| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Information hearing from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | |
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| Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then USA Today White House correspondent Joey Garrison discusses the news of the day and the agenda for the first full day of the new Trump administration. | ||
| And we'll look at President Trump's day one executive orders and policy priorities on immigration and the border with America First Policy Institute's Chad Wolf and Carrie Talbot with Immigration Hub. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| The golden age of America begins right now. | ||
| This is the Washington Journal for January 21st. | ||
| After his inaugural address, President Trump wasted no time in advancing elements of his agenda, including the signing of numerous executive orders that ran the gamut, from immigration to those involved in the attack on the Capitol on January 6th of 2021. | ||
| This among meeting his supporters in downtown D.C. and attending several inaugural balls for the first hour and a half this morning, your calls on Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text us at 202-748-8003, post on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN, and on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Here are some of the nationwide headlines from newspapers and how they captured yesterday's events here in Washington, D.C. with the inauguration of Donald Trump. | ||
| Wall Street Journal, their headline, Defiant Trump regains power. | ||
| Subhead, new president is sworn into CAP remarkable comeback. | ||
| This is the Washington Post, Trump's Stark Vision. | ||
| Taking office, he orders policy reversals and begins reshaping government. | ||
| From the New York Times, Trump Cap's return to power, vowing to stop a U.S. quote, decline. | ||
| That subhead, he sees a mandate as both personal and political. | ||
| And the Washington Times, Trump vows, quote, golden age against all odds returns to redirect America's path forward. | ||
| That inaugural address is still available on our website, our app, and other channels here at C-SPAN. | ||
| But if you want to see it there, here's a portion of Donald Trump yesterday during his inaugural address as the 47th president. | ||
| The golden age of America begins right now. | ||
| From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. | ||
| We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. | ||
| during every single day of the trump administration i will very simply put america first our sovereignty will be reclaimed Our safety will be restored. | ||
| The scales of justice will be rebalanced. | ||
| The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end. | ||
| And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free. | ||
| That was just a portion of the inaugural address. | ||
| You can see that on c-span.org and our app at C-SPANNOW. | ||
| If you don't watch that whole speech from yesterday, and we're going to ask you about the president being sworn in yesterday as well. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003 and Facebook at X available to you as well. | ||
| In Virginia, Hampton, Virginia, Democrats line. | ||
| This is Danny on the swearing in of Donald Trump as the 47th president. | ||
| Danny, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Some is unbelievable. | ||
| Knocking Biden, knocking Browns, knocking blacks. | ||
| He is the 47th president, but his agenda and arena needs to be examined. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| This is from Mike. | ||
| Mike in California, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it was excellent. | |
| The difference between Biden and Trump is that Trump puts the American people first. | ||
| And America knows it. | ||
| Biden never, ever put the American people first. | ||
| He put them last. | ||
| He didn't even consider them. | ||
| So that's evidence with when he opened the borders, the first thing he did. | ||
| The reason he did that, and I'm a social society teacher, by the way, so but the reason he did that is both malicious and it was political. | ||
| He wanted to, he sees those invaders as potential Democrats. | ||
| So when it comes to the president being sworn in yesterday, what do you think about that event yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought it was excellent. | |
| I thought he hit a lot of high points. | ||
| It's very reflective accurately of where the American people are and what they want. | ||
| I think that he, as a president, has done a great service to America in really bringing the elite liberal media down to humbling them in terms of their impact on the political scene and serving as the offensive team of the left. | ||
| And I love the fact that what he derided Biden because he deserves it. | ||
| Biden is treasonous. | ||
| What he did was treasonous and open those Southern Wall open the borders. | ||
| And there's no getting around that. | ||
| And he did it because he wants to turn Texas and Florida blue. | ||
| When you turn those blue, the Republicans can't win the presidency anymore with the Electoral College. | ||
| Okay, that's Mike in California, Eddie in Atlanta on the Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th president. | ||
| Eddie in Atlanta, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hey, hello. | ||
| Sorry, yeah, I was sitting there listening to him. | ||
| It's the same old talking point that he made when you first got in 16. | ||
| He ain't gonna do nothing but tear the United States up again like he did the first the first four years. | ||
| Biden was the best president in our four years. | ||
| You know, my bank account is sitting 14,000 when Trump got it. | ||
| When Trump was in office, my bank account was less than 100. | ||
| And we were struggling trying to figure out how we're going to, how we're going to. | ||
| So I don't, how we're going to eat and how we're going to. | ||
| Trump didn't have the best economy. | ||
| He got the economy under Obama, you know, and he screwed it up. | ||
| Now you're going to screw it up again, talking to that same old sitting there talking, and he's talking about he wants to work with the Democrat. | ||
| And then the next thing you know, he's bashing the Democrats. | ||
| What do you want to do? | ||
| What do you want to do to them and stuff? | ||
| Trump is just, man, he's scum. | ||
| I wish we, I don't know. | ||
| Okay, that's it. | ||
| That's Eddie in Atlanta. | ||
| Let's hear from Hector. | ||
| Hector's in Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hey. | |
| Looks like we're going to have another period of the robberbarians. | ||
| We got a criminal administration headed up by Felon and who has allowed 1,600 felons out. | ||
| So it's going to be the end of democracy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Hector in Virginia, and several of the thoughts on Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| You can continue to make yours on the phone line. | ||
| You can post on our social media sites as well. | ||
| As the caller referenced, when it came to part of the activity of the new president, it was in the Oval Office signing a numerous amount of executive orders. | ||
| One of those dealing with those January 6th defendants. | ||
| This is the breakdown of what happened from yesterday, saying that Mr. Trump, President Trump, pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, including people convicted of seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers, using his clemency powers on the first day of office to undo the massive prosecution of the unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. | ||
| He spent about 45 minutes talking to reporters and signing executive orders yesterday in the Oval Office. | ||
| You can find that on our various platforms as well. | ||
| When it comes to specifically him referencing the January 6th and those involved, here's some of that exchange from yesterday. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| First, we have a list of pardons and commutations relating to events that occurred on January 6th, 2021. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, and how many people is this? | |
| I think this order will apply to approximately 1,500 people, sir. | ||
| So this is January 6th, and these are the hostages. | ||
| Approximately 1,500 for a pardon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Full pardon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Full partner, commutations. | |
| Full pardon. | ||
| We have about six commutations in there where we're doing further research. | ||
| Nice to see you again. | ||
| So this is a big one. | ||
| Anything you want to explain about this? | ||
| We hope they get him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We hope they come out tonight, frankly. | |
| They're expecting it. | ||
| Approximately 1,500 people. | ||
| Six commutations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Were there any cases you didn't know? | |
| We're looking at different things, but the commutations would be the ones that we'll take a look, and maybe it'll stay that way, or it'll go to And the order does require the Bureau of Prisons to act immediately on receipt of the pardons and commutation orders. | ||
| The sorry, following up on the document that the president just signed, saying among those set to be released from prison are defendants captured on camera committing violent attacks on law enforcement as lawmakers met to certify President Biden's 2020 election victory. | ||
| Leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, extremist groups who were found of seditious conspiracy in the most serious cases brought by the Justice Department, will also be freed from prison after having their sentence commuted. | ||
| Mr. Trump is directing the Attorney General to seek the dismissal of about 450 pending cases. | ||
| Again, this is all from the first day in office for President Trump. | ||
| We're asking you to comment on that first day and the president being sworn in yesterday. | ||
| Roy in Florida, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Yesterday for me was a sad day. | ||
| I hang my head in shame. | ||
| Poor Capitol Police and the poor D.C. police get no help at all from Donald Trump. | ||
| He signs a bunch of pardons for a bunch of guys that tore up the Capitol, and that's what they did. | ||
| There's so much hatred in this country. | ||
| It's pathetic. | ||
| Anytime we change presidents, we always disagree. | ||
| My dad worked for five presidents in Washington, D.C. You know, and look at it now. | ||
| You know, he worked for Carter, Reagan, Johnson, came right from the Air Force into the federal government, put food on our table, but we always got along. | ||
| And for some reason, Trump has divided this country so bad, it's not even funny. | ||
| You can't talk to your neighbors. | ||
| You can't talk to your friends. | ||
| This man is a danger to society and should not be in the White House. | ||
| He should be at a mental institution. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| That's just the way I feel. | ||
| This is what I see. | ||
| Does any of these people not pick up a paper? | ||
| You know, my age, I'm 50. | ||
| My dad worked for the government. | ||
| He was a civil servant down there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's go to Mike. | ||
| Mike in Massachusetts, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Yeah, it's the same thing over here. | ||
| I grew up in the USA, and there was a backdrop. | ||
| There was a backdrop of the space race of unity. | ||
| We didn't make fun of military veterans. | ||
| I can't get out of any conservatives I know how that's okay. | ||
| They immediately start talking about Joe Biden, whether it's my friend or whether it's the guy on the street who I asked with the Trump shirt. | ||
| This is up here in New England. | ||
| And our friend up in Maine, who has been convinced that climate change is not happening, I can't get it out of him either. | ||
| You know, the Nazi rhetoric comparing Haitians, you know, saying Haitians are going to eat dogs and all that. | ||
| That's Nazi rhetoric. | ||
| And I can't get out of a single one of these guys a straight-faced answer. | ||
| They actually don't even try to answer. | ||
| They launch off into some unrelated topic. | ||
| So, how does that all relate to the president actually being sworn in yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
To me, it's kind of like the end of an era. | |
| It's the end of how I viewed this country, which was through a lens of unity and coming together to get certain things done. | ||
| And for me, it changes the whole perspective of life, which is we're against each other, and your neighbor has it out for you, and you can't trust anyone. | ||
| And worst of all, you just can't talk about it in public and get a straight answer out of these people. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Let's go to Al. | ||
| Al in Massachusetts as well, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling from Plymouth, Massachusetts, where it all started of self-governance. | ||
| No longer Charles I, but the people. | ||
| This president was put before the public for eight years. | ||
| The Democrats spent $2 billion. | ||
| And on top of that, they had Oprah and Taylor Swift. | ||
| The citizens, the voters of this country have spoken loud and clear. | ||
| Democracy has elected Donald Trump. | ||
| And if you truly want to defend this system of self-governance, then we need to give this man a chance. | ||
| The Democrats, otherwise, the Democrats will be left behind. | ||
| So that's a warning for Democrats. | ||
| And the left-wing media complex has been exposed. | ||
| That's Al there in Massachusetts giving his thought on Donald Trump being sworn as 47th President of the United States. | ||
| Some opinion pieces from two papers this morning. | ||
| This is the Washington Post this morning on their take from yesterday's events. | ||
| Listening to President Trump is how it's headline saying that Mr. Trump today is more powerful than he has ever been. | ||
| His party, now molded in his image, is capable of pushing his agenda through Congress. | ||
| The Democrats, after their defeat in November, lacked the influence to thwart Mr. Trump's unwise ideas, but Americans will be paying attention to how well the president's policies are carried out. | ||
| They will not want to see the economy falter or watch the country's political polarization increase. | ||
| Quote, it's action, not words that count, the president said after his formal address. | ||
| The editors of the Washington Post finishing on this, he is right. | ||
| That's the Washington Post take. | ||
| You go to the editorial of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| The editor is right under the headline, Trump's Inaugural of Optimism. | ||
| And the editor is writing that perhaps the most important lines in Mr. Trump's speech were his promise to end politically motivated prosecutions. | ||
| Quote, Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents, something I know something about, he said. | ||
| Going on to say, we will not allow that to happen. | ||
| It will not happen again. | ||
| Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law. | ||
| This couldn't be clearer, and the contrast with the Biden years is refreshing. | ||
| If he means this, despite his occasional campaign rhetoric, he will help the country and his presidency by avoiding a retribution drive that will be a political dead end. | ||
| And again, you can find that in the Wall Street Journal giving their take on the events of yesterday's inauguration of Donald Trump. | ||
| You can add your opinion to the mix: 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| And texting available too at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's hear from Greg. | ||
| Greg in Ohio, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Trump supporters have a difficult time deciphering between rhetoric and reality. | ||
| You're not going to executive order. | ||
| Price is going backwards. | ||
| You're not going to legislate. | ||
| Price is going backwards. | ||
| He said he's going to deport 11 million illegals during his term. | ||
| I got news for you. | ||
| You're going to deport 7,500 people per day between now and 2028. | ||
| I want to see that happen with 2,500 ICE officers. | ||
| That is unreality. | ||
| And the soldiers, National Guard, are already on the border in a support role. | ||
| I want to see this happen. | ||
| Oh, and by the way, that war in Ukraine didn't end in 24 hours. | ||
| He said nothing about it. | ||
| So I want to see prices go backwards, a whopper go backwards. | ||
| I want to see rent go backwards. | ||
| And everything he said is unreality. | ||
| And I'm going to leave it at this. | ||
| A very famous quote. | ||
| Who is the worst fool? | ||
| The fool or the fool who follows him? | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| From John in Florida, Independent Line, you're next. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Pretty good day yesterday. | ||
| It was nice to see the president get sworn in. | ||
| It was quite a speech. | ||
| I don't think I've ever seen a speech like that. | ||
| I was amazed at what he was saying as Joe Biden and Kamal Harris were right behind him. | ||
| He basically eviscerated them. | ||
| It was quite something. | ||
| As far as what happened and what he did on his first day, I was pretty impressed with the closing the border immediately. | ||
| And I was happy the J Sixers all got released. | ||
| Some of those people have been in prison for four years without a trial. | ||
| Four years. | ||
| So I was happy they weren't political prisoners at that point. | ||
| I mean, that was out of control. | ||
| And I agree. | ||
| I just liked the general overall tone of the country. | ||
| It seemed like we're going in a more positive direction. | ||
| And I was really, really, really disappointed as Joe Biden was walking out the door to pardon his whole family. | ||
| Absolutely disgusting. | ||
| I mean, if you're going to take a pardon is what the Justice Department told the J-Sixers, then you're guilty of the crime. | ||
| So I guess we can assume that now Biden's family is guilty of everything they've been telling us for the last four years seems to be true, which is sad. | ||
| But again, I want to leave on a good note. | ||
| It's a start of a new day, and I'm very positive. | ||
| And I'm hoping that, like the last caller said, these prices will come down. | ||
| Rome wasn't built in a day, so this is going to take a little time. | ||
| So just everybody hang in there and let's hope for the best. | ||
| I appreciate you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Okay, that's John in Florida. | ||
| John mentioning border security issues. | ||
| This story about some of the executive orders signed yesterday saying that Mr. Trump signed those orders to beef up security at the southern border that began taking effect hours after he was inaugurated, making good on his defining political promise to crack down on immigration and marking another wild swing in the White House policy on the divisive issue. | ||
| Some of the orders revived priorities from the first administration that his predecessor had rolled back, including forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico and finishing the border wall. | ||
| Others created sweeping new strategies like an effort to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in America, pulling the military into border security, and ending the use of a Biden-era app used by nearly a million migrants to enter America. | ||
| The story adding that actual execution of the agenda on immigration is certain to face legal and logistical challenges. | ||
| We'll talk about that later on in the program, about 8.30 this morning Eastern Time, a discussion with two experts on the immigration portions of the president's agenda going forward. | ||
| You can comment on that in other portions of the agenda. | ||
| As you saw there, a lot of executive orders signed yesterday in the Oval Office. | ||
| Some signed at the Capitol One Arena at a rally that took place. | ||
| You can see all those events on our various platforms. | ||
| You can comment on as well. | ||
| Let's hear from Adrian. | ||
| Adrian in Washington State, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm relieved. | |
| I'm happy that he's back in office. | ||
| I think America will be put on the right track. | ||
| I'm glad he declared that we have two sexes, male and female. | ||
| The economy is going to eventually be turned around. | ||
| The deportation of the illegal aliens. | ||
| So I'm ecstatic that he's back in office and it was a mandate. | ||
| The American people, we had a mandate that we wanted him back in office. | ||
| And his speech in front of Biden and Kamala was a repudiation of what they have done to this country. | ||
| So, yay, Trump. | ||
| God bless America. | ||
| God bless Trump and his cabinet. | ||
| From Miami, this is James, Democrats line. | ||
| James in Miami. | ||
| Hello, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| I thought the inauguration was a very nice inauguration. | ||
| I'm a Democrat, okay? | ||
| But unfortunately, the people that voted for him, there's going to be a statement made in two years from now. | ||
| Oh my, what have I done? | ||
| Democracy is going to be tested, and that's what this is. | ||
| This is a test for democracy in our country, for the world to see. | ||
| I was looking at the Democrats and how they were sitting there, and they were clapping. | ||
| The man won. | ||
| The people have spoken. | ||
| Let's see if he fulfills all his promises. | ||
| But I guarantee you, he will not. | ||
| But this is a transition that we have to go through. | ||
| So it'll never happen again. | ||
| The Autocrat is going to make an attempt to run this country, and they're going to try to destroy the democracy, but we will prevail. | ||
| Guaranteed. | ||
| We will prevail. | ||
| It's just a test for mankind and for democracy. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Jeff is in Pennsylvania, independent line on Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th president yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I used to be a Republican until the Republicans couldn't stand together. | ||
| I like Donald Trump's way of doing things. | ||
| I love the fact that he closed the border and is going to get rid of the illegals. | ||
| But more importantly, I love the fact that he is not going to use the DOJ to prosecute political opponents. | ||
| Now, I keep hearing Trump this, Trump that, the sun's not going to rise because of Trump. | ||
| And yet the man with his personality, which is perfect for the job that he has, is saying, I am not going to let the DOJ go after anybody. | ||
| Now, the question I have for anybody out there. | ||
| Jeff, you're breaking up a little bit. | ||
| Either go closer to your phone or go closer to somewhere that may not be blocking a signal. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution talks about the president granting pardons. | |
| Can a pardon be granted to somebody who has not been convicted of a crime? | ||
| If so, how is it legal for Mr. Biden to pardon all these people if they haven't been convicted of anything? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's Jeff in Pennsylvania, Jeff Weaponing. | ||
| Comments made by the president about his idea of so-called weaponizing of government. | ||
| You can see that portion and more on our various platforms. | ||
| But here's that portion from the speech yesterday. | ||
| After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. | ||
| Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Something I know something about. | |
| We will not allow that to happen. | ||
| It will not happen again. | ||
| Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law. | ||
| And we are going to bring law and order back to our cities. | ||
| Let's hear from Tim in Connecticut, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, so thankful Trump got in. | |
| What he's going to do in other has other countries afraid of him because he will not put up with any garbage. | ||
| Will not. | ||
| And I want to thank the Democrats that actually realize that they're protecting the U.S. that voted for him. | ||
| That's about it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Frank up next. | ||
| Frank's in California, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| I just like to say, it was very interesting watching the inauguration yesterday. | ||
| I kind of like the insight of how they did everything because it was able to see a lot more closer. | ||
| I just don't understand. | ||
| I hope Mr. Trump does a very good job. | ||
| I am a Democrat, and I'm willing to give him a chance. | ||
| I just don't understand they decided an executive order about not putting a government freeze, and he wants to do all this immigration stuff. | ||
| I just, I hope everything goes well. | ||
| But he has to, remember, he's got two years because then the midterms come. | ||
| So we'll see what's going on. | ||
| And I hope they'll be able to work on both sides of the aisle for the American people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Some of the other executive orders that were signed quite a bit yesterday, but just some of the ones dealing with temporary suspension of U.S. foreign assistance program for 90 days pending reviews, the creation of that Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk being involved with that, the overhauling of the refugee admission program to better align with American principles and interests, declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. | ||
| You heard him talk about that directive in the speech, but a directive ending the weaponization of political adversaries of the previous administration, designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, the directive ordering the restoration of freedom of speech and preventing government censorship of speech, and then amongst them the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. | ||
| Others there too, quite a bit yesterday in that signing ceremony that took place in the Oval Office, which you're watching right now still can see on c-span.org or our C-SPAN now app. | ||
| Let's go to Jack. | ||
| Jack in Florida, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yeah, this is Jack. | ||
| I'm a little nervous, but I was very disappointed in his speech and rhetoric. | ||
| And the whole thing just really upset me. | ||
| And it's very sad for this country. | ||
| I'm 87 years old, and I've never seen a show like it was yesterday. | ||
| And he's talking about putting tariffs on Canada. | ||
| Canada makes most of our cereal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I eat cereal on a regular basis. | |
| And so that cereal and whatever else Canada makes for us is going to cost more money. | ||
| I just bought a Jeep, a Jeep automobile. | ||
| It was manufactured and put together in Mexico, and the engine came from Italy. | ||
| So I don't know how he's going to do that. | ||
| But it's very, very sad. | ||
| It was the saddest day that I have seen in my 87 years of how our government works and how the presidency is just one of their oligarchies. | ||
| And Elon Musk, when he said they were going to put a man on Mars, which that doesn't make sense at all. | ||
| Take that money and spend it on the people. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Jack there in Florida giving his thoughts on yesterday's events. | ||
| A viewer texts us this morning. | ||
| This is Pat from Indiana, I believe, saying this. | ||
| How can you believe anything Mr. Trump says as he was sworn in and didn't place his hand on the Bible? | ||
| Never seen any other president do that. | ||
| You'll remember there were two Bibles, one stacked upon the other, one the Lincoln Bible, one given to him by his mother. | ||
| The Hill picks up a story taking a look from that event in yesterday's inauguration ceremony, saying that President Trump, when taking the most recent oath of office, did not appear to place his left hand on either of the Bibles. | ||
| The placement of the left hand, however, has no bearing on the legitimacy on his first day back at the job. | ||
| The U.S. Constitution does not stipulate that a president-to-be place his or her hand on a Bible when taking the oath because each president who recites the oath or affirmation is, quote, bound by the words themselves per Article 6. | ||
| The same article also says that, quote, no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. | ||
| Article 2, meanwhile, merely states that the chief executive of the United States must recite the oath before being able to take office. | ||
| Interestingly, the story adds, there's also no stipulation that the oath of office end with, so help me God, though it has become customary. | ||
| There's more there in that Hill story if you want to read that in connection to yesterday. | ||
| Connecticut is next, Republican line. | ||
| Carol joins us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I think it's a wonderful day that President Trump got back into the Oval Office, okay? | ||
| Not only because of the economy, which prices were all so high, and that's because the Biden administration was trying to kill the oil and gas industry, and that's why prices are so high. | ||
| They were trying to force us to go electric. | ||
| That's what they were trying to do. | ||
| And also, the illegal immigration, you know, we have criminals, drugs, terrorists, you know, child pedophiles all coming into this country and breaking our immigration laws. | ||
| And that's what the Biden administration was doing. | ||
| And if Kamala got in, it would even be worse. | ||
| They would never have stopped this, okay? | ||
| So for these reasons, I'm so glad that President Trump got in. | ||
| You know, I think people will be thriving. | ||
| This country will be safe. | ||
| The crime rate will go down. | ||
| You know, I go to CVS now, and things that I just picked off the shelf, now they're under lock and key. | ||
| I have to get an attendant at CVS to open up just to get soap sometimes. | ||
| And this is what has happened under the Democrats. | ||
| So, you know, I do not believe that Trump is a, whatever they say, a dictator and all that. | ||
| I think he's going to restore peace and security to this country and safety to this country. | ||
| Barbara there, that's Carol there in Connecticut. | ||
| We've about an hour to go on this. | ||
| If you want to make your comments about Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th president, you can call us on the lines. | ||
| You can post on Facebook and on X. You can send us a text if you wish. | ||
| 202-748-8003. | ||
| Again, we'll go for about another hour. | ||
| If you want to call and make those comments on the phone lines, please pick the line that best represents you. | ||
| And if you've called in the last 30 days, if you can hold off from doing so today, we would appreciate it. | ||
| Democrats line in Texas. | ||
| This is Barbara. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is Barbara. | |
| I'm from Texas. | ||
| And America is a lie. | ||
| God hates liars. | ||
| And I'm just waiting on him to answer my prayer. | ||
| Chris in Philadelphia, Independent Line. | ||
| You join us next. | ||
| Hello, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yesterday I watched it. | ||
| It was my day off from Martin Luther King. | ||
| And sad that such a respectable man like Martin Luther King had to, you didn't even really hear about him because you're too busy hearing about Trump's dog and pony show. | ||
| I was just waiting for the cigars to come out. | ||
| You know, anybody that didn't, let's talk about Elon Musk when he jumped up on stage, jumping around like a lunatic, not professional, not educated, just in space, basically. | ||
| And like the caller Jack from Florida said, the 87-year-old man who said, you know, when there is a problem when you're talking about going to Mars and there's so many internal issues here, it makes you wonder like where things are headed. | ||
| But I didn't vote for Trump. | ||
| I wouldn't vote for Trump. | ||
| I'm an independent, but I did vote Democrat. | ||
| But, you know, it's just, it was a sad day. | ||
| It was just, I mean, Melania never even took off her hat. | ||
| You couldn't even see if she was a man or a woman or what. | ||
| As far as the transgender stuff, of course, Elon Musk is going to push for that. | ||
| His son, his son is a transgender that he don't like. | ||
| So there's always something. | ||
| Jeff Gayo. | ||
| Okay, okay. | ||
| Chris, we'll leave it there. | ||
| This is Bird from Richmond, Virginia, who texted us this morning saying a new era has begun for the American citizens where our country, our nation comes first. | ||
| The American dream and that American greatness is now set on a new course towards a full comeback. | ||
| Again, a golden era is how the president casts what he'd like to see done in the next four years. | ||
| You can comment on that or other portions of yesterday's events on the phone lines if you wish. | ||
| If you want to go through the executive orders portion of it, again, a numerous amount signed yesterday, and we'll show you some more that were signed, including the requirement for federal workers returning to full-time work in person, | ||
| federal hiring freezes, except for military and other excluded categories, a regulatory freeze preventing bureaucrats from issuing any more regulation until the president has full control of the government, a rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, orders, presidential memoranda, and others, and then the ordering of the halting of offshore wind lease sales and pausing the issuance of approvals, permits, and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects. | ||
| Again, that was during not only at the Capitol One Center earlier in the day, which you're seeing there, and which the president throwing out pens after some pens after he was done with that, and then he going to the Oval Office later on to sign those other executive orders and talk with reporters there too. | ||
| Ryan up next in Virginia, Republican line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how's it going? | |
| I was just wanting to put in my two cents on the pardons that happened yesterday. | ||
| Kind of threw me for a loop because I thought there was going to be more of a case-by-case basis. | ||
| It ended up working out for me as I was one of them. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, nobody really expected it to happen actually on day one the way that it did. | ||
| I personally don't agree with the violent offenders being pardoned for those violent crimes, but each his own, I guess. | ||
| It just makes me wonder what else is actually going to happen in such an expeditious manner because typically there's a logistical process that delays things from occurring so rapidly. | ||
| But, you know, I guess I'd like to see it as good news when it comes to a matter of efficiency and productivity. | ||
| Gary in Tennessee, up Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello, Pedro. | ||
| Good to talk with you. | ||
| You and the other moderators are wonderful and professional, and you're way cool. | ||
| A couple of bull points I'd like to go through. | ||
| First, I'd like to congratulate all the MAGA people on their election. | ||
| And I think I'm going to wish America well. | ||
| And I'd also like to tell the MAGA people that there's one thing worse than a storyliner, and that's a bad, bad winner. | ||
| But anyway, the one thing I wanted to call about also is the mandate that was talking about. | ||
| I lived through a real mandate, and that was back in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. | ||
| I'm not a big fan of Ronnie, but he did have a mandate. | ||
| He won plenty of states then, if not all of them, except for Georgia, I think. | ||
| But anyway, another thing is with the pardons. | ||
| Now, these pardons he's having, I think, you know, it's his executive orders, and that's fine. | ||
| But why doesn't he pardon all the people that assaulted police officers? | ||
| After all, the Republican Party is the party of law and order. | ||
| I also have a friend that assaulted a sheriff allegedly. | ||
| He can pardon him. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| The last thing I'd like to talk about is being a Christian and looking at scriptures. | ||
| I'd like to have all those Christians out there that supported Mr. Trump to look into the fact of the Antichrist. | ||
| He fits a lot of boxes there. | ||
| Oh, well. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's go to Glenn. | ||
| Let's go to Glenn in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I'm just going to make it short because people are rambling. | ||
| I'm 71 years old. | ||
| I look at this guy. | ||
| You come from here. | ||
| I think it's a very sad state of affairs for the United States of America. | ||
| He's a convicted felon. | ||
| It's typical. | ||
| It really is when you take the time. | ||
| It's the stories from the fascist playbook when you look. | ||
| He's a symptom. | ||
| Donald Trump is a symptom, and he's the consummate con man. | ||
| And he's been able to take the, he's chasing the highest office in the world. | ||
| I could go on and on and on. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I think you guys got the gist of where I am and where I feel. | ||
| 71 years old, and I thought 1968 was crazy. | ||
| It's 2025. | ||
| Put your seatbelts on, folks. | ||
| It's going to be an interesting four years. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| Thanks for the time. | ||
| Yesterday was President Trump's Day, though President Biden, before leaving office, making some news of his own. | ||
| This is from the Associated Press. | ||
| Joe Biden pardoning his siblings, their spouses, on the way out of the White House, saying Monday that his family had been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats motivated solely by a desire to hurt me, the worst kind of partisan politics. | ||
| Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end. | ||
| He said the family pardons were a surprise finale in a series of unprecedented presidential actions by the Democrat, who had been known as an institutionalist during the half century in politics. | ||
| Mr. Biden also pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley, members of the House Committee that investigated the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and allies who had been targeted by Republican President Donald Trump, who was sworn in on Monday. | ||
| Joseph, up next, Joseph's in Virginia, Bedford, Virginia, Republican line, Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a great day in American history. | |
| I voted for him three times, and after the worst, most inept, corrupt presidency leaving office. | ||
| Thank God for Trump. | ||
| I never prayed so hard for Trump and the Republican Party to win. | ||
| After four years of socialist woke-tard failure, America and the world could not take another four years of that. | ||
| And I'm sick of people saying he's a felon. | ||
| This man has been more attacked than anybody in history, and only because he loves America, he puts America's people in America's problems first. | ||
| He's the best damn president we've ever had. | ||
| And we're looking forward to four years of success after four years of libtard failure. | ||
| Thank God for Trump and the Republican Party. | ||
| And I'm looking forward to the midterms when we could throw the rest of them woke tard bums out and put some sanity back into our government. | ||
| Joseph, there in Bedford, Virginia. | ||
| When it comes to those the president wants to see appointed to his cabinet, one at least has made it. | ||
| Roll call reporting that the Senate Monday resoundingly confirmed colleague Senator Marco Rubio to be President Donald Trump's Secretary of State, making him the first member of the 47th President's cabinet to win the chamber's backing. | ||
| The Senate vote, 99 to 0 for Mr. Rubio, followed shortly after the senior senator from Florida received unanimous support, 22 to 0, from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he was a member for his 14 years in the Senate. | ||
| Quote, anyone in America who wants to see what American foreign policy looks like and get a good rundown on it needs to watch Rubio's confirmation hearing and watch the questions that were asked of Senator Rubio and his answer to those questions. | ||
| That was the Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho. | ||
| He said, quote, he was flawless in his presentation of American foreign policy. | ||
| Let's hear from Larry. | ||
| Larry in California, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Yeah, now that. | ||
| Watch your language, caller. | ||
| Watch your language. | ||
| But you can keep going, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, don't interrupt me, please. | |
| Well, don't watch your language then. | ||
| Donald, please keep going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Supreme Court hasn't charged him. | |
| If the Supreme Court charges him, he's a domestic terrorist. | ||
| He will be taken out by a lot of us military people. | ||
| We've had it with this guy. | ||
| Okay, that's Larry to his legal problems. | ||
| He was liable for sexual abuse. | ||
| That's been said many times on this program and on other forums as well. | ||
| Let's hear from Ruth. | ||
| Ruth in Indiana, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| As far as I was concerned, it was a sad day yesterday. | ||
| We've heard 10 years of nothing but running down our institutions, you know, running people down, lamblasting them. | ||
| It's just a sad day. | ||
| And to hear that the rioters have been pardoned, I mean, and you've got all these tech giants up here with all this money who are going to control the information now that we receive. | ||
| It's really a sad day. | ||
| I'm just sorry that we're going this route. | ||
| I'm really fearful for our democracy. | ||
| We hate one another because for 10 years, that's all Trump has done, is teach us to hate one another. | ||
| People don't give Biden the credit that he really deserves for bringing this country through rough times. | ||
| I just hate this moral bankruptcy and so forth. | ||
| The speech yesterday was nothing about but me, myself, and I and my grievances. | ||
| The Proud Boys were marching. | ||
| Republicans are supposed to be for law and order, and Trump says he's for law and order. | ||
| So you pardon all these people who broke into the Capitol. | ||
| I guess the only way we would, some of these people who have been hoodwinked would believe that this riot actually happened would have been if they'd have hung pence, who thankfully had the goodness to do the right thing. | ||
| It's just a sad day. | ||
| I'm just sorry this happened. | ||
| That's Ruth Fair in Indiana. | ||
| Some of the other status of the president's other nominees, just to give you an update on there, the Washington Post reporting that it was earlier yesterday that Pete Hegseth and John Radcliffe, Mr. Trump's picks to lead the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, respectively, also mustered approval from the Senate committees overseeing their nomination, necessary steps before they can be considered by the full Senate. | ||
| Heg Seth, a former Fox News host and soldier in the National Guard, whose nomination process has been clouded by allegations of sexual assault, financial mismanagement, excessive drinking, and other misconduct, barely scraped by. | ||
| The Senate Armed Services Committee approved him 14 to 13 along party lines. | ||
| Heg Seth, who is 44, who faced withering scrutiny from Democrats during his confirmation hearing, is unlikely to win any Democratic support and can only afford to lose three Republican votes when his nomination goes before the full GOP-controlled Senate. | ||
| The leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, meanwhile, urged a swift Senate-wide vote to confirm Mr. Radcliffe, 59. | ||
| Quote, our world is far too dangerous for any delay in having a Senate confirmed leader in charge of the CIA. | ||
| We urged expeditious consideration of this important nomination. | ||
| That was a chairman, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said in a statement. | ||
| Nikki in Panama City, Florida, on the nominee or the inauguration of Donald Trump yesterday as President of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| I was delighted to see all of the events yesterday. | ||
| I tried a little bit of MSNBC and a little bit of ABC and even PBA. | ||
| I came back to C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is really the only ones that didn't continue to spout hate, just like some of the callers this morning that just run on and on. | ||
| I wanted to say one thing, only call for one thing. | ||
| Trump has always been funny about his ties. | ||
| And I've watched him for, I guess, 30 years. | ||
| I have never seen him wear a purple tie. | ||
| And this year, purple means a whole lot. | ||
| Last year, purple meant a whole lot. | ||
| It meant swing states. | ||
| It meant bringing, you know, red and blue together and unity. | ||
| And that's what I'm looking for. | ||
| I'm looking for unity in this country. | ||
| And, you know, some people just don't seem to want to even try. | ||
| Don't even want to try. | ||
| And it's like, I'm going to not try so I can punish Trump when what you do is you punish the country. | ||
| So let's just try. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Nikki there. | ||
| Nikki there in Florida. | ||
| This is John in Pittsburgh, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning, Pedro. | ||
| I just want to say that the circus is coming back to town and all his sideshow people. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Your comments on Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| We're going to go for another 45 minutes, finishing at around 8.30 this morning Eastern Standard Time. | ||
| If you want to make those calls, you can text us too. | ||
| Post on Facebook, post on X as well. | ||
| Christine in Pennsylvania on our Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| Just wanted to say shame on you, C-SPAN. | ||
| I listen to you every day, and I really do like the program. | ||
| But in the last hour, when a caller called up and was disappointed that Trump didn't put his hand on a Bible, you had the opportunity to correct a record and make it right. | ||
| And the real reason for that is because, as you notice, Judge Roberts started saying the oath prior to the family being in position, including Melania. | ||
| So there is no way for him to start that without having the hand on the Bible. | ||
| If you could please state the truth, I'd appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| One of the things yesterday, the president talking about economically, the topics of inflation and energy, part of his inaugural address, here's a portion of that from yesterday. | ||
| Next, I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices. | ||
| The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices. | ||
| And that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. | ||
| We will drill, baby, drill. | ||
| America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have. | ||
| The largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth, and we are going to use it. | ||
| Let me use it. | ||
| We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world. | ||
| We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it. | ||
| With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American auto workers. | ||
| In other words, you'll be able to buy the car of your choice. | ||
| Back from yesterday, the Wall Street Journal takes a look at some of the economic and other factors, not only during the Trump administration, but comparing them with the Biden administration and the Obama administration under the section of Consumer Price Index. | ||
| They write that it's not just eggs. | ||
| The Consumer Price Index ticked up to about 2.9% in the 12 months through December, according to the Labor Department. | ||
| Not only is that more than December than December before Trump's first inaugural, but the American wallet still remembers the huge rise in prices in between. | ||
| The Federal Reserve is on a long, last-mile march to get inflation closer to 2%. | ||
| But the stubborn price pressures, which could be further fueled by Trump's plans for new tariffs and curbs on immigration, have left officials sounding more hawkish, projecting fewer rate cuts this year than anticipated. | ||
| They not only look at consumer price index over these administrations, but other categories such as Southwest Border Migrant Encounters, the unemployment rate, the trade deficit, and other factors of a compare and contrast of administrations. | ||
| If you want to see that, that's in the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| Rudy is next in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thanks for taking the call. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What a lot of people are not talking about is one of the orders that Trump signed yesterday, which was a great day, is that they did away with the security clearance of the 51 CIA guys that signed that Hunter Biden letter back in 2020 saying that Hunter Biden's laptop wasn't real. | ||
| 51 former security guys, right, most of them Democrats, well, yeah, executive order took away their security clearance. | ||
| So I don't know what CNN and MSNBC is going to do for guests now because that's about all that showed up on their shows. | ||
| Was these guys get on there lying about Trump? | ||
| And, you know, how Trump didn't pardon criminals like the January 6th committee that erased all the information. | ||
| They destroyed evidence. | ||
| And I think that's a felony, ain't it? | ||
| So people were whining about, you know, got to give these January 6th people pardon because Trump's going to come after them. | ||
| Well, they deserve to be come after because they're criminals. | ||
| They destroyed evidence. | ||
| They erased all that. | ||
| That's a felony, you know? | ||
| And pardon his family. | ||
| They're all a bunch of crooks. | ||
| Other than Barack Obama, Biden's the worst president we've ever had. | ||
| And thank God we got rid of him, you know. | ||
| And yeah, yesterday was a great day. | ||
| It's just, you know, long live Trump and see you, Biden. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Rudy in Ohio, this is Andre in New York, Democrats line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Pedro. | |
| I sit up here and I watch your face as the last guy was talking. | ||
| And it must be extremely hard for you to deal with so much misinformation that's getting repeated by these people. | ||
| The key to it all was the oligarchy that was up on the stage with Donald Trump. | ||
| From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, they own entities which distribute this misinformation. | ||
| And I wanted to say this was a sad day in America when you have the richest of the rich up there and Joe Biden goes out only after they talk about this spending. | ||
| Joe Biden spent on the people of America to help people. | ||
| Donald Trump is only concerned about him and the top 1%. | ||
| Thank you, Pedro. | ||
| Have a beautiful day. | ||
| There are people that are acting as acting heads of various departments of the federal government until President Trump's nominees are confirmed by the Senate. | ||
| Just to give you a list of who is in place currently at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brian Driscoll, who held the FBI Network Newark Field Office, will serve as the acting FBI director. | ||
| This adding that Mr. Trump has chosen Kash Patel, who worked in the Trump administration in various capacities to helm the FBI. | ||
| He's a controversial pick. | ||
| And while the GOP majority in the Senate means he'll probably be confirmed, it might take some time. | ||
| In the Attorney General's office, immigration lawyer James McHenry has been tapped to serve as acting attorney general as the Senate to looks to confirm Florida, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Secretary of State, now under Marco Rubio, receiving nomination at the Treasury. | ||
| Fiscal Assistant Secretary David LeBrick has been tapped to be the acting Treasury Secretary while lawmakers wait to confirm Mr. Trump's pick, Scott Bessett. | ||
| And at Homeland Security, Benjamine Huffman, who currently serves as the Department's federal law enforcement center's director, has been tapped to be acting secretary of the agency. | ||
| By the way, a couple of hearings that you may want to keep a lookout for for Elise Stefanik, the representative from New York previously, but now being considered to be the next ambassador to the UN, 10 o'clock, is her hearing before the Senate. | ||
| And then Doug Collins, who's been tapped to head the apologies, I'm forgetting it for a second, the Veterans Affairs Administration. | ||
| He's also on set to be before a hearing at about 10 o'clock this morning. | ||
| Stay close to c-span.org and our other platforms for more information on those confirmation hearings. | ||
| That's part of a changeover at administration. | ||
| So stay close to that. | ||
| Let's hear from Mike. | ||
| Mike in California, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, I'd like to bring up a few points that I haven't heard people talk about. | |
| One was, what about the war in Ukraine? | ||
| Didn't Trump say he was going to end out in 24 hours? | ||
| Second thing is Bitcoin and true social or obvious conflict of interest. | ||
| He doesn't seem to want to divest himself from any of his businesses before he gets into office. | ||
| The other thing is, what about the assets of the illegal aliens that are being deported? | ||
| A lot of these people lived here for a long time and they have houses and bank accounts and things like that. | ||
| I think Biden beat Donald Trump to the punch when he issued the pardons to all the people that Trump was going to go after. | ||
| And I think Trump wasn't targeted by the DOJ. | ||
| I think he committed all those crimes. | ||
| And I think he's got away with it because the Justice Department was a little slow on getting things done. | ||
| And the Supreme Court gave Donald Trump a break. | ||
| That's what I got to say. | ||
| Joe is next in Long Island, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| Is this Joe from Long Island? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I didn't hear the first part. | ||
| Yeah, I just got a question over there. | ||
| I don't understand this pardoning that Joe Biden did because he made money from all this while he was a senator, having his son go and be the henchman with the money and stuff like that. | ||
| And then he goes and he pardons everybody in his family. | ||
| Now, isn't he part of this criminal activity that's been going on over there? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| My second question is: how come people are calling up all the Democrats are calling up and they're still mocking Trump and he's this and he's that and he's everything else. | ||
| But what I don't understand is it wasn't Trump that brought this country to where it is now after four years. | ||
| I don't want to go through the whole thing of borders opening and inflation that Biden and Harris did and all this other kind of stuff that the criminal stuff going on, police stations burning down, riots and BLM. | ||
| That was all under his watch that nobody got arrested for and nobody even got blamed for it. | ||
| Yet, Democrats are calling up and saying what kind of criminal Trump is. | ||
| I got news for the Democrat callers. | ||
| It wasn't Trump that did this to this country four years ago. | ||
| I mean, you hate the guy, I understand, but to come to reality, come down, stop taking your medication. | ||
| Okay, Joe there in Long Island. | ||
| Again, we'll go for about another half hour. | ||
| When it comes to your calls on Donald Trump being sworn as the 47th president, 202748-8,000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Joining us to give us a sense of what is expected on the first full day of President Trump as a new term is Joey Garrison, who joins us from outside the White House. | ||
| He's a White House correspondent for USA Today. | ||
| Mr. Garrison, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| First of all, for those who may not be in the know, exactly where are you in perspective to the White House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm right on the front lawn of the White House on a cold morning over here. | |
| It's the first morning of Trump 2.0. | ||
| And as you can see, you got the White House there behind me. | ||
| What's the agenda for this first full day? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the big thing today is Trump is going to be welcoming to the White House House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader John Thune. | |
| And they're going to really start laying out their plans for the long-discussed reconciliation package. | ||
| There's been, of course, a debate whether to have this in two different bills or one bill. | ||
| This is going to have the various tax policies proposed by Trump. | ||
| That includes, of course, continuing the Trump tax cuts from 2017. | ||
| And there's also going to, you know, in 52 days, the funding of the government runs out. | ||
| They're going to have to hash out an agreement on how to proceed from there. | ||
| Another topic of discussion is also the federal aid for the wildfires in California. | ||
| President Trump is going to be going to California to survey wildfire damage on Friday. | ||
| When it comes to the House and the Senate, how in agreement are, Mr. What's the President's preference as far as how reconciliation take place? | ||
| What is the perspective of the House and Senate currently? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, President Trump wants to have this all in one big package, one bill. | |
| But in the Senate, Senate Republicans have talked more of a two piece of legislation track. | ||
| Johnson is going to be more on board with the one bill approach to this. | ||
| But it remains to be seen how they're going to move forward. | ||
| That's going to be all part of what's discussed today here in the White House. | ||
| We've been showing our viewers at home several executive orders that were signed from inside the Oval Office. | ||
| I wonder, being there and being in the area, what was your perspective from yesterday's events in the office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, I mean, it was a remarkable scene here, really. | |
| First of all, rewinding a little bit. | ||
| You had Trump in front of 20,000 of his fans, supporters at Capitol One Arena, start signing some of the executive actions. | ||
| This includes revoking 78 Biden-era orders. | ||
| He then came here to the White House and in the Oval Office signed some of the others. | ||
| That included withdrawing from the World Health Organization, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, calling in a national emergency at the southern border. | ||
| And while he was doing this, he kind of went back and forth with reporters who were asking questions. | ||
| It went on for about an hour. | ||
| Really, that is one thing about Trump is he is going to take and engage more with the press than President Biden did. | ||
| You know, of course, part of this actions as well included pardons or commutations for about 1,600 of the January 6th defendants. | ||
| There had been talk about the fact that, hey, maybe he wouldn't pardon some of the more violent offenders from January 6th. | ||
| That wasn't the case. | ||
| There were many defendants here who had been accused of assaulting police officers. | ||
| And really, it was a very broad pardon issued to, if not all, of the January 6th defendants, most of them. | ||
| Because a White House changes so drastically from one to another, what have you noticed from being there now that Mr. Trump is now in office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a little early, but I mean, very quickly, right after the inauguration, you saw inside the press room they took down photos of Biden that were on the various parts of the West Wing of him engaging with Americans over the past four years. | |
| Those came down. | ||
| Trump photos went up. | ||
| In the Oval Office, you saw immediately a portrait of Andrew Jackson went back up there. | ||
| I guess, and I didn't see this firsthand, but I guess there's also the Diet Coke button on the desk that Trump had. | ||
| And so quickly, you know, new people come in. | ||
| You saw buses coming here yesterday full of some of the new employees from the Trump administration who are now moving into their desks today here at the White House. | ||
| So it really is quite a rapid transformation when it comes to one president going out, another coming in. | ||
| You talked about the president's interaction with the press. | ||
| When is the first White House briefing expected from the new press secretary, Caroline Levitt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we don't have a date on that, I believe. | |
| I think there was a lot of speculation that could happen as early as today, certainly this week. | ||
| But, you know, we're going to be very curious to see how those press briefings go. | ||
| Of course, you remember during the first Trump White House, they would often be combative. | ||
| We're going to see, we haven't seen Caroline take the podium yet on behalf of the president here in the White House. | ||
| So we're all kind of curious how this will unfold. | ||
| Do you know how if the press pool or those who sit in the pool day after day will change drastically in this White House under the former one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think you're asking about in terms of who's sitting in those seats. | |
| And yeah, I mean, for now, you know, we all have the same seats, assigned seats that we had from the previous White House. | ||
| Mine will be on the second row, USA's today's is. | ||
| But we'll see how things perhaps change from there. | ||
| There have been talk about the new Trump White House bringing in more kind of new forms of media, podcasters, that sort of thing. | ||
| You know, it's been too early to tell any indication in terms of a change like that, but we'll see where things go from here. | ||
| So as a reporter, Joey Garrison, what's the story you're interested in examining next in this new White House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, the day one was just such a rapid fury of orders. | |
| I want to see if there's any more of those to come that didn't get signed yesterday, and I want to see how those negotiations start happening on the Hill. | ||
| I mean, it's one thing to sign, use your executive pin to pass things by bypassing Congress. | ||
| You know, it's going to be interesting to see how these dynamics play with the House and Senate leadership. | ||
| I mean, the Republicans have a full control of the Senate, White House, in-house, and they are going to be expected to pass big things. | ||
| They're going to have to take complete ownership over these next two years. | ||
| And so I'm looking forward to seeing how that communication evolves from here, what comes out of the meeting today and other meetings coming up in the future. | ||
| USA Today is Joey Garrison, who reports from the White House outside of the White House joining us today. | ||
| Mr. Garrison, thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thank you very much. | |
| This is Ann joining us from Cincinnati, Ohio Democrats line. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I think that Biden was a great president. | ||
| The speech yesterday was baseless from Trump. | ||
| It consists of hate, and it did not consist of anything that I feel will keep America great. | ||
| It was baseless. | ||
| And some of the pardons that were offered are offered by most presidents that are going out. | ||
| He should have offered a pardon for himself. | ||
| And we must look at the fact that the media is going to be shackled. | ||
| We are not going to get too much public information from the media because he is anti-media, everything but Fox. | ||
| Biden, on the other hand, to me, was a good president. | ||
| He did care about people, and he cared about how well America was going. | ||
| And as far as putting his hands on the Bible, he lost me because his thing was he wants you to purchase his Bible. | ||
| But he is not a God to me. | ||
| And I don't understand how the common person can look at him and see that he is all about money, millionaires, billionaires. | ||
| I am very disappointed. | ||
| I am seeing the country come apart and become very, very angry at our neighbors just for being who we are. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Anne there in Ohio. | ||
| Let's hear from Lavinia in Georgia, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I think God put the right person back in the office. | |
| It's in God's hands now, and he's put the right man back in the office. | ||
| We couldn't have took another four years of Biden's bringing everything down and raising prices up. | ||
| Biden didn't do a whole lot for nothing, and I don't know why these people can't see that. | ||
| So I think highly of Trump, and I know he's going to be great and do great because it's in God's hand, and God put him back where he put it. | ||
| God put him back in there. | ||
| This is video you're seeing from one of the many balls that the president, the first lady, attended. | ||
| The tradition of attending these balls, dancing at these balls. | ||
| So we'll show you a little bit of that, and we'll hear from Sam too. | ||
| Sam's in California, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| So the singular issue on the basis of which I will judge President Trump's second presidency is the cost of prices. | ||
| Inflation may have come down, but prices haven't. | ||
| I recall pre-COVID, you heard this jingle on the radio, $5 foot long from Subway. | ||
| I don't think we're going to hear that jingle anytime soon again. | ||
| So when I hear it again, I'll know the prices have come down. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| From Ohio, Democrats line in Madison, Ohio. | ||
| This is Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| Good morning, United States of America. | ||
| I'm sorry that we have elected and sworn in a sexual predator, a felon, an insurrectionist, and a traitor. | ||
| And the reason I say those things is, listen, I was in the paratroops. | ||
| If I would have taken classified documents home, I would still be in Leavenworth, Kansas, breaking big rocks into little rocks. | ||
| This guy is no good. | ||
| He's never been any good. | ||
| And we're going to see the full effect of what this guy is going to do to us. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call, Pedro. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Here's how papers across the United States characterize yesterday's events here in Washington, D.C., the Chicago Tribune with their headline, a picture of the president, his family behind him in front of the Chief Justice back in charge is how they decide to label that. | ||
| Moving then to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Trump returns. | ||
| Again, a picture from the speech yesterday. | ||
| This is the headline of the advocate out of Louisiana. | ||
| Also, Trump returns. | ||
| The subhead, after I'm president to come back, president emboldened to reshape American institutions there. | ||
| The Minnesota Star Tribune, Golden Age, taking that quote from the speech from the president yesterday, sweeping inaugural promises, January 6th pardons, and then the San Francisco Chronicle, Trump back in power. | ||
| Again, this picture from the swearing-in ceremony. | ||
| Catherine in Connecticut, Republican line, you're next up. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question that I would like to ask you. | ||
| This morning around 7.50 a.m., a gentleman who was a Democrat, I'm calling him a gentleman, was a Democrat, called, and you had cut him off immediately because you said, please watch your language. | ||
| His final words were, I'm military, and we're going to take him out. | ||
| My question to you, sir, is, why did you not ask him what exactly did he mean? | ||
| Did he mean assassinate him? | ||
| Did he mean kill him? | ||
| Did he mean murder him? | ||
| Did he mean vote him out? | ||
| I was absolutely shocked that you did not follow through with that. | ||
| That's a threat to the United States President of the United States. | ||
| And I'm still, my mind is still swirling thinking, why in God's name did you not say to him exactly what do you mean? | ||
| Is there any way you can find out who that man was? | ||
| It was 750. | ||
| I'm from the East. | ||
| And could you find out exactly who he was and why he made that threat? | ||
| That was a threat to the President of the United States, sir. | ||
| And you didn't follow through with that. | ||
| And by the way, I'm a Republican, and I can't tell you how thrilled I am that President Trump is in office. | ||
| I think President Biden was a very nice man, and I think what they did to him was a disgrace. | ||
| And those were the Democrats themselves to do such a terrible thing to that man, to humiliate him like they did. | ||
| I think he was a very nice man, as far as that goes, inept as a president towards the end. | ||
| But I'm thrilled that President Trump is in office, and I'm really concerned that that man made that threat. | ||
| His words were, I'm military, and we're going to take him out. | ||
| Please, please, please find out exactly what he meant because. | ||
| Okay, well, I'll stop you there. | ||
| The man used language, so I stopped him there. | ||
| He got his comment out, and I don't know what he meant by it. | ||
| And so we're not in the process of investigating in the way that you would want to see that investigated. | ||
| We do urge caution for those and every one of those who call into this program, especially if verbal threats are made against the President of the United States or someone else specifically, and call that out appropriately. | ||
| But your point is taken. | ||
| Eddie in Illinois, Democrats line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I enjoy the Wall Street Journal. | |
| I started watching it probably two years ago, three years ago. | ||
| Anyway, I think the problem is, as my opinion, is our government is failing us, our three branches of government. | ||
| And are you still there? | ||
| Yeah, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| And they're failing us. | ||
| There are checking balances in our branches of government. | ||
| And they're failing the citizens. | ||
| Although we elected Trump, now he's up to the task of putting this country back together. | ||
| We have four years to see whether this is done. | ||
| Now, pardon the criminals that attack the Capitol. | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| But my main purpose is we have three branches of government to run the country. | ||
| If they fail us, the country will fail. | ||
| Thanks, Pedro. | ||
| From Dan. | ||
| Dan is in Delaware, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning, Pedro, and good morning to all your listeners and callers. | ||
| How are you today? | ||
| I'm fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I'd just like to say I'd like to see the country get more unified and be one. | ||
| We are all Americans, and the partisan politics should be a set aside. | ||
| Now, after that good note, I'd also like to say I'm so surprised by the number of people who are still supporting Biden. | ||
| And again, I'm from Delaware, Biden's home state. | ||
| But Biden did an awful lot of terrible things while in office. | ||
| Our economy crashed. | ||
| We had war start around the world, almost to World War III. | ||
| The southern border is insane. | ||
| The number of illegals coming across, the fentanyl, the sex trafficking, the missing children, and the law and order, there's just been no law and order in the last several years under Biden, at least on one side of the aisle. | ||
| The law fare was just unbelievably obvious to most of us. | ||
| It's so disgraceful. | ||
| And on one last note, with regard to all the pardons, it's amazing the moral high ground that the Democrats take with so much offense to Trump's pardons. | ||
| Many of the January 6ers, even the ones who attacked cops, have been in the jail long enough for the crimes that they've committed. | ||
| It is time to let them out. | ||
| And you're speaking to a law and order, 22 years Air Force veteran here. | ||
| They've served enough time, and 1,500 people were charged under all that. | ||
| Nowhere near, in fact, practically zero people were charged for the summer of 2020-20 riots across the country. | ||
| It's just pitiful. | ||
| And with regards to Biden. | ||
| You've got to put a lot out there. | ||
| So we'll go to Linda, Linda in Utah, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm just wondering if everyone's just laughing as hard as I am about Trump and not putting his hand on the Bible when that lady called. | ||
| I just, you know, he didn't have time to put his hand on his Bible. | ||
| What did he have? | ||
| A 500 pounds in his hat? | ||
| Takes five seconds. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| I just thought that was so funny. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a wonderful day. | ||
| And for all the things we've showed you this morning, here is the actual part of yesterday when the president-elect became the president of the United States. | ||
| Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. | ||
| I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear, I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute, that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States. | ||
| So help me, God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So help me, God. | |
| The oath of office being administered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, Democrats line in California. | ||
| William, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Pedro. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The last caller regarding the hand on the Bible, that was what I was actually calling about. | ||
| But with that said, I would so hope there are some Republicans either in the Senate or in Congress that are willing to stand up for what's right against Donald Trump and just not fall in line like it seems like they're all doing. | ||
| I really have concerns for the country and the country's future. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| From Kerry, Kerry and Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to say to every Democrat out there who is knocking Trump without giving him a chance. | ||
| First of all, there's a word respect, and he was elected our president. | ||
| Number two, I'm a victim of terrorism. | ||
| I was in the tower on 9-11, and it's 20 years, and I'm still with cancer and now on my last years. | ||
| So for all of you who think that that border didn't need to be closed and closed quickly, you are so wrong. | ||
| And he was going to leave it open forever. | ||
| So that's really all I have to say because it's all I'm involved in. | ||
| But as I said, the word is respect. | ||
| He is our president. | ||
| Weren't you raised like that? | ||
| From John in Maine, from our independent line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| John in Maine. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| One more time for John. | ||
| Let's go to Bertha. | ||
| Bertha in Richmond, Virginia, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I am disgusted. | ||
| I did not look at that inauguration yesterday. | ||
| I refuse to even watch the fact that America, some Americans that voted for him, voted for a felon. | ||
| Now we got a felon in office. | ||
| The felon is getting ready to get out. | ||
| The rest of the felons concerning January 6th. | ||
| And I guarantee you, I would not be surprised. | ||
| China be a part of our country, or we'll be a part of their country within these four years. | ||
| I'm disgusted. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Again, Bertha joins us from Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| You can call in the remaining minutes of this segment: 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, Independents, 2027 for 8-8002. | ||
| Some of you texting us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| This is from Diane in New Jersey. | ||
| I believe highlighting the First Lady, specifically highlighting the First Lady. | ||
| Justin aside, she says in her text, didn't our First Lady look exquisite last night? | ||
| From Stan. | ||
| Stan in Minneapolis, Republican line. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm a conservative. | |
| I voted for Trump three times now. | ||
| And frankly, I am thankful that President Biden issued the pardons to his family members and to Anthony Fauci. | ||
| And my rationale is as follows: I personally have no desire to see his family members or Fauci prosecuted or serve criminal time for if they did something inappropriate. | ||
| But I am very interested in knowing the truth, whether or not Fauci colluded with the Chinese in covering up things with COVID or the Biden family took money inappropriately from China. | ||
| I would like to know the truth. | ||
| And therefore, now with the pardons issued, these people should be called in front of Congress to testify in the search for truth. | ||
| They can no longer plead the Fifth Amendment. | ||
| There is no criminal prosecution that can be brought forward. | ||
| Their only obligation would be to tell the truth. | ||
| And if they didn't tell the truth, perhaps subject themselves to perjury. | ||
| So we have, as a country, many things to take care of. | ||
| We should be looking forward. | ||
| However, I do think it would be good if Congress would ask those people to testify under oath to tell the truth about what happened so we can get to the bottom of that. | ||
| And I think Joe Biden, with these pardons, has kind of cleared the way for Congress to get to the truth. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Stand in Minneapolis. | ||
| We've been focusing on President Trump, him being inaugurated yesterday, becoming the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| It was former President Biden before leaving Washington, D.C., making comments about his term in office. | ||
| Here's a portion of that from yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every day, I'm deeply moved by all we all did for this country. | |
| I really mean it. | ||
| History's going to mark down just what you did. | ||
| You know, but the point I want to make today is to make clear my favorite address, as we all do have more to have a lot more to do. | ||
| If you heard the inaugural address today, we got a lot more to do. | ||
| I look, I know from many years of experience, they're up and down, but we have to stay with it. | ||
| My dad taught me the measure of first, you heard me say it before, is how quickly they get back up when they get knocked out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what we have to do right now. | |
| We've always done our best as Americans. | ||
| We never, never, never give up. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| We're leaving office. | ||
| We're not leaving the fight. | ||
| You're smart. | ||
| You're skilled. | ||
| You're passionate. | ||
| The country needs you again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So stall you can. | |
| Stay engaged in all the ways you can. | ||
| Whether it's in public service, the private sector, philanthropy, academia, running for office yourself, or anything else you choose to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I give you my word, we believe in you. | |
| We, Jill, and I, our family, believe in you. | ||
| Just as I've said how the laws we enact that are seized are going to grow and bloom for decades to come. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I say that to you as well. | |
| I have no doubt, no doubt, you'll make this experience and take in the friendships you made, you made to continue to do amazing things for decades to come. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's why I see a future. | |
| All, all of them leading the way by you all. | ||
| You know, so take some time to decompress, reconnect with your friends, spend more time with your family. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But most of all, take care of yourselves and each other. | |
| I mean it. | ||
| If you want to see those full comments of the former president, go to our website, go to our app. | ||
| There is Annette, Annette in New York, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi, yes. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I just want to say that I was affected personally. | ||
| So this is not necessarily emotional. | ||
| There was a tax increase under Trump. | ||
| I'm in Long Island. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, people are forgetting this is a guy who's not that bright. | ||
| He wanted people to inject with bleach. | ||
| Okay, that's number two. | ||
| Number three. | ||
| There are the questions on the semantics of that, but go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he said it. | |
| Are we going to dispute that? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, also, in my opinion, no respect for the rule of law with all those pardons. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And imagine those people with petty crimes who are right now in jail. | ||
| He's pardoned people at the Capitol. | ||
| So that's what I want to say. | ||
| And his followers, including Musk, with that signal to people, sorry. | ||
| America, buckle up. | ||
| You're in for a long, hard ride. | ||
| One more call from Carl in Alabama Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I agree with the caller. | |
| I was going to say that about Trump, too. | ||
| You remember the pandemic when he told people to inject, bleach, or use a bright light? | ||
| But I'd like to thank President Biden for coming in and rescuing the country's end. | ||
| And the reason why Trump didn't put his hand on the bio because he don't believe in it. | ||
| And the Bible clearly states the love of money is the root of all evil. | ||
| And Elon Musk and all those millionaires and billionaires that Trump had on stage with him, Trump is the most evil president ever. | ||
| And Elon Musk and the rest of them are the richest people in the world. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Just to clarify things, this is the BBC headline from April of 2020, their headline, coronavirus and the time outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfected as a treatment. | ||
| That's it for this portion. | ||
| Again, thank you for all of you who participated. | ||
| Coming up, a discussion taking a look at specific actions by the Trump administration when it comes to matters of immigration. | ||
| Two guests joining us, Chad Wolf of the America First Policy Institute and Carrie Talbot of Immigration Hub. | ||
| that discussion taking place when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mark the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States with a free commemorative inauguration button from C-SPAN. | |
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| A discussion on border policy and immigration policy under the Trump administration and two guests joining us via Zoom. | ||
| We're joined by Chad Wolfe. | ||
| He was the former acting Homeland Security Secretary and the Trump administration that from 2019 to 2021, serving currently as the American First Policy Institute, the Center for Homeland Security, and Immigration Executive Director. | ||
| Also joining us in studio is Carrie Talbert with Immigration Hub. | ||
| She's their executive director to both of you. | ||
| Thanks for joining us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for having us. | |
| Quickly, a little bit about your perspective, or various organizations. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, your time in the Trump administration was excited that, but the America First Policy Institute, what is it? | ||
| What do you do there? | ||
| Well, sure, we're a 501c3 created about three and a half years ago at the end of the first Trump administration. | ||
| We have 20 different policy centers, and so we advocate for America First policies across the spectrum of issues, anywhere from education to health care to national security, and of course, homeland security. | ||
| And we've been doing that and we'll continue to do that. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, same question. | ||
| Your organization, a little bit about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much. | |
| Yes, I'm co-executive director of the Immigration Hub and we're a network of organizations that focuses on sensible, humane, and fair immigration policy. | ||
| And to both of you, I'll ask you, first, Ms. Talbot, what did we learn about the Trump administration's sense of immigration policy from that first day yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the breadth of those executive orders was really incredible. | |
| Unfortunately, it amounts to an almost total ban on immigration into the U.S. right now. | ||
| And, you know, I think that's really unfortunate considering our economic situation and how much we depend on immigrants and how much communities really need immigrants to help rejuvenate small towns, to help us grow. | ||
| And, you know, these executive orders really just basically turn everybody away, you know, even people coming on visas. | ||
| It's in mass deportations, but it's also people even trying to come lawfully. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, same question to you. | ||
| What sense of the Trump administration's policy on immigration did we get from yesterday? | ||
| Well, I would say that the actions obviously is what the American people wanted to see after four years of basically unchecked immigration to have over 10, 12 million, depending on how you count illegal aliens come into the country. | ||
| The majority of them staying here, very few actually deported or removed. | ||
| I think it's okay to take a pause to say, okay, let's get our arms around who's here, trying to understand, put better vetting in place to understand who is coming here. | ||
| And then, of course, making sure that you enforce the rule of law. | ||
| For four years, that immigration law simply hasn't been enforced. | ||
| So I think the American people, obviously on November 5th, wanted to change. | ||
| And I think those executive orders deliver that change. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, of the executive orders signed yesterday when it comes to immigration or border security, what was the strongest one in your mind? | ||
| Well, I think there was a couple there. | ||
| Obviously, the national emergency along that border allows DOD resources to obviously help in that fight, making sure that that border is secure. | ||
| There was several others, such as starting border wall construction. | ||
| Look, you need physical infrastructure in certain areas, not entirely across that border, but in certain areas. | ||
| And that construction was all but halted for the past four years. | ||
| And a lot of that wall, as we know, was sold off at pennies on the dollar. | ||
| And then I would say the directive to start Remain in Mexico or the migrant protection protocols was also critically important. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, then, if that's the case of yesterday, what was the most concerning of the executive order signed yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's got to be the so-called birthright citizenship order, which we call a second-class citizenship order. | |
| This really relates to kids who are born in the U.S. | ||
| This has been around for hundreds of years that if a child is born in the United States, they are a citizen. | ||
| That is critical to make sure that we do not have a second class in this country. | ||
| You know, we believe in border security, and it's really a total fallacy that the border is out of control right now. | ||
| Arrivals at the border are actually lower than when Trump was in office. | ||
| The 14th Amendment, the basis of that birthright citizenship, what wiggle room is there within that, in your mind, if there's any, that the president would even issue such an order? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, there's no wiggle room at all. | |
| It's unconstitutional. | ||
| The Constitution is super clear, the 14th Amendment, that these kids are born here, they are citizens. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, question you about that as far as what the 14th Amendment says and what the executive order did. | ||
| Look, I think there's questions among legal scholars and others on whether you can take this action. | ||
| Again, the action is very, very limited when we talk about the birthright citizenship EO that the president issued. | ||
| It's just for children of illegal aliens that come here illegally. | ||
| It's not for everyone that that applies to. | ||
| Let me just go back to a comment made earlier when we talk about the lowest number of illegal crossings under the Biden administration. | ||
| It is a complete fallacy to say that illegal crossings have dropped. | ||
| It simply is not true. | ||
| When you funnel most of those through the CBP1 app or the CHNV parole process, those individuals would normally be counted as illegal apprehensions. | ||
| When you decide, as the Biden administration did, to count the individuals coming across that border differently, well, then of course your numbers are going to drop. | ||
| But the flow and the pressure on border patrol along that border has not subsided at all. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, if you wanted to respond to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, I totally disagree. | |
| The numbers have been counted the same way for decades. | ||
| And looking at the exact same numbers, you know, Biden cracked on on the border. | ||
| No. | ||
| I'll invite viewers, if they want to ask questions about immigration policy, border policy, and the Trump administration, 2027 488,000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you want to text us your question or comment, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, executive orders being one way to deal with these issues, but what does the Trump administration at least desire to do through Congress to do other aspects of border or immigration policy? | ||
| Probably set out in H.R. 2 or a version of H.R. 2 that was passed in the last Congress stalled in the Senate. | ||
| My guess is they're going to go back to elements of that, providing that provides DHS, Department of Justice, a few more authorities that they would otherwise have. | ||
| But look, you can secure that border today using executive authorities from the president or using secretarial authorities from the DHS secretary. | ||
| It's the way it's been for four years. | ||
| We heard from the Biden team that they needed Congress to do more, and yet the last year of the administration, they actually started to do a few more executive orders and a few more things. | ||
| They just didn't do it all the way and actually enforce that. | ||
| So it can be done. | ||
| Is it preferable for Congress to make some lasting changes? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But you don't need Congress right now to secure that border. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, lasting changes such as what? | |
| Well, you can do lasting changes such as making sure that you have the ability to return individuals back to their home countries a little quicker, particularly children. | ||
| I mean, we've seen an unaccompanied alien child crisis over the last four years. | ||
| Over 500,000 have been trafficked into the United States, and that's because it's very difficult to return those children back to their parents in their home countries if they're not from Canada or Mexico. | ||
| So a few changes like that, I think, could go a long way. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, you had said that you support security issues and things like that. | ||
| A lot of people voted for the president because of these issues. | ||
| What is it about the current state of immigration then that will give you pause as far as how things are handled from here on out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I would also like to see long-lasting reform in Congress. | |
| I'd like to see balanced solutions that have a path to citizenship and strong border security. | ||
| That's what the American people want. | ||
| They did not vote for cruelty. | ||
| They voted for an end to chaos, which is totally understandable, and that's what we support. | ||
| We want long-term reform and laws that do both security and a path to citizenship. | ||
| And you know, just listening to this, I just am reminded of how many attacks there were on children. | ||
| There they go again, talking about attacking children. | ||
| And that's what happened under Mr. Wolf and the first Trump administration was family separation. | ||
| And we don't want to go back to that. | ||
| Yeah, let's just remember that the Biden administration has lost over 330,000 children in the immigration system. | ||
| So this idea that they care for children, that that's what their best interest was over these past four years, their actions did not show that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, they're talking about two different things. | |
| So what Mr. Wolf was helping with was separating children from their parents. | ||
| That's what everyone was upset about in 2018. | ||
| The Biden administration has not lost 300,000 children. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, a response? | ||
| Yeah, just ask the New York Times. | ||
| It's Donna Bastion of conservative writers at the New York Times, and they are the one that broke that story. | ||
| Over 330 lost in the immigration system because the Biden administration, time after time, when they had a chance to make a decision to protect children, they continue to cut corners and allow those children to be issued to sponsors that were not fully vetted and they did not follow up on where those children were. | ||
| Before we take calls, I want to ask both of you, the man at the center of policy going forward when it comes to border and immigration is Tom Holman, the so-called border czar, as it will. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, what does he bring to the table and what do you expect him to do in this new position in the White House? | ||
| Well, Tom's an operator. | ||
| I mean, he's got decades, I want to say 30 years experience, not only as an ICE officer, but also as a Border Patrol agent. | ||
| So he understands how the system works. | ||
| He understands what the bounds of what can be done within the current system, the authorities that ICE and DHS have. | ||
| But he also knows how to enforce the law. | ||
| He knows how to remove individuals from the country. | ||
| And if you allow law enforcement agents who are trained to do their job as Congress intended them to do, then you can actually, you can bring a lot here. | ||
| As the czar, obviously sitting in the White House and advising the president on what those strategies are, and then obviously it then shifts to the department to execute that with field operations and others. | ||
| So I think it's going to be a good mix. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, then, as far as the position that he assumes in the Trump administration and it comes to future border and immigration policy, what are the concerns you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just have concerns overall about this administration targeting families and kids. | |
| You know, we think there are going to be raids today. | ||
| And I don't think that's what the American people want is to have little kids separated from their parents and then left at school with no one to pick them up after school. | ||
| Nobody wants that. | ||
| And so I just am concerned that this administration is going to run rampant over these families and communities. | ||
| Our guests joining us for this discussion, our first caller is from Greg. | ||
| He's in Wisconsin. | ||
| Independent Line, you're on with both of our guests. | ||
| Greg, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and like to thank both of you for being here. | |
| Mike, my concern is the fact that we have an amendment process that we have in our country, and we also give the president the power to issue executive orders. | ||
| We have a 14th Amendment in which we have an executive order in which the president has just signed in wanting to end birthright citizenship. | ||
| My concern is the fact that does an executive order override that of an amendment process? | ||
| And what is that going to look like in terms of a constitutional question? | ||
| We have a lot of executive orders that are being signed by presidents. | ||
| We have an amendment process. | ||
| The 14th Amendment strictly states ending birthright citizenship. | ||
| And I want to know what does both of the people here have an opinion about this. | ||
| And I'll just take this call and let me hear what you have to say about that. | ||
| That's Breg in Wisconsin. | ||
| Ms. Talbot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, that's an excellent question. | |
| It's totally true that there is an amendment process. | ||
| And this was a constitutional amendment during the Civil War. | ||
| It was critically important that everyone born in the United States be an American. | ||
| That's what makes us who we are. | ||
| It makes us American. | ||
| And so an executive order cannot overrule an amendment to the Constitution. | ||
| Mr. Wolf. | ||
| Again, it's something I said earlier. | ||
| I think the executive order that the president issued is very narrow. | ||
| It's not saying every child here does not afford this opportunity. | ||
| Very, very specific, talking about the children of illegal aliens who came into the country illegally. | ||
| And so I think it's critically important. | ||
| Look, I agree that there's an amendment process. | ||
| I think the basis of the 14th Amendment, as was said, is back in the 1800s. | ||
| It's dated, and the purpose for that, I think, is not questionable, but I think it's open to interpretation. | ||
| I think the president's comments yesterday and others have said, obviously, this is going to be challenged in a court of law. | ||
| So ultimately, my guess is that the Supreme Court will decide on whether or not it's just unlimited to anyone and everyone that comes here, or there's actually some bounds and there is some ability for the president to issue an executive order around this issue. | ||
| From Tampa, Florida, this is Kim, Democrats line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I think what Mr. Wolf is saying about immigration and the border is 100% correct. | ||
| We don't know who came across that border during administration. | ||
| I think we should lock the border down, vet the people that's in the country already illegally. | ||
| Because if something was to happen with one of those people that came across that border and it happened to a Democrat's family, they're going to be up in arms and they're going to feel real bad knowing we should have vetted those people. | ||
| We don't know if Talibans came across. | ||
| We don't know if ISIS came across. | ||
| We need to keep the border shut, come across legally, go to the American embassy in your country, get a visa, apply for immigration status in your country. | ||
| If you're given it, you're giving it. | ||
| If you're not, you're not. | ||
| We can't go to other countries and get in the way these people come here and get into this country. | ||
| We don't know who's here. | ||
| It could happen to one of my grandchildren. | ||
| Go also been out working and I hear somebody came to this country legally and destroyed a school. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Kim in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, you had talked about this idea of security and shutting the border down, so to speak. | ||
| What's the manpower required? | ||
| What's the money required? | ||
| And does the federal government have that? | ||
| Well, again, when we talk about shutting the border down, we talk about shutting the border down to folks deciding to cross illegally, to the cartels, to the gangs and others. | ||
| Obviously, there's a good amount of trade travel, legitimate trade, legitimate travel coming across that border that should continue. | ||
| As far as manpower and additional resources, absolutely, it's going to take more. | ||
| That's why the president issued the national emergency to allow DOD to provide some resources as well. | ||
| Look, for four years, the border has been broken in one manner or another. | ||
| So they're going to have to, the new team's going to have to get in there, assess what's been done, build the capabilities and authorities back up. | ||
| We've had Border Patrol agents detailed from the northern border for four years because the border has been out of control. | ||
| If it wasn't, you wouldn't have agents detailed from all over the country. | ||
| So they're first going to have to get their hands around what's been broken, build it back up. | ||
| I'm sure Congress, I'm sure, I'm sorry, I'm sure the new administration is talking to Congress inside this reconciliation package about what more resources that the Department, not only DHS, but obviously DOJ, State Department, and other elements that are critically important to securing that border need. | ||
| Ms. Tommy. | ||
| What about this idea of more manpower, more money to deal with issues along the border? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, actually, the Biden administration sought more money, but Republicans were always blocking it. | |
| And so, yeah, we do think that there's an important role to play for technology and infrastructure and vetting. | ||
| And, you know, they already do that. | ||
| We do know who's here, and they do vet people. | ||
| And actually, the Biden administration was trying to push people through legal channels. | ||
| And actually, I want to call Mr. Wolfe's attention to these executive orders because a lot of them do actually apply to people coming lawfully, including the birthright citizenship one, does apply. | ||
| There's actually a Kamala Harris provision in there saying if your parents came on visas and they have a kid here, that kid does not qualify for citizenship. | ||
| So that would have ruled her out for president. | ||
| So I think really we need to be careful here about just the sweeping immigration ban that's in these executive orders. | ||
| Mr. Wolf? | ||
| Again, this is what the American people voted for. | ||
| You can say that they didn't, but we saw four years of an out-of-control border where we allowed anyone and everyone to come across. | ||
| We saw individuals on watch lists that were released into the United States, and then we had to go and find them because of the overwhelming number of individuals coming to that border time and time again. | ||
| And so the measures that the president has put in place along with his team, it's what the American people want to see. | ||
| You may not like it, but the majority of Americans voted to make sure that that border is secure, that we stop the hundreds of thousands and millions of individuals coming across that border, released into American communities almost as quickly as they come across that border. | ||
| The American people wanted to stop. | ||
| They voted for President Trump, and that's what these executive orders do. | ||
| Mr. Wolfe, one of the actions yesterday was the shutdown of something called the CBP1 app. | ||
| What is the app and what is the purpose of the shutdown? | ||
| And did you agree with that move? | ||
| Well, I did agree with it. | ||
| And again, we talked earlier about how you count numbers. | ||
| And I think the comment was it's the way they've always been counted. | ||
| We have never used the CBP1 app, the manner in which the Biden team used it. | ||
| And so therefore, they counted those numbers differently. | ||
| So that's just fact in reality. | ||
| What it allowed is if you were an illegal alien and you were in northern Mexico, at least initially, and then they broadened that to basically anywhere in Mexico, that you could sign up for on the CBP1 app for an appointment at a port of entry, allowed to come in through that port of entry and then released into the United States. | ||
| You weren't actually asked about asylum status. | ||
| You were given parole to come into the United States and then you could claim asylum at a later time. | ||
| And so that was basically just facilitating folks coming into the country legally. | ||
| Now the Biden team called it a legal pathway. | ||
| Obviously that stopped on day one. | ||
| That, as well as a parole program for four countries, what we call the CHNV program. | ||
| These two programs facilitated more and more illegal aliens into the country. | ||
| And again, the American people said we've had enough of it. | ||
| And if I understand it correctly, those who are in the queue, so to speak, of the CBP1 meant their appointments were automatically canceled. | ||
| What would you say to them? | ||
| Yeah, again, elections have consequences. | ||
| And if you're in the queue or you've got an appointment six months from now, six weeks from now, again, the American people, and I think the Trump team was very clear throughout the campaign and others that they intended to end that program pretty quickly. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, the ending of the program and the implications. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think American people would agree. | |
| If you stand in line, you should be able to get what you're standing in line for. | ||
| The government promised that. | ||
| And it's really unfortunate, I think, that we're moving away from where we should be headed, which is a really organized, no chaos kind of situation where people can stand in line. | ||
| And that's what the American people want. | ||
| I do not think they voted for the chaos that these executive orders are about to cause. | ||
| What they want is a very orderly situation at the border. | ||
| And mostly they voted for the economy. | ||
| They want prices to go down. | ||
| And immigrants help prices go down. | ||
| I think people are going to be really shocked when their prices at Walmart go sky high and the grocery store go sky high because these immigrants who are picking strawberries and helping with fruits and vegetables suddenly are getting rounded up. | ||
| I don't think that's what people want. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, that's a common argument that we've heard as far as the impact on immigrants and the economy. | ||
| What would you make of that argument? | ||
| Yeah, I hear that a lot, which is basically the argument is our economy is so dependent on, I guess, illegal immigrants that we should just ignore the law, allow them to come in, allow them to stay so that we have a great economy. | ||
| I just, I don't fundamentally believe that. | ||
| I think if you enforce the law the right way, a smart way, you target, which we have heard the president, we've heard Tom Oman talk about, you target criminal aliens in communities. | ||
| There's over 600 to 700,000 of these individuals in the United States today. | ||
| There's over 1.5 million final orders of removal. | ||
| These are orders given to individuals to say you have no legal right to be here in the country. | ||
| You need to remove yourself. | ||
| And they've decided to defy that court order. | ||
| So even if you just focus on these populations and you remove them, you deport them, that's a historic number of individuals without really getting to a lot of other folks here that are here illegally. | ||
| So this idea that you're going to target the agricultural industry or one industry or another in a way that you're going to have such a major impact, I don't believe that that's the prioritization of the Trump team. | ||
| Here is Susan. | ||
| Susan's in Indiana, Republican, lying for our guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I have a question for Ms. Talbot. | ||
| I always hear the arguments about, like she was saying, taking the children away and that they might be at school. | ||
| What about the mothers and fathers that had to now bury their children because of illegal immigrants that have either raped, murdered, drunk driving, that have killed their children? | ||
| Those children will never come back to their parents. | ||
| So there's no option for that. | ||
| Another question I'd like to be addressed is every time the Democrats talk about getting rid of the illegals, they refer to them as crop pickers, laborers in hotels. | ||
| To me, this is kind of talking about like maybe slave labor. | ||
| I don't think we appropriated ending slavery as to the rise in cotton cost. | ||
| So I'd like to hear your opinion on that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Susan and Indiana. | ||
| Ms. Talbot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, certainly all workers should be treated fairly and given a fair wage. | |
| And, you know, that's why it's important that we eventually do immigration reform and have people register with the government, get right with the law, and be able to continue contributing. | ||
| You know, we need more workers. | ||
| Our population is getting older, and we need people to help us take care of older folks, help us, you know, in our hotels and on vacation, et cetera. | ||
| And I think our lives will be better for it. | ||
| You know, I do definitely feel so horribly for those families who have lost a loved one. | ||
| It's just awful. | ||
| And those folks are already deportable. | ||
| We already have laws on the books saying they should be deported, and they should be deported for sure. | ||
| So it just is a horrible situation. | ||
| I don't know that we can have our entire system based on just a few folks who are committing such horrible crimes, but we do have to make sure we do as much as we possibly can to protect those families. | ||
| On that vein, the Senate yesterday passed what's known as the Lake and Riley Act, and it would require, according to MEC, immigrations and custom enforcement to take custody and detain undocumented immigrants who are charged, arrested, or convicted for committing acts of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting. | ||
| What do you think about the act itself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, that bill had some provisions in it that I don't think people were fully aware of. | |
| Like it actually allows state attorney generals to just go into federal court on any immigration case, even just individual cases. | ||
| That's really going to clog our federal courts. | ||
| And it's just too bad that they rush that through Congress and we're going to have these awful repercussions in the courts. | ||
| And also, you know, picking people up who have they stole some M ⁇ Ms at 7-Eleven, some kid who steals something. | ||
| Those are not priorities. | ||
| We need to focus on actual priorities, like the previous caller said, people who have serious crimes. | ||
| Those people should be priorities for deportation, not somebody who made some mistake when they're 17 and was just charged, not convicted. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, you can respond to the caller and you can respond to the passage of the Lake and Riley Act. | ||
| Yeah, it's unfortunate that we have to pass a bill to actually tell the federal government to detain dangerous individuals and not let them go into communities. | ||
| But after four years, that's exactly what we had to do because I agree that there are certain laws on the books that allow individuals to not only be detained and to be removed, but there's a lot of leeway. | ||
| There's a lot of discretion, unfortunately, in immigration law. | ||
| And so what this bill says is you must do it, right? | ||
| It doesn't give that leeway or discretion anymore. | ||
| And it's unfortunate because it shouldn't be that way. | ||
| We should have a federal government, whether you're Republican or Democrat, that enforces the law and doesn't cherry pick which laws to enforce and how much to enforce them. | ||
| There's always going to be prioritization. | ||
| You always need to prioritize. | ||
| But when you're prioritizing and you're still letting dangerous individuals go free, that's when the American people have a problem. | ||
| I think that's when Congress has a problem. | ||
| And that's why the bill passed, I would say, overwhelmingly, not unanimously, but overwhelmingly in both chambers. | ||
| Chad Wolf, formerly of the Trump administration, joining us for this conversation. | ||
| He's with the America First Policy Institute, Carrie Talbot, the Immigration Hub. | ||
| She serves as their executive director. | ||
| Just to warn both of you and our audience, and just a few moments from now, we're expected to take you live for the swearing in of Marco Rubio, the next Secretary of State. | ||
| We'll show you some of that process as it plays out and as we continue our conversation with our guests. | ||
| While we're talking about that, Mr. Wolf, the incoming Secretary of State, the role that Marco Rubio may have in immigration and border security issues. | ||
| I know it's more of a Homeland Security thing, but does he play a role? | ||
| Well, actually, he plays a big role. | ||
| Obviously, we think about Homeland Security. | ||
| We think about DHS because they have agents and officers on the ground, whether it's Border Patrol agents or ICE officers or USCIS officers. | ||
| So they play a very outsized role in immigration as far as processing individuals. | ||
| But the Department of State, the Department of Justice are two key agencies, particularly when we talk about the incoming Secretary of State and what he needs to negotiate with some of our foreign countries that allow individuals to be returned there, that allow certain measures to take place. | ||
| Obviously, Mexico plays a big role here. | ||
| Certain other countries in Central and South America play a very big role. | ||
| And the State Department is the lead negotiator in a lot of that. | ||
| And so Senator Rubio, or now Secretary of State Rubio, is going to have to play a big role with his team as well. | ||
| Carrie Talbert, the influence that Marco Rubio has on these issues, the Secretary of State. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, actually, I worked with Marco Rubio on the 2013 immigration bill when he actually supported a sensible, balanced approach that included path to citizenship and border security. | |
| But yeah, I agree that he will play a really important role, especially with Latin America, because a lot of the policies that Trump announced last night actually depend on cooperation from countries like Mexico. | ||
| Mexico has already said that they do not intend to take all these folks who are not Mexican. | ||
| And so this is going to be a real hurdle for the Trump administration. | ||
| Again, we will take those comments and that event featuring the Secretary of State, the incoming Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, when it happens, we'll continue on with calls. | ||
| Ron in Maryland, Independent Line, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Well, you know, if Mexico isn't going to take and those people who are crossing their southern border, their southern border, illegally, then they need to do something about it. | ||
| So I'm really disturbed with your guest there, your female guest. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I didn't get your last name. | ||
| What she is saying, America, is that we should prioritize cheap labor over the safety and well-being of human beings, especially female and children. | ||
| This is really disturbing. | ||
| And then earlier she said that, well, they are. | ||
| The Biden administration was vetting these people who are crossing our border. | ||
| Do you mean to tell me that we're supposed to believe that? | ||
| Do you understand that the cartel is making money off of the backs of every single person who's crossing that border, ma'am? | ||
| Okay, we'll let our guests respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I do very much understand that. | ||
| I've worked on this for 20 years, and I very much understand that vetting is incredibly important for security. | ||
| And I am very committed to working with any administration to make sure that this system gets more safe and more secure. | ||
| But it's not more safe and more secure to just push people into unlawful crossings. | ||
| What Trump is doing is he's shutting down all lawful pathways. | ||
| That means people will use the cartels more. | ||
| They will go around. | ||
| They are not going to stop trying to come just because Trump says he doesn't want them. | ||
| And we saw that yesterday. | ||
| People were lined up at the border. | ||
| So I totally hear your point that we want to make sure this is a safe and secure system, but we have to do it in a smart way. | ||
| We can't just assume that by trying to close it all down, that that's going to work. | ||
| We need to use more safety, more security measures, more technology, but do it smart. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, we were talking about Mexico. | ||
| What is Mexico's role in slowing migration to the United States? | ||
| Well, they have a very large role, obviously, a major conduit to our southern border, their northern border. | ||
| Look, we saw where Mexico, if incentivized, can take measures. | ||
| We saw that during the first Trump administration. | ||
| They don't want to take these measures. | ||
| It's not in their nature. | ||
| It's not in their politics to want to do this. | ||
| But I think if anyone, obviously the Biden administration really couldn't get them to do much except for in that last year, they started to do a little bit more. | ||
| They can do a lot more. | ||
| I think President Trump and his incoming team is going to ask them to do a lot more. | ||
| And we'll see if they're able to do that. | ||
| Look, you know, they've got a big role. | ||
| I think the challenge that they have, because the Biden administration opened that border to basically the entire world, no longer the majority of folks showing up Spanish-speaking, right? | ||
| We talk about how Mexico is more willing to take Spanish-speaking folks back in Mexico. | ||
| You now have dialects and languages from over 130, 160 countries coming across that border. | ||
| So how do you deal with that when Spanish is not their native tongue? | ||
| I think it's going to be a real challenge for the Trump administration. | ||
| I agree with others that have said that. | ||
| Unfortunately, that's the situation that we find ourselves in because of these last four years. | ||
| So I do think that Mexico will have an outsized role in helping to deter some of the illegal immigration. | ||
| They can do that, as a previous caller said, on their southern border. | ||
| But there's a number of other things that they can do as well. | ||
| A new president in Mexico, how willing do you think she is working with the Trump administration on these issues? | ||
| Yeah, now I don't know her very well. | ||
| I think she's made some public comments where she's not a fan of some of the things that the president has indicated that he would like to see her do. | ||
| We'll see how that actually works out once you get Secretary of State in there and you get others actually talking to them about what can be done and what the United States can help them do as well. | ||
| So I think it's going to be a negotiation without a doubt. | ||
| But something like MPP, Migrant Protection Protocols, they didn't want to do that during the first Trump administration either. | ||
| But once it was in place, I started to hear from them when I was in service that they actually liked it because it slowed the flow within Mexico and it started to ease some of the strain on their social services as well. | ||
| So it can be beneficial to Mexico, what we're asking them to do as well. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, Mexico's responsibilities in these issues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mexico has been engaged in a crackdown for quite a long time. | |
| I'm just amazed that you would say that they've hardly done anything because they've been cracking down quite a bit in terms of preventing people from taking buses to the border. | ||
| And I do anticipate they'll continue doing that. | ||
| I do not think that Remain in Mexico is in their interests at all. | ||
| Remain in Mexico is where the Trump folks just push people into Mexico and have them wait there instead of waiting anywhere, you know, in a proceeding in the U.S. | ||
| So we're going to see camps developing along the border that are very dangerous and where children and families will be at really high risk of kidnapping. | ||
| Yeah, let me just make a comment there. | ||
| We talk about pushing people to Mexico. | ||
| Again, they all traveled through Mexico to get to the United States. | ||
| They were all seeking asylum. | ||
| We had them under this program wait in Mexico for their asylum proceedings, then had them come into the U.S. and go to those asylum courts. | ||
| What the Trump administration and others weren't excited about is just releasing these individuals. | ||
| The law is very clear that you must detain or remove individuals. | ||
| Now, some will say, well, we've never had the resources to do that. | ||
| And so we've just let people go into the interior of the country, never to hear from the majority of them again. | ||
| I think the Trump administration is trying to get back to what the law says, which is you will detain or you will remove individuals. | ||
| That's the ultimate goal. | ||
| That's what MPP was designed to do. | ||
| We didn't see even a feint or a hint of trying to actually follow the law during the Biden administration. | ||
| Let's hear from Bethany in Maryland Democrats line. | ||
| Bethany and Marilyn, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I wanted to talk a little bit about when Mr. Wolf talked about the Biden administration losing 300 children. | ||
| Well, we know during the Trump administration, when they implemented their separation policy, it was done punitively. | ||
| And it was done as a deterrent, hence why the previous Homeland Security director ended up resigning. | ||
| So the way they talk, you swear that illegal immigrants are walking around here killing everybody. | ||
| Well, we know statistically that's not true. | ||
| We can't get anybody to do anything about all the gun violence we have in the United States, but all of this energy and effort being put into illegal immigrants as if they're the ones that are committing the vast majority of the crimes that we have in the United States. | ||
| And we know that's not true. | ||
| And he knows that's not true. | ||
| That's Bethany, and we'll let him respond. | ||
| Yeah, well, I hear this a lot. | ||
| Statistically, the numbers are very low. | ||
| I would say, how low do the numbers need to be to try to deter illegal aliens from committing crimes? | ||
| Every crime committed by someone here illegally is a preventable crime, and that should be our goal. | ||
| As far as zero tolerance, and I think I heard this mentioned earlier in 2018, the left continues to love to talk about a program in place, zero tolerance, issued by the Attorney General for four weeks, seven years ago, because it's all they've got. | ||
| It's all they've got to say how terrible the Trump administration, at least the first time around, was. | ||
| Again, I go back to the last four years and the number of children that have been displaced and lost inside this immigration system have been encouraged to come here at the hands of smugglers and cartel members. | ||
| If you want to talk about what's best for illegal aliens, and we heard this a lot, is you would prevent this very, very dangerous journey coming to the United States where you pay and you put your life in the hands of a cartel member. | ||
| They care nothing about human life. | ||
| All they care about is making money, and they're going to do that at any cost. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, if you want to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and family separation, I talk about it because it was one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. | |
| I remember getting a call in 2018 from someone at DHS saying, telling me they were purposefully not tracking which kid went with which parents. | ||
| They were purposefully doing that. | ||
| It was punitive. | ||
| I totally agree with the caller that it was a really horrible thing to do to kids and parents. | ||
| And what he's talking about with the Biden administration, totally different situation about kids who are already in the U.S. and helping them, but that's not the same thing as purposefully trying to hurt children. | ||
| Kirk. | ||
| Again, the difference being, you know, 5,000 to 6,000 impacted by zero tolerance and 330,000 children, the comparison is astronomically different. | ||
| Kirk in Oklahoma, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, Pedro. | ||
| I have a few questions. | ||
| I know I talked to you before as an immigrant face deportation for two years myself. | ||
| I want to ask Mr. Chadwolf a few questions. | ||
| Some of the questions I want to ask: how much ICE agent we have in the United States? | ||
| I want to ask him also how many immigration judges and what's the latest court date a person have to see an immigration judge. | ||
| Let me answer the immigration court once. | ||
| If you have a court case right now, you're not going to see a judge until 2028. | ||
| And the question is, with all this talk, pushy talk, Biden is going to end up deporting more people than the Trump administration. | ||
| And it's a given. | ||
| For example, four major flights end up to China under the Biden administration, and that was in 10 years. | ||
| 10 years. | ||
| So, Mr. Chadwolf, it's not everybody you can fool with your argument and your is in schism about this process. | ||
| Okay, well, let him respond. | ||
| Okay, I'm not sure exactly what the question was, but I'll get to a little bit of it. | ||
| Obviously, there's limited resources when it comes to ICE removal agents. | ||
| There's limited resources when it comes to immigration judges, which is the whole purpose of why the system today is broken. | ||
| The fact that you can't get a court hearing for four or five years, maybe six years, depending on where you are, that is an indictment of the current system. | ||
| It is not working as it is intended. | ||
| So, you need to make changes. | ||
| Obviously, the president and his team believes in the changes that they are making will help do that. | ||
| That's why you have migrant protection protocols put in place, because the system isn't working today when you simply release individuals into the country. | ||
| And the fact that there's so many being released that you don't have enough removal agents, you don't have enough ICE attorneys, you don't have enough immigration judges to process these claims more quickly. | ||
| Asylum is being abused today. | ||
| 80 to 85 percent of folks that are claiming asylum will never receive asylum because they will never qualify for it. | ||
| And so this idea that we need to reform the system so that those that truly need protections under U.S. law get those protections as early as possible. | ||
| They don't wait six years. | ||
| They get them within a matter of weeks or months. | ||
| They get those while everyone else that will never qualify for asylum is removed back to their home country so that they can apply and come to the United States if that is their goal in a legal way. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, this idea of reforming the system as he talks about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be great if we could provide for more immigration judges. | |
| You know, when I first came to Washington, we actually had Republicans and Democrats work together. | ||
| It wasn't all just totally political, totally polarized, very extreme proposals like Trump put forward last night. | ||
| We actually were trying to do sensible stuff, even as, you know, recently as 2013. | ||
| And we should get back to that. | ||
| We should look at things we can all agree on, like more immigration judges. | ||
| To what degree, Ms. Talbot, do you think that raids will take place in the United States under the Trump administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sadly, I am anticipating they would start probably today. | |
| And I think it's going to be just really awful. | ||
| I mean, I think, you know, certain people, as we talked about, are security threats, and, you know, they should go after them. | ||
| But I'm just concerned that we're going to see what we saw a few weeks ago in Bakersfield, California, where they had agents kind of stalking the Walmart, hanging out in the parking lot, just randomly asking people questions. | ||
| That's racial profiling, and we don't need that. | ||
| We do not need agents at schools and hospitals and community places. | ||
| If they're going to do enforcement, it should be very targeted where they know exactly where they're going, the exact person they're going after, why they're going after that person. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, what keeps these raids, if they do happen, tailored to specifically those that they're supposed to get? | ||
| Again, I would say that they're a targeted enforcement operations. | ||
| We think of raids as agents going in neighborhoods and kicking down doors randomly, seeing who's in different houses. | ||
| That's not how it works. | ||
| It's just an elementary view of how ICE targets and removes individuals from the country. | ||
| I think if you go back to the first Trump administration, 90% of individuals removed were either criminal aliens or final orders of removal. | ||
| And so what were the other 10%? | ||
| Obviously, that was everyone else that was included there. | ||
| So I think what the Trump team has been very, very clear on is that they're not going to exempt individuals from the law. | ||
| You're not going to exempt individuals who happen to be here illegally that come to the attention of law enforcement. | ||
| They're not going to give them a pass. | ||
| Obviously, it's what Biden team did for four years, and we saw the border explode and we saw removals at an all-time low, removals from the interior of the country at an all-time low. | ||
| And I think the Trump team obviously has a different way and a different view about that. | ||
| Kathleen is joining us on our line for Republicans from Los Angeles, California. | ||
| Kathleen, good morning. | ||
| You're on with our guests. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| This is my area of expertise. | ||
| And I'm so glad that she brought up the 14th Amendment. | ||
| The 14th Amendment was meant, it was enacted during the Civil War, after the Civil War. | ||
| It was enacted for the newly freed slaves and their descendants. | ||
| And it was later bastardized by liberal judges on the Supreme Court to include women, LGBTQ folks, and illegal aliens. | ||
| So this Trump is trying to make right what was made wrong long ago. | ||
| So after the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964, the next year, Democrats enacted the Immigration Act of 1965. | ||
| Put elite mass immigration aliens adversely impact black Americans economically. | ||
| This was talked about in the 1800s when there was mass immigration. | ||
| Black Americans benefit economically when there is a halt to immigration. | ||
| Okay, Kathleen, that's a lot of history, but what's the question, if you don't mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm wondering why Democrat, Trump is trying to make right what was made wrong long ago. | |
| Why are Democrats have destroyed black America and why is the woman not aware? | ||
| She said she's worked in this area for a long time. | ||
| Why does she not know that for every 10% increase in immigration, black Americans lose a certain percentage of their wealth? | ||
| Okay, we'll leave it there. | ||
| Kathleen in Los Angeles, thank you. | ||
| Ms. Talbot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's not true. | |
| It's not true that immigrants hurt black Americans. | ||
| Immigrants help grow the economy for everyone. | ||
| And I think it'd be really helpful for all of us who want to see the economy grow, including for black Americans, make sure we understand how this economy works and that the way it grows is to have more workers. | ||
| So yeah, I think it's sad that that's the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. | ||
| I mean, my understanding is that it's equal rights for all, for women, for everyone, for immigrants. | ||
| The colonists themselves were immigrants. | ||
| So I just don't agree. | ||
| And I think that it's really critical that we make sure that we don't have second-class citizens in this country. | ||
| Mr. Wolf. | ||
| Yeah, let me just say, we talk a lot about making sure that we have immigrants here to support the economy and be part of the United States. | ||
| I don't know that anyone would disagree with that. | ||
| The United States continues, regardless of a Democrat or Republican administration, to be the most welcoming and generous country in the world. | ||
| Over a million green cards handed out every single year. | ||
| What we're talking about is folks coming here illegally and the crackdown and making sure that we're protecting U.S. citizens, U.S. communities, and that we're telling people to come here the right way to be vetted so that we understand who you are. | ||
| We understand what you want to come to the United States for. | ||
| And that is the way it should be. | ||
| It's not the way the system is designed now. | ||
| It's the way that President Trump and his team looks at it. | ||
| It's part of what these executive orders do. | ||
| And that's what we should strive to get. | ||
| This idea that we're, you know, that Trump and everyone else is against migrants coming here and they want to crater the economy. | ||
| It's just not reality. | ||
| We're talking about folks wanting to come here illegally and understanding who those bad actors are and who are the good actors. | ||
| Chad Wolf, how would you know if the Trump administration is on the right track when it comes to immigration policy? | ||
| What signs would you see? | ||
| Well, you're going to see a different, obviously, atmosphere along that border. | ||
| You're going to see the apprehensions numbers go down. | ||
| You're going to start seeing removals taking place. | ||
| You're actually going to start seeing the law enforced, right? | ||
| You're going to start to see other folks like government of Mexico, El Sal, Guatemala, Honduras, and others, as well as other countries in other parts of the world. | ||
| What kind of reception are they getting from the Trump administration as well? | ||
| So I think there's a number of things that you can say. | ||
| You know, migrant crime, do we start to see that reducing? | ||
| The number of the amount in fentanyl coming across the border, is that going down? | ||
| So there's a number of key indicators. | ||
| It's not going to happen overnight. | ||
| I wish it would, but it's not. | ||
| It's going to take a little time to see results in all of these areas. | ||
| Ms. Talbot, what would you see in the next couple of months that would concern you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really, I mean, everything concerned me last night in those executive orders because they're not doing what Mr. Wolf is saying. | |
| Actually, focusing also on lawful pathways. | ||
| And I'll have to end it there, and I apologize for that. | ||
| We're watching the swearing-in ceremony of Marco Rubio as the Secretary of State. | ||
| Good morning, everybody. | ||
| How are we doing? | ||
| I want to give a special welcome to Senator Rubio's family, especially his four beautiful kids and his wife. | ||
| Thank you guys for being here. | ||
| It's a great occasion. | ||
| I will say that it's pretty hard to top being sworn in as vice president, and then the Buckeyes win the national championship the very same day. | ||
| But this is a hell of a start to a run because Marco is one of my favorite people in Washington. | ||
| And, you know, he's a son of Cuban immigrants to this country. | ||
| He grew up in very humble beginnings, but he has an incredibly deep love of our nation. | ||
| He is a bipartisan solutions seeker, a guy who can actually get things done, but a conservative of great principle and great vision. | ||
| And I think more than almost any potty that I've met in Washington the last few years, Senator Rubio, I think, understands the distinctive priorities of President Trump and why it represents such a significant and frankly important and needed departure from a generation of failed foreign policy. | ||
| Senator Rubio will be the chief diplomat of the United States of America, but he will remain a friend. | ||
| I'm proud to know him, and I'm proud to do this. | ||
| So, Senator Rubio, thank you. | ||
| I also, of course, want to thank President Trump for nominating Senator Rubio and giving me a first easy swearing in. | ||
| It's the first time I've ever sworn in an official in the United States government. | ||
| And I want to thank Senator Jim Risch and his family for making this easy. | ||
| You guys got this done and got it done very quickly, 99 to zero, right? | ||
| I think even I wouldn't have got close to 99 to zero. | ||
| So, Senator Rubio, it's a great testament to your career of service. | ||
| And this is a new chapter, man. | ||
| But I think you're going to do great. | ||
| So, great. | ||
| So, I think that we're going to administer the oath, and then, Senator, you'll say a few words. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's do it. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So, please raise your right hand, repeat after me. | ||
| I, Marco Rubio, I, Marco Rubio, do solemnly swear, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, foreign and domestic. | ||
| That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. | ||
| That I take this obligation freely, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. | ||
| And that I will well and faithfully discharge, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I'm about to enter, the duties of the office of which I'm about to enter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, help you God. | |
| So, help me God. | ||
| Congratulations, Mr. Secretary. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for making time. | ||
| It's been a busy 72 hours. | ||
| Maybe longer, but 96 hours, I guess. | ||
| But first, I want to thank Jeanette, my wife, who has been so supportive. | ||
| As the Vice President knows well, it's impossible to do any of these jobs we do here, including the Senate, but now in this new role, without the support of our family and particularly of our spouses. | ||
| And so thank you for being supportive every step of the way. | ||
| I would not stand here before you today without that. | ||
| I'm also thrilled and grateful that all four of my children are here. | ||
| That the most important legacy any of us will leave behind, the most important job I'll ever have, is that of a father and a husband. | ||
| And I'm honored that they were able to join us. | ||
| Amanda, my oldest, Daniela, my second, Anthony, our third, and then Dominic. | ||
| I'm very happy that they're able to see this today. | ||
| I also want to thank my colleague, Senator Risch and Ms. Risch, for joining us. | ||
| He did a great job managing the committee, which brought us here to this point. | ||
| But he's also been one of my closest friends in my time in the U.S. Senate. | ||
| In fact, we, by reason of chance, certainly not by design, we wound up basically being first and second behind one another on seniority in every committee. | ||
| So we even sat next to each other on the floor. | ||
| So people thought it was a plot. | ||
| It was not by design, but it's one of the most special relationships I've established. | ||
| And obviously, it's an honor to be with the Vice President, who I think is going to be phenomenal. | ||
| Someone I knew and admired and actually relied on for policy ideas before he was even elected to the Senate. | ||
| And now we'll do an extraordinary job for the President. | ||
| I can't think of a better voice for the world and for the President's policies. | ||
| As far as the task ahead, President Trump was elected to keep promises, and he's going to keep those promises. | ||
| And his primary promise when it comes to foreign policy is that the priority of the United States Department of State will be the United States. | ||
| It will be furthering the national interests of this country. | ||
| And he's given us a very clear mandate. | ||
| President Trump's made it very clear: everything we do, and this is true in government, but especially at the Department of State, everything we do must be justified by the answer to one of three questions. | ||
| Does it make us stronger? | ||
| Does it make us safer? | ||
| And does it make us more prosperous? | ||
| If it doesn't do one of those three things, we will not do it. | ||
| And so that is the goal, and that is the task, and that is the promise that he was elected to keep, and that is the promise he will keep, and we will help him keep. | ||
| It's a transformational moment. | ||
| The United States, I think, is now, as President Trump pointed out last night, and I believe deeply, we are headed into a new era that I think will make the world a safer place. | ||
| We have a president who yesterday, President Trump, made clear in his inaugural speech that one of the primary goals of American foreign policies is the promotion of peace. | ||
| Of course, peace through strength, peace and always without abandoning our values. | ||
| But I think it's extraordinary that it's something that needs to be said and hasn't been said enough in recent memory. | ||
| And we look forward to being a key part of helping the President achieve his agenda that he has a clear mandate to keep. | ||
| If I may take the liberty for just 15 seconds to say something in Spanish, because I know a lot of people back home would be very proud, and I want to make sure I acknowledge that. | ||
| Quierada la gracias adios, ami familia, mi famila que no táquiquo nosotro hoy, a mi padre, que minera un este país enga laño 1 6 y proposito de suida fue que nosotro poderamos vivir los suño que no no no foroon posi le paraillo. | ||
| E jungo nor increible. | ||
| Se del secretario de tado, del paíma poderoso, y mahueno en historia de todo lomanidad. | ||
| Y jo ungrango nor de la de la gracias Presidente Trump por está opportunidad. | ||
| I just said I saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico. | ||
| what I said. | ||
| And I want to end by thanking Almighty God and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. | ||
| That is truly the singular purpose of our lives. | ||
| It's the most important priority. | ||
| It's the only thing that will matter when we take our last breath on this earth. | ||
| But this is an extraordinary opportunity. | ||
| It would not have been possible without God's blessings. | ||
| I'm honored and I'm privileged, cognizant of responsibility, and I want to thank President Trump for his confidence. | ||
| We will work hard every second of the day to help him achieve the agenda the American people have given him to achieve. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for being a part of this today. | ||
| God bless all of you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bye, y'all. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll talk more soon. | ||
| A longtime member of the Senate, now Secretary of State of the United States in the Trump administration, Marco Rubio, there are comments that you heard him make. | ||
| You can comment on that as we enter into open forum. | ||
| This segment you've heard, the inauguration yesterday, all a part of Open Forum. | ||
| And here's how you can participate. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Here's a status update of some of the other nominees chosen by the president to serve in his cabinet. | ||
| This is from Fox News saying two more of the nominees will face questions from senators today, while a third, Treasury nominee Scott Besson, will get a committee vote. | ||
| Former Republican Doug Collin Representative Doug Collins, an Air Force Reserve chaplain, will testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee as he seeks confirmation to lead the Veterans Affairs Department. | ||
| And Representative Elise Stefanik, Representative of New York, will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Mr. Trump's nominee to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| This saying that the Senate Finance Committee, meanwhile, will convene at 10.15 this morning and vote on whether to advance Scott Besson's nomination to be the Secretary of the Treasury. | ||
| There's more there from that Fox News story on the status of the various people chosen by the president to become members of his cabinet. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats and Republicans, 202-748-8001, and then Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| In this open forum in Wisconsin, Independent Line, John starts us off. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm kind of bummed out that I missed past this question of the previous guest, but I agree that we need to have more legal immigration. | |
| You know, we can up the numbers that we allow legally to come through here on the pathway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And as far as the other thing that I wanted to ask them was, you know, President Trump had talked about, jokingly, I think, and tongue-in-cheek about taking Canada over. | |
| Our major problem was with Mexico. | ||
| And our Mexican border is 2,000 miles long. | ||
| And at the southern tip of Mexico, it's only 700 miles long. | ||
| So if the drugs, the fentanyl, the gangs, all of that stuff is coming across our southern border, maybe we need to rethink which direction we want to expand the country. | ||
| And that would solve all the problems because a lot of people, they'd all be part of America. | ||
| And they wouldn't have to cross a border to come up here and work and pick the crops during the offseason and things like that. | ||
| That's a, you know, I'm sure people can say it's way out there, you know, which it probably is, but I'm just saying, you know, that'd be a possibility. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| A lot of the problems we're having. | ||
| Thanks, Medro. | ||
| Yep, John there. | ||
| This is Richard in Kansas, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I wish I could have talked to the lady that was there before because I will stop short of calling her a liar, but she certainly was one of the most dishonest people I've ever met. | ||
| Now, as far as the 14th Amendment, there's a part that they always like to leave out on that, and that is subject to the jurisdiction thereof. | ||
| All citizens born or naturalized into the United States or United States and subject to the jurisdiction of are citizens of the United States. | ||
| Illegal aliens are not subject to that. | ||
| Also, the people that pick our vegetables and pick our fruits and work in our swimming pool industries and big ditches and things like that, they're green card holders. | ||
| There's a process for them to go through and do that. | ||
| They come here, they work, they go back home for six months or so, and then they come back and they work. | ||
| I'm very familiar with this because I've been involved with it for 45 years. | ||
| Now, as far as what we really need to get a handle on, you better start telling people what it means to be a natural-born citizen, because there's a big argument now. | ||
| A lot of people that are not natural born citizens are running for offices of running for the president of the United States. | ||
| And this needs to stop. | ||
| We need to get that down. | ||
| It's the Vattell standard, is what this country was set up on. | ||
| And you can look it up on the internet. | ||
| Okay, let's go to Anna. | ||
| Anna in Texas, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| The Lincoln-Raleigh Act. | ||
| We've never had the Uvalde Act, where two teachers and 19 students were murdered. | ||
| We never had the El Paso Act, where 35 people who were coming in from Mexico to get groceries and also just living in El Paso. | ||
| El Paso is one of the best cities in Texas. | ||
| That young man was white. | ||
| We never got, you never got anything with South Lake Carroll, very wealthy neighborhood, Fentanyl young man, 19, selling it to students. | ||
| We don't talk about Social Security. | ||
| Right now, $27.1 billion from people that work in Texas and in the United States. | ||
| Nobody says anything about that. | ||
| We also, a work visa, 1 million people come into Mexico. | ||
| They build homes. | ||
| They have a quarterly visa where they come. | ||
| The other one is the cartel. | ||
| When they talk about the cartel, those are cartels that come from different countries flying into small airports in Texas and Oklahoma also. | ||
| And they bring in drugs. | ||
| I am, and Mr. Wolf, when he was talking about ICE, ICE came through in 2019 and went into rest little, I'm sorry. | ||
| Okay, well, we got your point, Anna. | ||
| Thank you, Anna there from Texas. | ||
| There's a follow-up story from the passage of the Lake and Riley Act on the Hill this morning, saying that the passage is roiling the Senate Democratic Conference as senators believe their party bungled immigration and border security in 2024, but they aren't happy about the swift passage of a bill they view as terrible policy. | ||
| Democratic critics of the bill believe the rush to pass it is a political overreaction from Democratic colleagues scrambling to protect themselves on those issues. | ||
| Some Democratic senators are venting frustration about Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer giving a green light to politically vulnerable colleagues to vote to advance the bill without getting an ironclad guarantee that Democrats would have more opportunity to amend the legislation. | ||
| Those Democratic lawmakers have likened the handling of the bill to a disorganized retreat and one that has sparked deep frustration and a caucus still stung from the loss of their majority in November. | ||
| More there, a background story about the passage of the Lake and Riley Act at the Hill. | ||
| Let's go to Dean, Dean, on our independent line in Delaware. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my call. | |
| I think that just a side note as a businessman, what I have experienced in the last eight years, and it's increasing, is there are a lot of illegal immigrants to Delaware who work several different situations, most of them for cash because they are illegal. | ||
| They might pick the crops in the season, and then they do independent work. | ||
| Very good, but they want cash. | ||
| That way they don't have to pay taxes. | ||
| So not only is it an invasion of our economy because they work so much cheaper, we're not getting the benefit of the federal, state, local, and city, especially Social Security taxes. | ||
| They don't pay that. | ||
| So I think it's important that people understand there's very complicated issues, and there's more than one, two, three, or four sides to this story. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's go to James and Albuquerque, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, the bottom line is there has to be legal immigration. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's just the bottom line. | ||
| You can't let people in here. | ||
| You break the law. | ||
| It's a law that is broken when you come in here. | ||
| When illegal aliens come into the country, that's illegal. | ||
| That's what it means. | ||
| It's illegal to do that. | ||
| And the thing about these blanket pardons, I hope the Trump administration changes that. | ||
| You know, pardons are only for people who, you know, have convictions or are convicted of something. | ||
| That has to change. | ||
| And another thing is the media and politicians need to quit lying and telling people the truth. | ||
| And I'll give you an example why they keep lying. | ||
| The Democrats lie every time there's an election about the Republicans want to take away Grandma's Social Security. | ||
| That has never happened. | ||
| It never will happen. | ||
| They need to start telling the truth. | ||
| These politicians, the talking heads, and for the most part, the Democrats keep lying to the people when there's elections. | ||
| They need to stop that. | ||
| Start just reporting the news, telling the truth, because it's about truth and lies. | ||
| This election was about truth and lies, good and evil, and that has to stop. | ||
| Okay, James and Albuquerque, James and Albuquerque calling in on this open forum. | ||
| Again, the numbers on the screen. | ||
| You can continue to post your thoughts on various things from this program on our various social media channels. | ||
| But there are the numbers if you want to participate for the next up until 10 o'clock. | ||
| One of the things that the president addressed yesterday during his inaugural address, amongst the many things he addressed, was the issues of gender, race, and related policies. | ||
| Here's a portion of that from yesterday. | ||
| This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. | ||
| We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based. | ||
| As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. | ||
| This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pain. | ||
| And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty. | ||
| It's going to end immediately. | ||
| Our armed forces will be free to focus on their sole mission, defeating America's enemies. | ||
| Much more to the inaugural address from yesterday. | ||
| Find it on our website at c-span.org, our app at C-SPANNOW. | ||
| This is Joulster in Kentucky, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a question. | |
| You say that we're limited on immigration judges. | ||
| Could we not hurry up the process and make some of our local judges taught to be immigration judges and hurry up the process instead of four years to two years? | ||
| Say we have an illegal person come in and they're paying state taxes and federal taxes for two years. | ||
| Hurry up the process for them to become a citizen and then have that monitored by a legal, a local judge, maybe every two years. | ||
| I mean, they have 100 questions to answer, which some of our U.S. citizens can't answer. | ||
| We have enough people to teach them English. | ||
| I'm one of those teachers. | ||
| And just hurry up the process for them to become a U.S. citizen if they're paying federal and state taxes and they haven't committed any crimes. | ||
| And then monitor that they're paying taxes and that they're not committing any crimes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And have a local judge monitor that. | |
| Can we not do that process? | ||
| All right, Joulster there in Kentucky. | ||
| This is Sankofa in Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| As a descendant of the enslaved who were not immigrants, but captives who were chained in the bottom of ships and brought here against their will, it's a big difference. | ||
| I'm for the mass deportation of illegal aliens. | ||
| I don't feel sorry for those who came here illegally because they knew exactly what they were doing. | ||
| My brothers and sisters can be shot and killed over a traffic stop or for the least breaking of the law. | ||
| So I could care less if their families are separated. | ||
| We experience that on a daily basis of our families being separated. | ||
| But no one cares about our families staying together. | ||
| It sickens me to the ⁇ sickens me the way people care so much about illegal aliens and care so little about American citizens struggling every day to feed, clothe, and house their families while at the same time paying their local taxes to only be used to house, feed, clothe, and educate and provide medical care to people who should not be here in the first place. | ||
| We are being pimped to take care of non-U.S. citizens, and it's not right. | ||
| That's Sankofa in Georgia. | ||
| Politico reporting this morning that President Trump early Tuesday morning announced plans to fire more than 1,000 presidential appointees, quote, who are not aligned with our vision to make America great again. | ||
| Just hours into his second day in office, he kicked off that process by dismissing former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council and celebrity chef Jose Andres from the President's Council on Sports. | ||
| He also dismissed former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President's Export Council and Brian Hook, who served as special envoy for Iran in the previous Trump administration from 2018 to 2020 from the Wilson Center for Scholars. | ||
| Quote, let this serve as official notice of dismissal for these four individuals with many more coming, he wrote on Truth Social, followed by the words, you're fired, that all in caps. | ||
| Let's hear from Thomas in Florida, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| My name is Thomas. | ||
| I called about a month ago to say that I am a part of Trump's administration. | ||
| Can't quite go into details just yet, but I do want to say this thing about people accusing Elon Musk of doing a Nazi salute is absolutely ridiculous. | ||
| It's very easy to film someone moving their arms around and then catching them in an angle where if you freeze it, it looks like it's a Nazi salute. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| He's very obviously not doing that. | ||
| And it's extremely dishonest and disingenuous and divisive when the media tries to present it as such. | ||
| If you want to know more about me, you can YouTube Blue Orange22. | ||
| But essentially, this new Trump administration is not going to tolerate the dishonesty from the left-wing media, the lies of the left-wing media, and trying to paint Elon Musk as a Nazi is ridiculous. | ||
| He has one of the most diverse workforces in history. | ||
| He hires people from all over the world, all races, all religions, all creeds. | ||
| So to paint him as a Nazi is just pathetic. | ||
| Okay, that's Thomas there in Florida. | ||
| Political picking up that story. | ||
| This took place during the event yesterday at the Capitol One Center. | ||
| Politico writing that his use of hand gestures that critics are comparing to a fascist salute is quickly taking a life of its own on social media. | ||
| The tech billionaire offered a vigorous straight-arm salute Monday while on the stage at the Capitol One arena as he told the crowd, my heart goes out with you. | ||
| Let's show you a little bit of what happened yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is what victory feels like. | |
| Yeah! | ||
| And this was no ordinary victory. | ||
| This was a fork in the road of human civilization. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You know, there are elections, elections that come and go. | ||
| Some elections are, you know, important, some are not. | ||
| But this one, this one, this one really matters. | ||
| And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. | ||
| Thank you. My heart goes out to you. | ||
| It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured. | ||
| You want to watch that again? | ||
| You can go to our website at cspan.org or app at c SPANNOW. | ||
| This is open forum. | ||
| You can call those numbers to participate. | ||
| This is Delia in New York City Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Pedro. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| I just wanted the sister from Georgia stole some of my thunder. | ||
| I agree with her when she was talking about the illegal alien situation. | ||
| And as far as black people are concerned, and I am a Democrat, mind you, and I am, you know, I'm sorry that it was handled, that particular issue, political issue, it has been handled. | ||
| I've been greatly affected by that. | ||
| I'm not calling to get into that, but I agree with what she was saying. | ||
| And also with the guy from Florida who just called in about the, you know, wave or whatever it was. | ||
| I, as a Democrat, and again, I, you know, unfortunately, I had to cross the aisle, you know, this election, and I did vote for President Trump because I am sick and tired of what is going on. | ||
| And I will say I saw something that the, well, just to say to the gentleman in Florida, just for one second, don't get into the ridiculous. | ||
| Just ignore it. | ||
| We've got to keep moving. | ||
| I, you know, as far as Elon Musk, Mr. Musk is concerned, I, you know, I just saw what happened. | ||
| I was watching it last night. | ||
| I didn't see that and I saw it. | ||
| And I agree, that's not what that was. | ||
| He was just waving or whatever. | ||
| Now, I wanted to say I saw President Trump last night. | ||
| He was at the desk and he was signing the executive orders. | ||
| I'm very proud. | ||
| You know, I was really on the fence because as a Democrat, you know, God says I'm a Democrat as a Christian. | ||
| You know, I always want to honor what God says. | ||
| And at the same time, there are times when God will tell you or put in your spirit to do something that you may not understand now, but you have to do it for the greater good, for his word. | ||
| And something Trump did that I was so impressed with last night, of many things he did when he was at the table. | ||
| He turned around and they asked, they said something about who would he, I can't think of what it was, but he mentioned President Clinton, my favorite president of all time, Mr. President William Jefferson Clinton. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, the only black president we've ever had. | ||
| So as far as the point you're making about Mr. Trump, go ahead, or President Trump, go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, he said he, when he was saying about President Clinton, he said, well, I think he's very smart. | |
| He's a very gifted politician, he said, and he's not treated with the respect that he should be given. | ||
| And I would say that goes not just to him, but also to his wife, First Lady Hillary Clinton. | ||
| And I'm saying that just to say that this is the kind of man that Trump is. | ||
| And it doesn't matter what the media says to the gentleman in Florida. | ||
| God will always confirm the character of his people by what they say and what they do. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Delia there in New York. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's hear from Ben in Connecticut, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yeah, good morning. | ||
| And I just want to congratulate to the 49.9% of Trump's supporters who voted for him for electing a criminal, for electing a rapist, and for acting, for electing a pathetic liar. | ||
| Congratulations and good luck to all of you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Fernando in Texas, Republican line. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Let's hear from Bill. | ||
| Bill in Florida, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I just wanted to remind one of the callers not too long ago that some of the first words out of Donald Trump's mouth when he ran for the first time was that Barack Obama was not an American citizen. | ||
| That turned out to be another one of his big lies that he is very good at doing. | ||
| And how does that relate to the current status he holds as President of the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was wondering, and I just watched Marco Rubio take the oath with his hand on the Bible. | |
| I did not see Trump place his hand on the Bible when he took his oath. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Bill in Florida there from yesterday. | ||
| Just give you a little bit more from elements of the inauguration speech. | ||
| Again, you can always find these things, the speech in whole at C-SPAN. | ||
| A lot of other things there, too. | ||
| Not only the inaugural speech, the Capitol One Arena event, the event in the Oval Office where he signed those executive orders, even things as recently as the swearing of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, there. | ||
| All available at our website at c-span.org. | ||
| You can always go to our app, too, at C-SPAN now if you want to view these things. | ||
| Tabitha is in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Tabitha in Ohio. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Are you there? | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I wasn't sure you were there. | |
| I wanted to comment actually now that I've heard some things since I've been sitting here about the Trump not having his hand on the Bible. | ||
| If anybody was watching, that actually did really, really anger me. | ||
| They waited a very, very long time for JD Vance's family members, aka his little children, to come to the stage and wait for him to be sworn in and inaugurated until his family was there. | ||
| They started Trump before anyone was there. | ||
| Melania was not there with the books yet. | ||
| She barely made it there when they started. | ||
| That was not okay at all. | ||
| So to say that he wasn't on the Bible is not fair because that wasn't his fault. | ||
| He didn't start talking. | ||
| Someone else did. | ||
| That's point number one. | ||
| Point number two, I'm just very glad to have Trump as my president today. | ||
| I woke up very happy and very free and very safe feeling compared to what I did two days ago. | ||
| And that is all I wanted to say. | ||
| When it comes to confirmation hearings, lots to watch out for today on our networks. | ||
| Here's how you can keep track of it. | ||
| 10 o'clock, just a few minutes from now. | ||
| Doug Collins chosen by the president to become the next head of veterans affairs. | ||
| He will appear in this confirmation hearing. | ||
| And you can see that at 10 o'clock on our main channel, C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, the app, c-span.org, the website. | ||
| Also, if you're interested in international relations, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, chosen to be the next ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| Her confirmation also at 10 o'clock. | ||
| C-SPAN 3 is how you can follow, as well as the app and the .org. | ||
| Let's go to Clyde. | ||
| Clyde is in New York, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| 65% of Americans are remedial in thinking. | ||
| A lot of them are not, I shouldn't say that, but a lot of them don't understand finances and politics. | ||
| This is the ending of the New Deal. | ||
| This thing has been repeating at least three times in American history. | ||
| And I say, give Trump everything they want and see where this country goes. | ||
| It's going to go just like the 26 other businesses that he failed in. | ||
| Pretty much it. | ||
| And I hope the people realize after everything is said and done where they are. | ||
| Because their whole thing is looking for a boogeyman. | ||
| And now the people, they've gotten their boogeyman. | ||
| And he's going to stress that to death. | ||
| So, America, be happy with what you get because it's about to come. | ||
| Democrats line Tracy in North Carolina. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| How are you doing, Pedro? | ||
| Fine. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yeah, I was watching the event yesterday, and I just, you know, we knew many of the executive orders that were going to come, but I was really disappointed with the issues on transgender rights. | ||
| I think it's a small fraction of our country that's faced a lot of hate and a lot of discrimination. | ||
| And it really is an example of government overreach from a group that really says they're for small government. | ||
| So it really is a warning to how far they might reach into our personal lives in the future. | ||
| That is Tracy. | ||
| She's in North Carolina. | ||
| That's the Capital One Center event that you saw yesterday where the president started signing those executive orders before moving to the White House to sign a series of others. | ||
| Some of the other things he did yesterday through that. | ||
| This highlighted by the Washington Post issuing a directive barring the censorship of American citizens' constitutionally protected speech by the federal government, issuing a directive aimed at addressing the cost of living crisis in the United States, withdrawing from the United States, withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, revoking any security clearances held by his former National Security Advisor John Bolton and the former intelligence officials who signed onto a letter calling the Hunter Biden laptop story Russian disinformation, | ||
| granting interim security clearances to certain personnel on a list provided by the White House Counsel's office, and directing his administration to make recommendations to beautify federal civic architecture. | ||
| Let's go to Horace. | ||
| Horace in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just wanted to go back to the insurrection, whatever, for the Capitol. | |
| Everybody's blaming Trump for the whole thing. | ||
| And if they would have started way back before the crowd started coming in, you see, Trump had his taped phone call and said, told them all to be peaceful. | ||
| So then it goes on, then, you know, on and on, and they got to get more start breaking things up. | ||
| And he called in and asked them if they wanted the National Guard. | ||
| And I think it was either Pelosi or somebody in there that they didn't want the guard. | ||
| So then it went on and on and destroying things. | ||
| But I wanted to know when Casto Casto took over the whole Cuba, wouldn't that be an insurrection? | ||
| Linda's in El Paso, Texas, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, this is Linda. | |
| I want to say one thing. | ||
| I live on the border. | ||
| Yesterday I was watching the news where this lady was from a different country and she was crying, Trump, let us in. | ||
| What gets me? | ||
| Why aren't they crying and fighting the way they're trying to fight to come here in their own country? | ||
| Adam from Kingston, New York, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I am just really upset. | ||
| I don't even know where to begin, but being Elon Musk, someone that I used to actually kind of look up to, particularly give the Nazi salute, was very, very disappointing. | ||
| And I feel that it's only a matter of time before you start to see people give that salute back. | ||
| And that's what I'm really, really afraid of seeing moving forward. | ||
| There's so much to dive into. | ||
| There's so many executive orders that are being signed that are authoritative. | ||
| I'm really upset. | ||
| I don't really know where to begin or where to end. | ||
| As an American right now, I'm very confused. | ||
| Thank you for your time and thank you for hosting this show. | ||
| One more call. |