legal capacity there is a little bit murky.
So if once Congress provides the money and authorizes these things, it's not really up to the president to say that we're getting rid of this agency.
That requires an act of Congress.
And when he was president last time, he tried this on a smaller scale with these small independent agencies.
And even those, Congress said, no, no, we're keeping them.
And they outlasted.
Well, let's play a very short portion of Vivek Ramaswamy from the Sunday on Fox News Sunday talking about the plans for reducing government.
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.
He said people are going to be surprised at how quickly we can move.
What is he talking about?
Well, so he has this, when he was running for president, he also talked about this.
And his proposal was instead of to, so federal employees are protected by certain legal protections that allow them certain guarantees before they can just be fired.
You know, that's to protect us from having a spoil system where a president comes in and just installs loyalists.
Instead, we have a merit-based civil service made up of experts who can manage the functioning of government.
He can get around that by just having massive widespread layoffs.
That's what the term reductions in force is referring to there.
So he says he can come in quickly, say, all these agencies, you're too bloated and we're laying people off.
Or another thing he's talked about is randomizing it and saying, if your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you're laid off.
Now, whether that would actually, whether that's an effective way to manage our government is very questionable.
You're talking about laying off, if this is evenly distributed, half of the doctors who care for veterans and half of the air traffic controllers and the civilians who support the armed services.
So that's something that I don't think would be very practical or that Congress would allow that to go through.
But they do have some ability to try to implement these layoffs.
It won't be as quick as he talks about because federal employees have the ability to appeal those and bog down the system a little bit, but he could do it.
And there are unions within the federal government.
Talk about how that works and what their role might be in this.
Yeah, so they're obviously going to fight this.
They have, in most cases, collective bargaining agreements in place.
They have contracts that in some ways dictate whether these course by which these layoffs must take place.
And they protect things like flexible work schedules.
So Ramaswamy has also talked about eliminating telework.
Most federal employees do not telework at all.
who do spend most of their time in on-site but for those but Ramaswamy was saying that most of them are teleworking and that they're not actually working right Right.
So according to the most recent data we have, that's not true.
And of course, those who are, when you telework, it doesn't mean you're not working.
It just means you're not working from the office.
But so even that is, in many cases, needs to be negotiated through labor agreements.
They could try to override that and press that through labor authorities or in court.
But it'll be a challenge for them to just sort of unilaterally try to put that in place.
I want to read you this quote by the American Federation of Government Employees, Everett Kelly, and get your reaction.
Who says, But make no mistake, our union will not stand by and let any political leader, regardless of their political affiliation, run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws.
During President Trump's first term, his administration attempted to gut many of our negotiated union contracts, downsize and relocate federal agencies at great disruption and cost to taxpayers, and replace tens of thousands of nonpartisan civil servants with political appointees who would blindly do his bidding.
Yeah, a couple points there.
The Trump administration really butted heads with federal employee unions in his first term.
They tried to kick them out of their office space that they have and reduce the amount of time that employees could spend doing union activity.
And they thought that I expect those executive orders to come back into place very quickly upon Trump taking office.
And in terms of the last point, that's a reference to something an executive order President Trump signed right before he left office called Schedule F, which made employees, federal employees at will to take away what we were just talking about with the merit-based civil service.
Instead, employees could be fired because they weren't loyal enough to the president.
And that was met with a lot of backlash.
It never ended up going through, but Trump has promised to bring it back.
And so we'll see where that winds up.
We'll take your calls up until the end of the program at 10 a.m. when the House comes and gavels in.
The numbers are Democrats 202-748-8,000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
And Independents 202748-8002.
We have a line set aside for federal employees.
You can call 202748-8003 if you work for the federal government.
In that clip that I showed you, Ramaswamy did mention contractors who were overbilling the government.
Of course, contractors are a big part of the federal budget.
How would that work?
Has he said anything more about going after contracts?
And of course, interestingly, Elon Musk, of course, who's working with him on this same efficiency department, is a big recipient of government contracts.
Yeah, I think that's estimated to be his contracts are estimated to be worth billions of dollars per year.
And there's some concerns about a conflict of interest there.
In terms of going after the contracts, I mean, these things are constantly being re-bid and renegotiated.
So, you know, any administration has the ability to try to work out better deals for the government.
Trump talked a little bit about that in his first term.
And the federal government has enormous buying power, obviously, because the scale at which they're operating.
So you could definitely see some of these contracts be reworked, reshaped.
I think every administration tries to do that.
So it depends what they're willing to go after, what services they're willing to shed, if that's up for debate.
But they will have opportunities to press federal contractors on what they're billing the government.
And past administrations have attempted to reduce the size of government before.
Can you talk about those previous attempts and what came of them?
Yeah, I mean, it's honestly one of the oldest tricks in the Washington playbook is to come in and say, we have this blue ribbon committee that's going to reduce the size of government and get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.
Almost every president comes in with some sort of task force to do that.
There were, well, first of all, President Trump in his first term had this big reorganization plan that was aimed at making government more efficient.
They came up with, that was internal to government, whereas the Musk Ramaswamy thing will be outside of government.
That came up with some ideas that never really went anywhere.
Some big initiatives happened under President Clinton and President Reagan that were sort of similarly like bringing outsiders from government to come up with these proposals and were really going to make government more efficient.
They had some success.
President Clinton really did actually reduce the size of the federal workforce.
But some of these proposals, they never really went anywhere.
They required congressional action.
And they weren't just like, oh, here's some waste.
It was real policy proposals that they were coming up with.
And there wasn't always an appetite to implement those.
Richard sent us on X wanting to know about the numbers.
So what is the percentage of America's workforce that's employed by the federal government?
So it depends what you count.
There's about 2 million, 2.1 million federal career civil servants.
There's another 600,000 or so that work for the Postal Service, and then there's active duty military.
So it's a pretty, it's a fairly small percentage of the overall workforce in America, but it's not nothing.
I mean, if you're talking about widespread layoffs of these people, and Ramaswamy has talked about 75%, that's a major economic impact.
You're talking about laying off over a million people.
And let's go to the phones now to Sean in Blacksburg, New York.
Democrat, good morning.
Yes, hello.
I just wanted some clarification.
Actually, I'm not really Democrat or Republican.
I think I might have said Republican, just more independent.
But clarification, you mentioned that President the law that he passed before he left the last time, basically made it sound as though he would fire people that weren't loyal to him.
As I understand it, it would give the ability to fire a federal employee basically that weren't doing their job.
So the law, or it's not a law, it was an executive order, and he would apply this new firing capacity to any federal employee who worked in a policy position.
It was very loosely defined, and there was concern that this could be applied on an extremely widespread basis.
And what I was referring to is what the administration actually talked about there, which was we have federal employees that are entrenched in these agencies, and they're standing in the way of the president accomplishing his goals.
So when I talk about loyalty, what I mean is they view much of the federal workforce as adversarial to what they're trying to accomplish.
And anyone who stands in their way, this will make it easy to get rid of them.
Jica on X said Project 2025 said to privatize as much as possible.
Can you explain the key risks and benefits of hiring employees versus contracting services?
Sure.
So first of all, there's many things that are defined in federal law as inherently governmental.
So it's actually quite difficult to contract those out unless Congress were to rewrite those laws.
Federal contractors generally bill at a higher rate than federal employees, but there's a little bit more flexibility there, which is why agencies often turn to them because they don't have to go through the same hiring processes and they don't have to be responsible for their lifelong pension or health care benefits as career employees who serve a certain amount of time.
They are responsible for that.
So there's a little bit more flexibility with contractors, but it sort of depends what you're working on and what you need, what you're looking for.
Clarence in North Carolina, Independent.
Good morning, Clarence.
Good morning.
How you doing?
I was a federal worker for 43 years.
And my problem with union, and I was a shop steward, you have too much authority in the union because you have a program like the union I was in.
You can self-work two days without getting a doctor's excuse and come back the third day.
Nothing could be saved to you.
You can't fire nobody.
What Trump did with the VA, I'm a veteran.
He made it for if you're not doing your job, you can get fired.
We at the VA, we had to wait months to get an appointment.
You go there and stand in line, employees on the phone.
They ignore you.
We had people come in in wheelchairs, wait, and employees on the phone.
So it was good.
Make them responsible.
And I was a shop steward for 40-something years.
If you don't make them response by promise, you need to run the federal government.
And that's one of the main problems.
It'll never be solved until you get these union in line.
And I was there, and I saw it.
That's what made the federal government run so bad.
And it'll never get right until they get the unions in line with what they want to do.
Thank you.
What do you think, Eric Hatz?
Well, there's been complaints for many years, decades, that it's too difficult to fire malfeasant or poorly performing federal employees.
That's because of what we talked about with the protections that they have.
So, you know, there needs to be justification for firing federal workers besides that they're not politically engaged in one side or the other.
It's not impossible to fire them.
You just need to be able to support your case.
It can take a little while, but thousands and thousands of federal employees get fired every year for costs.
So it's certainly not impossible.
I'll quickly mention that the caller worked at VA and talked about what Trump did there.
He passed a law that made it easier to fire employees at the Veterans Affairs Department.
That didn't go well because it got challenged in court, and several different courts and panels found that it was actually unconstitutional the way they wrote the law.
We may see them try to bring that back, but VA is not currently using that law because of all the trouble they had enforcing it.
Let's talk to Jay in Burbank, California.
Democrat, good morning.
Hi.
My question would be: you know, historically, given how dictators like Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet, Hussein, Gaddafi, Chavez, and Orebon, the first things that they do when they come in is they purge elected civil service officials.
They purge them, they replace them, they use patronage to ensure loyalty, which it looks like what's going on here.
They maintain control through intimidation, surveillance.
My question is: how do you think that President Trump's actions with his own administration compare?
And do you see any direct parallels in his treatment of the civil service and government loyalty, especially in terms of loyalty tests, firing officials, basically using the government for personal political gain?
That's my question.
Thank you.
So that's interesting because certainly what these over a century now of civil service law is trying to prevent is that sort of system.
And what you know, so there's really two different things going on here.
What the efficiency commission that Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are leading are talking about is just getting rid of employees altogether, not necessarily replacing them with loyalists, but just shrinking the size of federal government.
You know, that would give more influence to the political appointees that are at those agencies, but it also would mean that they're just doing less because you can't just replace that with nothing.
And then there's the Schedule F thing, which could lead to the president installing more loyal people to him.
I mean, they've certainly talked about getting those who aren't loyal to him out of the way because they're resisting his efforts.
So it depends what scale that they deploy this in, whether the courts let this go through or not.
Vivek Ramaswamy has talked about how there's a friendly Supreme Court now so that he plans to use that to his advantage to sort of just do things.
And then once it gets up to the court, the highest court, then they'll just sort of rubber stamp what he's trying to do.
So that is a possibility.
This is Jerry in Somerset, Kentucky, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Yes, if Trump succeeds in getting rid of, say, 12 million illegals, and well, three of them, like Republicans like to say, just lay around, don't work, and 3 million are children, at least 6 million jobs of workers that are going to be leaving their job and they're going to be open.
So if them federal workers are going to go do them jobs, picking peppers and picking peaches and cucumbers and whatever, because I picked cucumbers and it ain't no fun.
Okay, have a good day, everybody.
All right, Jerry.
And the Washington Post has this about where federal workers live in the U.S.
And it says only 15% of the 2.1 million civilian full-time federal employees in the U.S. work in the Washington metro area.
That includes Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland and even a bit of West Virginia.
The other 85% work elsewhere around the country.
And you can see a map here.
The question is, you know, one of the ideas was, you know, there's too many agencies and departments in D.C., we can just move them out and then people will quit on their own.
What are you hearing about that?
Yeah, that's something that they tried to do in the first term on a much smaller scale.
They moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters from Washington out to Colorado, and they moved a couple agencies within USDA out to Kansas City.
And if their goal, and at the time, Office Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney talked about this, if their goal was to get people to quit, it worked.
scale, on a large scale, those employees did not relocate.
And that led to a lot of problems because these are experienced people who have a lot of institutional knowledge within these agencies of how things work, how budget functions, and they walked and then the agencies didn't have that anymore.
But it's a very good point that people often get lost in this conversation.
85% of the federal workforce is not in the DC area.
And so most employees are already not here, but most headquarters are.
So that's sort of what these folks are talking about when they want to relocate.
They want to put headquarters out closer to where they are carrying out their functions.
And Patrick in Fairfax, Virginia, Democrat.
Hi, Patrick.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my talk.
Question is, if Mr. Elon Musk and Arswami, will they be government employees?
And if so, what type?
And if so, are they subject to the same conflict of interest rules that all government employees are subject to, especially those employees that are involved with contracting?
They could be sued, I believe, if they violate some of the regulations regarding contracting.
So in announcing this initiative, the president said this would operate outside of government, allow them to sort of operate a little bit more nimbly, but they would work very closely with the White House and its budget office to implement the things that they want to affect.
Typically, when these sort of special advisor positions outside of government, they do have certain ethical constraints and disclosures they have to make.
We'll have to see the exact structure that they set up for this to see if that would apply here.
But I imagine Musk and Ramaswamy would resist that.
The Hill has this article that says, federal workers brace for Trump overhaul of civil service.
What are you hearing from federal workers themselves?
Are they concerned about this?
Are they starting to look for other jobs?
What's the mood?
Yeah, we're definitely starting to have these conversations.
And there's kind of two tracks, I would say, in my conversations.
Employees who are kind of freaked out and they're really worried about what's going to happen.
And some of them are less so, they're just quitting, but more so if they're retirement eligible, they might retire earlier than they had anticipated.
Some maybe just are looking for other jobs.
I have heard that.
And then there's those who said, you know, I've been around for a Trump administration in the past.
It's difficult.
You know, we have smaller budgets and a little bit more pressure on us from political appointees.
And we have sort of reverse course on the type of things we were doing.
But ultimately, we survived.
We got through it.
And it's important for me to be here and carry out my functions and help deliver on the mission of the agency.
I think that's probably the more common thing that you hear.
So there's definitely nerves and there's definitely anxiety.
And in terms of specifically this Schedule F proposal, I think people are really, really nervous about what that will entail.
But most are willing to sort of wait it out and see how it plays out.
What are you going to be watching for throughout the transition and in the beginning of the Trump administration?
So a couple things.
One, President-elect has not sort of formally cooperated with the Biden administration on the transition because it hasn't signed these agreements that statutorily they must sign in order to deploy their teams into agencies.
So every transition, you send a bunch of people into each agency, you kind of get briefed on what they're working on and try to set some expectations for what you want to work on when you get there.
That's not happening yet.
From what we understand, it's expected to happen, but we don't know when.
So definitely keeping an eye on that.
And then if they start to signal what their day one priorities are going to be, then we'll obviously want to look at that.