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Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments, live.
Then, all this week, watch Washington Journal's special Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live segments each morning with a new writer.
Coming up this morning, Seth Kaplan discussing his book, Fragile Neighborhoods, Repairing American Society.
This is Washington Journal for Wednesday, December 25th.
The holidays are traditionally a time for friends and families to gather, but this year some people may be limiting or skipping festivities to avoid talking about politics amid record high perception that the U .S. is divided.
To start today's program, we want to hear your thoughts.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello and Merry Christmas.
Thank you for being with us this morning.
We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few minutes, but wanted to start with a little more detail of what we are trying to talk about this morning.
From The Guardian, this article from just a few days ago says, as the holiday season ramps up, millions of families across the U .S. will be deciding how to tactfully navigate disagreements within family gatherings after a divisive year in politics and a bruising presidential election campaign.
The election split Americans in half.
On November 5th, Trump got 77 .3 million votes, or 49 .4 % of the popular vote.
Also from that Pew poll, a note saying that just 4 % of US adults We're good to go.
Do you all have conversations about how you can restore bipartisanship?
Are those conversations happening?
Absolutely, and I can tell you that for me, and I'm sure Senator Lankford would agree, bipartisan work.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This week and in recent days, we've been trying to think about ways we can do more work together.
Senator Lankford, tell me about some of those conversations.
How do you start the conversation of how you can do more work together?
So what's interesting is I really don't think of this as bipartisan work.
This is just American work.
Most people don't think of themselves first as Republican, Democrat, Independent.
They think of them first as just human beings and neighbors and people that work and families.
And so really what we're talking about is how do people who disagree sit down and figure it out?
That's where we are.
Unfortunately, Washington, D .C. is a mirror to the country that the country doesn't really like.
Everybody looks at Washington, D .C. and says, those people yell at each other and everything else.
And I typically will smile at folks when they say, those crazy people yell at each other.
It's like, what was Thanksgiving like when your whole family got together last year?
What happens is family members get together that aren't together all the time.
They see their differences and they have arguments.
I was like, well, that's D .C.
That's what's happening.
People that disagree.
But the difference is we're not supposed to just come here.
And just figure out how to be bipartisan.
We're supposed to figure out how to solve problems.
And two people that disagree, or a hundred people that disagree, or 435 in the House that disagree, have got to be able to sit down, be grown -ups, and say, let's talk this out.
Let's figure it out.
Do you feel like you're in a minority of people who care about figuring it out right now in Washington?
Because certainly across the country, as we're saying, relationships, conversations are fractured.
Yeah, conversations are fractured.
I don't think I'm in a minority that want to figure it out.
I think I'm in a minority that has hope we will figure it out.
I think a lot of people just lost hope this gets better, and I think that's the emotion of the country, is they want it to be fixed.
But they can't figure out how it's going to actually happen.
The latest poll I saw was over 70 % of the people in the country don't like the direction of the country.
That's not a political statement.
It's an emotional statement.
Like, what's happening to us as Americans?
And my basic statement is, well, Americans are all made up of individual Americans.
When each person decides they're going to do it different, America decides they're going to do it different.
From Gallup earlier this year, it was September, they put out a survey.
Americans agree nation is divided on key values.
It says that a record high 80 % of U .S. adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while 18 % believe the country is united.
The percentage seeing the nation as divided has ticked up from 77 % the last time Gallup asked the question.
In 2016, it is more than 10 percentage points higher than prior in 2004 and 2012 measures.
It says that public skepticism about national unity isn't new.
Surveys by Gallup and others dating back to 1990s show that Americans typically have seen the country as divided on key values only in 2001 and 2002 in the aftermath.
Of 9 /11, did Gallup find most Americans perceived the opposite with over two -thirds of U .S. adults believing the nation was united?
Senators were also talking about efforts to bridge political division during their goodbye speeches, their farewell speeches on floors in the House and Senate earlier this week.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona during her farewell address.
We've worked together and cleared the way for historic settlements, land transfer deals, water deals, economic certainty, all by listening to one another.
Not to debate or to rebut, but to understand.
It's this very marketplace of the diversity of ideas that makes our country great.
The knowledge that with dialogue and competition we are driven to be more thoughtful and more creative.
And that is why, despite the challenges facing our country, I remain hopeful.
America is still the freest, most creative and innovative place in the world.
We are the birthplace of emerging technologies in medicine, artificial intelligence, energy, robotics, all revolutionizing our global economy.
And the opportunities created by American ingenuity are limitless.
And we must not let our politics hold us back.
For America is still the shining city on the hill and it is up to each of us to protect it and to strengthen it.
We cannot afford to let political differences stand in the way of what tomorrow may bring.
We must hold firm to those guardrails.
For this first hour of this morning's Christmas edition of Washington Journal, we are asking your thoughts on ways to bridge the political divide.
Again, the numbers were broken down regionally.
Eastern or Central Time Zone, your number 202 -748 -8000.
Mountain or Pacific, it's 202 -748 -8001.
We will start with Bruce in Texas.
Good morning, Bruce.
Good morning, ma 'am.
Hi, Bruce.
Yes, ma 'am.
Merry Christmas to you.
Same to you, Bruce.
I get up early every morning.
I'm retired and I get up every morning just to watch C -SPAN and see who's doing who and who's doing what and get a little more informed and things.
Now I want to let everybody know that I'm a good American.
I serve my country.
I live at the border.
Very nice area.
Everything's quiet.
The idea is that I had a brother.
He was a staunch Republican.
And I'm an American.
He never served in the military.
I served in the military.
Even though he believed what he believed, I believed what I believed.
I look at things at face value.
And I weigh things.
And the thing that we always agreed upon Bruce,
what were some of the topics that you agreed on?
We love our freedoms and we love our liberties and we're not going to do anything that's going to jeopardize that.
I mean, I haven't had a speeding ticket since 1990.
You know what I mean?
Three, good to have served and be of service.
And he got into teaching the Boy Scouts.
Young men becoming men.
Well, I was in the Boy Scouts, and then I went in the military, and that changed a whole lot of things there.
But after the military, I went to college.
And then I traveled around the country.
People do things in Mississippi differently than they do in Ohio.
And it depends on the area of jurisdiction and their political difference.
It's like a cell of another cell of another cell.
It's like they're in their little groups.
And they do things differently.
And I've been in areas where I've been unduly prejudiced against myself because of the color of my skin.
And I was never raised like that.
And I've been in a room of people And I was just different because I was there in a professional manner.
I used to do the travel on the, what do you call it, Rotex, nuclear power plants and things, and they needed welders, pipefitters, electricians, you know, skills.
There you go.
Enhance your education.
And I guess there's where the difference is.
Education.
Bruce, when you and your brother, it sounds like you respected each other, did you talk politics?
Or did you just know that you had these different viewpoints and just left it at that?
Oh, no.
When we talked politics, it got heated.
But at the end of the day, it was his argument, my argument, and here's the thing.
We talked to each other.
I mean, the tone in which you say things to people matter.
You know, it's not like I'm above you or you are above me.
We looked at each other like equals.
There you go.
That was Bruce in Texas.
Jeff in Indianapolis.
Good morning, Jeff.
I think it's going to be very hard to present the fairness back in 1988.
Jeff, do you have friends and family that have different political beliefs than you and do you discuss them?
Yeah, well, we may disagree on some issues, but there are some issues that we can find common ground on.
And hopefully...
Jeff, it sounds like you're trying your best when it comes to political issues to have these conversations.
Do you have any advice for people who may be struggling?
That was Jeff
in Indianapolis.
Rob in New York, New York.
Good morning, Rob.
Hello.
Good morning.
Thank you for C -SPAN.
Merry Christmas.
Hi, Rob.
Merry Christmas.
I'm a sort of a pro -Democrat kind of liberal New Yorker who is border control.
You know, I've been talking about the border wall for 30 years.
Calling into C -SPAN and what I didn't think of and I like are the buoys, the river there, and anything else you can throw up and to prevent people from illegally crossing.
So there you go.
A liberal, kind of a liberal Democrat from New York who is pro -border.
I'm also pro -gun.
I'm a Second Amendment guy, but to bridge the gap between you know the two sides.
I'm not like most police departments and police personnel that you hear talk.
I'm not pro semi -automatic weapons and military style assault weapons in the hands of the public.
That's craziness.
So there's a way to bridge the gap there if the two sides are willing to sort of just have some common sense And some decency about listening to the other side.
I'm against conspiracy theorists and the people who spew the crazy conspiracy theories when half the time they know that there's no such thing as alternative facts.
And if we're unable to have just the decency to agree on common sense, We're good to go.
I think?
His lack of leadership skills, which was demonstrated by the way he handled COVID and the way he was telling us to, you know, whatever, drink bleach and do, you know, silly things,
because he's not able to really take a commanding, substantial position on just about anything.
So he distracts us with his John, in District Heights,
Maryland.
Good morning, John.
I mean, I gave up on politics almost 30 -some -odd years ago, and I started studying the Word of God.
I read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
I read the prophets, the minor and the major prophets.
I've also read the four Gospels four times.
I've read the epistles.
I've studied Revelation.
The problem we have right here, right now, it's all about so -called Christianity.
This is supposed to be a Christian nation.
It was never a Christian nation.
It wasn't started as a Christian nation.
When you take a look at how the Native Americans were treated, they were Christians doing that.
I'm an African American.
My people were brought over here, bought and sold, done by the so -called Christians.
So it's not a political problem.
I saw something the other day that really, really made me sick to my stomach.
These people putting their hands on Donald Trump and praying for him.
Nobody's heard this man confess Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
Nowhere.
When he said God saved him from that gunshot, did he give him thanks for it?
No, he didn't.
See, so I understand this, that the problem is not political.
It's the so -called preachers and teachers, imams and rabbis who are supposed to have some morals to teach the people on how to pick the politicians.
But when they become political also, then there's no moral, there's nobody to teach the people how to read what the scripture says about the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Now, we're supposed to be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
At the same time now, our tax dollars is paying for over there to blow people to pieces over there in Gaza.
That's a shame.
You got the Christians edging this on, agreeing with it, and not trying to stop anything about that, but they're supposed to be Christians.
I've never read anywhere in the Bible where your skin color made you superior, but you're still supposed to be a Christian.
So the problem is not political, ma 'am.
The problem is spiritual.
You want to bring the politics together?
Let the people who have the gospel preach and teach nothing but the gospel for the people because the gospel is the power of God and salvation.
That's the problem.
This nation is not a Christian.
But you have people in this country who are really truly Christians.
But you cannot be a Republican, a white Republican, be a Christian.
You can't be a black Democrat and be a Christian.
All that's got to go because there's only one thing to mean something.
That is the love of God in Christ Jesus.
And we're supposed to be celebrating Christmas.
It is so sad to hear all this Christmas music at the same time.
You got people sleeping in tents at 16 degrees because of the reason of corruption.
This brother's coming back into the White House.
What he has done, he's used the white racist Christians to bring him to where he wants to be.
Because Donald Trump, you can't find nowhere in this history, he done anything for poor people, black or white.
You can look at his administration.
Got your point, John.
We appreciate your call this morning.
It was during his farewell speech earlier this month, Republican Senator Mitt Romney was talking about the divided nation and urged unity.
Here is a portion of his speech.
Now, it's customary to end remarks with these words, God bless America.
That has never seemed jarring or out of place to me because Americans have always been fundamentally good.
From our earliest days, we have rushed to help neighbors in need, as de Tocqueville noted.
We welcome the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
We've respected different faiths, as our first president confirmed to Muslims and Jews.
"United we stand" is a fitting refrain.
As the leader of the free world, our sons and daughters have fought time and again for liberty.
And our treasure has buoyed freedom fighters around the globe.
Like all people, we've made mistakes, some grievous, but often our mistakes have come from misguided understanding.
God has blessed America because America is good.
There are some today who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our foundation of virtue.
Now, I've been in public service for 25 years.
I have learned that politics alone cannot measure up to the challenges we face.
A country's character is a reflection not just of its elected officials, but also of its people.
I leave Washington to return to be one among them and hope to be a voice of unity.
Just a little over 30 minutes left in this first hour of this morning's Washington Journal asking your thoughts on ways to bridge the political divide.
We'll hear next from Sarah Savannah, Georgia.
Good morning, Sarah.
The way I look at this is, you know, the unity and doing things together is so important.
And everybody gets all, you know, misconstrued with this thought.
And the guy that was just talking before you played the Mitt Romney thing, you know, he's talking about Christians and, you know, the love of God and this, that, and the third.
But he is talking about things that are dividing us.
Everybody just needs to forget about color.
Forget about... Race.
Forget about all of it.
But we do have to remember that our country, we built this.
This is our land.
This is our place of wealth and whatever.
But we can't let people in that are going to rape and murder and kill people.
And so those people aren't supposed to come in.
But you can't talk about, oh, I love God and God loves us and we need to do this on the third.
But yet, You're going to say you can't do it because you're a white political person who has worked his way up the corporate ladder?
You know, I mean, everybody that has what they have in this world is because they worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it.
It wasn't handed to them on a silver platter, like everybody is talking about Trump.
That's not the truth.
The truth is, his family worked hard, they taught him to work hard, and now he is...
You know, doing what's right.
Do you think he wants this job?
I mean, if I were him, I'd be like, oh, forget that.
You know, but he's trying to do the best thing that he can do.
And I think that if we could all just understand what the underlying issues are and just forget about all of the color and this, that, and the third,
and go to what can we do to protect each other?
I think that is what we need to do.
But nobody...
Who cares what I think?
Sarah, if you had a friend or family member like John, our previous caller, who had a different viewpoint, how would you approach that conversation?
Oh, I would smack him in the frickin' face and let him know that I'm handing out three flat sandwiches.
Because it's ridiculous.
It's like, oh, you know, just because you're white and you have money or just because you're white and you've done this.
You know what?
That's ridiculous.
We don't have...
White entertainment television.
There's BET.
And it's not about the rate.
It's not about the colors.
I mean, I would give the clothes off my freaking back for a black person, a Mexican person, an Indian person.
It doesn't matter.
But, you know, here we are.
You know, you got this guy talking about, like, God and love and Christian and Christianity and all this.
And he is the one that is sitting there, like...
That was Sarah in Georgia.
John in Princeton, New Jersey.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
Happy holidays to everyone.
What I'm worried about most of all is the extreme competence of political campaigns,
the campaign staff and experts to get people mad.
I think, you know, in order to get people out of their chairs to vote, they want to get you mad.
And getting mad is not the best frame of mind to be in to make a good decision.
You know, if you thought about a couple of surgeons arguing, trying to get each other mad, and trying to decide what to do about how to change your heart valve or something like that, you wouldn't like that.
Okay, so this is...
This is the issue.
They're performing for you on TV.
And behind that, there's a lot of other things going on.
Unfortunately, too many of them have to do with collecting money to fund a campaign.
So, John, is there a solution?
Is there a way to avoid hearing that kind of discussion?
You know, I think it's a little bit like a...
I don't know exactly how to describe it.
It's sort of like a ball rolling down the hill.
You've got to stop it.
You've got to see through the magic trick.
You've got to look past the expert politicians and their staff and their efforts to get you mad and think about history, too.
The country's been through all this kind of stuff in the past.
Just think Think about how to eliminate the efforts, how to ignore the efforts to get you angry and mad and what they're really going to do.
There's not a whole lot that's happening today in the United States that hasn't happened in the past in terms of political strife.
We even had a civil war.
Don't want that again.
That was John in Princeton, New Jersey.
Clifford in Oceanside, California.
Good morning, Clifford.
Good morning.
And good morning, America.
And the opposite side does party up and has been using race as a way to control their votes.
But 40 of them have been able to see the light and see that Trump is that light.
And thank God for that on this very Merry Christmas.
And as for...
Well, as long as these Democrats continue with racism, trying to divide our country through race, that was a long time ago.
We've gone way past that, and I don't believe the majority of the American people are racist in any way, shape, or form.
But the Democrats wanted to be that way in order to get those are the ones that make people mad.
Clifford, do you have friends or family that are Democrats?
Godwin, who's determining who's Christian and who isn't, and who has that sort of thought about, you know, whites and every other people besides the blacks, well,
there's not much you can do.
They're just setting their ways, and they don't have an open mind.
The majority of people that do, well, yeah, they come to the realization that we're all Americans in the end.
That was Clifford in Oceanside, California.
Donald in Missouri.
Good morning, Donald.
I'll show you my faith by my works.
And Donald Trump, he's been doing some things.
He's getting some things done.
The Democrats over the past four years have just wanted to turn the United States into a sewer with drugs on the streets, people dying on the streets in tents,
women killing their own offspring.
Donald, when you talk with people who don't share your beliefs, how do you approach that conversation, those conversations?
Donald, when you're having those conversations and you're saying you can't get through to people, is the same thing happening with you?
Are you hearing what they're saying?
In their point of view?
Donald, you mentioned that your daughter has different She came out and said,
I don't want to talk anymore about politics.
And that's fine with me, because I have a couple of kids through her, and I don't want to spoil that, so I don't have to talk about politics.
But, you know, that's how we decide what we're going to do in this country.
It's not something.
We'll leave it there, Donald.
It was Bruce, our first caller this morning, that brought up His political difference with his brother and earlier this month, Brad and Dallas Woodhouse, they are also brothers.
They're political strategists on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
They joined us on Washington Journal to discuss their efforts to bridge the divide.
Here's a clip from that interview.
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.
Well, you're right.
I'm from down south.
Oh, God's mom.
And I'm your mother, and I disagree that all families are like ours.
I don't know many families that are fighting at Thanksgiving.
Is this really your mother?
No, this is her mom.
I was very glad that this Thanksgiving was the year that you two were supposed to go to your in -laws.
And I'm hoping you'll have some of this out of your system when you come here for Christmas.
Yeah, we were not together this Thanksgiving.
We are most years.
I would really like a peaceful Christmas.
And I love you both.
December 16, 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, you know, she said she loves us both.
She didn't say she loves us both equally, you know, 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.
As I always remember it, it did not sound to me at the time like it does when you play the clip.
In other words, Steve Scully says, we've got a call from Raleigh, North Carolina, and that's all I heard.
And then he says the name Joy.
Well, Joy is my sister.
My mom is Joyce.
Interrupted, like...
The second interview that Dallas, one of the brothers, wrote an editorial article in the Carolina Journal.
In part, he said, Brad and I used our fleeting fame he's talking about that viral clip to encourage people to discuss politics in a measured and respectful way with their families.
We believed and continue to believe that you can have sharp disagreements without believing the other side is evil.
Yes, you can disagree without being disagreeable.
Brad and I have strived for that.
We have succeeded more than we have failed.
Back to your calls.
We'll go to John in Pennsylvania.
Good morning, John.
Hey, good morning.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Yeah, getting back to that gentleman.
I just can't believe on Christmas you would let that man go on and on about, you know, he read the Bible.
How can you read the Bible and spew so much hatred and so much racism towards white people, towards Christians, towards Jews?
If the man was truly intelligent, he would know that his own people, okay, captured blacks, sold them.
I don't know why he's so mad at America.
He should be mad at Africa for capturing these people and selling them to America as slaves.
As far as the country being racist and Don Trump being racist and Republicans being racist, I mean, look at what's going on.
Look, your highest paid quarterbacks in the NFL are all black athletes.
Hey John, we're talking about the political divide here.
Do you want to talk about that?
John, is that no?
Is that no?
No.
No, John, you don't want to talk about the political divide.
That was John.
I hope John has a very Merry Christmas.
We'll go to David in Flint, Michigan.
Good morning, David.
It's funny and I'd like to say Merry Christmas to all of the United States and hope everybody has a nice Christmas.
And I am thankful for C -SPAN.
The black guy that spoke, he spoke his opinion and seems like all the people that came after him is proving what he said was almost right.
But I'm like this.
I have met so many nice white people.
I'm a black guy raised in a black neighborhood.
I haven't really lived around white people too much because I've always stayed in the black neighborhood, in the black parts of Flint, and I don't go out a lot.
But if I was to see somebody trying to harm a white person in my neighborhood, I would stop it because I love everybody.
America, I believe Elon Musk had a lot to do with Trump winning.
I don't believe the votes in Pennsylvania were like they turned out to be.
However, we're here with what we got, and we just got to do the best we can.
I am kind of horrified with Trump being the president because I know of so many good, qualified, white, black, whatever, that could have been presidents that love all the people.
I hope we can come together because, you know, it's always better if you feel like your country, this is my home country, my parents, my...
David, do you have friends and family who are Trump supporters?
One of my godson, I think he voted for Trump, and we stopped speaking with.
He called yesterday, and I was glad to hear from him.
And I told him, well, I hate your decision, but that's behind us, and we're just going, let's get back close.
But wait, him and his girlfriend, he's got a white girlfriend, and she's just as sweet as she can be.
I said, let's just get back together and be friends again.
That was David in Flint, Michigan.
Mary in Nevada.
Good morning, Mary.
Morning.
Morning.
Hi, Mary.
Hi.
I agree with some of the callers.
When they got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, I believe during Reagan, that's when Rupert Murdoch swooped in and bought up papers and everything's about the almighty dollar and whatever sound bites you can get out there and get people agitated with.
So Fox got sued for $787 million for spewing propaganda.
Then Newsmax just recently got sued for an undisclosed mount for the same thing.
Also, some of the conservatives on our Supreme Court have been corrupted by billionaire dollars, Leonard Leo and Harlan Crowe.
And people need to maybe, if they could just, what they're listening to, if they could do some fact -checking on it and see if what they're hearing is true.
Because I think maybe some of these stations will, there's like another side of what they aren't telling you.
Like they're telling you, oh, President Trump isn't getting intelligence information.
Well, it's because he won't sign the ethics document.
Why is that?
Thank you.
So, Mary, if you were talking about one of the issues you believe to be is the news and not offering fair viewpoints, if...
Media outlets continue to do that.
Where do we go from there?
What options do people have?
No, I think they're offering a viewpoint.
I just don't think they're offering the entire viewpoint.
So if that's what's happening, how do we get past that?
I think people need to fact check more what they're hearing from whoever they're listening to.
Maybe listen to historians and authorities.
I do have a request of C -SPAN.
And I know you've had Pete Buttigieg on before, but my request specifically is if you could have a segment with him to discuss what was done under the Biden administration in the last four years.
All of the things that are going to come, all of his four major pieces of legislation starting in 2025, probably over the next decade and beyond.
We're all an investment in Americans' future.
And, you know, President Biden may not have communicated that like he should have.
Mr. Buttigieg is an excellent communicator, just to set the record straight.
So that you have people taking credit for policies that they didn't even vote for.
You know?
That was Mary.
Harry in Annapolis, Maryland.
Good morning, Harry.
Good morning.
I want to wish everybody A very, very happy Christmas and universe with all the Americans.
Divide should not be there.
Once we have elected our president, Trump, we should all accept him to be our president.
That is the way.
There will be no critical divide.
We need to respect those who have elected Trump and we should not start criticizing.
Now is the time when we should all be together.
He is our president.
This is how we will be able to get away from the divide which we have politically.
That is not how we should be.
Americans are Americans.
This is a blessed place to live.
I being from Asia, I can recognize this is the best place where we have the rights to have a freedom of speech.
We can speak whatever we want to.
We can live what we want to be.
So we should stop.
Blaming people.
We should start living life.
We are universes with us.
So please be American, support whosoever is our president, support that government and let's wait for the next one.
Wait for four years and we can change whatever we want to.
But at this time, the Republican Party is at the helm.
We should all follow and continue to make America great.
Thank you.
That's Harry in Maryland.
Rick, also in Maryland.
Good morning, Rick.
Good morning.
Boy, I tell you, first of all, Merry Christmas to everybody.
That guy, Harry, I guess it's just how I was raised and the way I've lived in this country as an African -American.
That guy, when he talks about Trump, he just disgusts me.
And as long as we have Trump around, we're going to always have problems.
It's just going to always be a problem.
Have a nice day.
Ray in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Good morning, Ray.
Good morning.
Am I on the air?
Hi, Ray.
Yes.
Oh, very, very.
Ways to bridge the political divide.
Trump nominates or asks Harris, he wouldn't nominate, for her to become special prosecutor given her background and prosecutes.
So you'd like him, you'd like to see President -elect Trump nominate people for positions, Democrats for positions?
Russell, we will go to him in Louisiana.
Good morning, Russell.
Hey, good morning dear.
You know, we do have political divide in our country.
I don't know what happened since the 80s when I was growing up as a young man.
Things are so different now.
We have such political divide.
And I think in America, as well as probably the world, I think one of the biggest problems is that we don't respect our fellow man and woman anymore.
We don't hold doors open for people, pants hanging down.
And the racial divide is absolutely ridiculous.
I don't see where the African -American good people have been held down or anything.
Look at the prominent Black people we have in our communities today.
You know, some wonderful, intelligent people that know right from wrong.
Right is right and wrong is wrong.
We just have to start respecting one another.
And the political divide, I find, comes from greed and power.
And when it comes to what they've done to Trump in the political arena, Let's go to George in Missouri.
Good morning, George.
Hey, thanks for taking this call.
Let's wish everybody a happy, healthy new year.
You know, I think the political divide has been around as long as we've had political parties.
I think what exposes it more is that we have more outlets, social media outlets.
That are 24 -hour, around the clock, and people listen to more news, more opinions.
Remember, if you're talking to two people, you get three different opinions.
But I think the real problem lies in the fact is that people, it's all right to think differently, but everybody's entitled to their opinion.
And people should just sit back and relax, listen to the other person.
You don't have to agree.
But there's no reason to become enemies over it.
I mean, houses, people's families are getting divided by this.
It's ridiculous.
Relax.
In two years, we got another election.
You don't like what's going on?
Vote somebody else in.
It's not a big thing.
We're only here for a short period of time.
It means nothing in the long run.
Just try to get along, relax, and if you don't like something, vote the person out.
That's why we have elections.
That was George in Missouri, our last call for this first hour.
Coming up next, we continue this week's author's series on Washington Journal.
Eight days of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics.
After the break, we'll be joined by author Seth Kaplan discussing his book, Fragile Neighborhoods, Repairing American Society, one zip code at a time.
We'll be right back.
During Christmas week, each night at 9 p .m. Eastern, C -SPAN will feature interviews with departing members of Congress, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from both chambers.
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I think?
We're good to go.
On C -SPAN's Q &A, Don Scott, Virginia's newly elected Democratic Speaker of the House of Delegates and the state's first black speaker in 405 years, talks about his life, including spending almost eight years in prison.
I had never been in trouble before.
I had served my country.
And I was hoping that I would get a little more grace and maybe get the judge to have some latitude to go with the law.
And he probably could have gave me even more time than he did.
But...
I remember hearing my mother when he said 10 years, you know, she couldn't believe it.
And that yelp of pain, it always stays with me.
And it's always motivating.
And it always lets me know how fragile our freedom is and how perilous it is.
And if you make one wrong move sometimes, it could be literally the end of your life as you know it.
Virginia's Democratic House Speaker, Don Scott, Sunday night.
You can listen to Q &A and all of our podcasts on our free C -SPAN Now app.
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On Friday, January 3rd, don't miss the opening day of the 119th Congress.
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Witness vice president Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the electoral college vote, where this historic session will officially confirm Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
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Washington Journal continues.
Washington Journal's Holiday Author Series continues this morning.
Eight days of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics.
This morning, we are featuring author Seth Kaplan and his book, Fragile Neighborhoods, Repairing American Society, one zip code at a time.
Seth, thank you for being here.
Good morning, Tammy, and happy holidays to all of our guests and all of our visitors or watchers this morning.
Thank you, yes.
Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah for those who will be celebrating the first night tonight.
We'll start with your work.
You have worked in a number of countries looking at preventing violent conflicts, government collapses.
You're an expert in fragile states.
Explain what that means and why you decided for your book to talk about American neighborhoods.
So first, the world is about 200 countries and about one -third of them are what we might call fragile.
They're chronically unstable.
So just think of the news in just the last few weeks.
Syria.
So Syria, when I wrote my first book on fragile states, I wrote about Syria.
It was a peaceful country.
It was a safe country.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
But they're very unstable and often they're violent.
And the shift to fragile neighborhoods is basically, I became known in Washington.
There's not many people that work on fragile states.
So I became known as the fragile states guy or person.
And if the State Department or the World Bank was working on a project with fragile states, they would be calling a few people, but I'd be one of the people that called and everybody would have identified me, Mr. Fragile States.
2015, 2016, a lot of people in Washington are anxious because of the election, partly because the candidates, partly for where that election season was going.
And then I got asked over and over and over again without any prompting, is the U .S. becoming a fragile state?
And I had just come back from Sri Lanka, Somalia, Nigeria.
And you've said that the U .S. is fragile, but not as a state.
Explain what you mean.
I think if you look at our great institutions, the Constitution, we have so many nonprofits, we have such dynamic technology and companies, we have very limited, yes, we do have some political violence,
yes, it's a little more than we had 10 years ago, but compared to the places that I work in, we have a lot of history, we have a lot of institutions.
One of the magic things about America is the institutions check each other.
That's the nature of our political system.
No individual can become very powerful because there's all these checks and balances.
And those institutions work very well.
So given that context, I do not think we are a fragile state.
But if you travel around the country, many of the places that people are going to be calling into the show or have called in the last hour since I've been listening...
You go to Kentucky, you go to Louisiana, you go to Michigan.
Lots of these places, people's lives are not great.
Their communities have been diminished.
Their local institutions have decayed.
We may grow as a country, but we find our lives less well than in the past.
We may have more objects, but we have less relationships.
So when I look at the fragility of our relationships and the fragility of our community, That is what I mean by a fragile society.
And I think it's really clear.
It's not very clear in Washington.
It's really clear in lots of communities around the United States.
And why is this happening?
How did some of these communities get to where they are?
I think there's a lot of factors.
Clearly, there's some changes in technology.
But I would trace...
The arc.
If you look at the data, we peaked in terms of our social strength roughly 1964, and we've been on a downward trajectory since.
So it's not smartphones.
Smartphones and technology, we talk about it a lot, but it's an accelerant of a previous trajectory, previous process.
I think this comes, I think if you had to put your finger on a few things, I would say one thing is the physical landscape in which we live has changed.
We went from living in place -based community in which lots of local institutions and our neighborhoods were relatively compact.
Now the physical landscape has spread us out.
When we have single functions like zoning, you got a lot of houses, you have no place to meet, you have no local shops, no local businesses, no local stores.
And so physically we've isolated ourselves from each other.
But even more dramatically, our institutions have dramatically changed.
We went, again, place -based community, lots of local institutions.
Today, we have a lot of national institutions.
Our companies are large.
Our nonprofits are large.
Our philanthropies are large.
Our universities think national.
What can bring us together locally?
Even when we think of schools, everyone sends their kids to the best school.
Nobody thinks of the importance of neighborhood schools.
Charities used to be local.
Now charities are big.
So we don't work with each other.
I mean, what is democracy but practicing?
If you think of the Tocqueville, or you think of the Progressive Era, which are the two great eras of, you could think about American civil society, an early version, and then a later version.
And now our civil society, at a very foundational level, has greatly decayed.
Not the big non -profits.
You can say in every community, those charities, those little institutions, they've emptied out.
They've disappeared.
And so what brings us together?
Where do we practice working with each other?
So it's that diminishment.
So the nationalization, the technology, the physical landscape, the changes in our institutions, I think all those things matter.
You could think of bigger social changes, like we're working harder, we have less time for each other.
I think those things matter as well.
But I would look at the underlying changes that maybe we could have worked harder, we could have had a more competitive landscape.
And we still could have been tied to our neighborhoods.
We didn't make that choice in our society.
Our guest for the next 50 minutes or so is Seth Kaplan, author of Fragile Neighborhoods, Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time.
If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
The lines for this segment are going to be regional.
If you are in the eastern or central time zone, it's 202 -748 -8000.
And if you are mountain or Pacific, it's 202 -748 -8001.
Your book focuses on neighborhoods.
It's very hyperlocal is a term that you use in the book.
Why look at that as the cause or the root for what we are seeing as opposed to policies or economic conditions overall?
First, again, I've worked in lots of countries.
I would say the one big, big takeaway that I always...
There's something more foundational.
That determines the health of a society.
And to me, that's relationships.
Now, what that means varies country to country.
I think in the United States, we have a lot, a lot of social problems.
We talk about, especially on your show, The Last Hour, polarization or divisions in our politics.
But look, we have this huge crisis of people dying from drug overdoses.
We have rising suicides, rising depression, rising mental illness, rising mistrust.
So I can go All across the board, in terms of our society, those things suggest there's something not right with our society.
And we've been spending loads of money, we've been trying different policies, and yet the problems get worse.
So that tells to me that policy may matter, but it's the wrong lever.
So the real lever to me is, again, relationships.
So if we didn't have these problems two generations ago, and we have these problems now, Many things in our country are better than 50, 60 years ago.
I mean, you can just, from less poverty, we have fewer people who live in awful conditions, racial issues, you can just think of how many things, women empowerment, so many things are better in our society,
more freedoms, and yet, something is wrong in the society that has produced these problems.
And for me, on a fundamental level, It's the diminishment of the local.
It's the diminishment of those institutions and those relationships.
Like, I live in a very flourishing neighborhood and I feel like there's a security blanket around me.
I may not have many friends.
I have a few friends, but I have hundreds of relationships.
It just gives you a different mindset.
It means if you have lots of small problems, whatever the problem might be, a neighbor has lost a child.
I mean, that literally happened and people just gather and We're good to go.
I think?
But how do we go forward such that we work together to help our communities better themselves and not look far away to politics and policy as the answer?
That's the big question in my opinion.
We have callers waiting to talk with you.
We'll start with Karen in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Good morning, Karen.
Good morning.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to everyone.
I'd like to ask Mr. Kappen if I have a theory, and I'd like to get his opinion on it.
Something happened years ago in this country, and I think it caused a chain reaction, I guess you would call it.
But back in the 80s when the air traffic controllers were on strike, airfare plummeted.
The price of airfare plummeted.
And all of a sudden, Congress...
The way it was explained to me,
it's hard to call somebody names on the floor and then go sit at Little League practice with them at night after dinner.
They had to deal with each other.
They had social interactions.
Now Congress people don't even know each other.
That caused the political divide.
As far as the humanistic divide and racism, before Barack Obama got elected, everybody was politically correct.
They might have felt like Archie Bunker, but they didn't talk about it out loud.
They didn't show each other hate.
Thank you so much, Karen.
Pennsylvania is always an interesting state.
A state that you can learn so much about America because how diverse the different parts of the states are.
Also a beautiful state.
So thank you for calling.
I would say we should think that our mistrust and our divisions have many causes.
And I would say there are certainly policies or political rhetoric or political action that has contributed to our social ills.
But I would always say What can I do in my community?
How can I do something more to help Chester, Pennsylvania be better?
I mean, I do think the rhetoric of politicians have changed a lot.
I think that's probably, or at least I think it's the changes in the norms in the society.
If we vote for someone and it becomes acceptable to say something in politics, that likely results from the fact that it's become more acceptable to talk that way in our lives.
And what politicians do, we always should think are downstream from what is happening in society.
And to the extent that we don't work together and we don't cooperate locally and we're more alienated and we're more divided and separated from one another in our communities,
we're not practicing how to work together.
We're not practicing how to talk with one another.
We're not practicing how to...
How to give and take, to compromise.
And I think when we look at the way our politics has changed for the negative, I would have to go back and say it is downstream from how our local communities have declined.
We used to work, we used to have all these fraternal institutions that brought people together.
We used to actually take leadership roles, sit on committees, spend time in our communities.
And when we do less and less of that, we are more likely to speak to each other in different language.
We're more likely to take harder stands.
We're more likely to look for politics as the answer to our problems.
And we tend to elect people who fit more within the range of what we find acceptable ourselves.
And so I just think we get the politicians we deserve.
And it's more a reflection on who we are.
And if we want to change politics, we've got to change what is going on in our communities.
We'll hear from Tom in Spring Hill, Florida.
Good morning, Tom.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
I think it's very unrealistic.
From what I get out of this, he wants to force integrate people.
And there's certain people that want to be by themselves.
You look at certain communities in New York.
At a certain time in New York you had your Irish neighborhood, your Italian neighborhood, your Jewish neighborhoods.
Everybody, in a way birds of a feather flock together and they wanted to keep it that way.
But unfortunately, with acts like the Fair Housing Act, the Community Investment Act, you've put placed certain elements of society that didn't need to be in certain neighborhoods and now you created this, of course also with liberal, progressive policies in your most of your blue states.
You're pushing people out to move to red states, which I live in Florida now.
I'm glad I live in Florida.
I don't have to deal with that mess in New York City.
What's going on in New York?
What a disaster.
But it seems like you're pushing for force integration.
I live in a HOA community.
I have a choice to go to a clubhouse or the gym if I want to associate with people outside my ideology or my background.
But sir, it seems like what you're pushing for is force integration.
Thank you, Tom.
In my work, I've seen a lot of very creative initiatives in terms of building community.
And one of them, which sounds really comparable to the place that you've chosen to live, is there's an organization that I met when I spoke at the Builders Association in California many months ago.
And this company, was building places for people to live.
Very much it sounds like the place that you live, but what they were doing different is they were designing the physical landscape to ensure that people would interact more easily.
They were putting shops in the larger development so people would intermingle spontaneously and they even had a curator who would be regularly organizing events in the compound or whatever.
This large complex.
You're talking about hundreds and hundreds of homes.
This is a large development.
In this large development, with several thousand people, they would have places to intermingle.
They would physically be able to social interact regularly because of the landscape, the types of activities that they like.
The club you mentioned, they had a club, but they also had someone who was curating.
So the point is, We're good to go.
I think?
People want that.
And I think in a society that we are increasingly, we went from relationship abundant and let's say knowledge scarce and material items scarce.
Now we have material abundance, knowledge abundance.
We have relationship scarcity.
More and more people are going to make the choice that they want to live in a place in which we can make relationships and find relationships easily.
So I don't think this is a question about integration.
Or or whatnot.
I think it's a question that people are starved to be with each other and, to the extent that our society does not have institutions or hasn't built itself physically in a way to encourage relationships, it is isolating ourselves more than we actually want.
And you yourself, you go to your club.
You go to your club to meet people.
So what, what would it take that everyone in every neighborhood Tom?
our caller talking about integration.
In the book, you point to immigrant communities as examples of successful neighborhoods.
Why is that?
So these new neighborhoods...
are somewhat similar.
They have very strong social capital, they have very strong local institutions, people work together and they can be materially poor, but they can be socially rich and because they're socially rich, they take care of each other, they help lift up the kids, they take care of those who are alone and in need, and we can learn a lot from immigrant communities, and I think our country was much more like that in the past.
Let's hear from Gary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Good morning, Gary.
Question for Seth regarding his book, you know, when it was flashed on the screen.
I haven't read the book, but basically addressing the educational challenges within our country.
He's considering a bottom -up
Actually, I firmly believe that the problem exists both ways.
From a bottom -up, one zip code at a time, that can be used as a model, a focal point,
As it relates to prototypes, like like prototypes that are used and in creating products, and when certain zip codes in certain areas that would be used as prototypes, and when you find the, the product, let's say, suitable for Implementing
or testing, and if the prototype proves out, then it can be adopted and nationalized.
But it has to start from the top as well and the biggest problem as I see it and I'm 70 years old is the.
There is no or there has been a decreasing.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
That's where the problems have, I feel, that have stemmed since the really focusing since the early 60s.
So Seth has a good focus, but he needs help and he needs to belong to Gary,
we'll get a response from our guest.
And Merry Christmas to you.
I would just say, I do think the decline in religion and religious belief is one of the drivers of our decline in communities.
And I talk about churches actually a lot in my book.
And I think churches, if they played a role, more of a role in community building, too often I think people go to church for two hours on Sunday and they have no more faith in their lives.
And churches, to the extent that they build community, especially place -based communities, so I often urge my Christian friends, don't just go to church.
Don't just show up once a week, or don't just send your kids to this thing or that thing.
Think about how your church can be a real church community, especially a place -based community.
How do you thicken the bonds?
And I do think churches have an incredibly important role.
In terms of restoring the social fabric.
But I think churches need to have a more ambitious idea of what their community is about.
And it's not just about the sermon and two hours on a Sunday morning.
It's about Sunday to the following Sunday.
How are we gathering people?
What role are we playing in our neighborhoods?
And many of the most inspirational social entrepreneurs I write about.
They're from the Christian faith, and they see that part of their mission is to restore the social fabric.
I have a chapter on J .P. DeGance, who works with churches around the country, trying to restore the strength of the family.
I have a person in Detroit who is a former pastor who says his future wasn't in the church, it was restoring neighborhoods, and he built a community hub in one of the poor neighborhoods in Detroit.
And I've consistently met people who started with faith but then saw their role as basically social repairs in our society.
So I totally agree with Gary that religion is important.
Religion is not for everybody.
There are other ways, many other ways to lean into this idea of social repair.
But churches and the Christian faith has very, very rich material.
But I do ask all my Christian friends, Let's hear from John in Folsom,
California.
Good morning, John.
Am I on the air?
We'll go to Sharon in Hanover, Pennsylvania.
Good morning, Sharon.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you.
Sir, my experience as a low -income elder and low because of various life events.
I would give anything to afford to leave my community.
Much of southern Pennsylvania, suburban -wise, I'm sorry to say,
my town is impacted daily by loud Harleys, loud monster trucks.
Neighbors don't care about barking dogs.
Environmentally, they are clueless, many of them.
And I'm saying income level greatly impacts what Quality of life you're going to have and culture in this country worships noise,
power, and speed.
It's just, I want peace and quiet.
I guarantee you that is very difficult to find even with higher income.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A lot of Pennsylvania today.
So I would just say that I do talk a lot about, and I think it's important that we have enormous amounts of what we might call place -based inequality in the United States.
Some neighborhoods, people do very well, and other neighborhoods are distressed, or those are very obviously fragile.
We have an enormous increase in neighborhood -based inequality in the United States in the last 50 years.
It used to be that most neighborhoods were mixed income, and today we have a heavy concentration of wealth in some places and poverty in other places.
And if you live in a low -income neighborhood in which everyone is poor, it's certainly harder for children to rise up.
The social mobility is much lower.
It's harder to get a decent standard of living, and that's not material.
We're good to go.
I think?
If you're thinking again, I don't talk mostly about policy, but to the extent that policy matters, when policy doesn't take neighborhoods or place into account, it does a great disservice to people.
Because if you only focus on individuals and you only focus on their needs, and we don't think about places, specifically neighborhoods, and we don't think about relationships and how we address problems, we are...
We are not solving problems.
In many cases, the problems are getting worse.
In some cases, those siloed material services to individuals, they'll help some people.
Those people will say, I'm better.
I have a better...
My problems are solved.
And they will leave.
And what ends up happening is we encourage the best and the brightest to move to certain places.
And leave other places behind.
And if we were much more place -based and we were much more relationship -based in terms of how we thought about our challenges, we would adopt different policies.
So in that case, I do think many of our policies make things worse because they're placeless, they're focused on individuals, they're focused on needs, they're not focused on building community, ensuring flourishing neighborhoods.
And building communities that can help everyone all the time.
Your book does profile five organizations that are trying to do exactly what you were just talking about and increase the feel of neighborhoods and revitalize them.
Tell us about what they are doing and if they're successful.
Well, first, why did I choose these five?
So I did research on The data about what makes neighborhoods successful, and you can define that in many ways, but a simple way is it has high social mobility.
You can be a poor neighborhood, and if people go up, what is the cause for this neighborhood to be good for the kids and this neighborhood to be bad for the kids?
Or what makes this neighborhood have a long lifespan?
This neighborhood has a short lifespan.
And there's enormous differences, literally decades.
You can live in two different neighborhoods, and you can have a 20, 30 -year difference in lifespan.
So I first looked at...
What are the key factors?
And then I decided that basically my research says five are the most important.
And so I focused on, and then I looked for the organizations I thought that doing the best work in each of the five.
So I mentioned this idea of Communio.
Communio is this organization led by this guy, J .P. DeGance.
It works now with, I mean, dozens of churches all over the country.
It is just focused on...
We're good to go.
I think?
It's very much about helping.
It's very much about bringing people together.
You could call it about bringing people together across families.
One is families.
One is across families.
It identifies the worst performing ninth graders in Baltimore.
And it gives them a 10 -year commitment 24 /7.
And it literally builds like a thread family of volunteers that will be there to basically love that child.
A lot of our problems are because we don't have love.
We don't have support.
We don't have love.
We don't feel stable in terms of how we grow up.
But think about how many kids in America don't grow up in a very stable, supportive environment.
That may not be because their parents don't want to give to them.
Maybe they can't.
Maybe their neighborhoods are not in very good condition.
Maybe the parents have many, many other competing objectives.
So these ninth graders typically Come from very unstable, sometimes homeless situations.
The thread makes a 10 -year commitment, and the results are astounding.
These kids go from an under one, I think it's 0 .7 GPA, to about 60, whatever percent of them are eventually getting to college.
So the change is dramatic.
And so a third organization I focus on was this Life Remodel, which is the former pastor that focuses on...
First, he did a lot of cleanup and beautifying across Detroit.
Detroit is a city that if you haven't been to, it's worth seeing.
60 % of the population down.
Huge neighborhoods no longer exist, and there's dilapidated buildings.
So he did all this work.
Eventually, he built the neighborhood hub.
He had to build trust with neighbors who didn't know who he was.
They didn't trust him at first.
So that's really about how do we build trust across divides.
A really apt topic for a conversation on political divides.
And so he does this hub, brought in all these organizations to this neighborhood, and literally has transformed the neighborhood in terms of people's expectations for themselves, the level of crime, a lot of pretty dramatic changes.
I also have a chapter on an organization called Purpose Built Community, which does much more ambitious...
Again, I'm looking at different...
Family.
I looked at inter -family.
I looked at community.
I have one looking at schools in Eastern Kentucky that's basically working with local schools to improve the social context to help children do better in school.
You can't do good in school if they don't come from a good social context.
And this Purpose Build is based in Atlanta and they now have a national network.
25, I believe, last time I checked.
Neighborhoods.
And they do much more transformational work.
But again, it's focused on the physical.
The other four are focused more on institutions.
Purpose Built is about, we bring in mixed income housing, we help make the school much better, we create a commercial corridor, we economic engine.
It's about changing the whole environment.
So that's much more ambitious, much more expensive, and much more physical.
And all five of these can teach us some really incredible stuff.
Yes, good morning.
I hope you're as generous with me as you was with your guests up there.
And let me get my point out.
But, you know, we'll...
We're missing the point.
I've been listening all morning and I haven't heard anything about the orange elephant in the room.
Now how can we have all this stuff that they're talking about this morning when you got someone up there that constantly lies.
Lies is a disease.
This habitual lying is a disease.
So you got a sick person up here that got a lying disease and he's running the country.
And he came in and made all this stuff happen.
If you think back, before Trump, we were going, at least we were moving forward.
You know, it's one thing in the Constitution that's very important that everybody should go back and read.
And they say we the people, in order to establish a more perfect union, meaning that it was never perfect.
It's an experiment.
And we're supposed to work.
We're good to go.
I think?
Who's leading the country?
You got to look at the line that's going on all through the Congress and everywhere.
And how can people have trust?
This stuff is going to our kids.
When my kid have a basketball, football game, and they lose, they go there and shake hands.
You got grown people right here that can't even lose an election and admit it.
They're acting like the kids.
So this is what we're showing our people.
This is what we're doing.
And then we're asking ourselves, why can't we be civil?
I never heard none of this when Trump was in office.
And we got to be civil.
How can you be civil when you got somebody up there?
All right, got your point, Lynn.
We'll get a response.
Thank you so much, Lynn.
I could not agree with you more about the need to be civil and the need to practice civility in our community.
So again, I think politics is At best, very frustrating.
It can be much worse than that.
And I personally try very hard not to pay too much attention to politics, to be very honest.
And I think really hard about what I can do in my community to make my community better.
I work on lots of countries.
And I would say one of the things about America that stands out compared to the countries I work on, I mean, I work in countries in which...
Political violence and civil war is very possible.
I mean, it doesn't make the news, but think of the millions of people who have been displaced and hundreds of thousands who've died in Sudan, which is arguably the worst place on earth right now you want to be in.
I work on Libya personally.
I spent a lot of time in Nigeria, where you can be kidnapped off the highways.
And so I think politics in our country is very dissatisfying and very frustrating.
And yet, we as a country have so many great assets, and we ourselves have power, if you want to take it into our hands, to...
I mean, we can't change national politics.
But the thing is, whoever is elected, we're not going to have a civil war tomorrow.
We should be realistic about that.
Whoever's in office, they're going to be gone in four years.
I know countries like Cameroon.
The person has been in office for over 40 years.
So the good thing about our politics is it changes.
The bad thing is we're forced to listen to whoever's in office and whatever they say on a regular basis.
And I could say that about whoever's in office.
And I would just urge you and other people who are watching or listening, don't fixate on what we can't change.
Let's fixate on what we can change.
And I believe the real answer It's not to think of our political divides, but to think about how we can cooperate with our neighbors, whether it's your kids' sports team and the other sports team.
They compete, but could they cooperate on something that would make their communities better?
What can we do in our neighborhoods?
What can we do locally in terms of associations or nonprofits or local businesses or local government?
We have great power.
Let's hear from Tony in Austin, Texas.
Good morning, Tony.
How can we better help the human beings that are suffering?
You know, people are hurting.
During disasters, people come together, regardless of their beliefs, their religion, their social economic status.
I just think everybody needs to love their neighbors as you love yourself, and we would be in a better place.
And also, I believe that regardless of what's going on in America, people just need to come together and love each other.
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Tony.
I would say Salvation Army and other local institutions, charities, to the extent that you don't just go and give things to people in need.
To the extent that you get to actually work with people to better your neighborhoods and better your communities, they are an important part of what we need more of in this country.
A lot of these local organizations are not as strong as they used to be.
Maybe we need new types of organizations.
I call this civil society 3 .0.
We had civil society that became famous in De Tocqueville.
We had civil society, a newer version, That basically was built up around the turn of the late 19th, early 20th century.
And that civil society grew and grew and became stronger and stronger through the 60s.
And it's been in decline ever since.
What is going to rise to replace it?
And so for me, when I looked at these five great organizations, I'm basically asking, what can we find that's working?
How do we make more of it?
We need to replicate it.
We need to help it grow sideways, not grow to be this huge, humongous organization that's distant from us.
We need lots of local organizations, and to the extent that you can find in Austin, Tony, or other people in their communities, an avenue that you can play a role helping other individuals,
but I would say even more than that, helping your community get strong, because that will leave fewer people behind.
We most want to help people, when they're okay, to strengthen the ties between us and not when they're already on the downward trajectory.
We help those people as well, but the stronger we are as a society, the fewer people will go on the downward trajectory.
Kathy in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Good morning, Kathy.
Good morning.
I totally agree with your neighbor, I mean, with your guest.
I call it plug -ins.
We out here, we have food clubs, we have the rec center, we have that, and we have different income levels in the downtown area.
There's plenty to do.
But you have people out here that come here, and some of them are just not, you know, they don't have good intentions.
So in a multi -family unit, such as a high -rise building, you have no control over who's your neighbor.
and so the crimes just like um are can be under you know they they go on and um for example in this building there is someone that uses devices against the neighbors now those are undetectable crimes and it's hard how do you you can't you know it's hard to report them to the police unless you do your own almost investigation but it is um just like in um colorado where the you you know the There was a group accused of taking over apartment buildings.
That's just not Colorado.
That's also in downtown Silver Spring.
And I'm suffering every night because of something a neighbor is doing.
And now my question is, this building has a radio system.
A lot of multi -family buildings have radio, in -house radio.
I wonder, why do they need that?
I mean, with the increase of AI...
This is not talked about yet, but you're going to have AI -type crimes.
And I'm experiencing that, but I'm not prejudiced, and I agree with you.
And part of my answer to the question is, I don't talk about it because I don't want anybody to call me paranoid, but just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong, and I know I'm not.
But my answer is...
They just have certain groups I plug into and do plan on moving.
But I shouldn't have to be chased out of my neighborhood.
But I'm just saying, your idea was really awesome because that is what we do in downtown Silver Spring.
We plug into different groups and organizations.
But you do have a crime element that's rising.
And they don't mind using, I know it's going to sound silly, but Wi -Fi devices.
They talk over them just like your telephone is a microwave and a two -way radio device in one.
They use that to, if they see a single, you could be a single person and you're a targeted person for whatever their purpose is, I don't even know, but it's getting more and more dangerous.
Kathy, we'll get a response from Seth.
Thank you, Kathy.
We're not far from one another because I also live in Silver Spring, but not downtown.
So you're almost my neighbor.
You're a couple of neighborhoods over, Kathy.
So I know Silver Spring very well.
Very diverse.
Lots of things happening in the downtown area.
So I could not speak for your particular situation, but I would wonder, is there some way for you and other neighbors I think there's two avenues I can imagine change happening.
One is that the person or the company who runs the building take a more proactive role.
And the question is, is that possible?
But I would say another way, is there a resident association?
Or is there some institution that you can join, participate, create, activate?
I know somebody in Dallas.
I didn't write about this person, but I know this person.
And he runs an organization focused on neighborhood crime, place -based crime.
And one of the ways that they approach this problem is that they identify residents who are near the...
They focus on drug houses.
So one of the ways they solve that problem is, at least the first step, is identify nearby residents.
We're good to go.
I think?
We're good to go.
I think?
Good morning.
I have a couple of questions.
A couple for C -SPAN and a couple...
Well, the author, I'd like to ask you a question.
Does he make a profit on his book?
Does he?
Do you make a profit on your book?
Do I make a profit?
Well, I will tell you that most authors lose lots and lots of money.
So yes, if you buy a book, technically I get a few dollars, but honestly, I probably lost...
Can I ask C -SPAN a question?
Go ahead James.
I would like to know, do you charge him to come on your station to promote your book, his book?
And I'm not just talking about him.
You probably have three or four authors every week to come on promoting their book.
Do you know what it would cost me?
I have a small business here.
It would cost me $50 ,000 or more to put an ad like this on my local television station.
And I've just been concerned.
I'm not just talking about this particular guy.
But overall, people that come in and promote their books, that is some free advertising.
And if they donate all their profit back to a charity or something, that's one thing.
But to get on there and spout, he can come out next week and write another book about an opposite thing.
And he's just got an ongoing business here.
No, James.
We never pay our guests to come on.
They don't pay us.
Everyone is happy to join our guest.
Seth spent a lot of time writing this book, as do all of the authors who come on.
They're passionate about the topic, and they're more than happy to join us and share their work.
And also, to be honest, I don't think I'm going to sell.
Dollars selling those books.
I know they do.
Your presidents have books and so forth.
And somebody's making a lot of money and they're getting a lot of free publicity on your station.
And you ought to pay C -SPAN for putting your ad on the television.
I have to pay for those ads when I put them on the TV.
James, do you have a question related to the book other than the financial side of it?
No, I've been wanting to call in about this for a long time, how the authors get on TV and promote.
All right, well, James, if you ever write a book, you know, Good morning,
Tammy.
Merry Christmas.
Happy Hanukkah.
Just a quick thing.
I think you accidentally cut that guy off earlier.
What he said was, am I on the air?
Oh, no.
He unfortunately used an expletive.
That was his contribution this morning, so we ended that call.
Okay, I didn't hear that expletive.
I don't know if we're talking about the same one.
No, that's because we have a three -second delay.
Oh, okay.
Yep.
Okay, sorry.
A couple things I just kind of caught into this conversation.
I hope I'm pretty much on topic.
So a couple comments for Mr. Kaplan, and then...
So I'm calling in about the homeless.
I wanted to know, I guess he said he was apolitical for the most part, if I caught that.
I wanted to know if he thinks and how this would be done, like when we have hurricanes and horrible earthquakes, they're considered a national emergency, national disaster,
they're labeled as such.
And I want to know if he thinks homelessness should be labeled in the same way.
And how would that be done?
That's one question.
Because the news media, not C -SPAN, you know, covers a lot of tragedy.
Deaths, single deaths, but it seems like a lot of times none of them are good.
I mean, they're all terrible, but it seems like they kind of pick, for lack of a better word, the sexy stories, you know.
And to me, having one homeless person on the street without living there is an emergency.
We should treat it as an emergency.
Okay, then my next one more thing.
I just had an idea quickly.
What about the idea of having 211, the phone number 211, where people who can call for food and shelter, but instead make it like donations where people can call because the shelters from 211 are vetted?
Thank you, Sophie.
I was in, not Raleigh, but I was in Charlotte and Salisbury, North Carolina, not far from you a few months ago.
Good to hear your questions.
I would say, again, if there was one thing in our social problem that I would think is an ongoing national emergency, I think homelessness is awful, a huge problem,
but it's the drug overdose deaths that I see as...
I think there's a connection between that and homelessness, but it's the fact that every year...
We're good to go.
They care for the members of that community.
The schools help.
The houses of worship help.
In my case, the synagogues help.
Different charities help.
And so the weaker our communities, the weaker our social fabric, the larger the problem of homelessness, the larger the problem of drug overdoses.
And I don't think we can call it a national emergency, the decline of community.
We could say that about the drug deaths, because these are problems that are local.
A hurricane needs like a surge of resources.
A community doesn't need a surge of resources.
It needs a steady accumulation of daily things people do and institutions people build that strengthen and bring people together.
And I think to solve homelessness, to solve the drug, what I would call it a drug crisis and all of these types of problems, we need this steady Not a surge, not something that's one -off, not a magic policy.
There's no magic bullet.
We need zip code by zip code, neighborhood by neighborhood, the slow accumulation of relationships and institutions that bring people together.
And there's a lot of headwinds against this with phones and whatnot.
But the more we do that, the more we will be able to deal with our various problems and the less divisive our politics will be.
Our guest, Seth Kaplan, author of Fragile Neighborhoods, Repairing American Society, one zip code at a time.
Seth, thank you for your time today.
Thank you so much, Tammy.
It's a great pleasure.
We are wrapping up today's program with more of your calls.
We're returning to our earlier question, wanting to hear your thoughts on ways to bridge the political divide.
You can start calling in now.
Our phones are broken down regionally.
If you are in the eastern or central time zone, it's 202 - 748 -8000 Mountain or Pacific 202 -748 -8001 We'll be right back.
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This weekend at 3 .15 p .m. Eastern, author Stephen Puglio with his book, The Great Abolitionist, discusses the career and life of abolitionist and politician Charles Sumner,
who represented Massachusetts in the U .S. Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874.
Then, at 4 .45 p .m. Eastern, author Elizabeth Reese, with her book Marquis de Lafayette Returns, recounted the 1824 -1825 trip Lafayette took through the young United States when he returned after the Revolutionary War.
And at 7 p .m. Eastern, lead up to Inauguration Day, American History TV looks back at famous inaugural speeches.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are continuing to take your calls, asking your thoughts on ways to bridge the political divide.
You can call in now the lines, again, regional if you're in the eastern or central time zone, 202 -748 -8001.
And if you are in the Mountain or Pacific, it's 202 -748 -8001.
We'll get to your calls and comments in just a moment.
But first, I wanted to show you an interview that C -SPAN has been doing.
We've been speaking with members of Congress who are retiring, and we spoke with them earlier this month asking what they think would make Washington better.
Here are some of those interviews.
When a new Congress sets up the rules, I want the old Congress to set up the rules before they know who's actually going to be in charge.
I think that there are opportunities for us to have a more humane schedule.
I would put my foot down in terms of people, and I don't know how you do this by rules, but have people who are hired just to be political flacks.
And not do actual policy work.
But part of that can come from the top, having legislative leadership in both parties taking a firmer line about performance and individual members of Congress not supporting people for leadership positions who are not providing the leadership that we think need to happen.
And it's easy for you know a geezer who's got one foot out the door to pontificate, Because I know this is hard.
And I know the politics are serious and the stakes are high, particularly in a time of Trump.
But I think there's more we could do to humanize it.
And I think there is more work that rank and file members can do to enforce norms that are More civilized.
We need to make it okay for members to have their families here with them in D .C.
Families serve together.
Families serve together.
So members of Congress get elected and it's their spouse, oftentimes, is the one staying at home and on a random Tuesday night getting yelled at at the grocery store because their spouse voted in one way or another.
If you had families here, you then see the human element that is so missing from our current dialogue and debate of understanding when you're dropping your kids off at daycare and you have the courtesy of your friend telling you that your child just got sick on your shoulder,
on your suit that you just put on, they know that you're a human being.
And missing that piece of it?
Here means that we just come here, we battle, we put our armor on and we battle, and we don't know who's on the other side.
What are they concerned about?
What are they fighting for?
What's a little bit of understanding of their life that you might be connected with?
And just because they're liberals versus conservatives doesn't mean that there isn't this human element where you can actually work on something.
Something that affected your life that affected their life, or that your constituents have unified.
I think campaign finance reform would help a lot because one of the reasons why senators on Thursday afternoon tend to scatter is that senators are leaving for One of maybe two or three purposes or some combination of these.
Trying to get home, which is understandable.
I certainly like being home, if I could, on a Thursday night or a Friday night, and being home for part of the weekend.
But a lot of it is senators are leaving to raise money.
That's the reality of American politics today.
That was not the case 25, 30 years ago, and dramatically so before that.
Not the case.
We need campaign finance reform so senators and house members don't have to spend as much of their time raising money.
That adversely impacts the Senate.
Our first caller in this segment, Tom in Florida.
Good morning, Tom.
Good morning.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
I just wanted to address your question about the political divide.
And I know this is kind of a...
A problem that didn't just occur recently as the guest you had on had mentioned some time frame about basically things eroding starting from the mid -1960s if I'm correct in what it was that he said.
And I think it's going to take that long to repair the political divide.
And I think the problem Really comes down to education.
I mean, they don't teach civics in school.
And if they do, it's a minuscule amount.
And those kids grow up to be adults, not knowing how the political system works in America.
And you couple that with politicians that take advantage of that fact.
Give information, make promises, and people buy into that.
And they kind of pit one group of people on another group of people, conservatives, progressives, etc.
And I just think it's going to take a very long time to right the ship.
So I don't see that chasm or divide, if you will.
closing anytime soon.
I hate to be negative on Christmas, but that's just how I see it.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
That was Tom in Florida.
Chris, Memphis, Tennessee.
Good morning, Chris.
Good morning and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Thank you.
The divisiveness, we have to go to the root of it, which is our source of information.
Where do we get our source of information?
The media.
The media, television, powers that be, they're the ones that are actually dividing us from false information.
And until we can get control of that, which is pretty much impossible, I mean, I love C -SPAN.
I sit here and watch.
It's kind of swaying a little bit.
I won't say which way, but most people know.
But you guys are great, actually.
We love Washington Journal.
Thank you very, very much.
But these other media sources, I can't even watch them.
I stopped watching since 9 -11.
It's very divisive.
That is our issue.
You guys tell me, what can we do about the media?
That's really the full root of the problem on our divisiveness in politics and in our American families.
It's horrible.
Just today, it's going to happen.
It's Christmas.
People try to be casual to each other, but if politics comes up, there'll be an issue.
So I say it's the media.
So we need to get a grasp on that.
Thank you.
That was Chris in Tennessee.
Gary in Saginaw, Michigan.
Good morning, Gary.
Yes, good morning and Merry Christmas to America.
Merry Christmas, Gary.
Thank you.
Probably, I think we...
Gary, can you turn your television down in the background?
Turn it off.
Yeah.
I thought we have addressed...
No, I'm sorry.
We haven't really addressed...
The underlying issues that deal with the problems we have and the connections.
Basically, white supremacy is one of them.
This country is in great trouble at this point because of the presence of administration that's coming in, white supremacy, money.
The money in finance, I mean in politics, that has caused us to divide.
We can go all the way back to the Reagan administration and trickle -down economics, which is not mentioned at this point, but it's still in place.
And American people don't really see the reality in how that is connected.
without foreign policy how that uh is connected with the immigration problem uh how that's connected with uh education um it's about the money um it's about white supremacy and they haven't really uh respected the american people and uh brought it forward you know we've got an administration now we talk about the media um You know,
and the media presents their view.
You know, we got an administration coming in office that is getting people from a media center, a media conglomerate that has been shown by the legal system for more money than any other entity.
We just don't connect the issues, you know, the underlying issues that are all related.
That was Gary in Michigan.
Pam in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Good morning, Pam.
Good morning, and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
I saw that your topic was about crossing the political divide, and I was thinking, you know, I think right now we are as divided as I've ever seen, and I'm in my 60s.
But I think the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that topic was, If Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who are kind of co -presidents right now,
decide to attack Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we will patch up this divide.
It will affect every single one of us, and every one of us will need to stand up and say this cannot happen, and I think you will see us come together.
So it may end up being for
That was Pam.
We'll go to John in Maryland.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
First, Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
I would like to say that my concept for patching, correcting the digital divide, Let me preface it by saying, the eagle,
the bird has two wings.
Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, it's still the same bird.
If they would take the money out of politics, then I think you would see a wholly different set of politicians up there.
That's all I have to say for it, and have a blessed day.
That was John.
We'll go to also John in Oceanside, California.
Good morning, John.
John, are you there?
I believe.
Hi, John.
Hi.
Yes, from Lewiston, California.
Good morning and Merry Christmas.
I've got an idea.
President Trump is his cabinet.
Nominating a lot of billionaires.
Why don't, since they all want to make America great again, why don't they all donate about $50 million each to take care of a lot of problems in this country?
And it sure would, I think, show some signs of uniting if they would give back what they haven't.
Terry in Racine, Wisconsin.
Good morning, Terry.
Between a lie and a truth.
First of all, I think we should broadcast that Reagan got rid of the deregulation of the FCC.
The Democrat Party basically has to start spewing out the truth.
Facts are documented.
We have to make that aware of the people.
And with so much of the media now concerned with a bunch of misinformation, Trump's broken speech pattern where he can say anything and deny it later.
If we go all the way back to the beginning, what was the fall of humanity?
It was a lie.
You know, Eve knew the truth.
Eve, when she was tempted by the serpent, said, the Lord said, the day we eat of the fruit of the tree, we will surely die.
And a lie came back.
No, you will not surely die.
Eve spoke the truth.
She knew the truth.
But she accepted the lie because she saw advantage in it.
And that's why we have so much rampant lying down today.
It's because people see an advantage to it, and they do it.
So we have to deluge the airwaves and the media.
We've got to hire a bunch of young kids, get them on that internet, tell them, give them the script of what is being misrepresented in the media.
And let them go on the media and start printing out the truth.
And if we had enough boiler rooms filled with young people putting the truth out there, we could counteract some of this.
Again, I don't have much hopes with Congress being able to start giving the FCC back the power to regulate truth in broadcasting.
That has to happen.
That was Terry in Wisconsin.
C -SPAN spoke with members, retiring members of Congress from both parties about what they think would make Washington work better.
Here are more of their answers.
I think part of the problem with the place is that it's a reflection of what's happening in our society.
If somehow we could deal with this issue of the splintering of information, the fact that people get...
We're supposed to be smart people.
A downhill, there's a descent into money, money, money, money in politics.
I have authored, co -sponsored every last form of campaign finance reform.
The Supreme Court certainly didn't help with Citizens United and cases before that.
But Citizens United has allowed all of this dark money.
It's a system that we would associate with banana republics.
We need to spend more time really...
I always try to lead by example and set a good example for my colleagues and people back in Delaware who follow or watch what I do.
I think the other thing is actually to have leaders who understand what leaders are all about.
A mantra, a speech I give about leadership that would fill up the rest of this interview.
But we need leaders who bring all the right qualities to the job and demonstrate that.
Leaders are humble, not haughty.
They have the heart of a servant.
They understand their job is to serve, not be served.
Leaders surround themselves with the best people they can find.
And when their team does well, the leader gives the credit to the team.
We have just over 30 minutes left in today's Washington Journal.
And for the remainder of the time, we are continuing to hear your thoughts on ways to bridge the political divide.
Again, if you'd like to call in, the lines are regional.
If you are in the eastern or central time zone, it's 202 -748 -8000.
If you are mountain or Pacific, 202 -748 -8001.
We'll hear next from Jim in Oregon.
Good morning, Jim.
Armando in San Antonio.
Good morning, Armando.
Good morning, young lady.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Okay, this is...
Okay, Mom, it's going to be quick.
I just want to...
You know, I'm homeless.
And I work.
I got to stay in my car, sleep in my car.
That's when I...
You know, people think all them homeless are drunk addicts and drunks and all that.
No, that's a...
Majority of us, like, work, you know, play by the rules and still can't get ahead.
And, uh, again, Merry Christmas.
That's all I got.
Merry Christmas, Armando.
We'll go to Harold in Gary, Indiana.
Good morning, Harold.
Good morning.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Hope everybody's enjoying their morning.
I guess the best thing to do is cherish each other while you got each other and do the best you can with what you got because I grew up pretty...
Not having much, but having a lot of love in my family.
And if you love each other, that'll pull you through almost everything.
And we're fixing to hit a new year, so just work at working on yourself.
Don't worry too much about everybody else.
You get better, the world will get better.
Merry Christmas.
That was Harold.
Ed in Torrance, California.
Good morning, Ed.
Good morning.
I'm a conservative out here in California, feeling kind of all alone.
But what I find missing is contrition on the side of the Democrats.
I haven't heard one, not one person has come up to me and apologized for anything they've done, like impeaching the president twice or assaulting lawsuits on him that are senseless.
A little contrition, a little sorrow, a little apology.
One time.
Love to hear that.
Thank you.
We'll go to Tom in Florida.
Good morning, Tom.
Hi.
I've been a Democrat for a long time, and I supported Trump since he's been in politics because, I mean, the divide was getting to such a point where...
I think people should watch both sides because it doesn't seem like there's going to be any change in news outlets basically seeming like political activists.
And it just seems like maybe there's a way, instead of setting up laws to change that, that they could add something that would be an alternative option.
Like, they used to have a show called Point Counterpoint.
Where you would hear civil conversation about different opinions on something.
Where you could watch this one channel and see both sides to where you could kind of figure out the truth for yourself or at least get some facts to fact check that have not only just one part of the story.
It just seems like it's almost like there's...
I mean, when people get into a conversation about something, the divide is so strong on the information.
Like with me watching a whole spectrum of different news media and giving them kind of equal time, I can almost tell what other people are going to say before they say it.
Because it's...
You can go through the channels and see the repetition depending on who they're supporting or favoring or whatever.
But I just think, like other people have said, the media seems to be the main source of the problem because it's kind of like every problem suffers when nobody has the same facts.
It doesn't matter.
Merry Christmas, Tom.
We'll go to George in South Carolina.
Good morning, George.
I'd just like to say we have always had a political divide in this country.
We just have to filter it out.
And just nothing's really ever changed, except that we have it on TV now.
You can see more of the problems or the divide.
So nothing has really changed.
In the old days, it really was maybe even rougher, more divided.
So we'll make it through all this.
Thank you and Merry Christmas.
That was George in South Carolina.
C -SPAN spoke with members retiring from Congress and they also, in addition to what they think will work, would make Washington work better, they also spoke about what they'll miss most about their time in Washington.
Here are some of their responses.
...relationships and the ability to go all over the world and see things and be so proud of representing America, what we do for the whole world and the people that we've saved in the different, just so many areas and all the good that we can do.
I've said this, there is nobody else that will take our place as a superpower of the world.
There's others that want to take it economically, China.
Others want to take it basically military might, Russia.
And others that have nefarious reasons for wanting to be as powerful as we are.
With that, you have to have super compassion.
You want super economies, you want a super military, but you have super compassion and super empathy.
And you have to be able to answer the call for those that are basically having a hard time, the hardest of times.
We're the only ones that come to the table every time.
Every time.
It's the USA.
The people.
The people and knowing you're hitched to something so much bigger than yourself.
I'm hitched up to trying to make America better.
I mean, that is a daunting thing.
And it's so frustrating because you're saddled with pulling things in your direction.
It's such a challenge.
So it's that big challenge matched with understanding people from all over the place, all these different backgrounds, and that want to get things done.
Just love this place.
I mean just love this place and the people I get to work with even when things are frustrating and things are mostly frustrating on a weekly basis and on a monthly basis, but that's how the institution was designed.
That's how this institutional system was designed.
So I've come to like that frustration.
But I love the people.
I'll miss the work.
I'll miss the...
Thank you very much.
Decades ago, you tend to spend most of your time with your party, your caucus, but I'll miss the people here.
I'll also miss the great staff here, everybody from the great work that Capitol Police do, to the floor staff, to others who make this place run, and in a very significant way, the staff.
I had a remarkable staff.
Everyone from Kristen Gentile, my chief of staff, all the way down, they just did superlative work.
And most times when a big deal is announced in Washington on legislation or something big gets done, guess who did most of the work?
The staff.
Not the senators.
That's not a big secret, but I've just revealed it to some if they thought it was a secret.
First of all, I'm going to miss all my friends.
I'm going to miss being in the middle of it.
I mean, I've been involved in negotiating some of the toughest things we've done, and certainly in agriculture I've been involved in six different...
Five -year farm bills, and this is the third one I led this time, which the bitter part is we didn't get it across the finish line.
We did some things at the end of the year that are important for farmers and families, but the partisan politics that never used to get into the Ag Committee did.
And so that was disappointing for me to see.
But the other thing is just the people that I've worked with.
My staff are like my second family.
I would not be successful without them.
They have been absolutely fantastic.
Fantastic.
So that part, you know, the missing people, the honor of walking into the Capitol, suiting up for Michigan every day and fighting for Michigan is something I'll miss.
On the sweet side, though, I'm going to be home in Michigan full time and have more chance to look at the water, our beautiful Great Lakes, and really enjoy.
You know, the opportunity for the first time really in my adult lifetime not having to look at a legislative calendar to figure out when we're going to celebrate birthdays or Christmas or take a vacation and so on.
And a programming note for you.
C -SPAN has been digging into its archives to bring you a marathon of President -elect Donald Trump's nominees.
In their own words, discussing policy, politics, and their relationship with the president -elect, today we are featuring Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum, Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
and Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi.
All of those are airing today on C -SPAN 2.
Back to your calls.
We'll hear from Rich in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Good morning, Rich.
Merry Christmas, Tammy.
Merry Christmas, Rich.
To get right to it, the only way I see as lessening the political divide would be for a spiritual revival to take place in America and for true conversions to actually take place.
But even biblically speaking, we know that that will never solve.
There will always be
We're good to go.
Which pretty much hung its hat in the previous election.
One of the premier issues was abortion.
And you have a substantial number in the other major party opposed to abortion.
Now what sort of compromise could be found to satisfy that?
So there will always be a political divide until one side or the other wins out.
There is no...
True compromise and there are many other issues.
We have a country today in which evidently a number of people support a murderer or an alleged murderer who shoots a CEO in the back and on the streets and they find that acceptable because they oppose the policies of the company.
Now, I'm not sure what, aside from spiritual conversion, what you're going to do to remedy that, how you're going to bring two sides together to find some sort of compromise on that sort of thing.
It's going to come down to there's right and there's wrong until we decide that we can't compromise on every issue.
That was Rich in Tennessee.
Thomas in Mesa, Arizona.
Good morning, Thomas.
Thomas, are you there?
Hi, yes, I am.
How are you, ma 'am?
Hi, Thomas.
Yes, good morning.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
And I am calling from Mesa, Arizona.
I was originally from Baltimore and raised in New England in Salem, Mass.
And I am very sad about the political divide because I'm from a family.
Oh, a couple of Democrats, and then was Jackie Kennedy's second cousin, and went to Hyannisport for many, many, many years, doing Stone, Masonry, and work on the house, and family,
and I love Rosie and Ethel, and did not like John, did not like Ted or Bobby, because of...
Peter Lauper was basically their pimp, and so they all got Marilyn Monroe, and I know this for a fact, hated that man with a passion, and Ted Kennedy killed a girl named,
a beautiful little girl, I went to elementary school, Catholic elementary school, French Catholic school, junior high school, high school and college, and Mary Jo Kopechny,
he put her in the Catholic...
I went and put her in the water, 40 feet under the water, upside down in the car, and didn't even help open her seatbelt.
He just let her drown.
And they found out later in the coroner's report that she was three months pregnant with his child.
That's why he didn't become president in 72.
That's enough of that story.
And my thing that we really need to do is we have an administration run by a multi -multi -billionaire now, and the president has convicted of many crimes.
He has no respect for women, and I am a Democrat, but I have Republican friends.
In fact, Senator John McCain was my first best friend in Arizona.
I worked in the medical practice for surgeons, and I had run a 28 -doctor practice in California, and so John McCain became my first best friend in Arizona.
This is a very rich state, and hard to get by.
A lot of friends have so many different opinions.
But many things I do agree with him, and I just try to make the difference and say, okay, we have differences, but let's work together and accomplish what we have to do to get things done for America, the United States.
And that's the one thing Joan and I talked about.
In fact, my great -great -uncle and his father operated the aircraft carriers, the Wasp and the Hornet, in the Pacific Theater and in Korea.
And Mr. McCain Sr. came to my great -uncle's house in Wakefield, Mass.
We spent the whole day on Lake Cornethaugh, the largest body of water in New England.
He was a wonderful man and a lovely person.
And I got to meet Pappy Boynton, the great pilot.
And I have my differences, but we need to work together across the aisle.
Got your point, Thomas.
We'll go to Robert.
In Michigan.
Good morning, Robert.
Good morning and Merry Christmas.
Hi, Robert.
I'm an elderly man.
I did graduate from high school.
But back in my day, we had government, civics, health, and all of the above.
And on the news constantly when I would hear it, I would hear about illiterate countries.
Africa, South America.
I've never met so many people who are able to read.
Don't understand that.
It will be divided as long as we agree with these creative truths and manufactured facts.
And those who are educated, and I'm not very educated, I'm a dumb, but I'm just saying, people, please, if you can read, you've got to understand that.
This is the first time that on the news, they never mention it.
There's mention of That was Robert in Michigan.
And the Biden White House released a Christmas video yesterday.
Here is The video that they published on X.
How silently, how silently the wonder's gift is given.
There's a certain stillness at the center of this story.
A silent night when all the world goes quiet.
All the noise, everything that divides us, it all fades away in stillness in the winter's evening.
To the sky, to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child.
A child.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
As we take a few moments of quiet reflection, find that stillness in the heart of Christmas and look at each other.
It's who we really are.
Fellow Americans.
Fellow human beings worthy of being treated with dignity and respect.
Because there's so much that unites us as Americans.
So much more that unites us than divides us.
We're truly blessed to live in this nation.
And I truly hope we take the time to look out, not at one another, for one another.
As we sing O Holy Night, may I wish for you and for our nation, now and always, that we'll live in the light, the light of liberty and hope, of love and generosity, of kindness and compassion, of dignity and decency.
From the Biden family, I wish you and your family peace, joy, health, and happiness.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and may God protect our troops.
Members of Congress are also posting well wishes for Christmas and the holidays.
This from Senator John Thune, grateful to see the joy of the holidays through the eyes of our grandkids, wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1 5.
This from House Speaker Mike Johnson, Merry Christmas and many blessings from our family to yours.
Elizabeth Warren tweeted, Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas Eve for me, Bruce, and Bailey.
And then in quotes, she said, did you know that he's named after George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life?
And one more from Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury.
She says, this holiday season reminds us of the importance of family, friends, and community.
Let's carry the spirit into the new year.
Merry Christmas Eve, New Mexico.
Just a few minutes left.
We'll go back to your calls.
Jules in St. Louis, Missouri.
Good morning, Jules.
Good morning and Merry Christmas.
I think we can get rid of the political divide mostly by figuring out that we ought to reverse Citizens United in which they claim that money is speech.
There's a rumor going around that a businessman can get the United States on a...
Straight course, but there's two types of economies.
There's a microeconomy, which is the kitchen table all the way up to the, say, Elon Musk.
There's a macroeconomy, which is what government should have been run by, and it should be run for the people.
The Constitution only has a very little bit in it about money.
But yet and still, money is what runs this place.
Number two, we ought to make sure that everybody gets a good education, and by a good education, I mean we ought to learn how to critically think, and that ought to be a required course, including civics.
Because if we can't think critically and we automatically jump to conclusions every time we hear a single word or epithets or that sort of thing, we're not going to get anywhere.
And by the way, the Bible, people quote the Bible, it's harder for a rich man to get through the eye of the needle.
And that was a geek going into Jerusalem, I believe.
Happy holidays to you, Jules.
We'll go to Moses in Mesa, Arizona.
Good morning, Moses.
Yes.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
I would like to say there will be no peace until you put God at the conference table, Minister Louis Farrakhan.
You brought the devil, Donald Trump, on your show, but you won't bring Louis Farrakhan on your show.
I can't understand that.
That was Louis in Arizona.
Lorene in Puyallup, Washington.
Good morning, Lorene.
Good morning, Tammy.
Merry Christmas.
Good morning!
Merry Christmas!
I would like to say that in Washington State, it is a state requirement that all seniors take a year of civics.
So I think we are doing that here in Washington State.
And I think that the politicians and the country need to Learn to respect each other.
You can have disagreements and not agree politically, but I think we need to respect each other that everybody has their own views and we just need to accept that.
Very Merry Christmas to Lorraine, one of my favorite aunts calling in.
Howard in Yonkers, New York.
Good morning, Howard.
Good morning.
How are you?
Doing well.
Merry Christmas, Howard.
Merry Christmas.
Just want to say that I believe C -SPAN is a national treasure.
And relative to your question, I think we need to bring back the fairness doctrine and to have it apply to cable TV as well as broadcast TV.
And I believe that The reality of climate change, and as the person before me said, critical thinking, has to be taught in the schools.
I am a substitute teacher that was formerly a regular teacher, and I bumped into a teacher a few months before the election who said, the U .S. economy is collapsing.
And I said, what are your sources?
Where are you hearing this from?
She said, well, I hear it on YouTube and different places on the internet.
I said, do you ever read the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times?
She said, no.
What are they?
This was a real teacher saying this to me.
So I think teaching critical thinking and what reliable sources are and having a fact checker
That was Howard in New York.
Just a few minutes left.
We'll go to Christina in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Good morning, Christina.
Good morning.
I just wanted to make kind of an observation that I've noticed for quite a while.
You know, we're talking about Democrats and Republicans, you know, race, genders, and all of this, and it's apparent to me that division, you know, they've got us all divided, and, you know, I study constitutional law,
and every day that we got up, we always set a pledge of allegiance, you know, to one flag, one republic, under God, and when they keep us divided like this,
We can't actually come together and to use all the resources.
You know of all people from different classes and different races, Republicans and Democrats.
I truly believe they're all working together and they are not here for the people.
And um, in the, in the declaration of independence, you know, it states in there that um, our creator, endowed us with unalienable rights and we instituted governments to protect and defend those rights.
And it's, you know, the declaration of independence is kind of like, you know, it's a list of grievances and if people were to read it, so many of the things that are happening back then are happening now.
And it's it's the duty of the people.
We need to stand up and we have the right and we have the authority to either alter or abolish our government, and I do not see this government.
That was Christina.
And our last call for this morning's program is Pat in Decatur, Illinois.
Good morning, Pat.
Oh, we lost Pat.
That is it.
For today's program, from everyone here on Washington Journal and at C -SPAN, Merry Christmas.
We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the program at 7 a .m. Eastern and 4 a .m. Pacific.
Enjoy the rest of your day, and again, Merry Christmas.
This week, watch Washington Journal's special Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live segments each morning with a new writer.
And coming up Thursday morning...
Journalist and columnist Jonathan Alter discusses his book, American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Watch live and join the discussion on Washington Journal Thursday morning starting at 7 Eastern on C -SPAN, C -SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c -span .org.
During Christmas week, each night at 9 p .m. Eastern, C -SPAN will feature interviews with departing members of Congress, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from both chambers.