Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live.
Then documentary producer and director Martin Smith discusses his recent PBS frontline film, China, the U.S., and the Rise of Xi Jinping.
Also, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Ed Whelan discusses President-elect Donald Trump potentially using recess appointments to fill his cabinet and other key administration positions.
Washington Journal starts now.
Good morning.
It's Tuesday, November 2024.
A three-hour Washington Journal is ahead.
We begin this morning on the role of scientists in public policy debates.
A new report shows Americans split on whether they believe scientists should take an active role in public policy debates or whether they should focus on establishing facts and staying out of the policy realm.
So this morning, we want to know what you think about scientists making public policy decisions.
Phone lines split as usual by political party.
Democrats, it's 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Special line this morning for scientists.
202-748-8003 is that number.
Or if you want to text us, you can also dial in at 202-748-8003.
Please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X.
It's at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Tuesday morning to you.
There's about 175,000 scientists who work for the federal government.
That's a 34% increase since just 2005.
We're asking this morning, how involved should scientists be in creating public policy?
You can go ahead and start dialing in now.
The reason we're having this conversation, a recent Pew Research report, here's the headline, public trust in scientists and views on their role in policymaking.
The New York Times had a wrap-up of what that report found.
They write, for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the public's trust in scientists has improved.
That's according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
About 76% of Americans say that they have confidence that scientists act in the public's best interest, a modest but significant improvement from last year, but about 10 points lower than the figure before the pandemic.
This year's uptick was largely driven, they write, by a slight increase in trust among Republicans, a group that also experienced the steepest drop in confidence during the pandemic.
Still, the roughly 9,500 Americans surveyed were divided over whether scientists should play a role in policy decisions.
The story goes on to say about half of the survey respondents said experts should take an active role in policy debates about scientific issues like childhood vaccines and climate change, while the other half said that they should focus instead on establishing sound scientific facts.
That's the wrap-up from the New York Times.
We'll take you more through that Pew Research report, but we're simply asking this morning, how involved should scientists be in creating public policy?
Again, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, and that special line for scientists.
This discussion, also part of a recent conversation on our QA program, former NIH Director Francis Collins was on that program.
He was talking about his book on wisdom, on truth, science, faith, and trust.
He talked about the role of scientists in a conversation that started about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being appointed to be the head of the Health and Human Services Administration in the next Trump administration.
Dr. Collins, do you see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His efforts with regard to vaccines as dangerous?
Yes, I do.
He is capable of putting forward information that's demonstrably false, beginning with the idea that vaccines have something to do with autism, which is one of the most clearly debunked claims that has ever been made about a connection between a medical procedure and an outcome.
He continues to cast doubt on vaccines for childhood illnesses, which, if more and more people start to believe those, we're going to see children start to die of measles and whooping cough and other conditions that we had pretty much eliminated on the basis of totally falsified estimates of what the risks are of those vaccines.
Yeah, RFK Jr., for whatever reason, has identified himself with a set of ideas that are clearly not compatible with truth and yet sound compelling because he can quote a lot of data, mostly from second or third rate journals that have been pretty much disqualified and debunked, and people tend to go along because we are right now a society that is distrustful of everything.
And we're particularly distrustful of expertise if it happens to be something that looks like an elite.
And you know what?
If you want information about your health, don't you want it from somebody who's studied that issue for 15 or 20 years, who has an appropriate degree, understands all of the nuances of the biology and the medicine.
But somehow, these days, those are suspicious people.
And the people who just posted something on the internet, or RFK Jr. are seen as somehow being the ones you can rely on.
America, what happened to us?
How do we forget the principles of how we maintain a good repertory of established facts and depend on those and don't begin to throw those out the window when suddenly it's a fact we don't like or it makes us uncomfortable.
Truth doesn't care how you feel about it.
It's just truth.
Former NIH director Francis Collins, that was on our QA program.
You can watch that program in its entirety on our website at cspan.org.
By the way, RFK, in his own words, talking about what he would do at HHS, he was in an interview with NBC News just after the election.
This was some of his comments.
Well, he's been very specific in what he said.
He wants me to do three things.
One, clean up the corruption at the agencies, particularly the conflicts of interest that have turned those agencies into captive agencies for the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry, the other industries that they're supposed to be regulating.
Number two, to return those agencies to the gold standard science, the empirically based, evidence-based medicine that they were famous for when I was a kid.
And number three, to make America healthy again, to end the chronic disease epidemic.
And President Trump has told me that he wants to see measurable, concrete results within two years in terms of a measurable diminishment in chronic disease among America's kids.
That was RFK Jr. earlier this month, taking your phone calls this morning, asking you simply how involved should scientists be in creating public policy.
And again, holding aside that special line for scientists, there are about 175,000 scientists who work for the federal government.
Whether you're inside or outside the federal government, you're welcome to call in on that line.
Otherwise, phone lines split as usual by political party.
We're going to start on the independent line out of Eaton, Ohio.
Rod's up first this morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
Morning.
I'm not sure how involved they should be if they're not qualified, but it's hard to determine how qualified someone is, just like the fellow talking earlier on the clip there about, well, they've got a PhD or whatever.
That doesn't mean anything, really.
It's like going to a lawyer or a doctor.
They have a certificate there.
I mean, you don't know how well they did and what they know.
But the way things are now, you really have to do your own research.
I mean, the great thing about the internet is you can look at all the clinical studies and everything, which they tell you anyway.
We had a clinical study for this.
We had this.
We had that.
Well, you can get on the internet and pull up all these studies and just make a decision yourself on whether it be an individual drug or a course of treatment or a vaccine, because really, that's all they're telling you anyway.
And depending on who you're listening to or what you're watching, they're going to pull out the data from a particular study or a handful of studies to support their side.
So, Rod, let me ask you: this is the way they put it in that Pew Research report.
How would you describe your level of trust in scientists in general?
Would you say you have a fair amount, a great deal, amount of trust, or not too much?
I have great faith and your average scientist that works.
See, this world is split between in the old days, it was theory.
You had great theoretical scientists, and then the theory would trickle down to the applied engineers and applied scientists.
That's how I'm talking to you on a cell phone today, things like that.
It doesn't work that way anymore.
Now, you have people that are hidden, a lot of great people, a lot of great scientists, a lot of great inventors that'll never see the light of day.
They're keeping the world together.
It's when things pop up like COVID or whatever, when there's nothing going on huge, then they'll dig up, you know, like every day you say this, that about your health.
But I have great faith in the average scientist, the average engineer in this country that developed things that, you know, well, I'm going to go stay out of here and keep going on about that.
But anyway, Rod, you're butting your head up against a brick wall every step of the way because it's all politics, politics, politics.
I appreciate the call from Eaton, Ohio.
Let me just show viewers, visual learners for the numbers on trust in scientists before COVID.
Back in January of 2019, it was about 86% of the country that said they had a fair amount or a great deal of trust in the scientific community during COVID.
That dropped as low as 73% back in October of last year.
This year, it's rebounded to some 76% saying they have a fair amount or a great deal of trust in scientists, but still 23% of the country saying they don't have too much or none at all trust in scientists.
That compares to just 13% pre-COVID.
This is Gregory in Sherman Oaks, California.
Democrat, good morning.
Hello.
The question is: should scientists be involved in public policy?
And of course they should be for the same reason that we want people who know stuff being involved in public policy.
The question isn't here.
The question isn't should it seem to be about incompetence.
And we live in a time with huge problems that can only be figured out and dealt with with the help of scientists and that most existential issue of all climate destruction and global heating.
If we listen, the scientists are pretty darn consistent when they talk about the dangers in continuing to fill the atmosphere.
Gregory, are you still with us?
Gregory, one more try.
I think you're still on the line.
No?
Then we will go to William in Tucson, Arizona.
Republican, William, go ahead.
Yes, good morning, John.
Listen, you know, I think it's kind of rich sometimes because we as Americans, we quickly forget things.
I remember it was high school biology, and I remember hearing the teacher tell us all that global freezing was coming back, the ice age was returning, and that in the future that Wisconsin and Minnesota would be completely uninhabitable because it'd be just too cold for large numbers of people to live there.
Then in year 2000, I heard Al Gore tell us all that within a few years that the oceans were going to rise and Florida was going to disappear.
I think that one of the last real scientists that we had that people took seriously was a fellow named Jacques Cousteau.
And I used to love his series.
You know, he used to explain to us, but I know that generally we're trash tossers.
You know, we've got an ocean of trash out there that we could take better care of the oceans.
But I think in reality, we're not in control of the heating of the earth.
I think that that's outside our ball here that we live in.
And I think there are just some things we have to outrun.
You know, we have these trouble with hurricanes on the coast.
People still build their homes and stuff right out there on the coastline where they're going to be subject to these big winds.
Move them in.
You know, I don't understand why people necessarily put themselves in harm's way against nature.
William.
That's all I have to say.
That's William in Tucson, Arizona.
Again, the crux of this question is how involved should scientists be in creating public policy?
Let me show this chart from that recent Pew Research report.
People were asked about what roles scientists should play in public policy debate.
The two options were that they should take an active role in public policy debates about scientific issues, or they should focus on establishing sound scientific facts and stay out of the policy debates, the policy prescription part.
51% say that scientists should take an active role in public policy debates.
48% say they should focus on establishing sound scientific facts but stay out of the policy debates.
That latter answer was much more often given by Republicans, 64% answering that among Republicans who were asked this question.
Among Democrats who were asked this question, 67% say that scientists should take an active role in public policy debates about scientific issues.
Again, this is all in this Pew Research report, and it was the impetus for this question today.
So we're asking you, how involved should scientists be in creating public policy?
William in Rocky Ridge, Missouri, Independent.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
So I think it's worth mentioning that it's important that scientists are involved, and it's also important that scientists with opposing opinions are involved.
I think we can all agree throughout COVID there was this huge split and the scientists that didn't agree with the quote established narrative were shut down.
There was no discourse.
There was no opposing opinions allowed.
Was the only scientists that were allowed to present their opinions were the ones that agreed with the politicians.
And I think that is the critical factor.
It's not should they be involved, it's which ones should be involved.
And the answer is all of them, and we should listen to all the scientists.
And like the previous caller mentioned earlier, you know, all the information in the world is available on the internet, and a good number of people are educated and intelligent enough to formulate their own opinions.
And a lot of scientists who formulated opinions were shut down.
So I think that's something that's very important to remember.
I do think they should be involved, but I think they should be involved in a secondary role, not necessarily on TV.
I think it's easy for people who aren't used to the camera to get to fall in love with it.
And I think that's what happened.
So, William.
You think that's a bad development of scientists going on TV and trying to speak directly to the public to explain research or what they found in their decades of work in certain fields?
I don't think it's a bad thing for scientists in general, but I think it's a bad thing to coordinate unindividual.
I think we need to make sure that we involve healthy discourse and scientists who disagree and let both sides present their arguments for and against a policy.
William, thanks for the call from Missouri.
I'm sorry, it's Maryland, not Missouri.
202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
That special line for scientists, 202-748-8003.
On this topic, I want to show Dr. Marty McCary.
He was on this program back in September.
He set to be the FDA commissioner in the Trump, a second Trump administration.
He was talking about his book, Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means for Our Health.
This is part of that conversation.
So we have a $4.5 trillion healthcare economy, and we've got to deal with the root causes.
We've got to deal with good scientific standards for our recommendations, and we've got to promote clinical excellence.
So increasingly, you're seeing doctors now go directly to the public and explain things in ways they can understand it, presenting the latest scientific research.
That's what I'm trying to do in the book Blind Spots.
And you're seeing a lot of these efforts now to educate the public.
We need a civil discourse.
In the past, there was a feeling that we should only have one position as a medical field.
That's what the small group of people at the top of the medical establishment believed.
But an open civil discourse among medical experts is not only important, it's how we learn, it's how we grow as a field, and we should evolve our position as new information comes in.
So I do believe in civil discourse, and I believe in civil discourse, not just in medical science, but in society at large.
There's a lot of agreement in America, and I think if we can turn off the polarization of all of these voices in the echo chambers, we can see that we all want the same things.
We want to address chronic diseases.
We want to address childhood obesity.
We want to address our food supply to live healthier.
And we want to lower the cost of health care.
It's now 48% of all federal spending goes to health care through its official direct forms and through indirect hidden ways.
We have two options.
We can increase spending or we can cut the waste and focus on promoting health and stop just dealing with a sickness business and instead actively promote health based on good clinical research.
Marty McCarry is set to be the next FDA commissioner, if confirmed, and he was on this program back in September.
You can watch that in its entirety at cspan.org.
We're asking you how involved should scientists be in creating public policy.
Here's a few of your answers from social media.
This from Tony in Florida.
Scientists look at specific areas and are experts in their own narrow areas.
They should be consulted, but never put in charge of public policy.
They are unused to weighing the implications of their recommendations and then making cost-benefit analysis.
This is Mike saying scientists should be very involved.
Sean, only if they're elected to Congress, otherwise, no.
And Marty's saying, can you find one doing pure science and not pushing an agenda?
They should never be setting the rules, only advising the people who are elected to make the policy.
And that's our question.
That's kind of the crux of this Pew Research report.
Taking your phone calls on phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and a special line for scientists.
This is Mike in Fort Washington, Maryland, Republican.
Go ahead.
All right, guys.
I could do a whole half an hour on this.
First off, I really don't want to call you disingenuous, sir, but the CDC failed us during COVID.
The polio vaccine has been questionable at best at doing anything but causing polio.
Measles doesn't solve me.
All of our vaccines have been terrible at best.
Scientism has been used to propagandize the citizenry on ideas that have been false holistically.
And it should be a continuous questioning of information.
That's the idea of science.
Have you ever taken any vaccines?
I stopped it when my kids were seven because I realized that when you start reading the effects, your intestines can flip over and things like that.
You realize they're unnecessary.
Why don't we promote scientism, Mike?
Scientism is like lawfare.
It's the idea that I'll use science to push an agenda and propagandize the mindset of the people.
Look, Europe banned Skittles.
We still promote it.
All we got to do is look at what we're doing compared to other science around the world.
India kicked out the polio vaccine that they were trying to push on their kids because it was killing their limbs.
So, Mike, do you believe that?
Do you trust scientists in other countries more than you trust American scientists?
Look at what their food is like over there versus ours.
We have carcinogenic food and we ignore it.
FDA is terrible too.
We have to literally continue to do experiments and testing.
But let me say this last thing on scientism.
Okay, we say fossil fuels are where we get our fuel.
There's no dead plants or animals giving us oil.
Oil is down a certain level and they dig the same place across the world and they get oil.
It is not from fossil anything.
We're using propagandite ideas to teach people things that are false and you can't prove it.
Look, the DNA stuff was.
Mike, got your point.
Let me move on to Randy in Louisiana, Independent.
Good morning.
Oh, hey.
Go ahead, Randy.
What are your thoughts on the role of scientists in creating public policy?
Well, look what happened this last presidency and with Wuhan Fauci.
Look how many people got murdered.
I mean, I lost two friends because of blood clots and these so-called vaccines.
I took a, I don't like taking vaccines.
I took a doctor talked me into taking a pneumonia vaccine.
Now I got chronic bronchitis.
And The only way I can get rid of it is taking a mushroom supplement from a health food store, and it works.
So, Randy, would you say you're not somebody who trusts scientists?
I don't trust them at all.
Follow the money.
Big Pharma made a killing on this, and they killed a lot of people, and you can't sue them.
You know, everybody's, and then you got some idiot up there.
You give a fool a little authority and watch it go to their head.
There's the president and Wuhan Fauci, it went to their head.
So, Randy, who do you trust in creating good public policy?
Your own opinion.
I mean, it's up to you.
You know, that's what I like to take care of my own body.
I have to, you know, you've got to trust a doctor.
I like Dr. Peter McCullough, but they shut doctors down.
They wouldn't let them talk.
And who wouldn't let doctors talk, Randy?
The government.
They would shut them down.
I couldn't get my own doctor to give me a prescription of been around forever.
It treats malaria.
I forget the term, the name of the drug.
But hello, you there?
I'm listening to you, Randy.
Okay.
Yeah, I just don't trust him.
You know, and my doctor, he was right.
He was dead on.
He's from India.
And man, he's kept me alive for 25 years.
That's Randy in Louisiana.
This is Tina from Facebook saying, I'll trust a scientist more than a lawyer any day.
Got a special line for scientists: 202-748-8003.
Hunter calling in on that line from New Jersey.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning, and thank you for the topic.
I just want to say, I think there's like this arrogance of ignorance of people.
You had a caller earlier who said that he could go on the internet and read this stuff.
Well, you know what?
Next time you need open-heart surgery, why don't you go find somebody who read about it on the internet?
I bet they wouldn't even hire a contractor who read about some stuff on how to install your or put on an addition.
I mean, come on.
These people like myself are going to school for post-grad school, 5, 10, 15 years.
That's who you want.
The other person who called in about vaccines and some nonsense about it's crazy stuff.
Hunter, what?
What kind of scientists are you?
I do drug development.
And why do you think there has been a drop in trust?
I mean, the Pew Research Service has been charting this for years.
There's a distinct drop during COVID.
It's rebounded a little bit.
But explain what happened here and what the scientific community needs to do to regain that trust.
You had Trump in the office and you had Fox News proliferating the nonsense.
Don't you remember Trump in the office saying, put bleach in your arm?
Come on.
This is all about using propaganda to create distrust.
When Trump was in the office, because he delayed all even communicating about COVID, we lost about 140 to 200,000 people because he did nothing.
Vaccines saved lives.
So what?
Vaccines for COVID saved.
It was used on tens of millions of people around the world and it saved lives.
What can scientists do now?
They need to stand up and not be bullied.
That's what it is.
And have people, and you have to have communication.
There needs to be more public service announcements in this country about what science does for people.
Drugs are approved, or things are approved because the benefits outweigh the risk.
Everything has a risk.
You're taking aspirin, you got a risk.
Everything has a risk.
But you approve and you have medicines and things that happen because they outweigh the risks.
On that thing, just like Fox News that promote lies.
They were fined almost a billion dollars for lying about the last election.
They should have taken their license away.
On weighing risks.
So back to kind of this Pew Research question, that survey that kicked off this question today.
What should the role then be of the 175,000 some scientists in the federal government?
The most are in the Department of Defense, but every agency has some scientists.
Should their job be: we're going to establish the facts and we're going to give that to you and you make the public policy, or should they be actively involved in public policy recommendations and decisions?
That was one of the aspects of this.
That's a fair question.
People who elected are, by law, have the accountability to make decisions.
I mean, Fauci wasn't elected to make.
I mean, Fauci is, look at this guy for 60 years.
He's dedicated his whole life to helping society, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
And he suggests policies, but for Trump and others to denigrate the guy is crazy.
I mean, we should be denigrating Trump for not doing what was as a president to lead the country and having 200,000 people die because of his inactions.
Elected people constitutionally make laws.
Everybody else contributes to that decision.
Do you?
There are callers that have said that Anthony Fauci had too much power.
You said he suggested policy.
I would assume some of them who called him would disagree with that, saying that he had much more influence than a non-elected person should have.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, anybody who is head of an agency and department makes the ground rules for what they recommend.
I mean, you know, we have thousands of agencies.
Go look at your local municipality, right?
There are people who make decisions about all the time.
Sometimes you think that they're right, sometimes you think they're the wrong.
It happened to me in my municipality.
You call them up and you have a conversation.
But you can't have arrogance based upon ignorance.
People have studied, have knowledge in certain areas, and you have to assume they're doing the best they can and what's right.
And if you disagree with that, then have the conversation about that.
And then, Hunter, before you go.
We were in a pandemic.
People were dying by the millions.
And people were trying to make decisions that were the best decisions at that time.
Before you go, what kind of pharmaceutical drugs do you help develop?
I've been in many of them, a lot of cardiology, neurology, and so forth.
A lot of them, women's health, a lot of them.
Hunter, thanks for sharing your thoughts this morning out in New Jersey.
Sean is next, Pennsylvania Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm reading a lot and hearing a lot about all this talk of student loan cancellation forgiveness.
The solution is right in front of us, actually.
America's founding fathers actually called for uniform bankruptcy rights ahead of every right listed in the Bill of Rights.
So, Sean, we're talking about scientists.
We're not talking about student loan forgiveness.
Oh, I'm sorry.
All right, I got to open phones later today if you want to call back on that topic.
Let me keep it to this, though, just so we can kind of focus this conversation here.
Chris, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Good morning.
Chris, you with us?
Got to stick by your phone, Chris.
Julie, Orlando, Independent.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Hi, John.
Just want to say that scientists should not be involved in any public policy whatsoever.
I did not get the COVID shot, but I got COVID and have long COVID and have heart issues.
And I went to a specialist, and they said a lot of people that had COVID had heart issues, and it didn't matter if they had the shot or not had the shot.
So, no, absolutely not.
Julia, do you think things would be different if you had taken the COVID vaccine?
No.
According to my cardiologist that's a specialist, he said some people that took the vaccine got worse, and others that didn't take the vaccine have the same effects as the vaccine.
So whatever COVID did to people, it did it no matter if you had the vaccine or you didn't have the vaccine.
Julie, what is it about your cardiologist that you trust, but the scientific community who came up with the COVID vaccine and a vaccine in record time that you don't trust?
Why that person and why not the scientistific community behind the COVID vaccine?
Well, first of all, my cardiologist laid it out for me.
Like, he's seen it.
Like, people that took the vaccine, he's seen the causes of that.
And then the people that didn't, he's seen it.
So it didn't matter if you took it or not.
That's what I'm trying to say.
You just got to do your own research.
It's your own body, and you should be able to put whatever you want into it.
That's Julie in Orlando, Florida.
This is Eric in Buffalo, New York.
Eric, good morning, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
It just baffles me that the way some of these people act and take their information from, like the gentleman was saying before, about Fox News and the internet and all their, you know, the misinformation and disinformation.
I have friends that's parents have died of COVID and they still swear, you know, they died from the COVID vaccine.
And they did, you know, just, I mean, I'm sorry, they didn't get the vaccine, but people developed problems from the COVID vaccine and stuff.
Just endless chemtrails in the sky from the jet airplanes.
And it's just the endless snake oil, you know, salesmen that back in the olden days.
You know what I mean?
It's baffling.
It is.
It's let me let me bounce this off you.
This is from today's Washington Post.
It is Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation.
His official title is President of Heritage Action.
But he has a column in today's Washington Post.
It talks about Donald Trump's cabinet picks.
But this is one paragraph, and it goes into the science and the science issues here.
He says, the American people are sick of the status quo and tired of listening to the so-called science.
They want science to listen to them for a change.
They want science that is untainted by big pharma.
Industry-funded science that manipulates studies to profit off the American people is worse than useless.
That RFK Jr. Not been credentialed by Washington's traditional gatekeepers is precisely why conservatives like me are excited about his nomination.
What do you think of that?
RFK Jr., what island did he go to that dealing with Samoa?
Or wasn't it that he promoted to not do vaccines against measles?
Proven fact.
The one politician that invited him to speak got arrested and he walked away.
Wound up 80-something children got killed because of that, because of the outbreak of measles in 2019, I believe, if you look it up.
Wasn't that something that you're not a big fan of RFK Jr.?
No, I'm not.
Not at all.
Not at all.
A heroin addict that, you know, spouting his opinions, you know, I mean, everybody's got their opinions on things, and I don't believe in a lot of his beliefs.
All right, that's Eric in New York.
This is Jeff in Maryland, Atlanta for Scientists.
Good morning.
Good morning.
What kind of scientists are you, Jeff?
Marine, coastal and marine scientist.
What are your thoughts on the role of scientists in creating public policy?
I think there should be science that informs our managers and our decision makers.
And there has to be science because if you don't know all the information that you need to know, you're just making guesses.
And I'm really scared that's where we're headed.
I do trust some of the choices that Trump has made, but most of them I'm very nervous about because they're people who aren't don't have careers in the fields that they're going to be overseeing.
And you can have a very intelligent person be an excellent manager or CEO, but they still have to have excellent counsel and input from their most informed scientists or the people that have information about the agency and whatever it is they manage.
Who are the picks that you like and who are the picks that you don't?
Oof.
Well, I'm not a fan of the Interior Department pick.
He's known to be pro-industry and disregard information from his career scientists.
I'm okay with Robert Kennedy Jr.
I think I don't agree with everything he has to say, but he's very bright.
I like the way he speaks.
He presents information and is persuasive.
I don't dispute the information he has presented because I'm open-minded.
I'm a scientist.
And until I learn otherwise, that's what I am trained to do is just get as much information as you can.
I'm concerned about our oceans.
I'm concerned about the basic building blocks of life.
At the cellular level, we have a lot of things happening in our environment that people, no matter where you are, you're just going about your life without understanding.
And there's things that are changes that are happening that we can't undo.
The corals throughout the planet are dying.
You can argue about what's causing it all day long.
And it doesn't matter in the end if we know what's happening and we choose to ignore it because we disagree about policies or we disagree about what the cause is.
So, Jeff, how do you think Lee Zeldon, former New York congressman and Donald Trump's pick to head the EPA, how do you think he'll do on that front?
Well, the EPA has been troubled ever since its conception.
It's hard to run an agency with their mandates, when you've got attorneys all over the place that are trying to sue on behalf of oil companies, attorneys that are trying to sue on behalf of pharma.
One of the things that we do in the agency I'm not going to name that I work for is we clean up pollution.
And when you've got an army of attorneys that outweighs, has more money to spend than the government and has 10 times the manpower, you have a tough time enforcing regulations.
So the EPA has always had a tough time with its mandate.
I don't think that where we're going is the right direction.
We're not listening to scientists.
We're just ignoring scientists.
That's Jeff in Maryland on that line for scientists, 202-748-8003.
About 20 minutes left in this segment.
A little bit more from that Pew Research report that spawned this conversation.
Views on the quality of scientists' policy judgments was something else that they polled Americans on.
Americans offered reserved assessments of the quality of scientists' policy decisions.
Fewer than half of Americans, 43%, think scientists are usually better than other people at making good policy decisions on scientific issues.
46% think that they're neither better nor worse than others in this regard.
10% view them as worse at making science policy than other people.
More generally, half of Americans say scientists make judgments based solely on the facts, while nearly as many take the view that scientists' judgments are just as likely to be as biased as other people's.
Those numbers break down along party lines as well.
Again, that from the Pew Research Report on this.
This is Tony on that line for scientists out of Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning.
So I think it's an interesting question.
How involved should science or scientists be in creating public policy?
You know, scientists work for interests.
There are no, you know, there are no scientists doing science without an employer.
And so I don't think that scientists should be trusted.
I think that peer-reviewed research and the data that supports that should be trusted.
And so we should definitely not support scientists.
They can be hired for any purpose.
The other thing that I would point out is that I think the question itself is maybe a little bit misleading or not a great question.
And a better question would be something around, you know, how does public policy get created?
Whose voices are heard?
And I would just remind Americans that there was a Princeton study and it showed that there was no relationship between voter preference and legislative policy.
And I think that I would probably start there is really sort of dissecting who has power in this country, what voices do influence public policy and why.
I would probably take a closer look at C-SPAN itself, the media, the funders of C-SPAN, the think tanks that come onto C-SPAN.
I would probably dissect a lot of those powerful voices and entities and look at how they corrupt and influence public policy in America and maybe think about them in reforms.
I don't think scientists are the problem or science.
I think that there's a lot of powerful misleading voices.
Yes.
What reforms would you want to see on this program?
Oh, so I think that the, I like C-SPAN very much.
I think there are some good qualities to it.
I think the place where I have some issue is when you have these clearly these special interests that are called think tanks.
And they come in and they have one representative that basically provide very misleading, skewed data, junk science, and they go unchallenged.
And so I would say that I would want you to do some education with your viewers about who these think tanks are.
And then I think having one person come on and giving their skewed perspective that, again, is sort of backed by oligarchy or very wealthy influences, I'm not allowing that.
I think having a more diverse people on the program, and there are, you do have some diversity there.
I will give you that.
And then with just the ownership, the people who basically own C-SPAN, the cable industry, right, that I would say are monopolies.
I would think the funding itself for C-SPAN is problematic.
And so I would challenge that.
And then I would challenge a lot of the people you have on.
The regurgitation of these news stories that, again, are owned by maybe five companies own about 90% of the media in the country.
And so again, a lot of what you guys are doing is spreading propaganda and special interest and not science, not well-thought-out reviewed material.
So, Tony, on the cable industries, they don't own C-SPAN.
They pay a carriage fee to carry C-SPAN.
They pay us for our program, and it represents a few pennies on your cable bill.
We're a 501c3 nonprofit.
On the think tanks, just to understand kind of our thought on that, is that a lot of these folks at think tanks, they influence members of Congress.
They talk to them all the time.
And if they're influencing members of Congress, if they're in their ears, we want to give viewers a chance to talk to them as well and challenge them as well and have them explain what they do.
A lot of what we ask at most every one of those conversations is, what do you do and how are you funded?
And then give viewers a chance to challenge them.
So I think we're on the same page of what we're trying to do.
I think that there is some genuineness in that perspective you just shared.
I would just say that I think having them on as a solo guest being, it's really hard to challenge them.
Often they don't even respond to the things that guests say, the questions directly.
They just go over their talking points.
I think having more than one guest with an opposing view would probably be a better format.
And maybe even having a line that has more educated callers.
I like the scientist line, but maybe having a line that can have sort of callers that are a little bit more informed.
I think some of your guests that call in are, you know, just dubious at best.
That's Tony in Pennsylvania.
This is Charles next.
Out of Michigan, 15 minutes left in this segment.
Question we asked this morning, how involved should scientists be in creating public policy?
Charles, Republican, go ahead.
Yeah, hi.
Can you hear me, John?
Yes, sir.
Man, that guy from Pennsylvania, Tony, wow, you hit the nail on the head with everything you just said.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, I just got to start out by saying, first off, I was a Bernie bro.
All these years, I've been a liberal progressive.
I was on that side because of the environment.
COVID changed all of that for me.
I had called into this show a couple years ago.
I had gotten COVID early on.
Never had a vaccine.
I don't take flu shots.
I'm healthy.
It lasted for about two days.
I called in and asked one of your guests, one of these scientists that you guys are talking about, just completely blew me off when I asked the question about natural immunity.
And what I'd like to say is somebody I truly think that you should have on your show is Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.
When we sit there and talk about COVID and how that changed, you know, the just scientists and public policy and the question you're asking, there were things that were happening right at the beginning of, you know, in March of 2020 that, you know, you had a doctor from Minnesota that was talking about how that was aerosolized and, you know, how six foot of distance wasn't going to work and masks weren't going to work.
And nobody really said anything.
And I can't think of the guy's name right now, but I know he's from up in Minnesota.
He talked about it later.
You know, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs is also a liberal progressive.
And it's funny where he's at now today.
He came out after being part of a big study and said, look, everything points to the virus coming out of a lab.
Now, he didn't say whether it was malicious or it was just a mistake, but the people that they had making the policy, Fauci, the head of the CDC, not Redfield, but the other people that were in the head of the CDC and whatnot, these people, they just kept on with that, that it came from the wet market, that it came from a natural environment.
Yeah, I just, you know, like having somebody like him, and then, you know, something else that Jeffrey Sachs came up with was, I mean, and this is a bit off topic, but the Nord Stream pipeline and who blew that up.
Look at where we're at with that nowadays.
Another little bit of information that just recently came out that I read too was there was a high-up official from the Netherlands, the Dutch government, that just recently came out and said that, you know, the Dutch government, on the COVID policy, it was dictated to them by NATO.
Not the WHO, but NATO.
So these are these things where we're now finding out that everybody was calling misinformation for so long surrounding this stuff.
And you know what?
We were right.
That's Charles in Michigan.
This is Sandra Beaumont, Texas.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
I'm a first-time caller.
Thank you for having me on.
I believe in science.
We studied science in school.
And without science, we wouldn't have doctors.
You know, and I believe that with the COVID situation, it was handled bad.
Dr. Fauci had been around in a lot of ministrations, few ministrations.
I remember when AIDS became an epidemic.
Dr. Fauci was renowned.
He put a name on it.
I think doctors and scientists, when in a situation like that, they should come together with the public and give information.
My thing is, if I'm diagnosed with a fatal disease and my doctor comes and says, Sandra, you have so many months to live, but we have this experimented drug that may help you live 10 years longer.
I'm going with both sides.
Thank you for letting me say that part and have a blessed Thanksgiving.
Sandra, thanks for being a first-time caller.
You can call in once a month down the road.
Hope to hear from you down the road again.
This is a few more of your comments from social media.
Rob in West Virginia is saying most people don't understand how knowledge is gained through science using the scientific method.
If they did, they absolutely would be in favor of evidence-based policy initiatives.
I think many politicians are denigrating science and expertise for their own selfish reasons.
This is L or B. Science such as health risks or weather risks like flood zones should probably be a consideration in some decisions of government.
Do not, however, turn any policy decisions over to scientists.
And for heaven's sake, honestly, consider opposing opinions.
And one more, Tina, saying, I'll trust a scientist more than a lawyer any day.
This is Dexter, a scientist in McKinney, Texas.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
It's been a very interesting program.
And I would just like to say, a previous scientist said that your question was not direct, but I think it is a very focused question and it addresses the issue.
And if someone would approach this from a practical point of view, would you make a decision about how you drive your vehicle without getting advice from a mechanic or an engineer who knows about vehicles?
I think we ordinary people need to break things down to everyday situations to understand clearly.
Would you not want a doctor to give you advice if you had a medical issue?
A doctor is a scientist.
So it is very clear, and I don't understand why it's even a question in this educated culture of ours that someone would question not having an expert provide the necessary information.
Anytime you want to make a decision, you want as much information as you can gather about the decision.
Dexter, what about scientists in public policy making of not just determining the scientific facts, but also things like cost and benefit analysis and public opinion on things and whether people will trust it.
Are scientists good at that?
Yes, I think scientists are good at that, but they are partly responsible for the fact that people are ambiguous about trusting.
And it's not, it's a question of the fact that history records scientists have manipulated results and they presented facts that are contrary.
For example, the asbestos crisis, smoking, tobacco, smoking a tobacco.
These special interests, like somebody mentioned before, have contaminated policies because they have corrupted some of the processes.
But the essence of what science and the fact that it's about getting as much quality information as possible, that is what it's all about.
Dexter, what kind of scientists are you?
I'm a social scientist.
I'm studying management philosophy.
So based on interactions of people and experiences, we need to observe people as a science to understand how we can suggest things that may be better and advantageous to our whole community or entire world population, for example.
Dexter, thanks for the call from Texas.
Another scientist out of New Jersey.
It's Clementon, New Jersey.
Bob, good morning.
What kind of scientist are you?
I'm actually a professional.
I was a professional engineer.
I'm retired at this point.
I was the managing partner of a firm that did some work on energy stuff that made it into the bill recently was approved by Congress.
Which bill is that?
The 1.6 trillion energy policy program that just went through Congress or went through a couple years ago, actually.
So, what's your thoughts on the role of scientists in policymaking?
Yeah, that's exactly what I called.
In general, I do think engineers and scientists should absolutely be included in policy discussions because they're trained to evaluate complex information and render objective assessments.
And what I see in the public discourse that comes out is we, you know, somebody that called in suggested that everything we do has risk has benefits and risks, and that's true.
We often suppress the risks to achieve benefits we want.
And sometimes those benefits are not benefits derived by society, but are benefits derived by those who earn those benefits, you know, earning money and things like that.
And the thing is, like, I really do think it's important that not only that engineers and scientists be engaged as citizens, but that our government agencies employ engineers and scientists to evaluate things objectively and that they really can't be people who own stock in things.
I think that was the problem with Fauci.
There's been suggestions that he made a lot of money on things the government did, and that takes his input and advice.
So, Bob, what about this explanation for the concern that people have about scientists being too involved in public policy?
This is from a Vox story, again, on this Pew Research poll that we've been talking about this morning.
There are some people that are worried that scientists are so married to their data that they ignore everything else.
During the 2020 lockdowns, for example, many people disagreed with school closures, though closing schools was a largely evidence-based decision.
That evidence, though, limited and uncertain, and the closures ultimately cause real lasting damage to children's education and mental health.
In policy debates like that, where scientific evidence is pitted against economic reality and family values and individual emotions, some people may worry that scientists only consider their science.
What are your thoughts?
Here's the problem with what you just said, as an example, and that is not an area in which I was involved.
But I'll use an example.
First, I'll comment on exactly what you said.
That is exactly the problem.
I think people who said that was evidence-based were wrong.
There's no evidence to support that.
In fact, all the evidence that I heard about was that children were the least likely to be affected by COVID, and therefore shutting the schools down was really counterindicated.
We learned a lot during COVID.
I don't know that it's an even fair assessment.
And I'll give you another one, which is very complicated, I don't think.
But in the field that we evaluated, global emissions affect global warming.
Carbon emissions affect global warming.
And the U.S. produces about 15% of global emissions, or carbon emissions.
And that means that if we achieved the goal set by the government, we would cut global emissions down by our emissions down by about 7.5% of global emissions.
But in the meantime, global emissions increase at a rate in which that will never matter in the overall problem.
You can point to data to suggest that with 4% of the world's population producing 15% of global emissions is a problem.
And it is.
It's not how you solve the problem.
You've got to attack the problem where it's worse.
And the perfect example is when they shut down industry around the Olympics in China and within two weeks, it was an incredible effect on the world and an incredible effect. on global emissions seen by satellite pictures around the world by anybody who looked.
You really, we could be so much more cost-effective if we approached that problem by investing on improvements in India and China, where most global emissions are affected, so that for about a quarter of the cost, we could achieve a much more substantive effect and improve the conditions around the world.
That's where people selectively talk about, talk about data.
And the people, you know, engineers and scientists represent about a half a percent of the population of working people.
And it's, you know, you're talking about a very small people who are capable of digesting the information and arguing about it.
And so, yeah, they need to be involved to produce and inform people of what is objectively the best decisions.
Politically is another situation.
You don't always do what is objectively the best decision.
Sometimes politics governs, but it really needs to be part of the discussion.
Does that make sense to you?
Bob, I appreciate that.
Our last call in this segment of the Washington Journal, but we can talk about it further in open phones if viewers didn't get through in that segment.
Stick around, though.
A lot more to talk about today.
Up next, a conversation with documentary filmmaker Martin Smith about his new PBS frontline film, China, the U.S., and the rise of Xi Jinping.
And later, it's Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Ed Whalen to talk about the potential use of recess appointments to fill cabinet positions.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
Sunday on Q&A, Jokin Jack Werfel, author of My Two Lives, talks about surviving Nazi Germany as a half-Jewish member of the Hitler Youth, the steps taken to conceal his identity.
and the day his Jewish mother was arrested by the Gestapo.
As we got out of the subway, which was right around the corner from where my mother lived, where we lived with my mother, I saw all kinds of Gestapo and SS cars in front of the building.
Now, this was a large building.
There were many families in there.
And my brother and I decided that better than going in and going there with all these SS and Gestapo people, we waited on the corner and watched it from there.
And we decided to ask our mother as to why these cars were there and what the Gestapo was doing there once they were to leave.
We would go home and ask our mother.
Well, after a while, all of a sudden, to our surprise, it was my mother.
They were bringing out of the building, put her in one of the Gestapo cars, and they took her away.
Jack Werfel with his book, My Two Lives, Sunday night 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.
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend at 2 p.m. Eastern, Conversations with Veterans and Historians on World War II.
Hear from Merchant Marines, The Last Rosie the Riveter, Buffalo Soldiers of the Korean War, Holocaust survivors, and more.
And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, actor Dennis Quaid portrays Ronald Reagan in the film Reagan and headlines a cast discussion about the movie.
The 40th President's story is told through the eyes of a KGB agent and is based on the Soviet Union's real-life surveillance of Ronald Reagan.
The event features several clips from the film.
Exploring the American story.
Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
Washington Journal continues.
Martin Smith joins us now from New York.
He's the producer and director of the new PBS Frontline documentary titled China, the U.S. and the Rise of Xi Jinping.
Martin Smith, good morning to you.
Good morning to you.
That documentary is set to air tonight on PBS's frontline, 10 p.m. Eastern.
Viewers can watch it in its entirety.
Let me give viewers a preview.
This is about 30 seconds of what they'll see tonight.
Xi Jinping wants to restore China to its grandest state.
The rise of the Chinese leader.
He was not afraid to say, we're not giving you the freedoms and rights.
If anyone believes that they can stop China's steady rise, it's probably indulging in fantasy and the global implications.
He has chosen to go down the route of consolidating power, the route of nationalism.
Premieres Tuesday, November 26th, 10, 9 Central, only on PBS.
Martin Smith, why is it important for Americans in this moment to learn about who Xi Jinping is?
Well, this is our chief global rival.
And we have a new president or a returning president coming into the White House.
And it will be foremost on his agenda to figure out how he wants to deal with Xi Jinping.
And so we took it upon ourselves to help our audience understand who he is, where he came from, what shaped him into the man he is today.
And it's important because, you know, we've been focused on Ukraine, we've been focused on our own domestic issues.
Not enough has been focused on Xi Jinping and China and where we stand vis-à-vis that global superpower.
Where did he come from and what did shape him?
He was born into the China of Mao.
And in the midst of that upheaval that marked Mao's time in office, Xi Jinping was affected by so much that happened.
His own father was a fellow communist revolutionary along with Mao.
He was put into a high office once the revolution succeeded in 1949.
And then not long after that, as happened to many politicians of all stripes, Mao decided he didn't trust him.
He sent him to work in a factory and then he incarcerated him for eight years.
That was when Mao was just a child.
I mean, that's when Xi Jinping was just a child.
And then Xi Jinping himself was subjected to what's called struggle sessions, where you're put in a dunce cap and you're put in front of thousands of people and humiliated, derided, denounced.
His own mother denounced him.
Then he was sent into the countryside to do hard labor for seven years from age 15 to 22.
All of this was tremendously impactful on him.
And instead of turning against all this and all the humiliation he suffered, he embraced Mao.
He understood that to get ahead in China, you had to be redder than red, and you had to line yourself up with the party.
So he emerged from all that, saying in an interview that we have a clip of in the program that his time in the countryside and all of that was something that was good for him.
You know, it was a tremendously stressful time.
His own half-sister committed suicide.
You know, his father was in prison.
He was doing hard labor with peasants.
He tried to escape.
His family sent him back.
He lived in a cave in one of the poorest provinces of China.
So that was really what cast the die for who he became and how he decided to embrace the very system that had so, you know, punished him.
Let me give viewers the phone numbers to call in Martin Smith with us this morning ahead of the airing of his documentary tonight on PBS at his frontline 10 p.m. Eastern.
Go ahead and call in on phone line split as usual by political party.
202748-8000 for Democrats.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
Martin Smith, bring us to the more recent history of Xi Jinping.
When did he start really climbing the ladder of the Chinese Communist Party?
And how long has he actually been president of China?
He's been president of China since 2013.
He became the chairman of the party in 2012, which is really a more powerful position.
You know, he came out of exile.
He came out of the countryside.
He was 22 years old.
He was able to get into a university, but his interest was in politics, even though he got a degree, I think, in chemical engineering.
But then he went out into the provinces and was there for several decades, working his way up the ladder until he got a big break in that the party brought him in to clean up a corruption scandal in Shanghai.
And from there, after seven months, the party noticed him and they brought him to Beijing and put him on the standing committee of the Politburo and he became one of the most powerful people in China.
That was 2008.
Since then, and specifically since he became president and head of the party in 2012, 2013, has his views on the United States changed or has he been consistent in how he views the United States as a chief rival?
It's an excellent question because he kept his cards very close to his vest.
And he was a very cautious bureaucrat while he was climbing the ranks in the countryside.
Once he got to Beijing, the party saw him as pliable and they wanted somebody to lead the country.
They were looking about at the various candidates.
They put him in charge of the 2008 Olympics, which was a great success.
And he sort of passed the test, if you will.
And so he was made the head of the Communist Party in 2012.
In 2013, he becomes the president.
But he was—it wasn't really clear.
There were clues.
One of the things he did before he became the chief was that he was running the Central Party School.
This is sort of an elite academy that trains the communist leaders of the future.
And we have an interview with a woman who was a member of the party for many, many years.
She was a teacher there, and he was the administrator.
And she said that he operated something like a mafia boss in terms of the way he talked to teachers, told them what their limits of their teaching.
He said, if you want to speak freely, get out of here.
And she said that was a harbinger for her of things to come.
And indeed, once he took office, he really became a much, you know, people thought he was going to be something of a moderate when he came in, and he wasn't.
He became a very tough customer.
How long did it take you to make this documentary?
How much access did you have to people, to interviews in China, and the people who were willing to talk to you for this documentary?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
We made every effort possible to engage more voices from China.
I traveled to China on a business visa in January of 2024.
I arrived.
I contracted COVID.
I was down for a week.
But I was there for a month, and I had many conversations with many various academics, former party officials, all of whom agreed to participate in a documentary.
I said, look, I'm going to do a film here, and I'm going to have a lot of American experts, and they're going to say they're going to criticize China.
They're going to criticize Xi Jinping specifically on human rights, on his expansionist policies in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, his threats against Taiwan.
I want you to have a chance.
I'm saying this to the various people in China.
I want you to have a chance and take the opportunity to respond and give your point of view.
They all signed up.
I had agreements.
I had letters inviting me back.
I came back to New York and applied formally for a journalist visa.
And they sat on the request.
And my passport and the application sat in the consulate in New York City for several months.
I had several meetings with officials.
And, you know, they didn't say no.
They just never responded.
Finally, after several months, we had to pull the plug on that.
I did find a few people that would speak on behalf of China, people, government advisors or others, unofficial spokespeople, who did speak on camera.
And I caught them here when they were visiting the U.S.
But we were, you know, the restrictions on media in China are severe.
International media is heavily restricted.
And so they never let me in.
But we were determined that we would tell this story.
And we did it with U.S. experts, a few China spokespeople, and lots and lots and lots of archival research to find the bits and pieces that we had stitched together to make this film.
If you had somehow gotten the opportunity to ask a question of Xi Jinping himself, what would you ask him?
Boy, there would not be just one question.
There would be many questions.
I would want to understand his thinking about where he is taking China.
You know, since he took over, he exerted enormous control.
You know, there are some 600 million surveillance cameras in China.
That's about one for every two citizens.
They have a technocratic way of with AI and other sophisticated tools of monitoring everybody's movements.
He's fired a lot of people, purged a lot of people.
I would want to understand what happened once he got into office.
What did you think?
And when he inherited the top job, when he became president, China was at its peak.
The U.S., the West, was in decline.
We'd had an economic collapse in 2008.
Once he becomes president, China is looking very good.
And why he focused so much on control, on expansion, that would be my question.
Because he took a country that under Deng Xiaoping, starting back in the 80s, in the 70s, was opening.
It was called reform and opening, and that was the policy.
And there were many decades under several U.S. presidents where the relations were quite warm.
Once Xi Jinping comes into office, he turns hostile.
I would want to understand more about the roots of that hostility and what it's getting him.
If you had to guess, what would you say is Xi Jinping's biggest fear today?
I think he's beginning to understand that he can exert control through repression, but that somehow in order for the economy to grow, you have to have foreign investment.
Foreign investment is now fleeing the country.
You need to have the markets in the West.
You need to have friendly relations if you're going to have China healthy.
So I think the problem here is that he's trying to find the balance between sort of a strict control and hostility towards the West with trying to get the economy going again.
And he needs foreign investment.
He needs trade.
And now Trump is coming back into office and just yesterday talked about slapping another 10% on Chinese goods coming into the U.S.
These policies tend to create inflation here in the U.S. because the cost of these goods coming in goes up, and that's passed on to the consumer.
You know, Xi Jinping is saying and repeating to Trump, look, nobody's going to win in a trade war, but yet that's the direction we're going.
So I think Xi Jinping is really struggling to find how he can open and maintain control.
There's a lot of unhappy people, especially the young.
There's an unemployment rate up to 25%.
I mean, it's not an official figure, but that's the estimate.
So you've got a lot of very unhappy young people in China, and they are protesting and paying the price with jail terms, with beatings.
But it's not, you know, his China is not invincible.
The documentary name again is China, the U.S. and the Rise of Xi Jinping.
It airs tonight, 10 p.m. Eastern on PBS's Frontline, also available to stream on Frontline's website and YouTube and the PBS video app.
And Martin Smith is here to take your phone calls for about the next half hour this morning.
Phone lines again by political party.
We'll start on the independent line, Harry in Bel Air, Maryland, up first for Martin Smith.
Go ahead.
Hi, Mr. Smith.
Wouldn't you say that Kissinger was partly responsible for the rise of China and our cozing up to the Communist Parties all over the world except for Russia and maybe even Russia and the greed that goes along with it?
So I would think that we have been complicit in the rise of China.
That's my question.
Mr. Smith.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the rise of China.
The people in China have every right to have their living standard raised.
Before the revolution, it was one of the poorest countries in the world.
The opening to the West, which you referenced, the visit of Kissinger with Nixon in 1972, this was all going in a fairly good direction until we got to Xi Jinping.
So it wasn't reasonable to think that we should just quash the ambitions of Chinese population.
You know, this is a very sophisticated culture and nation, and it was a good thing that they were able to amass great amounts of wealth.
The problem is the hostility that now exists.
And I can't say that American leaders have stoked that.
I think that you have to look at Xi Jinping and hold him accountable for why he's turned in that direction.
Raymond out of Harper Woods, Michigan, Republican.
Good morning.
You're next.
Hey, what up, Doe?
That's the Michigan State Police line.
How you doing?
Doing well, Raymond.
What's your question on this documentary?
Sure.
Well, I see this is Mr. Smith talking about the president of China, right?
Yep.
Okay.
Well, from what I'm hearing on the inside, I'm a Trump-certified team leader.
Now, Trump's a military man.
He funded all the military and really beats up as much as he could.
And ever since the Saudis dropped the dollar and we had all that inflation, the pandemic happen to us, the whole deal was everybody invested in the United States to go to World War II, baby boom, all that, right, with the oil, that we still have a pretty good amount.
But after the dollar, we've got to somehow take a little bit of time.
Raymond, bring me to your question on Xi Jinping today.
Sure.
China is way overpopulated.
I'm not sure how strong they are, especially on that TikTok app.
I think we've got to stop that.
Thank you, sir.
Martin Smith, social media, TikTok.
I'm not sure what the question is, frankly, but I appreciate the caller.
You know, we don't take on TikTok in this documentary.
There are many things that we couldn't get to.
Our focus is on Xi Jinping and who he is and how he became the man that he is today.
So I have to punt on the question of TikTok and what harm it's causing.
And I think that we have to find our way back to a reasonable competition with China.
I think that under Xi Jinping, it's going to be difficult.
I don't think that he is really looking for improved relations with the West.
His friends, of course, are Russia, Iran, North Korea.
You know, he set himself up sort of on the other side of the equation.
This is from Andrew in Texas via our text messaging service.
Xi has already changed the Constitution to stay in power.
Do you believe that Xi will remain in power his entire lifetime?
Well, you know, I don't know what his intentions are, but he did in 2018 revise the Constitution and it was ratified by the People's Congress a few years later.
So it allows him to serve his five-year term and then run again and be elected.
And so as long as he can lead China in a direction that pleases the party, the top-level party officials, he'll remain in power.
He has tremendous ambitions more than any Chinese leader since Mao.
He has a strong vision for how China can be a leader in artificial intelligence.
He's put together the biggest infrastructure program in history with connections around the world, building ports and bridges and train tracks all over the world.
So he's a tremendously ambitious leader.
Martin Smith joining us from New York.
Mary Elizabeth is in New York City as well.
Line for Democrats, good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm listening to the conversation, and it's always been my opinion that when trade relations began with the Chinese government, there was a question earlier about Kissinger and Nixon and their,
quote, opening up China and the fact that whole American industries moved their businesses and their manufacturing facilities to China to save money and to have greed and more profit.
And it's always been my understanding that all these contracts that were signed were controlled by the People's Liberation Army.
So I wonder what is the relationship with the minister and with the People's Liberation Army, because 51% of the contract was controlled by the PLO, PLA,
and then the 49% was any Western investment in that particular contract, which meant that they would be in control of the contract and the relationships, the trade relationships in that country.
And with the tariffs that the quote, incoming administration is proffering is what effect is that going to have on American consumers who are buying all of their intangible product to have the label made in China.
Well, one of the effects of those tariffs is going to be, at least in the short term, the effect in the long term is a little bit squishy to figure out.
But in the short term, and I'm talking several years, it's going to cause a rise in prices.
And it's going to cause, therefore, inflation.
You're quite astute in terms of the investment and the control by the government of China so that foreign investment comes into the country and then makes agreements with China because they want the cheap labor, they want cheap property, they want benefits.
But China says, look, you got to tell us what your trade secrets are, what's your secret sauce.
And then the government takes that information and gets a Chinese company to manufacture the product using the special sauce, whatever that is, whatever product we're talking about, and then drives the U.S. company out of business.
It's been a very rocky road for many businesses.
They did rush in under Deng Xiaoping in the 70s and into the 80s.
And foreign investment was healthy, but it was struggling.
And many corporate leaders came to the White House to complain about how China was stealing their intellectual property, driving them out of business.
Now, tariffs is a kind of different page in all of this.
But you're quite right that there is a problem with the way in which U.S. companies are able to operate in China.
At this point, many of them are fleeing the country.
Elon Musk is an exception.
He has a huge Tesla factory in Shanghai.
And he's a kind of bridge between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
It'll be interesting to see if he can be effective in bridging that gap.
The question on tariffs coming a day after we found out from the incoming president about plans to slap an additional 10% tariffs on all Chinese products.
I want to give viewers a flavor from your documentary on the trade war and tariffs in particular.
This is about two minutes and 20 seconds from the documentary, China, the U.S., and the rise of Xi Jinping.
Trade war worries igniting after the president signed this order to slap tough tariffs on China.
Punishment.
He started with a 10% tariff on Chinese aluminum, 30% on solar panels and electric vehicles, 25% on steel and nearly everything else made in China.
What China did was move its exports to other countries and move its imports from other countries as well.
So it shifted the purchase of soybeans, for example, from the U.S. to Brazil.
So that wasn't a useful policy.
President Trump has just slapped tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese exports.
Igniting the biggest trade war in economic history.
Trump's trade war would consume the remainder of his presidency.
China is now punching back with an equal amount of tariffs on American exports.
After several tit-for-tat tariff increases, the trade war, which continued into the Biden administration, actually increased the trade deficit.
The trade deficit has skyrocketed to $891 billion, the highest ever.
Cost increases also led to a decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Intellectual property theft continued.
And the costs imposed by tariffs were simply passed along to consumers of imported products.
And now, Trump has promised to impose even higher tariffs once he is back in office.
Tariffs were put in place because China's economic policy was hurting U.S. factories and workers.
That's a belief on the part of some people in the U.S., especially by the people of the Trump administration.
The Biden administration has even extended those.
But if you talk in private, many don't agree with such kind of policy.
Why?
Because it hurts the U.S. economy.
There is the argument.
You have the high inflation.
Where do you get it?
In part because of these tariffs.
The documentary is set to air tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern on PBS.
Martin Smith, what's your expectation of the reaction in China to this latest 10% tariff threat?
The line that they're using, I've heard the spokespeople and I've heard from Xi Jinping himself in various venues that he's spoken in, is that he thinks this is not going to work and everybody is going to be hurt by this.
So I don't know exactly what will be accomplished.
Right now, President Trump is not in office, so this amounts to some saber-rattling.
And he fashions himself a deal maker, and I think he's trying to set the stage and get Xi Jinping's attention and to then try to negotiate something that will not be harmful.
Look, we're bound together.
They need our market.
We need their investment.
So it's very hard to decouple.
And that's been the phrase of late, that we're decoupling from China.
But it hasn't really benefited anybody at this point in time.
And I don't know if this saber-rattling that we're seeing is going to play out once Trump is in office.
That remains to be seen.
It's very hard to predict what Donald Trump is going to do tomorrow.
Less than 15 minutes left with Martin Smith this morning.
Diane's waiting in DeSoto, Kansas.
Republican, good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
In thinking about Xi Jinping and the way he grew up, it almost sounds like he had an attitude of if you can't beat him, join him.
But anyways, my question is with regard to his relationship with Trump and especially China's aggressive attitude towards Taiwan and the Philippines, et cetera.
I think that they're both survivors.
Xi Jinping is a survivor and he made his path as a result of that.
Donald Trump is also a survivor coming back a second time.
And I just wonder, how do you think this influences both of their reactions to the other with regard to especially aggressive policies with Taiwan, et cetera?
Thank you.
Diane, thanks for the question.
It's a very good question.
I think Donald Trump admires strong leaders.
I think he's, in fact, envious of the way in which a leader like Xi Jinping can control what happens in his nation, in his country.
So I think there's some admiration that goes on there.
With Xi Jinping, it's hard to say how he—it's relatively opaque and hard to determine how he sees Donald Trump.
I think he's cautiously sort of circling right now and trying to figure it out and figure out what's next.
I think Xi Jinping has focused very much on his domestic enemies, on repression, and then on his, as you mentioned, threats against Taiwan, against the Philippines, the moves in the South China Sea to build military outposts off of coral reefs in the middle of the ocean.
I think he's been focused there.
But now he needs to focus on the economy, and I think that's something he has, in the words of one of our interviewees, taken for granted, that the economy was in very good shape when he took over, not such good shape now, and that he needs to focus on that.
And I think the coming of Donald Trump will force him to focus on that even more.
You know, during the COVID lockdown, there were demonstrations across China against the restrictions on movement of people, and they were the largest demonstrations since the TNMN Square protests in 1989.
The PLA and the state security didn't shoot people on the streets, but what you saw was a lot of people arrested and given prison terms.
And I think it portended trouble ahead because there is this sort of undercurrent of resentment, of protest, of unhappiness, especially among 20 and 30-year-old people in China.
And so he's got to manage that through his toolbox of repression and at the same time get the economy moving again.
So he's got a big challenge there.
Is the PLA any match for the U.S. military?
We don't know.
The Chinese, I think, I talked to a number of military officials when I was in China.
And, you know, they say, well, you know, our army is not experienced.
We haven't fought wars.
The United States has fought several wars.
We haven't really won them.
But there is experience in the U.S., in the Pentagon, that they lack.
And I think that there's a certain amount of insecurity.
I think Xi Jinping would see Taiwan as an opportunity for his military to learn and get some experience.
I don't know if that's enough to push him to pull the lever, but is the PLA, are we a match for one another?
They have a bigger navy.
They have more ships.
They're turning them out very quickly.
But it's really hard to say.
It's a massive army.
And I had a conversation, it's in the film with Admiral Paparo, Sam Paparo, who is the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, all the soldiers in the Indo-Pacific.
It's a huge responsibility.
He says, look, if there's a war over Taiwan, it will dwarf the Second World War.
It will lead to a depression.
It will be catastrophic if that happens.
To Winter Park, Florida Independent, this is Ian.
Thanks for waiting.
Hi.
Good morning, guys.
Just wanted to thank C-SPAN for taking my call.
Before my question, I just also wanted to say I had not heard of this film before today's segment.
And throughout just hearing you speak about it and the couple of clips that have been played, I'm really looking forward to watching it.
Unfortunately, it seems to air at one in the morning for me, so I won't be watching it today.
But let me say that it will be available online in perpetuity.
I've already found the website and everything, so I'm going to be able to do it.
So it's free there, and you can watch it on your own time.
Yeah, so the question I had was: throughout the making of this entire film, were there any moments in particular that were memorable for you?
And if so, which one was the most memorable?
There is a theme that came up throughout the documentary, from the Cultural Revolution to Chaniman Square to the battle for Hong Kong, where the and the crackdown in Xinjiang against Muslims, the minority there that's been resisting Chinese rule.
And that is when they take a dissident and put them in jail, they often then pressure family members to testify against their offspring, their siblings, whatever.
And this theme is repeated.
And they seem to be saying that, look, your loyalty has to be to the party, not to your family.
And I found it extremely moving to listen to some of these people who have fled the country and talk about how their families were turned against them.
And this is a tactic that repeats itself over and over again throughout the documentary.
It's extremely moving and heart-wrenching to watch.
You'll see it in the documentary, especially one woman that fought against during the uprising in Hong Kong.
She's in the U.S., there's a bounty on her head, and she says, look, at the end of the day, this is about fighting for the people you love, but they cut you off.
She's not able to talk to her mother or father, who are still in Hong Kong.
And, you know, she resists crying in the documentary.
She was very moving.
Lily Gaithersburg, Maryland, Republican.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'm excited to hear this topic.
I'm a first-generation immigrant from China.
So I think I wanted to add some of my perspectives.
I think I got really interested when I heard about the part when your guest was trying to shoot this documentary in China.
And he was basically kind of like a stonewalled.
And that's so typical of how they do things.
And I want to say that, you know, I left the country more than 20 years ago.
Back then, it was quite open and, you know, much, much more open than nowadays.
I was shocked myself looking back and realizing that, you know, how the country has gone backwards.
And I believe she wants to be Mao number two, which, you know, I really detest Mao because I think the worst part about him is that he treated the people of China like trash.
And so she does not care about the people.
And he was basically writing the coattails of the economic boom, you know, from Teng Xiaoping and others.
But he's ruining the country.
And I feel so sad about the people of China and They're suffering under the Communist Party, even though obviously economic condition was better before, but now it's kind of like coming down too.
And I also wanted to say that I always laugh when I hear about people here calling Trump a dictator.
They have not seen a dictator yet.
And I also laugh when people talk about, you know, rant about Fox.
If it's not for Fox and some of the right-wing, I mean, you know, they don't get everything right.
But if it were not for them, this country would be just like communist propaganda because it's all the same thing.
So that's my just two cents.
Thank you.
Martin Smith.
I appreciate your thoughts.
And I think you're quite, they're quite cogent in terms of Xi Jinping and the turn to a sort of Maoist autocracy.
And it's, you know, I've talked to many Chinese.
I welcome you to America.
I'm glad you're able to speak freely and make a phone call and speak on the air about these things.
You couldn't do that in China.
Chinese censorship is prevents any, you know, free speech, freedom of assembly, all these things are threatened, and human rights ultimately.
So I appreciate your call.
Final two minutes.
I wanted to end on Miles Yu's column in today's Washington Times, senior fellow director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute.
He touches on what you and I talked about earlier on Xi Jinping and his biggest fear right now.
I just wanted to read this to you and get your reaction.
He writes that Mr. Xi's demand for non-interference in democracy and human rights issues reflects the regime's deepest fear.
It is not a defense of sovereignty, but an indictment of his regime's repression.
From the Tiananmen Square massacre to the silencing of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement and the internment of millions of Uyghurs, the Communist Party's record is one of systematic oppression.
Mr. Xi's paranoia stems from a well-founded fear of his own people.
The party knows it governs a nation brimming with discontent, from the stifling censorship to the internet to the absence of basic freedoms by branding democracy and human rights as foreign impositions.
Mr. Xi seeks to delegitimize these universal principles, ensuring that his regime's iron grip remains unchallenged.
He writes, This tactic, however, is failing.
The world increasingly sees China not as a sovereign defender, but as a regime desperate to silence the voices of his own people.
Would you agree?
I have to agree, and I think if you watch the documentary, you'll see what this author is saying played out in pictures and in witness testimony.
In many cases, very painful testimonies are given in the documentary.
So you'll see this play out.
I think one of the things that you have to understand about Xi is that he watched the fall of the Soviet Union, and he became very afraid that that could happen and that peripheral states would split off from China just like they did in the Soviet Union.
So in the Soviet Union, you have the Baltic states, you have Georgia, you have Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan.
All these countries were under the control of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev came in and all this began to unravel.
Xi Jinping sees this, and his attitude is that the Russians were not men enough, man enough to really see, you know, keep control.
So Xi Jinping speaks of a China dream where he's going to maintain His China, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, Mongolia, Taiwan, the South China Sea.
That's his dream is to keep all of that under his control.
He's running into trouble.
His economy is faltering.
You know, for economies to succeed, they need to open themselves to foreign markets.
They need people to feel free to express themselves, to innovate, to create.
And all of that is stifled in China.
So he's running into a cul-de-sac, and we don't know what's going to happen.
It does seem to me quite dangerous when you consider what could happen over Taiwan, for instance.
We've already seen the fall of Hong Kong.
The future is not that bright.
China, the U.S., and the rise of Xi Jinping premieres tonight, 10 p.m. Eastern on PBS, available to stream on PBS's frontline website and the PBS video app.
Martin Smith is the producer, director, correspondent for it.
Congratulations, and thank you for the time this morning.
John, thank you very much for having me.
Coming up in about a half an hour this morning, we'll be joined by Edward Whalen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
We'll focus that conversation on recess appointments to fill cabinet positions.
But first, and in this half hour until then, more of your phone calls in open forum.
The phone numbers are on your screen.
You can go ahead and start calling in now on any public policy or political issue as you're dialing in.
I want to show you a portion from yesterday at the White House.
President Biden pardoned two turkeys, Peach and Blossom, ahead of Thanksgiving in the annual ceremony on the White House South Lawn.
The two turkeys are named after Delaware State flower, the peach blossom.
And by the way, Delaware has a long history of growing peaches.
In fact, the peach pie in our state is one of my favorite.
It's a state dessert.
And peach blossom flowers also symbolizes resilience, which is quite frankly fitting for today.
This White House tradition began when Turkey was presented to President Truman.
And that president, then President George H.W. Bush, began pardoning turkeys.
In the last four years, I've had the honor to continue that tradition by pardoning peanut butter and jelly, chocolate and chip, Liberty and Bell.
And today, Peach and Blossom will join the free birds of the United States of America.
Born this past July at the Zimmeroon Family Farm, raised by the, yeah, I hear you.
Peach wants to speak a little bit here.
Raised by the family with the help of neighborhood children who helped the turkey get ready for this very moment.
According to experts, Peach weighs 41 pounds and loves to eat hot dish and tater tots and cross-country skis.
You know, dreams to see, but the real dream he has is to see the northern lights, I'm told.
He lives by the motto: keep calm and gobble on.
Meanwhile, Blossom weighs 40 pounds, loves to eat cheese curds and watch boxing.
Dreams to visit to visit each one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes.
Lives by the motto, no foul play, just Minnesota nice.
They just finished two-day road trip from Minnesota to Washington.
By the way, you have chairs.
Sit down.
I forgot you had chairs.
I'm sorry.
Started thinking about the arduous trip they made.
You guys are still standing.
That trip's 1,100 miles.
It takes 16.5 hours through it all.
They stayed calm and they gobbled on and still gobbling.
They were stayed nice listening to their favorite music, which apparently includes the song Living on a Prayer.
Well, fellas, your prayer is going to be answered today.
Based on your temperament and commitment to being productive members of society, I hereby pardon Peach and Blossom.
Washington Journal continues.
Here's a bit of situational awareness of where we are this morning on the Washington Journal coming up in about 10 minutes.
There'll be a brief House Pro forma session, and of course, we'll take you there for live gabble-to-gabble coverage when that happens.
We'll talk, take your phone calls in our open forum now and after that.
At about 9:15 this morning, we'll be joined by Ed Whalen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center for a discussion on recess appointments.
Other things happening today on the C-SPAN networks that you should know about, a discussion on cyber threats and infrastructure security.
That's happening at 11:30 a.m. Eastern.
And you can watch that live on C-SPAN.org, C-SPANNOW, and here on C-SPAN.
That's taking place by the, it's being hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at 1 p.m. Eastern today.
A discussion on the Trump administration agenda for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It is a discussion on cryptocurrency, climate regulations, and their impact, and the SEC's new enforcement approach.
That is from the Federalist Society.
1 p.m. Eastern, C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and of course, the free C-SPAN Now video app.
A lot going on today on the C-SPAN networks.
Hope you stay with us.
It's open forum now, though.
Any public policy that you want to talk about, the phone lines are yours to do so.
This is Fred in Jessup, Maryland, Up First Republican.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
Yeah, good morning, John.
Thanks for taking my call.
I wish I could have got in and talked to Mr. Schwartz about that front line that he's going to air specially tonight.
No mention of Joe Biden's involvement with China and the policies that were aligned with Xi Jinping.
His involvement, Peter Schweitzer wrote a book called It showcases Biden's laptop on $22 million he's accepted from China and Chinese policies directed his.
Remember, the Democrats were not involved, they were not concerned with the COVID-19 investigation.
They tried to shut that down.
They come out with the phony narrative that was man-made.
The Hunter laptop implicates Joe Biden as extorting Chinese millionaires that wanted to enter our energy market and the money that they've accumulated.
There's no investigating on any of it.
There's no concern.
This is huge.
Our president's been compromised for four years.
And the book you're referring to, Peter Schweitzer's book, is it Red Handed, How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win?
Yes, sir.
I was hoping that you thank you.
I was hoping that you would have him on as a guest.
But it seems like the books that you're all pushing are from the left.
And this would have exposed everything.
I mean, the FBI has had that laptop since 2019.
They won't tell you where it is, who has it.
They're not concerned about what's going on.
They've got over 21 congress phone recordings at Joe Biden leading to his Delaware mansion talking about money transfers back and forth.
I mean, all the evidence is there, nobody's looking into it.
I hope one day somebody investigates this.
And, Fred, if you want to watch Peter Schweizer on C-SPAN, 15 different programs featuring author Peter Schweizer, including one of our three-hour in-depth programs, all available on our website.
If you just search Peter Schweizer in the search bar at the top of the page, you'll find all those programs.
Jimmy is in New Hampshire, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I'm calling mostly just to comment on watching the program this morning about Xi Jinping.
It seemed to me like it was a discussion almost like the Sopranos.
It seems like it's mafias juggling for power on a world stage.
And it's just amazing to me.
You know, democracy, one of the biggest things that democracy seems to do in this country is protect monopolies.
And everybody that gets creates a power structure seems to have a particular interest.
And that's pretty much about all I wanted to say.
How everything represents a mafia mentality.
Thank you for listening.
Sean in New York City, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
First off, real quick, you just played the clip of Joe Biden hardening the turkey.
That was like extremely hard to watch, like pulling teeth.
Oh, Lord.
But on the other hand, I know you guys are talking about Xi Jinping.
Just recently, probably about a little over a month and a half ago, he was videotaped in front of his entire military saying prepare for imminent war, you know, with the West and whatnot.
And, you know, speaking to the threat of, you know, these people constantly talking about nuclear war and the news and whatnot, like this is escalating to a tinormous level.
I think we need to pay a lot more attention to what these leaders on both sides, whether it's China, Russia, the U.S., you know, Turkey, and amongst a whole host of other nations that are really perpetuating this threat of war at this point.
But thank you very much.
Bill, Georgia, Republican, good morning.
Open forum.
Good morning, John.
I'm calling about the fact that in response to the science discussion of do you believe in scientists?
Well, basically, sometimes you believe in scientists, but can you hear me, John?
Yeah, Bill, the question we had, just for folks who didn't watch the first hour today, was what role should scientists play in creating public policy?
It was based on a Pew Research report that found Americans were split on whether they should be involved, actively involved in public policy or should just focus on establishing facts and not creating public policy.
So for viewers that didn't watch, that was the discussion this morning.
Well, Matt, can I respond?
Please.
When I spoke to you and Dr. Fauci on November 25th, 2020, you cut me off, but I made a very good point with Dr. Fauci.
So many times it's not the scientists, it's the people who are involved with the scientists.
And for whatever decision, you wouldn't allow me to finish or to follow up with Dr. Fauci to make my point.
I apologize for that, Bill.
Do you want to finish your point now?
Well, the point is, is that it's sometimes when scientists sometimes are wrong, but the people who are around them interpreting what they're saying sometimes allow them to be wrong.
And there's no follow-up and there's no criticism.
And sometimes there's self-evident truth and people don't see it.
And specifically, when I mentioned to Dr. Fauci the dangers that he was causing to the young people of America with his school closures, in the end, I was right, and Dr. Fauci and you were wrong.
And that is why people have lost confidence.
November 25th, 2020, Anthony Fauci appeared on this program, and Bill was apparently one of those callers on that program.
Viewers can watch it on our website at c-span.org if you want to go back and you want to listen.
Coming up now, we hope you stick around after this brief pro forma session in the House.
It shouldn't be more than a minute or two.
That's how long they usually are.
That's taking place now, and we'll see you back on the other side of that.
The House will be in order.
The chair lays before the House.
A communication from the Speaker.
The Speaker's Rooms, Washington, D.C., November 26, 2024.
I hereby appoint the Honorable Adrian Smith to act as Speaker Pro Tempore on this day.
Signed, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Today's prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben.
Would you pray with me?
The Lord Most High is awesome.
You, O God, are the great King over all the earth.
On this Thanksgiving week, may this nation clap its hands and shout to you cries of joy and gratitude.
Through all our lives, be near us and remain with us.
And may we, with ever-joyful hearts, be cheered by the multitude of blessings and peace you grant us each day.
Keep us in your bountiful grace and guide us with your tender mercy when we are perplexed.
Free us from all ills that seek to overtake us in this world, that with sureness and certainty of your redemption may we be received into the next.
All praise and thanks to you, O God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, one eternal God, whom we adore.
Amen.
Pursuant to Section 3Z of House Resolution 5, the Journal of the Last Day's Proceedings is approved.
The chair will lead the House in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the Lord.
I pledge allegiance to the flag to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Pursuant to Section 3Z of House Resolution 5, the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. on Friday, November 29, 2024.
That's going to do it for today's pro forma session in the House.
But we're with you for another hour here on the Washington Journal this morning, taking your phone calls in this next 15 minutes in open form.
Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and independents, as usual.
Steve has been waiting through that pro forma session in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Democrats, Steve, thanks for waiting.
What's on your mind?
Well, first of all, I want to commend you.
You said straight face and had to endure listening and all kinds of stuff.
Let me just say this, man.
At 72 years old, I've lived through a lot of president.
But I'll give you an example of what we're going through now.
The Wizard of Oz.
And when all of these conspiracy theorists, et cetera, get to the castle and the curtains pull back, there's a little orange clown standing back there.
He has no knowledge or power to do anything.
I'm scared for this country.
I'm a historian.
You know, I love history.
Our country is very new, still very new, and it's only held together by a thin thread of sanity.
And the more I hear conspiracy theorists and outright ignorance, well, it scares the dog out of me.
And by the way, to the guy that says about scientists, yeah, we were wrong.
Yeah, that's how you get to the answer.
You know, you go down a thread of logic, and suddenly the logic is illogical.
And Steve, in the future, just remember to turn down your television when you're speaking through your phone, just makes it easier for all of us.
This is Gary in Sterling, Virginia, Republican.
Go ahead.
Hi, thanks.
I'm an old-time, old-time Republican.
You know, I'm one of those that tries to grasp logic, reason, and common sense.
Logically speaking, I would say the strongest or biggest cabinet pick Trump's made is Chris Wright.
He's the most powerful because he could stop fracking with sand and water, which are finite and diminishing resources, and instead frack with CO2, which we have an abundance of, and we need to get rid of it.
And a better place to store it would be, you know, 10,000, 15,000 feet underground.
And then if he converted all the big-block diesels to natural gas, that would give everybody they'd pay half the price because that's half the price of diesel fuel.
It's 85% cleaner.
It's 50% cleaner than gasoline.
President Putin ought to be sending natural gas to China to get them people off of coal.
And Husan ought to be sending it to India to get those people off of call.
I mean, I don't know why we can't use some logic in this world.
That's Gary in Virginia.
Chris Wright, the energy executive picked to lead the energy department in the next Trump administration.
This is Sharon in Maryland.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Doing well.
I was calling in all this stuff that's going on right now with our country.
It seems like it's another place, like it's not the United States of America.
And I'm an African-American woman, and I'm kind of tired of all this stuff that's going on because I got generations of grandkids that will be born and grandkids that's already born.
And I don't think it's right for us, you know, not, you know, to treat our bring up our children in the right way.
And the United States of America is the only nation on this planet that's blessed by God.
And if we keep on doing things that he don't want us to do, he'll let one of those adversaries that hate the United States of America take us out.
And we got to have military men to stand up for this country and, you know, go against Donald Trump.
Because do is take this country down.
That's Sharon in Maryland.
This is Charlotte in Walden, New York, Republican.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I have to agree with the gentleman who called about Biden and China and how I'm going to watch his documentary tonight, but I want to see how biased it's going to be.
And I believe that Mr. Smith, in some of his interpretations, was a bit biased about Mr. Trump.
But anyway, this country is new to this new president, and we all have to just, you know, relax, take a breath.
Nothing's going to happen in a minute.
So I appreciate the show that's going to happen.
But I also have a little bit of angst about hoping that everybody will come together.
As the young lady said before about her children and grandchildren, I have concerns too, and we need to leave the planet and the place and the government in a better place than us always being angry with each other.
And thank you, and I hope everybody has a wonderful Thanksgiving.
At Charlotte in New York, you mentioned Mr. Smith a story, a big story yesterday about a different Mr. Smith, a federal judge on Monday, granted special counsel Jack Smith's request to dismiss the federal election fraud case against President-elect Donald Trump, ending the criminal prosecution that accused Mr. Trump of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In a signed order Monday, Judge Tanya Chutkin dismissed the case without prejudice, which leaves the case open for possible refiling after Mr. Trump leaves office in 2029.
The special counsel said that the office's prohibition on prosecution extends to President-elect's cases as well.
Mr. Trump was indicted as a private citizen, but was elected to another term, of course, during the prosecution.
Donald Trump in a social media post saying all the criminal cases against him are empty and lawless and should never have been brought.
Over $100 million of taxpayer money has been wasted in the Democratic Party's fight against their political opponent, me.
That was Donald Trump in his social media post about that filing.
Donald, Omaha, Nebraska, Republican, good morning.
Hello.
Go ahead, Donald.
It's open forum.
And yes, I have a way that we can save money like that phony deal we just had on about that Congress.
They just count that as a day of being in doing their duty and they're all at home.
I mean, they're phonies.
Why don't they just shut that place down?
They're never there and save the money.
Thank you.
Part of that reason for those pro forma sessions has to do with the topic of our next conversation.
It's with Edward Whalen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
He's going to be joining us in just about five minutes here to talk about the history of recess appointments, Congress's role in recess appointments, all of that coming up in just a few minutes.
This is Craig in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Republican.
Good morning.
Open forum.
Until then.
Yeah, I just wanted to talk about, and I'm glad you brought this up, science and policymaking.
And how did you ask the question?
What was the, would you frame that?
The way we framed it, I believe, was how involved should scientists be in creating public policy?
Right.
And first of all, I appreciate C-SPAN for bringing these important ideas up.
It's the question of whose wheelhouse you're in.
In other words, policymakers, they deal with thoughts.
They deal with thoughts and actions of human beings.
And those things are, I mean, you can't see a thought go through the air.
Nobody's held a thought in their hand.
It's unseen.
Scientists deal in the physical world of, you know, see, hear, taste, touch, smell.
They can deal with things, factual things, or like current, say, even current technology.
Like now we have computers.
We used to have, you know, paper and pen.
Okay.
But when you make policy, you're dealing with thoughts.
And so like, let's look at you shall not steal.
That's in every city, state, and the whole federal, our whole system and our whole country.
You're not supposed to steal.
And that doesn't need any science.
It's just a human behavior that you're not supposed to do.
So in that, I think I would say that policymakers deal with the transcendental or the unseen as well as the seen.
So science can contribute, but science can't solely run policy because that's not its wheelhouse.
So there needs to be, everybody needs to hold hands and work together very carefully.
Craig, would you agree with this?
This is from Vox piece, a write-up about the Pew Poll that sparked that discussion about trusting scientists and public policy.
They write that some people are worried that scientists are so married to their data that they ignore everything else.
During the 2020 lockdowns, for example, many people disagreed with school closures, though closing schools was a largely evidence-based decision.
That evidence was limited and uncertain, and closures ultimately caused real lasting damage to children's education and mental health.
In policy debates like that, where scientific evidence is pitted against economic reality and family values and individual emotions, some people may worry that scientists only consider the science.
Well, and that's their only strength.
Okay.
Now, I praise them for their strength of knowledge, but then they don't think in terms of, let's say, like, you know, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
So, you know, they may come up with the conclusion that if we lock everybody in a room, this thing will go away.
Problem is, if policymakers look at it and say, if you lock everybody in a room, the economy crashes and we all die.
You know, we all lose our job, lose everything.
And so there has to be a balance.
And they should not be the sole dictators of policy.
There's no way because of that whole point there.
We've done damage by trying to make them the sole policymakers.
So we need to have some balance.
And you're still going to have to go with, you're going to have to balance the transcendental, the unseen with the seen.
You're going to have to accept that we need policymakers as well, which is philosophy.
And yes, sometimes moral writings like the Bible and things like that about truths.
You know, what shouldn't, how should we live together without destroying each other?
You know, and of course, how should we take care of our children as well, which is the issue there?
I mean, you don't lock them in bubbles and how are they going to progress?
And you're going to retard those years of their life.
You can't do that.
So we've got to find a balance.
If it was a 100% kill virus, there might be some logic in what we did in the past.
But it was not a 100% kill virus.
It wasn't 100% lethal.
And in fact, it was not as lethal as I expected.
Thanks for the call from Oklahoma.
Just a minute or two left here in open forum.
Brenda, thanks for waiting in Michigan.
Yes, good morning.
I just wanted to make a comment.
United States, we are in for a rough ride, so we better get our pillows ready so we can kneel on our knees.
This man is not a leader.
He's just into confusion.
He's not choosing people to put in place that are qualified.
It's really a sad situation, and we are being destroyed.
We are going to be destroyed within.
United States is destroying within.
Thank you.
That's Brenda in Michigan.
And Marcy, last call in open forum.
Go ahead.
Hi.
I just wanted to make a comment of the last caller that came in.
I agree with her.
I've noticed right now there's a lot of things that aren't being reported on because they're still developing.
But I live in central Florida.
And this time of the year is our season when it gets cold up north and all the old people come down that can't stand the cold.
And they're not coming down like they were.
I live in a mobile home park and we have 200 residents with 30 that stay full time, which I am one of.
And we've had very few of them come down.
And why aren't they coming, Marcy?
And I'm running short on time.
So it's not a problem.
I understand.
I don't know.
It might be a mixture of fear.
They're waiting till after January 20th.
I don't know.
It's just there's an air of unease wherever I go in stores, even my congregation.
And it's, I'm just going to have a wait and see attitude right now, but I'm not very optimistic about things.
And that's all I got to say.
Thank you very much.
Marcy in Florida, our last caller in Open Forum.
Stick around about 45 minutes left this morning.
In that time, we'll be joined by Ed Whalen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
We'll take a look at President-elect Donald Trump's potential use of recess appointments to fill cabinet positions.
Stick around for that conversation.
We'll be right back.
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Sunday on Q&A, Jochen Jack Werfel, author of My Two Lives, talks about surviving Nazi Germany as a half-Jewish member of the Hitler Youth, the steps taken to conceal his identity.
and the day his Jewish mother was arrested by the Gestapo.
As we got out of the subway, which was right around the corner from where my mother lived, where we lived with my mother, I saw all kinds of Gestapo and SS cars in front of the building.
Now, this was a large building.
There were many families in there.
And my brother and I decided that better than going in and going there with all these SS and Gestapo people, we waited on the corner and watched it from there.
And we decided to ask our mother as to why these cars were there and what the Gestapo was doing there once they were to leave.
We would go home and ask our mother.
Well, after a while, all of a sudden, to our surprise, it was my mother.
They were bringing out of the building, put her in one of the Gestapo cars, and they took her away.
Jack Werfel with his book, My Two Lives, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Washington Journal continues.
Ed Whalen's back at our desk.
He is the past president, current Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Ed Whelan, remind viewers what EPPC is.
Well, we're a think tank, the premier think tank in D.C. dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to the broad range of issues of public policy.
And how long have you been there?
20 plus years now.
Past president, as we said, expertise in constitutional studies.
Two weeks ago in the National Review, you wrote a column about, you called it the, quote, terrible anti-constitutional scheme of recess appointments.
Why is it a terrible and anti-constitutional scheme?
Well, what I'm referring to is the idea that's being talked about that Donald Trump would try to force the Senate to adjourn, perhaps right on Inauguration Day, and proceed to make blanket recess appointments to top cabinet offices.
That would be, I think, an outrageous upsetting of the constitutional scheme, which contemplates that the Senate will give advice and consent, especially on high offices.
Now, as Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, this provision in the Constitution that gives the Senate authority to advise and consent on nominations is really important in making sure that the president makes high-quality picks.
Absent that check, the president could indulge his own whims, his own favors, and as Hamilton put it, might even appoint someone simply because that person possesses a necessary insignificance and pliancy to render him the obsequious instruments of the president's pleasure.
So this was a fundamental feature of the Constitution.
It is a fundamental feature.
And yes, to be sure, there is also a provision for recess appointments in the Constitution.
That, as Hamilton put it, is an auxiliary provision designed to supplement this core provision.
This recess appointment scheme would turn things on its head, and there's never been anything like it in American history.
Take us back a step.
What does advise and consent mean in constitutional terms?
That's the process by which the Senate decides whether to approve or reject a president's nominees.
So it's usually a majority vote process.
A nomination goes through the Senate, goes through a hearing in the appropriate committee, and then is voted up or down by the Senate.
So why were recess appointments put in in the first place?
What was the point of them?
The recess appointment provision, it's quite clear, was put in to address the situation in which the Senate was not available to act on a vacancy, a nomination vacancy that had just arisen.
It's been interpreted very expansively, and I'm fine for present purposes on that expansive interpretation.
I'm not challenging that when I raise my objections to President-elect Trump's scheme.
The problem is that, again, he will try to force a recess of the Senate, something that plainly is way outside the purpose of the recess appointments provision, in order to bypass the Senate's advice and consent provision and install high-level cabinet officers.
How does one force a recess of the Senate?
Well, that's a good question.
There are two paths that President Trump or his advisors have apparently been considering.
The first would be to coax and cajole the Senate into recessing itself.
So I would not call that forcing.
It would be, I think, a shameful act if the Senate were to do so.
I don't think it will.
But the scheme to force would use, or I would say, misuse, a provision of the Constitution that enables the President to adjourn both houses in the event of a disagreement between the Houses on the time of adjournment.
This is in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, I believe.
It's a provision that's never been used before.
It's one that I don't think could lawfully be used in this instance.
But the idea would be to have the House collude with the President to force the Senate out of session.
What would be the point of giving the President that power in the Constitution?
Well, I think the basic point is that sometimes the Houses might disagree on whether the other House can adjourn.
Let me go back a step.
The House, I'm sorry, the Constitution says that if a House is to adjourn for more than three days, it needs to get the consent of the other House.
So you can imagine a situation in which one House doesn't consent to the adjournment of the other.
And in that situation, you might need a tiebreaker.
The President can come in and adjourn them both, the provision says.
Now, what we have here is not a situation in which the Senate would be seeking to adjourn and wouldn't be getting the House's consent.
On the contrary, it's a situation in which the Senate would want to stay in session.
And there's no role for the House to object to the Senate staying in session.
Any disagreement on the House's part with the Senate staying in session is no more constitutionally significant than your or my disagreement with that.
So I don't think it possibly gives rise to a disagreement within the meaning of Article 2, Section 3.
26 minutes ago on C-SPAN, viewers saw a pro forma session.
What is a pro forma session?
It was one in the House, but they also have pro forma sessions in the Senate as well.
That's correct.
Pro forma sessions have become fairly common, as I understand it, in the Senate since the Supreme Court's ruling 10 years ago on recess appointments in the case called NLRB versus Noel Canning.
They might well have existed before then.
I'm not fully aware of the history.
But the idea is to prevent a recess of sufficient length that the president could make a recess appointment during that time.
What the majority said of Noel Canning is that a recess of 10 days is presumptively enough to allow an intra-session recess appointment.
If you have these pro forma sessions every three days, you never have a 10-day recess arise.
Did the Constitution ever contemplate the idea of senators turning over their advice and consent power to a president by saying we will not be in session and allow you to do a recess appointment?
Well, I think it's a deeply anti-constitutional idea.
I don't see anything in the Constitution that contemplates it.
Is it within the bounds of the Senate to abdicate its responsibility?
Sure, I suppose, but I think it's, as I say, deeply objectionable.
Deeply objectionable.
There are some senators arguing for this process.
Bill Haggerty was one of them on ABC's This Week on Sunday.
I want to play about a minute and a half of his interview.
The issue of recess appointments, you know, Trump had suggested and wanted John Thune to agree to it.
The idea that if he can't get confirmation on any of these, that he could bypass the Senate and do what's called recess appointments.
Is that still on the table?
Do you think that's still something that Trump is considering?
It is and should be on the table, John.
President Reagan's used it, President Clinton used it, George W. Bush used it.
This is a constitutionally available tool.
What we want to see is Democrats cooperate with us.
But if the resistance movement gets as heavy as it was, I've been through the process myself of confirmation.
I turned my paperwork in on the 21st of January.
I didn't get through the process till July.
So we need to see things move in a far more expeditious pattern.
We need to see things move quickly.
The American public has spoken in that regard, as I said in the beginning.
President Trump is ready for action.
We need to put a team in place around him.
And he needs every tool at his disposal to do that.
Recess appointments have certainly been used.
Barack Obama named members famously to the National Labor Relations Board in a recess appointment, but never, as I understand it, for positions as important as cabinet secretaries of the largest cabinet agencies.
And let me just ask you, just finally, you mentioned if Democrats are obstructing, would he do that or try to do that if he didn't have the Republican votes to get somebody confirmed?
Because that's the issue.
If he doesn't have the Republican votes, would he try to bypass the Senate and appoint a major cabinet secretary in a recess?
Again, John, I haven't spoken with President Trump about the specific plans.
What he wants to do is see these appointments made quickly.
He wants to see us get through the confirmation process.
And again, I think everything should be on the table.
And I think if my colleagues understand that, they'll know that they need to step up and move expeditiously to get these cabinet members confirmed.
Republican Senator Bill Haggerty of Tennessee on the Sunday shows this week.
He called it a constitutionally available tool.
Well, I will charitably construe his comments as not embracing the scheme of blanket recess appointments at the outset.
You can't have everything on the table when you knock everything else off the table and just have this.
So I think he's interested in making sure that nominations get confirmed promptly.
Perhaps down the road, there might be occasion for a recess.
I want to emphasize, though, that there are tremendous advantages that President-elect Trump has that most previous presidents never had.
And these advantages make the comparisons to, say, Ronald Reagan completely inapt.
For starters, he has a large majority in the Senate.
He has the filibuster having been abolished for executive branch nominees.
So you can't have a single senator put a hold on and threaten to go through the whole cloture process and tie things up.
There was the adoption of a two-hour rule with respect to post-cloture on not on cabinet officers, but on other officers.
That would make it very easy to get those confirmed.
There is the Federal Vacancies Reform Act that was adopted in 1998 that Reagan did not have the advantage of, which enables him to put acting officers in place in a broad range of positions throughout the federal government.
So there are a host of reasons why he does not face some sort of crisis.
He should be able to work things through the process and get competent nominees confirmed quickly.
Indeed, if I may, hearings can start as early as January 3rd.
Formal nominations can't be submitted until January 20th, but you can have cabinet officials confirmed on January 20th and appointed on that date.
President Trump had three confirmed and appointed on that date back in 2017.
There's no reason he can't have at least that many, probably more.
Just on those comments, are you saying that the bar is lower to achieve the advice and consent of the Senate than it used to be for cabinet officials?
It's a lot lower now with the abolition of the filibuster.
That is just a huge change.
You have a majority in the Senate.
The Democrats have virtually no tools to obstruct.
In the past, the minority would have had a huge ability to obstruct.
When I say in the past, this is before 2013.
So it is a huge difference, absolutely.
Let me get some calls on the line for you.
Ed Whalen with us until the top of the hour end of our program, 10 a.m. Eastern.
It is 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
We're talking about recess appointments, but also a good person to ask your judicial questions of questions about judgeships.
Ed Whalen can cover it all for you.
Joseph is up first in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey.
Republican, good morning.
Hey, John, how are you?
Good morning.
I'm just listening to the guest.
I'm listening to him, and neither one of you guys mentioned that President Obama did it 32 times.
And I don't want to hear things were different with Reagan.
Obama was picked 10 years ago.
He did it 32 times.
You guessed it mention that.
This is just another thing.
You guys are in your bubble in D.C. and you're against Trump.
Trump hasn't mentioned it once yet, and the guy likes to talk.
He hasn't mentioned it once.
Guys are talking about it, maybe they are discussing it.
But now what Trump thinks about it, it's unconstitutional.
But when Obama did it, it was okay.
And you guys, you guys didn't mention that.
Ed Whalen.
Well, respectfully, Joseph misses the point.
Again, I'm fine on recess appointments being made.
The question is whether you make blanket recess appointments at the outset of a presidency.
Barack Obama did not do that.
There's simply no comparison between what President-elect Trump is said to be considering and what Barack Obama did.
Now, I'm sort of twisted between, oh, it's a great idea, and oh, he's not even thinking about this crazy idea, so I'm not quite sure how to respond to that.
What did Barack Obama do?
Barack Obama made recess appointments.
I know during intracession recesses, perhaps during intercession as well.
He had the Supreme Court strike down unanimously three of his appointments, I believe it was, to the National Labor Relations Board in this case I referred to before, NLRB v. Noel Canning.
So, but again, recess appointments have been made in the past.
It's a perfectly proper tool when the Senate is actually in recess, forcing the Senate to recess in order to make blanket recess appointments of cabinet officials at the outset of a president's term is a far cry from that.
It's not apples to apples.
It's not apples to oranges.
It's apples to orangutans.
So what would you be comfortable with?
How many recess appointments if they don't get the votes that they need?
If it's not a blanket recess appointment, which you've made your opposition known to, what would you be okay with?
Well, there's no magic number.
It's a process.
When you look back to previous presidents, almost all have made nominations, tried to work through the Senate process, and then have gotten frustrated and obstructed.
They've then said, okay, I have no choice but to do this recess appointment.
Here, we have a majority in the Senate.
Any competent nominees to major positions ought to be confirmed very quickly.
And, you know, it's tempting to wonder whether this scheme that's being talked about is designed to enable the installment of less than competent nominees.
We saw, for example, the nomination of Matt Gates to the Justice Department, a nomination that has now been withdrawn, but a terrible pick in so many ways.
And not someone who should ever be installed via recess appointment.
Is there anybody else who you would describe as not a less than competent nominee or a terrible pick?
I'm not going to address the full range of nominations.
One great thing about the confirmation process is the nominees will have an opportunity to prove their competence.
And so, yeah, some questions have been raised about different candidates.
I'm not, can't say I'm wild about RFK Jr., for example.
But let them go through the process.
If they shine, all the better for them.
They'll have even more influence in the administration.
If they bomb, well, that'll be very telling as well.
But again, you have 53 Republicans in the Senate.
There should be, there will be a good dose of deference to President Trump's picks.
Felix Gaithersburg, Maryland, Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
I don't really have a comment on the prompt, but I just wanted to make an overall comment on some observations from my working experience.
I did notice that sort of the framework that I'd use and approach things from an accounting background in the federal government is using a control framework.
And that kind of starts with the tone at the top.
And unfortunately, or fortunately, that occurs at the presidency level.
So it's interesting to kind of see how these polarizing kind of picks, nominations throughout the upcoming second Trump presidency can kind of shift and control the tone surrounding the American public.
Ed Wayland, any thoughts?
Interesting comment.
I do think a president sets the tone, and a lot follows from that.
Roy, West Palm Beach, Florida, Republican, go ahead.
Yeah, hello.
How are you doing?
Doing well.
Yeah, I'm calling pertaining to what your guests are speaking about, about the recess appointments.
You know, if needed to be done, it is constitutional, correct?
It all depends what it is.
No, I do not believe that the president has constitutional authority to get the House to try to force a disagreement with the Senate so that he can adjourn both houses.
I've explained in writing why I think that is unconstitutional.
I think it's deeply anti-constitutional for the president to try to force a recess of the Senate for the very purpose of making recess appointments.
And I'll add further that the court was deeply divided in Noel Canning, five to four, on the scope of the president's recess appointment authority.
Now, my objections to the scheme assume that the majority is right in that case.
But Justice Scalia had a very powerful dissent that he read from the bench, and he was joined by three justices who are still on the court.
And in that, pardon me if I said dissent, it was a concurrence in the judgment.
In that opinion, he said, A, the recess appointment authority can be exercised only during intersession recesses, recesses at the end of a session of the Senate before the next session.
So this would typically happen sometime in, say, in December.
And B, that this recess appointment authority can be used only with respect to vacancies that arise, that happen during the recess.
Vacancies at the outset?
Not vacancies that preexist the recess.
I think there's a very good chance that if Donald Trump were to pursue this scheme, some months down the road, you would have a Supreme Court majority that would strike it down on any of several bases, including the possibility that the three new justices, Republican appointees, Trump's own appointees, would join with the Chief Justice, Justice Alito, and Justice Thomas in adopting the two positions that Justice Scalia set forth in his concurrence in that case.
About 20 minutes left.
You bring up the Supreme Court, just to shift slightly to the Supreme Court.
What is your expectation or what is the expectation among folks who watch the court as much as you do as to how many picks for the Supreme Court Donald Trump might have in a second Trump administration?
Well, I would put the over-underline at around two.
But vacancies are often overpredicted, and I might end up making that mistake here.
I would think that there are some justices, I won't be coy, I'm speaking of Justice Thomas and Justice Alito, who might decide that this is a good opportunity to pass their seat along to someone who would entrench their legacy.
You have a Republican-controlled Senate.
It would be very easy to get high-quality nominations confirmed, and you'd basically have the conservative majority rejuvenated.
Now, they'll make up their own minds, so we'll see what they decide to do, but it seems to me that there are strong arguments why they might decide just to step down sometime in the next one or two or four years.
If it were two and Donald Trump ends up appointing five justices over the course of two terms to the Supreme Court, where would that rank in terms of number of Supreme Court justice appointments by a single president?
He would, I believe, tie Dwight Eisenhower, who had five.
FDR had more than five, I believe.
You had enough time.
Yes, yes.
Washington obviously appointed them all at the beginning.
I'm forgetting another president.
It may have been Lincoln who appointed five or so.
So it's, you know, it's a significant number.
It's hardly unprecedented.
Do you think it's a good thing for the judicial branch to have one president appoint a majority of the sitting justices on the Supreme Court?
I'll say it all depends how good his appointments are.
How do you think his appointments have been?
Great so far.
What's an appellate judge?
Well, the federal judicial system is basically divided into three levels.
You have the Supreme Court at the top, you have federal district courts or trial courts at the bottom, and you have the federal courts of appeals in the middle.
So we have 12 geographically organized federal courts of appeals, as well as a specialized court that hears certain matters.
So when you hear about the Ninth Circuit or the D.C. Circuit or the Fourth Circuit, they're formerly known as, let's say, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, et cetera.
These are the appellate courts.
How many are there and how many picks to the appellate courts does a president usually get?
Well, again, I believe there are 12 geographically organized courts of appeals, as well as the so-called Federal Circuit, which handles intellectual property and claims against the government, I believe.
Right now, it looks...
Each one of those has about how many judges?
Oh, there's a wide variation.
It's not a standard number.
No, the Ninth Circuit, which covers a huge area, has 29, I believe.
The First Circuit has maybe five.
So there's quite a variation.
I would say the mean is probably in the 10 to 15 range, but don't hold me to that.
So right now, there are only five vacancies or announced vacancies among the 170 or so active judgeships on the Federal Courts of Appeals.
There might be some more vacancies that arise, far fewer vacancies right now than at the outset of Donald Trump's first term in 2017.
Basic reason for that is in Donald Trump's first term, Republicans controlled the Senate for the two years preceding his coming into office, and they obstructed lots of Barack Obama's nominees.
Of course, we have the opposite situation now where Senate Democrats control the Senate and have been pushing Joe Biden's nominees through very expeditiously.
In terms of what's considered the most important pick, obviously, Supreme Court, is the appellate court is the next most important pick.
Is that fair to say?
Sure.
I think so.
And from there, too, you might say that some courts seem more important than others.
You might look at courts where they're at an ideological tipping point where the en banc decisions made by the full court might change if you had one or two more, say, conservative judges.
You have the D.C. Circuit, which has a very lopsided Democratic advantage, which I think will be difficult for anyone to alter, but is seen as by many as particularly important because lots of big cases of administrative law end up in that court.
So look, it would help the odds to get a conservative panel if you had one or two appointees to that court.
I don't know that that's going to happen.
More calls for you.
This is Billy in Crockett, Texas.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
I would just like to say that America is a nation of God.
And even though Donald Trump, I wasn't behind him, even though he won that nation, God already told me that Cameron would win as well.
And what I'm saying about our nation is we are a nation of God.
And that's why we're the world leader.
And that's why we get this safer than anybody would come in here talking crazy and doing crazy things because God is real.
And I'm one of God's sons.
I'm quite sure.
Well, Billy, do you have a question about the judicial branch or recess appointments?
Well, I would just like to say that I'm for the things that will be better for the people.
And with America being the type of nation we are, we're not like some type of crooked place.
We are the people of our nation.
They get a chance to speak and they get a chance to react.
Well, Bill, I appreciate the call from Texas and letting you speak.
This is Mike in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Republican, good morning.
Hi, good morning.
It's the first time calling.
I was looking online and I saw that there were, he mentioned Clinton and George Bush, and I saw there were 139 recess appointments under Clinton, 171 under Bush, and 32 under Barack Obama, which seems low.
For the Barack Obama breakdown, they said that 20 were later appointed by the Senate, and I think 12 were withdrawn.
So I'm wondering what's the difference between those figures, those occurrences, and what's being suggested now.
They said the ones for Barack Obama, that's the only one I had data, were all appointed or nominated before the recess appointments.
So I don't understand the hand-wringing going on that I'm hearing.
Maybe I'm taking that the wrong way, but just curious what your take is on that.
Well, let me repeat myself.
It's much more than hand-wringing.
It's an objection to a complete inversion of our constitutional system of the Senate's role in major nominations.
So again, recess appointments have their place.
And if Donald Trump ends up making 200 recess appointments during actual recesses for the sort of mid-level, low-level offices that previous presidents have done, fine.
What I am objecting to is the idea of forcing the Senate into recess in order to make recess appointments, something that Hamilton would have found abominable, something that Justice Scalia would have found abominable.
Recess appointments of top cabinet officials, the very sorts of folks who ought to be getting scrutiny by the Senate.
And all of this with a Senate with 53 Republicans.
And what a blunder this would be down the road to have these recess appointments challenged and invalidated and have six months of President Trump's term blown by this scheme.
If that were to happen, if they were invalidated, what does that mean for what would have happened in agencies over those six months?
Well, it all depends what the unlawfully recess appointed officials did.
But basically, you could have lots of folks who would have the authority to challenge the actions taken.
Let's say, for example, that an attorney general fires a Justice Department employee.
That employee challenges the firing saying, among other things, you're not lawfully in office.
Well, so that person would presumably be reinstated or get some huge damages award.
But the point is that this would just be a huge mess at the outset.
It takes simple tackling and blocking to make a lot of progress here.
It's very easy to go through the ordinary channels.
I emphasize again that earlier presidents prior to November 2013 did not have the benefit of the abolition of the filibuster.
Huge, huge change.
Presidents prior to 1998 did not have the advantage of the Vacancies Reform Act, which gives a president another vehicle to put in place officials who will implement his vision, put them in place as acting officials.
Again, there was a change back in 2019 that means that post-closure debate for sub-cabinet officials is limited to two hours.
That makes it very easy to get lots of nominations confirmed.
So all these efforts on the confirmation side have happened to make it easier to get a nominee confirmed.
Has there ever been an effort to overhaul or make a constitutional change to get rid of the recess appointment?
This whole idea that's caused this concern?
Well, I don't think it's recess appointment so much that's caused the concern.
What you have is, you know, admittedly, an awful lot of federal government officials who are subject to advice and consent by the Senate.
I think the number may be somewhere near 1,200.
So there's a legitimate question about how you go about enabling those positions to be filled.
And I think some of the changes that have occurred have, by design or not, made it a lot easier to do that.
Again, on recess appointments, the question is whether the position that Justice Scalia expressed in dissent, I'm sorry, in his concurrence in the judgment in NLRB v. Noel Canning would at some point be adopted.
But whether or not it is.
But there hasn't been a proposal to overhaul the Constitution and get rid of recess appointments.
Is it because it just hasn't been as big of an issue as it could potentially be this time around?
Well, I think it's because the Senate has plenty of tools available to prevent recess appointments.
We talked before about pro forma sessions.
So you don't need a constitutional amendment to limit recess appointments.
Just one senator coming in and calling the Senate into session.
Right.
To Dennis in West Palm Beach, Florida, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
A question for Mr. Whalo.
With the caveat of not wanting to jinx anybody, what are some of the names that President Trump should consider for possible Supreme Court openings?
Thank you.
Well, I don't think that I'm particularly in good favor with the future White House folks at this point.
So I will not name any names.
I will say that Donald Trump appointed 54 courts of appeals judges in his first term, an excellent group of judges, really outstanding on President Trump's part.
And some 30 or so of those appellate appointees are in the age range to be plausible candidates for a Supreme Court nomination.
And a good 12 to 15, I think, will be hailed as really outstanding candidates.
You can look around different courts of appeals and find different candidates.
So it would be easy pickings for President Trump to select one of the outstanding individuals he has already had the good judgment to appoint to the courts of appeals.
Why don't you think you're in good favor with the incoming Trump administration?
Just this issue?
Well, among other things, I have not been, you know, it's fair to say that I have had my reservations about our president-elect.
Do you care to elaborate?
Well, only that I would have preferred a different candidate in the primary.
That said, I very much wanted him to succeed.
And I'm trying to do what I can to help him succeed on judges and on other matters.
And that includes beating down bad ideas that other people are trying to push on him.
Mary Grace in Florida Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
And thank you, Mr. Whaling, for explaining the recess appointments and other things, because the public does need to be educated.
Although I'm a Democrat, I feel that, you know, you are doing things fairly for all people.
And I am extremely worried that the Supreme Court, there are six Republicans and only three Democrats, and nothing is getting done because of the fact of their etiology on the other side, Republicans, and women are paying a price for it.
Is there anything in the Constitution that can settle this matter so it can be equal and fair to all people?
And I also feel that politicians on both sides are not listening to their constituents.
They just want to be in power.
So I would deeply appreciate what your thoughts are.
And thank you for your work.
And Mary Grace, just have you explain a little bit, what do you want to be equal and fair?
Are you talking about Supreme Court membership?
Yes.
I mean, it's unfair.
The women now, they defeated Roe versus Wade, and now women are dying because they can't get an abortion.
The last case in Texas where the woman had a miscarriage, and she couldn't have a DNC because the doctors are afraid because of the way the law is written.
And that's because the Supreme Court is unequally divided.
Gotcha.
And how, yes.
Got your point, Mary Grace.
Let me let Ed Whalen jump in.
Well, it's a big question on which I have a lot to say.
I'm respectfully in disagreement with, I think, virtually everything the caller had to say other than her thanks for my comments.
For starters, Republicans, conservatives worked for decades through the process to transform the Supreme Court.
And I am very grateful that we succeeded in doing so.
There's one lesson in there that actually bears on the recess appointment matter, which is there were some very short-sighted decisions made on strategic grounds or really ignoring strategy by Senate Democrats that were very, very costly and that paved the way for this conservative ascendancy.
One is the launching of the filibusters against lower court nominees in the first place back in 2003.
The second then is the abolition of the filibusters for lower court nominees in November 2013.
The third is the use of the filibuster against Neil Gorsuch's nomination in 2017, the only thing that could possibly have unified Republicans to abolish its remaining part of the filibuster.
And so you never would have had the confirmations of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett without that huge strategic mistake that Democrats made being short-sighted.
And I worry, again, on the recess appointment area that some folks are being very short-sighted and not understanding what this could mean in the future.
Say, for example, in 2029 that you had a Democratic president and 55 Republican senators and a House controlled by Democrats.
Instead of the Republican senators being able to be a check on the president's cabinet appointments, that Democratic president could do this same gimmick if it succeeded.
I don't think it will, but if it succeeded by getting the House to pretend to be in disagreement with the Senate on something so the president could adjourn both houses.
Again, I don't think the scheme would succeed, but if it did, it would have very damaging consequences.
Let me briefly address the idea of some sort of political balance on the Supreme Court.
The court is not, should not be a political body.
What we want are judges and justices who are faithful to the Constitution.
I think that the improvements, the changes in the court have been significant improvements and gotten us closer to that.
I heartily welcome the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs restoring abortion policy to the states.
There are lots of stories out there that are simply false where lots of people are scaring doctors into thinking they can't do things that the law plainly allows.
This is part of an assault on Dobbs, on the Supreme Court.
But this is a matter, an abortion policy that obviously people have sharply divided views on.
In our system, this is left to Democratic processes to decide.
And I hope, I'm very grateful that Dobbs allows some real protection of the lives of unborn human beings.
And I hope that we'll continue to make progress in that direction.
If you want to read more on Ed Whalen's thoughts on the judicial system, on legal matters, a lot of different ways you can do so.