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Mediacom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live.
Then Washington Journal's special Holiday Authors Week series continues, featuring live segments with various writers.
Coming up this morning, Ken Walsh, discussing his book, The Architects of Toxic Politics in America, Venom and Vitriol.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Friday, December 27th, 2024.
A three-hour Washington Journal is ahead, and we begin on the topic of the death penalty.
This week, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life in prison.
The move comes just weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, a proponent of expanding capital punishment.
This morning, we begin by getting your view on the use of the death penalty in America.
And we're doing so on phone line split this way.
If you support the use of the death penalty, 202-748-8000 is the number to call.
If you oppose the use of the death penalty, 202-748-8001.
If you're not sure, a phone line for you, 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Friday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
This was the headline from Monday by the Associated Press.
President Biden gives life in prison to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates before Trump can resume executions.
This was the statement that President Biden put out along with that move.
Make no mistake, he said in that statement.
I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.
But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level in good conscience.
I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.
That was President Biden on Monday.
It was followed by a statement on Truth Social by Donald Trump.
This is what he said.
The president-elect saying, as soon as I'm inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists and murderers and monsters.
We will be a nation of law and order again, promised the president-elect.
That back and forth, that move by President Joe Biden leading to this discussion this morning on the Washington Journal, simply asking for your view of the death penalty.
Phone lines, if you support it, if you oppose it, if you're not sure, that's okay too.
We want to hear from you in this first hour of the Washington Journal today.
And we'll get right to the phones.
Mark is up first out of Oklahoma on that line for those who support the use of the death penalty.
Mark, good morning.
Yes, sir.
I believe in the death penalty because it sends a message to people who've committed horrible crimes of killing people and stuff, even if they were high, that you are going to be held accountable for what you do.
And if we just keep putting people on death row and just not and commute them, then hey, you know, three meals in a cot.
I've run into people.
That's been their attitude.
So the move by President Biden this week, you think it will lead to more violent crime, Mark?
I think we're already seeing it.
A lady burned on a subway, I think, in New York City.
The guy that shot the CEO of the insurance company.
Mark, thanks for the call from Oklahoma this morning.
Did you want to keep going, Mark?
Did you have something else you wanted to add?
Yeah, I'll add one more thing.
When I was in school, they let them know, and there was a woman that was executed in Texas.
And that perked everybody up, even the ladies.
Oh, fudge.
We crossed the line.
Lady Justice is blind.
That's Mark in Oklahoma.
Currently, some 2,200 people on death row in the country right now.
Most of them, of course, in the states on state, federal death row.
Three left on death row.
When it comes to federal death row, the decision by President Joe Biden left out of the clemency, the commuting of the sentences, three people, they include Dylan Roof, who carried out the 2015 slangs of nine black members of the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber, Joe Karzar-Naev, and Robert Bowers,
who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue back in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semic attack in U.S. history.
That happening, of course, on Monday.
The website, the Death Penalty Info Center, is a good place to go to find out about the size of death row in America, what's happening in the states.
Currently, the size of the United States death row has declined every year since 2001.
It's about 2,200 right now, including men and women, but mostly men.
That number is down by more than a quarter from a peak of nearly 3,600 at the turn of the 21st century, with a 17% decrease over the course of the decade from April 1st, 2008 to March 31st, 2018.
The number of prisoners facing active death sentences in the United States, that is, whose death sentences have not been overturned in the courts, has also fallen sharply.
In the spring of 2018, it dropped below 2,500 for the first time in more than a quarter of a century.
Again, deathpenaltyinfo.org is where you'll go.
We'll be showing you that website several times throughout this segment this morning.
As we hear from you, simply asking your view of the death penalty in the United States.
This is Steve in Indiana.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'd like to call in and give my opinion on opposing the death penalty because all life is precious.
And if we're killing a person for their crimes, aren't we becoming what they tell us not to be?
Judge, jury, and executioner?
You should never murder somebody.
And capital punishment is a form of murder because you're purposely taking someone's life.
I just think that it needs to end.
There's something to be learned from everybody, even criminals.
If we have psychologists look at them, maybe we can find triggers that would help that seeing it and recognizing in younger people the triggers that these people that are on death row, things that they went through when they were younger, that led them to be the criminal that they became.
Steve, what did you think of Joe Biden commuting the sentences of 37 people, but leaving three people still on death row?
Well, with the Dylan Roof and the man, I forget his name from the Boston Marathon and the other one.
I don't think that they should be executed.
I do, though, think that they should never see the light of day as far as outside of a penal system.
I think that they should be locked away for their crimes.
However, I do believe that there's something to be learned from them.
I mean, geez, Dylan Roof was, what, 19 years old when he committed that crime?
How did that young man get so lost?
Why didn't somebody in society in his school as a teenager something see the triggers and get that young man help?
And maybe that wouldn't have happened.
That's Steve.
Go ahead, finish up, Steve.
Yeah, I just don't see that taking someone's life is productive.
I mean, they want to kill people that are viable living human beings.
And a woman that's having serious complications, life-threatening complications in a pregnancy can't even get health care in almost half the United States.
It's ludicrous that they won't help a woman that's dying, but they'll murder someone that's in prison at the drop of a hat.
That's Steve in Indiana, Eddie in Louisiana.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
What are your thoughts on the death penalty, Eddie?
Myself, I believe the only way to stop these murders is to start the hangman again, like they've done many years ago, like in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
They had the hanging Judge Parker.
They hung six outlaws who was murderers, and they still got the hangman's place in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
I say to myself, they well deserve to be hung.
They should have a lamppost in some, say, five-acre place and have six lampposts.
And everyone that commits a crime like that, they should be hung to the top of that lamppost and leave them up there for the buds to eat.
And that's what I believe.
That's Eddie in Louisiana from the National Park Service website, Fort Smith, Arkansas National Historic Site.
Judge Isaac C. Parker, remembered in Western novels and films as the hanging judge.
Isaac Parker's real career and accomplishments in the Fort Smith area are far more fascinating and complicated, they write.
Sensational cases and executions overshadowed Parker's contributions, they say, in rehabilitating defenders, reforming the criminal justice system, and advocating for the rights of Indian nations.
Judge Isaac C. Parker in the late 19th century.
This is Chris in Wisconsin.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you.
I just quick statement: until you can make sure mistakes aren't made, you know, the death penalty is not a sentence that can be reversed if a mistake is made.
Thank you.
That's Chris in Wisconsin, Sylvia, Virginia, Etland, Virginia.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
That's exactly how I felt.
There were mistakes that were made.
And I think a lot of it's political.
It seems like when a governor or somebody's up for election, then they decide to put somebody on death row.
And I think we have to be very careful on the reasons and not to make mistakes, which they do make mistakes.
And I worry about the Boston bomber.
He seems so young to be on death row.
But then when the prisons are so full, I'm thinking, well, is that why they have the death penalty sometimes?
So I think we have to pray to the Lord that we're not making these mistakes and ruining lives that can be turned around.
Thank you.
Sylvia, Virginia, on the Boston bomber, Joe Carzar-Nayev, one of the three federal death row inmates that were left on death row after this move by President Joe Biden on Monday.
This is what Cal Thomas of the Washington Times writes, op-ed writer C-SPAN viewers familiar with Cal Thomas, saying, Mr. Biden issued a ludicrous statement to explain the inexcusable.
Mr. Biden says his only exemptions are for people convicted of terrorist attacks and hate crimes.
He says Mr. Biden is engaging in selective morality here.
Why should motives play a role when it comes to murder?
By his ill logic, a pardon should be given to Luigi Mangion, who is charged with murdering and killing the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
This is what C.S. Lewis called the humanitarian view of punishment.
Depriving a murderer of liberty is not a penalty equal to taking an innocent life.
He writes, Mr. Biden is engaging in what has been called cafeteria Christianity, obeying doctrines that he agrees with while ignoring others with which he disagrees.
Cal Thomas writing in the Washington Times about this move.
This is Ed in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I think they ought to keep the death penalty, but only in certain things, like if it's not an eyeball murder, I don't believe in it.
If it's circumstantial, I don't believe in the death penalty.
But I do believe when they're sentenced to life in prison, they should serve life in prison.
And I'd like to say one other thing, and this is for C-SPAN, which I've watched ever since my cable company put it on in 79.
There's nothing in this world as terrible to me as rudeness.
And for you people to hang up on people and not let them know they are no longer talking to you is about as rude as you can get.
Thank you for your time.
Ed, thanks for the call.
This is Jim in Lawrenceville, Virginia.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
How are y'all doing?
Doing well, Jim.
What are your thoughts on the death penalty?
Well, I'm a man of God, but I support the laws on the book.
And I believe that's not enough of a deterrent.
We've been too nice here.
They have nothing.
I think we need to bring back the hanging, firing squad, and the gas chamber.
That's not enough deterrent.
If the laws are on the book, use it.
I disagree with President Biden letting those guys off the hook is too much crime.
There's a price you have to pay.
I don't believe in killing, but if the law is there, use it.
We need to bring back all this lethal injection.
No, we need hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, a deterrent.
What do you think?
That's Jim in Virginia.
We've been showing you the website, the Death Penalty Information Center, a lot of info there about the size of the death row inmate population in the country, what it looks like, where they're located.
Earlier this month, we had Robin Mayer of the Death Penalty Information Center on this program to discuss calls for President Biden to commute those sentences.
This interview before that move by President Joe Biden on Monday, she explains why they were supporting those calls.
Well, there's lots of good reasons.
First of all, this is an enormous coalition of people who are attempting to persuade President Biden.
Organizations, racial justice organizations and civil rights organizations, many individuals, religious organizations, and faith leaders like Pope Francis, who has been very vocally persuading, trying to persuade President Biden.
But we also have some unusual voices like a number of corrections officials, people who presided over executions.
We have elected members of Congress.
We have elected prosecutors, state officials, and probably most importantly, we have family members, people who've lost loved ones to violence, some to the very people who are on the federal death row now.
All of these people are calling on President Biden to commute these sentences because they see long-standing systemic problems with the federal death penalty, the way that it has been used.
We'll talk about some of those problems.
Sure.
Well, probably the most important is that it has been used in an arbitrary and racially discriminatory way.
This is an issue that has been studied repeatedly.
It's well documented.
Even DOJ officials have acknowledged these very serious concerns over the years.
So we see that predominantly the federal death penalty has been used against people of color, and it's been used against people of color who have killed white people.
So we know that there is a very pronounced race of victim bias as well.
And we can see that in all of the statistics and all of the data that we've seen throughout the history of the death penalty.
For example, three out of four people who have been charged with a federal death sentence are people of color.
And that has been true since 1989.
So these are really powerful statistics.
We also know that the federal death penalty has many of the same problems that state death penalty systems have, which is to say we've had prosecutorial misconduct, we've had unreliable junk science, we've had terrible lawyering, all of which we know leads to unjust results.
And people who are sometimes innocent wrongfully convicted, but people certainly that didn't deserve death sentences as well ending up on death row.
That interview from earlier this month, President Biden on Monday makes that move to commute the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates.
And then this was the reaction in the wake of that move on Monday from members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
Senator Peter Welch, the Democrats, saying federal executions don't lead to safer communities.
The president correctly paused them because it's impossible to ignore the number of people exonerated from death row.
This is the right move.
It ensures these individuals will never pose a threat to public safety.
Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas.
Joe Biden is using his last days in office to spare the worst monsters in America.
These killers were sentenced to death by a jury of their peers and then had a lengthy and burdensome appeals process.
Chip Roy, the Republican from Texas, saying it's unconscionable.
The president's pardon power is being abused by Joe Biden to carry out a miscarriage of justice.
The rule of law depends on our faith in it.
Joe Biden isn't the only problem.
It's the radical leftists destroying the rule of law, but this is ending.
And Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democrat, saying, I've long advocated for the abolition of the federal death penalty and commend the president for this act of justice and mercy and for his leadership.
Taking your phone calls, want to hear your thoughts on the death penalty in America.
Nelson, San Diego, California, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
I just want to say, C-SPAN, you're doing a good job.
I mean, yeah, no, everybody wants to talk forever, but you guys aren't rude.
You're just doing your job.
But anyways, yeah, I'm kind of divided on that.
This is one of the things where you're, I never try to put my religious views in somewhere, but in the public domain, but to force other people to go along with it.
But, you know, the Bible says whosoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be said.
And that was before the Mosaic law.
That's a natural law thing.
But without a doubt, you know, the system, especially with Trump's, all the federal judges Trump supported, they're definitely going to go after black people more.
I mean, like Dylan Roof wasn't even charged with terrorism like the CEO killer was.
I mean, that shows you something right there.
Somebody goes into a black church and kills nine people and they're not even charged with terrorism.
He did get the death toll because he killed people.
But anyways, you know, I got punched in the back of the head by a homeless guy.
If I had turned around on the subway and killed him, I probably would have gotten the death penalty, not a hero.
I'm a Marine too, but that's a different story.
Yeah, I tend to think Kel Thomas is wrong.
It's evangelicals who choose to be pro-life when they want to.
Like when Trayvon Martin got killed, Huckabee was on Fox News every day cheering George Zimmerman.
When a black person gets killed, even by a civilian, right-wingers, they just sell over the grave, like vampires and warwolves.
You know, one last thing.
In Missouri, the governor knew the guy was innocent.
The black guy was innocent.
The prosecutor said he's innocent.
The guy, the victim's family said he's innocent, and they still execute the black guy.
Where's all the pro-life people then?
You know, that's all I got to say.
It's Nelson in California.
Missouri, one of those states where the death penalty still exists and is active.
This is that map from the Death Penalty Information Center.
The states in red, the 22 states in red on that map are states where the death penalty exists and is active.
The states in yellow are states that do not have a death penalty.
The states in blue, the five states on that map in blue, are states in which the death penalty has been paused.
Executions have been paused by executive action.
The vast majority of death row inmates are in the states right now, some 2,200 people in this country on death row.
Another map from the Death Penalty Information Center showing where they are.
The vast majority or a significant number of them, 632 of those 2,200, are in California.
Again, one of those states where the death penalty has been paused by executive action.
Florida has some 288 people on death row, and Texas, 180 people on death row in Texas, 138 in North Carolina.
You can see the numbers in those states across the country.
And again, the federal death row population is down to three at this point after the action by President Joe Biden on Monday.
This is Carlos in Ohio.
Good morning.
You're next.
Unbelievable that Biden would come up with this humanitarian message concerning the death penalty when he's the main sponsor of all the slaughter in the Middle East.
I can't understand that.
That's my message.
Judy, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, good morning.
You're next.
Judy, you're with us.
Yes, I am.
Go ahead, ma'am.
Oh, all right.
Thank you.
I am opposed to the death penalty.
I don't think it's the right of the state to kill other people.
Secondly, I don't think it's either a deterrent.
People have been killing forever and ever and ever, and we've had the death penalty forever and ever and ever.
So that isn't anything that sucks.
Furthermore, I've heard that it costs more to execute because of all the legal ramifications than it does to keep someone in prison for life.
Prison in life is no wonderful thing, and certainly is day after day after punishment.
So I am very much opposed to the death penalty.
Mike's next out of Detroit.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I have a little different spin on why I support the death penalty.
First of all, you have these privately owned prisons that make a tremendous amount of money on people who have the evidence because of the new technology.
And it's easier to find out if someone actually committed a crime.
And like in the Middle East, they let the families determine if someone has been convicted of murder to have them killed.
Second of all, I also think that when you are involved in mass murders, like say for instance, when presidents in Congress vote to go into wars that's unjustifiable, like for instance in Iraq, where there were no weapons of mass destruction, and yet hundreds of thousands of people were killed.
Where's the responsibility for that?
Where's the responsibility for the genocides that Western culture committed in the Americas, from Canada all the way down to South America?
It's a documentary called The Extermination of the Brutes, where they said that it was about at least 200 million Native Indigenous people in this country, and they committed mass murder.
They're talking about Gaza.
They committed mass murder to get this country.
So let's start looking at when people invite people to wars unjustifiably.
Who should be held accountable?
Should the president, should the Congress voting to go to war and it's not a good war?
Should these people be held accountable?
Last point I wanted to make in regards to the death penalty.
It is a deterrent because when people recognize that if they take a life, that their life is going to be taken, that will make them think about committing murder.
Plus, when you have people in jail over extended periods of time, the kind of crimes that are committed in the prison system from people who stay there over long periods of time, there should be some kind of investigation for that.
Thank you very much.
That's Mike in Detroit.
We'll stay in Michigan, Caspian, Michigan.
This is Robert.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
This is Robert calling from the fascist town of Caspian, Michigan.
I think the death penalty is actually less of a deterrent than life in prison.
Life in prison is more dangerous to the person than the death penalty.
You put someone to death real quick, like, and it's over.
He doesn't have to live day after day after day.
And one more thing: I wish you would stop putting a picture of Donald Trump on the lower right-hand corner because it's showing bias towards the Republican Party, who's already been complaining about how biased you guys are.
And I've never seen you guys put any other picture of a president on that corner like that.
I think it's wrong.
And a lot of people don't even like to see his face.
They're trying to avoid seeing his face.
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
That's Robert in Michigan.
This is Kem in Jackson Heights, New York.
Good morning.
You're next.
Opposed.
These 37 who are guilty of murder, their souls will go to hell.
They will not be with God.
But if we cut their life short prematurely, that is what will happen.
But their sentence has been commuted.
They're going to spend the rest of their life in prison.
And God hopes, and I hope, that they will come to an understanding of what they did and redeem themselves.
And then their souls can be with God.
But that can only happen if we allow them to have their natural lifespan.
If we cut their natural lifespan off early, their souls will not be with God.
But if we let them live in prison forever, no chance of parole, then they may redeem themselves truly in a way that God says their souls can be with me when they die.
And we should not stop people from having a chance of redemption and their souls take it away from God forever.
That's Kim in New York from the editorial board of the Washington Times today on President Biden's action saying he abuses his pardon power in what he did on Monday.
And they talk about what happens sometimes if these people are allowed to remain in prison and move off death row.
This is the editorial board of the Washington Times.
Mr. Biden cites opposition to the death penalty as his underlying motive, but it's a mistake to pretend this end-of-term maneuver will save lives.
Among the Midnight Pardon beneficiaries is Carlos David Caro, who was arrested in 1988 for distributing marijuana before being arrested again for cocaine trafficking.
While serving time in 2003, another inmate referred to Caro using a naughty word.
Caro stabbed that inmate with an improvised knife 29 times.
He was then transferred to a more secure prison and given a cellmate who refused to share his breakfast with Caro.
So Caro strangled that man with the towel.
It's because they gave me a cellmate and he disrespected me, so I took him down, Caro said at the time.
The episode, the editorial board writes, reveals the folly of extending mercy to those who do not seek it.
Taking murderers off death row just gives them an opportunity to kill again.
That's the Washington Times editorial board this morning taking your phone calls.
This is Macy in Fairfax, California.
Good morning.
Macy, you with us?
I'm with you.
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Try again, Macy.
I think you got to put the phone to your mouth.
Okay, I'm from.
I'm going outside.
Can you hear me now?
I tell you what, Macy, we'll work on that line.
This is Ronnie in Brooklyn, New York.
In the meantime, go ahead.
Hello.
Go ahead, sir.
Yeah, good morning.
Listen, I oppose the death penalty because if you can check statistics, the amount of innocent people that sometimes find out afterward that they're innocent, they come off death penalty.
If you kill somebody, you cannot bring them back.
But if you light them up for life, they're innocent, you can release them because that is so final.
That's why I oppose it.
I'm from New York, and I remember Donald Trump when those five young men was accused in Central Park of raping and attacking someone.
They were innocent.
And Mr. Trump came out and he took out full case ads in local papers that they must bring back the death penalty because these young men deserve death penalty and was totally innocent.
So that's the reason why I oppose the death penalty because we all make mistakes.
Nothing is perfect.
That's the reason I oppose it.
That's Ronnie in Brooklyn, New York, David, Toledo, Ohio.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yes, I am a strong supporter of capital punishment.
Now, there are those cases where there's not just reasonable doubt, but some inference of doubt, some slight doubt.
In those cases, I would oppose the death penalty.
But in the vast majority of cases, for example, if it turns out that Luigi Mangioni has been convicted of murder and there's not the slightest doubt that he's guilty of murder, if that happens to be the case, then I would strongly be in favor of his execution.
I don't want my tax dollars supporting people who are definitely beyond the shadow of a doubt guilty of murder.
I don't want my tax dollars supporting them for life in prison.
Waste of time.
Thank you very much.
That's David in Ohio.
25 minutes left in this segment this morning, simply asking for your view of the death penalty in the wake of President Biden's actions earlier this week in the wake of that announcement that he was going to commute 37 of 40 federal death row inmates sentences.
It was Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley who was on CNN and spoke out about his view about it.
Here's what he had to say.
I have real concerns overall with the death penalty, but I also have concerns with the executive branch overturning cases that have been decided by courts across the country.
We had to have some autonomy there.
And I understand the concerns and threats of a Trump administration going forward on these.
But I think the baseline is I think you commute sentences or pardon people when you think justice was not done in those cases.
It sets a precedent here that goes well beyond his pardoning his own son, which again, I think was a mistake because no one is above the law.
Because it does, what I think you're getting at is an interesting point, which is almost like using commutations as a point of policy in order to stop the administration coming in next, putting in place policy that they believe, which does seem to be different from what you're looking at with Hunter Biden.
Absolutely, but it's concerned with how presidents handle pardons and how they handle commutations for their own reasons, their own personal reasons.
And back to the pardoning of his own son, I heard people say, well, it's the love of a father.
I get that, but there's a lot of parents out there whose children are in harm's way in the justice system, and they don't have the ability to do what President Biden did.
Democrat Mike Quigley on CNN earlier this week, taking your phone calls in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
This is Bill in Boyertown, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
Yeah, I mean, I don't really know what I think about the death penalty.
I know the state kills people.
The presidents just decide that they're going to kill foreign military leaders and they hit them with hellfire missiles.
So they're executing people.
Assassination is now part of the American way of life.
Our president and the military complex can decide who they want to kill.
I know that we kill a lot of young babies in abortion.
There's no big deal about that anymore.
People, if you say anything about it, they look at you like you're crazy.
It's just now they've thank God Trump got the Supreme Court turned around so that we did at least throw that to the states.
But as far as Biden and his commuting the sentences of death mate, death throat inmates, you know, he's shown his colors.
He's not calling the shots here.
His whole description of why he's doing it, which is, you know, it's not fair to kill people, but then you leave three people on the list.
It just, it doesn't hold water.
He is a doddering old man.
I think we should just maybe we should put him out of his misery like they're putting all killing all those brown people in Gaza.
Like they said, it's always the brown people or the black people that have to be killed by our government.
And if you don't think that Bill, I really hope you're not calling for the president to be killed.
That's not what you're saying.
Oh, I'm not calling for the president to be killed.
What I'm calling for is that look at how many people are being killed in Gaza with our bombs that he's sending there with his signature.
We don't even vote for that, but we have to arm the Israeli military while they're killing hundreds of, you know, tens of thousands of people.
So got your point.
That's Bill in Pennsylvania.
More stats on death row in the United States.
Earlier this fall, five prisoners executed in one week in the United States for the first time in years.
The U.S. marked 1,600 executions since 1976 when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.
This year alone, nine U.S. states carried out 25 executions or more.
We're talking about the death penalty in the United States, asking for your view.
Do you support it, oppose it?
Are you not sure?
Phone lines for any of those answers.
This is Bonnie in Brockton, Massachusetts.
Good morning.
Yes, I'm opposed to the death penalty because I believe they suffer longer than life in prison and also because of fraud.
And, you know, like the other thing is that I understand President Biden wants to pardon those certain prisoners.
And that's fine, like I said, because I'm not for the death penalty.
But why is he for abortion?
You know, so I'm not for abortion either.
And that's all I wanted to say.
Thank you.
Sal, Sewell, New Jersey.
Good morning.
You're next.
Hi, Darling.
Good morning, John.
I just like to, I support the death penalty because I watch a lot of these shows, Bloodline, and all these kinds of murder shows and their true facts.
And you see that these murderers kill these little kids, rape them, and adults, and they get a second chance if they get away with the first time.
And they do the crimes all over again, killing all the innocent people and raping and killing.
So I believe it's simple.
There's no sense keeping them people alive because they're not going to change no matter how long they stay in prison.
And that's just the way they are.
They don't care about anything about human life, so they'll just keep taking lives until they get caught.
So there's no sense in my mind to keep them in jail and execute them.
An earlier caller was giving the exact opposite view of what you just said.
He said, as long as there's a chance for redemption, that people should have that chance of redemption.
Maybe people will change over the course of a life in imprisonment rather than being sent to death row.
I hear you.
I just feel bad for the victims because you see, I understand where he's coming from, the person, but I see that when they take a life or a child's life, they abduct them, they rape them, they kill them, and they don't get caught, they do the same thing again.
And, you know, and I don't think they're, I don't care how many years they stay in prison.
I don't believe in second chance because them poor people, the victims, and them families are never going to be the same.
So that's the way I see it.
Sal, thanks for the call from New Jersey.
Some of your comments from social media and our text message line.
This is Rob in Huntington, West Virginia.
I don't support the death penalty.
One, there's no data to indicate that the death penalty deters crime.
Two, it costs more to go through the process to execute someone than it does to imprison them for life.
Three, it's murder, which is wrong.
Rob saying, personally, I would rather be executed than live in a high-security prison for life.
This is Timothy from Facebook.
I don't trust the government to execute only the guilty.
Todd, Facebook, saying, I'm in favor of the death penalty as long as we are certain of who committed the crime.
James on Facebook, I've never been a fan of the death penalty.
It's inhumane, and many of those put to death were possibly innocent.
Life in prison without parole is the solution.
And one more Larry saying, I've always thought that life without parole is a far worse punishment than the death sentence.
The downside is that taxpayers have to spend more money on their longer-term care.
This is Keith, Madison, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm opposed to the death penalty.
I think it's an instrument of the capitalist state to terrorize their lower orders.
And as somebody else pointed out earlier, the ruling class can bomb and destroy and kill and murder with impunity.
And they're never punished.
They're never held accountable.
And all the weapons that we shipped over to Israel to have the Gazans murdered, the Holocaust over there in Gaza.
No accountability by their side of the class line.
But our side, yep, we get a lot of accountability.
If anybody has watched the series on Netflix, I am a killer, it'll put it kind of in perspective.
It'll make you think about your own self and the conditions that people are put in and how they turn into killers.
So, yeah, when I watch that show, I think, well, but for the grace of God, go I. You know, I think, gee, if I were, you know, abused as a child, as many of those were, those people who murdered later, maybe I would have turned out to be the same way.
So, yeah, you ought to have a little bit of introspection when you talk about this subject because this capitalist system will turn you insane.
It turned a girl that shot six, actually seven people at a school here in Madison, it turned her nuts.
Her parents were, she came from a broken family, and she must have had a lot of anger in her.
And then she turned it on her fellow students and teachers.
So I feel sorry for her and how she turned out, and of course, the victims, but people should think about themselves and the society they live in.
That's in Wisconsin.
This is Thomas in Portland, Indiana.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Go ahead, sir.
Yes, I'm totally for the death penalty.
I believe that if anything could be done to deter someone from committing the crimes and they see someone getting killed, maybe that'll stop them.
People that are on death row, they have took and been through probably pretty much every bit of the system that they could.
I mean, if you listen to some of the details of some of these murders, there's one that I can think of on TV.
They keep bringing up where the guy killed the eight-year-old and the nine-year-old, and four years later, he killed the woman in the National Guard of the Services.
He took and stabbed that woman's eyes out.
I mean, come on.
The stuff these people do are so horrible, you can't even talk about it.
Stab the woman 30-something times after killing those two little kids four years before.
I mean, there's no saving that.
That's it.
That's all I got to say.
I'm sorry.
Doreen, Camden, Ohio.
Good morning.
For you today.
I'll keep it short, okay?
I support it because with all the technology we have nowadays with DNA and everything, and of course, you've got the cameras with the young man that shot the CEO in the back.
It's like, if it's a 100%, there is no doubt these people need to be executed.
And that's just my thought on it because there are choices in life.
We all have them.
And he chose, these people make choices to kill, rape, whatever they do.
So have a great day.
And Storeen in Ohio, you mentioned Luigi Mangioni, the Washington Times story noting that the federal charges that were filed against him could make him eligible for the death penalty.
The federal complaint filed against him with two counts of stalking and one count each of murder through use of firearm and a firearms offense.
Murder by firearm carries the possibility of death penalty, though federal prosecutors will determine whether to pursue that path in the coming months during the prosecution of that case, of course.
This is Tom in Franklin, Michigan.
Good morning.
Well, hi.
Yeah, I think someone else texted what I had to say pretty much, but I don't support it mainly because the government can be wrong.
I don't understand why conservatives don't get this because they're denialists.
They're the ones who don't believe government can do anything right.
Everyone's corrupt, right?
Every level of government, you know.
So now they're willing to let the government, that corrupt the government, decide who's going to get executed or not.
And, you know, so I just don't support it.
Thank you.
Bye.
Barbara, Chester, New Hampshire.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
I think there's gray areas.
DNA and everything that they have now on cameras, you can lean towards it.
Ifs, I don't think they should.
I think people that feel that they should have the death penalty, but it's okay for to have an abortion with a little baby that's eight months old that might live.
I think everybody should be in tune that there's gray areas on both sides.
Thank you.
We mentioned some 1,600 executions in the United States in the modern death penalty era since 1973.
That is the death penalty information center notes that the death penalty does carry the inherent risk of executing an innocent person since 1973.
At least 200 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the United States have been exonerated.
And currently, the death row population includes federal, and the vast majority now in states is about 2,200 people.
This is Russell in Lake City, Florida.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My viewpoint, the whole situation is you got the Democrat woman killed babies, put a thug in prison on death row, beastly above God white with not innocent babies.
That's very great progressions.
You guys are straight a sick.
All right, that's Russell.
This is Christine in Holland, Michigan.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning, John.
I wanted to call a while back when you had this same question.
But because I'm a follower of the Lord Jesus, and it says in the New Testament that even if you kidnap a person, you should have the death penalty.
It's not just murder.
But, and I really believe in it, even though a person might have a mental illness problem.
Christine, you want to see the expanded use of the death penalty is what you're saying?
Well, no, not expanded use, but just start using it.
If a person is found guilty and we know the system knows they're guilty, then they should be, you know, not have life in prison because that only takes another person's life, and that is the ones that have to watch them all the time.
And it's just too expensive.
And we're all under the death penalty, and we need to answer to God and try to live a life that will show other people the way and so that they won't hate.
And we just need to show love to people.
And sometimes I think that would be the loving thing to do.
That's Christine in Michigan.
Death sentence prisoners in the United States typically spend more than a decade on death row prior to either exoneration or execution.
Some prisoners have been on death row for well over 20 years.
Again, more stats from the Death Penalty Information Center.
This is Chris, Palm Harbor, Florida.
Good morning.
Hi, there's really two sides to this issue.
Like on the one hand, you have like the Manson family that were convicted of those brutal murders and they were sentenced to death.
And then California got rid of the death penalty, so it's commuted to life in prison.
And then Obama released Squeaky Fran in 2009.
So after, you know, butchering, you know, the Tate LaBianco murders, she is actually, or she was released from prison.
So there is a possibility that you could have somebody that gets the death penalty, but then does get released after their sentence is commuted to life in prison.
The other side of the coin is when you look back at the Lindbergh baby and the person that was convicted and sentenced to death and put to death from that, there's all kinds of questions about whether the person that they convicted actually did the crime or if they were just looking for someone to hang because it was such a spectacular case at the time.
So it really can go both ways.
I can't believe that Obama would pardon one of the Manson family that just murdered Sharon Tate and Abigail Folgers.
But on the other side, you have a bloodthirsty population that wants to make sure that somebody pays.
So that's my two cents.
That's Chris in Palm Harbor, Florida, a squeaky Fromm released from prison.
The story back in 2009, three decades after basking in the national spotlight as Squeaky, the infamous Charles Manson discipline disciple, excuse me, who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford.
The now six-year-old woman slipped quietly out of prison on Friday after being released on parole.
Squeaky Fromm eluded the media as she left Fort Worth's federal medical center, Carswell, in one of the many cars streaming in and out that morning.
She previously refused interview requests, and prison officials would not say where she planned to live or what she planned to do after more than 30 years behind bars.
Squeaky Fromm was that member of the Manson family who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford back in the 70s.
This is Ivory in Bellwood, Illinois.
Good morning.
Good morning.
As a historically black college student in Atlanta, Georgia, who primarily works around criminal justice reform, it is a two-parted situation.
I know in the case of Marcellus Williams, there was a lot of conversation amongst the black community as well as the surrounding community in regards to why this black man was being still killed even though it was proven that he did not murder the victim.
And it was just a slap in the face within our community because we saw first-handedly that there was not any type of criminal justice reform or even any motive to try to more so exonerate this black man, though he spent most of his time in this jail and then ultimately being killed.
And as a person, as a student, as one who's going into the legal force, I think that it is important to be able to analyze how people are being killed and being held in jail, in prison, and things like that.
And there really isn't any information that's going towards to have them released, or even there's not even enough evidence that's now being produced to exonerate them.
They're ultimately being killed.
So I think like my views are kind of, it's skewed because some people, they don't feel any remorse for the things that they have done.
And it's like, what do you do in those cases?
But again, in the criminal justice reform, you're looking at how can we better this system?
How can we try to figure out if these people are actually being convicted of the crime or are they actually, you know, is this a false imprisonment?
So that is my opinion on it.
That's Ivory in Illinois.
And just going back to the squeaky from story, just because I didn't remember pardon, it was parole was what happened when it came to Squeaky From.
Convicted and got a life term, becoming the first person sentenced under special federal law covering assaults on U.S. presidents after her attempt on Gerald Ford.
She was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which was tacked onto a life term for threats against the president.
Fromm was granted parole in July of 2008 for good conduct and was released in 2009.
So that's Squeaky From.
This is Macy in Fairfax, California.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I got a landline so you can hear me.
Oh, thanks for trying again.
Can you hear me?
Yes, ma'am.
Oh, okay.
I was like, oh, no.
I just also, I want to compliment you, sir, on the job that you do.
And yeah, I'm like others, I'm anyway.
In terms of death sentiment, I would like to mention a man's name named Leonard Peltier Peltier, who was on the reservation when the FBI came.
And he's been in prison for 50 years.
And the Native people say he didn't do it.
I don't know.
But so I wanted Joe Biden, everybody's supposed to call him because, I mean, 50 years on the line or whatever they call it, Johnny Cash, I guess, is sufficient.
And I don't think he did it.
I kind of believe the Native people on that.
So the story from NPR, the story from NPR, just for folks who don't know what you're talking about there, Macy, it's Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, I believe is how you say it, has spent most of his life in prison since his conviction in 1975 for the killing of two FBI agents in South Dakota.
He was denied parole earlier this year.
The U.S. Parole Commission said in a statement announcing the decision that he won't be eligible for another parole hearing until 2026, serving life in prison for the killing of those agents during a standoff of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, convicted in 1977.
He is 79 years old now.
Right.
And what was the FBI doing there?
Do you know that part, John?
If I may call you, John.
I can go into more of the story if you want, but I'm not an expert on what happened on the reservation that day, Macy.
But I know of this push to get him out of prison.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, 50 years and like you all were saying about Squeaky From, I mean, letting her out.
And I just want to say a couple callers, I really liked what they said, but all I remember is Mike.
And I just want to compliment a couple people who were talking about actually the Indigenous people.
I think it was Mike who was saying that hundreds of thousands of people were killed here.
I mean, it sounds so trite to just rehearse it, but it's a fact.
They gave them blankets laced with smallpox on purpose.
They broke their tools so that they couldn't live.
And it's just disgusting.
And stuff like that.
Stuff like that sounds lame.
Anyway, but thank you so much again for your good job because I like the way you go back and forth a little bit with the cut with the customers.
Yeah.
Customers is fine too, sure.
Macy in California, more on Mr. Peltier.
On June 26, 1975, agents came to the Pine Ridge Reservation to serve arrest warrants amid battles over Native treaty rights and self-determination.
After being injured in a shootout, agents Jack Kohler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range and a standoff ensued.
So that's some of the background.
You can read the story from NPR, P-E-L-T-E-I-R, or T-I-E-R, excuse me, Pell TA is his name.
This is Christine in Iowa.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
I'm quite unsure, you know, because if you believe in biblical things, you know, nobody is above God, and he's the only person that can take a life.
But, you know, I find it really concerning in our country, at least, that we're all sitting here calling in and giving our opinion on who we think should be killed and who we shouldn't.
That's a big old moral problem for me.
But when we're dealing with any problem, I think you need to go to the core.
And when we're dealing with, you know, people that kill other people, the system has been set up to where some people have more difficult lives.
And they end up living a life that violence is not as heinous as it would be when a person never has violence around them.
You know, and we really have to get to where we can fix all of this stuff.
And I truly, truly believe that, I know this, you're going to say that it has nothing to do with murder, but it does.
Our government is, we need to really start at the foundation.
We need to fix it where we can actually help people.
And that's equal accountability.
Take away Republican and Democrat.
Every person be accountable.
Even the wars and stuff like that when the president makes their calls or whatnot.
We're killing each other.
That's literally what we're doing.
The system has divided us so much that we're not even thinking clearly.
I'm going to leave it off with this.
We're sitting here calling in on who we think should be killed and who we should not.
That's Christina in Iowa.
We will continue the discussion again at 9 o'clock.
We'll do another half hour on this in the last segment of the Washington Journal today.
So if you didn't get in, I know there were several that were trying.
Please do call back at 9 and we'll continue this discussion.
But coming up next, we'll continue this week's Holiday Author Series on the Washington Journal: Eight Days of Conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum, a variety of public policy issues and topics.
After the break, we'll be joined by veteran political journalist Ken Walsh to discuss his book, The Architects of Toxic Politics in America.
We'll be right back.
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, who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874.
Then, at 4:45 p.m. Eastern, author Elizabeth Rees, 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.
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 at c-span.org/slash history.
Sunday 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 has some latitude to go before it.
And he probably could have given 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 at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Next week, C-SPAN digs into its archives to present President-elect Donald Trump's nominees in their own words, discussing policy, politics, and their relationship with the president-elect.
Our marathon continues on Monday with Tulsi Gabbard.
And then on Tuesday, we'll hear from Dr. Mehmet Oz and Mr. Trump's nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel.
Watch Trump nominees in their own words next week at 8 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2.
Washington Journal continues.
And the Washington Journal Holiday Authors Week continues this morning.
It is eight days of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum.
It's a variety of public policy, political topics.
And this morning, we feature political journalist Ken Walsh, his book, The Architects of Toxic Politics in America.
And Mr. Walsh, you argue in that book that we've gone through these cycles of toxic politics in America before, that these cycles sort of come and go.
So how do they go?
How have we broken out of past cycles of toxic politics?
Right.
Well, I think people probably today tend to think that this is so unusual.
And it is in some ways largely because President-elect Trump has been a real advocate of this kind of negative politics, frankly.
And also, it's amplified by social media.
Those are two big differences than what we've had before.
But you could trace this way back to the beginning of the country.
George Washington, of course, was elected unanimously by the Electoral College.
But the first election after that, and the second one in 1796 and 1800, John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson both times, were two of the most toxic elections we've ever had, right from the beginning.
Some of the things they said and their supporters said about the different candidates sort of would curl our hair these days, and because they were so negative and so sort of personal.
But just shows it happened right from the beginning.
In that same timeframe, we had the first character assassin in American politics, which is a man named J.T. Callender, who when he endorsed Jefferson, and then Jefferson was elected and did not give him a job he wanted as postmaster of Richmond, Virginia.
So he turned against Jefferson, and he's the one who broke the story about Jefferson having an affair with Sally Hemings, one of the Hindu enslaved people at Monticello, his plantation.
Jefferson denied it.
It was considered very salacious at the time.
It was a character assassination attempt, as I say.
But Jefferson was still re-elected and became a popular president.
The interesting thing is, as often happens with these spreading of rumors, DNA evidence has since shown that Jefferson did have an affair with Sally Hemings.
So even though for many years this was considered sort of an excessive negative charge, it turned out that he was right.
But we have had waves of this in our history.
The worst example of our toxic politics where we could not resolve our differences, we could not find common ground was the Civil War, which was a terrible calamity for the United States.
Ended slavery, of course, saved the Union, but at an enormous cost to the country in lives and respect for each other and so on.
So what happens is, after having researched this quite extensively, well, the country goes through a period where people are afraid, unsettled, resentful, full of grievance.
The toxic politics comes back, and that's where we are now.
You write on page 206 in your book that this politics of resentment and anger and grievance often runs its course until the warring sides, or at least one of them, become exhausted and the country tires of the struggle and believes it's gone too far.
At this point, the negative messaging goes out of style and people settle into a more pacific period.
Do you see that happening anytime soon?
Well, I think a lot of Americans hope that will happen.
I just saw a poll just in my due diligence before coming in to do your show that 65% of Americans are now saying that they're so distressed by politics and so exhausted by it, just what you just were reading there, that they've tuned out the news.
They've tuned out political news.
Doesn't make me happy as someone who's made his career on reporting political news, but that's part of what happens.
People get exhausted by the negativity and the toxic nature of things, and they just don't pay attention to it anymore, and then it has less effect.
But we still have a very deeply divided country, very polarized country, and people who do not believe good things about the other side.
And I don't think that's going to change.
I'm sad to say that, but I think we're in for this toxic environment for a long time.
You write in this book, and this book came out earlier this year, of course, before the election, that you think the semi-quincentennial could be a moment to end the toxic politics or make America less toxic.
Yes.
Well, that will be the 250th anniversary of our founding as a country.
And that's two years from now.
So there are signs that some of this is happening, particularly on the level of governors.
A lot of governors, they have to get along with people more than the national politicians do in many cases.
So there's something of a movement among some governors.
There's something of a movement in the media as well that maybe we have played this toxic game too long ourselves, and maybe we should pull back from that and try to take another approach.
So there are signs of it, but I was just exploring what could possibly be a triggering event for making us sort of respect each other more as Americans and respect our institutions.
And maybe that kind of a thing, a kind of an event, a historic event, and it's going to be celebrated all over the country would cause a sort of a renaissance of finding common ground and reduce the toxic nature of things.
That's what I hope for.
Chapter 5 of your book is titled Donald Trump, the most negative president of all time.
One, I want to understand why you cite him as such.
And two, he will be president in 2026.
Can this renewal happen with him as president in your mind?
Yeah.
That's one of the open questions.
I wrote that carefully.
I am not a partisan journalist.
I'm not a partisan person.
I've covered seven presidents, and I don't think I could have done it for that long if I was too partisan.
But the other thing I wanted to say before I go back to Trump is that the Democrats have done the same thing over time.
They have been very toxic in their politics.
And I talk about this in the book.
So it's not just Republicans who do it, although I do think that Donald Trump has exceeded the gone beyond the, we've had guardrails, as we say in covering politics, to too much toxic politics.
But he has built a base of support.
Now, in the recent election, the country was basically divided in half.
Trump, according to the most recent numbers I've seen, did not get 50%.
He got just below 50%.
But the country was very split.
So his toxic politics, his constant pillorying his opponents, finding negative ways to portray many, many issues, and his belittling people and so on, which is more or less the definition of toxic politics, using bullying and personal attacks and negativity to advance yourself.
This has worked for him politically.
A lot of his supporters like what he's doing.
I mean, one way I've heard it described that I think is very insightful is that people who voted for Donald Trump were hiring him not as a role model, not as a character paragon, but almost like an attorney or CEO who will get the job done for them.
And the other stuff, the character issue and that sort of thing, is much less important.
So he's sort of an advocate.
And advocates will take extreme positions.
They're push and push.
And that's what he's doing.
So the idea of looking for a renaissance, he's going to have to suffer some setbacks in his approach for that to happen.
It could happen, but I don't see it happening now.
You're right in your book, presidents have the loudest megaphone in American life and are vastly influential.
They set the tone for public discourse and, unfortunately, many have played a key role in intensifying the toxic environment.
Also instrumental in shaping today's toxic culture are a range of influencers who have become combatants in the culture wars.
Who are some of those influencers, those combatants?
Well, that's an interesting story of itself.
In the book, I describe this as sort of a rogues gallery of influencers who over the years have pushed us more and more toward the toxic environment we're in.
Today we have people like Rush Limbaugh, the late Rush Limbaugh was in this category, the famous radio commentator.
Now you have people like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, people with ties to Fox News cases, and they had made their reputation on being the conservative network through their commentators.
But the history of this includes Democrats and Republicans and others too.
If you look at the commentariat or the influencers on the outside, very famous people like that people don't remember today.
Father Charles Cocklin was a Catholic priest from Canada who moved to Michigan, established a small parish, and he became, he realized he was a great speaker and he gave him a radio show.
It became enormously popular around the country and he became a toxic politician.
He actually became a fascist because his argument was that we're fighting the wrong people in World War II.
We should be fighting godless communism, not the Germans and the Japanese.
And he had an enormous following.
So he was a forerunner of just what we see today, the influencers in the media, who are all over the place now.
And there's many examples of this over the years.
You also have the political influencers who played toxic politics.
Senator Joe McCarthy, for instance, the famous communist hunter who was in the category of a toxic politician.
Huey Long was the governor and senator from Louisiana.
Part of the time, he was so obsessed with being a strong man, he was the governor and the senator at the same time.
He was able to pull that off in Louisiana.
And he was so popular that Franklin Roosevelt felt that he could be a real threat to his reelection.
Of course, Huey Long was killed.
He was assassinated before he could run against Franklin Roosevelt in the 30s.
That's the other thing I wanted to mention real quick, and I'm sure the callers will bring this up as well.
That's one of the real problems with toxic politics.
Does it lead to violence?
We had that with the Civil War, as I mentioned before, probably the worst domestic cataclysm we've had, where we couldn't resolve our differences.
And so the question is, today we have such a toxic environment.
Is it leading to violence?
cases of people who are attacked in politics.
Donald Trump had two assassination attempts against him in the last year, one of which, the famous case, where he was shot in the ear during a public event in Pennsylvania.
Now, we don't know enough about that case to know exactly what motivated that shooter or the second time, which was less threatening to Trump.
But basically, is it part of this whole toxic brew?
The people feel in the end that they're entitled to take violent action against politicians or against each other.
And we have so many shootings in the country now, it's hard to sort a lot of this out.
That's one thing I think a lot of Americans are concerned by.
How far does this go?
How much, and that as having written this book, that's one concern I have.
Have we extended toxic politics to each other so much that we've come to distrust and hate each other as Americans?
That would be a very dangerous thing for us.
And I think in some ways we're on the cusp of that.
The architects of toxic politics in America is the book, the subtitle Venom and Vitriol.
Ken Walsh is our guest in this hour of the Washington Journal, taking your phone calls in our Washington Journal Holiday Authors Week.
It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in Republicans.
202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Phone lines already lit up for you, Mr. Walsh.
This is Ray, an independent in Colorado.
You're up first in this segment.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
And I happen to be affiliated with the Libertarian Party.
You mentioned the major figures within toxic politics.
I was wondering if any names come to mind when it comes to reasoned opposition as opposed to toxic opposition.
And I'm also wondering how much the kind of medium, radio, TV, internet, you know, how much of it really has played a role, I think, of the late Marshall McLuhan, his famous quote, the medium is the message.
That's a very good question.
By the way, I covered politics in Colorado for a long time, so I'm glad you mentioned that.
I always look back on that as a very positive time in my own career.
I worked for the Denver Post and the Associated Press in Colorado.
So, in any case, and as I remember, and very vividly, Colorado actually has a history of quite positive politics.
People there, when I covered politics in Colorado, were very proud of that.
The sense was that we don't stoop to conquer.
We don't demean each other.
Our politicians don't go too far.
Maybe that's changed, but I remember that was a very important matter of pride among a lot of voters in Colorado that they didn't wallow in toxic politics.
Now, as I said before, finding people who don't do toxic politics at all is increasingly difficult to do.
Excuse me.
I can't really point to many people who avoid it completely because when push comes to shove, people will go into toxic politics.
They think that's what it takes to win an election.
So you see people, including Joe Biden, by the way, who tried to come into office as a guy who would be a healer and who would not be a toxic politician.
But he got into it too because he felt that he was being roughed up too much by his enemies.
The other point I'd make is that The toxic politics is amplified greatly by social media in particular.
You can find on social media anything you want to find to support your views.
In academia, we call it confirmation bias, where people will look for information that only supports what they think, not anything to challenge it, and won't even pay attention to people on the other side.
And this is spreading through the country where people are getting to the point in polling you see people saying, I don't want to be in a neighborhood with people who disagree with me on politics.
There's a lot of talk during the holidays about how people dealt with their families, where you had people around at the dinner table for Thanksgiving or the Christmas holidays or whatever.
And how do you deal with people who disagree with you?
And some people felt, well, I don't invite those people anymore.
But the mainstream media, we don't get off the hook on this in my mind.
We accelerate this too.
I think we're too drawn to covering conflict and clashes, and that's how politicians have learned they can get attention.
But it's really social media, I think, that's doing more damage than the mainstream media.
It's growing in importance among young people.
And as I say, there's no filter there.
So you get whatever you see on social media is not filtered by an editor or a reporter.
So you have no idea what's true.
And some of it now with artificial intelligence and with what we used to call photoshopping, the images are made up and created, and they look very real.
So I just have to caution people to be careful in assessing what you see on social media because it looks real, but many times it's not.
But it goes to that idea of confirmation bias.
Social media today, the caller talked about the media being the message.
Remind viewers what the Daisy Girl ad was.
Yes, well, Daisy Girl, this also relates to the idea of Democrats have been guilty of this toxic politics themselves as well.
The Daisy Girl ad was the most famous political ad in our history, the most famous negative political ad, and the most effective.
This was run in the 1964 campaign by Lyndon Johnson, who of course succeeded John F. Kennedy after Kennedy was assassinated and he took on Kennedy's mantle.
He was very popular initially, but he ran against Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who was very conservative, and there was a subtext.
And a lot of times these negative ads work best when there is a subtext, when people think there's something going on here that I don't like, and the people who make the ads can latch on to that.
There was concern that Goldwater was too warlike, was too bellicose.
He was going to get us into a war with the old Soviet Union.
So Johnson came up with an ad which showed a little girl in a field.
And if you've seen it, you probably always will remember it.
It's a one-minute ad.
It showed a little girl in a field picking daisies.
That's where the name Daisy ad comes from.
She pulls petals off, like he loves me, he loves me, not kind of a thing.
And she counts.
And she gets the numbers wrong.
She's basically a toddler.
10, 6, 4, 5.
And then you hear a narrator take the countdown and it becomes a nuclear blast.
And she looks up and you see the nuclear mushroom cloud in her eyes as if she's looking at the blast.
And this is her last sight she's going to have.
So a nuclear war is illustrated in this very vivid ad.
And at the end, you hear Lyndon Johnson say, today it's important that we get along.
We must learn to love each other or we will surely die.
Goldwater is not mentioned in the ad at all.
And then the narrator says, be sure to vote on, gives you the date of the vote, November 6th, I think it was.
The stakes are too high for you to stay home.
That ad read once.
It was so powerful, all the networks picked it up as a news story.
The newspapers did.
It only had to run once.
And it made the point.
And it really just put the end to Goldwater's really campaign.
And he just knew how devastating it was.
But that's the most historic negative political ad in our history.
To John in New York, also independent.
Good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Yeah, thanks for taking the call.
Yesterday you guys had an author from the Newsweek.
I guess his name was Walter.
And the entire hour was condemning Donald Trump, how terrible a person he is.
And then you have this author today, and he goes directly to Chapter 5, How Toxic Donald Trump, the Most Toxic or Divisive President.
So you go there, and then you go on to say Rush Limbaugh and the media, how terrible he was, and Tucker Carlson and Fox News.
And, you know, a lot of people voted this year, and more than 50% of the country voted for Donald Trump.
don't care about what you say anymore because after the Russian collusion hoax, Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation and the lies about Biden's cognitive ability, her emails on her phones and having something in her basement.
have been there.
And they're seeing it.
They can see it with their own eyes.
And you know what?
We listen to you, and we listen to your condemnation of the Republicans, and you don't say a darn thing about President Biden and the comments he made about fascism, Hitler, and the people that support Donald Trump are no, you know, they're dangerous.
They're a danger to our country.
And then Hillary Clinton calling people that support Donald Trump basket of deplorables.
Can you say something bad about Joe Biden and something good about Donald Trump?
Is it possible?
Show me you're not biased, okay?
Good point.
Ken Walsh.
Well, first of all, maybe you weren't listening, but I did talk about how Biden had descended into toxic politics in his presidency.
And part of it is the criticism of Trump's supporters.
Yeah, and I think that's part of the problem he had.
I've been very critical of Biden in a number of ways.
One is I think that he and his White House did not fully explain the cognitive decline that everyone saw in that debate, which he lost to Donald Trump.
And he took a couple of weeks after that, but then he did drop out.
To me, that is a huge story that the mainstream media, my own business, my own career, that we didn't focus on enough.
And I've said this many times.
The basket of deplorables went too far.
But, you know, also, we have to realize one reason that the Republicans get so much attention for negative politics, as I say in the book, is because they have had masters of it in Republican politics.
Lee Atwater defined the attack politics in the United States in the 80s.
He worked for Ronald Reagan.
He worked for George Bush the father.
And this has nothing to do with Donald Trump at all.
And Lee Atwater, I knew Lee Atwater very, very well, and his philosophy was, we don't win elections by building up our own candidates.
We win elections by tearing the other side down.
He said that many, many times.
This is long before Donald Trump.
So there's a long history here.
The other thing is, is a couple of points.
One is that Trump, according to the latest numbers, he did not win a majority of the vote.
He won just below 50%.
He won the election, there's no doubt about that.
He won a big majority in the Electoral College.
But the Democrats, as it turns out, didn't do as bad as we thought they did initially after this campaign.
Kamala Harris lost by about 2.5 million votes.
That's a lot of votes.
But in percentage, she was about a point and a half behind Donald Trump.
So that's another thing to keep in mind.
The other thing I wanted to mention is, and I know the caller was very agitated about this, but one reason that the Republicans get a lot of attention for toxic politics now is because they're so much better at it and because they're so much more entertaining at it.
The people in the United States now have a short attention span, so to get their attention, you have to, in the media, social media, the punditocracy or whatever, you have to entertain them.
This is part of our celebrity culture now.
And the Republicans, frankly, do it a lot better than the Democrats do.
I'm not saying that as a criticism.
They know how the media work.
They understand the country in this way, I think, better than the Democrats do.
And that's partly why Donald Trump got as many votes as he did, because the constant drumbeat of attack and criticism was picked up and amplified by the social media and by the influencers.
And so in a way, it's a compliment to them in the sense of being public figures because they know how to handle public images and public impressions better.
By this, I mean the conservative or Republican influencers.
And some of them are not really Republicans.
They're conservatives, but they don't say that they're Republicans.
So anyway, but they do it very well.
So that's the other thing to keep in mind.
The Associated Press numbers, Donald Trump was 77,297,721 votes in the 2024 election, 49.9% of the total votes cast.
Kamala Harris, 75,009,338 votes, 48.4%.
William is in Miamisburg, Ohio.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, John.
This is your favorite old dumb, I can say 89-year-old Hillbilly now.
Mr. Walsh, I commend you for writing a book like that because we have nothing but crooks and politicians in the government.
It's just a shame that we pay taxes to support them crooks.
And that's from federal, state, and local.
It's just a shame.
I feel so sorry for my grandkids and nine little great-grandkids and be 11 in March.
It's just a shame.
Did you ever read the book Broke USA?
Broke USA?
I'm the number one guy in that.
And as far as Trump, every time I see his lips move, I get diarrhea.
It's just a shame.
That's William in Ohio.
This is Ted in Washington, New Jersey.
Republican, good morning.
Yes, I just wanted to say a couple of things about their negativity on balance here.
First of all, the Democrats are also very big on negativity.
I go back a couple of years ago to Nancy Pelosi.
She ripped up the State of the Union speech on national TV, and there was no repercussion.
It's just all the late night TV shows, PBS, 60 Minutes, ABC, they all went along.
Oh, yeah, let's attack Trump.
These people, the late night shows, are the biggest offenders.
I can't even watch them.
All they do is attack the one side.
It's not a balance.
Now, also, during the election time, we had David Muir, I thought, was a fair guy.
He's doing the interviewing at the debate, and he had a woman on there who was friendly, apparently, with some kind of relationship with Harris, and it was all softball questions.
So, you know, it's not one side or the other.
What you're doing, and I understand you're highlighting the one side, but if you look at it objectively, there is an army.
Okay, let's take the view.
You ever watch that on TV every day?
They totally attack anybody who doesn't agree with them.
And they are very toxic as well.
So I just hope that in your reporting or when you're talking about your book, you're inclusive about this, because the reason why people voted for Trump is because they're tired of the so-called swamp where all these united people in Washington, in Hollywood, and in the networks, they're all together.
They're like one group, and they're very powerful.
They don't have the money, but they have the media.
They control the media and they control the education and the universities.
I go to the big universities at the debates, and they're all on the left side.
I can understand that's their side.
I'm in the middle.
I go with the issue, but it is so strongly on the left-hand side.
I wish you would, when you do your interviews, allow more of that into the conversation.
Well, yes.
I don't really disagree with what you're saying at all.
I mean, and in fact, in my body of work, I think if you looked at it, you can see that I have been very critical of both sides on this.
You mentioned the Pelosi tearing up the speech, but basically, there's a parallel universe here for both sides.
For every case like the View, there's the Five on Fox.
They make a living of denigrating the Democrats and Biden.
I don't know if the color is still there, but do you watch the five at all?
The colour's not there.
Go ahead.
But anyway, so you have the View, you have the Five.
You have a parallel approach that both of them are taking.
I have been very critical also of the Democrats of not understanding the level of resentment and grievance that the working class has in the United States.
Understand that Trump did understand that better than the Democrats did, than Kamala Harris did.
She started off her campaign talking about the politics of joy.
Well, this very important segment in our politics, the working class, was not feeling joy.
That was the wrong approach to appeal to them.
And Trump did enormously well with those people.
They used to be the core of the Democratic Party.
And I come from a working class background myself.
And I saw that in my own family and when I was being brought up.
But the Democrats are no longer the party of the working class.
And they're going through enormous soul searching now on how do they fix this.
But it was a terrible problem.
And this problem that we have in the media, too.
We don't really understand the working class as we might have in the past.
One reason is we don't live like working class people.
When I first started covering politics long ago, I felt like I was living the same life as the people I was writing for as a newspaper reporter.
When the property taxes went up, I would not like it.
When grocery prices went up, when something happened in crime or something, I was worried about my neighborhood.
But as time has gone on, I think the people in the media, in the big media centers, New York and Washington and California and Chicago, for instance, we don't live the same life as working class people.
And I think we did at one time.
So this is a real disconnect, and this is something the Democrats are feeling.
The other quick point I'd make, and I think you were very, it was well taken talking about the celebrity endorsements.
I was always critical of the effect of celebrity endorsements.
Ever since I've covered politics, and it's been 45 years now, all those elections, the Democrats always get the endorsements from the famous stars.
And the Republicans do well with country music entertainers and some Hollywood people.
But basically, that's a Democratic constituency.
That's always the way it's been.
But it doesn't really convert votes.
I'm sure it annoys and angers people on the other side, conservatives who feel like there's too many social activists in Hollywood who are liberals.
And there are many who are liberals.
But I don't think they swing elections.
I think Americans really don't pay attention to that very much.
Even Taylor Swift, who had a brief moment in the sun in this last campaign.
If you had to list the three most divisive, toxic, is the word we've been using, elections in American history, would 2024 crack the top three?
Well, I think the first two would be 1796 and 1800, the ones I started out talking about.
They were incredibly toxic elections and very personal elections.
John Adams criticized, and his supporters criticized Jefferson as heading for bringing the guillotine, bringing the French Revolution to the United States, killing people, bringing atheism as the governing philosophy of the country.
And on the other side, Jefferson's people said Adams was a royalist.
He wanted to bring the sort of nobility into the country, the nobility of the nobles of Europe, that sort of thing.
And he was mocked as his rotundity.
And we're talking about personal attacks.
And he was criticized by the Jefferson people of being a hermaphrodite.
Now, that's not the best thing to call somebody then or now, but that's how negative it was.
A very, very negative campaign.
But big issues were at stake.
A lot of people were worried about their future.
Can we survive as a country?
That's the point I made initially.
When that kind of resentment and anger and fear and grievance rises, negative politics rises.
So that, I would say, is a very negative period.
Andrew Jackson had very, very negative campaigns a few years later.
That was the era of duels.
He got into duels.
He killed people in duels.
And just a quick point about this is that when he ran for president, he ran and lost and then he ran again.
His opponents raised the issue that his wife was an adulteress because she had been married before and she thought that her marriage had been, the divorce had gone through, but it had not.
So she was actually still legally married when she married Andrew Jackson.
And his opponents raised this as an issue against him, that he had married an adulteress.
And she was scorned by a lot of people in Washington, including the spouses of a lot of people in Congress.
Her name was Rachel.
And she never made it to his inauguration.
She died.
And a lot of people thought she died of a nervous breakdown because she realized how her reputation had been sullied by all this criticism.
And Jackson always held the death of his wife against his critics.
So you talk about a negative environment.
This is a man who was devoted to his wife.
He felt that his opponents had actually killed his wife by causing her health to be shattered.
And so that set the tone.
He became a negative politician.
You're right.
When Rachel Jackson once discovered her husband, Andrew Jackson, crying in his office, she asked him what was wrong.
Quote, myself I can defend, you I can defend, but now they have assailed even the memory of my mother, he replied.
Yes, well, at that point, yeah, he felt his mother was being attacked, and she was.
So, you know, we've had this history of our country, and that's part of what I was trying to show in the book.
Because of the reasons I've talked about, the Republicans take a lot of criticism from me and from others today for negative politicians, but a lot of people think that's the way they had to go to shake up Washington and to take on the swamp.
So I'm saying that a lot of people like that Donald Trump has done this, but it's causing a grief to a lot of other people, too.
Chesterfield, Virginia, this is Robert, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning.
You know, I'm 76 years old, and I've kind of noticed in this past election, younger kids and, you know, some of the kids are in their 40s and 50s, but they never watch Provo's on TV.
They watch, you know, movies and stuff, but they never watch the news.
They never watch Fox and stuff like that.
But what they do, it seems like on their telephones and Facebook, they talk a lot between them and their friends.
And a lot of them, their opinions, they went with Trump on the election with really not knowing much about what was going on at all.
That was kind of interesting to me.
And now going back to Donald Trump, he's out there preaching now about taking over other countries here.
And if that's part of these, you know, politics that, you know, I just don't understand why people can't see that this is going to break down these other countries with China.
And of course, you know, Russia, there'll be something there maybe putting military outfits on there and their countries to protect them from us.
That seems like it's going to be a problem.
But for these people that want to keep everybody upset, you know, I'd like your opinion on some of that.
Yeah, well, again, very well, well, insightful question.
What the call is referring to, obviously keeping up on the news, is that Donald Trump is very good at this.
That's partly why we talk about him so much in the media.
He's a terrific showman.
He understands the media.
He understands how to get attention.
He understands how to divert attention from things he doesn't want to talk about and create other things.
What's happened in the last week or so is that Trump has talked about the United States taking over Canada and taking over Greenland and taking over the Panama Canal.
Now, Maybe this is just his showman instinct because he knows everybody will talk about this.
If you look at how that would happen, it's very hard to see how any of that would happen except the Panama Canal, which I think that could happen.
The United States could take that back because the United States did build it.
But he raised the idea of taking over Greenland in his first term, by the way.
And Denmark, as I recall, actually owns Greenland, controls Greenland.
And they said, well, no, you're never going to get Greenland.
Forget it.
Now he's back on that again.
Now, maybe it's just he feels like it's an issue that he knows people will talk about.
Maybe he's serious about it.
There's no detail about this at all.
So we really don't know how serious he is, except that the Panama Canal, he apparently has looked into this because he knew enough about it to know how many people died, excuse me, building the canal more than 100 years ago.
He says about 38,000 Americans died building the canal.
So he's looking at it as a saying, all the, not only the expense, but the lives that we spent building that.
So, excuse me, he is focused on this right now.
Let you get a sip of water as we hear from Tom in Elgin, Illinois.
Republican line.
Tom, good morning.
Thanks for calling in.
You're on with Ken Walsh.
Just a couple of things.
The implicit by Ken, you're a nice man, and everybody likes to think they're in the middle of the road.
But actually, just you're saying that for every one of these shows, there's one of those.
Everybody knows that the media is like 90% liberal.
So that's not true.
And the negativity of Joe Biden, when he went after Bork and used the NPR to come up with this scandal and his lying, you know, he was lying and trying to embarrass politicians way before Trump.
His negativity is tenfold.
So when Trump goes against a 90% attack, he kind of has to do that.
And we want him going to bat for us against these people with these crazy ideas that a boy isn't a boy, a boy's a girl, and all this wild and wacky stuff.
And then not to mention that, yeah, I mean, and that's where we're at.
And I appreciate your niceness and that you think that you're in the middle, but you are a liberal.
Well, I mean, I have never disclosed my political leadings, and I don't intend to.
I don't think I could have covered seven presidents and won the major awards for White House coverage over the years if I was too biased, and I don't believe I am.
I've tried to call them as I see them.
As I say, I come from a working class family myself.
My father was a longshoreman in New York, and then he became a worked for the city of New York, and my mother was a waitress and then raised her five sons.
I have four brothers.
But in any case, I do try to, as I say, call him as I see him.
And I think that I think the caller and the other caller in particular was very riled up about the bias against Trump and so on.
And I understand that.
But at this moment, I don't think you could look at what Trump is doing and saying as he's trying to, as he's just won the election and is about to become president, and see that he's looking for common ground.
He's not.
He feels that the polarization benefits him.
He has felt that way for a long time and has felt that that's the way he would win re-election.
Now, as I say, he almost hit 50%, but he didn't quite hit 50%.
But he won.
There's no doubt about that.
But just look at the results that we've shown here in the map a little while ago and how divided we are as a country.
It's really remarkable.
And it's unfortunate that I think that the president-elect has not tried to step away from this a little bit.
Some of the polling I think would be interesting.
One recent poll said that 20% of Americans now support what they call a national divorce, where the blue states, the Democratic states, would go their own way.
The red states, the Republican states, would go their own way.
That sounds like a civil war to me.
That's about 60 million people feel that way.
That's a lot of people.
Only 20% of the people.
But we have very deep divisions as a country.
And I think at some point, somebody who has, who sort of stands astride the whole system needs to step back from this and serve as an example for everybody else.
In the Bible, it's called Turning the Other Cheek.
And this is what we used to think in our daily lives and in our politics and in public life.
So I think civility is really in danger here.
And you can see that in this idea of the national divorce.
So a different take on my first question about how these cycles of toxic politics end.
What was the previous cycle before the one that we acknowledge we're in now?
How did that end?
Well, I think after World War II, we had a huge fear about communism, about communism taking over.
So in that period, we had a very toxic period.
Senator McCarthy, the communist hunter, who was very popular for a long time.
You had a lot of commentators who supported him for a while, and he had a lot of people in Congress afraid of him.
So they went along with him.
You had two presidents, Truman and Eisenhower, who took action to find these alleged communists in government, which he never could really identify them, but he made the accusations.
That became a very difficult time for a lot of people who were wrongly accused.
What Eisenhower did, and this gets back to the point I'm making now about today, is he felt that he didn't want to take McCarthy on head-on, which a lot of people faulted him with since, but he felt that McCarthy would sort of overreach and he would automatically, at some point, people would turn against him.
And that's exactly what happened.
But he had the credibility as a president to feel like he wasn't going to embrace McCarthy.
He felt he could stand up to him.
And that's the kind of thing that I think we need today, somebody to stand up to the extremes and to find the, to speak for the common ground.
And I think Eisenhower managed to do that.
And by the end of his McCarthy's hot streak, when he was at his most popular, Eisenhower made the distinction, sort of a criticism of McCarthy done in a typical Eisenhower way, said, it's not McCarthyism, which is the name given to making unsubstantiated charges.
It's McCarthy was-ism.
But it was interesting how Eisenhower handled that delicately, but nevertheless tried to push McCarthy off the stage in an interesting way.
But it took Joseph Welsh saying, have you no sense of decency, sir?
At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Yes, that was the famous hearing in which McCarthy started to go too far, where he was making accusations against a young fellow who had no communist connections that we know of, and he was ruining this guy's life.
And so this lawyer, Welsh, that you talk about, had a very dramatic moment where he made exactly those words, criticizing McCarthy for going too far, for ruining this young man's life for his own political gain.
And that stuck with a lot of people.
Margot in Indiana line for Democrats.
Good morning.
About eight minutes or so left with Ken Walsh.
Good morning.
Happy New Year.
Congratulations on your book, Mr. Walsh.
I have a question for you.
Do you think Donald would be as gracious and dignified as Vice President Harris when it comes to the fact that she conceded to him with that landslide of 1.48%?
Yeah, will he be as civil as she has been?
Is that what you're asking?
No, I'm saying what.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Right.
No, I don't think so.
We already have a track record of that the last time.
And he had been saying all along in the campaign that he was talking about widespread fraud and things that were about to happen, that then when he won, that all went away.
Now, I am hearing, and you probably are too, reading the mainstream media, there is an effort by some Democrats to challenge those results, even now.
I don't know if that's going to go very far, but the Democrats are doing an enormous amount of soul searching, and I think that if they go to challenge the results, that's probably a bad thing for the Democrats to do because it would look like sour grapes doing what they accused Trump of doing, which is overturning the results of an election.
Maybe that's just like a two-day story, but basically the Democrats are really worried about their future now and how they handle things, including the working class that I mentioned before.
How'd you get into writing about politics?
Well, I come from a family, as I say, from New York City, a working-class family who were always very interested in politics.
My parents were always, that was the era when there were like 12 newspapers in the city, and my parents were avid readers of newspapers and political news.
And I was the oldest son, and so I was assigned to go to the newsstand and buy seven newspapers every day.
And I could tell you what they were, but that was when New York had a lot of newspapers, and my parents would devour them, and that transmitted itself to me and all my brothers.
So it goes back that far.
And then I just has always been interested in it.
And I fortunately been able in my career to do what I always set out to do, which is to cover national politics in the White House.
Ended up covering the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama.
This year released this book, The Architect of Toxic Politics in America.
I believe your eighth book.
My tenth book.
Tenth book.
Yes.
Ken Walsh with us for a few more minutes.
This is Bruce in Palm Harbor, Florida, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I politely, not even politely, disagree with Ken.
Has there ever been a person, president passed, that has caused people to outly get killed because of what they are pushing and knowing that it's a lie.
I can't get my head wrapped around the whole January 6th thing.
And even to this day, he doesn't say, oh, that wasn't the best idea in the world.
I sat here in my living room and I watched it on TV.
And he was urging it.
He whipped up the crowd, which were already whipped up, and he sent them on their way.
And, you know, if it would have been a race situation, those people would have been arrested.
That's all I have to say.
Thanks so much for hearing me.
Tomoski, you find a couple couple minutes of this segment.
Yes.
Well, we haven't had a chance to go into that January 6th.
That's, of course, the riot at the Capitol.
A lot of people call it an insurrection, an attempt to stop the count that was going to remove Donald Trump from office for the election of Joe Biden.
And that was thoroughly investigated.
People are still very divided about that.
The Trump people are feeling that he was unfairly criticized for fomenting the riot.
Other people say he, as our caller just said, he did foment the riot.
I think that at this point, people's views of that are not going to change.
I think that as they're not going to change about Trump's, all the charges against him.
The earlier Coral would say, well, you know, there's too much attention to Trump as a divider.
Well, I mean, he has had many lawsuits against him.
And he's attacked the whole system.
He's attacked persecution and not prosecution in the legal system.
Again, we're divided about this as a country, too.
I'm sure you've done segments about this, and it's been well argued about January 6th and what the pros and cons and Trump's relationship with institutions, with the law, with the Justice Department, with courts and so on.
And that's not going to change.
But that's one of the areas that divide us.
I mean, he has been a very, very divisive guy.
And this has fit in with his politics and still is today.
That's part of why I talk about him in the book and so many people still talk about him.
He's actually brilliant at getting attention, but he has not veered away from the idea of keeping the base that we've talked about here and talked about many other times and not expanding the base.
And as I say, he hasn't gone over a majority.
It's close, but it's not a majority.
And Carmel Harris did not do as bad as she seemed to have done on election night.
She came within a point and a half of Donald Trump.
So it just shows how polarized we are.
At some point, somebody has got to, in authority, a respected figure, has to take another direction.
It's very unhealthy the direction we're going in now.
It's infecting us in so many ways.
And the one thing that bothers me the most here is how it's turning us against each other as Americans.
We're not finding the common values we thought we had all along.
And people are just so hostile that they're not they don't want to associate with the other side.
They don't want to try to make a case.
And that's very unfortunate.
And that's, I think, a real danger for the country.
The Architects of Toxic Politics in America is the book that came out this year.
Ken Walsh is the author.
KennethWalsh.com.
If you want to check out his website, thanks so much for your time.
Thank you.
Coming up in the next half hour of the Washington Journal, we're going to return to that question that we began the program with today: your view on the death penalty in the United States.
Phone lines for those who support, oppose, and if you're not sure, a phone line for you as well.
Those numbers are on your screen.
Go ahead and start calling in and we will get your calls right after the break.
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, who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874.
Then, at 4:45 p.m. Eastern, author Elizabeth Rees, 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.
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 at c-span.org/slash history.
In his latest book, LBJ and McNamara, Peter Asnos' dedication reads this way.
To those on the Vietnam Wall, on them all, and their countless Vietnamese counterparts, it did not have to happen.
Unquote.
In his role as publisher at Public Affairs Books, Osnos spent numerous hours working with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for his 1995 book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.
Osnos writes: This book describes what happened in the years between 1963 and McNamara's last day as Secretary of Defense in February of 1968.
Robert McNamara died in 2009 at the age of 93.
Peter Osnos, with his book, LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail.
On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
For over 45 years, C-SPAN has been your window into the workings of our democracy, offering live coverage of Congress, open forum call-in programs, and unfiltered access to the decision makers who shape our nation.
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Washington Journal continues.
And we're with you for about an hour more this morning on the Washington Journal.
In these first 30 minutes of that hour, we're returning to that question that we began our program with today.
In the wake of President Biden giving life imprisonment to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates earlier this week, we are simply asking for your opinion about the use of capital punishment.
If you support the death penalty, 202-748-8000 is the number to call.
If you oppose it, 202-748-8001.
If you're not sure, a phone line for you as well, 202-748-8002, taking these calls until about 9:30 Eastern Time.
This is Gino in California, Valley Village, California.
Go ahead.
Yes, I support the death penalty by default.
We cannot continue to spend money and taxpayer money on supporting these perpetrators of these crimes for tens of decades of years.
I do understand that some death penalty people are executed and they're innocent.
When we know that they did it, i.e. the New York subway, Boston Bomber, et cetera, we can't continue to suck up resources having these people live for years.
They put in the least amount into the system and they're costing the most.
I believe thou shalt not kill, but at a certain point, it becomes economic, and I don't want to pay for it anymore.
It's a taxpayer.
Thank you.
John in Glenside, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yeah, good morning, everybody.
I'm opposed to the death penalty because I found that there are way too many people that have been found innocent in the long term.
And I think life without the possibility of parole at least gives us the opportunity over time to make sure that we haven't made a mistake.
And I think life without the possibility of parole is a pretty harsh way to spend your life.
And I think that's adequate.
Thank you.
On the first caller's point on the costs of keeping somebody on death row and housing somebody for life in prison, we've been showing you this morning, as we've asked this question, the death penalty information center.
A lot of information there, stats on the use of the death penalty, where people are housed on death row, what states still have the death penalty.
They also have a section on the costs of the death penalty and how much the death penalty actually costs and how that compares to a system in which a life sentence is the maximum punishment they write can only be determined by studies on the state level.
Many such studies have been conducted and their conclusions are consistent.
The death penalty imposes a net cost on the taxpayers compared to life without parole.
The question is whether the assumed benefits of the death penalty are worth its cost and whether other systems might provide similar benefits at less costs.
But why is the death penalty so expensive?
There's the legal cost, the pretrial cost, the jury selection costs, the trial costs, the incarceration, and the many appeals costs as well.
DeathpenaltyInfo.org is where you can go to take a look at some of those studies on the costs of keeping somebody on death row.
This is Pete in New Haven, Connecticut.
Good morning.
Yeah, hi.
I'm opposed to the death penalty because I don't want to be part of this system of eliminating people because for the crime that they cause.
Having said that, I would like to bring up one point.
I wanted to get on what Mr. Waltz was talking.
And the question I had for him is that when the insurrection was going on, I don't know what taught TB Neckwood.
It could be CNN, it could be ABC, CBS, or NBC.
They opened up the door, and I don't know where it is, showing the members of the Trump family.
One is her daughter, and I believe it's her husband, and several other people, but I did not see Trump there because it was just hitting view.
Well, I'll tell you what, people.
We can get to some of those comments in our open form.
We're going to spend the last half hour of our show today, but don't want to sidetrack too much away from this conversation on the death penalty.
We had a bunch of people who couldn't get in in that first segment who wanted to talk about the death penalty.
So we're doing it again now.
This is William in Pleasantville, New York.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning, John.
Some a little different approach.
On the opposed side of it, I think it might be too easy to execute people.
In other words, you think about God can forgive at will.
In other words, how do we know that the people that are executed are not forgiven and put a little time in purgatory and make their way up to heaven?
Okay, so I think that perhaps for these most heinous, terrible, terrible crimes, that we make a prison in a place like Death Valley and make it unusual for the punishment, but make it cruel as hell.
Make it so terrible that they would not be interested that it would deter them.
But back to the other side.
So, William, you don't believe in the existence of some sort of punishment that is too cruel or unusual?
No, I want it to be unusual, okay?
But when they, you know, these horrible ones you're hearing about with little children mutilated and people like that, their punishment should be cruel, much worse than it is now in prison.
In other words, make them suffer.
And if they're going to go to executions, make them public.
Hang them in the public square if you're going to go that route.
So have a nice day, everyone.
That's William in Pleasantville, New York.
This is Craig in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Good morning.
I appreciate C-SPAN.
Excellent topics.
I just want to lay down some facts, very simple, because a lot of people claim they use the Bible to say, they misuse the Bible to say that, you know, the death penalty is, you know, God doesn't want the death penalty.
The Bible doesn't want it.
That's totally, absolutely, provably incorrect.
In the Ten Commandments, it's you shall not murder.
It's not kill.
In the King James, they just used kill, but in the original Greek, it's you shall not murder, which is taking innocent blood.
And the deal is this.
Then it goes on in Deuteronomy 19 to say what to do if someone takes innocent blood.
And it says you take them out and you put them to death.
Then it warns: if the society doesn't put them to death, the blood of the people that person slaughtered is on the hands of the society.
So what we have to do is make it balanced and make it right.
God loves life, but God loves life so much that he doesn't want it to be cheap.
If you don't have death penalty, you're basically saying to the murderers or the psychopaths, well, no big deal.
You know, you'll get three meals.
You're going to live fine.
That's not the way it was meant to be.
It had to be stopped.
And that's the logic behind the scriptures that say the death penalty is absolutely condoned by the Bible in Deuteronomy and in the Ten Commandments.
So I just wanted to clear that up.
I know it's ugly.
I don't like any form of death.
Nobody does.
But you don't cheapen life.
You don't tell people in a society if you do this, it's not really that big deal.
That's Craig in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Just coming back to cruel and unusual punishment, it's the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution that it is addressed in excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted is the Eighth Amendment.
This is Joe in Providence, Rhode Island.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yeah, hi.
I'm going to go with a completely secular point of view here.
I spent 25 years in law enforcement.
And there's some people who commit who are so dangerous.
They commit such horrible crimes that they're intractable.
You can't ever change them.
And there's no reason to keep them alive.
You know, we send perfectly good people out to war to get killed for specious reasons.
I went to Vietnam when I was a kid.
Good people were getting killed for nothing.
And because some politician like McDermott will want to make money.
But, you know, you get people who kill children.
And, you know, he commuted a guy who killed two little girls and then killed a naval, a woman in the Navy, which is why he got the death penalty because it was on a federal reservation.
But I don't know how he could commute people like that.
I had a guy that I arrested who had murdered somebody.
He made a deal for a manslaughter charge.
He tried to kill me and another officer when we arrested him.
He got two ADWs, a manslaughter, and drug possession.
Okay?
He was out of seven years.
And you know what?
A few months after he got out of the killed again, he got his ex-wife to come to his apartment and he murdered her.
And then he killed himself, which was a good thing.
But, you know, I have a very, maybe people think I have a heartless attitude.
I don't.
Because there are people who have no soul.
They have no inhibition at all.
And when you get them, you know who they are.
They look right through you.
They'll kill somebody the way you step on an ant.
Joe, how many years?
How many years?
How many years were you a police officer?
25.
And did anybody you arrest for a crime ever end up on death row?
No, I can't.
No, I can't think so.
I had a guy, I had a relative who was a police officer in Chicago who was shot.
He survived, but a number of other people were killed.
The guy who shot him wound up on death row.
And he got a drug overdose on death row.
Go figure that one out.
But that was in Menard, Illinois.
But I was four and a half years with a state agency and then 21 years with a federal agency.
And ran to all kinds of people.
And, you know, there were people who killed and they weren't intractable.
They made a mistake.
You know, they still had some humanity, but there were people who had none.
Absolutely.
How do you know who are the ones who still have some humanity left and some who don't?
You had mentioned before the stare through you, but how do you determine that if in a legal system, how do you determine that if the idea is death row versus life in prison?
You know, you have a good point, but I guess it's experiential.
I had a guy here about 20 birdies to him.
He killed all these people in Venezuela, and we deported him back to Venezuela, even though he was a Peruvian.
And this guy was as calm as a cucumber.
He killed all these people, escaped from prison, and there was just no emotion.
The people who act crazy and angry and stuff, they're the ones who are less dangerous than the ones who are very calm.
There's no science to it.
After you deal with enough people, you get a feel for it.
Joe, thanks for sharing your experience in Providence, Rhode Island.
Got a couple other colors waiting to get in.
This is Michael in Springville, Utah.
Good morning.
Hello.
This is my first time calling.
I'm a little nervous.
I have a sort of different view about the death penalty about mental illness.
When I was younger, I got mental illness.
I took my medicine.
Mental illness cures it or keeps it away for a long time.
Many people in prisons have mental illness, and we need to fix our prisons so that they can help people with mental illness.
Because when you're in a psychotic state, you do not know what's going on, and you believe whatever.
Sorry if I'm taking too long.
Not at all, Michael.
Thanks for bringing in that aspect of this.
Appreciate it.
That's Michael in Utah.
This is Cole across the pond in England calling in.
Cole, go ahead.
Hello there, mate.
Yeah, regarding this subject, I think last we had in this country, it was Ruth Vellis back in 1955, like the last death penalty in this country.
And I think I just disagree with it, but I think it should be for people who really did evil crimes.
I think massive murders, people like that.
And they should get the death penalty, I think.
But in sight, I don't think it should be there, really, but if need be, especially circumstances, I think, that's my view anyway.
Cole, what did you think?
I don't know how much of the news it was over there in England, but of Joe Biden commuting the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates, but not three people.
The shooter at the Charleston AME Mother Emmanuel Church, the Boston Marathon bomber, and that Pittsburgh synagogue shooter back in 2018.
What did you think of that move?
Well, as far as I can see, they should get the death penalty for those in his crimes.
I think, I'm not map into the enemy.
So that's Cole in England.
This is Mary in Ohio.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I guess my take is that, you know, we have the innocence project that proved that people who are on death row were innocent.
So two wrongs don't make a right.
Putting somebody to death for a crime that they did not commit isn't going to be the right thing to do.
So I guess, you know, you can't correct a death sentence if they're dead and you find out they were innocent.
And we have a lot of our states who fight DNA evidence being brought to these previous crimes.
So I just don't know how you can put or even say that all these convicted people deserve to die because they may be innocent.
So Mary, the numbers in the modern era of using the death penalty since the early 1970s, some 1,600 people have been put to death.
Since 1973, at least 200 people who were on death row and had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to die have been exonerated and gotten off death row.
Right now, today, there's 2,200 people or so around this country on death row, just three on federal death row, and the rest are in states.
Yeah, and I mean, the numbers are small.
I guess on both sides, I mean, I don't think we sentence people to death frequently anymore.
But I guess in terms of cost, the, you know, spending life in prison is cheaper than death row inmates.
So I guess I just don't know.
I know that, you know, there are some people who want an eye for an eye, but in the end of the day, you know, you don't know that it's cost about the right person.
And I think that there are crimes that they just want to lock somebody up.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be the right person.
And, you know, there's plenty of poor people who can afford a good defense.
So I just think at the end of the day, the death penalty doesn't make sense to me.
It costs more money, and we make mistakes.
So I just, you know, that's, I guess, my point.
It's Mary in Ohio.
This is Kwame in New York.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yes.
How are you doing?
Good morning.
So I'm saying this, right?
Definitely.
It says thou shalt not kill, right?
I'm talking about the people who in the past was talking about the Bible, right?
So think about that, right?
It says, thou shalt not kill, right?
That was one of the Ten Commandments, right?
So if you're saying that we shouldn't kill nobody, but nobody should be killing nobody.
I feel like there was so many people wrong, you know, in the court system.
The court system needs to be fixed no matter what.
Something is wrong with the court system.
But that's what my belief is, thou shalt not kill at all.
That's Kwame.
This is Gary in Buell, Minnesota.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yeah, yes.
I kind of support it in a way.
If somebody goes out and kills a cop or somebody or anything at the schools and stuff, I think they should get rid of a few people like that, show it on TV, and let the people see what's going on.
You shouldn't go out and kill him.
But like I was thinking, everybody went in the service.
They were paid to fight to kill.
And like that one woman was saying, you shouldn't kill nobody.
But what if there's wars and you have to go out and kill?
So that's what I'm kind of thinking about too.
But there's a lot of innocent people that shouldn't be put to death.
They didn't do that, do it, didn't do it.
But you should make sure that the ones that do it, the cops see them do it and they do it to people.
They're the ones that should be punished for that.
Thank you very much and everybody and all the veterans.
Murphysboro, Illinois is next.
This is Tim.
Good morning.
You know, the death penalty should be right away because it costs about a million dollars a year to keep somebody in prison.
So we put 100 people in prison for lives without pro at a million dollars per year.
That's about what it costs.
Why not execute them and save the money and use it for the living that are hurting or disabled or whatever?
Tim, does it give you pause that some 200 people have gotten off death row over the years, have had their convictions overturned?
Well, in that case, take about two, five million out of mega millions or something and give it to the family of the people that were killed that were innocent.
But as far as mass shooters, illegal aids caused a U.S. citizen to die, they ought to have an immediate death penalty.
I volunteer to throw the switch.
It's Tim in Illinois.
This is Henry in Tampa, Florida.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm a bit undecided about the death penalty situation because I think that, I mean, what kind of seriously, like, what kind of death penalty are we talking about?
Are we talking about mass shooters here?
Are we talking about one individual per se?
I think that the death penalty should be enforced with people that take down schools.
Okay?
And you have to have all the information and you have to have all the evidence.
I get it.
But to just go ahead and take one person down just because they were found with whatever that they were found.
Yeah, I get it.
But at the same time, you have to have all the evidence.
And at the same time, death penalty should be about closure.
Okay.
Parents, people need closure.
Okay.
At the same time, if you're going to go ahead and get the death penalty and you're going to go ahead and take that person down, the people that were involved in that actual crime need actual closure.
Now, that's where I get undecided because the evidence has to be there.
And if the evidence is not there, then how can anyone take any human being down with a death penalty?
That's Henry in Florida.
One more call.
This is Larry in New York.
Thanks for waiting.
Yeah, how are you doing?
This is Larry.
I'd like to say, you know, as far as the death penalty, I oppose it.
And the reason why, you know, I have family members who think I think too much like a vigilante.
I'm an older gentleman in my 60s, but I was in prison for two years, maybe 30, 30-something years ago.
I don't know if people think it's the holiday in or what, but the thing is, that's a miserable, miserable life.
And my so-called vigilante thinking makes me feel like let them spend life in hell because that's what prison is really like, man.
It's hell.
Other than the point one gentleman made about the cost of caring for them for a few years or however number of years it's going to be, it's hell.
Some lady years ago was upset because her daughter was killed and the guy didn't get the death penalty.
I have three daughters.
To me, give them life and let them be miserable.
The death penalty is just a quick way out for them.
That's why people kill themselves and hang themselves when they go to prison, a lot of them.
They want a quick way out.
To me, let them suffer.
So people need to realize.
For people who don't know what that experience is like, what would you tell them more than it's hell?
What can you share from your experience?
That just that, that it was hell.
It's a miserable, miserable life.
And I was only in it for two years.
You know, unfortunately.
What made it so miserable for people who are saying that life in prison is the easier way out for these people who commit horrible crimes?
What made it hell?
Well, for one thing, you have no rights.
They tell you everything to do, when to pee, when to eat, where to go.
But on top of that, you are in the midst of a lot of people who are criminals, criminal minds, doing stuff to each other, raped, jumped, stabbed, killed.
It is not a holiday in.
It's not even close.
It's hell.
Some people, when they get light, they try.
The first thing they do is take away all your, anything that you can kill yourself with because they want the quick, easy hour.
So I'm just saying, just people need to keep that in mind, that prison is not the holiday in.
Me, if they do something to my daughter or my granddaughter, I prefer them to get life in one of the hardest prisons that we have, which we have a few here, Trenton, Ralway.
It's not what people think.
I think the average person doesn't know what it's like.
I don't know what they assume, but they want people, you know, killed for doing something to them or their family member.
But if they knew what prison was like, you know, again, my wife says I'm too much of a vigilante.
I want them to suffer, not have it over real quick.
Thank you.
That's Larry from Albany, New York, our last caller in this segment of the Washington Journal.
Half an hour left this morning.
In that time, we will let you take the reins of this program.
It's our open forum.
Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is your time.
Phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents on your screen.
Go ahead and start calling in.
And as you're calling in, we'll show you C-SPAN looking back on the historic year that was 2024.
Some key moments from Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the campaign trail.
Here's that look.
2024 was a momentous year for C-SPAN.
From continuing our decades-old tradition of providing gabble-to-gabble coverage of the House and Senate to key committee hearings and press conferences.
Good afternoon, everyone.
To landmark Supreme Court cases and to a historic presidential election, including both the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
Here's a look back on the year as we prepare for what's expected to be an action-packed 2025.
What kind of crack do you normally smoke, Mr. Biden?
Let me start again.
My name is Jason DeFor, but to most I am known as Jellyroll.
My name is Brett Farr.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
My name is Michael Phelps.
My name is Sho Chu, and I'm the CEO of TikTok.
Have you apologized to the victims?
Would you like to do so now?
Well, they're here.
You're on national television.
Would you like now to apologize to the victims?
Tonight, all eyes are on Iowa.
I am today suspending my campaign.
The New Hampshire primary.
The time has now come to suspend my campaign.
The events were shameful, criminal, violent, all of those things, but did not qualify as insurrection.
This will be my last term as Republican leader of the son.
Isn't how old we are.
It's how old are our ideas.
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable, because it does bring people together.
Without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it.
The Republican-led House will not be jammed or forced into passing a foreign aid bill.
I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important.
On this vote, the A's are 311 and the Nays are 112.
The bill is passed.
Declaring the office of Speaker of the House Representatives to be vacant.
The yays are 359, the nays are 43, with seven answering present.
Hopefully, this is the end of the personality politics.
Tonight, this event is being televised live on C-SPAN.
For the next 90 minutes, we are going to be live from a brand new exhibition.
Welcome to the National Book Festival.
What's so great about C-SPAN is that you hit every side.
This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.
The real verdict is going to be November 5th.
We'd be well served to remember the long and cherished tradition we have in this country of settling our political differences at the ballot box.
Today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.
Look, if we finally beat Medicare, it was a bad night.
They were trying to push me out on the race.
I'm staying in a race.
Take a look at what happened.
I want to speak to you tonight about the need for us to lower the temperature in our politics.
The most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades.
If tomorrow all the things were wrong, I'd work for all my life.
Say, bye, bye.
I proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States.
I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.
Just over 100 days before an election, Democrat Party bosses forced Joe Biden off the ballot.
There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.
No place in America for anti-Semitism.
Give us the tools faster and we'll finish the job faster.
We are here today to officially give a beat Kimberly Harris.
I accept your nomination to be president of the United States.
And you know what that means?
C-SPAN, don't play.
Wait a minute.
I'm talking now.
If you don't mind, please.
Does that sound familiar?
She went out.
Never touched by a human hand.
Certainly falls into the general definition of fascists.
That's a good-looking group.
Hello, everybody.
There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.
Yeah.
I think it's called Puerto Rico.
I'm ahead.
Yes, you have.
There you go, Let's.
Thanks for being with us on election night.
Look what happened.
Is this crazy?
This will truly be the golden age of America.
The outcome of this election is not what we wanted.
And House Democrats have fallen a few seats short.
We are going to raise an America first banner above this place.
The American people have spoken.
It's a new day in the United States Senate and it's a new day in America.
Politics is tough and it's in many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today and I appreciate very much a transition that's so smooth.
It'll be as smooth as it can get.
And I very much appreciate that, Joe.
You're welcome.
Thank you all.
A look at the year that was, 2024.
It's open forum now on the Washington Journal, taking your phone calls on any political, any topic that you want to talk about.
This is when we let you lead the discussion.
As you're calling in to let you know, a few events going on here in Washington today.
There's a brief pro forma session in the House that will take place at noon today.
You can watch that here on C-SPAN.
Also, on C-SPAN 2, all day today, a marathon of Trump nominees in their own words.
C-SPAN's dug into our archives to show you events featuring nominees of the incoming Trump administration.
They include today Education Secretary nominee Lyndon McMahon, Treasury Secretary Scott Passent, and former Congressman Lee Zeldon, who's been picked to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
Again, all day long on C-SPAN 2.
You can also watch on c-span.org and tune in on the free C-SPAN Now video app.
Also, this week, C-SPAN's airing a series of interviews with departing members of Congress, showing lawmakers giving their farewell speeches on the House and Senate floor.
Tonight, it's retiring senators Tom Carper of Delaware, Kristen Sinema of Arizona, as well as Representatives Alex Mooney of West Virginia and Grace Napolitano of California, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania.
That begins 9 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN on C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPAN Now app.
And now your phone calls for the rest of this program.
This is Roy in Cameron, Texas, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Well, actually, I called in on the support line for the death penalty, and they just passed me on over to the open forum.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody.
I want to say that I do support the death penalty.
Let me give you a reason why.
When that person takes another person's life, he doesn't just affect the person's life he took.
He affects everybody else's life around that person to the point of society as a whole.
So when he violates those people's rights, why should that person have any?
His family can still come see him in prison without the death penalty.
The people who lost a family member will never see that person again.
So you need to think about these things.
And then the second thing I'd like to say, since it is open forum, is I would like to ask the Democratic Party to please do their best to work with Donald Trump.
And I would like to ask the Republican Party to please grow up and quit the infighting.
Other than that, everybody have a great year.
Thank you so much, John.
That's Roy in Texas.
This is Lan, Oakdale, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Go ahead.
Hi.
I'm a first-time caller.
I listened to your previous program, and I just had to call in.
I read a book on questions and answers for the Bible, and that was one of them.
And the Old Testament says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
And the New Testament says, if anyone should take a person's life in cold-blooded murder, so shall their life be taken.
And I just, I read that, I had to call in.
Thank you for taking my call.
That's Lan.
This is Ann, Georgia.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just wanted to touch on the base of the illegal immigrants that have been coming over in so many, many millions that we don't even know how many.
But it has affected our grocery prices.
It's affected our taxes.
And it's going to, I believe it's going to be, if we don't do something about it very soon, get them out of here.
We're going to go broke.
The big fish eat little fish.
And there won't be any little fish that feed those big fish later on.
And how has illegal immigrants impacted your grocery prices?
Oh, my God.
I mean, it's taking more food.
The farmers don't even get treated right.
They're under so many restrictions.
And how much, I mean, food can you, I mean, we're running, we're going to run out of food.
You can't feed the whole world.
United States cannot feed the world.
A lot of our food don't even come from this country.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing that we import food?
That's a bad thing.
That's Anne in Georgia.
This is Cynthia in Youngstown, Ohio.
Democrat, good morning.
Hello.
Happy holidays to you.
Thanks for your service.
I think that one thing that we're looking at historically is we're kind of in a battle for the truth right now because the effect of social media and of podcasts, which I think played the critical role in this past election, they have blurred the lines between reality and virtual reality.
They've also been, you know, we've been affected by content in video games, which has hugely affected this young generation coming up.
And I urge parents out there as someone who works with kids to please take breaks.
Get your kids off those games for periods of time and pay attention to who they're talking to and what they're doing on there.
So that's the effect on the kids.
But the effects on adults is more alarming.
Adults should have a better filter.
And adults, like the woman who was just on there, nothing she said was true.
Immigrants do not hurt the economy.
There's research to support this.
They help the economy.
They are brought in by corporations as a cheap group of workers.
They always have been throughout our history since the start of industrialization.
They've been, and even before that, because they're a cheap labor force and they're motivated by wanting their freedom and working toward their freedom.
They're a great workforce.
They help the economy.
Okay.
We were affected, our economy was affected by problems with the supply chain and trying to catch up from that, all caused by the pandemic, okay?
Which I feel faded into history.
Nobody talked about the ongoing effects of it.
Okay, we wanted to move on from it.
And the Democrats, they have to bear responsibility for not talking about that more.
Cynthia, you said you work with children.
What line of work are you in?
I've been in education.
Okay.
And I've also worked as a counselor with kids.
And you mentioned podcasts greatly influence this election.
Is it serious?
Yes.
Is it a few specific podcasts?
And if so, which ones?
Okay, first of all, Kamala Harris went on a show called Call Her Daddy, which is women talking about women's things, but not necessarily important women's issues.
It's a lot of personal women's issues.
And it kind of toes the line between something you would see in Cosmopolitan Magazine and then some serious issues affecting women.
Okay, so easy for you're not going to get many men or women who take themselves seriously to really listen to that.
So she has like 4 million, 3 million listeners.
Joe Rogan has 15 million.
Joe Rogan, if people who listen to him look back into his past, he's from New Jersey.
He's 5'8 and weighs 150 pounds.
Look at him on TV or look at him on his podcast.
He looks like a big wrestler type guy.
He's a completely made-up formula.
And that's what the Republicans, that is, and they're not Republicans anymore.
They're zealots.
That's what they are.
And, you know, he has a formula, and it's about arousing people.
And it's about empowerment for men.
It's full of testosterone.
The guy's a taekwondo champion.
He talks about, read his history.
It's very interesting.
And he is an interesting person.
He was in comedy.
He tried a lot of different things before he found this niche.
And that's Cynthia in Ohio.
This is Anthony in Florida, Independent.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning, Big John.
John, happy holidays to you.
Welcome back.
We'd have had a treat all week.
We'd have had you.
We didn't have Pedro, Mimi, who I call Mimi, my mind.
And we didn't have Gretch, the queen of awesomeness.
And we thank you all.
But I want to talk about a couple.
Thank you all for the great show.
The death penalty, man, is a challenging issue.
But I think those that are proven to be predators, that serial murderous man, it's hard not to look at the death penalty of them.
And then also the last thing, Ken Walsh.
He's a jolly guy.
It seemed like his writing is one of a great saint.
And then if I seen him, I would call him Nick.
So I would say he's a jolly saint, Nick.
Hey, John, happy holidays, buddy.
It's Anthony in Florida.
This is Danny in Arkansas, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Just curious about, is there any updates on the Madison school shooting?
I'm not providing news updates as we're sitting here having that conversation, Danny, but I can check or you could Google as well.
Okay, because the one issue I see we're not really divided on is school security.
And the question keeps popping into my head.
Well, they can't afford magnetometers.
You know how much a school resource officer costs, so forth and so on.
But they all seem to dump a fortune into school athletics.
I mean, right there, there's a huge chunk of change, but they will not touch high school sports.
And it just, I can't wrap my mind around it.
Any parents listening out there, you go to a school board meeting, you back them into a corner and like, look, the ball team costs how much?
But you're saying a cop or a metal detector costs so much?
No.
That's where you can start to work on the problem.
Danny, cops and male detectors in high schools, I'm assuming you're saying yes.
I'm sorry to say again.
You want cops and male detectors in every high school?
Yes?
I think there should be because everybody has what about middle schools?
What about elementary schools, Danny?
I'm for that also.
I mean, it's a general school budget, my understanding.
Preschools, Danny?
I'm sorry to say again.
Preschools?
I think they should all.
Public schools.
Yes.
I think they should all do that.
I mean, as a homeowner, the majority of your property tax goes to the school district.
So a homeowner should also have a say in this.
It's like, my taxes are so high because so much goes to the school.
This is why I think you ought to appropriate some money, not for football or basketball teams.
School security.
Back in my day, it was a joke if some fool phoned in a bomb threat.
Nowadays, kids just, I wouldn't bump kids for not wanting to go to school.
It's they always talk about mental health and we should work on this and do that.
Start at the beginning.
Look where you're spending your budgetary money and put it towards something useful.
And Stanny in Arkansas.
This is Alan, also in the Natural State Independent.
Go ahead.
Wow, I noticed that.
I noticed that to Arkansas callers in a row.
So good morning.
Happy New Year to everyone, and especially to you, John.
I know you've recognized my call when it's come in before, which has surprised me.
But I have a compliment and a criticism, if you'll allow me.
Sure.
First, on your hosting truly, your, I think the word is grace, that you extended to that caller in the previous half hour who had an issue that he described, and you went to an extra effort to welcome him was really impressive.
And you've done that several times to callers.
So my compliments to you on that.
And so I wanted to get to George Washington for a different issue.
I've called about Ukraine, as you know, before.
I know you have, Alan.
Anna from Ukraine.
But yes, thank you.
But anyway, about George Washington, since you guys, I'm a retired history teacher, as I've mentioned before, and absolutely love George Washington and all the examples that he set.
And so I would assign students one assignment to read the abuses listed in the Declaration of Independence.
There's about 29 of them by my count.
And I'd ask them to select the worst abuse of those 29 abuses.
And the other was to assign George Washington's list of his rules of civility that he lived by.
He memorized them all, and he lived by them.
And I wish you, my suggestion is: I wish you guys would list one of those abuses each day, one of those rules of civility that he lived by.
Just list one each day and give him credit since you use his name, rightly so, and the capital behind you, which he laid the first foundation stone on.
And he set the example.
My criticism is the division of Republican-Democrat calling.
That is so against his.
He said, no, stop the party divisions.
And that's why he instituted the rule, which we went by early on, that the most votes elects the president, the next most votes elects the vice president.
And I just ask everyone to imagine right now Donald Trump president and the Democrat candidate would be the vice president.
And think about the other elections having the most votes elect the president and next most votes elects the vice president.
And people would be satisfied with that.
You wouldn't have this party division.
And of course, the parties took over, which are profit-oriented entities like selling cereal and whatever, cars or whatever.
And we've allowed these political parties to divide our country.
And George Washington said, do not do that.
So I ask you, please stop the party selection, Republican, Democrat stuff.
And just make it regional.
There's a whole age, marital status.
And Alan, we do do that on occasion.
Sometimes with these political issues that are happening on Capitol Hill, it helps people give some information about the caller's background or what they identify with.
But I appreciate the thought.
I did want to ask you, and I'm running short on time.
You talk about the abuses and usurpations listed in the Declaration of Independence, and you had your students figure out what the worst one was.
Of those 27, what do you think the worst was?
Well, it's the one they chose every time.
And thank you for staying on to ask that, because I completely forgot.
That was the point I was wanting to make.
Which of the 27 would you pick?
Yes, yes.
Listen to this.
It is so stunning.
It is absolutely stunning.
It says to, I've got it.
I pull it up here to read it.
It says, he, referring to the King of England, get this, referring to the King of England, he says, he has excited domestic insurrections among us, causing riots among us, in other words.
And he has endeavored to bring on the same insurrection from foreigners to come in against us,
and that he has incited our native citizens to war against us and list that those on board ships that he had taken captive on the high seas, he says, were forced to become the executioners of their own citizens.
In other words, shooting other ships coming off leaving shore or die by their own hands.
That phrase right there.
In other words, they jumped overboard rather than to shoot their own fellow Americans.
Those citizens that the English took captive jumped overboard rather than fire on their own fellow Americans.
That one abuse right there tells the history of our revolution.
And George Washington was reminding us all to remember that and to keep our unity in our country.
So please, please stop just the party division, which he said, do not do party division.
Alan, I appreciate it.
Thanks.
Enjoy talking to you from Arkansas.
We'll talk again in 2025.
Santos is in Sterling, Illinois.
Republican, good morning.
Good morning, John.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Great.
I wish you well and all your good work.
I just have a comment.
I recently caught Matsum Rahmaswami and their participation in their Doge that they were talking about some of their cuts that they want to make to save all this money.
One of them was to cut Pell the grant system here completely, not partially just cut it.
Yet they speak about recruiting engineers and others from other countries because we just don't have the people.
And Trump was on a news program speaking that anyone who were to come here to get even a junior college degree or a further educational degree in our country should get an automatic green card.
They're talking about how we're depleted in our, I guess, higher learning pupils.
Yet at the same time, they want to cut any facilitation that's going to help them complete that endeavor that we all need, as this country does lack in its higher education graduates.
But also, if you're saying that we're going to open the door to having immigrants come and take these higher educational jobs or come here and get educated for these jobs, why not give our kids the same chance?
One of my sons is in computer science.
The other one's going to be a teacher.
They're both in school.
I'm an electrician retired by trade.
But yet, I'm barely able to afford, with the help of Pell Grants and the scholarships they win, if they're both 4.0 students, to push them through college.
It's very difficult for us.
They don't even use housing.
They drive.
It's an hour away.
But I just don't understand it and why they're talking through, and I mean no insult by this, through both sides of their mouth, it seems to me.
You know, if we're going to be lacking in the higher education, well, let's facilitate it.
Let's make it easier, especially for those students who have worked very hard for their grade.
They come out of high school with straight A's.
These boys, and they're my sons, so I don't mean to sound biased, but as a father, of course I am.
But with all those efforts to cut the cost of college, how much do you estimate your boys will be graduating college?
How much debt do you think they'll have when they graduate?
Because I believe we've approached this in a very systematic way and we're sticking to the plan.
We may have what's considered a very low bill, if you were, for both of them, right around $25,000, which, as you know, is probably about one of the lowest student debts that you're going to come out with a master's degree.
Is that $25,000 for each one or $25,000 total?
For each one, for each one.
And that's if everything goes well and they do not cut the Pell funding.
That's with that in place.
And if the Pell funding goes that you use, what does that cost, you think, becomes?
Have you gamed that out?
Yes, you could add about $7,500 per year.
So it would be $7,500 times six years, you know, staying in curriculum and getting their degree within the, I guess, what would be six-year time period.
So more than double the debt if the Pell Grant system goes.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And there's a lot of students that are like them that are starving for that education to be a productive member of this society, contributing to the higher learning areas that we need.
You know, I mean, I commend my two sons.
I respect them very much.
Today, it's very difficult.
I heard one of your callers talking about the division.
I wrote my first book, John, and it got published.
And it's on Barnes ⁇ Noble, and it's all about treating each other right, getting rid of this vision, not paying attention to the party's affiliation of each one of us, treating your neighbor like a brother.
And It's not doing that well because, you know, as far as books go, it seems like they're the last bastion, surviving bastion of people who read who might be interested in such knowledge.
Well, Santos, if you write a book, you always got to mention the book's title.
What is it?
It's called Jesus Saves, Coming Soon.
And my writer's name is States Nay, spelled with an N-E and the hyphen above it.
It's on Barnes Noble.
It's on Amazon, Walmart, Target, paperback, or hardback.
And like I said, it's not really about religion, even the name might say that.
It's about faith.
It's about faith in each other, faith in Christ, treating each other right.
And I thank God for people such as yourself, because we live a mutual endeavor with you, John.
And that is to get the word out there, see what people really think.
The minds of America.
You know, and I bless you for doing your job and you do it well.
That's Santos in Sterling, Illinois, our last caller in the Washington Journal this morning.
But we'll, of course, be back here tomorrow morning.
It is 7 a.m. Eastern.
It is 4 a.m. Pacific.
In the meantime, hope you have a great Friday.
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The decision really came when he called in Leon Djawski, who was the special prosecutor.
And he asked him, he says, how long can Nixon drag this out in the courts?
And Leon Dworski told him three, four, maybe five years.
And I think at that point, Dad just said, enough is enough.
We can't drag this country down for the next three, four, five years.
We've got to move on.
America has to rise up and we have to leave Nixon behind.
And legally, he was the only person that could do it.
All this week, we've been showing you encore presentations of our weekly interview program, QA.
And tonight we conclude the marathon with a behind-the-scenes look at Gerald Ford's presidency from the perspective of his son, Stephen Ford.
Mr. Ford details what it was like when President Nixon resigned from office in 1974, when Gerald Ford was subsequently sworn in as the 38th President of the United States and his father's decision to pardon Richard Nixon.
Watch at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org.
Good morning.
It's Friday, December 27th, 2024.
A three-hour Washington Journal is ahead, and we begin on the topic of the death penalty.
This week, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life in prison.
The move comes just weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, a proponent of expanding capital punishment.
This morning, we begin by getting your view on the use of the death penalty in America.
We're doing so on phone lines split this way.
If you support the use of the death penalty, 202-748-8000 is the number to call.
If you oppose the use of the death penalty, 202-748-8001.
If you're not sure, a phone line for you, 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media, on X, it's at C-SPANWJ, on Facebook.
It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Friday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
This was the headline from Monday by the Associated Press.
President Biden gives life in prison to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates before Trump can resume executions.
This was the statement that President Biden put out along with that move.
Make no mistake, he said in that statement.
I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.
But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level in good conscience.
I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.
That was President Biden on Monday.
It was followed by a statement on Truth Social by Donald Trump.
This is what he said.
The president-elect saying, as soon as I'm inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists and murderers and monsters.
We will be a nation of law and order again, promised the president-elect.
That back and forth, that move by President Joe Biden leading to this discussion this morning on the Washington Journal, simply asking for your view of the death penalty.
Phone lines, if you support it, if you oppose it, if you're not sure, that's okay too.
We want to hear from you in this first hour of the Washington Journal today.