Doing the job that Canadians elected us to do in 2021, which is fight for their interests, stand up for their well-being, and make sure that they are good and that Canadians are protected and strong.
There will be a leadership process, and the rules will unfold over the coming weeks.
But I can assure you that the tools and the need to stand up for Canadians, to protect Canadians in their interests and continue to fight for the economy, is something that everyone in this government will be singularly focused on.
unidentified
I'd just like to point out that the rules of any leadership race will be something we'll be discussing over the next few weeks.
But the elected government, the government that was elected to protect Canadians in a very complex world and most recently elected in 2021, our government will continue to be focused on what's in the best interests of Canadians while the Liberal Party is doing what it needs to do to organize leadership race.
Thank you very much for being here in such great Ottawa Day.
And there you have it, Justin Trudeau.
Can we take you back now to more of this morning's Washington Journal?
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.
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.
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.
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 of the people that are coming there for all the rallies or pro-rallies for Trump, there's going to be too much disaster-ness 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.
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 soundbites 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.
Peaceful Transfer Concerns00:02:27
unidentified
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.
Senior historian Matthew Costello speaking for the White House Historical Association.
You can learn about the long history of that, whitehousehistory.org.
This is Charlotte, Pikeville, North Carolina.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for having me and letting me speak, sir.
I don't look in the past or anything, and I know there was an insurrection, you know, say four years ago or whatever, but we need to be looking into the future.
Donald Trump and the Project 2025 debunking public education is what I'm really concerned about.
You know, what are the citizens supposed to do in getting their children educated if they debunk public education?
This is Linda, an independent, back in North Carolina.
unidentified
All right.
You know, one thing that nobody has ever mentioned when everybody's 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 the 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.
And 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 campaign, Trump's second presidency.
Retribution Wanted00:02:03
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 that it 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.