The genome is basically the entire DNA instruction book of an organism.
All living organisms have a genome, including us.
Ours is this three -billion -letter script, A, C, G, and T in just the right order.
That's a lot of information, to be sure, if you tried to print out that information, which you have inside each of your cells, and stacked it up on...
But when I was first... Getting interested in genetics, there was no reference copy of the human genome.
We had little bits and pieces of it scattered around islands in the midst of a sea of ignorance.
And it became more and more clear by the late 1980s that if we were going to really make any progress understanding human genetics, we needed to have that reference copy of all three billion letters, and it needed to be done right so you could trust it.
And that was the proposal.
We're good to go.
I think?
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
I think?
I think?
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This is the Washington Journal for December the 26th.
On numerous occasions, President -elect Trump has promised to begin a mass deportation effort on his first day of his new term as top advisor on border issues.
Tom Holman said the effort would focus on deporting criminals and national security threats.
There are concerns by some on the effort's impact upon other U .S. migrants, also about how the effort could upset the U .S. economy.
To start the program today, How do you feel about these promised mass deportation efforts by the incoming Trump administration?
If you support them, call and tell us why at 202 -748 -8000.
If you oppose them, call us at 202 -748 -8001.
For immigrants in the United States, if you want to give your perspective, 202 -748 -8002 is how you do that.
If you want to text us your thoughts this morning, You could do that at 202 -748 -8003.
You can always post on Facebook at facebook .com slash c -span and on X at c -span WJ.
It was in late November that Scripps News along with Ipsos took a poll talking about and asking people about their thoughts on mass immigration.
Here's the headline.
Support for those efforts drops when Americans consider potential consequences.
When asked generally, About the idea of support for mass deportation for undocumented immigrants.
Those who participated in the poll, saying they supported that effort, 52 % said they support that effort, 42 % opposing that effort.
Those numbers change slightly when certain factors are introduced, that were introduced in the poll.
For example, support for those mass deportations if it ends up in fewer paying into Social Security and Medicare.
That support drops to 48%.
It drops to 47 % if it leads to labor market shortages.
It drops to 43 % if it results in prices to spike and support for mass deportations.
If families are separated in the process of doing so, that support only drops to 38%.
When it comes for those deportations and the technicalities of what faces the incoming Trump administration, the Associated Press highlights this in a recent story of theirs, which you can find online, saying about 1 .4 million people have final orders of removal,
while about 660 ,000 under immigration supervision either have been convicted of crimes or are facing charges, but only 6 ,000 officers within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement We're good to go.
I think?
So those are some of the technicalities that faces the incoming Trump administration.
When it comes to this idea of mass deportation, if this is something you support or oppose, you can call and let us know.
Again, if you support those efforts, 202 -748 -8000 is the number to call.
If you oppose those efforts, 202 -748 -8001.
And for immigrants in the United States, you can make your thoughts known too at 202 -748 -8002.
Social media available to you as well.
And texting us, you can text us those thoughts.
But I've informed Mexico that it just cannot...
Continue.
We're not going to let it continue.
The United States has lost 300 ,000 people a year.
Think of that.
I don't know.
I mean, how many people?
Everybody you meet said, I lost my daughter, I lost my son to drugs, to fentanyl.
Mostly to fentanyl, but to drugs.
Families are being destroyed and we're going to stop it.
We're not going to let that happen.
And we're also going to be doing something that's...
I think it'll help a lot.
We're going to do very big advertising campaigns, just like a campaign for running for president.
We'll spend a lot of money, but it'll be a very small amount of money, relatively.
We're going to advertise how bad drugs are for you, how bad they are.
They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, and ruin your teeth.
If you want to have horrible teeth, take a lot of fentanyl.
If you want to have skin that looks so terrible, take fentanyl.
We're going to show what these drugs are doing to you.
Nobody's done that before, and we're going to do it.
So those are some more of the recent comments that the president -elect has made when it comes to mass deportation.
You can find others at our website at c -span .org, asking you about your, to the level that you support or oppose these efforts by the incoming administration.
We'll start in Port Crane, New York, support line.
This is Rob.
Rob, good morning.
Tell us why.
Good morning, Pedro.
Well, You don't have to look very far to see that guy that set the woman on fire in the subway this week.
He was already kicked out of the country, came back and lit this woman on fire, then watched her burn.
I mean, this has happened all over the country.
They're killing and raping people.
This is ridiculous.
And back before the pandemic started, I remember hearing the press say, well, there's 20 to 30 million illegals here now.
And what is it now?
It must be close to 40 or 50 million.
And these people aren't vetted.
Our government under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has really ruined this country.
And it's going to take decades to get these people the hell out of here.
The caller references that instance of New York.
It was the ABC affiliate out of New York City with this on their website Monday.
That 33 -year -old man charged with murder in the death of the woman that he set afire on a subway train and the sub head, according to that spokesperson for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The man who committed that was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala.
That's from the ABC.
Another person on our support line.
This is in Oklahoma.
We will hear from Guy on this idea of mass deportation.
If you support or oppose it, Guy, hello, go ahead.
Good morning, Pedro.
I just that second woke up, so I'm a little groggy still.
But yeah, I'm in support.
Of getting rid of the criminals.
I mean, we've got to get rid of the criminals.
50 ,000 rapists, 12 ,000 murders.
They've already committed 14 ,000 murders from these illegals being here in the last four years that the media doesn't talk about.
You hear about Lake and Riley and certain people.
And then 380 ,000 children.
The number's just been updated.
380 ,000 children missing.
I mean, my God.
You know, 110 ,000 people last year died from the fentanyl.
We've got to secure the border, put the military, the National Guard, whatever it takes, and start with these hardcore criminals, gang members, and the people committing the crimes.
You know, if they're here, dreamers, let them stay.
If they're working, if they're good, if they want to be good citizens, let them stay.
But we've got to get rid of these hardcore...
If the numbers are as high as you say, what gives you confidence that the Trump administration is going to be able to do all that deportation?
Well, at least they're going to try.
They're going to try and they're going to do everything they can.
It's going to take more support, more money, obviously.
But they're going to do everything that they can, and I believe that.
Okay, that's Guy there in Oklahoma.
Again, you can call and support these efforts.
You can oppose these efforts.
Yes, hello Pedro and C -SPAN audience.
Pedro, you, Mimi, Greta, John, etc., Peter.
NBC, CBS, MSNBC, etc.
Will you folks kindly just say the truth?
They are illegal.
They are not undocumented.
They are illegal.
Why don't you news media give it to us straight?
Stop trying to use euphemisms to sugarcoat a very horrible situation.
Well, if that's the way you characterize it, then why do you oppose their deportation, or at least the mass deportation effort?
That has nothing to do with it.
You're not going to fool me with a trick question.
I stated my statement.
That's not a quick question.
You called in on our oppose line.
I assume that you want to talk about why you oppose it.
Tell me why.
Ah, he's gone.
Let's hear from Rod.
Rod on our support line in Ohio.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning, Pedro.
Morning.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Yeah, I support deportation in any form, whether it be illegal immigrants or people here that are on a legal visa that's expired or get in some trouble to where it should be rescinded.
But anyway, I'm going to keep it kind of short and sweet.
With the immigration problem, it's integrated into our society, our culture, and it's become part of our DNA.
It's like...
Because you can get the biggest chunk of it.
I'm trying to get my thoughts collected here on this, but it's like cancer.
You can go out and cut out a big chunk of cancer, but a lot of it will remain.
So you have to start with the obvious.
Everybody's screaming over the border, unchecked.
People coming in.
You have to deal with that first.
And then you can work backwards, hopefully, and start collecting all of it.
Because for every illegal immigrant that comes across unchecked, there are probably 10 people that came across illegally at one time that were lost track of, or something like that,
where they should have been sent back to their home country.
Okay.
Rod, there in Ohio, on our support line, some of you posted, when we posted this on the Facebook page not too long ago before the show started, some of those comments, this is from Susan Eastman,
saying when it comes to dealing with the issue of those already in the United States give them all work visas, adding that we need immigrants for our economy to function.
When it comes to the efforts, this is Timothy Crum saying he totally supports those mass deportation efforts.
We can't afford the cost of a whole class.
I'm not against immigration, but this invasion wasn't immigration or about refugees.
Again, that Facebook posting.
Yes, I oppose the mass deportation of immigrants.
Immigrants coming into this country just want to work.
And our economy depends.
The ranchers and the farmers of this country and the service industry in this country...
Elizabeth, keep going, please.
Our country is based on immigration.
People immigrated from Europe and all over the world to build this country.
And what's wrong with having people from all over the world come to this country to work?
That's all they want to do is work.
And mass deportation would break up families.
Children would be left here without a parent.
Elizabeth Theron, Maryland, giving her thoughts.
The Associated Press adding, when it comes to this effort that will be made by the administration, how local law enforcement factors into that.
Their story highlights the fact that some cities and states work with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcements to turn over people in custody who aren't U .S. citizens, but many left -leaning states and cities have so -called sanctuary policies.
That limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities in New York City, for example.
ICE used to have an office at the jail to easily take custody of non -citizens in 2014.
Then -Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation kicking out ICE and restricting police cooperation.
His successor, Eric Adams, has shown willingness to revisit some of these policies.
He recently met with Tom Holman and told reporters they agreed on pursuing people who commit violent crimes.
It goes on from there, just some of these efforts.
By the way, if you're at Newsweek publishing a map on their site, if I can get it to come up, it comes up those who support this idea of mass immigration or at least mass deportation that's planned by the Trump administration.
The map is here.
Those in the green that are shaded green saying yes.
They generally, those states going along with ideas or at least concepts of mass deportation.
Those in the no states, that orange, reddish color.
Blue states are limited.
It's unclear if you tap the map and go state by state.
It gives you the state if it supports deportations and the estimated undocumented population as of 2022.
Newsweek .com has that map.
If you want to take a look through that, you can call us about the level you support or oppose this idea of mass deportation.
Let's hear from Cody in Kentucky on our support line.
Hi, Cody.
Good morning.
Cody in Kentucky.
Hello.
Let's go to Ben.
Ben's in Virginia on our oppose line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
You can hear me?
I can hear you.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I oppose this because I don't think it's possible to do it.
Cost -wise, staffing -wise, and people got to be educated.
There is a process for deportation already.
And the reason why it's not possible to do mass deportations because, one, you need enough staffing.
To deport one person, you need two to follow enforcement, to escort that person out of the country to their country of origin.
And people are just thinking about, oh, you just drop them at the border of Mexico.
No, you have folks that are here from countries as far as China, as far as Iran, as far as Brazil.
You're going to need two to three law enforcement officials.
Air marshals to escort them out of the country.
It's very costly.
Number two, you have to process those criminals.
Or you have to process those individuals right, they have to go through immigration judge.
Some of them have to go through the federal judge, the federal or state judge.
If they have any offenses, any crimes they they committed, they have to go through that process, then go to immigration judges.
It's not possible to do it legally.
The easiest way, and A foreseeable way, is to impose laws that punish those who employ those individuals, right?
You need a seven -year background investigation to work for the federal government.
You can impose the same type of law to private sectors, right?
You can impose those laws and put the burden on them and say, look, if we find this type of individual in your entity, you'll be fined $1 million plus...
Yep, that's Ben there in Virginia.
Ben mentioning those costs.
Doc Holliday, or Doc Brian Holliday from Facebook, as part of his opposition, saying it's not a real plan.
It'll cost billions in the effort and to the economy.
When it comes to cost efforts, it was the New York Post two days ago.
An interview with Tom Holman, who's been tapped by the Trump administration, the incoming administration, to deal with border issues.
As far as a price tag to start these mass deportations, coming out of that interview, $86 billion as a starting price for that effort.
Again, let's hear from Steve, or we'll hear from Steve Massachusetts on our support line for these efforts.
Steve, you're next up.
Hi.
Hey, good morning.
Hey, I just wanted to say that first off, your list that you have of callers, I would imagine a lot of illegal immigrants are really upset that they're grouped in with illegal immigrants to call you.
Because I think there's a lot of people that are immigrants that are not happy with what's going on in our country.
And what's happening is we're completely changing our culture.
And 20 million people coming into this country, we can't sustain it.
And like...
Biden changed the laws and made that Haiti, the 20 ,000 that went to Springfield, were legal immigrants.
But how would anyone like that to happen to their town and have their culture completely changed by this amount of people coming from the government?
I thought we were the land of the people telling us what to do.
I just want to say that, you know, if it was in your town or in my town, I wouldn't be very happy.
Okay.
Steve, again, we've set aside a line for immigrants, 202 -748 -8002, that number.
Let's hear from Mara in New York.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Fine.
Go ahead.
Well, I came here from another country, and we've been here for 40 -some years, and we were sponsored.
And it took my family over 10 years to become citizens.
My father had to go to night classes every week, twice a week.
We had babysitters, and they had to learn how to speak English.
They had to learn history, and I think people should do it the right way.
What was their country of origin?
Italy.
Italy.
My father came here for work.
He didn't have any work in Italy and he came here for a better life.
But he did it the right way.
So when I see what's happening, it makes me sick.
As far as the deportation efforts that the incoming Trump administration has talked about, to what degree do you support those efforts?
I think you have to be here legally.
I think they've all broken laws.
And unfortunately, I don't like what's happening to these children.
They don't know where they are.
And that's very sad.
But they came here illegally.
My family had to do it the right way.
Okay.
Thank you for the perspective.
Let's go to Richard on our oppose line.
Hi there.
Jaded and we don't know how far that's going to go.
In other words, you know, you have people here from Afghanistan, from Ukraine.
Are these laws going to spill over and apply to them as well?
I think we have to take a critical look at what Donald Trump is proposing.
And we have to be very careful because, like I said, they can use this type of power.
The next thing you know, they may be rounding up American citizens under something like this.
So I just think we need to take a more critical look at this and be more careful about how we go about trying to get these people out of our country.
May I ask, why would you think it would start with those not supposed to be here, but why would you think that would extend ultimately to American citizens like you just said?
Well, because this country has a history of using things such as mass deportations.
And then, you know, you will see it will start to ripple out and, you know, go out and start to affect, you know, American citizens or whomever they may wish to do it, you know?
That's Richard there in New York on our opposed line.
One of the people asked about deportation efforts and...
In December of last year, border crossings were at record highs.
Now they've dropped to the lowest level of the Biden administration.
How much of that drop -off is because Mexico is now stopping migrants from even getting to that southern border of the United States.
That is critically one element of it.
It is not the only element of it.
The president took executive action in June of this year.
That has been a key driver of the low number of encounters at our border.
We are now delivering.
Yes.
Oh, and it is, Margaret, it is one element.
I think you have said to me, one of the very first things the Biden administration did was ask Congress to act in the earliest days.
And then fast forward, you had this bipartisan near mess on a border bill.
All that time passed.
Why wait until five months before the U .S. election to put in place those asylum restrictions that did cut off the flow, that ended a crisis?
Margaret, remember where we were when the president took office.
We were in the midst of the COVID -19 pandemic.
Right.
Mm -hmm.
Again, that full interview available at the CBS News website.
When it comes to plans for mass deportation by the Trump administration, the incoming administration, do you support or oppose those plans?
If you support them, call us and tell us why at 202 -748 -8000.
If you oppose them, 202 -748 -8001.
For immigrants this morning, if you want to give your perspective, 202 -748 -8002 is how you can call that number and let us know in the time that we have.
When it comes to taking a look at enforcement efforts, that was the Department of Homeland Security.
They released a report that you can find online taking a look at their deportation efforts for fiscal year 2024.
And they'll show you as far as the administration, or at least what the Biden administration has done, how that effort has gone.
271 ,000 plus non -citizens were moved to 192 different countries.
88 ,000 plus, almost 89 ,000 had charges or convictions of criminal activity.
3 ,700 known suspected or known gang members.
237 known or suspected terrorists, 8 human rights violators.
That's from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Let's hear from Martinez in Oklahoma, a supporter of this effort.
Go ahead, please.
Okay.
And that's why you support the effort?
Okay.
Martinez there in Oklahoma.
Martinez, you said we need to control it.
What does that mean to you?
Okay, Martinez there in Oklahoma.
Nicky is next up in New York State on our oppose line.
Hi.
Good morning.
First of all, it's ironic that in this day of peace throughout the world, we celebrate Christmas, that people oppose immigration, even illegal.
Jesus Christ was an illegal immigrant, for God's sake.
But the ridiculousness that you pointed out at the beginning.
6 ,000.
Do the math.
Do the arithmetic.
6 ,000.
Let's say there are 12 million illegal immigrants that you want to deport.
6 ,000 ICE agents.
Do the math.
6 ,000 goes into 12 million.
How many times?
I mean, this is just mean -spirited and you are being promised Something that Donald Trump is very good at.
Promising you pie in the sky, the greatest economy, and that he's going to solve, he is your new messiah.
So I hope you enjoyed this Christmas because the next one will be a MAGA Christmas.
Thank you and enjoy the rest of your holidays.
Bye.
Doug there in Chester, Pennsylvania on our support line.
You're next up.
Good morning.
Hey there.
I think there may have been some confusion.
I actually was going into a pose.
Okay, well then let me stop you there.
And if you would, call in and pick the line, our pose line.
I invite you to call right back on that line to make sure that we have people calling on the correct line.
Again, it's 202 -748 -8000.
If you support this effort of mass immigration, the incoming Trump administration, if you oppose it, 202 -748 -8001.
Yes, I oppose it because Trump does things without thinking ahead or planning ahead.
And then he changes his mind later.
But the main thing is, people do not have labels on their foreheads.
How is he going to be able to tell who's who?
Um, there's a lot of people that have been, that are citizens of this country um, that have that he could just round up and then we'll have to figure it out later and and he won't care about that.
So I'm opposed to it because of that.
And he got in there with um money from Musk and all these other billionaires and he just bought his election.
So if anything's fake, that's fake.
Because of that, Do you think, as far as the issue, specifically those here illegally, and particularly those that prove a threat, do you think the administration has a point on that front?
Yes.
Yes, they do.
But they need to do it the right way and be able to identify that they're actually here illegally and that they're criminals.
I know you talked about the writing on the forehead thing, but how do you know that there's no sense of the ability to identify those who are not here, who are not supposed to be here, and yet prove a threat?
Why do you think that can't happen?
I just think it's going to cause a lot of chaos like it did with the children locking up in cages.
And he's okay with that, because that makes him feel powerful.
And, you know, this president, or this incoming president, is scary.
He's just, he's out of his mind.
And people are, I mean, half the country is going along with it, which is even more scary to me.
Okay, Elaine there in Colorado.
This is Edward in New York, New York City, on our support line.
Hello.
Good morning, Pedro.
Thank you for having me on.
Really, really great question.
I think Trump will do two things.
I think he'll tighten up the illegal immigration to the lady caller before who said her family took 10 years to come in.
And I'm helping someone right now with a green card application.
So I think the legal aspect is something that he'll tighten up.
But I think more importantly, right now, you know, I go to the monthly police community meetings here in New York and Manhattan, and we're given to understand that there are 58 ,000 right now criminal migrants here in the city.
58 ,000.
And that about 75 % We're good to go.
I think? has enabled the travel business.
The cartels have two businesses.
They have the drug business, about $50 billion, and they have the $25 billion travel business.
And the travel business is very well organized.
It moves people.
It takes advantage of all the experience.
So, Edward, if I may ask, you listed off that 58 ,000 number in New York City.
Just taking a look at that number alone, what convinces you the Trump administration has the resources not only to handle the issues there in New York City alone, but the United States overall?
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
And those guilty of sexual assault, this is Joe Ellen Arabido saying that in support of the plan, we are a republic, a land of laws, and obviously they did not adhere to our laws.
The left always cite fairness in their arguments.
Well, how is it fair to those who follow the rules and entered legally?
And then Loretta Knott saying, also in her support, saying deportation of the illegals.
Hey, good morning.
Excuse me.
Best of the holidays to you.
The reason why I oppose this, I found out some interesting information.
Over the holidays, somebody in my huge family did a 23andMe on our very own family.
And so it turns out we're all immigrants.
Forget about even the humanitarian part of this.
Let's just pretend nobody's a real Christian in this country.
Let's just pretend.
About four examples.
I know that your audience is probably mostly even like older than me.
So you have a cultural memory.
How much money did it take just to get one very rich alleged murderer, probably a murderer, to go from Pennsylvania to New York State?
There must have been about 85 federal, local, state people to get that Luigi Mangione or whatever his name is.
Just to go from one state to one state.
You could have put him in a Volkswagen and had one cop do the whole thing.
But no, that's not the way our country works.
You always have to have about 80 cops to do one job.
Think about Elian Gonzalez, the little Cuban boy, five years old or whatever he was back in the end of the Clinton years.
Federal, local, state, just to get the guy reunited, the kid reunited with his father, took a military operation.
Because of all the locals that were up against a reunification to his proper father.
Think of David Koresh holed up abusing kids.
The federal government allowed him to kill five of their own agents.
And we had a whole army surrounding that compound for like 55 days or something like that.
That probably cost tens of millions of dollars.
No, it's going to be a civil war issue if we allow this to play out.
If you don't like to, like, you know, accept, like, essentially Native American...
I'm sorry.
CJ, I'm just saying, what's the point then?
For all those examples, what's the final point as far as your opposition to these efforts?
Well, it's impractical to go and to think that, you know, like Trump says, we're going to have the biggest mass deportation in history.
Did he ever hear about the Mexican Repatriation Act?
Okay, that's CJ in Virginia.
Let's hear from Ronald in North Carolina on our support line.
You're next up.
Hello.
Yes.
Can you hear me?
I can.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I'm against these immigrants coming in, and the reason why, they're taking most recently, Trump won, the election's so good, they've taken all the black people's jobs,
all these meals I've been in, they've taken all their jobs, and they hired two Mexicans to do their job.
That's wrong, and they've...
I think that that's what's wrong.
That's how I want Trump warned over that part.
But Biden has shipped plane loads coming in from the border.
Brought them down here.
That's wrong.
That's wrong.
And that's illegal.
We need to charge Biden for every one of them illegally shipped in here and flew in here.
Make him pay for them and plow them back.
And then the rest of the Democrats are on their part.
That's in my opinion.
Okay, our line for immigrants, this is Charlie in New York.
You're on, go ahead.
Yeah, back in the mid -80s, I left New York to do some construction work in California.
And I had a hard time finding work because a lot of the illegal immigrants, I was living in San Diego at the time, were taking a lot of that work.
So I've always been kind of opposed to immigration, especially illegal immigration.
But, you know, ironically, two years ago, I met a woman who was here illegally, and we fell in love.
And so my immigrant story has become more mixed, in my opinion.
As much as I oppose people entering the country illegally, there are times when it's necessary for persecution reasons, for religious freedoms.
And the immigrants I've met in the communities are hardworking.
So that's my opinion about it.
I think people need to be open -minded about the situation and not just have a black and white Okay.
Charlie, there in New York, the Wall Street Journal, just to show you the headline of a recent story they have taking a look at the upcoming plans for the administration.
Now, private prisons industry are part of those plans.
That's the headline from a recent story.
Just to read you a little bit, saying private prisons and other companies that provide detention services. Are getting ready to cash in on what President -elect Donald Trump has billed as the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.
That includes scouring for as many detention beds as possible with their network of facilities and scouting sites for new buildings to house migrants.
Some executives are considering whether to take up controversial work of detaining families or unaccompanied children.
Others are prepared to hire new staff and snapping up well -connected lobbyists.
Quote, this to us is an unprecedented opportunity.
That's George Zoli, the executive chairman of the GEO Group, a private prison company, telling investors on an earning call days after the election, this story adding that pulling off a deportation on the scale that Mr. Trump has promised would constitute an unprecedented logistical feat for the U .S. government involving identifying,
locating, arresting, detaining, adjudicating, and transporting potentially millions of men, women, and children.
Hi, thank you again.
I'm glad I got back through.
I think this is a very, very serious issue, and I've been concerned about this whole Trump immigration thing since his first term.
It's only gotten scarier to me as I've listened to people's spirits sour in the aftermath of COVID.
Everybody's memory's gotten very short.
You know, during COVID, when then -President Trump and Wilbur Ross intervened with Tyson and the other meatpacking plants to ensure that those plants would stay open no matter what,
as the virus began to intensify, many of those people who are our American countrymen were people who are of questionable documentation, who were making sure their food still stayed on our tables.
I think what really alarms me the most listening to everybody this morning talk about this is that everybody keeps saying this as if It's not possible because it doesn't make sense logistically.
And I think that, you know, I agree generally.
But what I'd like to posit here is that perhaps these people who we know feed on chaos are announcing to us that what they intend to do is to allow people to take extrajudicial matters into their own hands should this plan not work the way that they anticipate.
It most certainly does sound logistically impossible to try to forcibly eject.
People from American cities and to try to employ even something like the National Guard, which involves many, many proud Americans who were born here but are, you know, parts of families that are immigrant in nature.
You know, you're not going to have these people go and eject their own families from their own cities.
That's not going to happen.
But maybe what they're trying to say to us, man, is that they're ready to just let the brown shirts come out and do their thing.
That's what we should be concerned about.
These people have not demonstrated in the very last administration a modicum of concern for the dignity of human life.
They let a million of us die, and they will do it again.
Okay.
That's Doug there.
Chester, Pennsylvania, on our oppose line.
And continue to call in.
Again, the line's there on your screen.
Don in Sacramento on our support line.
Hello.
Hello, Pedro.
Man, these people sound just like these old...
Back in the cowboy days, how they used to treat them Indians and stuff.
And now they're trying to get them Mexicans the same way.
Same way they did the Jews over there in Europe.
Now they're going to be acting like the brown people are the only people that's doing all the crime here so they can send them out of America masked.
Well, Don, let's clarify something.
Do you support this idea of mass deportation?
Yeah, I support it.
But are they just supporting brown and black people?
Or are they going to include Europeans in this deportation thing?
How are they going to tell the difference between a European white person and a regular white person?
Well, aside from the clarifications you're making, why do you support the effort overall?
Because, I mean, there's too many of all of them here.
The Arabs, the Mexicans, the white folks coming from Europe.
Okay, okay, yeah, we'll leave it there.
Washington Times this morning, this takes a look at what Mexico is planning on doing, at least parts of it.
This is the headline, shelters to open in Mexico to prepare for Trump deportations.
It quotes the Baja California governor, saying the Mexican government will open 25 new shelters to house illegal immigrants deported from the United States in preparation for that crackdown.
Baja California Governor Marina de Pilar Avila -Omeda said in a meeting Monday that the country is taking Mr. Trump's threat of deportation seriously.
According to Nexstar's border report, five of the shelters will be in the city of Tijuana, the others in the capital city of Baja.
This story from the Washington Times adding that the migrants will only be able to stay in the shelters that can house up to 500 people for a few days before they will be sent back to their hometown.
Some people will hold men, some will hold men, while others will hold women, families, and unaccompanied minors.
There's more there on the international perspective on the plans of the incoming Trump administration when it comes to mass deportations.
That's in the Washington Times this morning.
Let's hear from Mo, also a resident of California and San Diego, on our POS line.
Hello.
Good morning, Pedro, and Merry Christmas to everybody.
I just want to say that I don't think he's going to be able to do it.
Congress isn't going to give him the money to do this.
No way.
Economists estimate it's going to cost over a trillion dollars.
You really want to add a trillion dollars to our national debt?
And I'm afraid this is why he wants to lift the debt ceiling.
Because he knows...
Congress won't give him the money.
Also, if he lifts the debt ceiling, he's putting it on America's credit card.
You know how credit card debt works.
We'll never get it paid off.
Besides that, we need these people to pick our strawberries and lettuce.
I'm here in California.
I see it every day.
No one's flooding across the border.
Just stop with all that.
And stop, please, stop being so greedy.
That's low in California.
It was at a recent Senate hearing that the Judiciary Committee's ranking member, Lindsey Graham, talked about the Republican control of the Senate next year in the 119th Congress as part of the judiciary plans when it comes to immigration.
He had some things to say about specifics.
Here's a portion from that hearing.
Who feel like the Biden administration was criminally negligent in protecting us by having a broken border and allowing drugs to pour into our country to kill tens of thousands of young people,
allow people to come in our country who are convicted felons to do damage to families we'll hear from today.
That nightmare is coming to a close.
In January of 2025, the Republican Senate We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
That's Lindsey Graham from that Senate hearing.
You can find that on our website at c -span .org.
By the way, on our companion network, C -SPAN2, at least for the time being, for 24 hours of hearing previous statements by... C -SPAN 2.
Yes.
My name is Nina Montoya, and my comment about the immigrant mothers.
It's wrong to separate the children from the immigrant mothers.
Okay.
If they're gonna deport of immigrant mothers, they should not separate the children from them.
They should be able to take their children with them.
All right.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Nina, is there anything else you want to add?
And children of the immigrants...
Calvin is next, in Alabama, a supporter of this effort.
Hello.
Not opposed, but are far of the mass immigration, because the many people that are legally trying to come into our country and immigrate are being...
cheated upon.
They are all spending money and their time and doing everything that's legally possible for them to do to get into our country and become legal citizens, and to me it's like uh, the ones that are just crossing the border, the millions that we've had that have came into our country, that Biden has allowed to come in, are cheating, They're jumping ahead of the line.
They're not even taking the test.
They're like taking a test and not having the answers provided to them.
And the others who are really studying to pass that test to get their citizenship, are being uh downtrodden.
They're, they're being cheated upon, and I think it's wrong.
We have a young man in our neighborhood that is working for his citizenship and uh, we've done all we can do to help him and uh, many of the people in our community are helping him.
It is not an easy process and a cheap process to achieve this.
I think, if our government is going to do anything, they need to revamp the whole process to where getting in here because of a solid We're good.
Okay.
Okay.
Got your point, Calvin.
Let's go and hear from Dorothy.
Dorothy in Louisiana on our oppose line.
Hello.
Hello.
Listen, man.
Dorothy, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I was calling from Lou Landis, Dorothy, and I think it's wrong depot immigrants.
The ones that leave is not right.
And Joe Biden did all that he could.
Okay, Dorothy there in Louisiana.
One more call and this will be from Thomas.
Thomas is in Georgia on our support line.
Go ahead, Thomas.
Hey, I'm tickled to death.
I finally got in here.
I've been waiting for quite some time.
Look, this illegal immigration is a real problem.
Just talk with our hospitals.
Talk with our schools.
We got teachers who were trying to teach class with a bunch of kids in there that cannot speak English.
Our teachers cannot speak Spanish.
It is a tremendous problem to our school system.
And look at our education system today.
We are probably number 35 or higher where we used to be number one in the whole United States, the whole world,
excuse me.
The whole world, we used to be number one in education.
Look where we're at today.
Okay.
Thomas Theron, Georgia, finishing off this hour of calls.
For those of you who participated...
Thanks for doing so.
We'll hear those thoughts when Washington Journal continues.
American History TV, Saturdays on C -SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
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.
We're good to go.
American History TV looks back at famous inaugural speeches.
This weekend, speeches by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, Harry Truman's 1949 address, and Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 address.
Exploring the American story.
Watch American History TV, Saturdays on C -SPAN 2.
And find a full schedule on your program guide, or watch online anytime.
Watch the election of the House Speaker.
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Tune in for our live, all -day coverage of the presidential inauguration as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming the 47th President of the United States.
Stay with C -SPAN throughout January for comprehensive, live, unfiltered coverage of the 119th Congress and the presidential inauguration.
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Washington Journal continues.
Washington Journal's Authors Holiday, Authors Week series continues on.
If you've been joining us again, authors of various political stripes joining us for conversations about their books and other topics.
Eight days over the course of a total that we're going to talk about these public policy and political topics.
Today, we invite author Jonathan Alter on.
He is the author of the book American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial, and my own Jonathan Alter.
Happy holidays to you.
Welcome to the program.
Happy holidays.
So great to be here.
This trial that you highlight in your title remind people about what you were writing about.
So the trial that I covered every day in the courtroom was the hush money trial that took place at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse and it resulted in the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 counts.
...of business fraud.
And that conviction, as we speak, still stands.
He's a convicted felon.
We're waiting for the judge to determine sentencing.
It's pretty clear that he's unlikely to try to have President -elect Trump serve any of his sentence, given that he was just re -elected president.
But he might freeze the case and return to sentencing in four years.
We're not sure exactly what's going to happen.
But this trial was, I guess you could call it a bittersweet experience for somebody like me, who I think, you know, feels very strongly.
And I think I speak for a lot of people, obviously not everybody.
You wrote in the book, just to read a little bit of what you wrote for our audience, saying, I'm still idealistic,
but it turns out that I have more illusions about this country than I thought I did.
I aim instead to show how a tawdry trial about a hush money payments to a porn star became an inspiring, if provisional, locus of democratic accountability.
A place where, for the first time since his father died 25 years ago, Donald Trump was forced to sit down, shut up, and face the consequences of his actions.
Can you elaborate?
Is that part of the trial of your own that the title of your book highlights?
And can you elaborate on that?
Yeah, so I grew up in an intensely political family in Chicago.
My mother was the first woman elected to public office in Cook County.
And I loved everything and continue to love everything about the presidents.
And I have Pez dispenser presidents at home.
I have a collection of presidential spoons.
I revere...
The only one I missed was Ronald Reagan.
I was a little too young when I was at Newsweek to interview him.
And so I've studied the presidency and I...
I assumed wrongly, and these were my illusions, that the American people would not elect a con man as president of the United States.
And so I was, you know, I was wrong.
And people simply didn't care as much about his rather long record.
You know, this was only one trial.
The others are now being thrown out because...
He was re -elected, and he won't have his Justice Department obviously continue those federal cases.
But in total, he was indicted across a few different cases on 91 counts of various offenses, not to mention the civil judgment a year ago for sexual...
This is a con man.
People who are for Trump, I just think that they are not looking at the totality of his character in making a judgment.
But this experience was, in some ways, very inspiring in the courtroom because, as you mentioned in your excerpt from my book, this was a kind of a partial accountability,
no matter what happens eventually to this case.
You know, even if he doesn't serve in jail, even if he doesn't, which he's very much not going to, even if he doesn't, you know, end up getting probation, every day in the courtroom,
he had to answer for really the first time in his adult life to Judge Juan Rashan, who controlled the courtroom.
And I got a front row seat on this accountability.
The trial wasn't televised, so while it was highly publicize the Stormy Daniels trial.
Nobody really got a good sense of what was going on in that courtroom if they weren't there.
And this is the only book about this case.
It was a fascinating case.
There was overwhelming evidence of guilt on Donald Trump's part.
So I walk the readers through, you know, I kept a very barbed acerbic Diary during the trial and I start the book explaining You know what I brought to coverage of this trial,
which was not legal expertise But as I mentioned, a long history of studying and appreciating the American presidency and American politics.
Republicans, 202 -748 -8001.
Democrats, 202 -748 -8000.
Independents, 202 -748 -8002.
If you want to call in and ask questions of our guests, Jonathan Alter, if you want to text him your questions, 202 -748 -8003.
Mr. Alter, you listed those various legal fronts.
Well, actually, I was originally credentialed for Jack Smith's case against Donald Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election,
the first time in the entire history of our country that we haven't had a peaceful transfer of power, or at least... Trump's lawyers appeal to the Supreme Court on the basis of immunity.
And we all know what happened in that case.
The Supreme Court ruled that a president could not be held accountable for acts while he was in office.
And this delayed that case so long.
It didn't kill the case, but it delayed the case until after the election.
And now Jack Smith has canceled that case.
because um you know trump has indicated all along that he would not allow the justice department to move forward with either that or the mar -a -lago case which related to his refusing a request to turn return classified documents that belong to the u .s government so he's indicted on that those cases are dead the georgia case Is probably dead.
So this was the hush money trial.
I thought of it as kind of the runt of the litter, you know, in terms of cases.
But it was nonetheless, you know, an important case.
The first time in American history that a president of the United States has gone on trial.
And obviously the first time a president of the United States has become a convicted felon.
Just to give you a quick sense.
I know a lot of people out there.
Very interested as I am in the history of the American presidency.
So in 1872, Ulysses Grant was given a speeding ticket for driving too fast on 13th Street in Washington in his carriage.
And in 1953, Harry Truman got a ticket for driving too slow on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Nixon was pardoned.
We're good to go.
You know, through the disruption of our politics and our values that Donald Trump represents.
I think?
So I try to give voice to what that feels like.
Obviously, I'm not giving voice to the way conservative Republicans feel and others who voted for Donald Trump.
But there are still, you know, tens of millions of Americans who I think share my views about Trump.
We'll ask you to highlight some of those as we go across the next 45 minutes, but we do have callers lined up ready to talk to you.
Let's start with Tim in Georgia, independent line.
You're on with Jonathan Alter, again, the author of the book American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Tim, good morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning, you guys.
I have two questions for you.
Well, really, one.
In the hush money trial, I think the majority, and I'm an independent, so I have, you know, I'm just an open -minded individual,
but the majority of people that I talked to looked at it in two ways.
One, they looked at it as this is a man That committed adultery and was trying to cover it up, they could not see where the government or any trials should be brought forth on him for that.
And two, the majority of them also saw it as a way of them trying to keep Trump from becoming president again.
So what I'm saying is that in most of the public's eyes, independents and We're conservative Republicans and maybe some Democrats that this trial was basically a sham to keep him from becoming president again.
I want to get your opinion on that because that seems to be the going thing with the hush money trial.
A lot of people don't even count that as a conviction.
That's why they voted.
Excellent questions.
So, you know, people say, well, this was selective prosecution.
You know, actually, there are more than 100 cases a year that just the Manhattan prosecutor brings, not to mention other jurisdictions.
On falsification of business records, which is what this case was about.
And, you know, prosecutors, federal, state, and local, they have offices of public integrity because they do use more resources to go after politicians to send a message that no one is above the law and that politicians should not break the law.
So some people are going, and I think this was part of what you were hearing, oh, this is just a A bookkeeping thing.
He was just trying to cover up, you know, this fling that he had with the porn star.
Interestingly, the people who were arguing that years ago with Bill Clinton, they believed that when he was lying to cover up an affair that he should be impeached and removed from office from that.
So they now are on the other side of that issue, those Republicans who believe that about Clinton.
But just setting that aside for a moment.
The problem with that is it's not just a bookkeeping error.
And I was made aware of this by a professor at the Harvard Business School who told me something I hadn't thought of.
He said, you know, the integrity of business records, the fact that you're not allowed to use fraudulent business records, just lie in your...
Business records is actually the foundation of our successful economy.
That if you just let people falsify business records, as Trump was convicted of doing on 34 accounts in this case, then nobody can believe anything in business.
You have crony capitalism.
It's all about just, do you know the judge?
And business would become very corrupt.
People wouldn't be able to trust the courts.
To keep business records clean and we would have a much less successful economy.
That's the way it works in Russia and many other countries where they have crony capitalism.
So to say that these, you can have a legitimate argument about whether these charges should have been bumped up from misdemeanors to a felony, to felonies.
That's something that you can kind of argue about.
But I don't think it's as easy to make an argument that he didn't do anything wrong because he was clearly breaking the breaking the law and interestingly, just last week judge Mershon ruled that the you know the immunity decision by the Supreme Court which protects presidents from being prosecuted for their official acts things they do while president that
It's true that there was important testimony by a woman named Hope Hicks about some things that Trump said about Stormy Daniels in the White House that you could argue would be protected by that immunity decision.
But what the judge ruled, I believe rightly, is that there was such, quote, overwhelming evidence of guilt.
Michael Cohen's testimony against Donald Trump, there was so much evidence of guilt that they didn't even need what he did in the White House.
And that's why he hasn't thrown out this conviction.
So, you know, you have to look at it.
Should the president or former president be above the law?
If evidence is brought to your attention and the evidence kept coming in right up until the trial started in April.
He kept being new witnesses, new evidence against him.
He didn't put out any case of his own except for one very unconvincing witness.
It blew up in his face.
There was so much evidence that for the prosecutor to look the other way and say, oh, yeah, just an affair.
We're not going to enforce the law.
We're not going to prosecute this guy.
He was president.
We're going to be accused of trying to prevent him from being president again.
So we'll just look the other way.
While he violates business records laws that are prosecuted every day somewhere in the United States, no, the president shouldn't be above the law.
And that's one of the issues that I deal with in this book, is how did we get to a place where so many people, including many independents, believe that, you know, some laws, yeah, okay.
You know, if he's trying to overthrow the government, maybe, you know, prosecute him on that.
But on other laws, don't.
I agree that the Jack Smith case was more important, much more significant than the Stormy Daniels case.
But, you know, you want to bring the defendant to justice where you can.
Right.
Okay.
Let's hear from Edward in Michigan.
Democrats line, hello.
Yes.
The whole idea of this hush money to the two women, to Stormy Daniels and the playmate Karen McDougal, the whole idea was to keep those affairs out of the news so that the voters wouldn't have that information in 2016.
Because Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton.
It was an extremely...
Well, it was a close in the Electoral College.
It was, you know, a nail -biter in the Electoral College.
Trump lost the popular vote.
So the whole effort, the whole money payment, the whole using, what is it, the National Enquirer or whatever, the David Packers thing, the whole idea was to keep this...
Okay.
So this...
Yeah, if you're interested in any of this, I really do recommend my book because this was an extremely important part of the trial.
Basically, what happened was you remember the situation with the Access Hollywood tape where he was talking on tape about, you know,
you can grab them by the you -know -what if you're famous.
And this came out in...
We're good to go.
I think?
And Trump plummets in the polls, and he only recovers because the subject kind of changes to Hillary's emails.
And so people, they don't care that much about Access Hollywood after he says on Melania's advice, as I report in the book, oh, it's just locker room talk.
Well, if Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal had come out Just before the election, it wasn't locker room talk.
This wasn't locker room talk.
This is what he did to me.
He would have lost the election.
It's hard to see how he would have survived that.
So Trump was desperate to pay this hush money.
He got Michael Cohen to do it.
And then he covered up that he got Michael Cohen to do it by pretending, falsifying.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
A critical presidential election, maybe the most consequential in our history, if you look at how Trump is changing the country, turned on this cover -up.
Let's go to Bruce.
Bruce is in Chicago, Republican line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I would like to ask the guest what his legal background is.
He's expressed a lot of opinions on Judge Merchan being the next...
You know, the next great Supreme Court Justice.
But anyway, I appreciate the American reckoning, and I just wondered if he's planning his next book on reckoning what happens with the person who's in the political office and taking money from our enemies abroad and distributing it through sham corporations and distributing it amongst his family.
And I just wonder if...
You know, if you had an answer for that, and I just wonder if that'll be your next book, if you're going to go and delve into the crime family of the Bidens.
Okay, well, so a couple of things.
First of all, I'm not a lawyer, but there have been many people who've covered many trials for many, many years who are not lawyers.
I had a retired judge.
As far as...
The Biden family goes.
You know, Hunter Biden was prosecuted, and I think it was wrong for President Biden to pardon him.
But the allegations that you just mentioned of this being a crime family, there's never been any evidence of that that has been presented anywhere.
That is all just right -wing...
...spin, and in some cases, lies.
And to just throw these charges around based on, you know, allegations which, in the case of some of the Russians, have been retracted.
These allegations of what Biden supposedly did in Ukraine, they've been retracted.
And to just assume that, you know, this man who, you know, I was very critical of, President Biden for...
Running for reelection.
I thought that was a historically wrong decision.
And in American Reckoning, I tell the story for the first time about how Nancy Pelosi maneuvered him off the ticket in July of this year.
But, you know, to go from that kind of legitimate criticism to just assuming that the craziest conspiracy theories about Joe Biden are true.
When nobody has ever found any evidence to support them, I think does not contribute to our debate.
Alright, if you're joining us, we're in the middle of our author series here on Washington Journal.
Joining us, Jonathan Alter.
He's the author of American Reckoning Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Mr. Alter, the New York Post had a recent editorial.
It took a look at the recent decision to remove Fannie Willis from the Georgia case, but it did make this point regarding Judge Bershon.
I want to read this to you, saying, The once -packed mob of legal hitmen gunning for President -elect Donald Trump is down to two notable holdouts.
Man, Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan is refusing to toss out the 34 -count conviction in the bogus, quote, hush money case, while also refusing to sentence Trump so that he can finally appeal.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg wants to keep the case on hold, while Trump serves his second term effectively putting a ticking time bomb over the sitting president's head for four years.
As the last men standing at the witch hunt, Merchan and Bragg ought to wake up, drop the pitchforks, and focus on actually serving the cause of justice.
What do you think of that assessment?
Well, needless to say, I don't agree with it.
It's a right -wing assessment.
They were not in the courtroom.
They did not see that Judge Merchan, while not suggesting as an earlier caller, said that he deserves to be on the Supreme Court.
But he did an excellent job in this case, very judicious, backed up all of his decisions.
And so this is not, you know, a ticking time bomb.
It's actually rather common.
For cases to be frozen when a criminal has been prosecuted in various different jurisdictions.
Sometimes sentencing is postponed in one of those jurisdictions, even as for years.
There's no statute of limitation on sentencing.
So I hope that judge Mershon does go along with Alvin Bragg, postpone, We're good to go.
It's historic importance.
So basically, the American people have decided, and I'm comfortable, I'm not happy about it, but I accept their verdict that Trump's legal problems should not prevent him from being president of the United States.
But they didn't vote for a judge to dismiss a jury's verdict.
The jury deliberated.
They were very, very attentive.
I looked at them every day, in some cases through binoculars, which one of the jurors didn't appreciate me looking at him, checking him out through my binoculars.
I really wanted to see how they were reacting to the testimony.
They rendered...
I think?
Were inspiring.
They helped restore my faith in our system and the way they handle themselves.
And to just say, oh, because of, you know, their verdict should be thrown out because the judge is a hit man and the prosecutor is a hit man.
How about the jury?
Are they hit men and women?
Or did they listen to the evidence and decide that Donald Trump should become a convicted felon?
I believe it's the latter.
Let's go to David in Michigan.
Democrats line for Jonathan Alter.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
Jonathan, back in late September, early October of this year, the Supreme Court told all 50 states that it was okay for them to purge as many valid votes as they wanted.
144 million Votes for president should have been at least 170 million votes because 30 million teenagers turned 18 years old by 2024.
And last voting 2020, 155 million voters voted.
This time only 144 million voters voted and it should have been about 170 to 175.
That's how Trump won because of the Supreme Court telling all 50 states to purge votes.
I think Vice President Harris should not certify votes on January 6th.
And let's see what happens.
What do you think?
Thank you.
Thanks for the call.
I don't agree with that.
I think she very much should certify this election.
It was a legitimate election.
If people are interested in my views on why Donald Trump won, I wrote a pretty long article on my Substack newsletter, which is called Old Goats, because I'm an old goat.
And I believe in a multi -causal explanation.
I have 10 different reasons why I think Trump won the election.
And actually, the Supreme Court decision is not one of them.
There was a dampened turnout for reasons that had to do way beyond.
The purging of certain voter rolls.
I don't know.
We're good to go.
I think?
What you mentioned that I thought were decisive.
And I think the idea of imitating what Trump wanted in 2020 to have, you know, the vice president not certify the election, that is a ruinous idea.
This is what we really need to avoid in this country is, you know, after the Electoral College has met, which is, you know, and...
After it's clear what the election returns are, even if they're extremely disappointing, we have to accept them and then do what we can after Donald Trump becomes president again to hold him accountable for his acts that hurt the economy.
And they, you know, they started just yesterday on Christmas where his tweet was like, his Truth Social post was, it was unhinged.
He's not saying, you know, Merry Christmas, everybody.
He's attacking his enemies and, you know, doing all kinds of very unpresidential things.
So we're going to be back into this.
It's going to be a very bumpy ride, and I think we need to focus on that rather than looking backwards at this election.
On our Republican line, here's Bill in Connecticut.
Yes, clearly the DOJ, in my opinion, has been weaponized, and it's a Democrat.
Just the fact that the charge was changed from a misdemeanor to a felony shows what a sham this is.
It's for Trump.
This is the type of prosecutions done
That's Bill in Connecticut.
- In answer to your first question, you talked about weaponizing the Justice Department.
This was the Manhattan DA, not the Department of Justice that brought this case.
Now it's true, they did have one lawyer from DOJ who helped them out.
And I remember as we're waiting for the verdict, Rudy Giuliani's son, you know, pointed to this lawyer and talked about how wrong that was, never been done before.
In fact, it's quite common For DOJ to help out in a big case.
But this case was brought by the Manhattan DA.
So that's one thing to make clear.
The decision to bump it up to a felony, which Trump did not contest.
He made many motions, but he didn't make a single motion.
His lawyers didn't make a single motion against bumping it up from a misdemeanor to a felony, which is done in many cases involving business fraud.
This was not...
Some, like, unique case to bump this up from a misdemeanor to a felony.
There's certain aggravating conditions that apply and that have been upheld by higher courts.
And so, you know, a lot of the armchair legal analysts, many of whom didn't spend a day in the courtroom or in the overflow room, or maybe they spent one or two days there.
Didn't read the motions.
Didn't read the judge's decisions on the motions.
They're frankly not as informed as I am about the legal complexities of this case.
And I believe it will all be upheld on appeal.
As to what Bill Clinton, who was, by the way, impeached, you mentioned John Edwards, he was We're good to go.
I think?
Exciting case.
Quite fascinating, not just because of the legal complexities, but because of the testimony about basically a conspiracy to change the results,
to affect the results of the 2016 election, which, by the way, is illegal under New York state law, which also came into this case.
So there are a number of statutes that were
Good morning and thank you for taking my call.
I so appreciate being able to ask a journalist this question, which is my theory.
Because I watch a lot of news and you don't really get to talk to the journalists.
And my theory, Mr. Alter, is I feel that the media kind of elected Donald Trump in an effort to be fair.
What the media, with the help of the Democrats, who did nothing but bash President Biden for the last four years.
We're good to go.
His womanizing.
He got me at the sexual assault.
I don't understand how somebody could be elected, but I feel that the media kind of elected him.
I think of a Walter Cronkite moment where he would take the piece of paper and say what President Trump said and say, no, I'm sorry, this is a lie, and throw it in the trash can.
When you normalize I think we got your point, Patty.
Thank you.
We'll let our guest answer.
Yeah, I think you're on to something.
I'm a little reluctant when we talk about the media as a whole because there were a number of good stories and there were a number of bad stories.
And so going back to the days when I was Newsweek's media critic in the 1980s and 90s, which I write about some in the book, you know, you need to draw distinctions.
But I agree there was a tremendous amount of misinformation.
and normalization and the misinformation resulted from a kind of a new structure to our media which is siloed now and so a lot of people didn't even get basic information because they were just you know following twitter to have their views validated and they weren't getting some of the um reporting that you you mentioned um they in other cases they were getting it
We're 10 years.
into what I think historians will call the Trump era.
Take what he did in the last couple of days.
He called up Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian hockey star, and urged him to run for Premier of Canada so that he could have one of his people, like another celebrity, running Canada so that he could run Canada too.
He's referring to Canada as a state, like he called Pierre Trudeau, the governor, he's trying to threaten Panama on the canal,
which was legally turned over to them 25 years ago, and they've done a great job managing it, and they've said that they will always continue to manage it,
not let the Chinese or anybody else take it over, including the Americans.
And so he's returning to issues that have been Resolved and just acting in non -normal ways.
And so when the caller talks about normalization, she is really on to something.
And this is what we have to be on guard for in the next four years.
He said that he would suspend the Constitution in certain cases.
He said that during the campaign and used the government to seek retribution.
Quote, unquote, against his enemies.
These are unconstitutional things, and we shouldn't be normalizing them as we move forward.
Mr. Alter, I want to ask you, we don't have time to explore it all, but when it comes to that media criticisms and former President Trump, you wrote a recent piece taking a look at the Disney ABC News decision when it comes to that settlement.
Weave that into the conversation as far as how the media, as you see it, treats the former president, particularly in this case.
Well, you know, that case, the ABC News case, involved George Stephanopoulos interviewing Nancy Mace, who had been a victim,
she said, of rape.
And Stephanopoulos said that there was a finding in this civil case in New York, not the case that I covered.
So...
Stephanopoulos used that term and Trump sued.
And instead of letting it go to trial or otherwise settling for an apology, ABC News and Disney, which,
because of its experience with Ron DeSantis in Florida, very much needs to get on Trump's right side, they caved and they settled when they would have, according to almost...
Most accounts, they would have very likely won this case.
And that was another act of what experts on dictatorship call anticipatory obedience.
Obeying in advance.
This is what strong men all over the world rely on.
Obeying in advance.
So they don't have to throw people in jail or do all kinds of We're good to go.
censor themselves not just be careful as all journalists should you don't want to libel and slander people need to have the facts on your side but what it does is sends a message to pull in your horns and not aggressively cover the president and going back To the 1790s,
to the George Washington administration, we've relied on the press, which is the only industry that is mentioned in our Constitution, to aggressively cover the president.
And we really should not be doing things like folding our tents in advance.
Hello?
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I wanted to ask Mr. Alter what his opinion is regarding why so many people of the electorate voted for an obvious I think of Herman Gehring waiting trial in Nuremberg when he was interviewed by an American journalist,
an army captain, and asked, how did the Nazis, such a small group of Nazis, manage to persuade the German people to eliminate a major minority, the Jewish people,
the handicapped and others, and persuade them to take over Europe?
Which obviously was a hopeless cause ultimately, and cost the German people so much in life and reputation.
And the answer that Hermann Goering, who was of course appointed by Hitler to be his head of the Luftwaffe and the second in command of the Third Reich, he answered very briefly, lies.
If you tell the same lie often enough, Time and time again, little by little, people begin to believe it.
And I'm wondering what your opinion is as to how this obvious con artist managed to fool such a major proportion of the electorate, and whether or not technology, changes in technology, for example,
the disappearance of small town newspapers that people used to rely upon, and the replacement of this form of media.
With these social media run by billionaires, essentially, such as the one that Trump has made his buddy -buddy.
Gotcha.
Gotcha point, Robert.
Thank you.
And Mr. Alter, let me narrow the question a bit.
Why do you think people were willing to look past Mr. Trump's legal issues in order to vote for him?
You can answer the caller's question, but I'm interested, in light of your book, why do you think that is?
Well, I think that immigration and inflation just became more important for voters than Trump's legal situation.
And I understand that.
I mean, inflation hits everyone.
It's in some ways worse politically for an incumbent.
You know, and I wrote a biography of Jimmy Carter, which the cover is right there.
You know, and it destroyed his presidency, because it hits a hundred percent, whereas unemployment hits fewer people.
So inflation is disastrous politically and and it really hurt Biden and Harris, uh.
And then immigration, you know, um Biden didn't start soon enough on trying to address this problem and uh, he and later Harris paid.
So those were more important for voters.
I get that.
I get that your pocketbook, Or your sense of what the United States should be in terms of immigration, might take precedence over even choice or whether the president is a con man.
But I share the caller's puzzlement about this.
And I think historians will be grappling with this for...
So I try to put Why?
Why do they succeed?
Because demagoguery works.
When you play on people's fears, it works.
Not all the time, but a lot of the time.
And what we had never seen before was a demagogue who told lies and played on people's fears at the very top.
We'd had Joe McCarthy and Huey Long.
You know, one Republican, one Democrat, and other kind of local or state demagogues in our history, but nobody at the level of Trump.
And then the caller also raised a really important point.
So local news, and I made a documentary for HBO about two fine local journalists named Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill.
Local news.
Are the lungs of democracy and have been since the birth of the republic, because if you're not informed, you can't make good decisions at the polling place.
And all over the country local newspapers have closed and some have been replaced by local websites, but not at the same level, and you can actually draw a map of news deserts where they don't have any.
Uh, you know weekly, much less daily local newspaper And Trump country.
And it's almost a perfect fit.
Congruent.
The Trump map on top of the news desert map.
And this is alarming because democracy requires at least a semi -informed electorate.
And I'm not saying that Trump voters were not informed.
In many cases, they were very informed, like a lot of...
We're good to go.
He says, the guy in the MAGA cap, the Trump supporter, says, you know, how can you oppose Trump?
He's the best.
He's the best for veterans.
And Kelly says, well, you know, General Kelly, no relation, who was his chief of staff, said that he was a fascist and his secretary of defense said he was terrible for veterans and that he would mock our war dead and say they were suckers and losers.
And this is first -hand testimony.
Senator Kelly is telling the guy in the MAGA hat.
And the guy in the MAGA hat says, he's been really on fire, pro -Trump.
He says, I never heard that.
I never knew that General Kelly and General Mattis said this.
I never...
Because he's just in his silo.
He's not watching C -SPAN when Democrats are on.
He's not...
Okay.
Yeah, hi, how are you?
I'm kind of glad I'm the last person that called because now I've gotten to hear what you've had to say in between all the callers.
And I want you to know that...
If you do a little research on this particular author, you'll see that his bias is worn out on his sleeve, and it is on the show here.
It's extremely disturbing to see that what I guess they call Trump derangement syndrome has been kicked up a notch or two by this author.
Man, you have quoted a lot of things that are not true, but what the worst thing is, is since I've been here listening to this entire program, you have called him a rapist.
You have called him a con artist.
You have compared him to Hitler.
These are the things that divide America.
And if you want to continue to divide America, keep writing books like this and keep having C -SPAN promote this for the last month since he's been elected.
This is ridiculous, C -SPAN.
Stop the hate.
Call or check the record.
Check the record on what we put on air as far as Mr. Trump is concerned.
But Mr. Alter, go ahead.
Yeah, so a couple of things.
First of all, I'm paid to express my opinions.
I've been a...
I've been a columnist for 40 years, okay?
So I'm not like a reporter for the Associated Press.
You can call that bias.
I call it opinion backed by reporting and fact.
And you talk about hate and you say that it's people like me who are introducing hate.
I write in my book about my too close relationship with John McCain, Republican, okay?
The idea that People like me are introducing hate when we've had a hate monger in our politics for a decade?
You know, this is not really, I don't think, a fair -minded assessment of who the major divisive figure in our politics is.
Donald Trump yesterday on Christmas had an opportunity to have a unifying message.
Say we're one country.
Wish everybody a Merry Christmas.
Instead, what did he do?
He nursed his grievances on Christmas Day, spitting out the hate.
So really, honestly, with all due respect to the caller, it takes a lot of nerve for Trump supporters to say it's the critics who began the hate.
That's not an underranged assessment of the last 10 years of our politics.
But in terms of being...
A bias against Donald Trump?
I plead guilty.
Yeah, I have thought for a long time that he's a con man.
Going back to when I interviewed him in the 90s, he threatened to sue me for something true I said about him in a documentary.
So yes, I've thought this man is a danger for a very, very long time.
Jonathan Alter's book is called American Reckoning, inside Trump's trial and my own part of our Holiday Authors Week.
Mr. Alter, thank you for your time.
Thanks so much for having me.
This week, watch Washington Journal's special Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live segments each morning with a new writer.
Coming up Friday morning, veteran political journalist Ken Walsh discusses his book, The Architect of Toxic Politics in America.
Watch live and join the discussion on Washington Journal Friday morning, beginning at 7 a .m. Eastern on C -SPAN.
C -SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c -span .org.
Our marathon continues on Monday, December 30th with Tulsi Gabbard and then on Tuesday, December 31st we'll hear from Dr. Mehmet Oz and Mr. Trump's nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel.
Watch Trump nominees in their own words this week at 8 a .m. Eastern on C -SPAN 2.
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