Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live.
And then, Cook Political Report founder and contributor Charlie Cook will talk about his analysis of the final campaign results and other key political trends.
And Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America CEO Allison Jaslow talks about potential changes to the Defense Department in President-elect Trump's second term and his selection of Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be the next Pentagon chief.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal is live next.
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Good morning.
It's Sunday, November 24th, 2024.
President-elect Donald Trump has named all his nominees for top cabinet positions, as well as his choices to lead what could become a new agency in his coming administration, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
This morning, we want to hear your thoughts on this proposal.
Our number for Democrats is 202-748-8,000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
We also have a special line for federal workers, 202-748-8003.
That's also the number where you can text us, but please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
And if you'd like to contact us via social media, we're at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
Now, to lead this new Department of Government Efficiency, the President-elect has named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the top officials that could potentially lead this agency.
And in an op-ed in the A Wall Street Journal, the two entrepreneurs and businessmen discussed what this agency might look like, saying in part, we are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America.
This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The two of us will advise Doge at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings.
We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.
Elon Musk spoke at a Trump campaign rally last month and put a dollar amount on the cuts he expects that this new department would be able to make.
Here's a portion of those comments.
You're being taxed?
All government spending is taxation.
So whether it's direct taxation or all government spending, it's either becomes inflation or it's direct taxation.
Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Deficiency is going to fix that.
We're going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.
And America's just not going to be great.
America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before.
The future is going to be amazing.
$2 trillion represents about a third of federal spending, and many experts are questioning whether or not that's actually possible to cut, including one expert who, as is written here in Yahoo Finance, one expert says this is not possible.
With the Brookings Institution senior fellow Elaine K. Mark, who is the former director of the National Performance Review, a program under Bill Clinton's administration, says that this would be very challenging and not realistic.
Let's listen to her comments.
The entire federal government each year spends about $6.1 trillion.
Most of that money, more than half, is spent on what's called mandatory spending.
That means it's social security payments, it's Medicare payments, it's retirement payments for veterans, etc.
So you can't touch that unless you want to raise a great big political stink, which guess what?
I don't think Trump really wants to do.
I mean, I don't think he's going to be wild about cutting Social Security payments or anything like that.
So that takes more than half out of there.
Then you've got interest on the debt, and then you've got $1.7 trillion left for what we call discretionary spending.
That is the military.
That is the FAA.
That is the Justice Department.
That is the Education Department.
That's HUD.
That's all the rest of the government.
Now, Musk has said, and Ramaswamy have said they want to cut $2 trillion.
Well, that's more than the entire federal discretionary spending.
So what you have to ask them is, what are you going to cut?
What are you going to do without?
And this is where the devil is in the details.
Do you think, Elaine, I've heard some folks say, you know, what you should really target is the regulatory state.
That if you really target that, you're going to find some good meat.
Plenty of government waste, duplication, inefficiency.
What do you make of that argument?
Well, but it's not in the regulatory personnel.
I mean, that's where this goes a little fluey.
We should be looking at regulations.
There is no doubt.
There's no doubt that we should take a look at permitting and all this stuff.
But that doesn't cut bureaucrats.
That doesn't save money.
The number of people who are involved in administering the regulatory state is really small.
It's bupkus compared to the money that's in the federal government.
That's a different exercise than cutting the government.
And I think until you understand that, we did that twice.
We did that with federal regulations and we did that with internal agency regulations.
It's a very good thing to do.
They did a little of this in the Bush administration.
They did some of this in the Obama administration.
So it's a very good thing to do, but it doesn't save you $2 trillion and it doesn't cut 80% of the workforce.
And that was a comment from Elaine K. Mark speaking on the asking for a trend show from Yahoo Finance.
Let's get to some of your comments.
On Facebook, Matthew Reed says, Musk just wants control of the regulatory agencies that are regulating him.
This whole election was his paid-for scam.
Cynthia Floor says, has no teeth.
Elon and Vivek are sidelined.
They won't put in the work required to be effective.
Peggy Miles says on Facebook, love it.
The government is bloated.
And Julie Christine says she is super excited over the idea of a department of government efficiency.
Once again, we'd love to hear your comments via facebook.com/slash c SPAN or on X at CSPANWJ.
Once again, our phone numbers for Democrats 202-748-8000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independence 202-748-8002.
And once again, we have a special line for government workers: 202-748-8003.
Let's start with Glenn in Straddoville, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Glenn.
Hi, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Hey, listen, everybody just needs to calm down.
Trump was in office once before, okay, and he did well.
But listen, all this misinformation and everything, and he's got his cabinet picked in that.
Give the guy a chance, okay?
All this misinformation from this person, misinformation from that person.
I think Trump has an idea what he needs to do, okay?
He's picked his cabinet.
He might not have them all yet, but give the guy a chance.
You know, he's a businessman.
He's done business for years.
He practically built New York City.
What do you think specifically of this idea of a Department of Government Efficiency?
Well, somebody has to start somewhere.
I mean, we've been living like this for how many years?
I mean, doesn't everybody want to have a great America?
Doesn't everybody want to have money in their pocket, less bills to play, less to pay for groceries?
Just give the man a chance.
Okay.
You know?
Anthony is in Detroit and is a federal worker.
Good morning, Anthony.
Oh, good morning.
My idea for cutting waste is there's a whole federal department, the Department of Homeland Security, created in 2002.
We need to eliminate that.
That is such a waste.
With all the agencies in it, we're in different departments before it was created.
Just get rid of Homeland Security.
There's several hundred billion dollars right there.
Anthony, are you at all worried about your job being at risk under the efforts of this new Department of Government Efficiency?
No, not really, because I'm with an I don't want to say which one, but an independent federal agency.
So I don't think we're not really subject to that political appointees as much as the other departments.
Okay.
Next up, we have Karen in Alexandria, Virginia, also a federal worker.
Good morning, Karen.
Good morning.
So I am a federal employee.
I will be retiring the Friday before Trump takes office.
Federal employees, Schedule F is coming to an agency near you.
And Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have no clue as to what they're doing.
The woman that was interviewed from the Brookings Institute that you showed, she was entirely correct about what she said.
However, the federal government employees are in the crosshairs.
And so federal employees, take care, protect your retirement.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Karen.
Karen made reference to Schedule F, which is a policy under the Trump administration that would give greater authority to remove people as federal workers.
Here's an article in Government Executive that Trump is expected to tap the Schedule F architect, promising widespread federal layoffs to head OMB, which ended up happening.
Russ Vought previously held the job and now says he wants federal workers to be viewed as the villains.
President-elect Trump plans to turn to a familiar name to head his management and budget office, selecting the former director and architect of his Schedule F plan to once again lead the key White House agencies.
And in an interview, Vought laid out his vision for the federal workforce, saying large-scale reductions in force would give the Trump administration the legal basis to shrink agencies.
Let's get back to your calls.
Ellis is in Augusta, Georgia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Alice.
Good morning.
What do you think of a Department of Government efficiency?
Well, I tell you one thing.
It's like this.
President-elect Trump, you know, that's what we have, and that's all that's to it.
And we have a co-elect President Musk.
Let me tell you this: the lady just said earlier about, you know, the president's efficiency and things, I think she's correct.
To me, if you're a billionaire and there's other millionaire, they can say whatever they want to say.
They can say whatever they want to say.
And one of the things I just want to say is this: whatever Trump says, those people are going to believe.
Whatever Musk says, those people are going to believe.
Why don't you listen to the people that know their jobs?
The woman that was talking earlier, she knows what she's talking about.
It's so easy for anyone to say a beginner and a millionaire to say what they want to say.
It's not going to affect them.
And one other thing, please, for I say this, when people say, give the man a chance, give the man a chance, the man already, he's not a bait.
That man has been bankrupt about how many times?
Five, six times.
Getting the man a chance, he doesn't know what he's doing.
How can you even say he's giving a man a chance?
You know what he's doing, and he don't even know how to run a casino.
But anyway, one more thing: I love your hair, and I want you to have a wonder.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
All right.
Now then, let's hear from Alan in Michigan, who is also a federal worker.
Good morning, Alan.
Hello.
What are your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency?
Hello.
Yes.
For the people that say give Trump a chance, Donald Trump, in case they don't know this, cut the Medicare budget twice when he was president before.
It's the number one reason a lot of testing is not covered now.
It's the number one reason a lot of medications are not covered.
So for the people that say give him a chance, give him a chance.
He's going to cut it again.
And as soon as these cuts take place, Biden takes office, guess who they blame?
People need to wake up what's going on.
By the way, all right.
Now then, Greg is in Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Greg.
Yeah, good morning.
Well, the federal workers are not going to like me saying this, but the government's just become too big.
There's too many people working for the federal government right now.
And if you want to bring inflation down, which is what everybody wants to do, you're going to have to make some cuts.
We're $36 trillion in debt.
If you want to get serious about bringing inflation down, something like this has got to happen.
But the only problem is I don't know if they really have any enforcement powers to be able to do it.
So it's going to have to go through the legislative process.
And that's where it might get bogged down.
But again, this is taxpayer money.
And people got to remember that it's always the money that belongs to the American people.
They're paying for the salaries of all these millions of federal workers.
So it's a difficult issue, but we'll see what happens.
CBS News has an article with a few things to know about the Department of Government Efficiency, pointing out that the name is a nod to Musk's support of a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, which was created as a joke by two software engineers and uses the image of a smiling Shiba Inu dog.
Trump said Musk and Ramaswamy's work will conclude no later than July 4th, 2026, or by the 250th anniversary of the Declarations of Independence.
And Trump only outlined the initiative's contours and didn't disclose how it will be staffed or funded.
And on Thursday, an ex-account for Doge said the group is accepting resumes from super high IQ small government revolutionaries willing to work 80 plus hours per week on unglamorous cost cutting.
In a separate post, Musk said compensation is zero.
Can the Doge actually cut federal spending?
At the moment, that appears unlikely given that the Doge isn't a real government department, which would need to be created by congressional approval.
Federal spending is authorized by Congress, and senators and House of Representatives may hesitate to support cuts to major programs like Social Security or Medicare, which are popular with millions of voters or to the nation's military.
It's also not clear how the organization will operate.
It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.
And let's get back to your calls.
Patrick is in Pittsburgh on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Patrick.
You know, it's stunning the disinformation that is being spouted here.
The Brookings Institute representative is not telling any.
She is so far off, it's beyond comprehension.
You know, you've got to look at where we are.
We are $36 trillion in debt.
We are literally on the edge of economic ruin.
And the fact that we're arguing about the two most brilliant people in this country when it comes to not only their technological prowess, but their economic prowess.
Elon Musk is a hero to this nation.
He's going to streamline our government.
He's going to articulate technologies that are absolutely mind-blowing.
We're going to be having humanoid robots helping the American people with their families, with deconstructing all the distress that we're dealing with.
Vivec is a genius when it comes to economics and technology.
It is really stunning to me that a Brooking Institute representative would not talk about the unprecedented waste that corporations and the systems within our government, particularly with our military, which is just beyond comprehension.
I would remind all viewers that the Defense Department cannot account for over $3 trillion of your tax dollars.
While the Saudi Arabian government is building breathtaking cities to $1.2 trillion, just think about this.
Our infrastructure is literally imploding.
And we're allowing all of these corporations, these corporate cartels, to loot the National Treasury, to carve up our taxation without any type of reality.
You know, I'm an intellectual property specialist.
This is the A-team on steroids.
Just wait.
And furthermore, let me be very clear about this.
The aspect of enforceability is going to be articulated to the political representatives.
And let me be very clear, they will take the recommendations of our A-team, Elon and Vivek, and the other incredible, gifted people that are going to be representing this new paradigm for America.
We are literally going to be in the golden age of this country.
That's a fact.
Okay.
Howard is in Carmel, Indiana, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Howard.
Yes, good morning.
This whole initiative with Musk is concerning.
This last gentleman that just spoke is so inaccurate in his statements, and I'm afraid that's unfortunately going to be the framing that most people look at this issue as it relates to the federal budget deficit.
Everyone needs to really understand that we are a sovereign fiat currency-based country.
The U.S. can issue country for any issue enough money for anything at once.
And I strongly suggest that everyone view finding the money documentary.
It's available on the public domain website on YouTube today by Stephanie Kelton, the economist who wrote the deficit myth.
There's a lot that concerns me with the election of a criminal like Trump that most citizens or that many, he's not a majoritarian president anymore.
He did not win a majority of the popular vote.
Let's make that clear.
So still a very close election.
I'm very told by anything coming from him.
The only thing that may provide some hope is that Elon Musk, regardless of what you think about him, is a brilliant individual.
He may be able to see the value in finding the money documentary I just spoke of because it talks about the modern monetary concept of how our money is actually constructed.
Our monetary actually works in the U.S.
We have a great deal of possibility to fund a great number of things that benefit this country.
If we get out of these silly paradigms that these budget deficits are real, they're not what we think they are.
They are important, but they're not, we're running out of money like this last gentleman said we're on the brink of some disaster.
That is totally wrong.
The budget deficits the federal government runs are surpluses in the rest of our economy that benefits us.
So we really have a very obsolete view.
Howard, I do just want to point out, you mentioned earlier that you said earlier that President Trump did not win the popular vote, but we still have ballots coming in, obviously.
But at this point, it is still clear that President-elect Trump did win the popular vote.
I'm here on c-span.org, where you can see the vote count that we have so far still showing that President-elect Trump not only won the Electoral College, but also did win the popular vote with more than 76 million votes.
I just wanted to address that.
Yes, you did.
You just didn't win the majority of the vote.
That's the point.
He didn't win over 50%.
It's under 40.
Right now it's at exactly 50.0%, but go ahead.
Oh, is it really?
Okay, so it's what points a lot.
Thank you so much for that.
Okay.
Let's go on to Sharon in Waterford Works, New Jersey, who is a federal worker.
Good morning, Sharon.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I'd like to say good morning to all of our C-SPAN viewers.
So as a federal employee, and I've been a federal employee now for going on 15 years.
Is there waste?
Is there fraud?
Is there abuse?
Yes, absolutely.
Are there ways to cut?
Yes, absolutely.
You know, but one of the things, and I hear everybody all the time on C-SPAN saying there are just so many government employees, not true.
We are so understaffed that we can't complete the work that we need to complete for the taxpayers of America.
And the gentleman is correct.
I do work for you.
But it is, you know, but we are so understaffed, we can't get done what we need to get done.
Try calling the Social Security Administration.
Try calling Medicare and you're on the Internal Revenue Service and you're on the line for forever.
And as a federal employee, that has happened to me.
And as far as the waste, fraud, and abuse is concerned, one of the things I want to say very quickly is that during the pandemic, the majority of federal workers were on telework.
And everybody railed against telework.
However, telework puts the expense on the federal employee because we're using our own utilities, we're using our own electricity, and at the same time, we're getting rid of these leases that we pay to commercial entities.
Some of the leases for just a small office space run anywhere between $6,000 to $10,000 a month.
So, Sharon, I want to actually highlight something that was also in that op-ed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy about the Department of Government Efficiency.
And in that op-ed, they said requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.
If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the COVID era privilege of staying home.
Sharon, I wonder what you think of that and whether you're at all concerned about your job in a potential cut under the Department of Government Efficiency if it's created.
So again, you know, when I look at what Mr. Musk and what Mr. Ramasamy have said, again, this is a misconception because this is a way, in my opinion, to turn the civilian force onto the federal worker.
I don't have a problem.
If I have to go in five days a week, I don't have a problem going in five days a week, as well as does the normal employee.
But however, what you have to consider is that now we're now paying for lights five days a week.
And most workers work over 4, 5, 6 o'clock.
So we pay an overage for any additional time that we work in offices over 4 p.m.
So you're paying extra utility costs for 4 to 6 p.m.
If I have to go in five days a week, I go in, you know, I go in five days a week.
That's the way it is.
I want to play a little bit more from Vivek Ramas from Vivek Ramaswamy, who sat down with Fox News in an interview last week to discuss the role of this new Department of Government efficiency and how they expect to downsize the 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.
You've got what has been called a deep state.
You've got people who have been career bureaucrats in place right now.
Didn't President Biden put in plans to ensure that you're not going to be able to fire those people at all?
How do you get around that?
And, you know, I asked Joni Ernst, are you for term limits?
She says, yes, I am for term limits, as long as the people around me are also for term limits.
That's not in place right now.
So how do you get rid of those people who are dug in?
Well, a lot of what's happened is President Biden has made a lot of changes trying to entrench the administrative state.
The Supreme Court has slapped them on the wrist numerous times.
So we're working with a legal landscape here that is historic.
You think about a president of the United States like Donald Trump elected with the mandate he's been given.
Both chambers of Congress belong into Republicans.
A six to three conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
Maria, if we don't downsize the federal government now, it's never going to happen in the future as well.
So this is a historic opportunity.
We're not actually going to squander this, but I think part of the key is to move quickly, to move effectively.
I think that mass deregulation that I talked about earlier gives us the industrial logic to then make cuts to that bureaucracy.
And moving quickly is our objective.
Vivek Ramaswamy, referencing there the legal framework that might be used to make some of these reductions.
They also laid that out in their Wall Street Journal op-ed, saying, Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden's tenure.
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022, the justices held that agencies can't impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so.
In Loper Bright v. Ramondo, 2024, the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies' interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority.
Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress granted under the law.
David is in Tyler, Texas, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, David.
Yes, they need to have their poll a little bit taller with that white flag.
They're in meltdown and they absolutely don't know what to do.
Let's get these radical Democrats out right now.
Go ahead and let these Republicans take over right now.
The country would be so much better.
Did you hear that, Democrats?
Thank you.
All right.
Rick is in Marion, Iowa, and is a federal worker.
Good morning, Rick.
Good morning.
I'm actually retired from the VA health care system.
I think that, you know, the last time Trump was in, they made it so the union could no longer have an office or representation, you know, in the facility, which made it really hard to keep things, you know, going smoothly.
And the state of Iowa did the same thing.
The problem is there's a lot of people that just don't want to do those jobs.
I mean, if you take the payaway, you're going to have a hard time finding help, just like the state of Iowa did.
And you know, who's going to suffer?
The veterans.
I think the only way to solve the problem is to make everybody pay their fair share of taxes.
And living in Iowa, you know, I see like foreign subsidies.
They spend billions on that.
Can you wait and see when this is all said and done?
Those people aren't going to have, they won't have to pay.
Small business.
I have a few friends that have small businesses.
They pay zero taxes.
And I'm not saying we should pull the rug off underneath all those people, but let's make the tax code fair.
I think that would solve a lot of the problems.
Okay.
Douglas is in Manchester, New Hampshire on our line for independence.
Good morning, Douglas.
Yeah, I think Vivek and Elon are going to do a great job.
They're awesome.
The people voted in Trump for a reason.
They want efficiency.
You can cut the government in half and still have a great country.
The country would be better off because right now about a third of all our tax money gets wasted anyway.
Trump should start with he should stop those 89,000 IRS agents.
Nobody likes the IRS.
We should get rid of the IRS altogether and just have a flat tax or a sales tax.
But they're going to do a great job.
Okay.
Also in that Wall Street Journal op-ed, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said, Doge intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.
The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified.
Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited.
Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and Doge's goal is to help support their transition into the private sector.
The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.
Tim is in Maryland and is a federal worker.
What do you think of the Department of Government efficiency and this plan that they're laying out for federal workers who may get cut?
Well, I don't know specifically what they plan to do, but this is very workable.
The first thing that I would do is have a hiring freeze.
That would cut the workforce considerably.
I work for the Department of Education.
It's a total waste of money.
We spend day after day after day filling out worthless forms, tracking and retracking and making sure this state's doing that and focusing on the southern states.
And it's all just a terrible waste of money.
The second thing they can do is, as I said, eliminate these needless forms.
It's spread across all the government agencies, just endless workers filling out needless forms, tracking some self-imposed regulations, policy dictates.
It's just a terrible waste of money.
Jim, I want you to stay with me for a moment because as I'm sure you're probably well aware, and this is also highlighted in this article from the Associated Press, Trump has called for dismantling the Department of Education, saying throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump has heaped scorn on the federal Department of Education, describing it as being infiltrated by radicals, zealots, and Marxists.
And he's picked Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive, to lead the department.
But like many conservative politicians before him, Trump has called for dismantling the department altogether, a cumbersome task that would likely require action from Congress.
Now, Jim, given that Trump is calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education, and you're also saying that it has a lot of waste, are you concerned about your own job?
Absolutely not.
And I agree, this entire Department of Education should be eliminated.
It is doing absolutely nothing worthwhile.
So then what will you do if it's dismantled?
Will you go work for another federal agency or leave to go to the private sector?
I'll have to do what people in the real world do, and that's go find a job.
That's the way life is.
Stick with it.
All right.
Tiroi is in Opa-Laca, Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Tiroi.
And can you turn down the volume on your TV?
Then go ahead with your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency.
Find a job.
Okay, we're going to wait for you to get that together.
Let's hear from Paul in Cornwall, New York on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Paul.
Hey, good morning, and happy Thanksgiving to everybody out there in TV land.
I say go for it.
This is going to be like an onion.
You're going to peel the layers back and you're going to expose a lot of things that these governments are hiding.
The government is more creative with hiding a dollar bill than Steven Spielberg is for making a movie.
So I say go for it.
Let's see what's out there.
And you know, to the first caller, amen.
Everybody, just get over it.
Stop worrying about this and worrying about that.
The dollar bill is better in your pocket than anybody else's, and that's what my grandmother always told me.
So I wish them all the best in this, and I wish them success with this.
If they can put a couple dollars back in the taxpayers' wallet, that'd be great.
If they can use that money they're finding to fix the infrastructure, that'd be great.
But I hope when they do find the money, it's put to good use and it doesn't make its way into someone else's pocket.
Thanks again for letting me speak.
Have a great Thanksgiving, folks.
A couple of comments that we've received via text and social media.
Randy in Millington, Michigan says, my thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency is you want to make the government more efficient by creating another government entity.
Yep, that's real brilliant thinking there.
On Facebook, Tanya Nicole Venable says, two stupid rich men thinking they can come to D.C. and force half the workers to go home just because it sounds good.
And another text message, this one from Stephen in Brooksville, Florida, saying, very excited about Doge.
Every successful organization has a department focused on eliminating waste and cost savings.
Time to trim the non-essential government employees, free pensions, working from home, contributing very little and associated costs.
Time for adults to make some difficult choices.
America is on the edge of economic collapse.
Susan is in Inverness, Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Susan.
Hi.
Well, first, the Biden-Harris budget came in $2 trillion less than Trump's $8 trillion, mostly which were created by his tax cuts to the wealthy, which he plans to continue and also make even better cuts for those people.
The mass deportation project will cost us billions or more.
And then add the extension of the tracks Trump wants to make will also be a greater deficit.
And where do you think all this money is going to come from?
Who's going to pay for it?
The middle class.
The cuts then to Social Security and Medicare.
all heard what Dr. Oz plans to do.
Elon Musk himself is an illegal alien due to his false student status.
He lied on his citizenship application and anyone else would be deported for that.
He is a total threat to the entire world.
He is a spiteful and evil man and I can't imagine what it's we can't do anything about him anymore because if you if you argue with him He's going to pull the rug out from under someone's feet.
He's a threat to the actual world.
And regarding cutting out the Department of Education, what are you going to have?
Different standards in different states?
That's absurd.
Everybody should kind of, you know, get the same kind of education to make them eligible for colleges.
Unfortunately, this goes back decades and decades.
Republican mantra always was, keep them dumb, keep them down.
Carlton is in Kentucky on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Carlton.
Yes.
What they're going to cut, they're not going to cut jobs in the federal government.
They're going to cut the benefits to say for retired veterans or disabled veterans, just like they did in 2019 to make the tax cuts for the rich.
That's all they're doing.
They're not finding ways.
They're finding money to continue the tax breaks for the 1%.
Thank you for having me, letting me talk, and you have a good day.
Okay.
Everett Kelly, the head of the union representing federal employees, was a guest on this program Friday morning.
And here is his reaction to proposed plans to cut federal workers.
You know, I think it's a little asinine to even think of the possibility of cutting 75% of the federal workforce.
I see it as a direct attack against the veterans, of which I am a veteran myself, because of the workforce, about 642,000 of that workforce are veterans.
So when you say you're going to cut 75%, you know, that means it does a direct attack on veterans itself.
And I'm appalled by that.
When you say that every federal employee is a necessary employee.
Absolutely.
Why so?
Well, think about it.
Think about the people that we represent, okay?
We represent the people at the VA, okay?
These are the people that we provide a service to the veterans that are returning home from war, okay?
That's a necessary job.
When you think about Social Security, you know, they're the people that take care of, in my opinion, the most prized possession of this nation.
And that's our elders, making sure that they get their Social Security checks on time.
When you think of FEMA, okay, they're not running away from disaster.
They're running to disaster to provide a service to the American people.
When you think about the Bureau of Prisons, these guys are out there making sure that our community is safe every single day.
We sleep easy at night because criminals are behind bars.
So, and any array of these organizations, of these agencies, rather, you know, we make sure that we are servicing the American people.
Back to your calls.
Nick is in Algonac, Michigan on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Nick.
Hello.
Hi there.
Go ahead.
Yeah, just a quick statement.
For about 30 years, I was a private contractor.
I did a lot of private companies.
And every time that we had gotten a government job, the price was automatically doubled.
So if I was doing a million-dollar project for a private entity, I was doing a $3 million job for the federal government.
That is a standard practice across the board.
So the idea that government overspends is everywhere.
And what do you think should be done about that specifically, Nick?
Well, I don't know.
You know, I think Deutsch, it's a good entity.
I think that they can eliminate a lot of things.
I don't know exactly what they're going to eliminate.
Obviously, we hope they don't go to Social Security or any major programs, but there are a lot of areas in the government that can be cut.
Okay.
And a lot of unnecessary employees, too.
I mean, anybody that I do know that works for the federal government, they could do out of three people, you could eliminate two out of the three jobs.
And they could still do that job.
Okay.
Ronald is in Sydney, Ohio, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Ronald.
Good morning.
I love listening to your show, and you do a good job on there.
Thank you.
And I just wanted to say that I think if Donald Trump is so smart, and he has been very smart his whole life because he's filed bankruptcy so many times, maybe he can figure a way to file bankruptcy for our government and get us out of this debt.
Since there's a lot of loopholes that he uses in the government, maybe they can create loopholes for our government.
And Ronald, what do you think of this idea of the Department of Government efficiency?
Well, there's a lot of things that go on that I don't approve of in Social Security.
There's too many fingers in the till.
You know, I see people collecting Social Security checks that have never worked a day in their lives, and I don't know how they're getting Social Security, but they are.
I know one person that can't read and write, he gets a thousand-dollar check a month just because he never wanted to go back to school and learn how to read and write.
And that's one of the things, you know, and there's other people that get things out of Social Security.
It was set up for the people that for retirement, more or less, you know, years ago.
And I thought that's where it was going to go, but it goes to other people.
You know, I know that other people need money, but they should set another system up for the other people.
But that's about all I had to say on this matter.
Deborah is in Maryland on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Deborah.
Yes, good morning.
I'm just wanting to say it first, I don't think you should let people defame that woman from Brookings.
Her numbers were straight out of the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan government agency that advises Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
The second thing is the total cost of federal civilian employees for the federal government, and this also is from the CBO, was about $281 billion in 2022.
They say it's $300 billion now.
I couldn't find that number for 2024.
But that is not even, that means you got rid of everybody.
Fired the entire federal civilian workforce, and you would only save about a third of a trillion, not even a third of a trillion dollars out of the $2 trillion that Musk says he's going to cut.
So they're going to have to go after entitlement programs.
The other thing is that the percentage of the workforce that is now accounted for by federal government employees is 1.9%.
The post-war average was 3.3%.
Now, it's at an all-time low at this point.
The federal government is not overstaffed, particularly given the rise in population in the post-war era.
It is, as that other woman said, understaffed.
You can now, since Biden gave some funding to the IRS, get through to the IRS a little more easily than you could four years ago, where you could stay online forever and never get the phone answer.
There are benefits to being able to interact with the federal government.
And you can just ask businesses about that because I'm sure that they are going to be the ones that are going to be complaining the loudest when they can't get a response from the government and need guidance or something else.
And just I guess one last comment is, you know, you really shouldn't just let people call in and say those numbers are wrong without providing the real numbers.
The real numbers are available.
They are on the CBO website.
You can Google them.
And as I said, you get rid of everybody.
I mean, National Park Service, the IRS, which everybody hates, of course, even though it brings in more money than it.
So, Deborah, I want to read a little bit more from the CBS News article that I was referencing earlier, which asked the question, where could the Trump administration cut spending?
And lays out that while experts are skeptical of Musk's claim he can cut $2 trillion in spending, they also point out that there are opportunities to look at efficiencies.
Eliminating Medicare fraud is one area that could result in savings, according to the Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan group that looks at government spending.
Its recommendations also include reducing the nation's contributions to the United Nations and ending subsidies for some agriculture products like dairy and sugar.
Its projected savings, $377 billion in the first year, or about 19% of the $2 trillion that Musk is eyeballing.
Scott is in Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Scott.
Good morning, Peace Man.
Happy holidays.
I think those programs are going to work out great.
The reason why is because Elon Musk got a hold of Twitter.
Twitter was the backdoor communication for the deep state.
He knows where all the bodies are buried.
So since he has that information, he'll be able to pass it on to the authorities, the Justice Department.
And what do you think of his plans for the Department of Government Efficiency?
Well, you know, it just all added in.
It's a good way to make sure that he gets all that information.
Now, for government efficiency, look at the school system.
1940s.
You have a school, 300 children, 28 teachers.
As time goes on, 900 students, 388 teachers, 1,500 students, 988 teachers, 2,000 students, 1,800 teachers.
And you know, you see what's going on here.
So, in other words, the teachers' unions are so strong, and we send them the most money to all the states that are doing the worst.
They get the most money.
And every year, they do worse with more teachers.
If that's not a scam, so they're going to knock that out.
There you go for government efficiency.
Okay.
Joe is in Adrian, Minnesota on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Joe.
All right.
I just wanted to say I think it's unconscionable that we are giving tax breaks to the billionaires at the tune of almost $2 trillion, or to the billionaires at the tune of almost $2 trillion, on the backs of the most poorest and vulnerable people in the nation.
This isn't sustainable, and I really don't think this is the mandate that Trump would voted in the due.
I mean, giving Elon Musk car blanche on the government.
That's just ridiculous.
And I'll take any comments off air.
Okay.
Raymond is in Rockwood, Tennessee, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Raymond.
Hello.
I have three friends who live in Virginia.
Two of my friends is in Florida and fifth wheels for the winter, but they're working from home and Virginia for the government.
Now, when they come back from Florida to Virginia, then they'll be working from home again.
But they're working from their fifth wheels in Florida over the internet.
I don't know if people know this or not.
They go camping all summer, and they're working from home on their fifth wheel.
People are ripping the government off this rip.
This working from home is paid vacations.
Don't these people understand that they're not working from home?
They're working Florida.
They go to Jamaica.
They can be working from home.
It's a ripoff.
They're stealing money from the government.
They're lying.
Jennifer Jones on Facebook says that department, the Department of Government Efficiency, doesn't even exist yet, and none of them will have the power to cut anything.
That's Congress's job.
Republicans in the House of Representatives haven't passed anything to help the American people.
Speaking of Congress, there's a story in Fox News that says, Comer to create a Doge subcommittee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene to work with Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy told Fox News Digital that he and his team have already met with Comer and Green, and they look forward to working together.
And Comer being House Oversight Committee Chair, James Comer, is expected to establish a subcommittee that will work with the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to eliminate government waste, Fox News Digital has learned.
A source Familiar told Fox News Digital that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, will chair the Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, which will focus on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.
Brent is in Cedrow Woolley, Washington on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Brent.
Yeah, hi.
As far as the Dodge Doge Committee, that's just a joke.
Like the person who just texted Tech and said, it has to be created by Congress.
The president doesn't just create government departments out of thin air.
And as far as the election itself, well, you know, right now, we're just in the calm before the storm.
So all you people that are all excited about Doge cutting money and everything else, you better be ready because it's coming out of your Social Security and your Medicare and your other social services that people depend on.
You know, and as far as the Department of Education, what do you think schools at state's going to do?
Take it upon themselves to just find the money to make an efficient school system.
Where they can't do it is that's why they need the government's help.
But like I said, the storm is coming.
So all of you people be ready because when the unemployment goes up, the debt and deficit goes up, when everything just crashes.
You all own this.
Every one of you that voted for them own this.
And you're going to see the pain in the next two years.
Thank you.
Alicia is in Oregon on our line for independence.
Good morning, Alicia.
Good morning.
Thank you for helping me.
And sir, I hear your grievance.
You know, it's not just Republican or Democrat or a federal, but it's also the state.
You can't get the two people in the same room to decide exactly where we need to give more or less.
Let me give you an example.
How many people are putting black bags in a truck that's using a PG ⁇ E?
For how long has that went on?
Can you dig a hole, put the truck back into the hole, put a record wall, put a person's name on it?
Would that save money on PG ⁇ E?
Come on.
You're rich, you're middle class, and you're poor.
It's going to pay both state and federal on the stuff we're paying on PG ⁇ E. Thank you.
Joe is in Tappahannock, Virginia, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Joe.
I don't know why they keep giving all these big tax cuts to the rich because the rich should be paying more money, right?
Okay, so the little man is going to hurt the average working man going to have to pay for all these to the rich.
And they're going in and the government going to start cutting.
First thing they're going to start cutting is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
And that's going to hurt the poorest of the country because they need all this.
So I don't know every time when a Republican get in there, they're always leading tax cut for the rich, cash cut to the rich.
The average working man never gets a tax cut.
All they do is get burdened down in taxes, taxes, taxes, paying for the tax cut for the rich all the time.
So why are they keep on giving our rich all these tax cuts and don't give it to the average working person that's out here working every day, two and three jobs trying to make it and paying every time you get your check?
There's lower and lower, taking more taxes, taxes, taxes to pay for the rich.
The rich need to pay more taxes.
Maybe that'll help.
I've got that idea.
Let's hear from Diane in St. Louis, Missouri on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Diane.
Hi there, Diane.
Can you hear us?
All right.
Then let's go to Neil in New York on our line for independence.
Good morning, Neil.
Good morning.
Can you hear me okay today?
Yes, I can.
Excellent.
Have you ever been in a post office?
These are cavernous, giant real estate sucks.
Anywhere I've gone, in all the many, many years that we have become more efficient in offices using laptops instead of giant computers to move information, using tools that are more and more efficient and effective.
You cannot walk in.
You cannot tell me that you're walking to a federal post office where the waste is immense, on top of which there are no people in a giant space rented in cities, states, and so on.
This would be a place you could cut immediately.
They've got so much inefficiency and the actual paper and paperwork, not just the envelopes we send, but every other part of it is ineffective, inefficient.
The equipment is old.
Who is managing this thing?
Who is the postmaster general in the federal government getting paid to manage this?
It's almost as if they have not seen what's gone on in normal commercial industry where workplaces and laptops and the tools that we have are minuscule and require almost no space to run serious businesses.
Post office is one of those places we could cut significantly.
Just the space alone would save a ton of money, let alone the tools, the equipment, all of it.
It's ridiculous.
It's just one thing, at least, that we could see and focus on.
And nobody could argue that.
Nobody.
Got the idea on the post office.
Let's hear from Rebecca in Fort Smith, Arkansas on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Rebecca.
Hi, I think that this department, Doge, is going to be so efficient.
Once the illegal immigrants are deported, that's going to cut our funds so much if we could send them back home.
If we stop ridiculous tests like whether or not monkeys are going to get drunk from gin or vodka faster, and the man that said that the president can't just make up departments willy-nilly.
What do you think Biden's been doing for the last four years?
I mean, seriously.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, let's hear from Miguel in Lawrenceburg, New Mexico on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Miguel.
You know, there are 25,000 corporations.
I'm sorry?
25,000 corporations in the U.S.
It's about how many states we're going to have.
They're running the country.
And what do you think about this idea of a department of government efficiency, Miguel?
Well, if there's something I can do about government efficiency, that's fine.
But if you want to get rid of governments that control things that have to be controlled, that's fine.
But they don't want to control corporations, and corporations need to be controlled, not only the social programs.
And that's my see.
Okay.
Jeff is in South Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Jeff.
Hi there, Jeff.
Can you hear us?
Yeah, I sure can.
Go ahead.
What do you think of the Department of Government Efficiency idea?
I like it.
I mean, this is going to be an exciting time coming up.
I've spent 20 years in manufacturing, and until people get around the table and start looking at things that can be changed, you're really never going to know.
I mean, when you've got Social Security sending money to deceased people, I mean, plenty of savings all over, and you've just got to start looking at it.
I wouldn't want to come from the position of saying nothing can be changed and we shouldn't try because when you look at the debt, I mean, got to try something, got to get around the table.
So I'm anxious to see what's going to happen in the next few months.
Okay.
Pat is in Hollywood, Florida, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Pat.
Hi, good morning.
I'd just like to say that I have actually three points I'd like to make real quick.
Number one, we're talking about government waste and efficiency.
By the mere fact that we're using the acronym DOSH, we're given free advertising for this mosque and their cryptocurrency that they just started.
Number two, I believe that this, all this thing to get the department and say that they're going to be more efficient is their way of merging church and state.
Everything they do, especially the Christian National, are about God, this God, that, for example, the state's trying to bring church into public school.
I believe in God and everything like that, but there needs to be a separation and per laws that the states cannot bring that into the country.
But yet, still the legislation changes the rule to allow that.
And lastly, elimination of the Department of Education.
There again, that's just on what I just said.
Trying to bring the Bible and push it down everybody's throat.
Here in Florida, DeSantis has ruined us.
He eliminated a whole bunch of people and put in his cronies.
And this is what we're going to end up with, their own cronies that they claim and blame everyone else for.
Thank you.
Sue is in Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Sue.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Hi.
As far as Elon Musk goes, he paid over a million dollars in Trump's campaign.
One of the reasons he did that is because he owns many, many companies that have contracts with the federal government.
And Trump wants to make him head of the regulations, canceling out regulations.
We need many of those regulations.
Regulations for air, for our water, for our land.
I mean, a lot of those contracts, these people go and mess up things like that.
And we, the people, have to fix that.
We have to pay for that.
He can't wait to get in there so he can cut regulations.
And when he cuts regulations for his own businesses and stuff, he's going to make billions off of that people.
I swear to God, you have no idea what you're doing with this man.
He is out of control.
And he is doing all he can to make himself money, himself and Trump.
Trump, the person who raped Egene Ciroll, in case anybody is wondering, yes, he did rape Egene Carroll.
We're just about out of time for this segment, but thank you to everyone who called in with their thoughts on the potential Department of Government Efficiency.
Coming up next, we'll have Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook here to discuss his final analysis of the results of the 2024 campaign, as well as key political trends to watch.
And then later, we're going to have a conversation with Allison Jaslow, CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
And with her, we will discuss potential changes to the military and defense department in President elect Trump's second term.
We'll be right back.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, Peggy Noonan, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former speechwriter for President Reagan, talks about her book, A Certain Idea of America, a collection of her columns from over the past quarter century.
She also discusses her time working in the White House and her career in radio after graduating from college.
Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the CBS News.
He had a radio show.
Every day he did a radio commentary.
It was written by a wonderful writer named Dale Minor.
When Dale Minor was off on vacation, I became one of the people who filled in for him.
Once when I was filling in for Dale Minor, who was writing for Cronkite, Cronkite himself took vacation.
And this young guy named Dan Rather came in.
So I wound up writing for him.
Then Dan became the anchor at CBS.
And I became his daily radio writer of his commentaries, which was a fabulous job and was like doing a column every day.
Peggy Noonan, with her book, A Certain Idea of America, tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Visit cspan.org slash results for comprehensive coverage of the 2024 campaign results.
Get the final Electoral College breakdown in the presidential race and see which states each candidate carried.
Dive into our interactive maps to explore the outcomes in Senate, House, and Governor's races and monitor the final balance of power in Congress.
Plus, watch acceptance and concession speeches on demand anytime.
Stay up to date with C-SPAN, your unfiltered view of politics at c-span.org slash results.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're joined now by Charlie Cook, who is the founder and contributor at Cook Political Report.
Good morning.
Good morning, Kimbler.
So we are now several weeks out from the election, and in a post-election piece that you wrote titled More a Ripple Than a Wave, in it you wrote, this may be the most misunderstood election in modern American political history, even given that it came after another misunderstood result in 2022.
What do you mean by that?
Yes, when you, you know, people, a lot of times if a election result isn't exactly what people were expecting, they think of it as a, you know, a really huge, huge election.
When this is kind of a split election in some ways, you know, the polls were showing that the race was going to be, nationally speaking, was going to be very close, and it was, that President-elect Trump's margin will end up being about 1.6 percentage points.
It's about 49.9, 50 percent total.
And six of the seven swing states were within the margin of error.
The only Arizona was really the only surprise.
So that, you know, this was, you know, basically it was the, there were three closer elections since the end of World War II, only six closer since the beginning of the Civil War.
So this wasn't a huge landslide.
It was really a pretty close race.
In terms of Electoral College, he received six more electoral votes than he did back in 2016 and six more than Biden got six years ago.
But it's still, you know, not a very big number.
So, you know, it wasn't, it may have been a surprise to some people, but it wasn't a landslide by any stretch of the imagination.
Landslides are generally 10 percentage points.
But the amazing thing to me is how little things, what little, how little things happened below that on the ballot.
I mean, you had $2 billion spent in the House of Representatives, and there may be no net change.
I mean, Republicans may have gone in with 221 seats and come out with 221 with Democrats at 214.
It just didn't happen.
Not a single governorship in the country changed parties.
Minimal change in the state legislature.
And in the U.S. Senate, Republicans picked up four Senate seats, but three of them were in states that Trump carried, very bright red states that Trump carried in 2016, and 2020 and 2024.
There was of the only five swing states in terms of Senate races, Republicans won, Democrats held on to four and Democrats lost one.
Pennsylvania, Bob Casey.
So this was not the earth-shattering election that a lot of people seem to make it out to be.
And I think it was really pretty much focused on President Biden in the last four years.
So what surprised you about the outcome of the election, especially as we're getting more detail about the way that voters actually made that decision?
I was, I guess, most surprised by, I thought that Harris would probably come out on top of ahead in the popular vote very narrowly.
But, You know, we knew that the House, we knew that the Electoral College was going to be extremely close.
And, you know, the thing to remember is that swing, undecided voters rarely split down the middle.
You know, they generally break one way, one direction or the other.
And the same thing with swing states.
They generally break one way or the other.
And in 2016, of these same, you know, seven swing presidential states, Donald Trump won six and Hillary Clinton won one, Nevada.
In 2020, Biden won six and Trump won one.
North Carolina.
This time they went seven and oh.
And so a lot of this, it was only a movement of a point or so, but you know, it's enough.
So he carried all seven swing states.
So that was a little bit of a surprise.
But we knew that they didn't, they don't, they rarely break down the middle anymore.
Let's have a look at some of the populations where Trump gained support.
In particular, let's see, 46% of Latino voters backed Trump, which is up seven points from 2020.
He won Latino men in particular, 55% to 43%, won white women, 53% to 45%.
He won non-college graduates, 56% to 42%.
64% of rural America supports Trump's.
Let's talk about Latino voters in particular and how Trump won Latino men.
Do you see that as a trend or something unique to this year?
Well, we saw some erosion for Democrats among Latino voters back in 2020.
But, you know, you could kind of look at this as the glass half empty or half full.
I don't think this election was about Donald Trump that much.
I think just as in 2016, I think the election was about President Trump then, and it was a close call, but it was a rejection.
And this time, I think it was really more of a referendum on President Biden in the last four years.
And so to me, you had a broad multicultural rejection of Biden or the Biden-Harris administration for years.
I see it as that, not really Trump picking up.
And so I think it's Democratic Party ties are loosening absolutely.
But part of this, I think, was mostly driven by cost of living being 20% higher than it was four years ago and the border having been out of control for three years.
And they finally, within the last year, started getting the border under control.
But that was after claiming that they didn't have the authority to do anything.
And then the last year they started doing what they said they didn't have the authority to do.
But those are the two issues that I think really, really drug Harris down that Republicans did all but go to the courthouse and have her name legally changed from Kamala Harris to Biden Harris, which is fair.
And if I were them, I'd have done the same thing.
But basically, I think this was a loss for the Biden-Harris administration much more than a Trump victory or a Harris-specific loss.
The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney has an article, Democrats' Gender Extremism Cost Them the Election, in which he argues that gender ideology and other radical stances may have Cost Democrats this election saying,
desperate to run away from President Joe Biden's inflation and immigration disasters and dwelling inside a liberal media bubble, Democrats thought they could win the 2024 elections by focusing hard on abortion.
At the same time, the party made no effort to shed its side's recent excesses on gender ideology and other radical stances.
This hard left campaign on social issues may have cost them the election by alienating socially conservative Hispanics and Muslims and turning off socially moderate, buttoned-up suburban parents.
Do you find anything in the data to indicate that that's what happened?
No, not really.
I mean, that's a conservative view of it, but no, I didn't.
I mean, first of all, I think inflation, the cost of living, which is, you know, inflation itself and not just monthly, but cumulative over four years, and interest rates, higher interest rate, altogether, that was probably about 70% of what happened.
The border was probably 20%.
So that led only, you know, 10% for other things.
And in terms of the gender, you know, transgender surgery taxpayer funded, that was something, first of all, Democrats didn't bring that up.
It was an ad that the Trump campaign, a very effective ad, probably most effective single ad of this campaign, bringing up footage from her Attorney General's race back, you know, 10 years or so ago.
That was an issue that Republicans brought up and used very effectively, but that wasn't something that Democrats really brought up.
I think we're, the only thing I would agree with that piece is that Democrats thought that the abortion issue and the Dobbs decision would be a silver bullet for them.
It would be a get out of jail-free card from inflation, cost of living, and border.
And the thing is, it's a powerful issue, and when it's on the ballot, it generally does really, really well.
But it doesn't, in the mix with a bigger election, it generally gets diluted.
And I don't think what happened in 2022 midterm elections, I don't think it had anything to do with the Dobbs decision.
And the Dobbs decision clearly didn't save Democrats in this one.
But it just gets mixed up, as I said, diluted by other issues that affect more people on a day-to-day basis.
We're going to be taking your calls with questions for Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report.
Our number for Democrats: 202-748-8,000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And Independents at 202-748-8002.
And Charlie, there's another op-ed, this one in the Hill, by Matt Lewis saying, Trump thinks he won a mandate to change America.
History says otherwise.
And in it, columnist Matt Lewis says, While Trump openly campaigned on a platform of disruption and retribution, few of his voters were expecting these specific moves.
There are countless reasons why people might have voted for Trump.
To be sure, there are plenty of MAGA true believers, but a lot of voters simply found him entertaining, disliked his opponent, or assumed he wouldn't follow through on certain outlandish claims.
America may have voted for Trump, but that doesn't mean most Americans actually want Trumpism.
Charlie, what do you think of this idea of Trump having a mandate?
Do you think that it was?
No, I think it's baloney.
I don't think he had a mandate in 2016 when he lost the popular vote.
I don't think Joe Biden had a mandate in 2020.
I mean, mandates come from, you know, it's number one, how big was your margin?
You know, and it generally may be a landslide, which is, you know, 10 percentage points.
And what's very interesting is that in the, I think it was 21 presidential elections between 1900 through 1984, 14 of them were landslides, 10 points or more.
But starting in 88, in other words, after Reagan Mondale, 84, there hasn't been a single landslide presidential election at all.
And 1.6 percentage points is not a landslide.
No change in the House.
And one of the narrowest majorities in House history, that's not a landslide.
53 seats in the Senate.
That's good, but it's not a landslide.
There's absolutely nothing that someone could point to that would suggest that this was a landslide.
And to me, it's a cardinal sin for a political figure or a party to pretend or presume they have a mandate when they didn't.
And I think Biden and Democrats presume pretended that they had one in 2020 when they didn't.
And Republicans, there's a danger of Republicans and Trump thinking they had one here when they don't hear either.
You know, we're just a era where two evenly divided parties where there aren't going to be mandates anytime soon.
All right.
Let's get to your calls with questions for Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report.
We'll start with Henrietta in Fort Pierce, Florida on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Henrietta.
Yes, hi.
Good morning.
I think this gentleman is just giving us lots of dribble.
This was a mandate.
316 electoral votes.
Police.
When's the last time someone got that?
In addition to that, it's been 20 plus years since a Republican won the popular vote.
In addition to that, this was a statement from America as a whole that we rejected everything that the Democrats have done for the past four years.
So Henrietta, before we get to your question for Charlie, I do just want to point out that Trump won 312 Electoral College votes, not 316.
But go ahead with your question for Charlie.
Why is he trying to denigrate the mandate that Trump was clearly, clearly given?
So let's let Charlie respond to that, Henrietta.
Go ahead, Charlie.
Yeah, well, I mean, to me, 1.6 percentage points is not, that's not a mandate.
I mean, that's not any more than, I mean, Joe Biden, how about this to the caller?
That's a narrower margin than Joe Biden had in 2020.
Does she think that he had a mandate then?
That's not, and I'm, you know, just checking some historic numbers to find out, hang on a second.
But 312 or 316, that is not a, that's not electoral votes.
That's not a big, that's not a big margin.
I mean, it just isn't.
You know, maybe she needs to go back and look at her history books a little bit.
But, you know, that's not, that's, that's nowhere near landslide or man mandate area.
But does she think that there was a mandate that Biden have a mandate in 2020?
We've already let that caller go, but let's hear from John in Syracuse, New York on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, John.
Well, my speculation on this is that it would have turned out a lot differently had Biden just kept his remain in Mexico policy that Trump had.
It was a great policy.
The only thing that the Republicans have correct is immigration.
Everything else they're wrong on.
Tax cuts for the rich.
Who wants that?
So to me, immigration, that was a big problem for the Democrats.
And the one question that I also don't believe is that women, the majority of women voted for Trump.
I know guys like me, we like Trump.
Women, I have a hard time believing, because I've been married to a woman for 50 years.
Almost every woman that she is friends with, they don't like Trump because of the things he's done to women.
He's been married 100 times.
I just don't believe he carried the women's vote.
I believe it's like, it might have been like 50, 50.
Wait, let me interrupt.
Who said that Trump carried the women's vote?
Because he didn't.
You put the statistics on the screen.
I don't know.
We can bring that chart back up.
Trump carried white women.
Exactly.
But not all women.
And I've never, ever, ever seen an exit poll that said that.
Speaking of which, and John, we're going to come back to you.
Let's look at some exit polling here.
This is on NBC News website, and it does show that 53% of women voted for Harris versus 45% of men.
So she did win with women.
But if you scroll down and go to sex by race, white women are the ones who did support Trump in particular.
53% of white women here supporting Trump as opposed to 45% for Kamala Harris.
But go ahead, John.
Did you want to say more?
Yeah, my wife's a white woman.
All her friends, well, you know, none of these women, and these are older women, none of them like Trump.
So it just is surprising to me.
As a guy, of course, I liked him, but I just don't believe that everything, his past history with women, the sexual harassment, that he carried the white women's vote.
I just don't believe it.
What makes you think that you live around a cross-section of all women in all 50 states?
Well, I think I've got a good grasp of what white women want because I've been married to one for 50 years.
Well, I have two.
You know, that's just, I don't know what to say.
I mean, that race is a big factor in American politics.
Gender is a big factor.
And Trump lost among all women, but he won among white.
I mean, there's, you know, look at any exit polling, any of the polling, you'll see.
I mean, nothing ever showed that Trump was ahead among all women.
No, I mean, but I think people, they look around, they see the people that they live with around, and they extrapolate that for all 50 states.
And, you know, you'd be a rare person indeed if everyone you knew constituted a cross-section of the entire country.
But, Charlie, historically, white women have voted Republican over time, yes.
Minority voters have tended to vote Democrat, although, as you noted earlier, less lately.
And whites tend to vote more Republican.
Men tend to vote more Republican.
Women tend to vote more Democratic.
white women, yes, Republicans do win those narrowly in recent years, and it just is what it is.
but i i don't think anybody should assume that the people that they're in contact with day-to-day are a cross-section of the entire country um that's um i can't imagine who could claim that All right, let's hear from Paul in New York City, who's on our line for independence.
Good morning, Paul.
Hey, good morning.
So my question is along these lines.
I mean, you seem to be downplaying the significance of the election.
I agree with what your position is.
It doesn't seem like a mandate or anything to me.
But I think it's rather remarkable that considering that Donald Trump had this January 6th charges against him, all the trials or all the court cases against him, the convicted felon argument that was constantly being repeated in the media, much more money that Harris had, much more media support, and yet he won and she lost.
And I think that it's, you know, David Axelrod, who's Obama's former campaign strategist or what have you, he basically said it's very difficult in modern times for a sitting president to win a referendum and that they want to make their choice.
And I think he's right.
But that sort of says that things are really bad if people are so desperate for change that they go to clarify.
So Paul is going to Republicans in this election and by a reasonably substantial margin.
But the thing is that I don't think, I'm not downplaying the significance of this election.
What I'm sort of saying is I think the interpretation is a bit off.
But I think this election was almost entirely about President Biden and the Biden-Harris administration last four years and primarily the cost of living, secondarily the border.
But, you know, whenever you have an incumbent up, it's a referendum up or down on the incumbent.
Now, you had this campaign started off with an incumbent running, Biden, and then very late in the game, he changed.
But as I said, they turned, they practically changed Kamala Harris's name to Biden-Harris, which is fair and the smart thing for them to do.
But this election was about, I think, the Biden-Harris administration.
I don't think it was about Donald Trump much at all.
Just as I don't think in 2020, that election wasn't about Joe Biden.
Now, Biden may have thought it was about Joe Biden.
Joe Biden might have thought he had a mandate, but that wasn't a mandate, not any more than this is a mandate.
NPR.org has a really interesting map here showing that most of the country shifted right in the 2024 presidential election.
And we did see a lot of this, you know, it was a slightly lower voter turnout the last presidential election, but definitely more Republican support.
And this sets up a question we received from Andrew in Peerland, Texas.
Do you think the Democrats should embrace progressive economic ideas like the federal minimum wage and Medicare for all to win future presidential elections?
I think they'd probably lose by worse margins.
But first of all, those maps that you see in the New York Times, Washington Post, carry where they have an arrow.
It's either a red arrow to the right or a blue arrow to the left, whether that county trended more Republican or trended more Democrat compared to four years ago, which is fine.
It's interesting.
I enjoyed looking at those too.
But you have to remember that if it's one arrow per county and that lots of counties have very few people in them, it could be kind of, it could be pretty misleading.
I mean, they should, you know, theoretically have the size of the arrow should indicate how many people were trending in that direction in that.
But no, I mean, the thing is that you've got 46, 7, 48% of the voters that are going to vote for a Democrat no matter what, and 46, 47, 48 are going to vote for a Republican no matter what, leaving about 2% to 4% that are in the middle.
When you've got such high floors and low ceilings for each party, and that does translate ideologically, what that means is there's no ideological mandate for liberalism or progressivism or for conservatism.
And what election results like this point suggest is a president, a party sort of shooting for the 40-yard line, whatever on their side of the 50-yard line, but not far off at all.
But it's, you know, the data points more to moderation and centrism, not to either farther left or to farther right, because that's just not where the country is.
We have another question we received via text from Kristen in Portland, Maine, who says, I'm a staunch Democrat, but I feel the images of the withdrawal from Afghanistan at the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration was an indelible image of chaos and incompetence.
No matter what the root causes were, a picture says a thousand words.
Charlie, do you think that that had a big impact in this election?
I think it did, but not a lasting impact.
I mean, if you think about it, you know, look at the Gallup poll, for example.
From January 2021, right when Biden took office through June, his approval ratings were sort of in the mid to high 50s.
And in June, it was June of 2021, it was at 56%.
But starting in July, you had had the border was sort of creating some problems.
Then you had inflation start shooting up in May and June.
Then the second half of August is when you had Afghanistan.
So you saw President Biden's approval rating drop from 56% in June to 42% in October of 2021, a 14-point drop.
And that I think that Afghanistan was a piece of what took him down.
But I think eventually I think the Afghanistan, and I agree that it did look incompetent, absolutely.
We have a son that served in combat in Afghanistan.
And, you know, it hurt lots of people to see that.
But I don't think it was a lasting impact.
And it's sort of got replaced by concerns about his age that started creeping in back in the next year in 2022 and 2023.
But I think certainly Afghanistan contributed to the decline, but it's not what kept him down for basically three and a half more years.
Ralph is in Bangor, Michigan on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ralph.
Good morning.
Apologize for the cold.
It's okay.
Go ahead with your question.
Okay, number one, you are a very good moderator in the fact that you let your callers talk and you let your guests have a good conversation with you without a lot of interruption.
Mostly what I want to do is I've got some things over the years that I figured out.
Life is not rocket science.
There's three things you need.
Food, shelter, and transportation.
If you've got two good feet, you've got one out of the three.
Another thing is when you cross the border to put food on your table, watch out, because at any time that border could close and you will have no food.
Accountability.
And Ralph, did you have a question for Charlie?
Yes, I do.
I'll get to that very shortly.
No accountability starts with our education, with our public education in the schools.
If you don't hold the kids accountable for why they're there and what they're supposed to be doing, then you end up with no accountability in the job market, whether or not it be government work or private work.
You just can't have a good outcome if you have no accountability.
For Charlie, I have this to say.
Charlie, I think you live in somewhat of a D.C. bubble.
I don't live in 500 miles out of D.C.
Well, all right, let me put it this way, though.
You're too close to it.
Trump won the election without any problem at all.
There's no question of that.
You can push the numbers any which way you want, but there is certainly an outcry from this nation that says we want change.
And the change in things such as the border, such as taxes, such as having boys go in girls' bathrooms, I'm sorry.
That just doesn't get it.
Hopefully, the two gentlemen, two very good business gentlemen who wish to apply some accountability to our government spending, gosh, I hope they get a chance to do it.
I really do.
Ralph, did you have a question?
Because I do want to get to some other folks so we can make sure to hear what Charlie has to say.
Okay, my main question is, sir, how can you discount the election results?
I just don't see it.
Okay, let's let Charlie respond.
I don't discount the election, and I agree with the caller that it was about change, that people were angry and they wanted change.
Where I differ with the caller is to me, they were angry at Biden-Harris administration, the last four years, a lot of the policies that have happened in the last four years, including the border that the caller talked about, but that it was more about Biden-Harris and not about not so much about Donald Trump.
And in 2020, when Donald Trump was the president, that was about change too.
And it was about Donald Trump.
It wasn't about Joe Biden.
To me, the 2020 election wasn't about Joe Biden at all.
He was like, you know, just sort of the vehicle.
I mean, if you voted for change, he was the vehicle.
And that's the same thing here for Trump.
But it is an anger.
It is wanting change.
No question about that.
I mean, when you see the numbers, like only 30% of Americans think the country's head in the right direction.
And about 70%, say 69, 70, think it's off on the wrong track.
Clearly, it was a change election, but was it change?
Were they angry at one side or were they just really excited about the other side?
And I would argue there was a heck of a lot more anger at the Democratic, at the Biden side, than it was, you know, ah, Donald Trump, here he is.
I love everything he says and does and wants to do.
I'm for him.
I'm saying it was more of an anti-election than it was a pro-election.
Terry is in Peona, Colorado on our line for Democrats.
Terry, how do you say the name of your town?
Paonia.
Peonia, thank you.
Go ahead with your question for Charlie Cook.
Well, first, I do have to say I'm really worried about our government and the way they're going to handle things.
I'm afraid about the post office.
I have family who work at the post office, and I have a family who are teachers.
And with the cuts and that that they're going to be doing, it's going to affect them and my grandkids.
I live in a community that's government supported pretty much.
A lot of elderly, low-income farmers, ranchers, and that out here.
We have a lot of people who work from home and who are coming in with money.
And Terry, did you have a question for Charlie about the election results and the way people voted?
Yes, I do.
Donald Trump, just I've got a few things to say, and then I'll get to the question.
Donald Trump went against the United States of America on January 6th, and I don't know how the hell he can even be able to be a president anymore.
According to our Constitution and everything, what he has done in the past eliminates him from being president, no matter who votes for what or what.
When they cut it.
So Terry, we are running on time this segment.
Can you ask your question for Charlie?
Pretty much, how is he able to be elected, number one?
Number two, what are you going to do when you deport people back to Mexico?
Are you going to shoot them because they turn around and try to fight back?
All right, let's let Charlie respond to some of these points that you've raised here.
Yeah, I, you know, I think presidents for, presidents for as long as I can remember, longer, you know, I remember Jimmy Carter getting elected in 1976, and he wanted to make government more efficient, and that was one of his priorities.
And we all would like government to be more efficient.
But, you know, I think the odds of any single president ever making a measurable difference in the efficiency of government is really pretty unlikely, just given the size of it, the scope of it, and how little a president can actually affect things without getting Congress to pass and to get things.
So in terms of the how is he, I mean, that's what the Constitution is there.
Laws are there, and judges interpret.
And, you know, if you had, if the judicial system, if the federal judicial system judged that Donald Trump was ineligible to be president, then he wouldn't be able to.
Now, you know, you can have an opinion.
I can have an opinion.
We all can have opinions.
But the ones that count at this point, really, are those in the district courts of appeal in the Supreme Court.
Now, I think you and I both know that that's not likely to go against Trump or Haddon.
It didn't.
So it is what it is.
We can like that.
We can not like that.
But it's the courts that interpret what that law, what laws say, what they mean.
And unfortunately, we're not allowed to do that.
But we had our voice with the election.
And clearly about 49.9 or 50% said pick Trump.
And that's the way we do things.
And I don't expect to see the Supreme Court go against him on anything like this.
So, you know, I understand the caller's frustration, but we all have our own interpretations of things, but oftentimes what we think doesn't count.
It's what the Supreme Court thinks.
Jeff is in Hoboken, New Jersey on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jeff.
Hi, yeah.
Thanks for taking my call.
I agree with what your guest Charlie is saying about people being angry, but I think that the Democrats are still doing the same old wrong thing.
The Democrats, the problem with the Democrats now is you have the elitist Democrats, then you have the rank and files, and then you have the populace.
And the populace right now are the majority, and they're not getting what they want.
Kamala Harris did not give any concrete policies when she was up there.
She had celebrities.
She did all these other things, but say things like, okay, let's raise the minimum wage.
Let's give universal health care.
Let's, you know, paid home sick leave, child care.
None of that.
There was no message at all.
There was nothing at all that she gave.
Okay.
And then the other thing I'd like to know what he thinks about is the influence of AIPAC and the Israeli government that nobody's talking about.
They had a huge influence.
If you look at Trump's cabinet pitch he's picking, he's picked an all ultra-right-wing Zionist people to be on his cabinet.
Combined with the fact that Marion Adelson gave him $100 million, that had a lot to do with the outcome of this election, plus the fact that all the Muslims and brown people in this country didn't come out and vote for Kamala Harris.
I'd like to know what Charlie thinks about that.
Thank you.
Yeah, I guess the place where I would agree, I'm not sure that there's that much populism left in the Democratic Party.
There used to be a lot, but now not so much.
And populism resides mostly moreover on the Republican side.
But where I do agree with the caller is that heading into the final stretch of the campaign, it was a very close race.
And there was two, three, four percent undecided.
And when Harris was asked on the view, is there anything that President Biden did or that you would do differently?
And she said, I couldn't think of anything.
And if you look at the exit polls, it shows that of the people that made their mind up in the last week, those people broke port towards Trump pretty strongly.
And, you know, my interpretation is that there were people that were open to voting for her, but they were waiting to see.
They weren't, you know, they didn't particularly, this particular group right here, they didn't want Donald Trump again, but they didn't want another four years like they had with Biden again.
And so they were waiting to hear what would she do differently.
And when she didn't come up with that, with anything, that last two, three, four percent just sort of swung over to Trump, and that ended up being the difference.
But I mean, I do think that for a vice president, you've been handpicked by a president.
I think it's easier said than done for a vice president to break and to break off and break away from that president.
Clearly, she should have said, you know, in retrospect, I would have done X or Y or Z, do it in a nice way.
But she needed to create some kind of separation.
But that really is easier said than done when someone picked you and you've been working with them for four years.
But I think the other fallacy out there is that with the exception of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, anybody that thinks that any sitting vice president is in the 10 most powerful people in that building are delusional because vice presidents generally don't have much say at all of what goes on in the White House.
And, you know, when things go right, they don't really deserve credit and much credit.
And when things go wrong, they usually don't deserve much credit.
But anyway, that's the way it works.
But I think, you know, the caller is right that she did need to create some kind of separation.
But again, that's easier said than done.
All right.
Let's get our last caller in for now, Ron in Elizabeth, Indiana on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ron.
Mr. Cook, I would like to ask you about this recent election, just a week before the election took place, approximately 870,000 votes were stricken from the roll due to challenges to voter ability by a group called Vigilantes Incorporated.
This is a ridiculous number of people whose votes have been challenged, but here after the election, almost 79% of them have been found to be valid voters whose votes did not count.
Could you speak to how this might have affected the election?
I don't, let me ask the caller while he's still on.
Where was that?
I'm not familiar with that group.
You can find that on FSTV.com at a report called Vigilantes Incorporated.
But where in the country was that happening, according to what you've read?
It's everywhere across the country.
Vigilantes Incorporated is a civil organization that was formed after the KKK fell apart.
They used to only have like 88 to 90 members.
This year, their roll tallies have jumped to over 86,000 members.
And these votes that have been purged are in every state of the union.
But the caller, in a country with 154 million people voted, and first of all, I've never heard of this vigilante group.
I know there were efforts to purge voter rolls.
And to be honest, I think our local election officials really do a very good job.
You know, one thing that they haven't been very good at is cleaning off dead people, for example, or people that moved away.
Now, they're sitting on the rolls.
They don't vote, but, you know, but, you know, so clearly things could be purged, and some degree of purging is good if it's somebody that's dead or doesn't live in that county, you know, anymore.
But the number out of 154 million votes, that's not, you know, not much at all.
But I'm not familiar with that group.
And frankly, I'm not familiar with that website that the caller was talking about.
But, you know, there is a certain degree of purging that happens all the time and is necessary.
Now, to the extent that they, if they are purging people off of rolls that legitimately should be on the voter rolls, that's wrong.
That's wrong.
And I would hope they would get caught.
I would hope that they would get prosecuted.
But frankly, I think our local election officials, I think they do a really good job and usually with very little budget that they and certainly a thankless job.
But I think it's amazing our elections work out as well as they do given the pressure they're under and given, you know, having to deal with, in this case, 154 million votes.
But I certainly hope that many people that should have been able to vote weren't purged.
I clearly hope that.
But, you know, I would need to know more about who these people were that were purged.
And were they still alive?
Were they still living in that jurisdiction?
You know, were they registered and voting someplace else?
You know, those are all things that are legitimate questions.
We're going to have to leave it there.
Thank you very much.
Charlie Cook is the founder and contributor at the Cook Political Report.
Thank you, Charlie.
Thank you, Kimberly.
And thanks, everybody, who called in with your questions.
We have more of your phone calls coming up after the break in open forum.
You can start calling in now.
The numbers are on your screen.
And later, we're going to have a conversation with Allison Jaslow, CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
We'll discuss potential changes to the military and the Defense Department under President-elect Trump's second term.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're in open forum, ready to take your calls, starting with James in Vermont on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, James.
Hi, thank you for having me.
I've been thinking much.
I do a lot of thinking.
It's not just Donald Trump as a crook.
Everybody says the insurrection he had, he had a coup.
It killed police officers and innocent people.
And I don't want to get back into that, but I want to point out: if the Bible state which says we should read the Bible and the first of the Ten Commandments is thou shalt not kill, if all those kids are going to be reading the Bible in school, they're going to have to live up to the fact that their president was a murderer and then he broke the Ten Commandments.
And then I want to bring about another issue which hasn't been brought out less about tobacco.
The Deep South is against abortion, but the cigarettes they produce cause spontaneous abortions in women.
They make the fetus sick.
If they're so much against killing people, why are they producing a product in the deep south where Trump got elected is killing all our people, giving us emphysema, diabetes, asthma, and spontaneous abortions.
Okay.
Ray is in Syracuse, New York on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ray.
Good morning.
Sorry, Mr. Cook, but I just wanted, before I start, he must have been misspeaking.
He said when he was talking about was it a landslide or not, he said it was only 49.9 or something.
In other words, it wasn't quite half of the electorate actually caused the win, but it was over 50%, wasn't it?
Did I get that wrong?
I watched it.
So there's new, some of the votes are still being counted.
And so as we're waiting for a final tally right now, where it stands is that President-elect Trump won 76,830,069 votes, which sits at exactly 50% of the electorate, 50.0 of the votes in the election versus Kamala Harris, who got 48.4% of the votes.
So where's the missing point, whatever?
Probably for third parties or like Jill Stein or something or something like that.
So it was almost a tie is what that's telling us.
In terms of the popular vote.
Right, right.
Yeah.
It's not quite a tie.
I mean, it's about 1.6% difference, but go ahead.
Okay.
Let's go to now Joe in New York on our line for independence.
Go ahead, Joe.
Yes, good morning.
Good morning.
I did listen to Charlie Cook, whatever it is.
And it was funny because when the caller said to him, You're in D.C., he answered with, I live 500 miles outside of D.C. Caller was talking about in his head, not in his physical location.
Number one.
Number two, my comment is on J6.
You had a caller call in.
Why is Trump president?
Because, listen, J6 was a setup by the Democratic Party as far as I'm concerned.
Also, you have callers calling in saying it wasn't a landslide.
I think it was a landslide.
I mean, you get 50% of the vote is pretty serious stuff.
Also, I called in after the Kamala-Trump debate, and I told the United States that Kamala was not going to win.
She did not answer a question.
She was lost because she was unqualified.
Has nothing to do with anything else, race, gender, any of that stuff.
If you go back and look at my comments then, they're true now.
She just wasn't a good candidate.
Thank you very much for your time.
CPAN is a really good organization.
We have a text message from Marty Downers in Grove, Illinois, who says: if the election was about Biden, he was the best the party could choose.
The Democratic Party needs new leadership.
Bradley is in Northport, Michigan, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Bradley.
Yeah, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I would like to echo what Keith Oberman said on his podcast: that Biden should consider pardoning Generals Millie, Kelly, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and any person feeling they'll be prosecuted by Trump because that's what he's going to do.
If you feel threatened that he's coming, I suggest he issues pardons.
And I would, if it's thousands, it's thousands, but I wish that he wouldn't pardon his son nor himself, but everyone else that feels threatened should lead a decent life because they've served this country and done much, and they shouldn't have to worry about going to court and having these crumped-up charges.
Thank you.
James is in New Jersey on our line for independence.
Good morning, James.
Good morning, I darling.
Yes, I'm volting about intelligence and Russian intelligence as our three years old.
1956.
And one thing that's very dangerous, there's one woman like in a position without intelligence.
I had to stop giving intelligence, information to intelligent people in Washington, D.C. and stop.
It's very painful.
It's very painful.
I had to stop.
Okay.
Tate is in North Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Tate.
Yes, I'm a retired dairy farmer, 79 years old.
And Mr. Cook probably has never had a job in his life, but never had dirt on his fingernails.
But what I'm saying is, he's at the lay of the ordinary life of people in North Carolina across this nation.
But Mr. Trump, I don't like his language.
He's from New York.
I understand New Yorkers are disgusting people.
They come down here and visit.
And down here, we always say that if they go back, they're Yankees.
But if they stay, they're damn Yankees.
But anyway, I like his policies.
Yes.
I was just saying, let's keep the language clean, Tate.
Finish up your point.
Yes.
I'm of North Carolina.
I'm a dairy farmer, retired.
I'm 79 years old.
And I don't like the language that President Trump uses because he's a New Yorker.
I understand that.
They come down here and they visit.
And then people that does it.
I think we've got that idea.
Let's hear from John in Tennessee on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
Am I connected?
Yes, you are.
We're an open forum.
Go ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think I saw sitting up here on the stump in East Tennessee, really in the Appalachian Mountains, not like Vice President thinks he is in Middletown, Ohio.
But I saw in 2020 after the start of the overthrow of the United States government by the mega-Republicans and Donald Trump.
They destroyed the Republican Party.
They had one option, a one-party system.
And the United States, the voters in the United States that voted, voted for an authoritarian or a dictatorship, period.
Thank you very much.
Mike is in Bowie, Maryland on our line for independence.
Good morning, Mike.
Yes, good morning.
Excuse my voice.
My question to Sister Cook would have been the demographics of the election.
I think 71% of white Americans voted for Donald Trump.
And if that's true, there's nobody in the world, anyone else, could have won the election.
So I'm looking here at some exit polling from NBC News, and it looks like 57% of white Americans voted for Trump.
Well, either number, there's no way anyone else could have won the election.
True?
Yes, because they represent 71% of the population.
That's my point.
Yes.
And my only thing I could say, I hope it doesn't mean too much to everybody, but I voted for character.
I didn't vote for sex or race or whatever.
I just voted for character.
But that's just me.
You have a good day.
Tom is in New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Tom.
Yeah, how are you doing today?
Basically, what I want to say is it is totally frightening that Kamala Harris was even that close.
And that is what's really frightening.
And the good thing that's going to come out of this is that Michelle Obama does not have a chance.
Go, Trump, eliminate most of the government.
Thank you.
Donald is in South Bend, Indiana on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Donald.
Yes, hi.
I just want to remind the voters: okay, in this upcoming cost cutting that the Trump administration is going to do this second time around, remember in the first time he did that, he cut, and correct me if I'm wrong, he cut the group that would go into countries to mitigate these emerging viruses.
And if he does that again, we're going to have COVID, quote-unquote, COVID part two.
So just remember that, voters.
That's what you just voted for.
Thank you.
Bubba is in Memphis, Tennessee, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bubba.
Good morning.
You just had a Republican to call in a while ago and use the word down.
You had a guest that was a Democratic, wait a minute, you had a Democratic guest on your show last week that used the same word, and you didn't even say anything to him.
Democrats call in and lie about an insurrection.
There was no insurrection.
You need to be correcting these people.
Donald has not been charged with insurrection or rape, and you continuously let Democrats call in and lie.
But when a Republican is a little bit out of line, you're quick to hit that button.
But that's all I got.
Good morning.
Goodbye.
John is in Connolly Springs, North Carolina, on our line for independence.
Good morning, John.
Yes.
I just love to hear Democrats cry.
I want to make them kind of cry a little bit more.
Why is it that Joe Biden, Obama, done things that they said they couldn't do?
But even the Supreme Court has lost its power.
They do anything they want to, whether it's against it all or not against it all.
I don't care what it is.
I mean, they can get by with it.
And I wish you'd start letting people come back, Democrat, Republican, and Independent, because I'm an independent, and I've been trying to call for two months.
I'm just finally gotten through.
Out of 10, probably one independent, as I was calling.
And it's not that they call it, we just can't get through.
But the independents need to have just as much right to say something on her as everybody else.
And I just thank you for everything.
And I prayed that Trump would win, and he did.
Me and my wife prayed, and that's so good.
Thank you, ma'am.
Okay.
Wisdom is in Memphis, Tennessee, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Wisdom.
All right, this is Brother of Wisdom making kind of sense coming in.
Anyway, first, I salute you, Queen, and I hope they give you a raise.
Wow, the stuff you hear.
What I would like to say are a few things.
The first thing is when you put privilege, equality seems like oppression.
People have a problem with other people being equal and getting their God-given life.
So they rationalize and they justify any wrong that Trump do.
It's about us getting back what we had or what we have.
And those who don't have, as long as it's not another race getting it, they're all right with it.
That other race shouldn't have this because they are that race.
How dare they have what we already don't have, but what they think they do have.
And one more point I want to make, you got the 5%ers, 10%ers, and 85%ers.
The 10%ers support, they control the 85%ers.
The 5%ers have, they're poor righteous teachers, and they're ignored.
They don't have the media to pass the downs and what have you to influence people.
So those 10%ers are influencing the 85%ers, and the 85%ers are fighting amongst one another.
That's why woke is a big problem in this world.
Even though everyone wants to be woke, nobody wants to be sleep.
They have a problem with the word.
And when they use it as a weapon, the 85%ers eat it up.
Thank you for having me.
Tania is in Homestead, Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning.
Yes.
Hi, good morning.
Well, the point that I would want to make is that I voted for the first time back in 2008 when Obama came into presidency.
And ever since then, I've been voting Democrat.
Now, as I'm older now and a little more wiser, I've started to notice a shift where a lot of Democrats have been having more values or more of the things that they've been talking about has only been focused on LGBTQs, gay rights.
And now that I'm 35, I'm starting to think: well, what about other Democrats who have other values who want to hear about other topics not related to the small minority group?
And this year, when I voted, this is the first time where I was undecided.
Not only have we not had primary elections in the past two elections, we haven't had any other candidate who has been able to represent us as Democrats in the way that we want to.
And I think the shift probably happened where we now saw more Democrats vote for Republican because Kamala Harris really, in my opinion, didn't have the qualifications to be president.
And I think herself she knew this because Obama the whole time was there, you know, having speeches for her.
But regardless of that, I think that we're seeing the momentum now where with Robert F. Kennedy, who he was there having these rally with these, you know, I guess, debates on his own and having some type of momentum.
I think that now we have to probably consider whether or not having a two-party system in this country is still, you know, a valid system.
Now I think maybe we should start considering a three-party system where there's other values that are being spoken about because there's too much radicalism in the left and too much in the right.
Okay.
Tom is in Marion, Illinois on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Tom.
Yeah, good morning.
How are you?
Doing well, thank you.
Honey, I just got one or two comments.
Can you just turn down the volume on your TV and then you can go ahead?
Oh, I'm sorry.
That better?
Yes, thank you.
Okay.
I just got one or two comments.
I'm an Air Force veteran in the Vietnam era, and I swear, I never thought I'd ever say today that we're fighting communism in the United States, but it is so prevalent and on point.
Everywhere you look, it's communist, communist, communist wanting to take our country over.
So I got one little statement.
It goes back to the good old days.
America, love it or leave it.
Okay.
Tony Ann is in West Babylon, New York, and on our line for independence.
Good morning, Tony Ann.
Hi, good morning.
I'm sorry.
I'm a little fired up today because I'm hearing people say that Kamala Harris is not qualified.
She's the only one that has ran in three parts of government, judicial, executive, and legislative branch.
But a reality TV host has more qualifications.
Explain that to me.
Okay.
Am I better off than I was four years ago?
Yes, I am.
I had my student loan forgiven as a teacher.
Okay.
$64,000 relieved off of my back.
I can contribute to the economy.
Okay.
What the Republicans do have is a right-wing ecosystem that has been brainwashing people.
I see it when I go to my own father's house.
Okay, they give part of the story.
Everything that Trump does is great.
And everything that Biden-Harris administration did is horrible.
It's like a brainwashing system.
That's what they have on their side.
Okay, look at the people that they're putting in government that he's picking for his cabinet with all sexual abuse.
Okay, a week before the election, I'm watching this man who supposedly has good qualifications and he's performing disgusting things with a micro microphone, okay?
Which I'm not a lot of people know if I can say that, and dancing around for 40 minutes.
Didn't want to answer questions.
A big buffoon.
That's what we want to have in our as a president.
We're a laughing stock from the world.
Okay, that's why.
We're going to go to Rodney in Louisiana on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Rodney.
Yeah, good morning.
I have a question for the black Trump supporters.
Has any black person asked Elon Musk how does he really feel about black people?
And everybody knows the history of white South Africans in South Africa.
Do any black people in America trust Elon Musk to have their best interests?
I don't think so.
And where did he get his money?
Where did Elon Musk get his money?
He's a white South African.
Isn't that kind of ironic that one of the richest persons in the world is a white man from Africa?
It's just so strange to me.
Thank you.
All right, that's all the time that we have for open forum.
Thanks to everybody who called in.
Coming up, we're going to have a conversation with Allison Jaslow, who's CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, to talk about President-elect Trump's second term and what that's going to mean for the military and the Defense Department.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're joined now by Allison Jaslow, who is the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Welcome to Washington Journal.
Thank you for having me.
Can you tell us a little bit about your organization and how you're funded?
Sure.
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or IAVA, is the leading voice of the post-9-11 generation of veterans.
We are a membership organization that represents more than 425,000 members and supporters nationwide, and we are a 501c3 nonprofit.
And then President-elect Trump says that he is poised to basically bring quite a few changes to the Department of Defense, from Detroiting troops domestically to banning transgender people from openly serving in the military.
What are some of the potential changes that you've heard about thus far that has caught the attention of your organization?
Well, I think the unfortunate part about the phase that we're in right now is there's a lot of hypotheticals and not a lot to react to.
I do think that many people believe that the transgender ban will take place again in the military, which is unfortunate.
Outside of that, you know, he's elevated a Secretary of Defense or at least nominated somebody to be a Secretary of Defense who has unfortunately outdated views about women in the military as well.
But a lot remains to be seen as, you know, that the Trump administration hasn't actually been installed yet.
Trump confirmed on Monday that he plans to declare a national emergency and deploy the military to carry out mass deportations.
Do you believe that this is an appropriate use of the military on the home front?
Well, I think something that like your viewers, but honestly the entire United States should get more attention and information on is the fact that the National Guard has been deployed to the southern border for many years now.
You know, at this point, the way in which we use our military, I think, should get more attention.
And I'm glad that we're having this national conversation around the ways in which we not only deploy our military here at home, but also how our military is deployed abroad.
I think most of your viewers probably aren't aware of the fact that we have troops in harm's way in Iraq, in Syria right now.
They're deployed under outdated authorizations of military force that were passed in 2001 and 2002 to authorize the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
And big picture, I think not only myself, but our members want to have a national conversation about how and when we deploy our men and women who are in uniform, both not just abroad, but also here at home.
And what do you think it would do to military personnel, to morale in particular, if these actions that President-elect Trump is talking about were actually carried out?
Well, I think there are a couple of things that you need to maintain in perspective.
One, anything that might be an unlawful order, members of the military, I have a lot of faith in, that they won't actually execute anything that is a hypothetical, unlawful order that might come their way.
So that's the first thing.
Secondly, I think what we should think about as a country and what especially United States senators need to think about in confirmations is we have an all-volunteer force.
And as long as we fight our wars with an all-volunteer force and that is the will of the people in America, we need to think about who is not only just commander-in-chief, but overseeing the policies in the military, because we want to make sure that raising your hand and pledging not only an oath to the Constitution, but to defend our nation and to be willing to go into harm's way to defend our country and our national security,
we want every able-bodied American who is willing and qualified to be able to do that.
And the policies that we put in place from the top down at the Defense Department need to ensure that the most amount of Americans who are able to serve our country will want to serve our country.
And so, again, big picture.
This is not about like any one person's ideology.
It's about the health and readiness of our all-volunteer force, not just now, but also into the future.
Pete Hegseth is President-elect Trump's choice for leading the Pentagon.
And some of his experience includes being a Fox News channel host, an Army National Guard veteran, as well as a recipient of the Bronze Star.
Do you think that this experience is enough to lead the Department of Defense?
So I'd say a couple of things.
I think the fact that he's bringing lived experience from being not just in the military, I think National Guard experience is valuable experience for him to bring into the job.
I think the fact that he's had multiple deployments is important experience to bring to the job.
That said, it is an enormous agency.
It has the largest budget of any other agency in the federal government, a workforce of around 3 million employees, which includes not just uniformed service members, but also federal government workers.
And I think, like, again, the United States Senate, who is going to confirm the next administration's nominees for not just the Defense Department, but all agencies, need to think about whether he has the chops to actually step into that role, not just because he's a member of the veteran or a former member of the military, but also the ability to run a large agency of that size.
And also, like, I think policymaking experience would be valuable in that role too.
And you've seen many members of the military who have also transitioned, become members of Congress, or had senior Pentagon roles before they've stepped into that role, which is very, very different than what Pete Hegset brings to the role.
He has also, as you mentioned earlier, made some comments about women in the military.
And here is him, you know, expanding on that during an appearance on the Sean Ryan show earlier this month.
Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated and complication in combat means casualties are worse.
And when you actually go into the hood, again, and I, you know, I got response.
I've got 99% positive response to this, a few, a little bit of pushback.
But when you actually break down what they did in the studies to open the door for women in combat, I mean, they just ignored them.
So the Marine Corps was the only service that actually tried to fight back and say, no, obviously I'm exempting special operations, which thus far has held the line fairly well.
Because if they were lowering the standard to become a Navy SEAL, just to let women inside the Navy SEALs, that's going to change the capabilities and ethos of the Navy SEALs, except for a very small example of some female super soldier who's capable of doing it.
But because of how Washington works, they're going to change the standards.
They're going to push for quotas.
We have numerous quotes in the book of, no, no, these standards aren't changing.
They're just evolving.
They're just evolving to meet the needs of today.
They're not getting tougher, right?
They're not getting that tougher.
No.
So they're getting lower.
Take someone like Millie.
I mean, he was calling down to individual units to make sure they had female company commanders after they graduated from ranger school.
Like, what's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs doing pushing company command slots for it's all an agenda.
It's all to say, oh, we have this first or we have this, that.
So that's proliferated everywhere.
The reason women started getting in combat is because of forward support companies and they were, you know, we were integrating a lot of the rear echelon activities into BCT's brigade combat teams that were now deploying forward as an entity.
And so you had women truck drivers or fuel or mechanics on these convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And then they'd be ambushed or hit by IEDs and suddenly now you have women in combat.
That's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield.
That's different than intentionally saying we're going to put women into combat roles so they will do the combat jobs of men, knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit.
And if you say you haven't, you're a liar because everybody knows between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different.
Allison, what is your response to his view that the standards have been lowered?
Well, I think first and foremost, it's worth noting that I actually saw combat before Pete Hagfeth did.
He correctly noted that in our most recent wars, combat found women.
So it is honestly very disappointing to hear from a contemporary of mine.
Pete Hesfeth is, I think, two years older than me.
The fact that he can't evolve his viewpoint to understand the reality of what the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that he fought in entailed is, honestly, it's very discouraging because it's almost like he's turning a blind eye to what the battlefield that we are currently fighting on and did fight on over the last 20 years brought towards women.
And I think that, You know, for better or worse, like there are some women who I've served alongside of who are way more bad, you know, tougher than I am.
There are women who are weaker than I am, but there are also men who are tougher than I am and men who are weaker than I am.
And so I think, honestly, understanding, again, if you've served in the last 20 years in our United States military, like there are women who have proven over and over again to meet the demands of not only our current warfare and the way that we are waging like battle and also fighting counterterrorism still today abroad, but also women who are graduating from Ranger School.
Again, I don't know how much your viewers know about the United States military, but Ranger School has about a 50% failure rate.
So the women who are graduating ranger school are objectively mentally and physically tougher than many men in the United States military.
And I think like maintaining that perspective is very important as this debate continues.
We are going to be taking your calls for Allison Jaslow, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans on 202-748-8001.
Independents at 202-748-8002.
We also have a special line for active military and veterans.
You can call in at 202-748-8003.
And now, Allison, I do want to ask about some of the controversial stories that have been coming out, particularly in relation to, in relation to the allegations of sexual abuse that Hegseth is facing.
Given that this is an issue, how big of a problem do you think this is going to be for his confirmation?
I definitely think it's concerning, you know, especially as we still are trying to tackle the issue of military sexual assault in the United States military right now.
But honestly, I think the most concerning thing about Pete Hegseth's background is that he seemingly thinks war crimes are permissible.
He lobbied the former president, who's now the president-elect, to get convicted war criminals pardoned.
And to me, that is the most disqualifying factor of his background as he seeks to be the Secretary of Defense.
There's an article in Time magazine about this Pete Hegseth's role in Trump's controversial pardons of men accused of war crimes.
Hegseth, the military veteran, staunch defender of Trump's America First Agenda, and an outspoken critic of what he calls the military's woke culture, has built a career around challenging the military establishment.
He held an influential role in advocating for Trump to intervene on behalf of service members in three cases involving war crimes accusations in 2019, cases that divided the military and ignited fierce debates over the limits of executive power and military accountability.
We have question from JD Redding on Twitter who says, Hexa's advocacy for pardons for service members accused of war crimes has been controversial.
How do you see this affecting military discipline and the legal framework within the military?
I mean, I would just double down on what I said just a minute ago, that if we make a choice as a country or if the United States Senate does to elevate somebody as Secretary of Defense who seemingly thinks war crimes are permissible,
that has cascading impacts on how we not only wage war going forward, but like one of the reasons why we have those guardrails is we want to make sure that other countries have a certain level of,
you know, war is complicated and even talking about character around waging war is complicated, but we want to make sure that our U.S. service members aren't murdered in war, that they aren't, you know, mistreated.
I mean, you saw during our most recent wars a lot of, you know, conversation around torture and what that means.
And like, again, I can't control and Pete Hedseth can't control what our adversaries might do to U.S. servicemen and women, but the standards with which we hold ourselves to, and then also hold our own members of the military to account, is important when it comes to when we want to hold our adversaries to account.
And so we can't be lowering our own standards, especially at the level of Secretary of Defense, if we want to be able to hold our adversaries to account when they might cross the line when it relates to the men and women who are serving our nation and who are deployed in harm's way right now to defend our country.
The Wall Street Journal has an article reporting on a Trump draft executive order that would create a board to purge general saying that the Trump transition team is considering a draft executive order that would establish a warrior board of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership.
If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast track the removal of generals and admirals found to be, quote, lacking in requisite leadership qualities, according to a draft of the order reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the President-elect's past vow to fire quote-unquote woke generals, referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.
What types of programs are at issue here?
And do you think that they have been implemented in a way that is a detriment to military readiness?
So I guess the first thing that is worthwhile for your viewers to know, which those who are military veterans would already know this, but once you reach the rank of, you know, general, you are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
So they are, for lack of a better way to describe it, political appointees.
And so whatever construct the president-elect is thinking about reviewing and or, you know, potentially firing some of his generals, because he will be the commander-in-chief at that point, or generals who are already serving, like it's within his right to be able to, you know, change leadership within the United States military.
You know, that said, like, I think It would be a little bit destabilizing to the military if there was a ton of house cleaned.
It's a very large bureaucracy, and the military itself, I think, benefits from having a lot of stability within the institution because that allows you to deal with a lot of instability elsewhere in the world.
And so, you know, if I was the commander-in-chief or if I was advising the commander-in-chief, like, I wouldn't want to create too much instability within the military itself because that could disrupt the ability for the military to also then deal with instability elsewhere in the world.
Let's go to your calls.
David is in California on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, David.
Yes, hello.
Good morning.
Hello, Allison.
I have a few questions.
The first is: what is the number of military bases outside of the United States, and how many of them do you really believe are necessary?
David, I apologize, but I don't have those facts right in front of me.
But I do think that it's helpful to have U.S. troops who aren't just here at home, but pre-positioned elsewhere in the globe if we need to be able to rapidly deploy them.
Okay, so I'm shocked a person in your position doesn't know that, first of all.
But the number is between 750 and 800.
Now, if you thought that there was 750 to 800, how many of those do you really think are necessary or could be consolidated?
Allison, do you feel like any of those bases could be consolidated or that there needs to be a reduction in U.S. presence abroad or even domestically?
Currently, I wouldn't say so.
Okay.
Let's go to Ted in Warrington, Oregon on our line for military, active duty military.
Good morning, Ted.
Good morning.
I was active duty in the U.S. Air Force Red Horse Civil Engineers for six years, two months, 12 days, and a wake-up from 78 until 85.
And I was really wondering why people cannot understand how the military really works.
The active duty, that's federally funded money.
You know that, and I know that.
You get into the Army Reserve, the Air Force Reserve, the Naval Reserve, that also is federal money.
When you get into the National Guard and the Air National Guard, that is state money.
And back in my day, we would deal with the Air Force Reserve.
We would deal with the Air National Guard at times.
And what we found is active duty guns, you can't take a person two days a month, two weeks a year, and expect them to think like we did.
It doesn't work.
I mean, I was on many deployments.
So, Ted, what is your question for Allison?
My question is: why do people not understand that all bases are needed, all personnel are needed, and that is why, in this day and age, there are military contractors.
In my day, there were no military contractors.
We were able to do it all.
I want to know the change.
Thank you very much.
Go ahead, Allison.
I don't know that I have a lot to offer there except for that I can relate to the feeling of disconnect between the average American and our United States military and an understanding of how and where we're waging our wars currently.
And that's going to be work that I will do personally but also our organization to bridge the military civilian divide, not just in the present day but going forward.
Brad is in International Falls, Minnesota on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Brad.
Well, good morning.
Kind of interesting coming from a lady that would probably hardly get out of a wet paper bag.
In New York on our line for independence.
Good morning, Robin.
Good morning.
First, I want to thank this woman for her service.
I have a little understanding.
I was a former volunteer.
I'm a former volunteer firefighter, basic exterior certification with hazmat.
And I'm against war, but I think we should have 100% draft.
Everybody should serve in whatever capacity that they can.
And the comments about males being superior at physical strength and all that, at the end of the day, athletes are, there's a small difference until we introduce steroids.
Even in IQ, they used to say that women couldn't have as high an IQ because men had bigger heads, but it turns out that's fatty insulation.
So unless we're just talking about literal brute force with no thinking, there's not much difference.
And women can withstand pain better because of childbirth.
So those are my comments and my thoughts.
Any response to that, Allison?
I have nothing.
Okay.
Mary is in Nevada on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Mary.
Good morning.
I'm just tuning in.
And I'm concerned about more than just the Defense Department.
I'm concerned about all of our major institutions.
The nominees are all unqualified.
They aren't being vetted by the FBI.
We are watching Afghanistan.
There was some conversation earlier programs.
There's plenty of blame to go around there, okay?
There's no perfect way to leave a war zone.
And Donald Trump is the one who negotiated a surrender with the Taliban.
So the stage was already set.
He breaks things.
He threw the Kurds under the bus.
He's going to throw Ukraine under the bus.
And we have an obligation to help defend Ukraine.
Who was attacked by Putin?
Who is our enemy?
We have what they are doing, money.
There's a big grift going on.
Trump is a grifter, and it's trickled down economically.
Mary, did you have a question for Allison?
No, no questions, just a lot of comments.
Thank you.
Okay.
We do have a question coming from Kevin on X related to women in the military saying the physical fitness standards are different and why is that?
And I'll point to an Associated Press article back from 2022 with the headline, Army eases fitness test standards for women and older troops saying this was back in March of 2022.
After three years of complaints and debates, the Army has scrapped its move to have a physical fitness test that is gender and age neutral and will now allow women and older soldiers to pass while meeting some reduced standards.
So Kevin wants to know why these standards are different.
Well, I don't know if Kevin has served himself, but I think the important thing to maintain in perspective is there's two things being discussed here.
One, whether men and women have the same physical standards to just serve in the military altogether, or whether women are capable of being in combat.
And especially, as I mentioned beforehand, the women who are not just participating in, but also passing Ranger school, are not only meeting the same standards as men, but are also objectively much tougher both mentally and physically than many other men who are serving.
And so I think it is important to note that women who are capable of serving in combat, many women like myself who have also been in combat, whether we wanted to or not, you know, I think it is the important factor to sort of maintain in perspective here and not as much what sort of you know particular standards are being managing for the entire force.
We have a question from Joan in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota who asks, why do you think the different branches no longer fill their quotas for enlisting new soldiers?
Well, I actually think you bring up a very good point that also dovetails with our conversation around the next Secretary of Defense.
We are undergoing a recruitment crisis right now.
And if, again, we want to wage our wars with an all-volunteer force, we need to make sure that every able-bodied American who's willing and qualified wants to step up, raise their hand, pledge an oath to the Constitution, and also serve their country in uniform.
And so, you know, right now, I can't speak as to why, especially post-pandemic, the military is struggling to recruit and fill all the slots that it feels it needs to maintain a healthy all-volunteer force.
But I do think as we continue to tackle that problem, we need to make sure that all of the policies that we are implementing for the all-volunteer military are supporting making sure that every able-bodied American who wants to serve and can serve and is qualified to serve is willing to step up and do so.
A couple more comments and a question related to women in the military.
This one from Robert in Price, Utah.
History is full of examples of women warriors being effective in combat.
History is also full of examples of ineffective leadership provided by men.
Ineffective leadership is the greatest danger to a military force, period.
And then on X, MLB says women are allowed into the Navy SEALs.
To date, only one woman has passed the rigorous training, but she chose to serve in a different capacity.
Anything else to add on this, Allison?
I would just agree with the first viewer who you referenced there that leadership is most consequential to making sure that we have a healthy military, an ethical military, to make sure that we have a military where people want to continue to serve.
And whether it's a man or a woman, I do think having high-quality leaders who we elevate, not just in political appointee roles like the Secretary of Defense, but also our flag officers or generals and admirals.
And so I would agree with him that no matter who we're elevating, like if they're not a good leader, that has cascading effects on our entire all-volunteer force.
Steve is in Racine, Wisconsin, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Stephen.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Just a quick question.
What are your thoughts on the administration's attempt previously to federalize the National Guard?
And do you think that would have a negative or positive effect?
Thank you.
I guess a point of clarification, the National Guard has been federalized at different points in our history, both to provide roles here at home for supports for natural disasters or the pandemic, also on the southern border.
But the National Guard has also deployed abroad as well.
When I first deployed almost 20 years ago, the unit that my unit replaced was a National Guard unit.
And so I think it's worthwhile for the viewers of this program to understand that the National Guard has been federalized at points over and over again when the federal government has needed it.
And I think it's not a bad practice, but the American public should also understand how and when the National Guard is federalized, but almost no different than the American public should understand how and when our active duty military or our reserves are deployed into harm's way.
Kate is in California on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Kate.
Good morning, Allison.
I was interested in addressing the administration issue, incoming administration issue, where they're saying they're going to be cutting the budget for the military.
And wouldn't there be a cost benefit in cutting the number of contractors who are paid quite a bit of a difference than active service members across the world?
And what is that price difference between active service member and contractors?
Thank you.
Well, Kate, I think it's important to maintain perspective on the fact that this is not a black and white issue.
I don't think any administration can view the complexity of our global national security issues as a black and white issue.
And so when considering any cuts, I think we need to not think about the cuts themselves, but what is the impact of those cuts?
Is it just a cost savings or could it actually cause a national security crisis or a national security concern or a vulnerability?
And I think we need to have a conversation that includes not just price tags, but also the impact of whatever expenditures that lawmakers, the Department of Defense, or whoever else is recommending.
Russell is in South Carolina and is on our line for active duty military folks.
Good morning, Russell.
I actually, I am a veteran, an Air Force veteran.
And my question for the guest is the Tuskegee Airmen were my first example of DEI.
So when you look at General Brown being attacked by the president-elect and the record that the Tuskegee Airmen left behind when they started escorting the B-29, a lot of people say that they may actually be very instrumental in America winning the air campaign during World War II.
And the 761st all-Negro tank battalion of General Patton were also instrumental in sealing the Battle of the Bulge.
So when they start attacking military DEI, aren't they really attacking America's ability to be ready for war?
And that's my question for the guests.
Well, I'll repeat myself that I believe that as long as we're a nation who wants to fight its wars with an all-volunteer force, we have to think about what most benefits the health of that all-volunteer force and also building a culture in that all-volunteer force that makes it most appealing for any able-bodied American to want to step up and serve.
To your point about C.Q. Brown, I think he is an incredible leader.
I think he's the cool head that we need in the times that we're living in.
I have had an opportunity to interact with him personally a number of times, and I have the utmost respect for him, excuse me.
And my hope is that we maintain that continuity in the chair of the Joint Chiefs.
Melissa is in Bloomfield, Iowa, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Melissa.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Quick, some questions for you there, Ms. Jeslo.
You say there's really no difference between men and women, and they should both be in combat, and this, that, and the other.
Well, there is a lot of physicalities that are different between men and women.
Now, you're speaking to somebody that has been in the military.
I've been through basic training the whole nine yards.
There is a big difference when it goes through physicalities through men and women in the military.
The requirements for women, for physical requirements for women in basic training, are different than they are for men.
Men have to do pull-ups, women do bent arm hangs.
You know, the runs are not as long.
The packs are not as heavy.
There is a difference because there is a difference between men and women physically.
Now, yes, there might be one woman out of 100,000 that can go through SEALs training, regular SEALs training, or go through the old-fashioned Ranger school and pass.
Not everybody has built the same.
Now, as far as combat goes, yes, there's an issue because when you're there with your brother and a brother, that's what you're fighting next to is your brother.
But when you have your sister that's next to you, you're double worried.
You're more worried about your sister getting hurt than you are worried about yourself getting hurt or yourself handling what needs to be done.
You know this if you were in combat.
And another question: what was your MOS when you were in the military?
I'd really like to know what your MOS was.
Was it, were you a truck driver?
I'm waiting for your response on your MOS.
And you can go ahead, Allison, and respond to whichever of those points you'd like to start with.
Sure.
So I didn't have an MOS because I served as an officer.
I went to school on an ROTC scholarship.
My freshman year was when I was, it was the fall of 2000.
So I wanted to serve my country before even 9-11 happened.
Of course, my sophomore year, the trajectory of my service changed fundamentally.
When I deployed almost 20 years ago today, the day after Thanksgiving in 2004, I became a platoon leader of a platoon that had a mission that was confined to a base.
But within 60 days, our mission was contracted largely.
There was one part that wasn't.
And most of my platoon became a force protection platoon.
So my platoon was in charge of both base security.
So if you can envision a watchtower with two soldiers in it, but we were also a convoy security platoon or otherwise called a gun truck platoon.
My soldiers' jobs when we went on convoys was to protect a convoy as it went from base to base throughout Iraq.
We experienced small arms fire.
Convoys that I was on regularly were hit by convoy, excuse me, improvised explosive devices or roadside bombs.
And, you know, to her point, like women come in all shapes and sizes, but I will tell you, when we experienced that change of mission, I had some of my women soldiers impress the hell out of me.
And also, some of my male soldiers get really intimidated by that change of mission.
And so I think we need to maintain in perspective that there are, again, I will point to Ranger School, there are women who are objectively mentally and physically tougher than many other men who are even serving in the military.
And it's very much true.
And I have my own witness of this, that there are women who have exceeded expectations in combat, in warm time.
And I think, honestly, it is sad that we are having this conversation today because we have made so many advances over the last 20 years.
Women are serving and leading in the combat arms, in the infantry.
And honestly, I feel very sad for their male soldiers right now who probably have a ton of respect for them that they're watching this play out publicly right now.
We should all be very sad that this is even a debate that we're still having today.
Doe is in Boone, North Carolina on our line for independence.
Good morning, Doe.
Hey, y'all.
Thanks for taking my call.
And thank you, Ms. Jaslow, for your service.
Firstly, I wanted to touch on a couple of things.
Mostly, I think you'll find it a little difficult to convince some of us to join up the military when you've got a guy in charge of the military that can't or isn't legally supposed to have guns being a convicted felon.
He's, you know, also not supposed to be voting.
It's wild that this guy's in charge of all of our weaponry and everything.
And he's not held to those same standards.
You're talking about the differences in standards between men and women.
But really, like, he's not even held to the same fortitude standards of the people in service that he's ahead over.
And I just want to hear your thoughts on that.
I mean, I guess the most important thing to note here is that the American public in this democracy that we live in has made a decision to, you know, elect its next president.
And I think what we have to reckon with our fellow Americans is the choices that we're making.
And I think that that's honestly something as a people that we need to war, you know, and wrestle out with each other versus my specific opinion.
Liam is in Fayetteville, North Carolina on our line for military, active duty military and veterans.
Good morning, Liam.
Good morning, Kimberly, and good morning, Allison.
Retired military army, Lieutenant Colonel Special Forces.
And I think I've seen Kimberly before in our crossing in service in the military.
I want to say that in terms of when the gentleman asked about how many bases we were and how they needed to be consolidated, Some of my last jobs was teaching at the CASQ level and command general and staff college level.
I had interactions with training at the National Training Center, probably got you certified to go to war.
Now, the thing is, is that I wanted to say is that our position is to position our bases as far forward as possible.
So if there's anything that needs to threaten America, we don't have to fight in the streets of the United States of America.
We have forces that are pre-positioned, like Allison said, so we can respond quickly to fill those gaps and protect us here at home.
Now, in terms of why we don't have a lot of people joining the military, I think it's an education problem as well as physical fitness.
So Liam, we're just in the out of time for the segment.
I want to let Allison respond to some of your points before we have to end.