Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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john mcardle
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Appearances
amy klobuchar
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brian lamb
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donald j trump
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kamala harris
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kristen welker
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mike johnson
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nancy pelosi
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barack obama
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bill clinton
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george h w bush
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george w bush
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jimmy carter
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larry becraft
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margaret brennan
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ronald reagan
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willie nelson
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charles in louisiana
callers00:11
grant in minnesota
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pete in virginia
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tim in california
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Washington Journal: Live Calls & Preview00:04:50
unidentified
providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live.
And then Axios political reporter and co-author of Axios' Hill Leaders newsletter, Steph Kite, will preview the week ahead in Congress and in Washington politics.
And then we'll talk with AEI senior fellow Kevin Kosar about Congress meeting today in a joint session to count and certify the 2024 electoral votes.
He'll also discuss changes to the process since January 6th of 2021 when the Capitol was attacked.
It's Monday, January 6th, 2025, a cold and snowy day on Capitol Hill, and also the day that Congress is set to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election.
A joint session of Congress gets underway at 1 p.m. Eastern to begin counting electoral ballots.
And ahead of that, we're getting your thoughts on this day.
Four years removed from the events of January 6th, 2021.
And as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office, we're asking, what does January 6th mean to you?
Phone line split as usual by a political party.
Democrats, it's 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 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 at Facebook.
It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Monday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now January 6th, meaning different things to different people.
In today's Washington Post, President Biden says this is what Americans should remember about January 6th.
This is what he writes.
For months, for much of our history, this proceeding was treated as pro forma, a routine act.
But after what we all witnessed on January 6th, 2021, we know that we can never again take it for granted.
Violent insurrectionists attacked the Capitol, threatened the lives of elected officials, and assaulted brave law enforcement officers.
We should not forget, he writes, we must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it.
We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.
And we should commit, he writes, to remember January 6th, 2021 every year, to remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed.
To remember that democracy, even in America, is never guaranteed.
President Biden in today's Washington Post, a different perspective on this day from Robert Knight writing in the Washington Times today the headline of his piece, How Democrats and the Mainstream Media Used and Abused the January 6th Insurrection.
Citing the insurrection in quotes, Mr. Knight writes, Attorney General Merrick Garland rounded up more than 1,300 people who had been at the Capitol.
Many were in prison for years before facing trial, and some are facing harsh sentences.
Using facial imagery technology, the FBI has been rounding up still more defendants.
Citing the alleged insurrection, Democrats in the House impeached Mr. Trump a second time and held the January 6th committee hearings.
Emboldened by the insurrection narrative, he writes, Democratic prosecutors in four jurisdictions brought spurious charges against Mr. Trump, hoping to keep him from being re-elected.
January 6th, 2021 was the gift that kept on giving for Democrats, he says.
At least they thought so until voters shocked them on November the 5th.
Let's hope, he said, and pray that Monday's Electoral College certification is conducted without any drama.
That's Robert Knight writing in the Washington Times, getting your thoughts in this first hour, simply asking you what does January 6th mean to you?
Again, here's the schedule in the House today.
It's noon when the House meets for legislative business and for morning hour.
And then 1 p.m. will be the joint session when the vote counting and certification process happens.
You can call in this morning, this three-hour Washington Journal on phone lines on your screen, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
We'll start with Kelvin in Maryland line for Democrats.
Good morning.
You're up first.
unidentified
Hey, John.
Good morning, man.
Thanks for taking my call, man.
And yeah, January 6th to me, man, what it did for me, John, it took me back to the insurrection back after the Civil War, man, when the first Reconstruction was started in that 10-year period, man.
Why Are We Giving a Pass?00:15:18
unidentified
And then it slowed to erode away.
And I believe we, as a country, have not learned the lessons from that first Reconstruction era.
And now we're in the second Reconstruction era.
And here we are.
And it's sad.
It really is sad that the people did what they did.
And we now just overlook it.
I mean, now we're trying to give them a pass, John.
I mean, with all due respect, the last caller has no idea what he's talking about.
Donald Trump is probably the best president we've ever had.
And what happened in the election was the people decided that the Democratic Party leadership, which is demonic and a party of death because they like abortion, they decided that they should lose and we should elect Trump.
And January 6th, Trump did not lead an insurrection.
He said peacefully, you know, go down there and protest.
He said, peacefully.
He did not say overthrow the government.
He did not say, you know, overthrow Congress.
So that's a lie, and I'm getting really tired of that.
And today, when they certify the election, and then Trump will be inaugurated again, all of this nightmare is going to be over.
Good morning, and greetings yet again, and happy new year from Motown.
In response to people like Todd, I want to dispel a lot of myths, if I could, if you'll allow me, about the stuff and the conspiracy theories that Trump supporters used to try and justify what happened at the Capitol.
First of all, Todd, if you're listening, Trump did indeed incite the riot.
He told that mob to go to the Capitol and fight like hell, or you won't have a country anymore.
Second, there's the lie about Nancy Pelosi being in charge of security and Trump offering it to her to refuse.
She was not in charge of security for the Capitol.
She wasn't the one who sent that mob.
He did.
And there's this other thing, other conspiracy theory about the FBI being at the Capitol.
Where in that mass of swinging flagpoles and hockey sticks and bear mace did anyone see any FBI agents?
And finally, there's this lame comparison between the attack on the Capitol and Black Lives Matter.
In what ways they think the U.S. Capitol and a Walgreens store are anywhere near morally equivalent?
I've been hearing this stuff all along these last four years, trying to either downplay or outright deny that January 6th even happened, even though the whole world saw it on live TV.
Another op-ed in today's papers from the New York Times.
It's Aquilino Gannell, former sergeant in the U.S. Capitol Police.
He was there on January 6th, the headline of his piece for many of us, January 6th never ended.
For those who didn't experience the violence on January 6th, it might feel like it's in the past, but it's not for me, he writes.
I keep reliving the five horrific hours of that cold Wednesday afternoon as I tried to protect elected officials, regardless of their political ideology and their staff, inside the Capitol building, all without firing my gun.
For my efforts doing my duty as a Capitol Police Sergeant, I was beaten and struck by raging rioters all over my body with multiple weapons until I was covered in my own blood.
My hand, foot, and shoulder were wounded.
I thought I was going to die and never make it home to see my wife and son.
Over the last four years, he writes, it's been devastating to me to hear Donald Trump repeat his promise to pardon insurrectionists on the first day that he's back in office.
It would be my great honor to pardon the peaceful protesters, or as I have called them, the hostages, he said in a speech last year.
But all of us who were there and anyone who watched on TV know that those who stormed the Capitol were not peaceful protesters.
Pardoning them would be an outrageous mistake, he writes, one that could mean about 800 convicted criminals will be back on the street.
His op-ed goes on from there.
Aquilino Gwinnell, former Capitol Police Sergeant, also in the time since leaving the Capitol Police, wrote American Shield: the immigrant sergeant who defended democracy.
It came out this past year.
He was on C-SPAN's book TV at the 2024 Gaithersburg Book Festival.
You can see him talking about his book, his experience.
C-SPAN.org is where you can go for that.
He was talking in that op-ed about potential pardons for those who've been convicted of crimes relating to January the 6th, 2021.
Donald Trump was asked about that in a Meet the Press interview last month.
Those people have suffered long and hard, and there may be some exceptions to it.
I have to look.
But, you know, if somebody was radical, crazy, there might be some people from Antifa there.
I don't know, you know, because those people seem to be in good shape.
Whatever happened to Scaffold Man?
You know who Scaffold Man was?
He stood on a scaffold telling everybody to go and nothing happened to him.
Whatever happened to Ray Epps?
Now, I don't know anything about Ray Epps, but it was sort of strange the way he was talking.
Where is he?
What happened to him?
Because the people that did very little, they arrested an old woman because she, I don't think she did anything.
They don't even know what she did.
These people have suffered.
Their lives have been destroyed.
And yet in Portland, where they burn down half the city, they burn it down all the time.
It's like a routine occurrence.
They don't do anything.
They attack the courthouse, federal courthouse.
You know, they always say federal building.
Okay.
They destroyed the beautiful limestone exterior of the courthouse in Portland.
They killed people in Portland.
Seattle, people got killed in Seattle.
Seattle, they took over a big chunk of the city.
They took it over.
They took the city away.
Minneapolis, it looked like when they said this is a friendly protest, and yet over the poor slobs from CNN, his shoulder, the entire city was burning down.
Was President-elect Donald Trump back on December the 8th, a Meet the Press interview?
In one of the stories in today's papers, a quote from Transition spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt, who said in an email about this issue of pardoning those who've been convicted of crimes related to January 6th, Donald Trump will pardon Americans who are denied due process and unfairly prosecuted by a weaponized Department of Justice.
The latest in today's papers.
Getting your thoughts this morning, what does January 6th mean to you?
That's our question.
Scott, Westminster, Maryland, Republican, go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning.
I believe that the media and the Democrats keep lying about what happened on January 6th.
There was no insurrection.
It is a lie to say it was an insurrection.
It was a violent protest, yes.
Insurrection, no.
Last insurrection took place at Fort Sumter.
Everybody's crying about these, about the people who were injured on January 6th.
Nobody's crying that Ashley Babbitt was shot in the back by Lieutenant Michael Byrd, an alleged police officer for the Capitol Hill police.
He should be charged with murder and he should be prosecuted to full stand law.
Okay, the FBI was there.
There were undercover FBI agents there that were instigating these people to be violent.
And the FBI, at a Capitol Hill hearing broadcast on C-SPAN, an FBI mid-level manager denied that he would not answer the question whether there were FBI agents on January 6th.
Scott, how do you feel about pardons for people who've been convicted of crimes, whether it's assaulting police officers, seditious conspiracy, some 14 people convicted of that?
What do you think of the idea of pardoning those people?
unidentified
I believe that the people who are currently political prisoners who have been persecuted should be pardoned at 12.02 on January 20th.
They were politically persecuted by the weaponized Department of Justice.
And you think everybody, whether they've pled guilty, been convicted, you think every person related to January 6th?
unidentified
I believe President Trump should review the documentation and he will see that these people are political prisoners that were persecuted by Merrick Garland and Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Registered Democrat, and I'm not a fan of Donald Trump.
But four years later, and to this day, none of us, including your first two callers, know all the facts about what actually happened on January 6th for these two reasons.
One, because our legacy media has no interest, no investigative curiosity into finding out all the facts and details about things that took place that day.
And there is a slight cover-up, and that's not my opinion.
Capitol Breach Revelations00:06:56
unidentified
But there's things like former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Stephen Son, who should have been at the January 6th committee because he has expansive information about what took place, and they didn't want to hear what he had to say.
Then we have, there are two videos, and I've been seeing these videos since February 2021.
There's two videos of Caucasian and African-American U.S. Capitol police officers letting hordes of Trump supporters into the Capitol, waving them in.
These videos are, they show them again on Friday on the TV show Greg Kelly Reports on Newsmax.
I recommend that turn it on again tonight.
They might show it again.
But these cops, their faces, you can see their faces, and no one has asked questions.
Who are these cops?
No one has identified them and saying who gave them the orders to wait.
Now, some people, yes, some people did invade and broken the Capitol.
But these people walked in and hundreds of these people who were charged with trespassing said they were let in by police.
Walter, you mentioned Stephen Son, the former Capitol Police Chief.
He wrote a book as well, Courage Under Fire, the Definitive Account from Inside the Capitol on January 6th, that book coming out about two years ago.
But he has written his account.
You're here in D.C., Walter.
Can you describe security in D.C. ahead of what's happening today?
Already preparations in place for the inauguration.
Also, the event this week, the state funeral for Jimmy Carter, the lying in state.
What's it like around D.C. for you this week?
unidentified
The way D.C. security is tight, but security, as I said, is always tight because that's up there.
If you read Stephen Son's book, he also mentioned that Nancy Pelosi and the Sergeant at Arms, Paul Urban, are the ones responsible for the breach of the Capitol, not Trump, because he'd been on a horn trying to get Secret Service.
And also, Trump authorized 10,000 National Guard troops.
That also came out by the National Guard whistleblowers.
See, a whole lot of information has been coming out that Nancy Pelosi, and they were FBI confidential human sources.
23 of them did not have authorization being there.
So that's why some people think that, and when you have Jill Sanborn, you also had Mayor Gardner and Christopher Ray who refused to answer the question when they were being grilled about how many, and they said, I can't answer that.
Some people do suspect those people were set up.
And the thing is, I'm not defending everybody, the ones who committed crimes, but the QAnon guy, he's free because that guy didn't do anything because the video showed that he didn't actually do anything.
And Rico Torreo, he should be released because he was in Baltimore.
Those who watched what happened on January the 6th and in the weeks or months after certainly know the name, the QAnon shaman, as he was described.
He's profiled in today's New York Times.
They look back on where several of these folks are today who were there on January 6th.
This is Jacob Chansley, his name.
Few people are more visibly associated with the Capitol attack than Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman who entered the Capitol building in face paint and a horned headdress while brandishing an American flag on a spear-tipped flagpole.
Moving with the first wave of rioters, he left a threatening note on the Senate floor for Vice President Mike Pence, who had to be hustled to safety as the mob overwhelmed the Capitol that day.
Yet, like others who disrupted the election certification, Mr. Chansley seeks to cast the 41-month sentence he received as, quote, experiencing tyranny firsthand.
Even after his release, he maintains that January 6th was a setup by the government and that public officials and the news media have painted him as a villain and a terrorist.
Still, Mr. Chansley, 37, said his day-to-day life in Phoenix creating art remains much the same as it was before that day, other than I get more interviews now, is what he told the New York Times.
This is Juanita in Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
You're next.
unidentified
Well, good morning, John.
Waited a long time to talk to you, buddy.
For me, January 6th was a day of treason.
And it was thanks to Mitch McConnell and our Supreme Court that we now have a man who is above the law.
And I am just disgusted by the whole thing.
I just lost a husband back in June who served in World War II.
The official announcement from the White House cites Liz Cheney, along with others who received the Presidential Citizens Medal that day.
This was her citation.
Throughout two decades in public service, including as a congresswoman for Wyoming and vice chair of the committee on the January 6th attack, Liz Cheney has raised her voice and reached across the aisle to defend our nation and the ideals that we stand for.
Freedom, dignity, and decency.
Her integrity and intrepidness reminds us all what is possible if we work together.
The official statement from the White House.
This is Mark in New York.
Good morning.
What does January 6th mean to you?
Don't Believe in Political Violence00:04:58
unidentified
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Thank you for C-SPAN.
And I'm in NYC, New York, by the way.
In NYAC.
I just want to say, yeah, I just want to say two facts.
I don't deal in conspiracy theories like all these MAGA people that keep calling in.
And the fact is that violence was used to enter our Capitol.
I don't know if some of the police were Trumpers and they opened the door for people, but I don't believe in political violence.
I've been to Washington, D.C. and other places, and I have demonstrated nonviolently.
And I was actually at the Capitol a year before, and we tried to get up the steps, and it was environmentalists, by the way, totally peaceful.
And we were blocked by the cops and arrested anybody who tried to get up the steps and had to pay fines.
And that's because MAGA is a violent political movement.
I mean, they accept violence as possible.
And I, you know, for their political means, I think that is a problem.
We're about halfway through this first hour of the Washington Journal, simply asking you this January the 6th, 2025, what does January 6th mean to you?
Plenty of op-eds and stories out there on this topic today ahead of the electoral vote counting and certification.
Here's one: the History Department briefing in Politico magazine, the headline, 20 years before January 6th, Al Gore stood up to his own party, and Mike Pence was watching.
It's by presidential historian Michael Cruz.
This is what he writes: Last summer, in a private moment at the memorial service for Axender Joe Lieberman at the Washington Hebrew Congregation, two former vice presidents had a conversation.
Al Gore thanked Mike Pence, according to people close to both men, in an interaction that's never been reported for his actions at the Capitol on January 6th when it was attacked by a mob.
Pence, on the opposite side of the political aisle, but in the same set of pews, said something surprising in response.
He suggested to Al Gore that he had done what he'd done on January 6th, 2021, in part because of what he had seen as a newly sworn-in member of Congress on January the 6th, 2001.
He had witnessed a vice president like him stand up to pressure from his own party to defy the Constitution, even though doing so by definition meant personal defeat.
I never forgot it, Pence said to Gore in the recollection of a Pence ally that day.
You don't know how much that means to me, Gore said, coming from you.
What Pence did and did not do four years back underscored the elementally high peril of what's often considered all but a formality, the certification of the Electoral College vote.
More from Michael Cruz in Politico magazine, if you want to read that.
Andres waiting in Ohio.
It's Gates Mill, Ohio, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for C-SPAN.
Thank you for taking my call.
Quite a timely subject, this one.
I'm a fairly frequent caller.
I'm a registered Republican.
I haven't voted for the president-elect in his two attempts.
January 6th Coup Attempt00:15:47
unidentified
And I am one of the, I guess, few people watching C-SPAN that watched this whole thing come about.
And it's unbelievable that there are the only kind word would be pea brains that either never witnessed what happened or are so deep into what is essentially fascist ideology to invent all these stories about green being yellow.
Of course, we're watching it right now on your screen, or at least I am.
What went down?
This was not police letting people in.
This was a riot.
It was a coup attempt and it was egged on by the then President of the United States.
This clown, utter clown, made us, made the United States of America be just like any other damn country in the world.
We had a coup.
You know, there's been coups from south of the border to the tip of South America, all over Africa.
Obviously, Mr. President-elect's favorite person who happens to be Adolf Hitler, he started his political career by egging on and trying to carry out a damn putsch, a coup d'état.
You mentioned you haven't voted for Donald Trump in the now three times that he's run for president, you just made a Hitler comparison to Donald Trump.
Why are you a Republican?
unidentified
Why am I a Republican?
Because I am a Republican, because I believe in small government.
I don't believe in uniparties.
Okay?
This is why I'm doing this.
And I will say this much.
Not only has he installed a putsch or tried to and failed, okay?
It was yesterday on CBS on Face the Nation that Nancy Pelosi responded to the idea of President-elect Donald Trump pardoning January 6th, those who've been convicted of January 6th crimes when he becomes president.
Well, it just depends on how they define what that is.
But I know that some of that encouragement and then the follow-up that so many people were threatened, including me, and to my home looking for me and finding my husband, and as I say, who still suffers from head injuries on that day.
So these things don't just happen and go away when you have a head injury.
But anyway, to see the threat to so many people in elective office, going beyond me, but so many people in elective office, it shouldn't be a threat to your family that you have chosen to do public service.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yesterday, this is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, the usually conservative editorials.
The question they write today is Trump's pardon promise for January 6ers, does it include the ex-meth trafficker who brought a metal baton and swung it at a police officer?
How far will he go, they ask, saying that pardoning such crimes would contradict Mr. Trump's support for law and order and send an awful message about his view on the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf.
Even if Mr. Trump restricts his clemency to nonviolent offenses, they write, he'd do well to examine the details.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal today, if you want to read that.
This is Laura in Spokane, Washington Republican.
Good morning.
You are next.
unidentified
Good morning.
Well, I feel that all of them should be pardoned and that their lives should be restored for them.
And here's why.
The facts are, facts don't support this idea that it was an insurrection.
There's a lot of jibber jabber.
There's a lot of false facts.
But none of it really adds up when you look at the truth of it.
I think that there were, and it's been proven they had people there that were bought and paid for to provide a riot-like attitude and cause trouble and stuff like that.
There's a picture on the front page of today's Washington Post, one of the broken windows from that day, this picture taken the day after January 6th of 2021.
So as you watch some of the videos that were taken that day, what do you think you're seeing?
unidentified
I'm seeing a group of people peacefully walking through the building.
That's it.
Trying to get there to air their grievances to the government.
What I do see is a lot of flim flam and a lot of staging.
And we're not looking at the real reason for this.
Now, they had the right to address the government and say, and they were right.
Okay, we now know that the election was fraudulent because of Hunter's laptop.
Tell you what, Loretta, I think we've got to work on your line.
As we're doing that, let me go to Harvey in California, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm real concerned about what happened.
A couple of callers ago, a gentleman called this a coup.
I saw it happen on TV as he did.
And I feel very strongly it was a coup, and it's a continuing coup.
Now, there's been a lot of activity on the 14th Amendment, Section 3 and 5 that you cannot hold office.
The Supreme Court on the 4th of March last year said they overturned the Supreme Court of Colorado that had a Republican electorate, Norma Anderson, that contested this.
It was also contested in 20 states, including Illinois and Maine.
So the electoral, okay, and also there is the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan group, and they had on the 8th of March, a guy from Garber from University of Maryland and a guy from the Hoover Institute at Stanford Law, McDonald.
And they brought up that, also they said that this all kind of jumbled, that the Supreme Court's decision didn't make any sense, contradictions, and they were trying to avoid what Trump threatened was violence.
And also, you've got like the group that came up with this Project 25.
They said, look, they're going to take away justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and education.
And then they said, if the left doesn't like it, then there won't be violence.
It's 7:45 on the East Coast, taking your phone call, simply asking, what does January the 6th mean to you?
The House is set to meet at noon Eastern today.
It's 1 p.m., where the joint session will take place for electoral ballot counting and certification.
President Biden is not in Washington, D.C. today.
He and First Lady Jill Biden traveling to New Orleans today to grieve with family members and residents affected by that New Year's Day attack in New Orleans.
Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday was on Fox Sunday Morning Futures.
He spoke about what's going to happen today in the House for this January 6th meeting, this joint session of Congress.
We've got a big snowstorm coming to D.C., and we encourage all of our colleagues to do not leave town, stay here, because, as you know, the Electoral Count Act requires this on January 6th at 1 p.m.
So whether we're in a blizzard or not, we are going to be in that chamber making sure this is done.
Listen, President Trump had a mandate, a landslide.
You know, so many electoral votes, and we get to count them all, and we cannot delay that certification.
He deserves that.
77 million Americans voted for President Trump in this agenda, almost 75 million for the House.
That's our highest number ever.
So we call it a mandate.
I believe it is, and we've got to get to work beginning immediately on Monday.
There were problems with the follow-up to January 6th.
And the committee, when they played the tape of Trump telling people to get out to the White House, never did kind of play the part where he said do it peacefully and patriotically.
I have serious concern about the fact that from December, they knew after the December events that there was going to probably be a problem maybe at the Capitol, certainly enough that they should have really had a lot of people about that.
That being said, Trump sat for 87 minutes in the White House and watched Fox TV, did nothing about calling off the riot, and I call it a riot, not an insurrection.
Killed at the Capitol00:12:01
unidentified
The guys that were punished for breaking into the Capitol, assaulting the police and things like that, that really happened.
I hate to tell the Trump people that.
And this guy, Ray Fs, they go after him.
And I think Tucker Carlson got in a little trouble because of that.
So, you know, it was a shame.
And to me, the bottom line was that Al Gore lost by 500-plus votes in Florida and accepted the court decision.
Donald Trump lost by 7 million votes popularly and by over 10,000 votes in the two closest votes states, and yet challenged in courts that turned him down, including Republican court, Trump-apported justice, every challenge they made.
And you still hear that the election was stolen.
I think it's a disgrace to the American people.
And Trump was legitimately elected this time, but I think this will follow him in the history books forever.
And I really am sorry that a lot of followers of Trump don't understand exactly what they're getting into.
This was late November of last year, a federal judge throwing out a defamation suit against Fox News by a former Donald Trump supporter who said he received death threats when the network aired false conspiracy theories about his involvement in the Capitol insurrection.
Ray Epps, former Marine, falsely accused by Fox of being a government agent causing trouble near the Capitol that day so that it would be blamed on Trump fans.
A U.S. District Judge granted without comment Fox's motion to dismiss the case.
Epps was the subject of a 60-minutes interview in 2023, shortly before filing his lawsuit, claiming that he and his wife sold an Arizona ranch where they lived and moved because of the harassment that they faced because of the reports.
And Epps had named Tucker Carlson as being the most active promoter of the conspiracy theory.
That's from the Associated Press.
This is Jimbo Bakersfield, California, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, John.
Hey, every January 6th, I always think about how my intelligence is going to be insulted again or going to tell me that which I saw on C-SPAN that day didn't happen.
And it's just tiresome to hear it every year.
You didn't see that.
That didn't happen.
And again, this is coming from someone who just has a visceral hate for both political parties.
Okay, I have no need for either of you.
But what I really am tired is this MAGA crowd trying to tell me that I didn't see what I saw on January 6th.
All right.
Now you're just downright insulting to us, to all of us.
You know what?
Own it because it's who you are.
And that's what you need to understand.
It's that your continuous, repetitive, nauseating lies do not penetrate the American people.
One other thing, John, when you look at that scene where the police are being pushed in at the bike racks, I want everyone to visualize if that had been a sea of black faces, as opposed to primarily a whole bunch of old white people, how would have the police responded then?
Would there have been bloodshed that day on that front line?
Many people speculate that there would have.
So the racial component to all of January 6th and the police response to it is also an interesting thing.
What do you think about Joe Biden writing an op-ed in today's Washington Post saying this is what Americans need to remember about January 6th, saying we must heed the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it, and we can't accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.
It's right there in the middle of the op-ed page of the Washington Post.
unidentified
Yeah, again, it would have been great if it would have come from someone like who has some respect within the community of people.
Again, Joe Biden told us that he was going to be the transition president, a one-term president, and he lost all credibility when he ran for a second term.
So Joe Biden can say pretty much anything that he wants to now, and he has no credibility.
Again, that's why Joe Biden is a textbook example of why the Democratic Party needs to disband and become a party of actual Americans.
I haven't had a political party since Pete Wilson was our governor.
Okay, I've been voting for Mickey Mouse because of the Electoral College and its close association with slavery when it should have been done away with during the 14th Amendment.
My vote hasn't counted since Pete Wilson was our governor.
So, again, I have no say in this government at all.
I live in Bakersfield.
So, again, I don't have any influence on my congressman.
He's going to be a Republican.
I don't have any influence on my senator.
He's going to be a Democrat.
I don't have any influence over my president.
I know that for as long as I live in California, 50 rural college votes are going to go for Jim.
That's Jim, an independent, but Jim, a frequent caller on this program.
Probably hear from him next month.
Give us a call again.
Sorry you got cut off there, Jim.
This is one more op-ed for you.
PJ Media, it is Scott Pinsker writing today about January 6th, or I should say an alternative January 6th.
He says, in a different timeline, January 6th, 2025 was going to be glorious.
The media would run harrowing retrospectives on Trump's insurrection in 2021 with scary, foreboding music playing in the background.
All the liberal talking heads would piously tell the cameras how close we came to losing our freedom.
It was the most dangerous day in America since the Civil War, they'd solemnly insist.
And then they'd sigh in relief, chastise those stupid American people one last time, and pat themselves on the back for finally defanging the evil MAGA menace.
We did it, guys.
It was all supposed to culminate with the sitting vice president, the lovely and talented and liberal Kamala Harris, presiding over the certification of her grand historic victory.
The screenplay was perfect, he writes.
You can always imagine Kamala grinning from ear to ear, the Democrats applauding while wiping tears from their eyes, and the Republicans finally admitting the error of their ways.
He says, Alas, the American people read that screenplay and threw it in the garbage truck.
It sucked.
Fortunately, the president-elect was already driving a garbage truck.
Scott Pinsker writing in PJ Media, time for a couple more phone calls in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
We'll have more time later as well if you didn't get in this segment.
This is Ethan in Massachusetts, Republican.
Good morning.
I think we lost.
Ethan, this is Sherry in Columbus, Ohio, Democrat.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, John.
I just want to say that Sinclair Lewis once wrote that when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
And I believe that fascism came on January 6th, 2021.
And I want to shout out to my fellow Ohioan who is on my page.
The activities of January 6th were a rally or a demonstration until the individuals violently entered the Capitol, and then it turned to something else.
unidentified
But my question revolves around accurate reporting and what we call the activities of that day.
I realized on January 6th, hundreds, if not thousands, of people were killed at the Capitol.
What do we call the activities that took place across the country under the banner of Black Lives Matter?
unidentified
Much more damage was caused.
Many more lives were lost.
What is the prosecutions, what prosecutions took place over those activities?
I think that it should be reported evenly.
Those people that went into the Capitol were violent.
They were more than protesters, but they didn't kill people.
Someone died, but they didn't die at the hands of a protester.
A protester died at the hand of a Capitol policeman.
And that's unfortunate, but that protester brought it on himself.
I'm not condoning anything that those people did, but I would just like to have it reported accurately what did take place and call people like the Black Lives Matter, who were both white and black, who protested under that banner.
I'd like them to be called rioters or anarchists or something like that, not protesters.
That's Andy in New Jersey, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around, plenty more to talk about this morning, including up next, we'll be joined by Step Kite, Axius Political Reporter.
We'll preview the week ahead in Congress and in Washington politics.
And later, AEI senior fellow Kevin Kosar joins us to discuss the joint session today, the counting and certification process, explaining the history of January the 6th.
Experience history as it unfolds with C-SPAN's live coverage this month as Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress and a new chapter begins with the swearing in of the 47th President of the United States.
Today, live from the House chamber, witness Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the Electoral College vote, where this historic session will officially confirm Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
And on January 20th, tune in for our live all-day coverage of the presidential inauguration as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming the 47th President of the United States.
Stay with C-SPAN this month for comprehensive, live, unfiltered coverage of the 119th Congress and the presidential inauguration, C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
Brian McClanahan has a PhD from the University of South Carolina in history.
Several years ago, he wrote a book titled Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her.
His view on the presidency is not the traditional one you get from most historians.
On the back of his book, published by Regnary History, the liner notes claim the worst presidents are the ones who want to, quote, reform unquote, the country through the power of the federal government, which usually means usurping the power of Congress or the people.
Brian McClanahan focuses a negative spotlight on Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama and others.
unidentified
Brian McClanahan with his book, Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her.
On this episode of Book Notes with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Mondays, when Congress is in session, we'd like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington to do that this first Monday of the 119th Congress.
We're joined by Steph Kite, politics reporter with Axios, and Steph Kite from the electoral electoral vote counting to a lying in state.
It's a busy week on Capitol Hill.
Just walk us through the schedule these next couple days first.
unidentified
Yeah, well, today is the big day of certifying the election results, certifying President-elect Trump's win.
Senate Hearings and Confirmations00:08:29
unidentified
Of course, that will be overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris.
That's her role.
Of course, it's perhaps a little bit awkward that she will be the one to announce that her opponent won the election.
So we've got that going on today.
And then we will see, there'll be former President Jimmy Carter will be lying in state and in the rotunda in the middle of the week.
And then his funeral will be on Friday where we'll see all of the former presidents gathering together.
Again, another potentially awkward moment with a bunch of people who have not always been on good terms and who have been political enemies over the past several years, but coming together as is traditional to honor the former president's life.
So amid all of that, is there going to be time for legislative business on Capitol Hill this week?
unidentified
You know, we might not see a ton of legislative business in particular, but one thing that we'll be watching in the Senate is how they begin to prepare for these confirmation fights, which will really kick off next week.
There's a rule where committee chairs have to give a week's notice before they have a hearing.
And so with them just really getting started, just really getting going here, they're going to, you know, announce when those hearings are going to start taking place.
We're expecting to see a focus on some of the national security picks, people like Pete Heckseth for the Defense Department, for example, someone we're expecting early on, Tilsi Gabbard, as her intelligence leadership role.
So we're going to start seeing indications that those are going to be moving quickly.
Then next week is when we'll see those hearings actually kick off.
And when those hearings take place, do they usually let one go at a time?
Are there hearings that happen at multiple times?
Obviously, they're senators that are on different committees, so they may be called in if there's hearings happening at the same time.
unidentified
Yeah, they try to avoid conflict, but you can see them stacked up pretty quickly.
We're expecting quite a few on the 14th and 15th.
And again, as you pointed out, it kind of depends on which committees these nominees end up sitting before, whether there's a lot of overlap in those memberships or whether they can kind of have hearings going on at the same time.
Because of course, just the members of these committees that oversee the agency that these people are being nominated for are going to be the ones who have this hearing.
Some nominees, for example, RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services, will have to sit before two different committees in the Senate, both help and judiciary.
So there will be, you know, there's going to be a lot of hearings coming up.
Some of them are probably going to be contentious.
Some of these nominees have some concerns that senators are going to want to have addressed.
So that's going to be an exciting thing to watch next week.
What's the primary focus for newly re-elected Speaker Johnson?
unidentified
Well, the number one thing that we know that the House and the Senate are both focused on is this huge reconciliation package.
Of course, President-elect Trump weighed in just yesterday officially saying that he no longer wants the two-part reconciliation bill.
He wants one big bill that will address things like extending his tax cuts.
It'll address border funding, funding for deportation efforts.
It'll address energy policy.
It's going to be a really large bill.
He has also said he wants to include the no taxes on tips policy that he's been campaigning on in this one bill.
For a while, we thought there would be two bills, that there would be one that was border-focused and another that then addressed extending tax cuts.
But it's clear that Speaker Mike Johnson thinks he needs it to be all in one bill in order to kind of corral his own conference and make sure Republicans have the votes to actually pass so many of these top priorities.
So we're already seeing those negotiations being hashed out publicly and also hearing about it behind closed doors.
And that's really going to be the fight over the next few weeks and next few months.
Why is this different from a regular bill that may include different pieces?
unidentified
Well, the reason they're using reconciliation is it's a way to get around the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate.
It allows for budget-related items to be passed with a simple majority in the Senate.
And there are rules around this.
It's not just an easy way to get around the filibuster.
It can only be used with policies that are related to the budget.
And there is a process that Congress will have to go through to make sure that the policies they want to get through meet that criteria.
It'll go before the Senate parliamentarian who will ultimately decide whether the things that Republicans want to get done can get done through this process.
Otherwise, if it's too policy-oriented, if it's not directly budget-related, then there's a chance that it could be rejected.
And those are the kinds of things that would have to get done in a bipartisan way in the Senate.
Steph Kite of Axios with us for this week ahead in Washington.
Now would be the time to call in with your questions about what's going to be going on in that building over my shoulder this week and in the weeks to come.
It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, 202748, 8002.
I want to get into the margins in the House and Senate.
For the first time in modern history, the House majority margin, four votes, is smaller than the Senate majority margin, six votes.
So what does that mean for John Thune, for Mike Johnson, for Donald Trump?
unidentified
I think the number one thing that this means is something that we've seen over this weekend, that there is going to be a lot more catering to the House in order to get things done.
Usually it's the Senate that's the chamber that's harder to get things through because of the filibuster, right?
Usually it's the Senate where things end up.
Bills get past the House, political messaging bills get past the House, they go to the Senate, and then they don't go anywhere.
Now we're looking at a situation, especially when you're talking about reconciliation, where they're really going to have to cater to the House even more.
For example, Senate Majority Leader John Thune wanted this two-part bill for reconciliation.
He publicly, he told his members that's what they were doing.
The Senate was all on board.
But because House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn't think he can get two bills across, they're going to cater to what the House needs to get it done.
And we've seen over the past few years that House Republicans, there is a faction of them who are very willing to make things difficult.
And there are a handful of them who are even willing to buck Trump on some issues.
Thomas Massey, for example, was willing to still vote against Mike Johnson despite the fact that President-elect Trump said that he was the one he wanted for Speaker.
And so you're going to see these conservative voices continue to have power.
And one of their biggest things is spending cuts.
And so whether they really do continue to push for that, even if Trump has very expensive priorities right now, is going to be a key thing to watch.
However, there is a chance that some of these Republicans are going to feel more comfortable falling in line with Trump at the head, right?
When Biden is in office and Biden is in the White House, Republicans are going to be even more willing to push back, to not let things go through.
So there is a little bit of a chance that we see a little bit of more cohesive working together when Trump is the one calling the shots.
So we saw this play out on the House floor in the speaker vote.
Three Republicans voting against Mike Johnson initially, two members get a private meeting behind closed doors with Mike Johnson and then come back and change their vote, that every vote is going to count for Mike Johnson.
unidentified
Oh yeah, every single vote will count.
And also, you know, making sure everyone is in attendance will count.
You know, if something happens, if you're missing one person for other reasons, that's going to completely blow up the chances of getting legislation passed.
And he's going to have to follow the rules he laid out.
One of the reasons why he's managed to get the conservative support he has is because Mike Johnson has continued to promise to give them more insight into the bills before they come to the floor, more time to look at legislation, to make sure it goes through rules whenever possible and not avoiding the rules committee and getting help from Democrats to pass things.
And all of that is just going to make it very difficult for the House to get anything done.
We've been talking a lot about the media this January 6th and how it's been covered in the media.
Any thoughts on that and how Axios has been covering this issue?
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, first to the caller's question, I mean, one of the key elements of democracy is a free press.
It's press with different viewpoints that have different listeners and different viewers, and that is all an important part of what makes our democracy a democracy.
And so freedom of speech is incredibly important.
And so, yes, it's important.
But, you know, we read into the question a little bit.
And there is real concern still and real distrust in the media right now.
We've seen this for a very long time, for several years.
And we see it, you know, with Elon Musk posting on X, you know, very explicitly criticizing the media's coverage of Trump.
And I mean, what I try to do, what Axios is trying to do, and all the reporters that I talk to is trying to be as unbiased as possible, trying to both hold people accountable and be critical of our coverage, but not in any political biased way.
But it is important for all reporters to do what we can to regain trust from the American people in what we cover.
Steph Kite runs the Hill Leaders newsletter at Axios.
Explain what that is and your coverage focus and how you cover Hill Leaders.
unidentified
Yeah, so this is Axios' newest newsletter.
We launched just a few weeks ago.
Time, I'm not sure.
Time is meaningless.
It's been a long, a long few weeks.
But we've launched this to really, really focus on our coverage of the Capitol and through the lens of leadership.
Because at the end of the day, it comes down to Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader John Thune to determine what gets put on the floor, how to rally their own members.
So our focus is really on leadership, both at the very top, also committee leaders, people who are determinative on what gets done in Congress.
And we know that we're going into this new Washington with President Trump's second administration, and they are ambitious.
They have a lot of things that need to get done, but a lot of the things that they need to get done are going to have to go through Congress.
And so that's something we'll be covering very closely.
Who will be the key committee leaders that you're going to be focusing on?
There are a lot of committees in the House and Senate.
So how do you figure out where to focus?
unidentified
Well, to start with the reconciliation fight, we'll be looking at Senator Lindsey Graham, who's chairing the budget committee.
A lot of that will go through him.
He will be a key person there.
The other kind of leadership we're watching are the senators on the Hill, senators and members who are closest with Trump.
We know that Trump is very engaged.
He's the kind of person who makes phone calls, who makes things happen.
Trump becomes, you know, he becomes a whip and he starts trying to move people in the direction he wants them to go.
And so people who are comfortable with the president-elect, the senators and members who are frequently getting phone calls and texts from him are going to be sources of power in this next Washington.
And so that's another space to watch, whether that's, you know, Tom Cotton was one who was considered for the administration.
Now will be the number three in leadership and also will be chair of the Intelligence Committee, another very powerful committee.
And lastly, the committee I will be watching closely is the Appropriations Committee, especially in the Senate.
With Susan Collins as chair, so much of Congress's power comes down to where money is appropriated.
And so that committee is always one that is very influential.
And when you have Susan Collins and Mitch McConnell as well on that committee, those are two voices who have not been hesitant about pushing back on Trump in the past.
And they could use their weight there to do that as well.
I have a question because you have brought up like the January 6th and all that.
So I could go into that, but I'm not going to.
My question for you guys is because the way the last four years have gone, even starting with the January 6th of the year before, is there a way that they could stop that certification of President Trump?
There actually have been changes to the way the proceedings will go today since January 6, 2021, to kind of respond to some of the issues at that time.
So it would actually be even more difficult for there to be any kind of overturning of these election results or even objections made.
In the past, before December of 2022, when the Electoral Account Reform Act was passed, all it took was one representative and one senator to object to a state's electors.
And that would require Congress to go back to their chambers to deliberate and vote on whether to honor that objection.
Now it takes far more than just one senator and one representative.
It takes a fifth of each chamber in order to even have a vote to object to these states' electors.
So, you know, procedurally, it's much more difficult now than it was even Jan 6 in 2021 to even object to states' electors.
We also have no indication that there is even going to be an effort to object to some of these.
Even Vice President Kamala Harris will be overseeing this process, and she has been very clear that Donald Trump won the election.
I would just tell Sylvia that we're going to dive even deeper into what specifically happens today in the history and the Electoral Vote Count Act at 9.15 a.m. on this program.
Kevin Kosar of the American Enterprise Institute, longtime scholar of Congress, writes about it and he'll be joining us.
But a great preview.
Thank you for that.
This is Tom in Philadelphia.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I was calling, and this sounds like a trivial thing, but it really does have meaning.
On January 6th, 21, when Trump was in his office watching January 6th, I think it'd be nice to know what he was ordering from the kitchen.
And it sounds trivial, but I'm pretty sure that guy was...
We've had the select committee on January the 6th.
We had a Republican committee that looked into January 6th.
Is there going to be another January 6th committee in the 119th Congress?
unidentified
You know, it's a good question.
I'm not sure that there will be, although we do know that Trump has made it clear he plans to even on day one to pardon some of the people who participated in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol who have been met with the law and who are in prison, some of them.
And so there's a chance that there is some kind of investigation on that side of things in Congress.
We know that Republicans may want to dig into how the Jan 6 fallout went and how people, how those investigations were played out.
But we also know that many Republicans are trying to move past Jan 6 entirely.
That's kind of their line when you ask them about it, is that they're looking forward.
They're not looking to the past.
And with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, at least for now, I expect Jan 6 to not be a top priority.
Less than 10 minutes left with Steph Kite this morning of Axios.
First time on since you wrote this story back in December about the Senate starting secret talks about a bipartisan border deal.
I promise to get to immigration.
What's been the developments there and what is this deal about?
unidentified
Well, we know for sure that there are many Democrats who are much more willing now than even a few years ago to talk about border security, to talk about doing immigration reform.
Many of the people I talk to who express interest in moving forward with this are people who are in these battleground states, people who are either in border states or battleground states, whether that's Arizona, Pennsylvania, other places as well.
So Democrats have certainly shifted what they're willing to talk about when it comes to border and immigration in a way that is very unique and where if there was to be a separate border bill outside of reconciliation, it would be interesting to see how many Democrats would be willing to actually get on board with that.
These conversations are obviously very early, and many people I've spoken to say that first they want to try to get as much done as they can through reconciliation, get significant funding for the border for deportation efforts and infrastructure there, and do what they can, Republicans only first.
But I do think this is a space to be watching, especially since the president-elect indicated that he might be willing to do something to protect DREAMers, people who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children.
Now they are all adults, but who don't have any legal status?
Who are the potential deal makers here on both sides?
Who would be the go-to for a Republican looking to make a deal to start to try to bring in Democrats?
What Republican would be leading that effort in the 119th Congress?
unidentified
It's a good question.
On the Democratic side, Mark Kelly in Arizona has been someone who has always been relatively moderate when it comes to his immigration proposals.
He has been an advocate for border security, so he would be one Democrat who you could look to.
Senator Fetterman from Pennsylvania was one who I talked to and who said he's maybe not been involved in conversations so far, but he would be very eager to talk to Republicans and try to work something out on this issue.
On the Republican side, you know, Lindsey Graham will be a key voice in budget.
He has done immigration legislation in the past, so he could be a voice there.
You know, John Cornyn in Texas could be another one.
He's been known for working bipartisan deals.
James Lankford was the Republican who led the last round of these bipartisan talks, which ultimately ended in failure.
So he could be another one who gets roped back in.
Do you think, what is the thirst for prosecuting Liz Cheney?
I think there's a lot of Republicans that really would not rather move on and would like some accountability from her.
I know there's a lot of deep state ghouls that would like to take, would like to not prosecute Ms. Cheney and then Thompson.
What do you think is going to happen there?
I mean, it's clear that Trump has said that he would want to prosecute some of his enemies.
He's also deferred recently to his picks to lead the Justice Department.
Pam Bondi is looking likely to get confirmed there.
Cash Battelle, who he's chosen for FBI, will be another key voice to watch there.
And that is something that we're all watching very closely.
Whether we see some of these leaders at DOJ kind of respond to these years of Republicans criticizing the politicization of that agency and whether they then use the agency to go after some of the president's own critics in their own way, it will be a space we'll be watching very closely.
But it's unclear right now what the real appetite is.
There are, of course, a few voices among Republicans who want to see this kind of aggressive action, but then there are others, especially on the Hill, who would much rather focus on getting legislative priorities done first to focus on being proactive, getting border policies in place.
And that has really been the focus from Republicans I'm talking to.
What do you think Benny Thompson's role is going to be in the 109th Congress, 119th Congress, I should say?
unidentified
I mean, you know, it's really going to be not, you know, in the minority again.
It's going to be pushing back again on Mark Green's efforts in the Homeland Committee in the House.
You know, he will still be a key player there.
You know, I think we're going to see the focus of that committee really shift again and focus on border and immigration, as opposed to some of the security Jan 6 elements there.
That's Skip in Connecticut, a social security question.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, well, see, this seems to not be a strong priority for Republicans, although Trump has continued to say he does not plan to make any significant cuts to Social Security, despite the fact that there is going to be a lot of pressure to make spending cuts to compensate for some of the money he plans to spend, whether it's the tax cuts or border security, all these other elements that are going to cost significant money.
We're talking hundreds of billions, trillions potentially for this package overall.
And there is going to be a push from conservatives to make significant cuts.
But Trump has continued to say that there will not be any cuts to Social Security.
Final 60 seconds, anything we haven't gotten to that you're tracking this week at Axios?
unidentified
Oh, man.
I mean, it's going to be a busy week.
We're just looking at one thing after the other.
I mean, I will be following pretty closely how these confirmation hearings kick off next week, whether we see any Republicans who decide to kind of say no on any of these voices.
Early on in the process, it seemed like there was some pushback to some of these picks, but lately it seems like many Republicans are kind of on board and willing to give Trump the people that he wants in these top positions.
Donald Trump on Truth Social just about an hour ago quoting Elon Musk saying, had this election not been won by Donald Trump, civilization would be lost.
That's the latest from the president-elect in his True Social page.
Steph Kite, you can get the latest from her and her colleagues at axios.com.
She's a political reporter there at Steph W. Kite on X. Thanks for your time.
But for the next 45 minutes or so, it's open form.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, the phone lines are yours to do so.
Go ahead and start calling in now, and we will get to your calls right after the break.
unidentified
President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and the nation's longest-lived leader, passed away last month at the age of 100.
Join C-SPAN for live coverage of the state funeral.
Today, the public will have the opportunity to pay their respects as President Carter lies in repose at the Carter Center.
On Tuesday, his journey continues to Washington, D.C., where he'll lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda with a service attended by members of Congress.
The public will again have the chance to honor him on Wednesday as his body remains in state at the U.S. Capitol.
On Thursday, the national funeral service will take place at Washington National Cathedral, followed by his final resting ceremony at the Carter Family Home in Plains, Georgia.
Watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the funeral services for former President Jimmy Carter on the C-SPAN Networks, C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
Here's where we are on a snowy day in Washington, D.C. President Biden and the First Lady Joe Biden are heading to New Orleans today to grieve with families from that New Year's Day terror attack on Bourbon Street.
That's happening at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue here on Capitol Hill.
The House is in at noon for morning hour and at 1 p.m., it's a joint session of Congress taking place for the official electoral vote counting and certification process.
All eyes on the Capitol today and that joint session this January the 6th.
Later this week, all eyes will be on the Capitol Dome for the lying in state of the late President Jimmy Carter.
The former president, his body lying in repose at the Carter Center in Atlanta today, the funeral services in Georgia taking place this week and efforts to honor him there before Jimmy Carter comes to Washington, D.C. for a formal state funeral.
There's the shot from the Carter Center in Atlanta of the lying in repose that is happening now.
Taking your phone calls in open forum.
It's 202-748-8000 this morning for Democrats to call in Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
We are taking your calls till about 9:15 Eastern this morning, so go ahead and dial in.
Sharon, up first in Berlin, Maryland, line for Democrats.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Good morning, America.
Thank heaven for C-SPAN and Brian Lamb as well.
But in any event, I'm calling regarding this tragic anniversary.
I know what I was doing that day.
I watched the events from start to finish.
However, I knew beforehand, as many of us did, that the insurrection began long before Trump summoned those flying monkeys to the Capitol.
It started with Navarro, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani.
They had the game plan set up so that in the event of Trump's loss, they had another alternative plan, which they have stated publicly.
Now, the saddest part to me is the fact that when Merrick Garland became Attorney General, he didn't start at the top.
I'm not so much worried about the rioters in jail as I am about the conspirators who aren't in jail and should have been from the jump.
It's Sharon in Maryland, Joe Biden, his take on January the 6th.
He writes in an editorial today on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post.
He says, for much of our history, this proceeding on January 6th was treated as pro forma, a routine act.
But after what we all witnessed on January 6th, 2021, we know we can never again take it for granted.
We should not forget, he writes, we must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it.
We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.
He says an unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite and even erase the history of that day to tell us that we didn't see what we all saw with our own eyes to dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession to explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.
This is not what happened, the president wrote.
This is Amy, Leesburg, Florida, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'd like to know why when Biden makes a false statement, it's an embellishment or an exaggeration.
And when Trump makes a false statement, he's a liar.
And another thing is, why don't you ever bring up that Merrick Garland's son-in-law made over $25 million selling the CR critical race theory to schools?
You know, and I called them on October 18th, and I said that the FBI and the CIA were complicit in getting Biden elected because the FBI lied to Mark Zuckerberg.
And whoever was a commentator was that day, she switched the whole subject and talked about Arizona recounting and that Biden actually got more votes.
What does that have to do with it?
It was not a free and fair election when the CIA and the FBI got involved and lied.
On the January 6th issue, well, first of all, let me say I'm a Democrat called on the Democrat line, and I voted for Kamala Harris and was really disappointed when she lost, but she lost.
And I hope everybody watches the way I loved your story about Pence and Gore.
And it's one of the duties, probably the last duty of a defeated vice president to acknowledge they lost and they received it.
And among the people in our history recently that have done that was Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960, had to certify the election of John F. Kennedy.
1980, the vice president of the late Jimmy Carter, Mondale, acknowledged with a lot of humor the election of Ronald Reagan.
unidentified
And of course, 2000, Al Gore.
But the one thing I want to say is there's been a lot of people are really upset about January 6th, four years ago.
And just listening to how people are still wrapped up in it, I voted against President Trump, but I want to move on.
We've got to move on.
But the people that say the cops who are waving us in and let's do a reality check.
On March 13th, 2020, President Donald Trump, by proclamation, declared a national state of emergency for the COVID pandemic.
On January 5th, there's a facility annexed to the Capitol called the Visitors Center.
Every tourist must go through the Visitor Center to be kind of screened, just like you're screened when you get on an airplane.
Now, that was closed.
I think even the Smithsonian was closed.
They were not prepared to receive tourists because the Capitol had been closed almost a year.
And all these people that came to Washington on the say-so of Donald Trump, including the late Ashley Babbitt, if they had done just what you would do if you had a reservation at a restaurant, if they had just read the paper and they would have known the Capitol is closed.
The story that James was referring to about Al Gore and Mike Pence, it is by Michael Cruz in Politico's magazine.
This is the headline: 20 years before January 6th.
Al Gore stood up to his own party, and Mike Pence, a new congressman at the time, was watching the certification of the Electoral College vote was once seen as ceremonial.
Two moments 20 years apart remind us how high the stakes really are.
A focus on Al Gore and Mike Pence, if you want to read that.
Again, Politico magazine.
Chris, Cleveland, Ohio, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I appreciate it.
This day here, the Democrats ride this thing like Secretariat all the way to the finish line constantly when they need to.
The headline, this time certification of the election is less messy.
Four years after Trump supporters rioted at the Capitol, lawmakers expect calm.
The temporary fencing is back up around the United States Capitol building.
It is a special security event, been designated as such.
The reports today on the amount of security on Capitol Hill include reports about some four or five hundred National Guard members being on call for this month, including the inauguration ceremonies on January the 20th.
It is a busy day on Capitol Hill, a busy few weeks here in Washington.
And as you can see, the security barriers are in place.
This is Eric in Oklahoma City, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Thank you for taking my call.
I wanted to comment on the January 6th.
I think the Democrats latched onto it as the shiny object for the American people.
Government Lies Exposed00:02:22
unidentified
Look over here.
Don't look at everything we've lied about and talked to you about for the last four years.
And they've kept it.
I agree with the gentleman from Ohio when they said they've ridden this thing to death.
And, you know, it was, you know, in the big scheme of things, you know, the government lied to us on just about every aspect of this quote-unquote insurrection, which, You know, people were killed, and nobody was ever held accountable for that.
The due process for the people that were arrested was turned on its ear.
They were thrown in jail, put in solitary confinement, not allowed representation.
You know, lie after lie after lie was foisted on the American people.
And we've never really gotten to the bottom of it, and we won't get to the bottom of it until Trump's knowledge.
But the whole underpinning for this thing was, you know, to.
Eric, in Oklahoma City, you talk about the death that day and the deaths in the days to come.
One woman, Ashley Babbitt, fatally shot as she and fellow rioters tried to break into the off-limits area near the House chamber.
The subsequent deaths of five police officers have been attributed to the stress and chaos of that day.
One suffered a stroke immediately after the riot.
Four died by suicide within seven months of January the 6th of 2021.
Diane Key West, Florida, Democrat.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, and thanks for letting me share.
One thing I don't understand that we don't have in the United States that so many countries have around the world is an equal rights amendment for women.
You know, that ERA, we have enough states who voted for it.
I'm really surprised Biden didn't let it pass.
You know what I wish for, first of all, and especially as a woman, we're losing the option for choice to take care of our bodies, and that we have, there is no equal pay.
We're still getting 77 cents to the dollar in the professional world.
And, you know, I wish that Kamala Harris, well, here's an idea.
I wish that Biden would step down right now, put Kamala Harris in his position and let her pass the ERA because it's, excuse me, it's so sad that we don't have rights, equal rights.
I don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Independent, if you don't vote, there is no reason why women don't have equal rights to the men.
It's Donald Trump's True Social page that we've been monitoring this morning ahead of the certification and electoral vote counting process.
This is what Donald Trump wrote about 15 minutes ago.
Congress certifies our great election victory today.
It's a big moment in history, MAGA.
A message from the president-elect, the Vice President Kamala Harris, also putting out a message today on her duties and obligations on this January the 6th.
The peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy.
As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.
Today at the United States Capitol, I will perform my constitutional duty as Vice President of the United States to certify the results of the 2024 election.
This duty is a sacred obligation, one I will uphold, guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution, and my unwavering faith in the American people.
As we have seen, our democracy can be fragile.
And it is up to then, each one of us, to stand up for our most cherished principles and to make sure that in America, our government always remains of the people, by the people, and for the people.
May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
A video message from the Vice President being released about 25 minutes ago this morning ahead of her duties today in that joint session of Congress.
The joint session will take place at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, and you can, of course, watch it here on C-SPAN.
John is in the Granite State Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
A couple of things.
When you were talking about January 6th, as you're talking about January 6th, some of the stuff that never was talked about during the made-up here, and I say made-up, it was totally a Hollywood show, and we all know that.
Committee Staged?00:16:09
unidentified
I mean, they even hired people from Hollywood to put it on, which was totally ridiculous.
Whether it was pushed on by the 25 people from the FBI that were in the crowd that were never talked about during the hearing, that was one of the things.
How come they never talked about those people?
What were those people doing?
We still don't know.
No one's talking about those people.
They were in the crowd.
We know they worked for the FBI, but we don't have a clue what they did.
They also didn't call the chief of police, Stephen Son.
Have been plenty from officers who are there, from the former chief of police, from other writers, one recent one focusing on Ashley Babbitt and women who were part of the crowd that went into the Capitol.
Have you read any of the other ones?
unidentified
Well, I've read stories from Ashley Babbitt's husband of who she was and what she was doing there.
So, no, I haven't read other books because I don't want to see the propaganda.
Actually, it would be great for you to watch Kevin Kosar.
He's coming up in about 20 minutes, and we're going to dive into this whole process, where the ballots that are counted and certified, where they come from, how they're handled in the state process before they get up here to Capitol Hill, what it means to count and certify them, and everything that you'll be seeing today that takes place at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Kevin Kosar will do that a lot better than I could for you right now.
So stick around.
We'll get into all of that in about 20 minutes.
This is Jonathan in Minneapolis.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Morning, John.
First off, I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
I just wanted to say it's cold in Minneapolis.
It's snowing everywhere.
And let me explain to you what's going to happen next.
What is going to happen is that they're going to say, because of all the people that are coming there for the women's march, because the people that are coming there for all the rallies or pro-rallies for Trump, there's going to be too much disasterness going on between everybody.
And they're going to say, oh, well, we can't have it outside because there's snow everywhere.
We're going to have it inside so Trump can feel good about the crowd sizes.
So there's that.
And there's also been drones and there's all this other stuff.
I just have a problem with some of the things that I'm hearing on here.
I love the comments about Trump spending 80 minutes watching TV.
I mean, he sent three emails, I think two to the D.C. mayor and one to Nancy Pelosi saying, hey, we're hearing some chatter over the airways about there being a riot.
Can you do anything about that?
But she did nothing.
And I believe Pelosi was in charge of the Capitol Police.
She did nothing.
The extras, extra presence, nothing was done.
I mean, she did this.
This is a plan.
She let it go and then she said, hey, we'll use it against them.
And that really didn't work.
I think, you know, part of the problem in this country is the Democrats.
I honestly don't think they understand the meaning of the words they use.
I mean, women have penises, men have babies, the borders closed, Republicans are fascist.
Yes, Biden's at the top of his game.
They need to crack the damn spine on the dictionary and take a peek.
Well, I'll tell you what, Malcolm, we want to keep you calling on the phone lines that you identify with because it just makes it fair for folks calling in.
A lot of people waiting to call in on the Republican line, too.
So call back on the line for Democrats if you're a Democrat.
This is April in Pennsylvania.
On that line for Democrats, go ahead.
unidentified
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
I feel like I am in some kind of bizarre universe watching some crazy movie.
How are we still arguing about what happened on January 6th?
If we walk into any federal government building, I mean, usually it's like we have to be orderly, respectful.
We probably get searched.
I'm like, it was a riot.
It was, how do we not see what happened?
We need to stop listening to sound bites and propaganda, go back to critical thinking, and use our actual eyes and see more than one point of view.
I just can't believe we're still having this discussion that January 6th was not an insurrection.
I'm sad.
I'm nervous.
I'm scared for our country.
I wish people would be talking more about why Trump, why would Trump want to hold a victory rally the day before the inauguration when the inauguration is his victory rally, right?
I'm like, shouldn't we be looking at history?
What happened in history that would be similar to what would be this victory rally?
Just like how he had that Madison Square Garden rally.
I'm like, it's eerily similar to Nazis.
And I'm just, I'm terrified, I'm scared, and I just don't know how we as a country can come together.
Instead of arguing and fighting one another, we really need to come together as a nation and just heal and actually learn real history and stop listening to propaganda.
To call it an insurrection whenever we had cities that were walled off from the police during the riots of the summer and call those protests and what happened on January 6th an insurrection, that's a foul.
That is.
That's insulting.
Those riots were something else.
Cities were burning, but that was a peaceful protest, according to the press.
And that leads to my second point.
The press and the media and the news that people have distrust with is because of misleading people for a long time now.
If the press would start talking about the truth, exposing some of the corruption in Congress on a regular basis rather than covering it up or just ignoring it, you might get some more followers and some believers and some integrity back in journalism.
I say recent and I say new, I mean like in the last 10, 20 years.
I've been voting for 40 years now, and I don't remember that ever being part of the process of making that a statement and making it a statement more than once in a single speech like they do now.
I've been listening to your show for quite a while.
And, you know, everyone has their opinion, but as you pointed out to a few, it just seems as though ignorance of what's going on in the country is rampant, that some of these people are making this crap up as they go along.
And it's just a terrible indictment.
It's the people that are voting.
If any of these people voted at all, it just seems as though they follow Trump, Trump, Trump, that he's going to unite the country.
He's going to divide the country, even more so than it is.
That's John in Houston, Texas, from the White House Historical Society on the peaceful transfer of power.
The White House is a stage for a peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next and exhibits online discover how the transfer from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson back in the very early 1800s featured set this precedent of a peaceful transfer of power.
This is Linda, an Independent, back in North Carolina.
unidentified
Hi.
You know, one thing that nobody has ever mentioned when everybody is trying to figure out who's to blame for January 6th, you know, and whatever you want to call it that happened.
They said they tried every day.
They called the police.
They called National Guard.
And the one thing they did not try, which worked, when President Trump finally walked down and said, okay, guys, go home.
Everybody turned around and left.
Now, is that a clue to who's responsible for this thing?
And what we found out last January 6th, and this could have been any event, but this one is etched in our minds forever with the police officers dying, so many people hurt.
We literally had cops that couldn't get at their riot gear.
It was locked on a bus.
A four-hour delay to call in the National Guard because of some rule that had been in place that created a phone tree.
Our architect of the Capitol, who's kind of the boss of a bunch of the employees, wasn't even there.
So these were dramatic changes we made.
103 recommendations.
In my job as chair of the rules committee was to make sure they got done.
We have, as you know, a new police chief, increased morale, many hundreds of more officers, and we have a plan and a strategy in place.
That's not to say there aren't threats all the time on members of Congress or on the Capitol, but I feel very strongly that we have made major shifts.
What happened last time where an officer's words haunt me forever on the police line said, does anyone have a plan?
Does anyone have a plan?
And the answer from the leadership back then was no.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, the chair in the 118th Congress of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, as it's known, the administration part of that, the administration of the various agencies on Capitol Hill, oversight of the Capitol Police Department, the architect of the Capitol, the government printing office, and others.
Those are some of the scenes that you're seeing on your screen of a snowy morning on Capitol Hill.
Time for a few more of your phone calls.
It's open forum.
This is Paul in New York, a Democrat.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I just want to speak about the incoming administration and how everybody thinks that Donald Trump won't be doing any more to divide this nation that he already has.
You know, if I'm to take the man at his word, when he was on a campaign trail, he literally campaigned on retaliation for those that, quote unquote, dare go against him or spread lies.
We just had one case ended where a journalist who made a statement about Donald Trump settled for several millions of dollars, and that might be more evidence of what's to come in the next four years of Trump's second presidency.
Carl's Retribution Rant00:02:43
unidentified
I don't have much faith in Republicans who swear to allegiance to the man as opposed to the nation, which is what I've mostly been seeing over the last couple of weeks in this past going congressional term.
And the next congressional term probably won't fare much better.
Yeah, so frankly, I'm sick of this insurrection talk.
You know, the problem with the Democrats is they've tried to create a narrative of something that was more than it was.
It was a freaking riot.
Okay, it's nothing but lies.
And the press, you, in particular, being a Washington Post individual, you've done nothing but help support this lie, printing things like the insurrection.
We all watched what happened.
We all saw there was nothing more than a riot and much less of a riot than what we saw in Minneapolis and other places.
You know, people are fed up with lies.
I think, you know, people can say what they want to about Trump.
The press will say he's lying.
He's giving you the truth, right, most of the time.
And it's just ridiculous.
It really is.
And people are fed up.
And I want him to get retribution.
Frankly, I want him to go after these people that have done nothing but lies and create this narrative that is totally false.
In that time, we'll be joined by American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Kevin Kosar.
We'll discuss what's happening today in that joint session of Congress, what it means to count and certify electoral votes.
Stick around for that discussion.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Experience history as it unfolds with C-SPAN's live coverage this month as Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress and a new chapter begins with the swearing in of the 47th President of the United States.
Today, live from the House chamber, Witness Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the Electoral College vote, where this historic session will officially confirm Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
And on January 20th, tune in for our live all-day coverage of the presidential inauguration as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming the 47th President of the United States.
Stay with C-SPAN this month for comprehensive, live, unfiltered coverage of the 119th Congress and the presidential inauguration, C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
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These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos.
This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington.
Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's point of interest.
Democracy.
It isn't just an idea, it's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
Democracy in real time.
This is your government at work.
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Brian McClanahan has a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in history.
Several years ago, he wrote a book titled Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her.
His view on the presidency is not the traditional one you get from most historians.
On the back of his book, published by Regnery History, the liner notes claim the worst presidents are the ones who want to, quote, reform unquote, the country through the power of the federal government, which usually means usurping the power of Congress or the people.
Brian McClanahan focuses a negative spotlight on Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama and others.
unidentified
Brian McClanahan with his book, Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her, on this episode of Book Notes with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
He's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and host of the Understanding Congress podcast.
Joining us to help understand today's electoral vote counting and certification process in that joint session of Congress.
Kevin Kosar, before we get to the why of what's going to be happening today, just explain what is going to happen in this joint session today at 1 p.m. Eastern.
unidentified
Good morning, John.
Good to see you.
Well, today's an important day.
It's the second to last step in the process we use in America to select a president.
The process began back in November with the general election.
After that, we had the Electoral College.
Now we move on to the process by which Congress receives from the states their reports of who voted for which candidate.
And then Congress proceeds to count them out loud and to officially declare who won.
This is a rare joint session of Congress, so we'll see the House enter session today around one o'clock, and then we'll see the senators file into the chamber and join their legislative colleagues.
And then one by one, they will open the envelopes and see who each state voted for and officially announce the results.
These state reports, these envelopes that you talk about being opened, explain their path to Capitol Hill today.
unidentified
Sure, sure.
So we have a very decentralized system here.
It's not the federal government who runs our elections and who mans polling places or anything like that.
Rather, this is a state-driven process.
So states conduct elections.
It is they who select individuals called electors who represent the public and who convene in the Electoral College.
And at the end of that Electoral College process, that's where you get generation of this thing called a certificate of ascertainment.
And for those of you who are on Twitter or X.com as it is called today, I tweeted out and tagged Washington Journal a couple examples of what these certificates look like, where the governor and other officials sign and say, here are the individuals who received our state's electoral votes.
The certificate of ascertainment, there's a couple of examples, as you mentioned, on your X page.
We can show them to viewers, including a very elaborate one from the state of Ohio, signed by who in the state of Ohio.
unidentified
You'll usually see a governor's signature on there.
That's one of the things that the Electoral Count Act was adopted to do.
You know, we have a Constitution that lays out the basic process saying that Congress has to come to this joint session and has to take states' electoral slates and to count them up and declare who won.
But the question is, like, well, where do these certificates come from and how do you know they're official?
And, you know, more than a century ago, the Electoral Count Act was adopted after the contested 1876 election precisely because there were dueling certificates sent in.
And interestingly enough, back in 2020, we also saw that.
We had some unofficial certificates being sent in claiming that Mr. Trump had won when he hadn't.
What happened with the Electoral Count Act in the wake of the events of January the 6th, 2021?
unidentified
Well, Congress finally woke up and realized that this very old law, which was written in very antique and stilted language, needed to be updated.
There had been scholars for 30 years saying, hey, Congress, this law is poorly written.
The words can be difficult for a modern audience to understand, and they can be easily exploited by crafty lawyers.
Unfortunately, Congress did not take action, and it took the events of January 6, 2021 to spark action.
And Congress did good work.
It was bipartisan work.
You had multiple groups working on new drafts to amend the statute.
And the changes were significant.
They basically took these rules around the process of clarifying who won the presidency and they tightened them up.
So it's a lot harder for crafty attorneys and partisan politicians to manipulate the process and to try to throw it off the rails.
You know, one thing we'll see today in the chamber is that any attempt to pause the proceedings by objecting to a state's electoral votes is going to have to meet a lot higher threshold.
It used to be that you only needed one representative and one senator to pause the counting and to force the joint session to split into the House and the Senate debating separately.
Now you need to get one-fifth of all senators to agree to object and one-fifth of all members of the House.
The law also further limited the grounds on which you can object.
You could have to limit your objections to two very technical things, which I won't elaborate on and bore listeners, but you can no longer get away with saying, I have suspicions that there's fraud here, and derail the process.
One of the things I put out there on X this morning are both examples of Democrats and Republicans rising and making allegations.
For example, in 2016, I've got a video up there of Representative James McGovern of Massachusetts, a Democrat, standing up and saying, you know, I object to this particular state's electoral slate, I believe it was Alabama's, because, you know, the Russians were engaged in propaganda and misinformation, so we can't trust these results.
He was joined by a number of other Democrats that year.
Obviously, Republicans did their own thing in 2021, and many, many of them, far more than any in history, got up and raised objections to various states' electoral slates.
Are objections just limited to modern political history, or was this happening in the 19th century and previous elections?
unidentified
Yeah, the first modern example was in 1960, where we had this weird situation where Hawaii declared Richard Nixon the victor over John F. Kennedy, and the official certification was sent to Congress.
But in the course of doing a recount, they declared that Kennedy had beat Nixon.
In the meantime, the Democrats electors had sent in their own separate certificate to Congress.
And weirdly enough, Richard Nixon was the sitting vice president and had to preside over the chamber.
And so he had multiple certifications in his hand and was kind of a little befuddled for a time on what to do about it.
And ultimately, they hashed it out, and it was agreed that Hawaii's votes would go to Mr. Kennedy.
But yeah, it was, you know, disputes go way back, and it was the toxicity and the intractability of the 1876 dispute between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden, which was just paralyzing for a while, that ultimately led to trying to develop these rules in the Electoral Count Act that would clarify who wins and what was an adequate basis for objecting.
This image of a sitting vice president counting votes in an election that they lost and announcing the winner and that they themselves has lost an election.
Is this a uniquely American thing that happens?
unidentified
So far as I know, it certainly is an episodic and it is a remarkable thing.
I mean, we are going to have to see today Ms. Harris, our vice president, standing before the chamber and going through this process.
You know, previously in 2016, we had Vice President Biden who was atop the chamber and he was fighting off various objections from Democrats and saying, no, this is not in order.
Heroes of January 600:10:38
unidentified
No, you do not have somebody in the Senate who agrees with you, so we cannot entertain your complaint about the process.
Kevin Kosar is our guest, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His podcast is Understanding Congress, helping us understand the electoral vote counting and certification process.
Again, it's set to take place in a joint session today, 1 p.m. Eastern.
You can watch here on C-SPAN for the next 30 minutes.
We're taking your phone calls, though, if you have questions or comments about this process.
202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Kevin Kosar, as folks are calling in, do you think the events of January the 6, 2021 fundamentally changed this process or how this day is viewed in America?
unidentified
Yeah, I think previously it was something that was largely done on autopilot.
Your average American certainly paid very little attention to it, the sole exceptions being the dedicated folks who watch C-SPAN and who are engaged deeply in our civic life.
2021 just shattered that, and it created a sense of anxiety about something that could be trusted to come off well, could go completely off the rails.
You know, and just to make a kind of more broader point about that date and what's happened since then, you know, law is something we use to try to coordinate ourselves as human beings, right?
We try to pass a law and say, this is what you can do, this is what you can't do, on a whole range of topics.
And we can't all remember what laws are in force all the time.
We can't understand fully what laws were adopted for or what the people who wrote them meant.
And when Congress did not pay close attention to the Electoral Count Act and just kind of let it sit for 130, 140 years, everybody sort of forgot why we had the process and how it was supposed to work.
And it took that terrible day four years ago to remind us that it's an important process and that we have to follow it and we have to be faithful to it.
And we have to have a shared understanding of why we do it and how we do it.
Well, I don't even know why we need an electoral college to start off with, but that's a whole different thing.
I was wondering over the however long we've been doing this, how many times people have voted against the certification of the votes.
And I'd like to know if maybe since I've been listening to the program all morning, everybody's confused about what happened on the 6th, four years ago.
Maybe we could go ahead and have that trial that Trump's been putting off.
And instead of going after the king, we've already got all the pawns.
There's a bunch of them in prison already.
And we can't get the king because they've already certified that he's king and he can't be touched.
Why don't we go after the senators or the house representatives that voted against it after they hid underneath the Capitol because of the riot and they knew that it was wrong?
Mitch McConnell came out the next day, said it was wrong.
And why we can't get them in a conspiracy theory, have it televised on TV to where the whole public can take it in, and then we'll have the truth.
Because in court, you can't just come up with some kind of theory or something.
You have to have facts.
And that's what the country is lacking right now is facts.
Let me speak to the issue of when has Congress voted on the voted to reject or not reject electoral slates.
We certainly saw that in 2021.
The House and the Senate separated to vote on at least two states, electoral slates.
In each case, they voted to accept them by overwhelming majorities.
We also saw it in 2005, I believe it was 2005, where George W. Bush was reelected.
There was an allegation raised that Ohio's electoral votes were in some way corrupted, that voting machines had been rigged by Republicans.
And so Democrats in the chamber objected.
And we had both a Democratic representative and a senator.
And so they had to break, and they had to go separately debate Ohio.
That, again, Ohio slate was accepted.
The votes were not rejected.
And then there was the peculiar 1960s situation where you had two different certificates that came in and they had to decide it.
The good news is we have not had an instance where a state's electoral slate has been thrown out and therefore votes have been taken away from a presidential candidate or vice presidential candidate and the ultimate result of the election corrupted.
Mike, Kevin Kosar, any thoughts on tax returns and presidents?
unidentified
Not so much on the tax returns and the presidents.
I mean, I think there's legitimate concern about you want to know whether officials are in hockey to foreign powers or something like that.
It might be manipulable.
But just to go back to the caller's initial point, I'd like to mention that some of the heroes on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 were the congressional staff, the people who were involved in helping Congress carry off. this process and who also critically protected the state's electoral certificates.
I mean, today when you watch on C-SPAN, you will see these boxes being carried in by staff, and these boxes contain the official certificates.
You know, those certificates could have ended up lost or trashed, burnt, who knows what, when the protesters stormed the Capitol and congressional staff rose to the moment and protected them last time around.
A question from Dan in Pennsylvania via our text messaging service.
What role does the Supreme Court have in certifying the election of a president of the United States?
unidentified
Thankfully, they have no direct and immediate role.
Under the modified updated Electoral Count Act, it is possible that a dispute at the state level about the certification of the election can be appealed to the federal courts and certainly could get its way all the way up to the Supreme Court.
But if the process is working properly, the Supreme Court stays on the sidelines.
The caller a minute ago said Mike Pence was one of his heroes from that day.
This from Politico magazine, some new reporting about an interaction between Al Gore and Mike Pence, Michael Cruz on it.
I don't know if you've read it yet.
This is just the first two paragraphs or so.
Last summer in a private moment at the memorial service for Xander Joe Lieberman at the Washington Hebrew Congregation, two former vice presidents had a conversation.
Al Gore thanked Mike Pence, according to people close to both men, in an interaction that's never been reported for his actions at the Capitol the day it was attacked by a mob.
Pence on the opposite side of the political party, but in the same set of pews, said something surprising in response.
He suggested to Gore that he had done what he had done on January the 6, 2021, in part because of what he had seen as a newly sworn in member of Congress on January 6, 2001.
He had witnessed a vice president like him stand up to pressure from his own party to defy the Constitution, even though doing so by definition meant personal defeat.
I never forgot it, Pence said to Al Gore in the recollection of a Pence ally.
You don't know how much that means, Gore said, coming from you.
What do you think about that interaction?
unidentified
Well, it's terrific, and thank you for sharing that with me.
And yeah, it speaks to a real truth about Congress, which is that you do have these moments where members all the time rise above naked partisan self-interest and just play by the rules or do the right thing.
Illegal Electors Debate00:14:01
unidentified
And when they do that, you hope it rubs off on some other members and that everybody can kind of lift their game.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with competing fiercely.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing and debating.
But the rules are the rules.
And for this representative government scheme to work, it means that we all have to be willing to play by the rules.
About 20 minutes left with Kevin Kosar this morning of the American Enterprise Institute, his podcast, again, understanding Congress.
This is Ray in Syracuse, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
A previous caller, Beck two or three brought up what he thought the solution should be, or part of the solution on this January 6th issue, is that the Democrats should present the facts in front of Congress.
And my first thought is they'll never do that.
And the reason is because that would require them to also put the Democrat bad things that they did and what they did to cause January 6th.
And it would be significant.
It would probably be more illegal and against the rules than what the Republicans may have done.
And another caller right after that asked about, shouldn't people that want to run for president divulge their financial information in detail so that they don't actually they're not allowed to run if they have these, these problems with the, with how they earn their money, and the same principle would would follow with that.
The Democrats would never agree to that, because they also are doing illegal and nearly illegal things to make their money and they're using their office, just like the Republicans are, to get things that they want, and they would not want to have to divulge their bad things.
So it would never be allowed.
They'll never do that.
That's why they don't do it now.
You almost never see head-to-head.
I did bad, you did bad almost.
It's so rare that I can't even remember the last time that happened.
That's right, Kevin Kosar, what do you want to pick up on?
unidentified
Uh yeah, two points.
Uh first, the concern about corruption in congress is uh, eternal.
Um, we've just never had a moment in in history where uh voters could feel fully confident that congress was not in some ways on the make or the take.
Um, you know, 150 years ago the corruption was brazen.
Uh, you know, you could have lobbyists and and plutocrats walk onto the floor of Congress and simply, you know, hand cash or sock certificates over to members of Congress.
Uh, now it's uh a lot more subtle, what with uh campaign donations and the like uh, and the concerns about using insider information, uh legislators using that to trade stocks, uh.
So, trying to get to a fully trustworthy Congress is just something that we we keep pursuing, but it's it's not easy.
As for the discussion around uh, january 6th 2021 yeah, it doesn't feel to me like either Democrats or Republicans are, for the most part, in a place where they can.
They can have a sober conversation about it.
Even four years later, the emotions are still raw.
The narratives are contrasting uh, conflicting uh, and you know, hopefully we will get to a point where we can have an honest conversation at some point in time.
Uh, my biggest concern about the um certification um.
You brought up a point about the 2016 in Alabama um.
One member had concerns about Russian interference and I just want to say that in my experience, I feel that 90 percent of the Republicans have not taken the the information about, like the recent trial of Alexander Spmirnoff, and I suggest that all of them who believe Democrats are lying look up that, those facts um about the Alexander Schmirnoff trial and also uh,
I just believe it's disgraceful that they feel Democrats are lying more.
If you go through Trump's financial team that were clearly working with Putin in Russia back in 2016, just the lies told about this quote-unquote Biden crime family and everything.
It was all you really got to look up this Alexander Schmirnoff trial and come to grips with who you feel is really lying.
Just about 15 minutes left this morning with Kevin Kosar as the snow is really starting to come down here on Capitol Hill, a snowy day in Washington, D.C. for this electoral vote count and certification.
You can almost not see the Capitol Dome, and we're just about a block and a half away here in our studios.
A question from a viewer saying, as a New Yorker, I feel disenfranchised as a voter, like my vote doesn't count.
Has there been any serious debate about reforming the Electoral College process?
And why do different states count their votes differently?
unidentified
Sure.
Yeah, there's been longstanding complaint about the Electoral College, that it's really a vehicle for having Americans vote as states as opposed to voting as individuals.
And so, yes, we've seen instances where a person will be elected president, they have the electoral votes to win, more than 270, and yet they lost the popular vote.
And that creates a dissonance in the minds of many who say we should be moving towards something more like just a direct national vote, just get rid of the Electoral College.
Well, whether you want to do that or not do that, the obvious challenge is to amend the Constitution, which is certainly a complex and onerous process.
And assuredly, folks who live in the less populous states, whether it's Delaware or whether it's South Dakota, are going to have strong feelings about that.
Now, more broadly, the feeling of disenfranchisement, certainly we have seen a lot of state-level reform action trying to open up primary elections so that you have multiple parties running candidates and voters feeling like they can actually vote for a third or fourth or fifth party candidate and that they won't be wasting their vote.
And there's the hopes among some reformers that that sort of thing will ultimately bubble up and produce members of Congress, at least more of them than we currently have, who are not affiliated with the two major parties right now.
Kevin Kosar, do you want to explain what's going on here in terms of where these are?
unidentified
Yeah, thank the caller for that.
I also popped by the National Archives webpage last night, and I was looking around because I wanted to share examples of what these certificates look like.
And I noticed that only some of them were posted.
Thankfully, the constitutional process only requires certificates get to the Senate.
Those are the ones that are officially counted.
The ones that go to the archives are critically important, but those are secondaries.
Those are records.
So Congress is going to be able to do the count today because the states all have sent them their electoral certificates of ascertainment.
That just proves to me that there is a two-tiered justice system.
And I actually heard it called illegal electors on this show.
And I'll let you say what you want to say.
Yeah, thanks for that question.
Let me clarify.
So, in 1960, we had an election, and in Hawaii, they counted the votes and they said, okay, Mr. Nixon won.
So we're going to do our duty and send a certificate in saying Mr. Nixon won.
You had Democrats who said, no, no, no, no, there were all sorts of problems.
It was a very close election, very small victory.
We're doing a recount.
We don't agree with this.
And we want to make it clear to Washington, D.C. that we don't agree with this.
So they sent in their alternate certificate for that purpose.
Then they did the recount, and then they reissued a certificate officially saying, hey, we, the state of Hawaii, our previous certificate was incorrect.
Here's the corrected one.
In 2020, we had something different going on.
We had states sending in official certificates of ascertainment, but then we had legislators who just met separately and sent them in.
Not all these people were certified electors, which is what you have to be to put your name on one of these.
You had places where people were saying, you know, the state legislator can simply overrule the people's vote and declare a different slate of electors.
What they were doing was obviously in contrast to the official law, they had kind of gone outside the official legal process.
They hadn't finished litigation in court.
So there were any number of problems with the way it was conducted in 2020.
But I'll give you credit to this point, which is in each instance, both 1960 and 2020, you had people at the state level saying, Look, our state didn't do the process right, and therefore something's wrong with the certification, and this is why we're protesting.
Yeah, I certainly appreciate the desire for transparency because nobody wants corrupt politicians.
Stock Act Transparency00:05:23
unidentified
We don't go to the voting booth saying, gosh, I like this guy.
He's fantastically corrupt.
He's my guy.
That's not the way the average voter behaves.
We want people to be honest, not crooked.
The question is just how do we get there?
Some years ago, one thing Congress did was pass legislation called the Stock Act, which aimed to bring some transparency to whether or not legislators were using inside information to line their pockets by picking stocks or dumping stocks that they held because they knew the stock was going to go up or go down.
That legislation is valuable.
There have been calls both from Democrats and Republicans in Congress to bolster it, to do something a little more robust.
And it's going to be very interesting to see whether the coming Congress takes it up because, you know, look, we have populists on the left and populists on the right.
And this is something where they may join hands and say, you know, we're going to do something to improve transparency and to hopefully decrease corruption.
Do you want to talk about the Understanding Congress podcast, what you do, and some of the other topics that you've recently covered there?
unidentified
Sure, sure.
Yeah, so I started the podcast a few years ago with the help of my employer, the American Enterprise Institute.
And the aim is to put out a podcast that explains this remarkably complicated, often head-scratching institution we know as Congress.
So each episode involves me talking with an expert on some niche area about Congress' operating.
So for example, I spoke with a former member of Congress who was a chair on the Ways and Means Committee, which is in charge of taxation in the House of Representatives.
And I just asked basic questions to him: like, well, how does this committee do what it does?
Is it bipartisan in nature?
You know, what's it like to deal with lobbyists who obviously care about tax policy?
You know, how does tax policy get figured out?
Does it get figured out in conjunction with spending policy?
And the podcast lasts about 20, 25 minutes tops.
It's not pushing a political agenda.
It's not aiming to say this is the right answer or this is the wrong answer.
It's just trying to better explain this institution of Congress, which is just often mystifying.
I think we're going to cover whether or not Congress needs to strengthen its capacity to fight the executive branch on dense legal issues.
The executive branch has the Department of Justice, and it has an army of attorneys and lawyers who can weigh in on any number of laws and constitutional issues.
Congress has a much smaller core of people that it can draw upon, and very frequently it feels like it has to ask people in the private sector or the lobbyists on K Street about legal issues.
And so there's this ongoing discussion about strengthening Congress's legal capacity, which hopefully would help it legislate a bit better.
Hey, I thought I heard Kevin say that about the 2021 with Ted Cruz.
I'm having trouble with watching TV.
So Ted Cruz, can you tell me what the ultimate process or what Ted Cruz and the Republicans wanted out of that objection with COSAR, which that never got debated, right?
I mean, that never went to the, they never went back to their chambers because of the riot.
So, yeah, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Hawley, a number of individuals in the Republican Party did raise objections.
They did have both representatives and senators.
And under the old rules, all you needed was one rep and one senator to pause the count and to go to separate chambers.
And they did go to separate chambers.
And if memory serves me correctly, what Mr. Cruz wanted was to set up a special commission to look at these allegations of state-level mischief and chicanery around the vote, and that it would ultimately have a short timeline to look into the matter and to report back to Congress, and then Congress would ultimately decide on what to do.
That was something, something similar happened in 1876 with the contested Hayes-Tilden election.
But ultimately, Congress said, no, we're going to follow the existing rules that we have under the Electoral Count Act, and we're just not going to go and try to create a commission.