| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on her nomination to become U.S. Attorney General. | |
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| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then Nebraska Republican Adrian Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade. | ||
| He discusses the new Congress and future Trump administration trade and tariff policies. | ||
| And Peter Montgomery from the progressive group People for the American Way on Pam Bondi's confirmation hearing to be Attorney General. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| This is the Washington Journal for January 15th. | ||
| Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee had the chance to question President-elect Trump's choice for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| Yesterday's hearing, Democrats sharply questioned him on his past relations with women and if he has enough experience to manage the Pentagon. | ||
| Republicans were largely supportive of the candidate, but some critical of the line of questioning presented by Democrats. | ||
| It's up to the full Senate to decide on if Mr. Hegseth should get the job and to start the program. | ||
| Tell us if you think Pete Hegseff should become the next Defense Secretary. | ||
| 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| For active and former military in the audience, your chance to give your opinion, 202748-8003. | ||
| You can use that same number to text us. | ||
| You can also post on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at c-SPANWJ. | ||
| Here's how the major papers across the United States took a look at that hearing yesterday that you can still find on our app at C-SPAN Now, our website at c-span.org. | ||
| This is the Washington Times. | ||
| Hegseph deflects Democratic criticism is how they choose to run with it on their front page. | ||
| When you go to USA Today on their lower part of the front page, senators grow Hegseth on impropriety allegations, mismanagement, and women. | ||
| Turning to the pages of the New York Times, their lead story: GOP embraces PICK for defense at testy hearing. | ||
| The subhead Hegseth and Hotzi, Democrats question his job qualifications and personal conduct. | ||
| When you go to the Washington Post, they put the picture right there in the center of the front page above the fold, Hegseth under fire at hearing, and then the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| This is their lead. | ||
| Again, a picture in the center. | ||
| Hegseth weathers fiery hearing denies misconduct allegations. | ||
| Again, that hearing took place yesterday in the Senate Armed Services Committee. | ||
| You can still find that whole hearing, again, on our many platforms. | ||
| But here's a portion from Mr. Hegseph's opening statement. | ||
| The Department of Defense under Donald Trump will achieve peace through strength. | ||
| And in pursuing these America First National Security Goals, will remain patriotically apolitical and stridently constitutional. | ||
| Unlike the current administration, politics should play no part in military matters. | ||
| We are not Republicans. | ||
| We are not Democrats. | ||
| We are American warriors. | ||
| Our standards will be high and they will be equal, not equitable. | ||
| That's a very different word. | ||
| We need to make sure every warrior is fully qualified on their assigned weapon system. | ||
| Every pilot's fully qualified and current on the aircraft they are flying. | ||
| And every general or flag officer is selected for leadership or promotion purely based on performance, readiness, and merit. | ||
| Leaders at all levels will be held accountable. | ||
| And warfighting and lethality and the readiness of the troops and their families will be our only focus. | ||
| Again, a portion from the opening statement from Pete Hegseth, 202748-8000 for Democrats, Republicans 202748-8001, and Independents 202748-8000 to also align for active and former military. | ||
| If you want to give your perspective on yesterday's hearing and the questions that were posed to Mr. Hegseth and telling us if he should become the next Defense Secretary, some of you are posting on our Facebook posting this morning to say this is from Kelly Branscombe saying President Trump has an agenda and all these Congress and senators that go against him need to be primaried out. | ||
| He got an overwhelming vote. | ||
| He won the presidency. | ||
| He won the popular vote. | ||
| He won every single thing and the senators need to look up and understand that. | ||
| It's time to quit standing in the way of progress. | ||
| From Richard LaBeouf saying, there's definitely some concerning points about him like his financial responsibility. | ||
| I do like the fact he's got a decent amount of military background. | ||
| Definitely not your typical nominee. | ||
| So yes and no. | ||
| And then James Hatch from Facebook. | ||
| No, he is totally unqualified for the position, especially considering his comments on women and others currently serving in the military. | ||
| We'll start with John this morning. | ||
| John in Brooklyn, Democrats line, you're first up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm John Salter from Brooklyn, New York. | |
| I want to remind everybody and espresent Democrats. | ||
| Let Trump go ahead and set his administration up the way he's doing it. | ||
| Let him self-destruct, and we can cut him off at the midterm election. | ||
| We can get one. | ||
| Specifically, what do you think about Mr. Hegseff as the Defense Secretary? | ||
| What are your thoughts to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm a veteran, and I think that he don't know what all the job he's trying to get. | |
| I don't think he knows the impact of it. | ||
| I don't think he knows the purpose of it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Why they do and why they don't do, you know? | ||
| As a veteran, why do you think that Mr. Hegsteth doesn't understand those things? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because if he do, he knows he don't qualify to be the Secretary of State. | |
| That's a lot of experience and foreign policy in that. | ||
| You got to understand the military. | ||
| Okay, John there in Brooklyn. | ||
| Again, Mr. Hegseth up to become the next defense secretary in the Trump administration. | ||
| His confirmation hearing yesterday in Maryland. | ||
| Well, Bob is next Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Pedro. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| I am a supporter of the Hagsteth nomination. | ||
| I think that, you know, he might not have all the experience at that level, but he's smart enough to know who to put in his wheelhouse to help guide him through everything. | ||
| You know, I listened to a good bit of that yesterday, and I don't believe that, you know, some of the questioning by the Democrats, it amazes me that they had no problem with who Biden appointed to certain positions, but they're going to pick, you know, nitpick everything. | ||
| I'm not saying the man's a saint. | ||
| And, you know, if you start looking, asking the same questions to the people that were asking the questions, they wouldn't be answering them either. | ||
| Bob there, Republican line from Maryland. | ||
| We'll go to Pennsylvania. | ||
| That's where Robert is, independent line in Abington, Pennsylvania, on if Pete Hegseff should become the next defense secretary. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yeah, I'm an independent, and I think Pete should, I think he did a good job yesterday, and I think he should definitely be appointed. | ||
| Trump definitely won the popular vote. | ||
| The Democrats yesterday, the Democrat senator from Hawaii and Tim Kaine from Virginia were complete, they were a complete disgrace the way they acted yesterday. | ||
| It seems like when a Democrat is the president, the Republicans don't cry and pout and kick their feet, and they usually get appointed unless they are a complete loon, like some of Biden's picks last time. | ||
| But the Republicans do not act like this. | ||
| And this is coming from an independent who has voted for Obama, Trump. | ||
| And unfortunately, I did vote for Biden in the last election. | ||
| And I think President Trump knows what he's doing. | ||
| He was. | ||
| So let me ask you, when it comes to the hearing itself and what Mr. Hegseff said, what is it specifically that stands out to you that makes you from that hearing that he's qualified for the job? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think his answers were on point. | |
| I don't think anything he said, of course he doesn't know every single aspect of the position. | ||
| Who does when this is a position that only a handful of people have ever had? | ||
| And this gentleman, John, a few callers back, is saying he doesn't even know what job Pete Hegset is being interviewed for. | ||
| He's saying Secretary of State. | ||
| Okay, Robert there in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Robert mentioning Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal's take on his questioning yesterday. | ||
| This is how they write, saying the closest Democrats came to rattling Mr. Hegseth was under the questioning from Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia over infidelity, his behavior in previous marriages, his drinking, and whether he disclosed a 2017 sexual assault allegation to Trump's team when he was being vetted. | ||
| That's from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Again, that full testimony available on our platforms. | ||
| But here's that portion, the back and forth between Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia, and the nominee, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| I want to return to the incident that you referenced a minute ago that occurred in Monterey, California in October 2017. | ||
| At that time, you were still married to your second wife, correct? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| And you had just fathered a child by a woman who would later become your third wife, correct? | ||
| Senator, I was falsely charged. | ||
| Fully investigated and completely cleared. | ||
| So you think you are completely cleared because you committed no crime. | ||
| That's your definition of cleared. | ||
| You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. | ||
| I am shocked that you would stand here and say you're completely cleared. | ||
| Can you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child that had been born two months before, and you tell us you are completely cleared? | ||
| How is that a complete clear? | ||
| Senator Hurt child's name is Gwendolyn Hope Hegseth, and she's a child of God and she's seven years old. | ||
| And she was and you cheated on the mother of that child less than two months after that daughter was born, didn't you? | ||
| Those were false charges? | ||
| Well, no, fully investigated, and I was completely cleared. | ||
| And I'm so grateful for the marriage I have to this morning. | ||
| You've admitted that you had sex at that hotel in October 2017. | ||
| You said it was consensual, isn't that correct? | ||
| Anything you've admitted that it was consensual and you were still married and you just had a child by another woman. | ||
| Again, how do you explain your judgment? | ||
| Completely false charges against me. | ||
| So I investigated and I was completely clear. | ||
| You have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two after you just had fathered a child by wife three. | ||
| You've admitted that. | ||
| Now, if it had been a sexual assault, that would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, wouldn't it? | ||
| It was a false claim then and a false claim now. | ||
| If it had been a sexual assault, that would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, wouldn't it? | ||
| That was a false claim. | ||
| I'm talking about a hypothetical. | ||
| So you can't tell me whether someone who has committed a sexual assault is disqualified from being Secretary of Defense? | ||
| Senator, I know in my instance, and I'm talking about my instance only, it was a false claim. | ||
| But you acknowledge it. | ||
| But you acknowledge that you cheated on your wife and that you cheated on the woman by whom you had just fathered a child. | ||
| You have admitted that. | ||
| I will allow your words to speak for them. | ||
| You're not retracting that today. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| I assume that in each of your weddings, you've pledged to be faithful to your wife. | ||
| You've taken an oath to do that, haven't you? | ||
| Senator, as I've acknowledged to everyone in this committee, not a perfect person. | ||
| Again, a portion from yesterday's hearing. | ||
| Let's hear from Robert. | ||
| Well, let's hear from Clay. | ||
| Clay in Georgia Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello, how are you doing? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You know, I'm going to tell you, I have a very, very problem with anyone that cannot answer yes or no. | ||
| They asked this man to say yes or no for some of those questions. | ||
| He had a problem with. | ||
| Anyone that has a problem with not answering a question like that is something wrong. | ||
| And the FBI did not bet everything about him. | ||
| Did I let the Democrats know everything that they need to know about this man? | ||
| There's no problem with that. | ||
| That is crazy to me. | ||
| So one other thing, one thing I want to say is anyone that does not answer a question, yes or no, then there's a problem. | ||
| No, he should never be nowhere close to even the White House when I am concerned. | ||
| Marcus is up next in Wisconsin, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello, good morning. | ||
| Right away, I just want to say that I strongly agree with the last caller. | ||
| If you can't say yes or no to a standard question like that in front of a congressperson, I don't think you're qualified to be in such a high position as defense secretary. | ||
| Let's go to Larry Larry in Illinois. | ||
| We've set aside a line, by the way, for former and active military, if you want to call that line, 202748-8003. | ||
| Larry's in Illinois calling on that line. | ||
| Larry, go ahead. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I spent 24 years in the Air Force. | |
| I was in Vietnam and I was in Desert Storm. | ||
| I feel that Pete will do a good job. | ||
| It's not political. | ||
| You shouldn't be political. | ||
| When I joined the Air Force, I did not vote for the whole time I was in the Air Force for 24 years for the president. | ||
| It doesn't make any difference who is the president. | ||
| You are to abide by their orders. | ||
| So I didn't have anything to influence my thinking. | ||
| But I think the government or the Air Force and the Defense Department shouldn't be so much political. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And again, I think Pete would do a very good job, give him a chance. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Larry in Illinois. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal also highlights the fact that a lot of attention being paid to Senator Joni Ernst, Republican from Iowa, former military veteran, could make or break the vote within the Senate Armed Services Committee. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal saying that in an interview on Iowa's WHO radio, Ernst highlighted Hegseth's pledge to support women in combat and said she, quote, thought it was a good hearing. | ||
| Asked if Hegseth had her vote, she said yes, she would support him. | ||
| Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2026, had faced pressure from Trump allies to back the nomination. | ||
| The same Wall Street Journal article has several Republican senators to watch out for when it goes to the full Senate for a vote and possibly could make or break whether Mr. Hegseth becomes the next defense secretary. | ||
| They highlight Joni Ernst being part of that, by the way, that list of six senators, newly appointed Utah Senator John Curtis, Republican Susan Collins of Maine. | ||
| Also on this list, the former minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana. | ||
| And so those are the ones to watch as this nomination ultimately goes to a full Senate vote to see if Mr. Hegseth will win the confirmation. | ||
| Mary up next in Alabama, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Mary in Alabama. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I think the gentleman should not be confirmed because he does not support the Constitution. | ||
| Because if you support Trump, you cannot support the Constitution. | ||
| Okay, we'll hear from another Mary. | ||
| Mary in Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| I was calling. | ||
| I don't think that he should be confirmed. | ||
| The fact that he couldn't answer basic questions about the job, like he doesn't have a basic knowledge about the job. | ||
| I think the senator from Hawaii was asking him about countries that belong to different, I forget what she asked them, but he couldn't even answer basic questions. | ||
| So the fact that he didn't even do his research before coming to a confirmation hearing just speaks about his lack of preparation for this position. | ||
| Additionally, he couldn't even say that if Trump were to ask him to do something illegal that was against the Constitution, he refused to answer the question. | ||
| So that just lets you know that Trump's trying to put people into power so that way he can be a dictator on day one. | ||
| And it's crazy that his voters don't believe what he says. | ||
| They say, oh, he's not going to do that. | ||
| He's not going to do that. | ||
| He's doing it now. | ||
| Okay, Mary there in Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Again, this hearing for Pete Hegseth took place yesterday. | ||
| Several other nomination hearings on deck for today and tomorrow. | ||
| And to give you a sense of what you can expect over the next two days on those confirmations for today, those before its various committees, Marco Rubio to become the Secretary of State. | ||
| Pam Bondi to be considered as the Attorney General. | ||
| Chris Wright to be Energy Secretary. | ||
| John Radcliffe to be the next CIA Director. | ||
| Sean Duffy to be the Transportation Secretary. | ||
| And Russell Vogt to be the Office of Management and Budget Director. | ||
| You'll recall that Christy Noam, the South Dakota governor, was slated to be confirmed, or her hearing slated to be confirmed for Homeland Security Secretary. | ||
| That's been postponed to Friday due to paperwork. | ||
| When it comes to Thursday confirmation hearings, Eric Scott Turner to be considered to be the next Secretary of HUD. | ||
| Lee Zeldon to be the EPA Administrator. | ||
| Scott Bessett, the President-elect's choice to become the Treasury Secretary, and Doug Bergham to be the Interior Secretary. | ||
| Now, when it comes to that Pam Bondi hearing, again, she being considered to become the next Attorney General of the United States, 9.30 is the start time for that hearing. | ||
| When that hearing starts, we'll show you a little bit of it. | ||
| But when the House comes in at 10, you can continue watching it on C-SPAN2, our platform, C-SPANNOW, the app, and c-span.org. | ||
| Again, that's for the confirmation hearing for Pam Bondi, President-elect Trump's choice to become the next Attorney General. | ||
| On our line for former and active military, we will hear from Gary in Michigan. | ||
| Next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How are you doing, sir? | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I don't think he should be confirmed. | |
| His lack of basic knowledge about the position he's applying for. | ||
| Also, his comments about women in the military. | ||
| I served with a lot of women in the military, and they were fully capable of performing their duties and orders given to them. | ||
| And the guy couldn't even answer basic questions, yes or no. | ||
| I served 20 plus years in the military, and if you can't answer a basic question, yes or no, I don't think you're qualified. | ||
| And I'm also concerned about his position on legal or illegal orders given by the commander-in-chief. | ||
| War crimes should not be under any circumstances provided. | ||
| So I don't think he should be qualified. | ||
| And his basic knowledge, he didn't even know anything. | ||
| So as far as I'm concerned, no. | ||
| That's Gary there in Michigan. | ||
| By the way, another confirmation hearing to look out for if you're interested to be, as far as when it comes to foreign policy, Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, President-elect's choice to become the next Secretary of State. | ||
| His confirmation hearing, we told you it was today, 10 o'clock today. | ||
| And if you want to watch it, do that on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Again, the other platforms available to you as well if you're interested in hearing what questions he'll be asked of. | ||
| Kevin in New York, he's on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Should Pete Hegseth become the next Defense Secretary? | ||
| Kevin, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me. | ||
| I believe Pete Heszick is a wise choice. | ||
| I believe he has a full spectrum of what others do not. | ||
| You would think that we would want a more mature person with maybe more years in the military, but I do not question Someone who has interviewed people for jobs like on television, on the television show, wanting to buy the best. | ||
| Now, not everybody's going to be a rocket scientist, and not everybody is going to be the best. | ||
| But I will say that he's reachable. | ||
| He would be in the top three. | ||
| So, as far as he's concerned, I feel he would do a good job. | ||
| However, I did understand that the people that were, this is an Inquisition or is this, you know, a bunch of Americans trying to get some work done right away. | ||
| I mean, we change people all the time if they don't work out. | ||
| Anyway, it's very important for us to get moving on this and all work together. | ||
| I've been in the nucleus of the machine here for many, many years, and I've witnessed it from both sides. | ||
| And you got to have one watchdog watch it on the other. | ||
| So, anyway, God bless America. | ||
| God bless Pete. | ||
| All the veterans that he's working for. | ||
| That's Kevin there. | ||
| Let's hear from Laverne in Oregon, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm really surprised that Republicans are willing to bring an alcoholic to this very important position. | ||
| And the Republicans that I know and have as friends definitely would not stand for having this person just because of his alcoholic behavior. | ||
| That is the one main thing that would keep him from being, you know, holding a responsible job of any kind. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| The Washington Post this morning highlights Republican questioning from the hearing yesterday, saying Republicans expressed outrage at Democrats' line of questioning and sought to poke holes in their criticism, maligning the negative allegations as coming from anonymous sources and suggesting that few senators on the dais had managed more people than Hegseph had, and yet no one was questioning their qualifications. | ||
| They offered sympathetic accounts written by female service members and former colleagues of Hegseph's to be entered into the hearings. | ||
| Official record, one of the people speaking up for Pete Hegseth yesterday was Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma, and in his comments yesterday, also criticizing Democrats for their line of questioning. | ||
| Here's that portion from yesterday. | ||
| I think it's so hypocritical of senators, especially on the other side of the aisle, to be talking about his qualifications, not going to lead the secretary or be the secretary of defense, and yet your qualifications aren't any better. | ||
| You guys aren't any more qualified to be the senator than I'm qualified to be the senator, except we're lucky enough to be here. | ||
| But let me read you what the qualifications of the Secretary of Defense is, because I Googled it and I Googled it and went through a lot of different sites. | ||
| And really, it's hard to see. | ||
| But in general, the U.S. Secretary of Defense position is filled by a civilian. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| If you have served in the U.S. Army forces and have been in the service for, you have to be retired for at least seven years, and Congress can weigh that. | ||
| And then there's questions that the senator from Massachusetts brought up about serving on a board inside the military industry. | ||
| And yet, your own secretary that you all voted for, Secretary of Austin, we had to vote on a waiver because he stepped off the board of Raytheon. | ||
| But I guess that's okay because that's a Democrat Secretary of Defense. | ||
| But we so quickly forget about that. | ||
| And then Senator Kane, or I guess I better use the senator for Virginia, starts bringing up the fact that what if you showed up drunk to your job? | ||
| How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night? | ||
| Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign for their job? | ||
| And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have. | ||
| And then, how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives? | ||
| Did you ask them to step down? | ||
| No. | ||
| But it's for show. | ||
| You guys make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man's made a mistake. | ||
| And you want to sit there and say that he's not qualified? | ||
| Give me a joke. | ||
| It is so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself as this higher standard and you forget you got a big plank in your eye. | ||
| We've all made mistakes. | ||
| I've made mistakes. | ||
| And Jennifer, thank you for loving him through that mistake. | ||
| Because the only reason why I'm here and not in prison is because my wife loved me too. | ||
| Again, that was part of the back and forth of the senators with Pete Hegsef yesterday at his confirmation hearing. | ||
| You can see it on C-SPANNOW, our app c-span.org. | ||
| If you want to watch that whole hearing, you can comment, if you wish, on if Pete Hegseff should become the next defense secretary, and you can tell us why or why not. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats, Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you are active or former military, again, give us a call on that line: 202-748-8003. | ||
| Skip up next in Michigan Republican line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm glad you played that take there because this is kind of what I was talking about. | |
| What was so interesting is if there's any cabinet position that needs nonpartisan compromise and working together, it would be the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| That's the number one that we need Democrats and Republicans working together. | ||
| Then you look at my senators, both of them on this, talk about qualifications. | ||
| Honest to God, they would have to Google the county where I live in their state to know where it's at because they've never been there and they have no idea where I'm even from. | ||
| So why are they qualified to be my senator? | ||
| But I wish people would stop the attacks, personal attacks. | ||
| Look at who is best for the position to protect our country and most importantly to protect our soldiers. | ||
| That's what I wish they would do. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call and have a good day. | ||
| Stephen up next. | ||
| He's in Kentucky, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Pedro. | |
| Thank you for allowing me to speak my opinion. | ||
| I just want to take a moment to tell Robert from Pennsylvania. | ||
| I think he mentioned that Republicans, you know, they don't kick and scream when things don't go their way. | ||
| Let me remind you about January 6th. | ||
| That was the biggest kicking and screaming event I've ever seen. | ||
| So they do do that. | ||
| Okay, to the topic. | ||
| I think a celebrity has polarizing as him does not need to be on a platform with defense secretary title. | ||
| It's too polarizing. | ||
| He has no idea what he's doing. | ||
| He might be a great speaker, but when it comes to geopolitical situations, he's clueless. | ||
| You know, the fact that we're allowing celebrities with no experience other than just being popular to run these departments. | ||
| Well, he does have a military background. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so what? | |
| It's a military background. | ||
| It doesn't mean he knows everything about defense, geopolitical. | ||
| Does he speak multiple languages? | ||
| No, there's plenty of other good Republican candidates out there that would have fit better. | ||
| But instead, Trump wanted to choose a celebrity that other there are so many good other candidates out there that could be leading towards Republic. | ||
| And that's I think it's a terrible decision. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Stephen there in Kentucky. | ||
| Mary will hear from in Pittsburgh, Democrats line. | ||
| You're next up, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Mrs. Mary Pittsburgh. | ||
| Yes, you're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I am 97 years old, and I definitely do believe this gentleman should not be made defense secretary. | ||
| And the major reason why is as far as leadership is concerned, number one, he evidently was in charge of some corporations, and both of them failed with his leadership. | ||
| And this budget is so high, I would not trust him with it. | ||
| And then also, I do not believe that he has the military background, or not only that, the background to serve as defense secretary because he could not answer several questions about the Pacific. | ||
| He was vague on it. | ||
| And I think he must have forgotten that I believe the Democrats did have a bill up that we would join the Pacific coalition, and the Republicans voted that down. | ||
| So now it becomes an issue. | ||
| But obviously, I do not believe he was well prepared to answer. | ||
| And I think the most important thing, too, is honesty. | ||
| I taught leadership in nursing at a college here in Pittsburgh. | ||
| And one of the main things about doing leadership is you have to be honest. | ||
| He evaded talking about his personal problems. | ||
| And he also blamed everything on Anonymous. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I do not trust him. | ||
| I do believe that we need somebody who, and I agree with one of the Republicans who said there are better Republicans out there they could put. | ||
| I'm not against him because he's Republican. | ||
| I'm against him because I do not believe he has the qualifications. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Angela. | ||
| That's the viewer. | ||
| This is Angela in North Carolina, former military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Can you hopefully get to hear me? | ||
| Pete Hagsett, regarding Pete Hagzeth, you guys are comparing wanting to put people like the five versus Pete Hagzeth in charge. | ||
| If you got dropped down on the ground in a war zone, which I have been to as a female, do you want Pete Hagset and SEAL Team 6? | ||
| Do you want toxic masculinity covering your back? | ||
| Or do you want the five covering your back? | ||
| And I guarantee you, if there was a choice and you are getting dropped down on the ground, boots on the ground in the Middle East, you are going to choose Pete Hegseth, toxic men like SEAL Team 6, toxic men being your verbiage, not mine, versus these little pansies like the five. | ||
| Angela, North Carolina, let's hear from a Republican Tom in Connecticut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Well, I think that Coralier is hard to follow because she's right on. | ||
| I think Pete's going to do a good job. | ||
| He wants to rebuild the military. | ||
| And right now, it seems like it's doing a dream walk. | ||
| There's nobody there. | ||
| The thing is, I don't have much to say because I'm not a senator, but I do appreciate the Republican senators fighting back this time. | ||
| They usually lean back and let the Democrats tear them to pieces. | ||
| And I do appreciate them fighting back. | ||
| And I think I wish Pete Hegset all the luck in rebuilding our military to be a fighting force and bring back that toxic, toxic, you know, manhood, whatever. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| From Sharon, South Carolina, Democrats line, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm not against him as being a Republican, Pete has seth. | ||
| My concern is, and the concern I should have been, is that will he be able to hold that position and be honest and do what he's supposed to do for the military and for this country? | ||
| He's not, I don't, I don't approve of him being Donald Trump's puppet, doing what Donald Trump tells him to do. | ||
| He needs to think with his heart and his conscience and his mind when it comes down to making decisions. | ||
| If it's wrong, if he feels it is wrong, don't do it because Donald Trump says do it. | ||
| Do it because he feels is right for the country. | ||
| And if he does that, I think he would hold that position more upstanding. | ||
| It's not against being Republic or being Democrat. | ||
| It's just being for the country, not for Donald Trump. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, that's Sharon there in South Carolina. | ||
| This is Kristen in Portland, Maine, texting us this morning saying this, as a Democrat, watching the hearing was embarrassing. | ||
| Democrats wasted so much time bringing up his character. | ||
| We know in Donald Trump's MAGA world, morals, honor, and respect for women means nothing. | ||
| We're about to get a very unqualified person at the head of the military. | ||
| And the Democrats did not ask the appropriate questions. | ||
| A long response off Facebook from Paul Novak saying when it comes to Pete Hegseph, easily very qualified, but more importantly, brings the correct mindset and principles to the position. | ||
| At its core, the military is there to kill those who pose a threat to the United States. | ||
| That requires a focus on the job, period, not quote, equity, not quote, diversity. | ||
| If you can meet the standards and pass the test, you can become part of the team regardless of your race, sex, color, period. | ||
| It goes on from there. | ||
| A long post on Facebook. | ||
| You can make other posts on Facebook on your wish on this topic at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| If you want to post on X, you can do that at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| You can text us like one of the viewers did, 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can use that same number if you are active or former military and you want to give direct thoughts on Pete Hegseph and the phones or call us on the regular lines, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| And Washington State, Independent Line. | ||
| David, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you, Pedro. | |
| I think it's a great service you guys are doing there. | ||
| I just want to say that the military is supposed to have much higher standards for moral turpitude than we see amongst us who are not in uniform. | ||
| And Pete Hegseff simply does not meet those standards. | ||
| But even if you wanted to put that aside, he just does not have any qualifications to run a large organization like the military. | ||
| We've got to get someone there who actually knows how to do the job. | ||
| And I think that the soon-to-be, the once-and-future president, that is, is trying to just beat the Senate Republicans into utter submission with someone so unqualified as Hegseth. | ||
| If they can ram him through, they can put anyone into any position. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Bob from Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, calling in on our line for active and former military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Yaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I'm actually in Massachusetts. | ||
| I'm really kind of perturbed here with everybody saying that Mr. Heset is not qualified. | ||
| The one, the Secretary of Defense we have now had a medical issue and disappeared. | ||
| And boy, out of the chain of command with all the things that are going on right now, that's pretty insane. | ||
| So to say Hegseth isn't qualified is insane, because at least he's a combat vet. | ||
| And he's not going to be taking off places and not telling anybody that he's in the hospital and getting care. | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, part of the questioning yesterday. | ||
| And in her line of questioning, talking to Mr. Hegseth, asking him and questioning him about public comments on women's service in the military. | ||
| Here's part of the exchange. | ||
| For me, this issue has always been about standards. | ||
| And unfortunately, because of some of the people that have been in the middle of the state, Mr. Hagseth's force. | ||
| Priorities other than middle-income military. | ||
| Mr. Hagseth have driven this moment. | ||
| I'm quoting you from the podcast. | ||
| Women shouldn't be in combat at all. | ||
| Where is the reference to standards that they should be there if they can carry, if they can run? | ||
| I don't see that at all, Mr. Hegseth. | ||
| What I see is that there's a 32-day period in which you suddenly have another description about your views of women in the military. | ||
| And I just want to know what changed in the 32 days that the song you sang is not the song you come in here today to sing. | ||
| Senator, the concerns I have and the concerns that many have had, especially in ground combat units, is that in pursuit of certain percentages or quotas, standards have been changed. | ||
| And that makes the combat more difficult. | ||
| Let me make a suggestion about what happened in that 32 days. | ||
| You got a nomination from President Trump. | ||
| Now, I've heard of deathbed conversions, but this is the first time I've heard of a nomination conversion. | ||
| And I hope you understand that many women serving in the military right now might think that if you can convert so rapidly your long-held and aggressively pursued views in just 32 days, that 32 days after you get confirmed, maybe you'll just reverse those views and go back to the old guy who said straight up, women do not belong in combat. | ||
| Again, a lot of questions yesterday. | ||
| That whole hearing available on our website, our app as well. | ||
| If you want to see that whole exchange from the various senators that were participating, the Associated Press and the University of Chicago conducting a poll specifically on Pete Hegseth. | ||
| They asked the question, do you approve, neither approve or nor disapprove or disapprove of people being pointed to various positions when it comes to Mr. Hegseth? | ||
| 19% of those responding from this poll saying they approve of Mr. Hagseth becoming the Secretary of Defense, 12% saying neither, 35% disapproving that, and 33% of those saying they don't know enough to make a decision. | ||
| Amongst Republicans, 41% of support for Mr. Hagseth, as opposed to 10% of disapproval. | ||
| Among Independents, 11% of support, 33% of disapproval. | ||
| And amongst Democrats, 6% of support, 54% of disapproval. | ||
| There's more there, not only on Mr. Hagseth, but other nominees of the president-elect. | ||
| Again, today, the focus on Pete Hegseth, as far as you telling us if he should be the defense secretary, lots of other hearings today. | ||
| Again, stay close to our website and our app to follow along on the hearings, including, as we've told you, Pam Bondi to be the next Attorney General, Marco Rubio, Senator Rubio to be the next Secretary of State. | ||
| Gregory in Minnesota, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I'm an independent. | ||
| I've voted for some Democrats. | ||
| I've voted for some Republicans. | ||
| But Pete Hegseth grew up in the town I live in, and he is a fine, fine person. | ||
| And so he's got a few blemishes. | ||
| Who without sin should cast the first stone? | ||
| Was what Jesus said in the Bible there. | ||
| So Pete will be the finest person. | ||
| He lives and breathes for military activity. | ||
| Once he got in the Army, I mean, he was a fine soldier, decorated, did a great job. | ||
| There isn't anything about him or his family that you could criticize at all. | ||
| I mean, anybody that has any moral compass at all would recognize that when he got out of the military, he saw some really awful things. | ||
| Fellow soldiers dying. | ||
| He went through some PS, what do you call that? | ||
| PTTSD or whatever. | ||
| And I mean, he had to transition back into regular life without being in the military. | ||
| But I mean, he, I mean, my goodness, that kid is, I had two points of saying he was. | ||
| Okay, Gregory, we're starting to lose you on the signal there, but thanks for calling in. | ||
| I'm Marion up next in Georgia, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| The last caller, did you not realize that he seemed to be more partying with women and cheating on women? | ||
| I'm not sure if that's the upstanding moral guy you think he is. | ||
| But Mike, my concerns, and I listened to the entire hearing because I really didn't know much about him until I watched it. | ||
| My first concern was that he did not go to the Democrats. | ||
| You know how he went and he spoke to all the Republicans beforehand. | ||
| It went to their office, but he didn't go to any of the Democrats. | ||
| So that shows that he's very partisan, which is a concern. | ||
| He also, one of the things that people haven't spoken about that just, you know, it's the little things to me that mean something, and they speak volumes. | ||
| And the one was when Elizabeth Warren asked him about the generals, that He had said that if all the generals should be not allowed to lobby after they get out of being a general or retire for 10 years, and she said that she agreed with him on that. | ||
| And she asked him, Well, would you also agree not to be a lobbyist or go back into Washington after you retire? | ||
| And he refused. | ||
| And she said, Well, will you please answer the question, Will you also do the same thing that you're asking your generals to do? | ||
| And he said, I'm not a general. | ||
| So to me, that spoke volumes about his character. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Marion in Georgia, retired military up next. | ||
| This is Mark from Pennsylvania. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| You know, part of my time in the Marine Corps I spent in Hawaii at Camp Smith. | ||
| And I will tell you, the representative from Hawaii was absolutely disrespectful yesterday. | ||
| Besides tourism, a large amount of the income and jobs that they have in Hawaii are due to military bases and military families that live off base. | ||
| And I don't believe that her constituents would agree with her line of questioning and the way that she treated him. | ||
| Your last caller was talking about when he made the comment that he's not a general. | ||
| One of the things that she has to realize is that when these generals leave office after retirement, they're getting a pretty good pension and that they still go work for these contractors. | ||
| This gentleman does not have the pension of a general. | ||
| So maybe him, you know, with his expertise, would be a benefit to go work for a contractor after his time with the government service is over with. | ||
| But also the gentleman who was very disrespectful about mentioning his child, and I'm very glad that he spoke up for himself and he actually mentioned the name of the child. | ||
| Anybody who has to attack someone by going after the child of anyone, it doesn't matter whether you're in the military or not, but to attack and bring up something so hurtful, that was not for any reason as far as his requirements for this job. | ||
| It was more just to insult him, insult his family, and actually sadly insult a child now that her name is mentioned, you know, all across the country, you know, on the news, and it's going to be in the newspaper. | ||
| And did that gentleman think about the embarrassment that that can bring that girl, you know, for the situation that happened in the middle? | ||
| Okay, that's Mark there in Pennsylvania. | ||
| He mentioned the senator from Hawaii, Democratic Senator Maisie Hirano. | ||
| Part of the questions that she had for Mr. Hegsup concerning operations, potential operations, possible operations against Panama or Greenland. | ||
| Here's part of the exchange. | ||
| President Ilek has attacked our allies in recent weeks, refusing to rule out using military force to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal and threatening to take to make Canada the 51st state. | ||
| Would you carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally, Denmark, by force? | ||
| Or would you comply with an order to take over the Panama Canal? | ||
| Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful commander. | ||
| We're not talking about the election. | ||
| My question is: would you use our military to take over Greenland or an ally of Denmark? | ||
| Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand. | ||
| And so I would never in this public forum give one way or another directly. | ||
| What orders the president gives me in any context? | ||
| That sounds to me that you would contemplate carrying out such an order to basically invade Greenland and take over the Panama Canal. | ||
| Again, that was from yesterday. | ||
| We've told you about a lot of confirmation hearings set for this week. | ||
| Some, though, being delayed due to issues of paperwork. | ||
| That's a story in government executive. | ||
| You can find it on their website at govexec.com. | ||
| Here's the headline: Some Trump nominees facing confirmation delays with ethics and background check schedules, saying that Senate Republicans are pausing the confirmation process for some of the president-elect's picks to lead agencies over delays in the vetting process as watchdogs and Democrats continue to press leadership not to move forward without first considering the finances and other parts of would-be cabinet members' backgrounds. | ||
| Lawmakers are hurrying to get at least some of Trump's nominees into place by inauguration day next week. | ||
| Though some Senate committee chairs have said they are awaiting background checks from the FBI or reviews by the Office of Government Ethics, some of those steps were delayed after Mr. Trump's team spent months holding off on the transition process. | ||
| The story adding that many of the President-elect's intended cabinet picks were scheduled for the hearings this week, some of those being postponed as relevant committees are awaiting background information on secretary designates, and that will likely mean that Mr. Trump has fewer picks confirmed on his first day in office than Senate Republicans had initially hoped for. | ||
| Government executivists, if you want to see more there from that story, let's hear from Tom in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you very much for taking my call. | |
| I view this nomination from a management qualification perspective. | ||
| And what I see is Mr. Hegseth has no experience managing major organizations. | ||
| And this is not the type of job that you bring somebody in for on the job training. | ||
| So from that perspective, I want the varsity not to kick. | ||
| Thank you very much for your time. | ||
| Angus joins us from Maryland Democrats line. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I would like to ask the American people to put the head of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines through the same thing you were doing for that particular man. | |
| And that means the president of the late of the United States. | ||
| He should be able to sit there and go through that same thing because he is the chief. | ||
| So if we could go through that wood. | ||
| So when it comes to Mr. Hegseth himself, what do you think of his becoming the next defense secretary? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The man that appoints him should be the one up there going through that instead of him. | |
| Okay, Craig is in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love listening to these liberal Democrats. | |
| They lost and they just can't get over it. | ||
| You want to fix California? | ||
| Let's start busting the trendy Aragon and Mr. Dingang. | ||
| So we're not doing that topic. | ||
| We're doing Mr. Hegseth as becoming the next defense secretary. | ||
| What do you think of that possibility? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Big criminal. | |
| Big tech side for big criminal. | ||
| I watched the trial. | ||
| It was a trial against Trump. | ||
| That's all the Demo Rats talk about. | ||
| They're the criminals. | ||
| Okay, that's Craig there in Ohio. | ||
| You heard the comments and back and forth with Senator Warren of Mr. Hagseth when it comes to women and things he said about women in the military. | ||
| A same type of exchange from Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. | ||
| Remember she saying in an interview yesterday that she'll support Mr. Hagseth. | ||
| This is about questioning him on combat, women in combat, fighting sexual assault in the military. | ||
| She herself, a veteran and a sexual assault survivor. | ||
| Here's part of the exchange with Joni Ernst. | ||
| For the young women that are out there now and can meet those standards, and again, I'll emphasize they should be very, very high standards. | ||
| They must physically be able to achieve those standards so that they can complete their mission. | ||
| But I want to know, again, let's make it very clear for everyone here today. | ||
| As Secretary of Defense, will you support women continuing to have the opportunity to serve in combat roles? | ||
| Senator, first of all, thank you for your service, as we discussed extensively as well. | ||
| That's my privilege. | ||
| And my answer is yes, exactly the way that you caveated it. | ||
| Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, combat rows, given the standards remain high, and we'll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases. | ||
| That'll be part of one of the first things we do at the Pentagon is reviewing that in a gender-neutral way, the standards, ensuring readiness and meritocracy is front and center. | ||
| But absolutely, it would be the privilege of a lifetime to, if confirmed, to be the Secretary of Defense for all men and women in uniform who fight so heroic. | ||
| They have so many other options. | ||
| They decide to put their right hand up for our country, and it would be an honor to have a chance to lead them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And just very briefly, we only have less than a minute left, but we have also discussed this in my office. | ||
| A priority of mine has been combating sexual assault in the military and making sure that all of our service members are treated with dignity and respect. | ||
| This has been so important. | ||
| Senator Gillibrand and I have worked on this, and we were able to get changes made to the Uniform Code of Military Justice to make sure that we have improvements on how we address the tragic and life-altering issues of rape, sexual assault. | ||
| It will demand time and attention from the Pentagon under your watch if you are confirmed. | ||
| So as Secretary of Defense, will you appoint a senior-level official dedicated to sexual assault prevention and response? | ||
| Senator, as we have discussed, yes, I will. | ||
| Okay, and my time has expired. | ||
| Thank you for your answers. | ||
| Let's hear from Mike. | ||
| He's in Louisiana, retired military, on if Pete Hegseff should be confirmed as the Defense Secretary. | ||
| Mike, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd say certainly not. | ||
| Due to the Article 134, the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires that all acts be directly presidential to good order and discipline. | ||
| And it seems to me that Hess said has no good order or discipline, but I think it will be confirmed by those who also have no good order or discipline. | ||
| So certainly not, in my opinion. | ||
| From Kristen in California. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Hi, Pedro. | ||
| Longtime listener, first time caller. | ||
| This will be real quick. | ||
| This is not apples to apples. | ||
| This is apples to hammers. | ||
| Senators are voted in by their constituents. | ||
| They spend a lot of money to run, spend a lot of time running for Democrats and Republicans, do ads, and are to work for all Americans, Democrats and Republicans in their state. | ||
| Defense Secretary is voted in by the senators. | ||
| They raise and spend no money to be voted in by the senators. | ||
| So no, he's not qualified unless all American people vote him in. | ||
| Now, the senators work for the Defense Senator, the Defense Secretary, who runs the whole entire military. | ||
| So no. | ||
| They are the same. | ||
| But if the senators have an advise and consent role in these things, why not let the senators make these decisions regarding Mr. Hegseth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, unless all the constituents, they don't raise money and all that. | |
| He's got an $8 billion budget. | ||
| Senators don't have that. | ||
| So that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| From Ben in Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| I'd like to say this at this particular time, I'm a little confused with the callers calling in and saying that cost overruns are acceptable. | ||
| The Pentagon not getting an audit that actually they didn't fail. | ||
| We're talking about the last 16 years, 12 of those 16 years, we've followed the Democrat rule where we put in high-ranking officials and they failed at their jobs. | ||
| It's time to try something different. | ||
| We've got a young man with military experience who wants to try and get in there and change the ethos of what's going on in the military. | ||
| Enrollment in the military is down. | ||
| We need to get that up. | ||
| We've got four countries worldwide lined up against us. | ||
| And we've got a military that's weaker today than it's ever been. | ||
| We honestly need a change. | ||
| We must think as contrarians, as an independent, I choose the best line. | ||
| And right now, that best line does not lie with the status quo. | ||
| The status quo has failed us. | ||
| Okay, one more call. | ||
| That will be from Bill in Arizona, also on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Pedro, how you doing? | |
| Yeah, Pete Pedcriff would be perfect for the job because the last time that Trump did this, all the generals stabbed him in the back, and they're only interested in embroidery. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| Okay, that's Bill there in Arizona. | ||
| Last call on this topic. | ||
| And thanks to all of you who participated. | ||
| Again, just to remind you of those confirmation hearings, 9.30, the start for the hearing with Pam Bondi, the president-elect's choice to become the next Attorney General. | ||
| 10 o'clock for Marco Rubio, the president's elect choice to become the Secretary of State. | ||
| A lot of other hearings, too. | ||
| Again, stay close to our website and the app for more information on those confirmation hearings. | ||
| Coming up and joining us next, we'll talk with Republican Aiden Smith of Nebraska. | ||
| He's the top member of the Ways and Means Committee. | ||
| We'll discuss the incoming administration's trade and tariff agenda and the prospect of extending those Trump-era tax cuts. | ||
| And later on in the program, a conversation with Peter Montgomery from the group People for the American Way about why he and his organization opposed Pam Bondi's nomination to become Attorney General. | ||
| Those conversations coming up on Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the nominee for Secretary of State, heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | |
| And John Ratcliffe, the presumptive nominee for CIA director, testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee. | ||
| Also, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, nominated for U.S. Attorney General, begins her confirmation hearings. | ||
| She'll testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee across two days, today and Thursday. | ||
| Also on Thursday, Scott Besson, the nominee for Treasury Secretary, testifies before the Senate Finance Committee. | ||
| Watch live on the C-SPAN Networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| With the presidential inauguration set for January 20th, watch the conclusion of the American History TV series Historic Inaugural Speeches. | ||
| Listen to inaugural speeches from Franklin Roosevelt through Barack Obama on Saturday. | ||
| Hear inaugural speeches by President Bill Clinton in 1993. | ||
| There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. | ||
| President George W. Bush in 2001. | ||
| And this is my solemn pledge. | ||
| I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And President Barack Obama in 2009. | |
| The challenges we face are real. | ||
| They are serious and they are many. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. | |
| But know this, America, they will be met. | ||
| Watch historic inaugural speeches Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| C-SPANshop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | ||
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| We are joined by Representative Adrian Smith, Republican of Nebraska. | ||
| He's the Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chair, and he serves the third district of the state of Nebraska. | ||
| Representative Smith, thanks for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great to be here. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| As chair of the subcommittee, can we get your personal thoughts on how tariffs should be applied in the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, tariffs are something that's been around a long time. | |
| We've found out that they can have varied impact at various times, impact the economy as well. | ||
| Overall, I can't say I'm a huge fan of tariffs, but I do believe they need to be a tool in the toolbox as negotiations take place. | ||
| It's very important that we are tough negotiators to level the playing field that over time has been pretty slanted against us. | ||
| When you say you're not a huge fan, is that because of their ultimate impact on an economy or are there other reasons? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That potential, certainly. | |
| And representing a lot of agriculture, we don't really like it when other countries place tariffs on our products. | ||
| And we're good exporters of ag products. | ||
| Let's face it. | ||
| Other countries tend to like our quality and price and value. | ||
| And so we don't like it when they place the tariffs on us. | ||
| That said, we need to keep our options on the table as negotiations would move forward. | ||
| President-Alaik Trump has talked about a variety of ways to approach tariffs and wants to achieve certain amounts of things with them. | ||
| Generally, what do you think of the approach he's taking? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's important that we drive a tough negotiation. | |
| And, you know, I've shared this with a lot of folks that we need to level the playing field, make no mistake. | ||
| And I think what we've seen over the last four years and lack of action, in fact, some of my Democrat colleagues just yesterday in committee criticized tariffs. | ||
| Now that Trump's coming back in, even though nothing was done about tariffs over the last four years, and let me say even more importantly, there was such a lack of action on trade across the board for the last four years. | ||
| That inaction, I think, is especially damaging because our competitors, our trade partners, expect more from the United States of America than what they've seen in the last four years. | ||
| Specifically then, what would you like to see the administration do to a specific country when it comes to tariff policy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Take Kenya, for example. | |
| The previous Trump administration teed up a trade agreement with Kenya. | ||
| Now, Kenya already enjoys the benefits of what we call AGOA, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, an important policy. | ||
| Kenya enjoys those benefits, basically tariff relief. | ||
| And so there are other aspects, though, of trade with Kenya that we could benefit from in terms of market access, agriculture being one of those. | ||
| So the Trump administration teed up a trade agreement, like I said, with Kenya. | ||
| The Biden administration comes in and says, well, we'll talk about trade, but not about tariffs. | ||
| I can't understand why that's been the case when, like I said, Kenya already benefits from AGOA. | ||
| Let's talk about market access and how we, our exporters from the United States, can get their products into a country such as Kenya on a continent that's growing in population. | ||
| That's what separates Africa from so many other continents is its growing population. | ||
| And I suppose though, as countries go, then China would come to the top of that list as far as how we apply those tariffs. | ||
| What's the concern and what's the benefit of applying tariffs going forward or applying other tariffs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the details can be very fine on all of trade. | |
| Trade is a lot of work. | ||
| And with growing technology, diversifying economies, that makes trade even more difficult. | ||
| So digital, for example, that is an important one because the U.S. leads the world in digital trade. | ||
| Other countries say, wow, that's a great source of revenue, especially if it only comes from another country such as ours. | ||
| That can be damaging in various ways, among them access to information and the flow of information. | ||
| That is important as well. | ||
| China, as a competitor, let's face it, and they are engaging in places around the world where we are not. | ||
| That's a problem. | ||
| And I think we will stand to see a vigorous, vigorous engagement in this incoming administration, especially in contrast to the outgoing administration. | ||
| We've heard the president talk about tariffs as a tool to do things like reduce the amount of fentanyl that comes in the country and other things. | ||
| Is that the proper use of a tariff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, fentanyl being a dangerous product, especially if we would become dependent on that revenue, that's an unstable source of revenue. | |
| I can't see a tariff being a good application there on fentanyl. | ||
| But he uses it as a means to say if we put these against the country, the country responds or at least can reduce the amount of fentanyl, then the tariff achieves its purpose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think that's a reasonable measure? | |
| That can be the case. | ||
| Again, I think we need to be careful and not become over-reliant on tariff revenue that is probably not very stable. | ||
| This is Adrian Smith joining us, Representative Republican from Nebraska. | ||
| He's the chair of the trade subcommittee for the Ways and Means Committee. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about trade and tariffs and other related issues, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8002 for independents. | ||
| And if you want to text us, 202-748-8003. | ||
| When it comes to an agenda for your subcommittee and larger for the Ways and Means, what's on the agenda going forward in these first days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we're looking at the pressures on our supply chains. | |
| Our supply chains for domestic manufacturers, for example, accessing various products. | ||
| Sometimes they face barriers. | ||
| Sometimes those are tariffs as well. | ||
| So sorting through all of that, the general system of preferences, that's a tariff relief effort. | ||
| The AGOA, another important program, it expires later this year. | ||
| And we want to make sure we stay on top of that. | ||
| Let's modernize these approaches as we can. | ||
| But that engagement, sending a message to the world. | ||
| We've got the review of USMCA coming up next year. | ||
| Let's prepare for that. | ||
| We just won a big case against Mexico that really, I think, flagrantly violated the USMCA in trying to shut out biotech corn. | ||
| A lot of it happens to come from my district. | ||
| But the world is watching. | ||
| When Mexico basically shut out our corn and President Biden didn't say anything, now some of his people went and filed some paperwork to ultimately, literally years later, win a case. | ||
| But I think we could have shortened that timeframe had President Biden spoken up and said, listen, USMCA has negotiated. | ||
| We all agreed during the previous Trump administration that USMCA was what we were going to work under. | ||
| Mexico violated that. | ||
| And the world is watching to see what our response is for something like that. | ||
| So I'm glad that we are moving into, I think, a more vigorous time in trade engagement. | ||
| And our trading partners, like I said, they expect us to engage more, unlike what we've seen over the last four years. | ||
| On the larger aspect of your service on the Ways and Means Committee, that's the committee that deals with tax issues. | ||
| What's the future of taxes that were placed in the first Trump administration in 2017? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The future is bright. | |
| We have been having some, I think, very engaging meetings, hearing from our constituents as well of how important it is to extend and hopefully make permanent that what we did in 2017. | ||
| There might be some small tweaks to modernize that perhaps on some needs that may exist. | ||
| But what we did in 2017 was a result of years-long negotiation and discussion and hearings that teed up our action in 2017 that was the right thing to do. | ||
| It was thoughtful. | ||
| It was effective. | ||
| Revenues have increased as a result of that. | ||
| And I think we would be very derelict to just let that all expire and go away. | ||
| It would be very damaging for our economy as well. | ||
| So we are very, very excited to get this done. | ||
| It'll take some work, narrow majority. | ||
| But I do know that it's my sense anyway that a lot of Democrats who were skeptical before, they may not vote for this just yet, but they have voted for parts of what we did in 2017 in extending that. | ||
| And I think there's broader understanding across America that what we did was the right thing for what we needed at the time. | ||
| And I'm glad we were able to do that before COVID. | ||
| That has made our post-COVID recovery go a lot better. | ||
| There's a story out this morning about the impact of what's been taken in by the federal government and what's been spent for October, November, and December. | ||
| They're saying there was a deficit coming into that $711 billion deficit over those last three months. | ||
| They highlight the fact that the problem, some of the problem was spending with issues such as Social Security and Medicare, but they also say that part of it was revenue that was taken and saying that the federal government collected $1.83 trillion, spent $1.7 trillion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you looked at overall. | |
| I don't find or hear too many Americans who say, boy, the federal government just spends their money so wisely. | ||
| The concern is that the spending doesn't get addressed like it needs to be. | ||
| And so I think the American people expect us to look at the spending issue as well. | ||
| And when you see the increased revenues to the government over the last several years, that's pretty telling. | ||
| And so, yes, to take a three-month clip there, that is probably a bit isolated in its view. | ||
| But I'm willing to look at those numbers. | ||
| I'm willing to look at criticisms that some folks might have of what we did in 2017. | ||
| It's up to us to process that, to have the discussions that we need to have. | ||
| Let's have this engagement that the American people want us to have. | ||
| And at the end of that, make a decision. | ||
| And I think the best thing to do for our country is to have pro-growth tax policy moving forward. | ||
| Well, some of the issue there was less tax revenue. | ||
| Democrats are arguing that the tax cuts provided that less revenue, and they want to see more taxes going forward. | ||
| Make the case that at this time, you know, more tax cuts or at least sustained tax cuts are the way to go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, we'll have the discussions that we need to have. | |
| What is most appropriate? | ||
| Now, there are some tax cuts that are more growth-oriented than others. | ||
| That doesn't mean that we just ignore those that aren't as productive economically. | ||
| There could be some fairness in there, too. | ||
| So let's look at that. | ||
| But at the end of the day, we need policies that help grow our economy. | ||
| And this just soak the rich, tax the rich. | ||
| When you look at the progressive nature of our tax policy already, the wealthy are paying a lot. | ||
| Now, are there some loopholes? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| There were loopholes created by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and some benefits there for the wealthy that I think we can do without as well. | ||
| Let's hear from Marie. | ||
| Marie in Texas with Representative Adrienne Smith, Republican of Nebraska. | ||
| Marie, good morning. | ||
| You're first up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| I called in to say that I fully support P-Tex 100%. | ||
| And also, I resent the way that the Democrats acted yesterday. | ||
| They're like a bunch of babies. | ||
| And to disparage him the way they did is unacceptable, unacceptable. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| Okay, that's Marie Texas talking about that back and forth yesterday when it comes to nominees. | ||
| You can express your thought on that if you wish. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in the House, we don't have a vote on that. | |
| I know that across America, a lot of people are paying close attention. | ||
| And I think the American people, they want a civilized discussion to process through what the Senate is responsible for doing in the advice of consent on the president selecting a cabinet. | ||
| I'm one who believes that there should be very serious deference to the president to select a cabinet that he was elected actually to select. | ||
| From Tom in Florida, Democrats line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing today? | |
| We appreciate Washington Journal. | ||
| I would like the gentleman to expand more on the T-Up comment. | ||
| He's used that numerous times. | ||
| And if he would, well, using the Kenya example he mentioned, what did actually they propose? | ||
| We want to know more detail on that. | ||
| T-Up, what does that mean? | ||
| The second thing I would like to ask him if he understands the Warren Buffett rule, Jamie Diamond, Goldman Sachs just commented on it, Bill Gates, where if the rich paid the same percentage basically the middle class does, we would have a balanced budget. | ||
| Does he know about that and he doesn't like that idea? | ||
| So those are the two questions I'd like to ask him, please. | ||
| Well, the teeing up terminology that I use, that's not a technical term, but it's preparation before presenting a piece of legislation, for example, or an idea. | ||
| And the fact of the matter is the previous Trump administration prepared to lay out a trade agreement with Kenya. | ||
| Now, it requires a lot of work. | ||
| There's a lot of diligence that's necessary because, like I mentioned, the growing technology and just a lot of moving parts to this type of negotiation. | ||
| Oftentimes, a trade agreement will be presented and start out with nowhere near the votes to pass. | ||
| It's my sense that the Kenya trade agreement would have received a strong bipartisan approval. | ||
| I sense that there are more and more Democrats all the time looking at growing opportunities in America by engaging with our trade partners. | ||
| In this case, Kenya would be an example. | ||
| He also asked about collecting more from wealthy Americans to benefit the middle class. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, when you look at various dynamics of the tax code, wealthy Americans pay a greater percentage of the revenues to the coffers than lower income folks. | ||
| In fact, there's a large segment of the population who does not have a federal tax liability. | ||
| And when we doubled the standard deduction during 2017, TCJA, we doubled that standard deduction. | ||
| We've doubled the child tax credit. | ||
| A lot of things that were important, especially for folks on the lower end. | ||
| Now, we get criticized for what is called that SALT cap, the state and local tax deduction. | ||
| That used to be fully deductible. | ||
| The billionaires could fully deduct their property tax on multiple vacation residences. | ||
| And we said, no, let's cap that. | ||
| In fact, in 2017, the average state and local tax deduction per household across America, the average across America, was about 5,000. | ||
| So we doubled that to 10 and put that cap. | ||
| Now, we'll take a look at that. | ||
| That was not indexed for inflation. | ||
| We want to make sure that those numbers are up to date, perhaps, but still within the framework of let's not give away a huge deduction, especially to the very wealthy, that would cost other taxpayers a lot of money. | ||
| This is Karen. | ||
| Karen's in Alabama. | ||
| Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| So I have heard a few, I don't know if they're specifically Trump people, but I'm assuming that they support Trump. | ||
| Anyway, they had talked about abolishing the IRS, abolishing our current tax code, and having everybody in the country pay 10% of their income for the income tax, and then maybe like a national sales tax. | ||
| I'm curious if you think that's something that that's a legitimate thing that we could do, and if so, how can we do it? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sure, that's a fair question. | ||
| I think that a lot of folks across America understand the complexities of the current code. | ||
| I want to always look for opportunities to simplify the tax code. | ||
| Now, I also want to make sure that we don't have inadvertent efforts that would result in perhaps putting a larger segment of revenue on a smaller number of people who can't afford it, perhaps. | ||
| But I always want to look at ways to simplify the tax code. | ||
| We know the IRS has struggled, even today, with the immense resources, additional resources that they've received in the last few years to supposedly add new employees so that more audits can be done to supposedly focus on compliance. | ||
| But the concerns that I have and many others have are that audits would be done on folks who already did the right thing and yet they have to ramp up a defense because of the additional resources coming from the IRS. | ||
| The IRS, we have found, hasn't even been able to find the employees, not a unique situation across our economy, but the IRS has struggled. | ||
| So I hope moving forward that we can see a modernized IRS that utilizes technology to improve customer service so that ultimately folks who have questions, legitimate questions, they can get those answered in a timely basis. | ||
| We're told that maybe the weight is less than it used to be, but there's still a lot of room for improvement at the IRS for what needs to be done to improve their customer service, ultimately, you know, foster an environment where compliance is easier. | ||
| Compliance is faster, perhaps, and let's focus on that technology. | ||
| That's the Internal Revenue Service. | ||
| The President-elect wants to create something called the External Revenue Service, according to reports, and this would deal specifically collecting monies from trade. | ||
| How would this differ than what's currently done? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the IRS, yes, that is internal, basically, and the collection of tariffs. | |
| It exists today, even without an external revenue service. | ||
| The president, I think, is focusing on the fact that we have an unlevel playing field for our country competing against other countries. | ||
| A very significant point here, these other countries that levy a value-added tax, a VAT, they levy that on products in their own country. | ||
| But when they go to export their products to our country, they waive the VAT, therefore making their products cheaper coming into our economy than even for their own people. | ||
| That is unlevel. | ||
| And that is, I think, an uncompetitive situation that we need to ultimately address. | ||
| I think the President, incoming President Trump, is interested in this as well. | ||
| But he's a fierce negotiator, and I think we can be better for it. | ||
| Who's responsible then for collecting tariffs? | ||
| What body in the government does that directly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Treasury. | |
| Ultimately, Treasury is, and IRS is less involved with that. | ||
| But commerce is involved on a lot of this as well. | ||
| United States Trade Representative, obviously at the ambassador level and a member of the President's cabinet. | ||
| There's for as small as the USTR is as an agency per se, they've got very significant jurisdiction. | ||
| But I really see it as important. | ||
| I think we're going to see an effective coordination among the agencies coming in because President Trump, like last time, he really leaned in on trade and less conventionally perhaps than other presidents. | ||
| But the fact of the matter is that that brought people together. | ||
| USMCA is a great example. | ||
| When President Trump said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, like several candidates for president had said prior, he actually did it. | ||
| And so he marched forward on that with the right folks in place to elevate the issue of trade. | ||
| And I think all across America, I think the coffee shops across America elevated their discussion as well in terms of what trade is. | ||
| And USCMCA is a great example. | ||
| USMCA, a Trump priority, was shepherded through the House by then Speaker Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| If that can be done, I think a lot of other things can be done too. | ||
| Scott is from Kansas, Democrats line for our guest, Representative Adrian Smith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I just see the deficit going up and up and up. | ||
| And at one time, we had eliminated the earmarks that they used to call pork spending. | ||
| We also had what was a balanced budget amendment. | ||
| And I also think that when they talk about revenues going up after cutting taxes on the rich, what would they have gone if they had not cut the taxes? | ||
| And you still go back to the original founding fathers. | ||
| Those that enjoy great fruits and privileges of this country owe back to the nation, not at the same rate, but at a rate much greater. | ||
| And as we're seeing a drift between the haves and the have-nots, I just don't see a lot of action being taken by Congress to get their financial house in order. | ||
| They harvest wheat somewhere in the world every single day of the year. | ||
| I know our agriculture products need to be exported at a fair price, but there's just so much details in how the government is ineffectively managing our taxpayer money. | ||
| And it's earmarks that I think bother me the most. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Scott there from Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Scott, I appreciate your question, especially on the debt question. | |
| There are many of us in the House and Senate very concerned about the debt. | ||
| This is something that has been looming for some time and growing, as you know. | ||
| And that's a major part of the discussion on the tax reform extension or permanence that we are looking at. | ||
| And we are wanting to bend that curve and to get our house in order. | ||
| Now, let's be very honest here. | ||
| And there are various spending parts of the federal budget. | ||
| We have discretionary spending, mandatory spending. | ||
| And the discretionary spending are those programs that Congress revisits every year. | ||
| The mandatory spending are the programs that exist. | ||
| Basically, when things happen across America, they send the bill to the federal government and the federal government pays that. | ||
| And we need to revisit all of this. | ||
| But a lot of folks think that, well, gosh, if you close the Pentagon, we balance the budget. | ||
| No. | ||
| In fact, you'll see where it's called crowdout. | ||
| That mandatory spending is actually crowding out other spending, such as defense. | ||
| Now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any efficiencies or cuts within the Defense Department, but let's not kid ourselves in thinking we can just slash away at various things and fix everything all of a sudden. | ||
| It's not that easy. | ||
| And we've not addressed mandatory spending like we really need to. | ||
| And that's in the health care sector. | ||
| I think we can make sure that technology can develop in a way to help us on the health care front without barriers taking place. | ||
| For example, I have a bill right now that would reimburse pharmacists to test and treat things like strep throat, COVID, and flu. | ||
| Right now, these pharmacists can't get reimbursed by Medicare, even though Medicaid will reimburse and private insurance companies reimburse. | ||
| There's a barrier to pharmacists receiving that payment, and it would be a reduced payment from what an MD would get reimbursed as well. | ||
| So there are barriers that exist to applying technology and the opportunities for our health care professionals. | ||
| We are the envy of the world in terms of health care training and professionals. | ||
| Let's let them treat who we know they can treat effectively. | ||
| Let's remove the barrier so that we can see more access. | ||
| As far as legislation goes, you also have something called the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What is that? | |
| Well, the various efforts out there to help small businesses, there's the expensing and there's the interest provisions as well that I've been working on that are part of the tax reform. | ||
| But that overall, we know that small businesses are a major part of our country and our economy, and we want to make sure that they don't get pushed to the side as we discuss so many things facing tax reform and the budget. | ||
| Before we let you go, the president wants to see a reconciliation bill in the minutes that we have yet. | ||
| What is that, and particularly, how would it work in achieving the policy goals of the president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the reconciliation process has been around since the 70s. | |
| It allows Congress to revisit budget numbers to reconcile the numbers, as the definition would go. | ||
| What it allows as well is something to pass the Senate with 51 votes instead of the 60. | ||
| So now, the House has always a simple majority, and even the closeness of the majority right now, I think it's a pretty good chance we can move something out of the House. | ||
| The Senate will need to act accordingly as well. | ||
| Now, it limits what can be in the bill. | ||
| Policy, new policy cannot be in the bill. | ||
| Now, there will be changes made to existing policy that will affect numbers and the budget. | ||
| But moving into a reconciliation process, the budget committee will give us instructions, and then we fill in from there. | ||
| So, there's going to be a lot of effort here underway soon. | ||
| And is tax policy part of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tax policy is part of that, yes. | |
| What could change? | ||
| Timelines, sunsets, permanence, or dates on those as they impact the budget and in spending. | ||
| Representative Adrian Smith, he is the Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chair. | ||
| He's also the Republican representative from Nebraska. | ||
| Thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Have a good day. | ||
| We're going to do open forum. | ||
| And if you want to participate, you can call the numbers 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll take those calls in open forum when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
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 on Monday, January 20th. | ||
| Tune in for our live all-day coverage of the presidential inauguration as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
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| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
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| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
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| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| We have about an hour in this show before we take you to the Pam Bondi hearing. | ||
| But first of all, we want to tell you about an event featuring President Biden tonight, his farewell address to the nation. | ||
| And you can see coverage of that starting at 8 o'clock. | ||
| He's expected to reflect on his more 50 years of public service and his hopes for the future of the country in a tradition that dates back to George Washington. | ||
| It will be the president's first Oval Office speech since he announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race last July. | ||
| You can see this farewell address tonight, 8 o'clock on C-SPAN, our main channel. | ||
| Follow along on our app, C-SPANNOW. | ||
| You can also follow along at c-span.org. | ||
| Again, this is open forum. | ||
| If you want to participate, we'll start with Rob. | ||
| He's in Florida. | ||
| Democrats lying. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| This is Rob. | ||
| So to the rep. I appreciate him coming on the show. | ||
| I want to say that, no offense, but he's your standard corporate establishment politician. | ||
| You could tell when he's lying because he starts to stutter when he's trying to explain a certain position, especially on his tax codes. | ||
| And, you know, I understand that, you know, he's trying to defend the billionaire rich class, the donor class. | ||
| My question would be, you know, I listened to Scott Galloway the other day on MSNBC and he explained how, you know, 10 years ago, we only had 400, you know, tax codes, you know, a couple of years ago. | ||
| And then now we have about 4,000. | ||
| We had about 500 billionaires. | ||
| Now we have about 2,500. | ||
| You know, the wealth disparity that's happening, you know, it's because of our tax codes. | ||
| The second thing is, you know, this whole thing with the external internal revenue service that we're trying to do, my question is: if we're taxing, you know, what are we going to do with that money from the tariffs that we get? | ||
| Are we going to give those back to the people? | ||
| Are we going to use those as tax subsidies to the billionaires, oil companies, so they can get rich again? | ||
| Okay, Rob from Florida, let's hear from David in Texas, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Two things, actually. | ||
| I watch your show frequently. | ||
| I see these politicians talking about money and taxes. | ||
| How many corporations at this time have their businesses as a post office box in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes? | ||
| Item two, while watching the Hague Seth confirmation hearings yesterday, the Democrats were bringing up all kinds of kind of things that I would say were close to being unethical. | ||
| And the Republicans forgive everything. | ||
| Are the Republicans that afraid of Donald Trump? | ||
| Thank you so much for your time. | ||
| Again, the Attorney General nominee for the president-elect, Pam Bondi, expected to go through the hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee, her confirmation hearing, a shot of the room. | ||
| It will fill up as the hour goes on. | ||
| That hearing set to start at 9:30. | ||
| So what you'll be able to do at 9:30 on this network, C-SPAN, you'll be able to watch a little bit of it before it transitions to other channels. | ||
| In fact, at 10 o'clock when the House comes in, this hearing will move to C-SPAN 2, or at least you can still watch it on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| And also follow along on our app at C-SPANNOW and C-SPAN.org available to you too. | ||
| Again, Pam Bondi, up for confirmation as the Attorney General, nominee for the president. | ||
| When it comes to the Secretary of State, that also going on today, 10 o'clock, the start of that hearing with Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida, that you'll be able to follow along there on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, and also on c-span.org. | ||
| Tony is next in Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, and thank you for having me on the air. | |
| I did want to compliment C-SPAN because you guys had on a person, Freeman, the other day, who was looking at the funding of think tanks. | ||
| And just he had some really disturbing information about the dark money and just the ways in which we need a lot more information about think tanks and that they should not be trusted. | ||
| And I hope C-SPAN will do a better job of putting that information on the air, just showing the dark money, the foreign money, the billionaire money that is funding many of the guests that come on this show that have very specific points of view. | ||
| The other thing that I was going to say, the representative that was just on, when he said our health care system is the envy of the world. | ||
| I mean, what a joke. | ||
| We're spending double. | ||
| We're the only nation that doesn't have some kind of a national health care system. | ||
| We spend twice as much money as any other industrial country. | ||
| We get worse outcomes, much worse outcomes. | ||
| Our people are sicker. | ||
| They're dying earlier. | ||
| So that is not the envy of the world. | ||
| The other thing I would say to the Congress people is that we, Congress has a 9% approval rating and then a 90% re-election rate. | ||
| There's something very wrong with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. | ||
| If you're voting for either of those parties, you're not an independent. | ||
| You've been fooled. | ||
| You're still being fooled if you're still pulling the lever for them. | ||
| We need to move away from that two-party system. | ||
| Additionally, there was a Princeton study that looked at voter preference and legislation. | ||
| And there's absolutely no relationship between voter preference and what legislation is passed. | ||
| The only relationship it showed is when billionaires want something, they get it. | ||
| And that's the end of the story. | ||
| Okay, that's Tony there. | ||
| Let's hear from Zan in Texas, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, everybody. | |
| I can't believe I'm wasting my 30-day call on this because I really wanted to talk about illiteracy in America. | ||
| But a previous caller mentioned something about bring back toxic masculinity to our military. | ||
| And that really bothered me. | ||
| I need to call in. | ||
| I was raped by a military man, and being raped is a very violent thing. | ||
| You're going to have your clothes torn, your furniture tipped over, glass breaking. | ||
| You're going to have to show up to work the next day with the long sleeves because you're going to have bruises, bite marks, long sleeves in 100-plus degree weather and a turtleneck. | ||
| I mean, it's just, it's weird. | ||
| And it doesn't just affect you physically, but also mentally, you're not going to be on your A-game. | ||
| More or less for me anyway, I wish after being attacked, you're shaken. | ||
| I mean, you're shook and mentally. | ||
| And I just, I can't believe somebody would say that. | ||
| Bring back toxic masculinity to the military. | ||
| I mean, come on, man. | ||
| And that's what I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mike is next. | ||
| Mike is in Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for a C-SPAN. | |
| Yes, I am somewhat disappointed that Pete Hexteth was not asked this following question. | ||
| I think that pan bodies should be asked this question as well. | ||
| Had they been in the Capitol on January the 6th, 2021, which side would they have been on? | ||
| That of Donald Trump or that of Mike Pets? | ||
| Because they were not on the same page. | ||
| I wish that that question would have been asked. | ||
| Mike Pets and his wife, both of their lives were threatened on that day. | ||
| So they needed to be asked whose side would they have been on had they been to the Capitol that day, Trump or Petts? | ||
| That's Mike there in Ohio. | ||
| Again, it's open for him. | ||
| If you want to participate, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can always express your thoughts on our various social media platforms. | ||
| Facebook is available to you as well as X. | ||
| And if you want to text the show, it's 202748-8003. | ||
| One of the things coming out from House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday saying that he has ordered the flags at the U.S. Capitol to be raised to their full height on Inauguration Day, pausing a 30-day flag-lowering order following the death of former President Jimmy Carter, the Republican leader's decision means that President-elect Donald Trump will not take the oath of office for a second term under a half-staff flag, a prospect that he had previously complained about. | ||
| It mirrors actions taken in recent days by some Republican governors who have announced their flags in their states will be raised on Inauguration Day to mark the second term of President-elect Trump. | ||
| That story coming out yesterday, also on Capitol Hill yesterday, the House Speaker talking with reporters, answering questions on disaster relief funding when it comes to the California wildfires. | ||
| Here's some of that exchange. | ||
| We're watching with heartache the people in the Los Angeles area in Southern California who are just devastated by this disaster. | ||
| The leader and I come from a disaster-prone state, Louisiana. | ||
| We deal with hurricanes and floods and tornadoes all the time and wildfires as well. | ||
| We all know that. | ||
| We all feel that. | ||
| We're all Americans. | ||
| And the Americans there that are affected desperately need and deserve help. | ||
| But you've also heard us talk about our concerns with the governance of the state of California, state and local. | ||
| And to the extent that there is complicity involved in the scope of the disaster, then we think that's something that needs to be carefully regarded. | ||
| You've heard the word conditions on aid. | ||
| We're not projecting in advance what this will be. | ||
| First of all, you have to understand the fires are still raging, and no one knows what the ultimate cost will be. | ||
| It takes some time to make estimates and all of that. | ||
| And that deliberative process will go forward. | ||
| And the way it works, as you know, is the administration will submit a request, a disaster supplemental request to Congress that goes through the Office of Management and Budget. | ||
| This is a long, deliberative process that we've gone through many times. | ||
| So it's premature right now for anybody to say what that number will be or what the scope of that supplemental legislation would entail. | ||
| I'm told, and I heard this morning as well, I spoke to President Trump about 90 minutes ago. | ||
| I think he's planning to go make a trip himself to Southern California to see the disaster himself. | ||
| And we will follow the administration's lead on this. | ||
| But I will say that we have to make sure there are safeguards on the precious treasure of the American people. | ||
| There are natural disasters, of course. | ||
| But if they are made much worse by human error and deliberate policy choices that were unwise and were stated as such at the time, then I think that that's something that needs to be carefully regarded. | ||
| Again, that's House Speaker Mike Johnson from yesterday. | ||
| Deshaun in Ohio, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm just calling because I see, I realize that a lot of like both Democrats and Republicans use they use the echo chambers, the filters through social media to give, you know, to push their messages. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But it's creating little bubbles of misinformation. | |
| And everyone has their own truth, but it's not the truth. | ||
| So it's causing people not to be able to see what's really going on. | ||
| And they're only able to focus on the information that they're being fed. | ||
| A lot of these old people, they don't even really hit the technology. | ||
| They don't really know nothing about that. | ||
| So the stuff they see, they think it's real. | ||
| Just like when they see that email and they click on that scam, that's the same thing these politicians is doing to those old people and also the people that's coming across borders. | ||
| They're not used to social media. | ||
| I grew up. | ||
| I was on Facebook. | ||
| I did not get Mexicans, Africans from like other countries as friend, as suggested friends. | ||
| I only got black people. | ||
| And I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. | ||
| Why am I not getting other races coming through as friend suggestions? | ||
| Why am I not getting other feeds? | ||
| I'm only getting gang violence. | ||
| Okay, let's go to Bill. | ||
| Bill in Kentucky, Republican line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| I just would like to say that, you know, I voted for Trump, but I will also say this, that I went along with what Biden, I didn't agree with everything, but I didn't, you know, create any chaos and stuff of that nature. | ||
| I didn't, I tried to get in, I guess, conversation with people, but it seems like the left doesn't want to hear what you want to say. | ||
| It's automatically personal attacks. | ||
| He's a jerk. | ||
| He's loudmouthed. | ||
| He's all this. | ||
| But, you know, I have to agree that the economy was a lot better. | ||
| He's trying to do it for every American, not for just the Republicans. | ||
| He really, I honestly truly believe that he is America first, and that's what we need to be because my father came here as an immigrant back in the 1950s, escaping, you know, persecution from Nazism and communism in Europe. | ||
| And, you know, when they first came here, my parents and my friends and stuff like that, they were always, they were proud to be American. | ||
| They were proud to be here. | ||
| I mean, yes, you have to embrace, you know, where you came from. | ||
| Never forget where you came from, but you have to understand we have to assimilate. | ||
| This is America. | ||
| And it all has to go towards the American. | ||
| You have to be a protective member of society. | ||
| And it's just, we got to work together. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, that's Bill there in Kentucky. | ||
| Mehmet Oz is the president-elect's choice to head the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. | ||
| A story today in the Washington Post about who will be helping him if they are approved and confirmed when it comes to the work of Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| This is a story by Dan Diamond reporting that Chris Klomp, a healthcare entrepreneur, would lead the roughly $1 trillion Medicare program, which provides health coverage to about 68 million Americans. | ||
| Abe Sutton, a veteran of the first Trump administration, would oversee Medicare's Innovation Center, which tests new ways to deliver care to patients. | ||
| And Stephanie Carlton, a longtime McKinsey consultant and former GOP Senate staffer, would serve as Mehmet Oz's chief of staff, helping him run the vast agency that also has the responsibility for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| This story also adding when it comes to Chris Klomp, the first one mentioned, he served as the CEO of healthcare of the IT firm Collective Medical before its 2020 acquisition has long criticized America's health care system as overly siloed and complex. | ||
| He pointed out some of the problems with delivering women's and families' care in a November 2022 interview published by Maven Clinic, a company that provides virtual care for women and families. | ||
| More there about those potential changes when it comes to Medicare and Medicare services. | ||
| You can see that in the Washington Post. | ||
| Let's hear from Mike, Independent Line in Illinois. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| Hey, I think we're being softened up for a knockout punt, Pedro. | ||
| There is a songwriter once wrote, Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose. | ||
| Here we are about to swear in a president accused of espionage, and now we find out he was going to do a coup at the end of his last term. | ||
| Not a peek from the Supreme Court. | ||
| And also, we find out on the 9th the day Biden closed the government down for a funeral. | ||
| I thought it was suspicious, so I watched the hearings and some weird stuff was going on. | ||
| We did sanctions on the Hague World Court for putting sanctions on Israel and us for what we're doing, where we bombed a country into a corner and we bombed them some more. | ||
| I believe what we're watching there is basically little Lil Palestine, we're big Palestine with these fires coming. | ||
| Texas burnt 1 million. | ||
| Oregon built a million acres. | ||
| Hawaii, and they're not letting them rebuild. | ||
| This is all softening us up to the final punch. | ||
| The ransomware, the FBI is not finding out who's doing it, but the one company like MGM said, no, FBI, we're not letting you into our system because the ransomware is here. | ||
| Kind of told me something. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Mike there in Illinois. | ||
| Let's Michelle. | ||
| This is Michelle in Los Angeles. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| A couple of callers back. | ||
| He said that the left doesn't want to hear what the right is saying. | ||
| And I think part of that problem is because I'm not always, I'm confused what they're saying. | ||
| In regards to Pete Hicks, He talked about qualifications, meritocracy, and how the military lowered standards in the past in regards to women and affirmative action. | ||
| But when it comes to him, what are his qualifications running a large political organization like that? | ||
| What is the merit that he brings to that job? | ||
| And are we lowering standards by hiring someone who hasn't even run an organization like that? | ||
| And my second point is the Republicans say that the Democrats are so hard on Pete Hexett, but the complaints that came in about him on his misconduct when he was running the two corporations that he ran, those were conservative organizations, and it was conservatives who lodged those complaints. | ||
| So when the Republicans say, listen to us, listen to what we're saying, you don't want to hear what we're saying, it's because it's too confusing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Michelle there in Los Angeles, this just coming over the wire at Axios, saying that inflation showed cooling signs at the end of 2024. | ||
| The Consumer Price Index ticked up by 0.4% in December, but a measure that excludes food and energy prices slowed for the first time in four months, according to the Labor Department. | ||
| The story adding that core inflation resumed a cooling trend, offering some optimism for policymakers ahead of us uncertain year. | ||
| The Consumer Price Index rose at a slightly quicker pace than the 0.3% increase in the prior month as energy prices surged by 2.6% in December alone. | ||
| Gasoline prices shot up 4.4%. | ||
| Axio is reporting that. | ||
| We'll go to Jeffrey next. | ||
| Jeffrey's in Florida, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| My name is Ben Dover. | ||
| Let's go to Mike. | ||
| Mike in Arlington, Virginia, Independent line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, hi, John. | ||
| Listen, I think with the coming climate change, there's going to be a lot more natural disasters. | ||
| I think that the Republican Party or whoever's in charge should be aware that they're setting a precedent if they attach aid restrictions to California because the next hurricane that hits Florida, they may find that, hey, maybe we don't want to give any aid to Florida. | ||
| So I think Mike Johnson is being a little nearsighted on all these problems. | ||
| And I wish him the best of luck. | ||
| The Cuba becoming coming back into focus, according to the pages of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| President Biden yesterday announcing that he's removing Cuba from the terrorism sponsored list, saying that's part of a deal that he worked out with help from the Catholic Church to free political prisoners on the island. | ||
| U.S. officials say the decision comes less than a week before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration for a second term would lead to the release of, quote, many dozens of Cuban political prisoners. | ||
| They're saying that Cuba's foreign ministry said it would free 5353 prisoners, all the inmates being incarcerated since protests took the island in 2021. | ||
| The move reverses a decision that President Trump made to designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. | ||
| That was in January of 2021, shortly before the end of his first term. | ||
| It isn't clear if he will restore the designation when he returns to the White House next week. | ||
| Kathy, up next in Ohio on this open forum, Democrats line. | ||
| Kathy in Ohio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was calling. | |
| I watched the program yesterday about Pete Hay Shit and watched all his answers and everything. | ||
| And you could tell he was really nervous because of all the water he kept drinking and the way he kept smiling and laughing at people when they talked to him. | ||
| And I just really can't see him being in there. | ||
| I think it's going to be a disaster. | ||
| Everybody has talked about him. | ||
| It has absolutely nothing good to say about him. | ||
| And when they talk to him about his sexual problems, he keeps saying, well, that's anonymous. | ||
| That's synonymous. | ||
| So I feel that once he gets in there, he'll be a real good match to Trump because Trump has all the sexual problems himself. | ||
| And that's really about all I have to say. | ||
| We'll hear next from Wayne. | ||
| He's in Illinois, Republican line. | ||
| Wayne in Illinois. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Yeah, the comment I wanted to make was on a previous caller said the Supreme Court should have gotten in and said something about what was going on. | ||
| He's forgetting that the Supreme Court is separate and distinct from the other two administration, or not administrations, administrative cabinets. | ||
| And the Supreme Court rules and comments only on law. | ||
| That's just like with when somebody wanted to have the Supreme Court comment on Chinese taking over whether or not they should be able to take over their area. | ||
| I can't think of the name off the top of my head. | ||
| But my point being is that the Supreme Court rules strictly on the law and nothing else. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Alexis in North Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I want to mention the re-election or the election of Allison Riggs to the North Carolina Supreme Court. | ||
| They've had two recounts. | ||
| She's won both of them. | ||
| And now they're trying to void 60,000 votes in order to make Griffin the winner. | ||
| And there's nothing fair, honest, or constitutional about it. | ||
| They're just trying to shove it in. | ||
| And I want people to be aware. | ||
| Call the North Carolina Senate and let them know that you're opposed to the efforts to denigrate Allison Riggs and make her ineligible. | ||
| Okay, that's Alexis in North Carolina. | ||
| Reuters reporting that TikTok plans to shut its app for U.S. users this coming Sunday when a federal ban on the social media app could come into effect. | ||
| That's unless the Supreme Court moves the block. | ||
| And according to sources familiar with the matter, the outcome of the shutdown will be different from that mandated by the law. | ||
| The law would mandate a ban only on new TikTok downloads from Apple or Google, while existing users could still continue using it for some time. | ||
| One more call. | ||
| This will be from Frank. | ||
| He's in Modesto, California Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to say that, you know, this whole thing is crazy. | ||
| You know, how do we let this kind of thing happen to our government? | ||
| I'm 74 years old, and I can't remember ever anything like this ever happening. | ||
| Well, Color, when you say this whole thing, what do you mean specifically? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, all these people that are getting elected, president and everybody else, you know, that's going for want to be the head of the FBI and this and that. | |
| It's crazy. | ||
| The people aren't qualified. | ||
| The leader is putting everything in their heads and making them follow them like he's a God or something. | ||
| And my mom was in a memory clinic for a hospital for about a year and a half, and she had dementia bad. | ||
| I bought her a little TV in there in her room, and she was watching it all the time. | ||
| And she was telling me what was going on. | ||
| She knew what was going on, and she had dementia. | ||
| Now, how did our government, you know, how could we let our presidents from the past and the people that started the Constitution, you know, what do you think they would say if they saw how we're acting and letting these things happen? | ||
| Okay, Frank from California, finishing off this open forum. | ||
| Thank you for all of you who participated. | ||
| Again, at 9:30, is when that hearing featuring President elect Trump's Attorney General nominee, Pam Bondi, she'll be questioned by many members. | ||
| There's the room filling up. | ||
| That's where you can see that hearing take place starting at 9.30. | ||
| Coming up next, a conversation with Peter Montgomery, with the group People for the American Way, about why he and his organization opposes Pam Bondi's nomination to be the Attorney General. | ||
| We'll have that conversation when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been Delano Roosevelt. | |
| Hi, Harry Epstein. | ||
| You solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States. | ||
| The office of President of the United States. | ||
| And will to the best of my ability. | ||
| And will to the best of my ability. | ||
| Preserve, protect, and defend. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. | |
| The Constitution of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So help me God. | |
| Congratulations, Mr. President. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch C-SPAN's all-day inauguration coverage on Monday, January 20th, including the historic swearing-in as Donald Trump takes office as the 47th President of the United States. | |
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Stay tuned to the C-SPAN networks for comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees. | ||
| Today, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the nominee for Secretary of State, heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| And John Ratcliffe, the presumptive nominee for CIA Director, testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee. | ||
| Also, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, nominated for U.S. Attorney General, begins her confirmation hearings. | ||
| She'll testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee across two days, today and Thursday. | ||
| Also on Thursday, Scott Besson, the nominee for Treasury Secretary, testifies before the Senate Finance Committee. | ||
| Watch live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| 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 points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now is Peter Montgomery. | ||
| He is the research director for People for the American Way here to talk about what we'll see in about a half hour from now, the Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me on. | |
| A little bit about your group and organization. | ||
| What does it do and how does it relate to days like today when we're watching these hearings play out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
People for the American Way is a national progressive advocacy organization. | |
| We are devoted to the idea that the American promise should be real for all people. | ||
| And we mobilize community leaders and cultural leaders to defend truth justice in the American Way. | ||
| And our vision is an America in which our rights and freedoms are protected for everyone, not just the rich and powerful. | ||
| And when it comes then to Pam Bondi herself and the possibility of her becoming the Attorney General, what are the concerns? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have a lot of concerns about the rule of law in this country under the Trump administration. | |
| And we have concerns about whether Pam Bondi is willing to defend Americans' safety, rights and freedoms, and whether she's going to do that or whether she'll be mostly representing Donald Trump, as she has as his personal lawyer, and the corporate interests that she's represented as a lobbyist. | ||
| You specifically wrote when it comes to Pam Bondi that she's bad news for the rule of law. | ||
| Give me specifics why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's bad news for the rule of law. | |
| One step back is that I think the biggest threat to the rule of law in the Trump administration is Donald Trump himself. | ||
| And in his first term, his worst impulses were held in check by people, including very conservative Republicans who worked for him, who believed that their oath to uphold the Constitution was more important than their personal loyalty to Donald Trump. | ||
| We're concerned that Pam Bondi's record suggests that she will do and say anything that Trump wants, including going after journalists and lawyers who investigated him, people who were just doing their job. | ||
| She's threatened to target lawyers at the Justice Department who investigated Trump. | ||
| She has, you know, she helped Trump spread lies about the 2020 election that he lost. | ||
| She went to Pennsylvania and made claims about fake ballots and insisted on national media that Trump had won for Pennsylvania and they weren't going to leave until Pennsylvania declared that to be the case. | ||
| That just wasn't the case. | ||
| And that kind of rhetoric has had a lot of negative consequences about people's trust in our elections to the violence on January 6th. | ||
| She also has helped Trump try to avoid responsibility for January 6th by resisting investigations since she's been at the America First Policy Institute, where she argued in a legal brief that Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. | ||
| So we're worried that she has tried to help Trump evade accountability and she's really proven herself to be a personal loyalist and we're worried that she's more likely to enable his abuses of power rather than prevent them. | ||
| She has served as the Attorney General of the state. | ||
| What do you think about that experience specifically and what she could bring to the role as Attorney General of the nation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's a very different role and it's a very different role under Donald Trump, who has made it clear that he's expecting personal loyalty. | |
| We do have concerns about her record as Attorney General in Florida, where she fired attorneys who were investigating abusive loan practices that were defrauding people of their homes. | ||
| She opposed same-sex equality for legal equality for same-sex couples. | ||
| She tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| So substantively, we have a lot of concerns with her record there. | ||
| This is the political story recently about the meetings that she's been having with various senators on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Some of the quotes coming from that, well, this is Chris Coons of Delaware of the Senate Judiciary Committee saying there's no question she has the relevant experience managing one of our nation's largest State Department of Justice. | ||
| She's been elected twice to be Attorney General. | ||
| She's managed a very large statewide Attorney General office. | ||
| Other complimentary comments about her experience as well. | ||
| That going into the hearing, are you concerned about what Democrats will ask or at least suppress of her when it comes to information they want to hear? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the hearings are really important for a number of reasons. | |
| One, it's in the Constitution. | ||
| This is an important part of our checks and balances. | ||
| And I think Democrats will be wanting to talk about both her qualifications and her character. | ||
| There's no question that she's more qualified than, say, Matt Gates, Trump's first choice, with her record as a prosecutor and a state attorney general. | ||
| We're concerned about whether her personal loyalty to Donald Trump and his stated desire to push the bounds of what's legal in his efforts to gut the federal government's ability to protect Americans, his efforts to avoid accountability, his pledge to pardon hundreds of January 6 protesters. | ||
| We're concerned about whether she's going to enable all those things, whether she'll be giving Trump advice that protects the American people or whether she just goes along with what he wants to do with his power. | ||
| Our guest is Peter Montgomery. | ||
| He's with People for the American Way Services, the research director. | ||
| And if you want to ask her questions, I will ask him questions about this hearing with Pam Bondi as she faces questioning from the senators. | ||
| You can do so on the lines. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| 202-748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| If you want to text us those thoughts and questions, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Specifically, what questions would you want to hear asked of her? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd like the Senate to ask her what she will do if Trump gives her an illegal order, asks her to do something that clearly violates the Constitution. | |
| There have been news reports that Trump's team is specifically planning to declare executive orders and pursue policies that are illegal or unconstitutional under current court rulings just to see how far they can push the limits. | ||
| I'd like senators to ask her what her advice will be in that situation. | ||
| What she'd do in that situation. | ||
| I'd like them to ask her more about her threat on media to go after Justice Department prosecutors and lawyers who did their jobs in taking part of investigations of Donald Trump. | ||
| I think those are some of the important questions we'll ask. | ||
| Again, these hearings are about qualifications, but also about character, about whether someone can be trusted to do the job to represent the whole American people and not just the president who's their boss. | ||
| What has your organization specifically done in light of this hearing as far as a media campaign and advertising? | ||
| Otherwise, what are you doing in the lead up to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are putting out information on our right-wing watch as a website we have. | |
| We put out information about her record. | ||
| We have mobilized our members to sign petitions to senators. | ||
| We have sent a letter to senators detailing our concerns and urging them to oppose this confirmation. | ||
| Republican senators, Democratic senators, who's involved in that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think our letter goes to everybody. | |
| I think our letter goes to all the senators. | ||
| I think that certainly our contacts and our conversations are more likely to be on the Democratic side. | ||
| What do you think is the possibility of her getting confirmed by the Judiciary Committee itself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's probably pretty good because Republicans have not shown a great desire in standing up to Donald Trump. | |
| On the other hand, we don't know what's going to come out. | ||
| And I think that one of the great things about confirmation process is that in some ways it's very transparent. | ||
| Both Democrats and Republicans get a chance to ask their questions on the record. | ||
| The nominee answers written questions that senators give that are also released to the public. | ||
| So it's a little bit hard to guess what might come out, what might sway members of the committee about her intentions and whether she can be trusted to do this job for all the American people and not just for Donald Trump. | ||
| This is Peter Montgomery joining us. | ||
| Our first call is from Dave. | ||
| Dave is on our independent line. | ||
| He is from Alabama. | ||
| You're on with our guest, Dave. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, I like Pam. | |
| She's a breath of fresh air compared to this regime we have now, the Biden regime, the loony bin, which is reflected through our media. | ||
| But it's said that there's so many federal laws now. | ||
| When you wake up in the morning, open your eyes, you've already violated about 500. | ||
| We need a clean house. | ||
| One of the things Trump said in the 2016 debate is that we need to erase, he said two, I said maybe 10. | ||
| So when the Congress legislative body passes a new legislation, and it's so complex, but we need to erase 10, get rid of them. | ||
| I'm also a proponent of streamlining the federal constitution started in 1871. | ||
| We were the U.S. Constitution. | ||
| So we need a Congress active to do the will of the people to go back and clean this mess up. | ||
| So Pam Bondi would be a great asset to getting rid of this swamp. | ||
| And then, of course, the media. | ||
| So I have great regards. | ||
| You got the point out? | ||
| We'll let our guests respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd say when you talk, people talk about the swamp or people like Pam Bondi talk about the deep state or the administrative state. | |
| I think it's important to remind ourselves that what they're talking about is gutting federal agencies whose job it is to protect American workers, communities, and the environment from wrongdoing by corporations. | ||
| And I think there's a major effort afoot by the Trump administration and the people that are advising him to make it harder for the government to rein in misbehavior, bad behavior by corporations, and to give more power over our lives to unaccountable corporations. | ||
| And I think that's harmful to Americans. | ||
| I hope that people will resist that. | ||
| But I think that is part of the agenda that we're going to see from this administration and one that will be supported by Pam Bondi. | ||
| To the caller's point, how do you think the Justice Department could be reshaped under Pam Bondi? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's hard to know just how aggressively they're going to be in following through with threats to fire, investigate, prosecute career civil servants in the Justice Department. | |
| And I think that they probably have a lot of plans for day one executive orders. | ||
| One of the things we know that Project 2025 was pushing was that they wanted to eliminate this bipartisan principle that's been held for a long time that the FBI and the Justice Department decisions about law enforcement prosecutions should be independent from the White House, should be insulated from political pressures. | ||
| They want to do away with that. | ||
| They want to basically give Trump virtually dictatorial control over every federal agency, including ones that Americans have traditionally understood to be independent, and that that independence is an important check on abuses of power. | ||
| And so we're worried that that independence could be eliminated. | ||
| Here is Mary. | ||
| Mary is in Maryland, Democrats line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Why not just let Trump appoint whoever he wants because we're no longer a country of laws and just let him destroy like he wants to do? | ||
| I mean, we elected him knowing all the crimes he had committed. | ||
| And why not just take the people out of jail and let them run for president? | ||
| Well, I think there are a lot of Americans who feel frustration and a little despair. | ||
| Maybe that's reflected in Mary's question. | ||
| I think that the country is worth fighting for. | ||
| The rule of law is worth fighting for. | ||
| And, you know, Donald Trump, despite talking about getting elected by a landslide, actually won by a very small margin of the popular vote. | ||
| His electoral college vote was nowhere near historic, the way he describes it. | ||
| So there's a lot of Americans who still want to protect the rule of law and are going to be willing to stand up to this administration when it does things that are harmful to our fellow Americans or to the principles that we rely on. | ||
| Republicans would say what you just said and cast it as a mandate. | ||
| Shouldn't that extend to who the president wants in certain positions? | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The president is able to appoint people, but the Constitution says that there are checks and balances on that. | |
| It's the Constitution that gives the Senate this authority to review nominees to make sure that they're qualified, to make sure they can be trusted to do the job. | ||
| So Donald Trump is no different than any other president who makes his appointments to the cabinet, and those appointments are subject to review by the U.S. Senate in public confirmation hearings. | ||
| And I think that it's a great process, and we should all be glad that it's in place. | ||
| The room is filling up there at the Senate Judiciary Committee. | ||
| Again, 9.30, the scheduled start time for this hearing. | ||
| We'll show you a bit of that room filling up as we hear from Bob. | ||
| Bob is in Wisconsin, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just wanted to make a few comments and ask a few questions. | ||
| Do you believe that Mayor Garland was political and he had weaponized the Department of Justice to go after political rivals like Trump and everybody else in Trump's cabinet? | ||
| The FBI lied in order to investigate Trump. | ||
| Don't you think the government has already been politicalized? | ||
| And they went after Trump and it's proven. | ||
| Don't you think that the case against Trump in New York, when it goes to the appeals court, everything is going to be dropped on the condition that he did so much wrong in court? | ||
| And then why would you say Pam Bandi, a very strong woman, is going to be politicized? | ||
| They're going to take the political out of the government that Biden put in it. | ||
| I don't get this at all. | ||
| Don't you think that Garland went after schools and parents? | ||
| They went after January 6th people that were just walking around there. | ||
| We all watched machines go down, election laws being changed. | ||
| American people saw it. | ||
| That's why they were mad. | ||
| It had nothing to do with Trump. | ||
| And you people are sitting on there talking about that he's going to weaponize the departments. | ||
| He's not. | ||
| You did. | ||
| The Democrats did. | ||
| And you're a hardcore Democrat. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| You're going to come up with some response. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, we'll let him come up with a response then, Bob. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I would say that Trump's conviction in New York was he was convicted on those counts by a jury of Americans who heard the evidence and made the decision against him. | |
| I think that our conclusion that Trump and Bondi, people like Kash Patel, are going to weaponize the federal government to take retribution on Trump's political opponents and personal enemies is based on things he has said and things they have said. | ||
| They have talked about going after the mainstream media. | ||
| They have talked about going after lawyers who are doing their job to investigate wrongdoing by President Trump. | ||
| Steve Bannon talks about Old Testament retribution. | ||
| And I think the American people, the poll suggests that the American people are not fond of the idea of massive pardons of the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, people who attacked police officers. | ||
| So we'll see. | ||
| There's been conflicting word from Trump and his allies about just how many of those people he's going to pardon. | ||
| But those pardons send a signal about the rule of law, again, and his valuing of personal loyalty to him over the Constitution. | ||
| Since you mentioned Kash Patel, does the organization share concerns about him as similar to Pam Bondi? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| We are also opposing Kash Patel's confirmation as FBI director. | ||
| He has very explicitly talked about going after Trump's opponents. | ||
| I think, you know, it seems like he's very eager to turn the FBI into a weapon that Trump can use against his opponents. | ||
| You know, Patel published a book called Government Gangsters, which is sort of a hit list of people he wants to see punished, including some of those Republicans that I mentioned who stood up to Trump and were not willing to go along with his scheme to stay in power after he lost the election. | ||
| Last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Kash Patel told the audience that the mainstream media is the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen. | ||
| Now think about that. | ||
| The media as the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen. | ||
| That says something about his mindset. | ||
| It says why we think that he and the administration pose a real threat to freedom of the press, which is core to our democracy. | ||
| So yeah, we have a lot of concerns about Kash Patel being named FBI director. | ||
| Conversation with Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way. | ||
| This is Lois. | ||
| Lois is in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Obviously, Bondi has been his personal attorney, and I expect she will be his personal attorney when she's in the Justice Department. | ||
| What I'd like to ask you is, he has said, as you noted, that Trump wants to prosecute the media. | ||
| How would the Justice Department actually do that for him? | ||
| And what could be done to stop it if she, in fact, is confirmed? | ||
| Well, I think there's a number of ways that they could go after the media. | ||
| They could target individual reporters. | ||
| Trump could order the Justice Department to target reporters who've been critical of him, could make claims about leaks. | ||
| He could file, they could go after them civilly and criminally. | ||
| There's a lot of ways that they could turn the fire of the Justice Department on individual reporters. | ||
| Project 2025, the plan for the administration put together by the Heritage Foundation and its allies, also envisioned doing away with the independence of agencies like the Federal Communications Commission. | ||
| Trump has talked about taking away broadcast licenses for networks whose news coverage of him he didn't like. | ||
| So that is another real threat to freedom of the press that we've heard out of Trump and his allies, and another reason that we're concerned about not having any guardrails in place. | ||
| You know, one of their reasons for wanting to do mass firing of professional civil servants is that they want to get rid of the guardrails and the checks and balances and people who might resist illegal actions. | ||
| CBS has part of her opening statement in which she says part of her job that she sees it as an overriding objective, quote, to return the Department of Justice to its core mission, vowing to get the Department, quote, back to basics, prosecuting violent crime and gang activity, stopping child predators and drug traffickers, protecting our nation from terrorists and other foreign threats, and addressing the overwhelming crisis at the border. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll see. | |
| We'll see if that's what she really does. | ||
| I think the Justice Department has always been working on those things. | ||
| And I think Trump has a much broader agenda. | ||
| This is from James. | ||
| James is in Atlanta. | ||
| James, you're on with our guest on our Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Can you guys hear me? | ||
| Can go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just want to say that real quick. | |
| I mean, to be honest, I don't really agree with Pam Bondi take it all, to be honest. | ||
| I mean, this is the worst pick, I think, since when Bush is in office back in the early 2000s, I mean, we don't know how that ended with Bush. | ||
| You know, he doesn't care about black people. | ||
| But to be honest, I'm really surprised, to be honest. | ||
| I mean, I'm actually disappointed. | ||
| I mean, I was surprised that he chose Bondi. | ||
| I was thinking he might choose someone like Howard Stern. | ||
| That's James there at a prank call to boot. | ||
| When it comes to the things that you're worried about, I know how to put this. | ||
| How much of it is based, I guess, from what you've said before, but how much is hypothetical in nature as far as what could happen should she become the Attorney General? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in some ways, it's all hypothetical because we don't know what they'll do until they actually take power. | |
| But we know that they have a whole lot of executive orders planned for day one, for the first week, for the first month. | ||
| There is an aggressive plan to remake the federal government to align with Trump's vision. | ||
| And unfortunately, some of that I think is going to be really harmful policies toward a lot of different groups of people. | ||
| And it's also going to be using the Justice Department and the FBI for him to take personal retribution against people he sees as his enemies, whether it's political opponents, whether it's the mainstream media, or whether it's civil servants in the Justice Department and other government agencies that have been doing their jobs. | ||
| And we don't know how wide they're going to do the mass firings they have threatened to do so that they can replace professional employees with political loyalists. | ||
| But that's all something that we'll be looking at. | ||
| And I will say that there is a broad coalition. | ||
| I mean, we're proud to be part of a broad coalition of civil society organizations that are see what's coming and are preparing for it. | ||
| And so I think there will be an energetic resistance to the worst of what the Trump administration tries to do. | ||
| The focus is on Pam Bondi today, but how would you rate the tenure of Merrick Garland as Attorney General? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I'm not an expert on that. | |
| I would say, I'll take a pass on that one. | ||
| I haven't given a lot of thought to that. | ||
| Terry is up next. | ||
| Terry joins us from Minnesota, Republican line. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, Peter, you complained about the potential pardons by Trump. | ||
| You didn't mention Biden's pardons. | ||
| I'm curious, your deal of, oh, Trump's going to nominate people loyal to him and try to put in place his policies. | ||
| I think that the American people voted for those. | ||
| Are you opposed to the American people's representative doing what they asked them to do? | ||
| I think it's clear. | ||
| You're still fighting the election. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| Talk about the media and whether they're going to attack the media. | ||
| You know, what is it? | ||
| 15% of the public trusts the media right now? | ||
| I mean, there is a problem with the media. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| They have to begin by stop having the unnamed sources, the half stories. | ||
| They become an advocacy for one side or the other. | ||
| And the American people see it and no longer listen. | ||
| I'm sorry, but your ideas and that side of the idea, the American people in the election pretty much flushed it down the toilet. | ||
| And you're diving in after trying to reclaim it. | ||
| Okay, Terry, there you make your point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say, you know, we recognize that Trump won the election. | |
| And like Trump, we're not trying to overturn the results of the election. | ||
| And so part of what that means is that Trump gets to name people to run the agencies. | ||
| It means he gets to name people to the federal bench as federal judges. | ||
| And we're very concerned about the people he's going to put on the bench and the people he's going to put in the agencies. | ||
| I will say that this process we're talking about today, the Senate confirmation process, is part of the Constitution. | ||
| It's not, you know, refighting the election. | ||
| It's saying that, yes, Trump won, but he still has to abide by the Constitution. | ||
| And the people that he puts in office have to abide by the Constitution. | ||
| And we have not given up our rights as American citizens to raise alarms when we think he's doing something illegal or just when he thinks he's doing something harmful with the policies that are pursuing. | ||
| So I don't know if you're suggesting that people who oppose Trump should just throw up their hands and walk away, but we're not going to walk away. | ||
| And I think a lot of Americans are not going to walk away from advocating for what we believe in and for an America that reflects our values. | ||
| You and your other groups, after if Pam Botti does become the Attorney General, is there another step as far as reacting to decisions he may make legally or otherwise? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there's a whole range of options for it. | |
| Once decisions start being made, once policies start being put in place, we're going to look at them. | ||
| Are there opportunities to challenge them legally? | ||
| Are they breaking the law? |