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Washington Journal starts now.
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It's Monday, December 16th, 2024.
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I think?
That they're on to something.
The country is divided rather evenly among partisan lines.
While Donald Trump comfortably won the electoral college, the popular vote margin fell within two points.
And yet, the media, including mainstream sources, rarely tries to appear neutral.
From news coverage to editorial columns, different outlets offer radically different views of reality.
And all this raises this question, why are media outlets biased, even when delivering basic news coverage?
We'll dive more into that column.
It's one of the columns that inspired this morning's question.
Here's another story from over the weekend about ABC News and its settlement with Donald Trump.
It's set to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by the former and president -elect Donald Trump.
...was a significant concession by a major news organization, the New York Times writes, and a rare victory for a media -bashing politician whose previous litigation efforts against news outlets has often ended in defeat.
Under the terms of the settlement revealed on Saturday, ABC News will donate the $15 million to Mr. Trump's future presidential foundation and museum.
The network and its star anchor, George Stephanopoulos, also published a statement saying they regret remarks...
We're good to go.
I think?
Published false information, but that it did so knowingly that the information was false or with substantial doubts about its accuracy.
A little bit more from that column.
Mr. Trump sued ABC and Mr. Stephanopoulos back in March after the anchor asked Representative Nancy Mace, the Republican of South Carolina, who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager,
why she continued to support Mr. Trump after he was found liable for rape in a 2023 civil case in Manhattan.
In that case, a federal jury found that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, but did not find him liable for rape.
Still, the judge who oversaw the proceedings later clarified that because of New York's narrow legal definition of rape, the jury's verdict did not mean that Mrs. Carroll had failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her, as many people commonly understood the word rape.
The story goes on from there.
But that story out over the weekend and getting a lot of attention, a lot of focus on media.
Good morning, everybody.
The only thing I can say is that I will not trust anything coming straight out of the Trump administration.
I don't know what we're gonna do, but I'm just not gonna believe anything that they say.
Never.
That's all I gotta say.
Tim, do you trust the media right now?
Say again?
Do you trust the media right now?
Depends on who it is.
I pretty much know.
Who's a reasonable source?
I source it out.
I do a little research on it.
I don't take anything for granted and I take everything with a box of salt.
Who's your reasonable sources right now, Tim?
I mostly rely on Reddit, believe it or not.
There's a certain politics subreddit that you can go to and they have let's just say 30 40 or more different sources that you know report you know and then you can go to the comments and read the comments and make a decision on whether Well,
you can believe it or not, or it gives you a little bit more resource to go to figure it out.
But just in general, nothing that anything that comes out of the Trump administration should be believed.
I mean, look at all the Fox News people they got.
Got your point.
That's Tim out of Kentucky.
Good morning to you.
I have to separate it into two.
I mean, national coverage and international coverage.
Because I followed both of them.
When I followed the international coverage news of the United States, one thing which really hurts me and...
After that, I see how they cover up the international news, including the recent one, the Syria coverage.
The guy who was an ISIS guy, now all of a sudden, he changed up himself and becomes a hero.
That means the media itself is...
Batella, you don't think that bias is there in national coverage?
Why would it be more biased in international coverage?
No, no, there is also, I'm going to bring you the national side too.
I'm telling you why I concluded that there is a big bias in international coverage.
When it comes to national coverage, it opens my eye after 2016.
Local election, national election.
When the media start treating Donald Trump as nobody from day one, they didn't give him a chance to do his job, and then all of the Russia, Russia, Russia.
I think that took four years.
It turns me off.
I was following CNN.
I stopped following CNN.
I stopped following folks.
I stopped it.
And then I said that we need the media anyway.
We cannot live without media.
But the sad thing is that the media failed us.
So it is time for corporate America to wake up.
This is a vital, important instrument for civilized society.
Without the media, We'll be just like another tyrant country.
So we need the media, but the media has to be held accountable to what they are reporting.
If they are doing something, there should be some accountability.
I didn't see any accountability in the media, except folks, somebody paid $50 million for defamation.
Well, that might be the case, but we need to hold the media accountable.
They are very important.
We cannot leave them.
You talk about turning off CNN, a story about viewers turning off CNN and MSNBC.
In today's Wall Street Journal, cable news loyalists have grown a lot less loyal to MSNBC and CNN.
While viewers are flocking to Fox News in the wake of Donald Trump's election win last month, ratings for MSNBC and CNN have tumbled.
The decline so far, far worse than what happened the last time Donald Trump won in 2016.
MSNBC averaged 603 ,000 primetime viewers.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
I think?
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I have low faith in the media system because there's no real accountability for bringing bold -faced liars on their network.
I was listening to a gentleman called Mr. Global, and he was saying there should be some type of system that tells the American people which news agency is more reliable and which is not.
It's like when you go into the store and they have an A or they have a B or they have, you know, a CIF.
They should have some way of monitoring.
He said he was talking about doing AI and regulating Which news agency have more of a true nature that can put out more accurate information?
You can't have a media organization being sued for, you know, multi -million dollar lawsuits and be saying that they're reputable.
You've got to be able to have a station where you turn to and they say, you know, like you have a big A or less reliable or something like that.
And Tyrone, there's organizations that do that, and we've had some of those organizations on this program to talk about what they do and how they do that and how they try to write it.
NewsGuard is one of those organizations that comes to mind.
Have you ever checked out some of those sites that try to do that?
Well, those are social media sites.
Those are not the mainstream media sites where we turn on ABC.
What they're doing is raiding the mainstream media sites and all different news organizations.
Yeah, well, I guess I haven't gotten to those.
Specific ones in that, you know, I'm an American.
I want things laid out easily for me, like most Americans do.
We don't want to have to search for these sites to be able to see which media organization is more reliable than the other.
We want to be able to turn on our TV and see that ABC has an, you know, have an F, or Fox got an A, or, you know, however that, however they can do it,
we're making it more accessible to the American public because We don't want to be complicated.
We want to be able to have things laid out for us like we're two -year -olds, like we're all babies.
We're in adult bodies, but a lot of us have this childish mindset that we want stuff laid out right in front of us.
So I think that is more of an acceptable way where people can make a more informed decision on what they're looking at.
How can you be sued for all that money?
Thanks for the call from New York.
Remy, Good morning and thanks for taking my call.
I'll get right to the subject matter here, and it's a good subject that we're on this morning.
Right off the bat, let's just start with why it is we have what we have.
And we know we have the airwaves which are free.
But unfortunately, the corporations that have to buy through the FCC a license in order to broadcast, you automatically know it's just one of 16 to 17 three -letter agencies.
That are actually having the oversight on what goes out to the American people.
My point being is this.
If you want to find out how I guess manipulated they have to be in order to take us from one direction to another, we simply have to look and maybe go back to Al Jazeera that had the airwaves for a while and then all of a sudden they're gone.
It was because at the time that Al Jazeera was broadcasting, it wasn't in conjunction with what the Politicians of the day wanted it to go.
Here's my point.
Let's fast -track where we are today and how we're being gaslighted by the UFO phenomena.
They changed the nomenclature.
It was UFO and then UAPs, and now we're going to refer to them as drones.
Nobody's asking the hard questions of these people like Mr. Politician or Mr. CIA or whatever.
You've got F -35s and F -16s that can go up here with cameras.
That's Remy in Maryland.
Back to Roland Fryer's column in the Wall Street Journal.
His answer to that question that he...
...posed earlier the question of why are media outlets biased even when delivering basic news coverage.
He talks about the economics of media bias.
Here's one of his answers.
But then cable news came along.
When Fox News debuted in 1996 and MSNBC deliberately shifted left around 10 years later, there was an early example of how a different strategy could succeed economically.
He writes, hardly any news sources today can hope to have truly broad spectrum appeal as consumers of every persuasion can find a product tailored to their own worldviews.
Good morning.
I feel so...
You know, first I'd like to congratulate the idiot for winning the presidency.
I think it was wrong.
Fox News really helped him out.
I mean, the Trump network.
I mean, and now all the rest of the networks are jumping on board.
And I think it's disgusting myself because the man is unfit to be president.
I know he's going to be our next president.
And it's got me upset very much.
But, you know, that's what we're stuck with.
And now the networks are sucking up so they don't get shut down, I think.
And that's bad for America and it's bad for the American people.
Thank you very much.
William, what did you think about this ABC News settlement that came out over the weekend?
$15 million settlement.
The money going to Donald Trump's future presidential foundation.
I think that that money should be paid after he pays E .G. Carroll and he pays his taxes in New York.
Okay?
But he shouldn't get it until then.
You understand where I'm coming from there?
That's William in Ohio.
This is Ernie in Pennsylvania, independent as well.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I'm glad to see you.
I hope they could put you on more often because you're one of the best.
Well, Ernie, what do you think about this media bias question?
Okay, let me say this.
First of all, all modern media is nothing more than propaganda instruments.
Why?
Our First Amendment guarantees...
To have freedom of the press.
The freedom of the press has been compromised.
Most of the news outlets are coming from think tanks or vested interest organizations and groups and institutions.
They have nothing to do with displaying what is going on for the American citizenry to be A challenge or a force against government overreach.
Instead they coerce and they persuade and convince the public that whatever the officials present it's the absolute truth.
This is farther from the truth.
When did you ever see an investigative reporter on any network or local news channel?
What do they normally say?
We're waiting for the police or some official to provide us with what is going on.
You don't see, well, we're going to get to the bottom of this independently, and we'll tell you and report what is really going on.
None of this occurs.
It's all paper.
It's all presented public relations formats.
And this isn't news.
This is programming.
So I hope the public get off of their rear end and don't be blaming politicians.
Politicians are nothing more than instruments of the establishment.
They don't represent you.
That's Ernie in Pennsylvania.
This is a different column in the Wall Street Journal, but it's about the prevalence of conspiracy theories today.
The headline, it's all conspiracy theories, right?
It is by Andy Kessler.
He writes, until recently, debunking conspiracy theories was the role of the mainstream press.
Sadly, their reputation is in tatters.
After their COVID biases, their insistence that President Biden was sharp as a tack, and their cheerleading for wokeness, millions of Americans now rely on podcasters and influencers and other crackpots instead.
And that isn't good either, he writes.
We live in an age of loosey -goosey truth.
The Twittersphere nicknamed former Washington Post reporter Taylor Loren's misinformation Fact checkers are too busy analyzing every Trump utterance.
Snopes can be a good conspiracy debunker, but still people want to believe, now more than ever, you need to make up your own mind, he writes.
Andy Kessler in his column today in the Wall Street Journal.
This is James Finksburg, Maryland, Republican.
Good morning.
Hey.
Hey, how you doing?
That's what I was just about to get on.
I think, like, the younger people are going on podcasts and on X.
James, is it a matter of the mainstream news channels getting to those places where younger people are going?
This is another one of those headlines today.
I'm not sure about the advertising part of it.
I mean, I just see that my kids get on TikTok and then so they don't watch TV anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I guess that's how they're going to try to get a hold of them, but I don't know if that's honestly going to work.
I think the younger generations, you know what I mean, easily manipulated, used in different ways and not the cable networks anymore.
And here's one stat from that story.
James, thanks for bringing it up.
In October and November of this year, 88 of the top 150 political TikTok accounts, this is by views, in the United States were content creators, according to data that the Wall Street Journal found.
51 were publishers like the New York Times, MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, while the rest were associated with candidates or political parties.
But 88 of the top 150 political TikTokers We're not these legacy news sources that we're talking about.
Angelo's next.
Houston, Texas, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How y 'all doing?
I want to thank y 'all for having us able to have a call in with y 'all where none of the other networks have the guts to do it.
And I really appreciate how when we say things, y 'all even ask us questions back.
As far as the media goes, I've really been watching all.
Of the media outlets on TV, I don't do the internet things.
I think it's sad when these news outlets play a clip of what somebody says, but they don't play the whole clip in order to try to distract what they're really saying.
I think it's awful.
I think it's sad.
I think it's putting panic in a lot of people.
They're scaring people into thinking that Everybody's going to lose their social security, which I'm on, and it's wrong.
We don't know if they're going to do it.
I have a suggestion that might sound a little silly.
We need an organization that when news media does not put a whole clip on to put forth what they're saying, we need to find them,
hit them in the pocketbook.
They'll stop it.
Angela D?
Do you think that happens with Fox News as well?
Or is MSNBC the only place you see it?
No, no, no, no.
I watch all of them.
I really do.
I'm retired and I'm bored and I can't believe I'm even doing it.
But it's all of them.
You hit them in the pocketbook, big time fines, and watch it go down.
Angela, do you think, and we just saw the settlement...
I do.
And I'm not a big Donald Trump supporter.
I don't disagree with everything he says.
I think you might start seeing him more, and I think it should be done more because money talks.
When you hit people in their pocketbook, they tend to stop doing what they're doing.
But it's a shame the way they're putting panic in the American people.
I say, let this man do what he says he's gonna do.
If it don't work, then blast him on the media.
But what if it works?
What if some of the things he says he's gonna do, what if it works?
Then what are they gonna say?
That's Angelo in Texas.
Ronald is in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, John.
Your name is John, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
John, I'm Ronald from Lawton, Oklahoma.
I was in the military for 20 years.
And when I got out the military, I served for the Operational Test Command.
I was a data collector.
I did like every job that you can really think of in the hotel.
I worked for the IHG Army Hotels.
John, I met so many people.
You wouldn't believe it, but even in Germany, all across Europe, all over the place, I met so many people, and they're all the same.
They all want the same thing.
They all want to live Liberty Life John.
There are somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five hundred thousand Americans that live in Mexico.
Why the hell would they want to live in Mexico and they're American citizens?
Come on, man.
So, Ronald, bring me to this news media question we're asking.
Excuse me?
We're asking a question about trust in the news in the wake of campaign 2024 as we head into 2025.
Where do you think the news media stands in the eyes of the American public today?
Okay, that's a good question because CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, X News, all the newscasts, podcasts, people coming on TV, doing town hall meetings and all this other stuff.
I mean, if you really want to believe Donald Trump, go ahead and believe it because he's already been impeached twice.
He's already been convicted twice, three times, 34 times indicted.
He got 91 more times to get indicted on stealing, you know, secrets from the United States and sharing them with Russia and China.
Now he's inviting China to come to his inauguration.
So, you know, believe what the news media say.
Believe it.
Because, you know, you're going to be as stupid as stupid is and stupid does.
And, you know, they say there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there's statistics.
Goodbye, John.
That's Ronald in Oklahoma.
We're good to go.
A few of your comments from social media.
I think?
This is Diana in Jeffersonville, Indiana, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'll keep this short.
CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, for the most part, these are not journalists.
They are entertainment networks.
And that's how I feel.
So, Diana, what do you watch?
Well, I watch CNN and Fox.
Those are the two that I watch.
Do you read any newspapers?
Do you get a newspaper in your house?
No, I do see things that pop up on my phone, so I read that.
Pop up?
Via what source on your phone?
Well, it just pops in.
I can't tell you.
It just pops in every day.
Do you trust news alerts from your phone?
Depending on what they are.
No, not necessarily.
Give me a recent example, Diana.
I can't do that.
I'm not prepared.
I just called in to say that I think that these are mostly entertainment networks.
I really do.
That's what I think.
Gotcha, Diana.
Thanks for the call.
This is Lawrence, Montgomery, Alabama, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, John, and it's a pleasure to talk with you.
Really, I think C -SPAN and Washington Journal are very straightforward, very objective.
I watch you frequently, and I appreciate the independence and the objectivity and the call -ins.
Now, what I do is I differentiate between TV news and print media.
I think that one of your independent callers a few minutes ago from Texas made a very clear case.
And that is that TV news is populated by activists, not really journalists.
And of course, TV news is constantly interrupted by advertising, which creates a kind of stress as a viewer would watch it.
I think they're all biased.
If you look at MSNBC and compare it to Fox, and I tend to be a conservative, I can still see the fact.
That they are populated by activists, not so much by reporters or actual journalists.
Now, I distinguish television news and its jittery nature and its constant interrupting with ads with print media.
And I often read both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
And you can see, if you're objective, that the selection of topics in the New York Times is different than the selection of topics in the Wall Street Journal.
And the depth of reporting in both of those newspapers is very, very good.
Then look at the editorial pages, and that's where the clear bias comes out.
New York Times editorials are very liberal, very biased in that direction.
Wall Street Journal editorials are very biased in the conservative direction, but I do as a conservative find them more interesting.
So John, I just want to compliment C -SPAN Washington Journal, and I want to make that distinction between TV news and print media.
So on print media, several newspapers, including the Washington Post here in D .C., This year decided not to make presidential endorsements, and there was a lot of pushback on that.
One, do you think that was a good idea?
Two, you talk about the lead editorials.
Should newspapers have editorials?
Does that color the objectivity of the news in the pages before?
Should newspapers have an op -ed page where people can write op -eds, but should there be an opinion of the newspaper in the form of an editorial?
Oh, I certainly think so.
And it gives away the sort of inclination of the ownership and the top editors.
It gives away some of the bias in the selection of topics and in the details in the reporting.
No, I have no problem with that.
In fact, some of it I think is almost funny.
It is so reflective and transparent.
Well Lawrence, we couldn't do a three hour show if we didn't.
I think it was a giveaway that they were so worried about the nature of the Harris camp and her word salads that they were embarrassed by it.
And I think they saw probably the rise of Trump momentum.
And I think that's the reason they defer.
What do you think, John?
Well, here's what Roland Fryer thinks when it comes to Donald Trump.
And Roland Fryer has that column, The Economics of Media Bias, that we've been returning to in this first hour of The Washington Journal, and reserves a special spot for Donald Trump in this universe of media bias.
He says it's difficult not to grant a special spot to Donald Trump, though doing so mostly requires stepping away from economic theory and into the realm of punditry.
Mr. Trump's populist...
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
With journalists' natural desire to see themselves as heroes bringing down corrupt politicians, mainstream outlets, especially those with flagging popularity, leaned into Donald Trump coverage.
They did so, however, with outrage rather than objective reporting, which attracted more liberal viewers.
Roland Fryer writing in the Wall Street Journal.
Again, he's a journal contributor, a professor of economics at Harvard, founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call, sir.
I think that people get confused.
There's a difference between journalism and pundits.
And a lot of these nighttime shows...
Have entertainment?
Yes, because they're pundits.
But my favorite newscast is Bret Baier, Special Report.
But I watch them all.
I watch MSNBC, CNN, ABC.
Now they have to pay a $15 million apology for not being journalists.
And...
I guess I love watching C -SPAN.
I can't wait for some of these confirmation hearings because don't trust the news.
Watch it.
Watch it live.
Watch the whole committee meeting.
Don't watch 10 second snippet.
You know, and I was so frustrated because we watched a two and a half year lie from news networks and even the FBI was paying off social media.
And sold it to America about the Russian collusion.
It was so frustrating to watch because even some of my, one of my favorite, I guess, politicians, Paul Ryan believed it.
He was a never Trump.
He became a never Trumper, believed the lie.
And we were sold to it by elected officials like Adam Schiff.
What does he do?
He gets a promotion by selling a lie to America that costs millions of dollars and we got it sold to us by the media and so journalism is darn near extinct and it's really sad to see.
There's no Walter Cronkite's anymore darn near.
George Stephanopoulos lied to us and he has to pay.
But he's still got a job and people still watch him.
Clay, this was another recent story.
This was just last week.
And I wonder what your thoughts on this story are.
A former FBI informant accused of falsely claiming that Joe Biden and the president's son, Hunter, had accepted bribes.
Well, the mere fact is we do have bank records that the Biden family has taken millions of dollars from our greatest adversaries.
There's witnesses.
And now, with the pardon, he's going to pardon himself.
And the Biden family walks away with $25 million, including his grandchildren.
And look at the pardons that he's just, he's offered.
People that have been bezeled millions of dollars.
Judges that have, what is he, he's considered the child.
I want to hear the whole story.
I want to hear both sides.
Whether it's Republicans or Democrats that are hurting this country, I want to know about it, and I want to be able to either vote them out of office or hold people accountable through our justice system.
And I pray to God that...
I say amen that this man got reelected.
I don't agree with his personality sometimes and things that he says, but he's, I tell you what, he's going to save America.
That's Clay in Wisconsin.
This is Bill out of California, Democrat.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Yes, I do trust the news media.
Of course, all I watch is MSNBC because I'm a Democrat.
I love their programming.
Bill, there's been a lot of talk in this age of news media fracturing and having different I've listened to all the other ones.
Fox News, just, you know, watching altercations of people on public transportation and, you know, that's just, that's ridiculous.
But MSNBC, yes, I love that.
I love them.
They have good programming there.
I trust that media and I think they're doing as good a job as they can in this environment.
It's Bill in California.
This is Robert in Michigan.
Independent.
Good morning.
Big question.
How do you defame a convicted felon?
Take some good look at our law.
You don't think they should have settled, Robert?
That's Robert in Michigan.
More from the New York Times story on that settlement.
It was the Ronneal Anderson Jones professor of law at the University of Utah who points out in that story, quoting that story in the wake of that settlement saying major news organizations have often been leery of settlements in defamation suits brought by public officials and public figures both because they fear a dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side.
Going on to say what we might be seeing here is an attitudinal shift.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good morning, John.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing well.
Very little trust in the media.
I agree with some of the callers that they just tell part of the story.
And one of your great programs when you had Frank Luntz on, I found that very interesting because you were talking about the media then.
I tried so hard to get in that day and couldn't.
I think one of the most upsetting that I've been is when they talk about that Both sides incidents in Charlottesville, Virginia,
and never play the full clip of it, which you have.
He was not talking about the Nazis.
He put them down.
And another thing, with the campaigning, all the different lies that they've been telling, too, just very disappointed in the media.
And MSNBC, I find to be one of the worst offenders, mostly to the viewers and to the voters.
They insult the people that voted for Trump rather than talking about the issues that do divide us and talk about the politics of it.
They insult the voters terribly.
One of the worst stations.
The other station...
Well, CNN's starting to insult some of the voters now.
But at least the more conservative stations, they don't.
They don't insult the voter.
When you say they insult the voter, how do they do that?
You have to be stupid to vote for them.
You're a Nazi.
They just, whatever they call Trump, they call us voters.
And I just, I don't even turn on MSNBC anymore.
I just can't watch it.
Nancy in Florida.
This is Shirley in Cleveland.
Democrat, good morning.
You're next.
You with us, Shirley?
Then we go to Diane in Missouri Independent.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning, John.
How are you?
Doing well.
Go ahead.
Well, I tell you what.
I love listening to this show because it really gives me a feel of what's going on out in the country.
I don't watch a lot of the media.
I do watch CNN when I'm traveling out of the country but I just am blown away of what is sold to people because everybody's pushing their agenda and it didn't seem to used to be like that.
So no, I don't trust a lot of it.
I do like the print Wall Street and New York Times but it's just you have to selectively decide your own mind on the issues because I don't think we always get the full story.
Diane, when you say it didn't used to be like that, probably the best way to show that is via this Gallup poll.
It is Americans' trust in mass media, and the green line here is those who say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media.
Back in the 70s, that number in the high 60s and into the 70s by the mid, We're good to go.
I think?
This is Gregory in California.
Republican, good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for the call.
I believe whether you're getting your information from the left or the right, if you can't decipher it and piece it together rationally,
I think you might have a mental illness as far as I'm concerned.
Gregory, how do people learn to do that?
To put the puzzle together?
As far as I'm concerned, that's hard to come by these days.
I don't know.
The solution is not easy.
How do you specifically...
It's concerning.
Do you have kids, Gregory?
I don't.
No.
I got a lot of nieces and nephews.
If you're trying to help your...
It's concerning to me that people...
And if you're trying to teach your nieces and nephews how to do that in a time when there are so many different places that you can get your news from,
what is your best advice to your nephew or niece?
Crazy, as I mentioned earlier about mental illness, but God of any sort or higher power has actually helped.
I mean, so I'll just leave it at that.
I mean, I don't have the answers, but it's the way that the system is being run is very concerning.
So, I mean, thanks for taking my call.
That's Gregory out in California.
Less than 10 minutes left here.
This is Mark.
Orange Park, Florida.
Democrat, good morning.
Yeah, good morning, John.
I recently reread 1984 in preparation for the second coming of Il Duce, USA.
And in the novel, Orwell created Newspeak, and in particular, one word, duckspeak, which was literally translated as quack like a duck.
And it was used in reference to Noise babble coming from telescreens that the party made everybody watch.
For opponents, it is all abuse.
When used in reference to allies, it is praise.
But it's all the same thing.
Quacking like a duck.
Now this pretty much sums up Orwell's views on over -the -air information.
Not mine.
I still trust the media.
Just passing it along.
Thank you.
Mark, you might be interested.
It was at the National Book Festival this year.
It's put on by the Library of Congress.
But we interviewed Laura Beers, a professor at American University here in D .C., about her book Orwell's Ghosts, including the impact of 1984 when that book came out.
But an interesting interview with Laura Beers.
You can find it at booktv .org if you want to watch it.
This is Lester in Louisiana, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
First of all, let me say I love C -SPAN and how y 'all covered the hearings and let people call in.
And as far as trusting the media, I don't completely trust them.
You have to take the good with the bad and figure things out for yourself.
I kind of lost trust in them and the way they treated Bernie Sanders' coverage when he was running.
That's Lester.
This is Mike out of Washington, D .C., Republican.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Marcus Garvey said whoever controls the media and the press controls the mind.
I was in the military and I've seen the CIA and Langley and stuff like that and the super PACs and how they give money to these Big media corporations, and they can swing the vote.
I live in Baltimore, too, where the Baltimore Sun pretty much has gone down print media because they lie so much and they target certain minority groups.
And for many years, that's what happened during the election.
You saw that a lot of minorities switched back to Republicans.
Minorities usually traditionally used the Republican Party.
Democrats, since 1865, sir, have...
We're good to go.
So Mike, where do you go for your news?
I'm right there on the ground.
I work in the school systems in D .C., the whole immigration thing.
You know, you see this whole thing going on, and they bring them in, and this government, the Department of Education, has failed us because they've not given us the resources for these kids that don't speak English from all different parts of the country and stuff like that.
And they're getting free food and welfare and hospitalization and everything.
And you can see it right on the ground.
The media, they don't even come out and speak to the people.
That's Mike in Washington, D .C.
This is Dawn in Texas.
Democrat, good morning.
We've never had our country, Republicans or Democrats, identify.
They work together.
And I was 11 years old when our beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
And my brothers fought in World War II, or this country would be under a dictator, as Trump would love it to be.
He is the wife of his children.
John, there was a column in the Washington Times today comparing Donald Trump to Franklin Roosevelt, saying that both spoke to Americans in a way that...
There's no comparison with Donald Trump and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was for the people.
He started so many after the war, World War II.
He got us back on our feet with the CC camps.
I remember all of those.
I was living.
So these people, and another thing, and people who probably don't know that are Trump lovers, in Europe, they outlawed Fox News because of its lies.
And Murdoch came over to America and started his Fox News, which are mostly lies.
That's Don in Texas.
Time for maybe one more call.
Did want to wrap up before that call though with one more paragraph from Roland Fryer's piece in today's Wall Street Journal.
It's the economics of media bias is the column that we've been returning to in this first segment.
This is how he ends that column.
He says, with several papers declining to make presidential endorsements this year, one hopes that there's a future for unifying objective sources of news.
My hunch though is that it will get worse before it gets better.
I'm skeptical that there's enough demand for objectivity and believe that there are powerful economic forces pushing media outlets to give audiences the red meat that they desire.
If we truly want less media bias, we need to stop consuming the unhealthy options that are on offer.
The market will give us what we want.
Roland Fryer in today's Wall Street Journal.
Gail, Texas Republican, go ahead.
Yes.
I just want to state that I do not trust most of the media.
And it took years, years.
For years I used to trust the media.
But I have to tell you, one of the things that really is very, very, really upsets me is the fact that I was watching,
January the 6th, I was sitting at home and I was on Facebook and I happened to come across a posting by a Sullivan, Jake Sullivan,
and his statement, he was videoing the attack in Congress.
And I thought, well, what is he talking about?
There's no attack.
Anyway, I watched his video.
He was videoing what was happening.
And in this video that I was watching, I actually saw, witnessed, peaceful patriots being The
people who are currently in prison for various crimes that they've been convicted of relating to January 6th, do you think any of them should be in prison?
No, those people, they weren't convicted.
No one has been convicted.
People are currently serving jail sentences and have been convicted.
No one has been convicted for insurrection.
That is a fake.
That is a phony.
How do you have an insurrection when you have police, Capitol Police?
That's Gail, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around, though.
Plenty more to talk about, including up next, it's a week ahead in Washington Preview.
We do it on Mondays here on The Journal.
Reese Gorman is our guest of notice.
And later, Brad and Dallas Woodhouse, brothers and political strategists on opposite sides of the political divide, discuss efforts to bridge political differences this holiday season.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
This week.
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Both chambers are facing a December 20th deadline to pass government funding to avert a shutdown.
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Washington Journal continues.
On Mondays when Congress is in session, we like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington.
To do that this morning, we're joined by Notice political reporter Reese Gorman.
And Reese Gorman, in the final week here of this lame duck Congress, we're facing a Friday deadline to fund the government past December 20th.
Start there.
What needs to happen this week?
Is Congress on track?
Yeah, so the government's not going to shut down.
They're going to come to some agreement, but right now, this is, it's just kind of negotiations are still ongoing.
The plan was originally for Johnson and leadership to release the text of the continued resolution yesterday.
It was supposed to be sometime in the early afternoon, early evening, around there.
And then they didn't release it.
And the reason why is because there's still some fighting going on.
So Republicans really want aid to farmers into the bill.
And obviously if you want to add, but they need Democrats to support it.
So they're like, Democrats will look at it as like, oh, if Republicans want this, then we need to get something out of it.
So currently there's a lot of back and forth over what they're going to add.
Democrats have a lot of demands that they can meet.
For example, one of it is like 100 % funding for the bridge in Baltimore that currently collapsed, as well as some other things.
So there's some back and forth there trying to get negotiations.
Additionally, there are some Republicans that are really upset about this kind of thing.
What is funding for farmers?
How did that come up?
Well, if you're going to give Republicans this, then...
You still need our support, so we're going to need something in return.
And so it's really just kind of stalling the whole negotiations.
And then remind people, if they do pass this, how long of a continuing resolution this is.
It's more than likely, the rumor here is, until the beginning of March.
So Johnson really wants to kind of get something into March, which, as I've reported before, as well, is that there's a lot of Republicans that are upset about that.
I mean, this could be well into Trump's first 100 days, so they're going to have to be dealing with reconciliation.
With Senate confirmation, so they're going to be having to deal with a lot and then you're going to throw government funding on their plate.
Additionally, there's likely going to be a 217 -215 majority.
It's likely going to be a very slim majority because you're going to have Matt Gaetz who's already resigned.
His seat's not going to be filled by then.
Mike Waltz is going to be resigning on January 20th.
He's going to be National Security Advisor.
You're going to have Elise Stefanik who likely will be confirmed by then so she won't be a member of the House anymore.
So that's going to be a no margin, because a tie in the House fails.
And so you're going to have no margin for error, and it's already tough enough, as we're seeing today, to pass any kind of legislation, especially spending bills.
But they will have a Republican Senate, which makes things easier on that side.
It does make it easier on that side, yes.
But again, they're going to need 60 votes to get anything passed for government funding, and they're only going to have 53 votes.
So they're going to have to kind of do some bipartisanship there to get to that 60 -vote threshold in the Senate.
And as we know, bipartisanship in the House...
So, what's the alternative?
A 12 -month, 9 -month government funding bill, CR?
If he would...
There's a lot of members that I talked to that said they would have preferred just to quote -unquote clear the decks, which would have meant get funding off the plate, actually do the spending bills, actually do the appropriations like they're supposed to, not just do a continued resolution.
Obviously, with only, what is it, four days now, that's not a possibility.
And so people realize that this is now Johnson's only option.
I talked to Steve Womack in my story.
He was just upset.
He said there's a lack of leadership.
They don't have leadership right now because what's happening...
So RFK Jr. is going to be up.
Up on the Hill for the first time well, not first time as nominee he's gonna be meeting with senators and so he's really gonna be making this pitch, as we've seen it's been.
He did not have a good end of the week last week and, you see, Mitch Mcconnell um kind of came out, not against Rfk Jr by any means, but basically saying hey, like we should kind of back off this kind of skepticism.
The polio vaccine, Mitch Mcconnell, famously a polio survivor himself, John Corden, tweeted out an article that was looked at as a subtle jab at RFK about the polio vaccine.
So there is some people that are, RFK is going to have some tough questions, especially about kind of his stances that he's taken in the past on these vaccines.
Obviously, especially when you look at McConnell, who is a polio survivor, he knows the effectiveness of these vaccines and he doesn't want to hear, he doesn't want to see these go away.
And so RFK's going to have to answer some tough questions.
But there's also, I mean, there's also Democrats that have expressed an openness, at least hearing him out.
And so we're going to see how this kind of goes for him.
You talk about the headlines late last week.
The headlines continue this morning.
This is the front page of the New York Times.
Kennedy aide filed to revoke the shot for polio.
So is...
Mitch McConnell meeting with RFK Jr. this week?
I imagine that would be a place reporters would be gathering if that's going to happen.
Yeah, I do not know exactly if they're going to be meeting necessarily this week, but I do know that he is going to be meeting with him sometime before the confirmation hearing, and he's going to want to get answers to these questions.
I mean, that headline was exactly what McConnell was referring to.
I mean, that is something that he does not want to be reading on the front page of any newspaper, and so I do imagine that he will be meeting with him 100 % before the confirmation hearing.
Anyone else on the Hill this week that you're watching for?
I think I'm going to be, I mean, obviously Pete Hegseth, as I reported, I mean, he kind of salvaged this, his nomination.
It was looking grim for a second there.
I mean, there's reports, I mean, I also reported that Ron DeSantis was being considered as a replacement.
He was really struggling.
I mean, he was going through, he was getting these tough questions, stories coming out about his past, and he salvaged this.
He kept fighting.
He pushed forward with the help of people like Donald Trump Jr., J .D. Vance, Breitbart, Charlie Kirk.
They all kind of, They did this pressure campaign because they saw how Senate Republicans were emboldened after Matt Gaetz may effectively be killing the Matt Gaetz nomination, saying that you're not going to be Attorney General, we don't want you to be Attorney General.
They knew that if Hegseth, the same thing happened, Senate Republicans would be emboldened and be like, we're more powerful than Trump.
We can destroy these nominations.
They didn't want that to happen.
So Breitbart started running kind of all these endorsements from Senators, N .P. Hegseth saying we plan to vote for him.
They actually, they preemptively ran, they got word Of a New Yorker story that was running on Pete Hegseth, and they preempted it.
They kind of ran a story, attempting to discredit it prior to the New Yorker ever actually publishing their article.
So that's how they used Breitbart.
Donald Trump Jr. and Charlie Kirk really went on Twitter, kind of pushed these campaigns, like, advocate for Hegseth.
J .D. Vance really made the fight, just being like, kind of what I was saying before, being like, we can't give up on Pete Hegseth.
We do not want to give up on Pete Hegseth.
I had sources telling me...
That this would, if Trump were to replace Hegseth with Ron DeSantis, that how bad it would look for the base, being like, we elected Donald Trump to get his nominees, and now the Senate is, like, he's caving to the Senate's will.
And so there's this whole kind of campaign to kind of convince Senate Republicans to vote for him, Joni Ernst especially, Lindsey Graham especially.
And, I mean, while he's not out of the woods yet completely, he's significantly in a better place than he was just two weeks ago.
Reese Gorman with us this morning to talk about the week ahead in Washington.
Always interested in taking your phone calls as well.
Phone line split as usual.
Republicans 202 -748 -8001.
Democrats 202 -748 -8000.
Independents 202 -748 -8002.
If you want to read his stories, it is notice .org.
For viewers who are not familiar, what is notice?
So notice stands for News of the United States.
A little play on POTUS, CODUS.
It's founded by Robert Albritton.
It's about a year old.
We have the notice side, which is basically this news side, which reporters such as myself and others who cover Capitol Hill, cover national politics, cover the White House, cover energy and environment, the DOJ.
And then there's also a fellowship side of it, which is we have 20 fellows now.
There's 10 fellows in the first class, 10 fellows in the second.
Where these are people who are not necessarily all new to journalism.
Some people might have done local journalism.
Some might be fresh out of college.
We have one person who's a veteran who kind of got out of the military, wanted to get into journalism.
And so we're trying to help them kind of get into national news in the best way.
It's kind of like a teaching hospital.
It's kind of just by doing, not sitting in a classroom at J school.
And so really we're teaching them.
They get to come up on the hill.
They get to cover stuff.
They get to go kind of out on the campaign trail when the campaign was going on.
They get to go into kind of local municipalities and kind of cover states and cover cities.
And it's just a really cool kind of Why include that as part of the notice mission?
Why a teaching hospital for journalists?
It's highly competitive to get a job at one of the outlets up here covering national news.
And then what else do we know?
Local news.
I spent three years in local news.
I love it.
It's becoming harder and harder to find good local news outlets because they're getting, whether it's getting bought up by hedge funds, and also if you do find one, they don't pay very well.
And so I think his idea was he really wanted to train this new breed and kind of brand of journalist.
We just did an hour -long segment on trust.
In news, in the United States, Americans' views on the news industry in the wake of the 2024 election, as we enter 2025, as we enter another Donald Trump administration,
where do you think that stands as somebody who can look at it from the inside out?
I think, I mean, it's 100 % that the trust in news is down, right?
I think that there's, I mean, people are watching the news less, and I think we saw as well, I mean, they're getting their news through other mediums, whether it be podcasts, whether it be...
What are we doing?
What have we done for the past 10 years that has led to this point?
And really try to gain the trust back of the American people.
It's not going to be an overnight thing, but it's something that we just, I think, have to really...
We're good to go.
Talking about that out in the open.
I think just being as fair as possible.
I think listening to people and giving both sides and not necessarily implementing your opinion or what you think is best for a CR with this.
I think talking people, I think the way it kind of goes with building relationships with sources as well.
Whenever you're working on a story, people don't want to just feel like you are talking to them.
You don't actually care what they say.
You think they're stupid.
They actually want to feel heard.
They want to feel listened to.
So I think actually talking to these people that are involved in these things and then reporting the news kind of as fact there.
I mean, obviously there's subjective truths that you implement in, but I think that, I mean, you don't just go talking to a member of Congress who might be opposed to the CR and be like, oh, why are you opposed?
You want to shut down?
That's kind of dumb.
No, you'd be like, oh, well, like, why are you opposed?
Actually, listen, hear them out.
Be like, okay, well, like, we'll put their point in because there's people out there in America that will see their point and be like, I agree with what they're saying.
So the CR is happening this week.
What else is happening on Capitol Hill that could impact Americans at the end of a lame duck Congress when we're all focused on the regular end of the year funding fight, the scramble, the potential for a government shutdown?
What else is happening that people may not be paying as much attention to?
Down the road we're going to find out, oh, that's the thing that actually had a lot of impact on people.
I mean, the citizens could be passing the NDAA this week, hopefully, so that's their...
And explain what the NDAA is.
NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act.
It's basically the annual defense act that kind of gets in and kind of gives just anything the military can do, that's what the NDAA is.
And it really is there to kind of...
It funds things, it kind of gives the military more power, different powers here and there, and it has to be authorized every single year.
So the House passed it.
And obviously, for the most part, it usually is pretty easily bypassable.
In recent history, it's been more and more difficult.
There's always kind of these sects that oppose it, but it always passes pretty overwhelmingly.
It's just a fight to kind of get in and out things.
I know that, I mean, Mike Rogers of the House Armed Services had said that there are things in it that he wished weren't in it at this point in time, but end of the day, kind of John's had to put it in and get Republican support.
What's one of those things?
One of those things I believe was kind of that they put in one of the culture items of no funding for transgender surgeries for military members.
And I think that Question from Twitter,
JD writing in, Mr. Gorman, in your opinion, what are the top three legislative priorities for Congress in the first week?
I definitely think reconciliation is going to be a big one.
They're working on what it's going to look like.
Reconciliation is basically where you can pass something through the Senate at a filibuster proof, so it only needs a simple majority to pass.
And it's basically how parties in power kind of get their big issues through.
Biden did it multiple times when he had both the House and the Senate.
And now Trump's going to do it.
So what's the talk right now is what reconciliation could look like, but that's definitely going to be...
One of the top legislative priorities.
I mean, there's talking between one bill and two bills.
So if there's two bills, the first bill would be border energy, kind of these big issues that are not necessarily tax -related that Trump has talked about.
And so they'll try to get that through, which would be just a simple joy in the House, a simple joy in the Senate that would pass.
And then second priority would likely be taxes, would be kind of reauthorization of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017, which more commonly known as the Trump tax cuts.
That there's raising the SALT caps, which is something Trump has promised to do, that includes stuff like no tax on tips that he's emphasized.
So those things right there are stuff that he will also be focusing on.
And then also, I mean, just border security net -large.
I mean, there's stuff that, yes, will have to go through Congress, but there's also stuff Trump is going to do by executive order, that he said he's going to do by executive order, that he can do on the first couple days of his administration.
And so I think those are things that you're going to look at as some of the top priorities.
Why is reconciliation a sort of get -out -of -the -60 -vote -majority -free card for the party in power?
It's a parliamentary thing.
So, I mean, it's basically just a way, it's called budget reconciliation, where it's not everything to be used for.
So you can't just have your broad priorities.
You can't just be like, oh, I want to, like, do X.
It has to be the parliamentarian.
We think an immigration bill would be something that would be allowed To use reconciliation for?
They're definitely going to push to get that through, yes.
I mean, they've been talking about using it for things to secure the border, things like energy, and it's really just fully on the parliamentarian.
There's going to be, I mean, the language is still being worked out.
Obviously, they're going to have to narrow.
They can't just do every single border kind of priority that Trump has.
They can't put it completely into a reconciliation bill.
They're going to have to.
Who's the parliamentarian?
The parliamentarian is...
Good morning.
How are you doing?
My comment is something that I continue to use with everybody.
It's very simple and what we can understand as we move forward in elections, and that is using a football analogy for our positions.
One of the things that we did at this election was that we dropped the ball.
We had a good quarterback, Joe Biden.
He dropped the ball at the debate, but instead of us coming and huddling up whenever the referee throw the yellow flag, we walked off the field.
So we can't do that in the future.
We have to come together and huddle up and discuss what is our next play instead of, because we just went willy -nilly.
My belief is that if I were a campaign manager, I would have had Joe Biden and in the future any candidate on every news outlet.
Reese Gorman, any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think that she kind of just expressed her opinion there on kind of where she views that the Democrats, and I think it sounds like she thought the Democrats did well in the election.
They did kind of come in on the margins on the House.
They did end up at a net positive, even though they did kind of still lose the House, but there was a net positive.
They did gain some seats, but they lost the White House and they lost the Senate, but it sounds like she thinks that the party's going in the right direction at the moment.
Ed, in Jacksonville, Florida, Republican, you're on with Reese Gorman.
What's on your mind?
Yeah, good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to know if the, on the NDAA, if the military pay raise stayed at the same percentage of rate that they suggested.
I do believe that the military did, there was a pay raise in the NDAA.
There was a slight bump in the NDAA.
I do believe that that wasn't there.
Ed, are you former military?
Yes, sir, I sure was.
I did a couple tours in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
And military pay in general, how do you think it is today?
Well, as far as the junior enlisted, I can't get over that Congress looked after our junior enlisted so well because they've been so far behind.
I think it's going to be like 14 .5.
That would be great for them guys.
Under the deal reached by the House and Senate, The National Defense Operations Act will allow all service members to receive a 4 .5 % pay bump next year.
Junior troops, a 14 .5 % pay raise.
The caller with that number.
And that was something that really, especially the veterans of both the House and the Senate were really pushing for.
That's something they really advocated for because to the caller's point that they believe that the service members do deserve a higher pay and they do deserve a raise for kind of their service and what they've been doing.
And so that was something that was really, really important to get the negotiations, the NDA over the finish line.
Just a couple minutes left here.
What didn't we get to this week, and we got to a lot already, that you're going to be covering and watching for?
100%.
I do really think that the government funding is going to be one of the biggest things.
And then also, I mean, on reconciliation, I think that they're going to come out.
There are some people, like Jason Smith, who's the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, that wants just one straight bill of reconciliation.
He doesn't want to do two.
He just wants one, because his worry is that if you just...
A lot of people do not want to vote for tax cuts.
They believe that sometimes it might kind of bolster the national debt.
And so he wants to put everything together.
Like, look, if you want the border, you want this energy stuff, you're going to have to vote for taxes as well because it's all in one bill.
So his word is basically that if you just separate it up, people are all going to be happy about this one kind of...
We're good to go.
Reconciliation package is likely what's going to happen, but they're still kind of working and talking about that.
I do think government funding is going to be a big deal.
House has a 72 -hour rule, so what it means, like, from when they release a text, they can't vote on a bill until 72 hours after the text is released.
So right now we're looking at a Thursday vote with the government shutting down on Friday, so we're really kind of cutting it close here.
But, I mean, when does the Congress ever...
Thank you so much.
Coming up this morning later, we're going to be joined by two brothers, Brad and Dallas Woodhouse.
They are political strategists on opposite sides of the political divide.
We'll talk about bridging the political divide during the holiday season.
But first, and for the next 30 minutes, it's your phone calls.
Open forum.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is the time to call in.
The numbers are on your screen, and we will get to your calls right after the break.
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Washington Journal continues.
Half an hour here for our open forum where we let you lead the discussion.
To do that, call in on phone line split as usual by political party.
Republicans, it's 202 -748 -8001.
Democrats, 202 -748 -8000.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
Good morning, John.
If the news media, the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, want to restore their credibility, they've got to quit misleading the American people.
And they have been, oh, since the Clinton administration.
You tune in there and I heard several callers mention, in fact, Trump's a convicted felon.
Why doesn't 60 Minutes do an in -depth study of that biased judge?
And that corrupt attorney general that changed the laws, changed the statute of limitations to file these trumped -up charges against Donald Trump and then impanel a jury from the most liberal area of the country and find him guilty.
The same way with the rape charges.
The Democrats are really good at digging up somebody from the distant past.
Some lady that will claim that they were sexually assaulted by an appointee, by a Republican or a candidate, a Republican candidate, or like that, and they never do an in -depth study.
That rape charge was never tried.
Trump wasn't convicted of that at all.
What happened was this lady finally, after 30 years, got into a civil court.
So, John...
To that question, your complaints about the media.
So, what media do you read or watch?
Joe Scarborough, one of the most discredited guys in the media, who told us for four years, or three some years, that Joe Biden was one of the smartest guys around, and he had all these faculties, and he ran circles around his staff,
is on there this morning.
He's slamming every appointee that Donald Trump has made, especially Pete.
If you think he's so discredited, why do you continue to tune in?
Because I want to see what he's saying.
Do you think he will?
It didn't even cost Trump a vote.
The moderators were unfair.
It was obvious.
J .D. Vance's debate the same way, who mopped the floor with a Democrat candidate, but they fact -checked J .D. Vance at every turn, and come to find out, their fact -checks were incorrect.
They did something they weren't supposed to do, which was fact -check one of the candidates, and when she did fact -check, Who's that?
It was a $15 million settlement was the news that came out over the weekend, John.
But that's John in California.
Miles in San Angelo, Texas is next.
Democrat, good morning.
Hey, yeah, well, after listening to all that, it's perfectly apparent that Donald Trump has actually never done anything wrong.
So I would ask John from California, can you name anything that he did wrong?
Because it sounds like...
You know, he was a perfect gentleman with that woman in the dressing room, right?
If you listen to John.
Anyway, whatever happened to Jeffrey Epstein in the news?
He was talking about a discredited lady.
What about a discredited gentleman?
How come we never talk about him anymore?
And you know, he came out and said that he was best friends with Donald Trump for 10 years.
So, you know, you can imagine...
Well, maybe you can't because you don't think Trump ever did anything wrong.
And that seems to be the thing about propaganda nowadays is that they can convince people that one of the most disgusting individuals to ever even walk into the White House is almost like Jesus.
And they even refer to him as Jesus sometimes.
Have you ever heard that, John?
Where do you see them referred to as Jesus, Miles?
Give me an example.
Well, Marjorie Taylor Bain said that even Jesus was...
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
How do you think they cheated, Miles?
When you say stole an election, there was a whole lot of controversy about comments of Donald Trump saying that in 2020, and Democrats were very upset at him using those words.
So when you say stole, what do you mean?
I would say they manipulated the election, because all you have to do, if you're smart, and they're not, but they did try once before, and they did fail, so you can learn from your mistakes.
And Elon Musk has more money than anyone in the world, okay?
And he's joined at the hip with Donald right now.
There's no telling what he was able to do.
That's the problem, is they figured out how to do it.
20 million people voted against, or didn't vote, right?
And then all the other people that That's Miles in Texas.
You mentioned Elon Musk.
A story in today's Washington Times where Donald Trump goes, Elon Musk follows.
The story noting where the two have appeared together.
Elon Musk in the 2024 cycle pouring at least $227 million.
Good morning.
I was wondering how Trump's true core, like nationalists, was going to be rewarded.
Now we see that anybody who's been in the military recently knows that somebody wearing the tattoos that Hespeth wears is a white nationalist, 99 % of the time.
And what he's written, you can see, this is the reward that Trump is giving to his corps of the corps, making this guy head of the military in the United States.
Dan, have you been in the military recently?
No, but I have a lot of friends and relatives.
Recently, I'm too old.
I'm talking about currently.
And they've told you about the tattoo?
That is their opinion of people who sport those tattoos in the military.
Okay?
And Tulsi Gabbard goes to Syria about Assad.
She didn't go about Assad.
That was a place where she could go to get a direct line with Putin.
And she is Putin's intelligence chief of the United States of America.
That's what he wants to put in there.
He has no respect for the people of America.
Trump.
That's Dan in New Jersey.
Joe, Dayton, Ohio, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning, John, from a rainy day in Ohio.
And the first thing I want to do, John, is wish you and your family and C -SPAN a happy holidays and a beautiful new year.
Same to you, John.
John, I just want to tell you, I want to thank you, and I've told you this before last month, that you and C -SPAN show the truth.
And I was really impressed with all these Trump rallies and all this stuff.
You showed every single word that he said, okay?
You showed the truth.
CNN, MSNBC, no.
All they showed was this picture, and they turned the volume off, and then they told you what he was saying, which was all lies.
But, you know, John, you don't even have to look any further than the January 6th committee, how they didn't show you all the facts.
And again, I mentioned this the last time I called.
C -SPAN would show the General Milley deposition.
Okay, a sworn deposition.
I saw it that Donald Trump did request the 11 ,000 National Guardsmen on January the 3rd.
That was a sworn deposition by General Milley.
But of course, the media doesn't want to tell you those facts.
But other than that, John, No, I don't trust the media, but I do trust you and I trust C -SPAN.
You guys showed the truth.
John, I want to thank you for everything and have a great, great rest of the year.
Joe, we'll talk to you again in 2025.
This is Bob in Amsterdam, Ohio, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Morning, John.
I've talked to a lot of different women in Ohio and I can't find one that voted for Trump.
You know, they was like 67 % against abortion.
They voted to have legalized abortion.
And now, all you find is, like the guy said, these tattooed, I don't even know what to call them.
They run around here and they have their guns strapped across their shoulders.
What a bunch of sissies.
Why didn't they go into the army if they wanted to do that?
I did my time.
And one more thing.
Putin said that he took this country, and all he had to do was buy one man to get it.
Now, isn't that pathetic?
Bob, when and where did you serve?
I served in Vietnam, Army, 82nd Airborne.
Bob, there's an event going on today in Washington, and there's others around the country, on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, 1944, during World War II.
I wonder what you thought, Sar, as somebody who served in the military, the legacy of that battle.
Well, that was terrible because these guys were floating down and they were just cutting them to pieces.
And they still overtook that whole area there in Normandy and everywhere.
The 82nd Airborne, there are some bad guys in the 82nd Airborne.
They don't put up with nothing.
And, you know, these guys did not vote for Trump.
We're good to go.
I think?
That's Bob in Ohio.
This is Mike in Stockton, California.
Independent, good morning.
Manipulate votes, I guess.
And then as far as that not being charged in insurrection, I thought the definition of insurrection is to stop a lawful proceeding of Congress or the government when Mike Pence wanted to certify the election or whatever.
And then they go in there with Roger Stone saying, oh, we can go in and buy a couple of the police.
And then they'll let us in and all that kind of stuff, carrying five -gallon buckets of feces and urine to the Capitol.
And the Republicans keep calling in saying it was a picnic.
I mean, it's just terrible.
These are people we have to live with.
And they keep accusing other people of stuff.
Donald Trump literally did things illegal and immoral, yet...
They accuse, just accuse, like the Salem witch trials.
You keep accusing Democrats of stuff.
No facts at all.
But the facts will come out.
He's going to be the president.
And I hope you really get, you know, enjoy the new America, just like that other caller said, Elon Musk and Romney Squammy learning all of our secrets.
We've been sold out to a foreign entity.
Don't you see that?
That's Mike in California.
A lot of attention over the weekend to that $15 million settlement between the president -elect and ABC News.
The caller mentioned Dominion Voting Systems.
It was back in the spring of last year, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million.
Good morning.
Yeah, we got a lot of angry people out there today.
I've got one story that will pretty well explain your media.
A few years ago, This nine -year -old girl that was taken across state lines to kill a baby, that was the liberals' perspective on it.
Conservatives found out that had raped her was an illegal.
So they pushed the illegal part of it.
So the liberals got to kill a baby.
The conservatives got to lock up an illegal.
And then both of them moved on.
Nobody cared about this child.
Nobody...
I don't know.
That's Marcy in North Carolina.
This is Tommy out of Kentucky.
Democrat, good morning.
It's open forum.
What's on your mind?
I never hear them say you can go here and look for it and go there and look for it.
How'd she find out all that stuff?
Just say that.
How would she even know?
And Trump, he was a draft dodger and all that.
And he was at a party with old Epstein.
Where do they hide all this stuff from?
They take manna over...
Over God.
They want money.
That's all they do.
Elon, he ain't satisfied with all the billions he's got.
He's got to take more off the poor.
They know the truth.
They want the money and the fame.
I don't know what problem, because I don't watch any of it.
But anyway, I just don't understand why they can't face the truth and tell the truth.
Donald Trump had the judges.
Which judges are you talking about Tommy?
So you don't trust the Supreme Court Tommy?
All right, that's Tommy in Kentucky.
This is Greg in Ohio Independent.
Good morning.
Okay.
This is Joyce in Atlanta, Republican.
Good morning.
Yes, it's funny.
The lady called about the nine -year -old girl, which was on the media.
We all knew about it.
And then the next guy says, where'd they come up with this stuff?
They don't have facts.
Donald Trump just wants money.
He has no facts.
And it's...
It's true.
The media has lied about Trump for nine years.
No facts.
But boy, the Democrats and even some Republicans just gobble it up.
And I called about a year ago and I said, the hate has got to stop.
And it still is not stopping.
They've tried to kill the president -elect twice.
And I'm on X, and I read these people saying, don't miss next time.
Why would they want a person killed?
A grandfather.
And that's the real issue, is the media has vilified Trump to make him not look like a human.
He's a human.
He's a person.
And I just do not understand.
Trump's trying.
To fix America and people just continue to hate.
All right, thank you.
James in Philly, Democrat.
Good morning.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Hello?
Go ahead.
Hi.
Yeah, thanks for taking my call.
I'm kind of shocked that we should be going back in time when we argue against using vaccines as a deterrent against disease.
So if anything COVID should have taught us is that you can't build a wall to keep out certain diseases.
And the fact of the matter is when it comes to vaccines, America, the United States should really be a policeman for the rest of the world, finding or discovering or doing anything we can to prevent diseases in other parts of the world.
um there are parts of the world that they don't have either the sophistication or the ability or whatever reason um you know there's there's wars going on there's all sorts of reasons why um vaccines will diseases um develop in places and um what we again back something we should have learned is that these things can spread around the world um the idea that you know polio jesus i might say going back in time
And the story on the front page of the New York Times continuing.
From similar headlines from over the weekend and late last week, the lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.
They write the aide has been working on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit whose founder is a close ally of Mr. Kennedy.
Well, good morning.
I guess one of the things that I'm sitting here listening to is when you bring these people on that are Democrats, all they do is they spew hate and they spew non -facts.
And as you, as the media, you're sitting there and you're not calling anybody out.
So, Angie, We'll have callers, usually on the Democratic line, we'll call in and say almost exactly what you're saying, but we'll say your Republican callers are spewing hatred,
that your Republican callers are spewing facts from Fox News, that both sides are using the same line of thought, the same words against each other.
Let's look at this.
The hypocrisy of the Democratic Party.
They're sitting here talking about RFK and him wanting to pull vaccines off.
Make sure things are right for people.
But they didn't have a problem when Joe Biden opened up the border.
They told everybody to get a vaccine or you'll die.
That's what they told the American people.
The media said, if you don't get this vaccine, you will die.
Was that right?
It wasn't true, was it?
We now know.
They told us to stay six feet apart from everybody.
We now know.
That's just something they made up on the cuff.
Angie, did you get the vaccine?
Pardon me?
Did you get the vaccine?
The COVID vaccine?
No, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
And now look at it.
And I'm in a business where I see where it's affecting people.
It's affecting women and the thyroids.
It's affecting men in the heart and they want us to act like we don't see it.
It's almost to the point where we're sitting here today watching our government tell us.
That the drones in the sky aren't real.
We're not seeing what we see.
So I don't understand why these people continue to listen to this regime that's in power right now and the mainstream media, which we all know Obama went back and changed so they could spew propaganda.
And common sense is no longer.
And Hillary Clinton said it best.
Their leader, Hillary Clinton, said it best when she said that they need to be deprogrammed.
The Democrats need to be deprogrammed.
They sure do.
That's Angie in Tennessee.
This is Ramona in Georgia, line for Democrats.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Can you hear me?
Yes, ma 'am.
John, I've been watching C -SPAN for many, many, many years.
And I come to the conclusion that I personally would like to do a spinoff of C -SPAN with a political forum like you guys got.
Call C -PASS.
C -PASS, all the lies and everything that people portray, because C -SPAN, the personally normalized racism,
personally normalized white supremacy, personally normalized Trump, and we minorities don't have any say -so.
And I would like to have a line for only minorities.
You think that would help, having a phone line for minorities only every day, Ramona?
Yeah, I don't think any white people should be allowed.
I don't want any white people, because they have C -SPAN and they run C -SPAN.
They have influence of C -SPAN.
So, Ramona, what we have is the callers, the people who call in every day have influence.
I think y 'all are missing a whole sector.
A whole sector, and the minorities do not have a say -so or word.
How many times you done heard a Chinese person call you a liar?
Or a Mexican?
Or a Black?
You know what I mean?
And Ramona, we've had discussions about specific issues in different communities and have talked during the election at one point where there was a specific focus on black men voting in the election around when Barack Obama made those comments about it.
We had a whole segment, I think it was an hour -long segment, for black men only to call in and react to that.
And every day we get viewers who identify as...
What I'm saying is every day we have people who identify what they are, that they do it voluntarily, but most people who call in don't necessarily say who or what they are, so I can't tell you what every caller today, what their background is,
what their race is.
Oh yeah, but I can.
I can tell.
And you know, and it needs to be done.
You know, Roland Martin on Filter does a great job.
About representing us.
About what's really going out there.
What's really out there.
You know what I'm saying?
And I'm just so tired.
This lady had me cracking those eyes.
You remember?
She was like, oh, and it wasn't a resurrection or whatever.
They was led.
They had a tour.
I was like, what?
A tour?
Stuff like that.
I'm like, done.
You can't fact check them.
You can't.
But, you know, I love y 'all and everything.
Hopefully, I'll have my spin off.
Thank you.
God bless you.
That's Ramona in Georgia, our last caller in this segment of The Washington Journal.
It's 9 a .m. Eastern.
Stick around.
An hour to go.
Brad and Dallas Woodhouse will join us next.
Brothers, political strategists on opposite sides of the political divide will discuss how to bridge the political divide during this holiday season.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
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I think?
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This week.
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Washington Journal continues.
Well, 10 years ago, we invited brothers Brad and Dallas Woodhouse onto this program to talk about the political divide in America and in their own household.
C -SPAN viewers might recall that it made for something of a viral moment when their mother called in.
Brad Woodhouse, remind viewers what that 2014 documentary, Woodhouse Divided, was all about.
Well, that documentary was about the time that Dallas and I squared off in 20... 2009, 2010, over the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
He had a documentarian follower activity.
He was running Americans for Prosperity in North Carolina.
I was at the DNC helping President Obama and the White House pass the Affordable Care Act.
And so we had this documentary.
It was coming out right around then, and I think we were doing a pretty mediocre segment with Steve Scully when Mom shocked the world and called in and told us to stop bickering.
Dallas Woodhouse, today, is your family, is the country less, more divided than it was back in 2014?
I mean, probably not.
I mean, there were certainly a lot of things that were posted on Twitter, everything about Thanksgiving after, you know, President Trump's election.
I mean, I think the election returns were a little more unifying in that we had a, you know, Republican president won the popular vote, which hadn't happened in a long time.
Well, that's no longer true.
Well, yeah, because y 'all just keep counting votes until you do that.
He won a plurality, but he did not win a majority.
Okay.
And that's something that we talk about, John.
Well, all right.
Well, let's see what that does for you.
But, hey, look, you know, I was thinking about things that have not changed over the last 10 years.
I mean, they passed.
The Affordable Health Care Act, Brad thinks it's a success.
I don't.
That hasn't changed.
Our mother, our mother who is spicy and as sharp as ever, she doesn't get around quite as good.
But, you know, she is the same.
You know, the other week I was with her and she, you know, Brad called her and she asked when Brad was coming home for Christmas.
She's really excited to see him, you know, as I am.
It's very different.
You know, he lives in D .C.
Are you going to be spending the holidays, the Christmas holidays?
Yeah, yeah.
We'll be together at Christmas.
He's coming to my house for Christmas Eve.
But the funny thing is, you know, when Mom talks to Brad, you know, I mean, she just lights up and gets so happy.
She then starts calling Robert Preston and getting 76 trombones ready.
And not the same with you?
Oh, come on, Donald.
That's not true.
And she said, well, why would you want to do that?
I said, I'm not going to miss my opportunity to let you down one more time.
Dallas, explain what you do now.
So I work with two sister organizations, American Majority and American Majority Action, a great grassroots organization that started in North Carolina about 18 months ago.
I was its first director.
And you know, Brad has, you know, got a We're good to go.
Republicans, you know, somewhat led by Trump, had taken a sour look on and, you know, that puts us at a strategic advantage.
And thanks to our work at American Majority, our activists, our paid staff, also the president -elect changing his sort of tune on that, we were able to turn that around and have, you know, for the first time in North Carolina's history,
Republicans actually outvoted Democrats in early voting, which was really phenomenal.
And Brad Woodhouse, explain what you do now.
Well first of all John, this is exactly how...
We're good to go.
I think?
The Affordable Care Act, we were successful in doing that.
We went on to make healthcare a potent political issue, to expand the Affordable Care Act, to get Medicare the power to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices, to protect Medicaid, and now we're in that fight again,
and right now we've added to that line of work in that we're trying to stop Thank you.
You mentioned you're in that fight again.
If the two of you get into a fight around Christmas time, who's the one that usually separates you?
Is there any chance that you avoid talking politics, Dallas Woodhouse?
There's no chance that we'll avoid talking politics, and I am always the one that will walk away because I just can't take so much of Dallas Woodhouse.
Well, actually, there is some truth to that, but I think it's a little different.
If you're going to be honest about it, we may razz each other a little bit when we're in person, but I think he does have less...
Tolerance for sort of bickering than he did 10 years ago.
And I think that's because he gets it from his Republican wife, Jessica, who's his toughest name.
Don't bring my wife into this.
Don't bring her into this.
No, but I think that's it.
But I will say this, right?
I mean, but we're just as likely to bicker about other things besides politics, you know?
And we are able to talk politics.
Yeah, we argue sometimes.
And let me just say this.
I mean, I want to say something about my brother, right?
I am a lot of what I am.
Just the good parts, Brad.
If there are any.
You know, because of my brother.
I mean, he is older.
You know, I became a television reporter in part, that's because I started in a performance background.
Acting in plays, being in show choir.
Well, my brother did that first.
You know, my taste in music.
You know, I love Springsteen.
I still listen to Huey Lewis and the News, even though he doesn't sing anymore.
Where did those tastes come from?
They came from my brother.
And, you know, I was a journalist for a number of years and I started covering politics.
And when I decided to make a switch, even though I was, you know, on the other side, you know, my brother was very helpful.
So, you know, today, a lot of times, like during the campaigns, you know, there's no point in us sort of talking, you know, who's better, Trump or, well, whoever they're running, Joe Biden or Kamala, whoever they figured out.
But we can talk tactics and other things.
And I still learn a lot from my brother.
He didn't tell me any trade secrets, but I can call him up sometimes.
I don't really understand why somebody did something or why a campaign might do that.
Or we just call it the laugh about it.
So yes, there's always playing up that we're bickering, but we get along and I still learn a lot from my brother.
Well, for viewers who want to learn a lot from the two of you, the phone lines are open.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
38 % said they actually plan to avoid family members that they disagree with politically this holiday season.
So why is it better to engage and maybe walk away than not engage at all?
Well, look, I think it's important to engage.
I think the problem I think that exists, and it was interesting, I was listening to some of your callers before.
Before we came on, and you know this, and you deal with it in listening and talking and moderating these calls every single day, is that we have, with respect to people who are active...
Politically or paying attention to politics, we have people just living with separate sets of facts.
I mean, there are people that still believe after a bunch of people in the government and senators and members of Congress and neutral observers have come out and said, those are airplanes over New Jersey.
There are a whole bunch of people that believe, for whatever reason, this is mostly on the right.
There are people that believe those are drones.
I mean, we just are operating with two...
You know, separate sets of facts.
I think that the results in that survey I think are sad.
You know, if we could operate with the same set of facts and then disagree on the policy solutions, which is what I think we were doing, you know, in the not way recent past, in the last 15 or 20 years,
but now we're not even agreeing on the same set of facts.
We're not agreeing.
On the efficacy of vaccines, even though uh, even though they've been proof.
You know the polio vaccine, I mean Rfk's own.
Uh, allies want to withdraw the you know approval for the polio vaccine, even though the efficacy of that has been proven over and over and over again, and that institutes a whole new set of not real facts, but a different people are operating with different set of.
I have a different answer, John.
Well, Brad brought up the drones.
You know, One thing is, when you have an administration that has so bald -faced lied, you know, Joe Biden was fine.
His health was great.
He's tap -dancing.
I mean, that's a problem.
I don't know what's happening.
We'll let Dallas have his say.
You know, I mean, and I got to tell you, we're talking about Merry Christmas.
Assuming he makes it another 15 days, nobody's going to have a merrier Christmas than Jimmy Carter.
Hold on, hold on.
Hold on, hold on.
We have to be able to turn it off.
You can't be consumed by it all the time.
I love my brother.
I think he's misguided.
I don't think he's evil.
I know he's not.
He's a good man.
It's a little different here in North Carolina.
I ran the Republican Party in North Carolina.
I tried to defeat a lot of Democrats.
I have friendly relationships with Democrats across the aisle in the legislature.
I have friendships with Democrats.
I don't think they're bad people.
And I think, you know, the Villa, you know, and, you know, Brad and I were talking about it, you know, ever since, you know, George H .W. Bush won in 1988, which was kind of a third Ronald Reagan term.
You know, otherwise the parties have flipped back and forth.
Clinton, Bush, Obama.
Trump?
Biden?
Trump?
I mean, you know, it's cyclical, you know, and neither one of us, you know, I don't believe that this past election was the most important in my lifetime.
I don't believe 2016 was.
I don't believe 2024 was.
They're all important.
But, I mean, you know, I do believe in the fundamental... Greatness of the American people.
And I think that, you know, I thought Biden was a horrific president, bad on policy.
You made that point, Dallas.
Let me come back to Brad real quick.
And I've got plenty of callers waiting to talk to you boys as well.
Hold on, hold on, Dallas.
Hold on.
And here's my prediction Here's my prediction.
Two months from now, one month after he's sworn in as president, Donald Trump will be trying to take credit for Joe Biden's successes, for infrastructure, for the economy, for the chips manufacturing, for low unemployment.
By the way, the other thing that Joe Biden did, he ended the pandemic that Trump exacerbated through his failure.
The Biden legacy will be a lot
Let me get you guys some calls here.
I want to make one final thing.
We take calls.
My brother seemed to have forgotten we had an election and it's over and he lost and the American voters did not agree with anything he just said.
Let me get some calls for you.
We'll start way out in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Kyle, up early this morning.
Independent, good morning.
You're on with the Woodhouse Brothers.
Aloha, gentlemen.
How are you doing?
I guess I bridge everyone being from Hawaii here.
You know, I don't think it's a matter of bridging any political divide.
I think if this last election showed us anything, is that a topic that was in the previous segment, the press really went up against Trump, and he still won.
The people of this nation, they've made him president, for sure.
And I think if there is a political divide, it's going to exist.
And I think it's working in the sense that the American people, they're still going to make their own decision with everything.
They say Trump is not a political party, it's a movement.
And we're seeing it now.
He got his second term.
And he doesn't have to take credit for anything Biden or anyone else did.
Brad Woodhouse, let you start on this one.
Well, that didn't sound much like the independent line.
I mean, well, first of all, let's start with that.
That would be a travesty.
For this country in a travesty for the rule of law, if he pardons the people who ransacked the Capitol, who crapped on Nancy Pelosi's desk, who injured 140 officers, some of whom died, I mean,
that would be an absolute travesty for the American people.
So look, Donald Trump was elected.
He gets a shot.
This was no mandate.
This was no romp.
He is now behind in the popular vote to the other candidates who were in the race, Kamala Harris and the third -party candidates.
He won in the key battleground states by a point and a half.
Or less.
Only by less than a point in Wisconsin.
The Democrats won four Senate races in states that he won.
We ran the candidate off the field in the governor's race in North Carolina.
We narrowed the majority that Republicans have in the House.
And at some point when the people he's nominated...
You know, go through the nomination process.
They'll be down to about a one -seat majority in the House for a number of months.
You know, he's the president -elect.
He'll be the president.
He'll get to run his agenda.
But this was no mandate for him, as the caller said, to do what the caller said is exactly one of the problems.
He said Donald Trump can now do whatever he wants.
That's not how it works.
Dallas Woodhouse, let me give you Johnny on the Democratic line from Cincinnati.
Johnny, go ahead.
Yes.
This is John, and I'm just trying to understand why, you know, at these dinner tables, people,
and all these smart people that you got two smart guys up there now, throughout the campaign, mute them.
And you all have never really looked or tried to connect the dots.
Dallas Woodhouse.
Well, a couple of things I do want to say about the Biden administration.
I mean, sort of the whole reason for Biden's candidacy, you know, was to end Trump and end Trumpism.
And as he exits office sort of in this clandestine way, you know, Donald Trump is stronger than he's ever been.
He is the biggest force in American politics by far and the biggest...
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
President Biden with Ms. Harris.
They already know Donald Trump's flaws and they know the things they don't like about him.
But what drove the election?
Immigration, inflation, the economy, and crime.
And those are important issues.
And it happens to be that the Democrat positions, as perceived by the American public, were on the losing side of that.
Coming up on 9 .30 on the East Coast.
We are chatting this morning with Brad and Dallas Woodhouse, two brothers on opposite side of the political divide.
John, if I can add one thing.
Sure.
I may have been the previous caller, and I think Brad would agree with me, is sort of this mystery of wanting to bridge the political divide.
And I think that's what a legislative body does, right?
I mean, a Republican House and a Democrat Senate have to bridge.
The divide to figure out how to fund the government.
It's not that Brad and I need to bridge the political divide.
And we have to work at it, but it's the ability to have a rational conversation, maybe get animated about it and disagree and walk away as friends and not think that the other person is evil or bad or going to hell because we disagree politically.
So I think bridging the political divide is kind of a misnomer.
How did you end up on opposite sides of the political divide?
How did you become a Republican?
How did your brother become a Democrat?
Well, my brother is older, and he was certainly more conservative when he was younger.
I grew up through the Reagan years, and he was my personal hero.
And Brad went to Washington.
I think he was always favored.
I never really thought of him as a liberal.
And by the way, I think my brother's very, very good at what he does.
I mean, I think, you know, he would never say this, but I suspect when they were having these calls around Washington, D .C., of the Biden people and the Harris people, whoever had listened to him a little more, they'd have done a little better.
Not, you know, maybe a lot better, not enough to win, but, you know, he could have helped them more if probably they'd listened to him.
You know, and I just...
I'm just a more conservative person, you know, and he went to Washington, and as I've said many times when this question comes up, nothing good happens when somebody goes to Washington.
Nothing.
Brad Woodhouse, is that fair?
Well, I mean, I was, you know, I started in politics as a Democrat.
My mom's a Democrat.
Our parents had been Democrats.
They'd grown up in the...
Now, my father...
I'm going to vote for the best person.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
Here to uh, to do a few things.
One it's, you know, to protect and defend, and it's it's to provide for uh, provide for security, but I think it's to help the least among us.
I mean, if government's not helping level the playing field.
For you know, and that right now, you know we have, and you know Dallas you want to defend this position we have, and this is one reason i'm a Democrat we have the Republican Party is drafting a budget bill for next year right now, Which will take Medicaid away from poor people so that Elon Musk gets the benefit of the Trump tax cuts being, you know, being extended.
And that is, to me, that is just the wrong priorities for the, you know, for the American people.
So I'm going to stick with the people on Medicaid.
And not with Elon Musk.
That's what makes me a Democrat.
A minute ago, you mentioned your mother.
It was about this exact time when you were appearing on this program in the last hour of the Washington Journal, 10 years ago, that your mother called into this program.
Joyce Woodhouse is her name, and this is that moment from 10 years ago.
You're right, I'm from down south.
Oh, God's mom.
And I'm your mother.
Is this really your mother?
Yeah, we were not together this Thanksgiving.
We are most years.
I would really like a peaceful Christmas, and I love you both.
December 16th, 2014, Dallas Woodhouse.
You mentioned your mom.
How is she doing?
I mean, she's still sharp as a tack.
She doesn't quite get along as, you know, as good as she did, but neither do Brad and I.
And I'll notice that on that clip, She said she loves us both.
She didn't say she loves us both equally.
Just for the record.
We know that the glorious Brad comes from a town you've never seen anything like it.
One thing I want to say about that clip that's interesting is I always remember it is that it did not sound to me at the time like it does when you play the clip.
In other words, Steve Scully says Interrupted like normal.
So shocked.
Well, I promise you, if a Joyce from North Carolina calls in in the next half hour, we will bump her up to the top.
But in the meantime, let me let you talk to Earl in Redding, California, Republican.
Earl, you're on with the Woodhouse Boys.
Hey, thank you very much.
I find this a very interesting discussion with these two gentlemen.
I got motivated to call today.
I try to call every 30 days.
I'm an Agent Orange volunteer Vietnam veteran.
I live on a fixed income.
Thank you for your service.
Oh, thank you for mentioning it.
I live on a Social Security and a veteran's agent.
I'm my Agent Orange, okay?
And here's some facts I want to share with Brad, because he's big on facts.
And you guys tell me if I'm wrong, okay?
Please, both of you.
I'll get off the phone, but I want to give you a couple facts that I see.
I lost 20 % of my fixed income in the last four years.
That's a fact, okay?
That's $2 ,000.
And it's $2 ,000 that I donated to homeless and veterans and help people, you know, give them rooms and boards and what have you that I can't do anymore.
Another fact is for two years we listened to Adam Schiff push a Russia, Russia, Russia.
Was I on the same planet as you two?
Is that what happened?
It turned out being a lie?
And then you want to call this an insurrection?
You know, here's a bunch of people that believe in the Second Amendment and nobody brought any guns to the insurrection.
Is that what happened?
Let me just say this, caller.
No, no, no.
Let me finish.
Let me finish.
I'm almost done.
Earl, go ahead and wrap it up.
I'm almost done.
Did I see protests, Black Lives Matter and other organizations for two years lock policemen up in their own police station and set it on fire?
And where were those prosecutions, gentlemen?
That's Earl in California.
Brad Woodhouse, he originally addressed you on that.
Well, so, look, I don't know his circumstances, how he lost.
Hold on!
Hold on!
Hold on!
He addressed all these questions.
He's just not living in facts.
He said, yes, Black Lives Matter protested.
Many people in Black Lives Matter were prosecuted after that.
Yes, there were weapons on January 6th.
This is the whole thing, is that we're not operating from the same set of facts.
I honor him for his service, but I think he's wrong about the insurrection.
There definitely were weapons.
Weapons confiscated.
And by the way, beating a police officer with a flagpole, that's a weapon.
Dallas Woodhouse, let me let you chat with William out of Georgia, line for Democrats.
Hey, good morning, fellas.
I think Brad hit it early on in the conversation when he said we can't agree on the same set of facts.
And I think the reason we cannot The facts don't line up well for the Republican Party.
You guys just elected a convicted felon who was awaiting sentencing over a prosecutor.
Just that alone is ridiculous.
Not looking at the sexual assault allegations that he had that he was found liable for, the exit out of Afghanistan, you guys bring that up all the time.
That was all set up by Donald Trump's failure.
Dallas Woodhouse.
Did the two of you have children?
We're good to go.
I was going to say, do you feel like they have political leanings at this point?
Do you talk politics with your kids and your nephews or nieces?
And I don't principally talk politics with my children.
I've never been the one that feels like I need to indoctrinate my kids to be like me or to take my positions.
My wife takes a little bit of a different view.
I think she's had more conversations with them about politics than I have.
But my children, and I believe Dallas' children as well, are fiercely... independent.
They will decide for themselves.
They're not going to be swayed.
I will say one thing that does really concern me.
It concerns me about our politics and it concerns me about my children and that is the amount of misinformation, disinformation that is fed online.
My kids are online.
I know Dallas' kids are online.
I think it's one of the things that parents struggle with.
I know that I've struggled with it.
Where's he going to go to college?
Do we know?
We should get the caller's opinion.
We don't know.
He's applied to a lot of places.
He's applied to institutions in North Carolina and all across the country.
He's been a great student.
We'd love to have him.
Brad's just a great father and a great brother.
You're a terrific father and a good son.
He is right about our kids being fiercely independent.
And I have to tell you, that is an extension from our mother.
I mean, our mother is fiercely independent, like you've never seen.
And, you know, we talk a lot about our mother.
And yes, my mother and father raised us to be politically active, to be politically minded.
To be civically engaged.
I mean, one of the great things, you know, we both have an autistic nephew that, you know, my sister's child, who actually lives in North Carolina.
And after, you know, this tremendous publicity we got out of C -SPAN and Mom Calling, we were able to do an event.
You know, years ago and helped raise money for the Autism Society and that was great.
But I'll tell you something else about my mother, which I think is really incredible.
You know, she installed something in us.
Not that we would just install in our kids about being fiercely independent.
But, you know, I love Brad's wife to death.
Jessica, she is fiercely independent, strong.
My wife, Christine, is fiercely independent, strong, hard -nosed.
I don't think guys like us could have been ready to marry, love, and accompany these strong women in our lives if we had not had the model and the learning experience from our own mother who's that way.
And I think that is one of the great...
And Joyce, if you're watching out there, we say hello to you and hope you're doing well.
About 15 minutes left with your boys.
We'll see if we can keep it civil until 10 o 'clock.
This is Ted in Minneapolis, Independent.
Good morning.
All these propaganda TV stations going on right now.
I think that Fox News is a commentary.
Also, CNBC is a commentary.
Now you've got problems with the other channels also.
These lawsuits that are going on.
It's just gotten to be pretty crazy.
What I'd really like to speak about is the national debt.
I think that if you look at... Dallas,
you want to start on this one?
Well, the simple answer is it requires really, really hard choices, and Washington avoids those at all costs.
I agree with the caller's concerns.
I'll say this about the national debt.
You can thank Donald Trump for a big, big part of it.
The first Trump tax cut cost $6 trillion.
Extending those tax cuts again will cost another $4 trillion.
Money we shouldn't be spending.
We're cutting taxes, but we continue to spend the money.
So it balloons, balloons the national debt and it balloons the deficit.
If we're going to continue to spend the money, if we're going to continue to spend the money on our national defense and on health care and all these other things, then we shouldn't be cutting taxes by $4 trillion and cutting Medicaid to boot.
Let me say something about this.
I didn't want to get into a big discussion about health care, but let me say this.
You know, we go back many, many years ago when Brad and I started these conversations, 2009, 2010, and Brad said something and he reminded me of the day that he was right about it.
He said it would pass and it would and that people would like it.
I don't know that they like it, but I will say, you know, attempts to repeal it have failed.
Here, to me, here are the two legacies of the Obamacare thing.
You know, one is if you really look at it and you hear about all the market exchanges and all that, you know, a minimal amount of people get their insurance through that.
The real insurance coverage, and they did expand coverage to people, is dumping a bunch of people on Medicaid.
And we have this moral hazard in the country where the federal government, right now, something they will not continue to do, is paying more.
For the expanded part of Medicaid where we put 25 and 30 year old single able -bodied men of working age on Medicaid then we pay for sick and pregnant Poor people,
which was the whole creation of Medicaid.
The second thing is, and I don't really know if the Democrats wanted this.
Hold on, you can have your say.
You talk about healthcare all the time.
I said very little.
The second thing is, they completely consolidated the healthcare markets.
That's why hospitals are merging everywhere, pharmacies are merging everywhere, delivery companies are merging everywhere, and they've just wrung out all the competition in the marketplace, and the middle class is getting squeezed.
Let's remember all the Obamacare lies.
You can keep your doctor.
You can keep your plan.
Why?
Remember, you can't disagree with me because Obama said that was not true.
Brad Woodhouse, 30 seconds and then we're getting to more.
Well, I mean, everything he just said is a lie.
First of all, over 20 million people get their health care through the marketplaces.
25 million people have gotten health care through expanded Medicaid.
Every single state in the country where Medicaid has been expanded, the economy is stronger.
We've seen a reduction in chronic diseases, everything from heart disease to diabetes.
And what he's saying is simply not true.
And I'm certain we can have a health care...
I'm certain we can have a healthcare discussion for the rest of the segment, but let me go to Jack in Hamilton, Ohio.
Republican, good morning.
Hey, you guys have really made my day.
I'd like to say to Dallas, Dallas, you've been so complimentary to your brother and to his family, and you've been conciliatory.
Your brother is nothing but mad and angry, and I'm thinking you're not going to get invited to the Christmas dinner at his house to get a Christmas card from him.
Well, the Christmas dinner is at my house.
You know, my brother is a fierce advocate, and he gets an hour on national television, and he's going to keep fighting for health care, and he's going to fight for what he believes, and that's fine.
I know how much I mean to him.
Look, first of all, I've said to the caller, I've said on this program, I think he's an excellent father.
He's an excellent son to his mother.
He's an excellent brother to me.
I love Dallas.
I love Dallas Fierce.
Brad, let me ask you.
You had said it's important to engage, and we've established the two of you spending Christmas together.
Is there a time limit, though, to engaging?
Is it one day?
Is five days too many?
Well, I think five days is a lot.
I really think about this as moments when you're together or when you're on the phone.
You engage for a few minutes, and then at some point, you see Dallas here.
He dominates the discussion.
He interrupts.
He drones on.
And at some point, it's enough.
You have to call a timeout.
But I think it's important to try.
I think it's important to try.
If we didn't try to engage one another in political discussion, since it's such a big part of our lives, we would have a hard time having a relationship.
Unfortunately, we have a relationship.
I want to put the one thing in context here.
Right?
Politics is not the most important thing in my life.
I work in it.
I believe in it.
But, you know, I go to church, Asbury United Methodist Church, 930 on Sundays to get my salvation.
Right?
I mean, You know, politics is not the be -all and end -all.
And we used to take long trips together, and we had political difference.
We're just fine.
You know, I mean, Brad and I are always busy with our kids, which we love.
But as we get older into retirement age, I hope we're able to do that again.
And, you know, we'll talk politics for an hour.
And then, you know, we'll move on to shuffleboard.
Maybe we'll go on a cruise.
And if I get, you know, Two out of hand, he'll throw my ass overboard.
I mean, and that wouldn't be the terrible way to go.
So, you know, that's basically what the government does to you if you're on government health care anyway.
So just speed it up.
We'll do a remote show from the cruise.
This is Raymond in Largo, Florida, though, waiting.
Line for Democrats.
Raymond, go ahead.
Hey, guys, how you doing?
Doing well.
Go ahead, Raymond.
Political divide.
You kind of need it.
If we want to be the United States of America.
You need to have a divide.
You need to have multiple opinions.
They're always not going to be on the same side.
If not, it would be Russia, North Korea, Iran, and so forth.
As far as one thing I just want to push back, even being a Democrat, the gentleman that called from California, he wanted to know where the $2 ,000 and the fixed income, that's very disingenuous by Brad by saying, well, I don't know where it came from.
Well, I mean, just do a real basic math.
That guy probably spends $100 a week, 25 % inflation.
That's $100 a month.
That's $1 ,200.
That's just in his hood.
Then you throw the gas in and that's an extra $40 or $50 a month.
Now you're up to $1 ,500.
I don't even want to talk about all the other discretionary things that the poor gentleman has to deal with.
So please don't do that to that guy.
He's a veteran.
He's out there working hard.
And you're basically saying it's not reality.
And that's a lot of the reason that you guys lost.
And that's all I have to say.
Thanks.
Brad didn't say it wasn't reality.
He just said he didn't know.
Dallas.
Dallas.
For God's sakes.
I wasn't questioning whether or not he had lost $2 ,000 in his income, but I didn't know what he was referring to.
And I did say, and I do say, that I appreciate his service.
This is George out of Michigan Independent.
Good morning.
Thanks for calling.
You're on with the Woodhouse Boys.
Thanks.
Yeah, good morning.
Hey, you guys are brothers.
You guys act like you don't even know each other.
You're just on separate sides of the fence.
I'd like just a one -word answer.
First, Dallas, do you love Brad?
More than you can ever imagine.
Okay, Brad, do you love Dallas?
Yes.
Okay, why are you guys bickering so much then?
This is what's wrong with our country.
This is why I am an independent, okay?
No, no, stop, guys.
Stop.
Please.
Hey, this is my time.
Stop.
Well, I mean, I actually agree with the previous caller.
We need these discussions.
We need, you know, Brad, I mean, you know, Brad and I can bicker and disagree and move on.
I mean, that's the problem.
It's not disagreeing.
I agree with the caller, two previous callers, whatever, that said we, you know, I mean, elections are not really...
But, you know, supposed to be necessarily unifying, right?
I mean, they are a way to count which side wins and which side gets to do what.
And that's healthy.
And look, I think we have a healthy democracy in America.
I don't think democracy is under threat.
I think America's good.
And I think Brad's good for America.
Maybe I am.
Brad, one of the callers, or one of the viewers, Lou on Twitter, wants to know if there's any issues that the two of you agree on.
Political issues?
I mean, not that I can think of.
I mean, you know, I'm sure there are, and this is one thing that I think people don't appreciate about Congress, is there are a lot of high -profile...
I'm sure that.
With five minutes left, let me go to Cookie in Indiana.
Line for Democrats, good morning.
Thank you for C -SPAN.
I've been watching for years, but I think that Dallas has a big problem with a big brother, and he's always trying to override what he says,
and so I am with you, Brad.
I think your mission is worthy, and hang in there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Dallas Woodhouse, any response?
Well, it's not just my brother I try to override.
Do you think people try to psychoanalyze your relationship with each other too much?
People can do what they want.
We've had our story told a number of times.
I hope people can learn that the thing that unites us is love.
Love for our mother, love for our deceased father, love for our sister and all the kids that are in the family, love for...
The beach, you know, love for NC State University, love for the country.
We don't have to believe the same path gets us to the same place.
And like I said, I'm fortunate.
I'm going to be fortunate to see Brad at Christmas.
And no matter what the disagreement is, you know, we'll go out and throw the football with the kids and, you know, watch whatever games on TV.
We will have a nice Christmas.
We always do.
Or Thanksgiving.
I wish I got to Washington.
The only reason I would want to go to Washington is to see him.
I don't want to go there for anything else.
I hope as we get older we're able to do more of that.
I think, again, there's a way to disagree and not hate each other and not walk away mad.
We do it all the time.
Brad Woodhouse, why is it so hard for... Americans to do what Dallas was just describing.
Find the things that you can love together.
Love of country was one of the things he mentioned.
Why is this harder for people, it seems like, to be able to do now?
Well, I think it's partly because people are the people that are engaged in politics.
By the way, I don't know that it is true that all Americans are Yeah.
It tells them the other side is evil, you know, that the other side is lying.
I mean, really strong, you know, really strong language.
And I think, you know, people, I don't want to say brainwashed, but, you know, people accept as a fact that, you know, that one side of the political divide is terrible.
The other side of the political divide is righteous.
And I think it sometimes get hard.
It's hard to get.
Because some of these things mean so much.
Like, you know, look, take mom.
Mom is not politically active anymore, but the health care issue was really, really personal to her.
It was personal to her for the reason that Dallas brought up earlier, which is one reason is our autistic nephew, who would know telling what he would do if he didn't have access.
My argument would be putting 25 -year -old able -bodied men on Medicaid eventually threatens my autistic nephew.
But that's my opinion.
Merry Christmas!
I love you, Brad!
Why should it be any different?
He always gets the last word.
Brad Woodhouse is the executive director of Protect Our Care.
Dallas Woodhouse is the North Carolina executive director of American Majority.
Thanks so much to both of you.
Merry Christmas.
Thank you.
Merry Christmas.
And that's going to do it for our program today.
We'll of course be back here tomorrow morning.
It is 7 a .m. Eastern, 4 a .m. Pacific time.
In the meantime, have a great Monday.
Well, this morning, President -elect Trump is speaking to the press from Palm Beach, Florida.
We'll have live coverage of that We're good to go.