Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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david corn
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kimberly adams
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bill christison
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Running Scared in Corporate America00:15:12
unidentified
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We're joined now by David Korn, who's the Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones magazine, to talk more about the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump tomorrow.
So we are just over 24 hours, less than 24 hours, I guess, at this point.
Well, it's in the afternoon, a little bit more, coming up before Donald Trump is inaugurated, the 47th president.
What is your assessment of the political moment that the country's in right now?
unidentified
I think it's fraught right now.
I think Donald Trump comes in with an extremist agenda that he himself has talked about, trying to seize more power for the president, trying to eviscerate federal agencies and the civil service.
He's looking to put inexperienced loyalists into some of the most important positions in our government.
I mean, Peter Heckseth, you know, you may like or not like what he says in Fox News, but this guy has never run a large organization.
unidentified
And running the Pentagon is a major job.
Tulsi Gabbard is a Putin apologist.
She was an apologist for Syrian dictator Basha al-Assad.
And now she's going to be in charge of the intelligence community.
Robert F. Kennedy has said there's never been a vaccine that's been safe or effective.
He's never run anything that big himself.
And now he's in charge of our public health system.
So I think there's a lot of possible danger ahead.
Bird flu is on the rise.
And here is Robert Kennedy, who tried to stop.
He petitioned the FDA to stop the COVID vaccine in some of the darkest days of the COVID pandemic.
So will he not try to give us a vaccine if there's a bird flu pandemic?
Will we try to block that?
I mean, that could cost the lives of many, many Americans.
So I think we're moving towards a very extreme agenda.
Kash Patel has never run anything like the FBI, and he has an enemies list, which he even published in his book of deep state enemies, including some Republicans, that he believes should be investigated.
So now he's going to be in charge of the FBI as inexperienced as he is.
So we're going to have a lot to look at in the coming months, let alone looking at the policy.
Trump put forward a very, very harsh view of what he wanted to do, very ideologically driven, but also driven to serve his own interests.
unidentified
And we'll see how that plays out in the coming months.
But we got a little bit a taste of that this past week, just the other day, when Trump announced his own cryptocurrency.
And all the experts that I've read say that it's kind of what they call a rug pull, that the people announcing the cryptocurrency can make a lot of money, but only because they, in essence, fool the people who buy into it.
I'll give folks a little bit more information about this crypto story that you're mentioning.
Here's a story about it in Axios: that the Trump meme coin doubled.
Again, this was he launched the crypto, making his stake worth $58 billion or more.
President-elect Trump launched his own cryptocurrency Friday night when this article first ran.
And as of Sunday morning, he appeared to have made more than $50 billion on paper for himself and his companies.
The stunning launch of the Trump coin caught the entire industry off guard and speaks to both his personal influence and the ascendancy of cryptocurrency in his administration.
It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have more than $50 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 48 hours previously.
That story was actually from just updated just 47 minutes ago.
So that even though the coin launched on Friday, Trump's stake in it is now worth $58 billion or more, according to this reporting from Axios.
I want to get back to the inauguration.
What do you think is different heading into Trump's second term from what the conditions were in 2017 when he first took office?
unidentified
Well, I think there are a lot of differences out there.
I think he has managed.
When we entered the first time, there was a lot of, I think people were keeping distance from him.
There were a lot of questions about his ability to be president.
I personally think that with the COVID pandemic and other things, he showed that he wasn't a good manager of the nation and of the government, and that he broke a lot of his promises.
And yet, four years later, after leaving the presidency, he's been able to convince a lot of Americans that he has an idea of what to do, but also corporate America.
I mean, to me, the biggest sort of change that we're seeing, and I wrote about it this weekend, is that four years ago, the Capitol was full of white nationalists, Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, and extremists who were kicking the you-know-what out of law enforcement officers.
140 were injured, in order to serve Trump and to stop the peaceful transition of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
So he had thousands of people there attacking the Capitol in what was basically an attempt to subvert the constitutional order.
And now, four years later, when he returns to the Capitol or his people return to the Capitol, it's not these extremists and radicals and fringe violent players.
Even Bill Gates, who I think has been a wonderful philanthropist over the years, but who's the target of a lot of MAGA-style conspiracy theories, said that, you know, he was impressed by Donald Trump.
He just doesn't want Donald Trump sticking tariffs or regulations or even prosecutions that may target him or his interests.
So I think Trump's stated desire to have more power and to use it, while the Supreme Court has granted him more immunity to do whatever he wants, essentially, has a lot of people running scared.
And I think to find these people, and these are not all criminals, the first round of deportations, which may begin even on Tuesday, will focus on people who are locked up with criminal records.
unidentified
And it will just basically be short-circuiting the process, denying them due process and sending them, I don't know, we still don't know where they're going to be sent.
But at some point, if they are true to their word, Trump and his supporters, they want to go after anybody who's here that's undocumented.
That means people who've been here 10, 20 years, perhaps, who've been part of the community.
We saw in the first Trump administration that climate scientists and researchers on all sorts of fields, if they said something or put out a report that contradicted Trump's policy or aims, that they were punished.
unidentified
And remember, I think this is a key thing that gets lost in the shuffle.
You were talking about the various groups of people who you say might be running scared in the new Trump administration.
There's a story in NBC News.
Trump's return to power has old critics and skeptics reconciling with a new normal across the spectrum of American society.
Leaders who once shunned Trump or battled him are now seeking to bolster their ties or extend olive branches later in the article saying, whereas in 2016, many saw a fluke, Trump this time swept the swinging states and won the popular vote.
His victory came after episodes like the January 6th attack on the Capitol and his criminal indictments, headwinds many believed were insurmountable.
Now executives are bending policies and bending a proverbial knee by abandoning their social and environmental agendas in manners that could appeal to Trump.
Leaders of multiple major media platforms appear to be reorienting their coverage to be less antagonistic.
And Democrats, without much of an active resistance to underpin them, have taken a wait-and-see approach to a new president with whom they already have eight years of experience.
unidentified
What is your take on the state of what used to be called the resistance?
Well, they're talking about corporate America and the media, and I think the story is spot on.
We saw ABC News settle a case that ended up putting millions of dollars into Donald Trump's pocket.
We had a news report this past week that the owner of CBS News, which is looking for some help from the federal government and some regulatory issues, has considered settling with Donald Trump about another ridiculous lawsuit, which put money into his pocket.
unidentified
There is a lot of accommodation going on.
The president is powerful.
And when he was first president, Trump was more incompetent, more of a bumbler, and had people around him who put up guardrails.
We've heard multiple stories about things he wanted to do, and people either ignored him or convinced him not to do it, or it didn't happen because he himself did not have the attention span to get things done.
unidentified
This time around, he's coming in with shock troops that are more focused on what they want to get done.
Thus, I think there is more fear from corporate media, and that includes corporate America, and that includes corporate media.
So you have the new management team at the Washington Post trying to cut, it seems, or curtail some of their coverage, harsh coverage of Donald Trump, and people leaving.
unidentified
Reporters are fleeing the Washington Post as the Post tries to figure out how we can attract Trump voters.
You saw, you know, it's harder.
This is sort of tea leaf reading.
You know, you saw CNN take Jim Acosta or released a report that they're going to move him to midnight.
He has been identified, at least by the Trump people, as being not friendly to Trump.
So they're taking a show from 10 a.m. and moving it to midnight.
Trump's Authoritarian Impulses00:12:19
unidentified
Maybe there's other reasons to do that, but it certainly looks as if they're trying to throw a bone to Trump by doing that.
So you have a guy who has authoritarian impulses.
He tried to basically blow up American democracy by declaring he won an election that he didn't win and then inciting violence, which he now is poised to excuse and justify with pardons.
And I think that is sending a shockwave of fear to a lot of people throughout society.
And I think Democrats, the piece is right there, still have not found their footing and have been, you know, kind of waiting and seeing or just not being strong enough, particularly on some of the inexperienced and extreme appointments that Donald Trump has put forward.
Once my man already was the last time, and right after he's elected the first time, he tells about a woman who nurses a dying snake back to health and takes it into her home.
unidentified
Then the snake turns around and bites her.
And the state tells her, Hey, you knew I was a snake when you took me in the first took me in.
He claimed that Haitian migrants who were living legally in the United States were eating cats and dogs, and then he wouldn't back off from that when it was shown it wasn't true, even when Republican officials in Ohio said it wasn't true.
unidentified
And then he and JD Vance promised that they would still look to deport these people and remove them from the United States.
So I don't know.
I think at the end of the day, the inauguration speech doesn't matter.
I don't think it matters what he says on Monday.
What matters, what he does Monday evening with executive orders and what he starts doing on Tuesday.
Gina is in Mississippi on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Gina.
unidentified
Good morning.
Mr. Cohen, I just want to laugh and say there's nothing worse than a sore loser.
And I want to talk about that.
I think that that is very important.
And I think the biggest issue with you Democrats is that you have told so many lies about Donald Trump on national TV that the American people soon figured out the game y'all were playing.
Not to even talk about the fact that you put a poor, demented, sad man as the president of the United States, that anybody with a functioning brain could see that he was not well and he did nothing but destroy this country for four years, no matter what you say.
There are slander laws and now you're going to turn it into saying it's Donald Trump punishment.
You know, when you get on national TV and you tell a lie so Gina, which points you're raising a lot of points, Gina, which ones are you asking Mr. Corn to respond to?
unidentified
Yeah, I would like to know, since she called me a liar, I'd like her to back that up.
What did I lie about?
Oh, come on.
That's right.
Just like when you say that President Trump is a rapist and he a racist and all that crap y'all have been saying for the last 10 years.
When rioters were attacking the Capitol and, you know, screaming, Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence, he sat in the Oval Office dining room and watched TV.
unidentified
And his aides came in and said, you got to do something about this.
He did nothing.
He swore an oath to protect the Constitution and defend it.
He broke the oath that day.
And when they said that Mike Pence was under threat and could be harmed, he said, so what?
So don't talk to me about sore losers.
There's never been a bigger sore loser than Donald Trump.
And to say that Biden destroyed the United States, look out your window.
What's destroyed?
Inflation has gone down.
We have the best economy of any Western nation.
He managed the COVID vaccination program well, and COVID is still with us, but it's not killing as many people as it did at the end of Donald Trump's term.
We have manufacturing revitalized with chip manufacturing.
And so, you know, you may have issues with the things that he did, and things are far from perfect.
But, you know, the hyperbole that he destroyed the country, you know, crime is down in a lot of measurements as well.
unidentified
So I mean, I don't know what to say about people who use such hyperbole.
Can't even see their own guy clearly.
And just on that last point about racism, Donald Trump spent years lying and saying that he had evidence that Barack Obama, the first black elected president, wasn't born in the United States, was born in Kenya.
We've seen reports in the last few days that a lot of them didn't, that sometimes they did not give him all the polling data and that they formed a protective cocoon around him, which has happened with other presidents in the past who have perhaps passed their sell-by date.
unidentified
But in those days, there wasn't as much media scrutiny.
And so I think, you know, it was, you know, Biden was not, I think he probably could be president, but he wasn't up for the job of running for president, which are two very, very different things.
Remember, you know, Donald Trump, you know, spent years saying he wanted to ban TikTok, hated TikTok because it was related to China.
unidentified
It was Chinese-owned, which is true.
And now he's like, I love TikTok.
Why?
Because he did well on it during this election.
That's why.
So it's all really about him.
I think TikTok does present some very real privacy and national security concerns that get to what you're talking about.
I'm not sure it's been fully used by the Chinese government to, you know, for propaganda or to change the views of young people who may or may not join the military.
But as we know, all these social media networks, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok or Instagram, they all use algorithms.
And algorithms decide what you get to see and what you don't get to see.
So it does give the people running TikTok a lot of power in terms of boosting some material or suppressing other material.
unidentified
And so I think for something that big and that large, without the transparency of how they're doing this, there are some real issues that probably could have been dealt with in a much better way than just this outright ban, because now Donald Trump and others are out there saying, oh, I don't want to ban TikTok anymore.
Well, the problems that exist because of TikTok still exist.
So it's, you know, saying ban or no ban is sort of a binary way of approaching this when what we really do need are laws and regulation that would create more transparency for tick tock and deal with these privacy issues that are very, I think, significant.
We're going to go to Brian in Easton, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Brian.
unidentified
Yes, thank you, C-SPAN, for taking my call this morning.
Here's my point.
I grew up in a time not long ago, I mean, I'm a 43-year-old guy, where the Republican Party, by and large, would have completely rejected Donald Trump, would have realized this is a person completely unfit for office who lacks any level of seriousness, any substance, any actual care for policy specifics, for leadership.
And in fact, we know that he was rejected by most of the party.
Their choice was Jeb Bush.
Their choice, perhaps, was Marco Brubio and a handful of others.
And he was a last resort for them.
But the point is, this is really the direct byproduct of when you put count, excuse me, when you put party over country, when you're willing to literally defecate on the Constitution.
I believe somebody, a recent caller, talked about AI.
I think what would be great, nobody said this, is if we take the founders, the framers of our Constitution, and actually found out what they would say about Donald Trump.
unidentified
With all these brilliant AI people in Silicon Valley, I'm sure that could be done.
Let's find out directly what they would think.
I think we could actually make that happen.
And just lastly, if I could, when it comes to truth, I know our incoming president-elect has a platform called Truth Social.
I mean, this is the equivalent of if O.J. Simpson had a platform called Fatherhood.
I mean, this is crazy stuff.
I'm concerned for our country.
I don't say that lightly.
I voted for John McCain.
Mitt Romney, I gave serious consideration to.
I'm fairly independent, but it's revolting and it's very tragic.
And I also blame social media.
50% or more of our country gets their news primarily from social media, not mainstream news that's been demonized and maligned.
But in so doing, people's minds, their opinions, we don't have a collective truth.
Truth is dead in this country, and that's a tragedy.
And I do think, you know, Donald Trump, when he started running for president, and he's done it up until now, gets out there and says you can't believe the media.
So when the Washington Post, over the course of his presidency, details 30,000 lies, falsehoods, you know, misrepresentations, 30,000, that's the number, more than 30,000, actually.
unidentified
You know, his people say, well, that's just the press.
We can't believe them.
And when I was at a Trump rally right before the election, I had what, to me, was a little bit of an epiphany because I think about this stuff a lot.
And I realized that for many Trump supporters, Trump is the media.
They believe what he says.
So when he says they're eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian migrants, they believe that.
And when CNN, NBC News, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, or even the governor, the Republican governor of Ohio says it's not happening, they don't believe them.
Donald Trump is their source of information.
When he says, you know, we've never had an economy as good as my economy when I was president, and that's not true.
Or we've never had a worse economy than when we have now.
And that's not true.
The Depression, for instance, people believe him.
And they, when it comes out in the rest of the media, they put to these, they put aside.
That means it's hard to have a real conversation or a debate about the national issues that we need to discuss.
All right, let's see if we can get to a couple more folks before we have to let you go.
Robert is in Springfield, Oregon on our line for independence.
Good morning, Robert.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
Yeah, so I voted for Barack Obama twice and Donald Trump three times.
A couple questions for David.
I watch you all the time.
Don't necessarily agree with you, but you're pretty informative, and I like that.
What was Carmela Harris thinking when she nominated or selected Tim Wolf as the vice president candidate?
I knew it was game-set match when that happened.
The country didn't vote for Joe Biden and did vote for Donald Trump primarily for one reason, not because they like Donald Trump's morals or any of those ideas.
It's competence.
People see the country going in the wrong direction, and all they want is somebody to put it back on track.
So, who do you think will be the 2028 Democratic candidate in the next election?
Well, thank you for your comments.
I really wish we could, you know, agree, at least disagree agreeably these days.
And a lot of the callers who disagree with what I say are not nearly as polite as you are.
So, I appreciate that.
You know, I would challenge you on the question of Donald Trump's competency.
If you go back to the first term, he said he would do something about health care.
He couldn't even put together a plan.
He mentioned Infrastructure Week again and again and again.
And he was a builder, developer.
You thought he would be able to do this.
He didn't put together a plan.
He did nothing on that.
It was just all photo ops.
And I don't think he handled the COVID pandemic well.
So I think I was mismanaged.
But to your question of 2028, I will predict now that I have no idea what to predict.
I think it's wide open.
I think there are a couple of governors out there.
But I think what Donald Trump has also done is change the way people see the presidency.
Maybe for good, maybe for bad.
And there could be all sorts of people who are not part of the political process at the moment, whether they're corporate executives or, I don't know, celebrities of other sorts, who might jump into the race.
So I think, you know, a lot of elections are usually about reactions to what we just went through.
So we're going to have a couple of years here to see how Donald Trump acts as president this time and what he does and what he succeeds in and what he fails at.
unidentified
And that will shape the playing field for whoever is going to be the 2028 nominee on the Democratic side.
The first thing I would like to say is: a lot of us, I'm an African-American woman who voted for Trump three times.
I also question Barack Obama's birth certificate.
I'm sure that does not make me a racist.
And because of the New York 5, I'm so sick and tired of hearing about that one.
Half of the entire United States of America thought those guys were guilty, and they confessed Trump just had enough money to put out a front page ad.
That does not make him a racist.
This very day, I have not heard a single individual person come forward and say Trump has ever spoken about black people or anybody else in a negative negativity as far as their race is concerned.
He talks about people as far as their person, not their race.
You talk about January 6th with the police officers.
They have fabricated this story so much to the tune that nobody knows what's really true with January 6th because we're told there was Secret Service in there.
There was anti-FA in there.
There were all kinds of other people that were in there.
You guys are so focused on this white supremacist and all this other ridiculous personally.
Janice, I want to let our guest respond to some of those points that you've raised.
unidentified
Anyone who doesn't watch the videos of January 6th and who doesn't come away with the obvious conclusion that Trump's supporters were violent and beat the crap out of cops to try to stop Trump from having to leave office, I don't think their powers of judgment or observation, I should say, are fully sound.
I think they're falling for propaganda.
There is no evidence that Antifa was involved in all this.
There's no evidence that any FBI, you know, deep state manufactured.
Donald Trump said, go to the Capitol.
People went to the Capitol.
They were proud boys.
There were Trump supporters who let people in.
The guy who, you know, with the horns, the QAnon shaman, these are all Trump supporters.
You know, the idea that you can look at this and believe that it didn't happen, that these people are innocent, or that they were somehow led astray by five FBI informants in the crowd.
And on the racist question, you know, people can go and Google the long history of racist remarks and racist actions that Trump has, including going back to the housing company that he and his father had that was sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination.
unidentified
So I'm sorry, if you don't look at January 6th and see it for what it is, saying that Donald Trump is not a racist, I don't think you have a lot of validity there in terms of critical thinking.
All right, let's go to Nick in Gatersburg, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Nick.
unidentified
Hi, how are you?
I would just like to say I'm a registered Democrat, but the last four years I've come around and I would just like to ask Corn about the media hypocrisy.
On May 29th, 2024, the White House was attacked.
The church was burnt.
And Trump was rushed into a bunker.
And the media celebrated it.
The media celebrated it.
They clowned him on it and everything else like that.
Fast forward to January 6th, all of a sudden, it's worse than the Holocaust and all this other stuff.
This double standard, okay, is what made me just realize how full of crap the media is.
Now, if he could address that, that'd be great.
It doesn't sound like he's much of a Democratic caller.
You know, whatever happened with Black Lives Matter, and people want to point to that to excuse January 6th, I don't get.
I don't get.
These are two very separate things.
You want to argue that the Black Lives Matter protests weren't handled right or whatever.
But to use that to say that January 6th was not a singular event in American history where an American president who had denied election results and was plotting covertly to stay in power sent people to the Capitol and then did nothing initially when they violently attacked it.
And he was trying to exploit that to remain in office.
So whatever you want to say about Black Lives Matter, I mean, that has nothing to do with Donald Trump sitting in the White House and saying, I like this violence.
unidentified
Let's see what happens.
Maybe it's going to help me out.
All right, well, I mean, that's despicable, but you want to support that?
It's your right as an American to say, I don't care about preserving the Constitution.
All right, and coming up next, we're going to be taking more of your comments in our open forum.
We're going to put those numbers up on your screen and you can start calling in now.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
A new chapter in U.S. history begins this Monday with the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.
Witness Democracy in Action with C-SPAN.
And for the first time since Ronald Reagan's inaugural in 1985, this extraordinary day will be held inside the Capitol Rotunda due to frigid temperatures.
Watch C-SPAN's live all-day coverage, where we'll take your calls, hear insights from historians, and speak with attendees in Washington, D.C.
This historic day begins at 7 a.m. Eastern with live coverage, including the outgoing president greeting the president-elect at the White House.
We'll bring you the swearing-in ceremony as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming President of the United States, followed by his inaugural address.
See the departure of President Joe Biden, the presidential parade inside D.C.'s Capitol One arena, and later the inaugural balls.
Also, don't miss our special coverage on C-SPAN 2.
Witness the inauguration unfiltered.
No commentary, no filler, just the sights and sounds of the presidential inauguration, exactly as it happens.
Watch C-SPAN's inauguration coverage live all day Monday, starting at 7 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
And online at C-SPAN.org.
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
A day before his inauguration, President-elect Trump will be at Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath laying ceremony.
You can see that live at 1245 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
This afternoon, President-elect Donald Trump will attend a pre-inauguration Make America Great Again rally to celebrate his victory in the 2024 presidential election.
From the Capitol One Arena in Washington, D.C., watch live coverage at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
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We are in open forum ready to take your calls with your comments on news of the day.
Our number for Democrats, 202-748-8000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And for Independents, 202748-8002.
Before we get to your calls, just the latest updates coming about the situation in Gaza with the ceasefire ongoing right now.
And news from the Times of Israel reports that the Red Cross is heading to pick up the hostages and that Trump welcomes the expected release of the hostages, saying on Truth Social, three wonderful young women will be first.
Armed men are also parading through Gazan cities as the ceasefire takes effect.
And here's another update: that hostage mothers are asked to come to the meeting point at the IDF base near the Gaza border.
Hebrew media reports that the IDF has asked the mothers of the three hostages to come to a meeting point at a base next to the Gaza border.
From there, they are to accompany their daughters as they are taken to the hospital.
And we will be following this, of course.
I also want to point out that we are going to be following here at C-SPAN coverage of many of the events leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Trump that's happening tomorrow.
But today, there is a wreath laying ceremony that's scheduled at 12:45 p.m. Eastern.
That's going to be happening at Arlington National Cemetery, where President-elect Trump will be doing a wreath laying ceremony.
We'll be carrying that live on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, and also c-span.org.
And then later on today at 3 p.m. Eastern, there's going to be a pre-inauguration victory rally held at the Capitol One Arena here in Washington, D.C.
And we will be carrying that as well.
And then in the evening, there's also scheduled to be a candlelit dinner at the National Building Museum that President-elect Trump is scheduled to attend ahead of his inauguration as the 47th President of the United States tomorrow.
Well, let's keep the language clean, Helen, and go to Joe in Tampa, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Joe.
unidentified
Good morning, Kimberly.
You've been doing a fantastic job all morning long handling some of these irate callers.
Okay, you should be ashaming yourselves, you callers.
You have no respect, no dignity, and you're talking about inaugurating a 47th president on a holiday that was supposed to be for Dr. Martin Luther King.
How about we talk about why is that the case?
Okay, think about that.
The other comment I wanted to make is the TikTok CEO is supposedly going to be a VIP on the Trump inaugural idea or whatever that is that's going to happen.
And he moved his stuff outside from the outside to the inside.
I think some caller previously from New York made a good point because he did not want the embarrassment of that crowd size.
You know how he loves the crowd size?
Well, by putting it inside, he can say, well, the crowd size was unbelievable if you could say that.
So yeah, those are my comments.
One, you've been doing a great job.
There's a lot of irate callers, and some of them are grossly misinformed.
In 2025, you see have some people that think that things are going to get better, that it's going to get fixed.
Look at what Trump did on his first term.
Did anything get fixed?
Obviously not.
This circum term is for the rich.
So you're going to have this oligarchies and the AI companies, the Jet Bezos, and things of that nature.
They're going to be in charge.
And you know what's going to happen?
I predict a lot of more jobs are going to be lost during these next four years because of automation and robotics.
So mark my words.
You're going to see the lady that just called, you think things are bad.
They're going to be so worse.
You're not going to be able to afford prescription medicine.
Joe mentioned the reports that TikTok CEO is planning to attend President-elect Trump's inauguration tomorrow.
In addition, Politico reports that TikTok is going to sponsor a Trump inauguration party and that the CEO is expected to attend the event.
TikTok is spending $50,000 on an inauguration party honoring influencers who helped Donald Trump spread his campaign message, according to the party organizer.
And it's scheduled for Sunday, today, the deadline for the company to spin off from its China-based owner or be banned.
Obviously, as we've been reporting this morning, the app has stopped operating in the United States, putting up a screen telling people that they're doing so as a result of that ban.
And then the CEO of TikTok is expected to attend that event.
Now let's get back to your calls and open forum.
David is in Flemington, New Jersey on our line for independence.
Good morning, David.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you.
I wanted to make a comment about Head Start, which of course is in the Project 2025 because it's always the iconic target of the American right since it came out of a president who was resurrecting the New Deal, the Great Society, the war on poverty.
Head Start is always The issues with Head Start that aren't discussed is the community action programs that stand in between the recipients.
And we can all argue all we want about who should receive Head Start, issues of immigrants and Head Start, generational poverty and Head Start.
We can argue about that indefinitely.
Statistics on whether it actually does give a Head Start or is it just a glorified babysitting program?
Those are all debated.
But what isn't ever pointed out is these community action programs like the one that runs Head Start in Flemington, New Jersey.
They wait until communities fall below the federal poverty line, such as in Flemington, and they rush in with a variety of programs, including Head Start, but they exploit their workers.
Again, we can debate all we want about who should receive this, but people don't understand in the middle of that enormous money stream are community action programs like the one in New Jersey, who rushed into this area.
And I have never seen, and I've seen it firsthand, workers exploited to the degree that they are exploited.
The people who get these grants treat the federal dollars like their own.
They keep the employees barely above the federal poverty line so they can't themselves get Medicaid and food stamps.
And that is never checked.
Every requirement of Head Start for the children is checked, which is right, but nothing for the employees.
Final point.
Let's not forget that programs like Affirmative Action and Head Start were created to address generational poverty in the United States.
That's three groups.
That's African Americans.
That's very poor Caucasians in places like Appalachia.
And that's Native Americans.
Head Start has an early Head Start component.
You can walk into this country pregnant and enroll in an early Head Start and keep your child in there until age five.
Again, we can debate whether we want to do that or not, but we have to stop exploiting employees who work for Head Start with these greedy community action programs.
Debbie is in Columbia, Missouri, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Debbie.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'd just like to say I have a complaint, not about you, Kimberly, but they're cutting into the open form a lot with all the news and stuff that we get throughout the morning.
And you're good about it, and John's good about it.
Allow the people to talk.
And I would just like to say about corn.
January 6th was mostly a peaceful protest.
The Capitol Police were guiding them through the building and opened the doors for them, the protesters.
And there was only a small feces accident.
It wasn't like it was all over.
And there were some Antifa people there, and they're in prison now.
So that's a lie.
And as for Joe Biden, he's taken credit for the hostage release and the ceasefire.
Renee is in Vista, California on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Renee.
unidentified
Good morning.
I just wanted to say that people really need to do more independent research before they vote.
They need to check all the C-SPAN channels, go to their local libraries and things, and really look into what everybody's history is and what people have contributed.
People talk about Trump's prior time in office.
Now, I do give him credit for the space program and for getting the vaccination started for COVID, but he also told lies about COVID with the ivermectin and the other product.
And one of those products, he was on their, he had stock in.
So he was getting money by telling people to take things that were going to harm them.
Then additionally, which product are you talking about that Trump had investments in where he would make money on?
unidentified
Not the ivermectin.
It was the other product.
I can't remember the name of it right offhand.
Let me and then I also wanted to say people also need to do independent research because there was somebody early that talked about him not being a racist.
But again, if they went back to the history, especially looking into the court systems, they would find that Trump and his father were brought to court for not renting to certain populations for their buildings.
And then people also need to research the bills that Biden put through.
Now, I disagree that Biden, going on, you know, with the infrastructure and things, Biden has done so much.
Renee, I just want to follow up on that point that you made about Trump earlier, because I was able to find an article from 2020 about, I believe, what you're referencing, that President Trump had, at the time, stakes, well, previously, had stakes in Regeneron and Gilead makers of an anti-body cocktail, remdesivir, which was one of the COVID-19 treatments at the time that President Trump, this is again an article from 2020,
previously reported he had earned capital gains from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Sciences, the manufacturers of two of the medicines he'd taken as part of his COVID-19 treatment plan.
But those were during, those were from a 2017 financial disclosure form.
His subsequent disclosure forms, including the 2020 form, did not list Regeneron or Gilead.
So it looks like he previously was involved with those companies, but not at the time of the pandemic, based on this reporting.
I did look a little bit more to reference the previous caller's statements about Trump's involvement with COVID treatments.
And it seems the one that she was referencing, hydroxychloroquine, also had some connection, but not necessarily what she was saying.
This is a story from Vox, also from 2020.
Trump's promotion of unproven drugs is cause for alarm, but not because he's making money off of it.
Trump indirectly owns a minute stake in the company that makes hydroxychloroquine, but that doesn't seem to be why he's promoting it.
The company that made it was Sanofi.
Trump's Sanofi stake is indirect and rather small.
He owns shares through a fund that includes a diverse array of stocks.
As Vox's Emily Stewart noted, a government official repeatedly promoting a product made by a company they may have a minute stake in would be a very inefficient way to be corrupt.
Let's go back to your calls and open forum.
Sarah is in Algonic, Michigan on our line for Republicans.
Now, the first thing I want to talk about is this David Corn character that you had on earlier today.
That dude is so hateful.
You could see it in his face.
And he was just spewing lies about Donald Trump.
And that's the reason why the Democratic Party lost because of people like him and his paper, Mother Jones or whatever it is.
But I just had to get that off my chest because I listened to him this morning and I can read his body language.
He is so hateful.
He hates Trump and he hates the American people.
But my next point is: everybody talks about Donald Trump and what he didn't do and how bad he Donald Trump brought respirators here to New York and brought hospital ships here when COVID hit.
Nobody talks about that.
All right?
And also, nobody talks about Nancy Pelosi and her making all these millions of dollars inside of trade.
Joe Biden, his family made all this money.
You talk about olive box.
He was in bed with them over in Ukraine.
That's why he made all his money.
And then we also don't know who was running the country because for all those years, Joe Biden, I don't like to say this, but he really wasn't the president.
He had some issues.
And I don't like to get on harp on people because of their medical issues.
But that was the truth.
Carmela Harris was inept.
The people spoke.
Why don't people understand that Donald Trump is the president now?
You've got to get behind him.
Forgetting the Past00:00:59
unidentified
You want the country to elevate itself and go somewhere.
And as John points out, those four more years start tomorrow, and we will be covering all of the inauguration ceremonies live here on C-SPAN, including some of the events happening today.
At 1245 Eastern, there's going to be a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
And then later at 3 p.m. Eastern, there is going to be a pre-inauguration victory rally at the Capitol One Arena, also here in Washington, D.C. You'll be able to find those events and many more related to the inauguration on C-SPAN here, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and at c-SPAN.org.
Thank you to everyone who called in today for Washington Journal.
We'll be back again with another edition tomorrow at 7 a.m. Eastern.
Have a great day.
unidentified
A new chapter in U.S. history begins this Monday with the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.
Witness Democracy in Action with C-SPAN.
And for the first time since Ronald Reagan's inaugural in 1985, this extraordinary day will be held inside the Capitol Rotunda due to frigid temperatures.
Watch C-SPAN's live all-day coverage, where we'll take your calls, hear insights from historians, and speak with attendees in Washington, D.C.
This historic day begins at 7 a.m. Eastern with live coverage, including the outgoing president greeting the president-elect at the White House.
We'll bring you the swearing-in ceremony as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming President of the United States, followed by his inaugural address.
See the departure of President Joe Biden, the presidential parade inside D.C.'s Capitol One arena, and later the inaugural balls.
Also, don't miss our special coverage on C-SPAN 2.
Witness the inauguration unfiltered.
No commentary, no filler, just the sights and sounds of the presidential inauguration, exactly as it happens.
Watch C-SPAN's inauguration coverage live all day Monday, starting at 7 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
And online at C-SPAN.org.
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
A day before his inauguration, President-elect Trump will be at Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath laying ceremony.