| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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This is your government at work. | |
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Coming up this morning on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then Dr. Amesh Ajala, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses President Trump withdrawing from the World Health Organization. | ||
| And Axios crypto reporter Brady Dale talks about the digital currency industry and potential regulation under the Trump administration. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| On this vote, the yays are 50 and the nays are 50. | ||
| The Senate being equally divided, the Vice President votes in the affirmative and the nomination is confirmed. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is Washington Journal for Saturday, January 25th. | |
| Last night, the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. | ||
| President Trump announced Hagseth as his pick to lead the Department of Defense in November. | ||
| Since then, the former Fox News host and military veteran has faced questions about his qualifications to lead the Pentagon amid a number of allegations, including sexual assault and heavy drinking. | ||
| For the first hour of today's program, we want to hear your thoughts on the Senate confirming Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Here are the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you are current or former military, there's a separate line for you: 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003 as well. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us today. | ||
| Again, Vice President JD Vance broke the tie to confirm Secretary of the new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| This from the Fox News website, it says the final vote came down to the wire. | ||
| Three Republicans opposed, making for a 50-50 vote. | ||
| Vice President JD Vance was needed to break the tie in the upper chamber, putting the final tally at 51 to 50. | ||
| The Senate's two moderate Republican women, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, voted no, as did Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former GOP leader. | ||
| North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis support was not a given, and he did not reveal his stance until the vote was already underway. | ||
| He ultimately said he would back Trump's pick, giving him enough support to be confirmed with Vance's tiebreaking vote. | ||
| That vote last night was the second time in history that a vice president was needed to confirm a member of the cabinet. | ||
| This tweet from C-SPAN back in February of 2017 talks about the first time. | ||
| It says at Vice President Pence breaks 50-50 tie on the Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education vote. | ||
| It's again the first tie-breaking vote on a cabinet nominee. | ||
| Vance, after who was in the Senate, served in the Senate until just earlier this year, also tweeted after the vote saying, I thought I was done voting in the Senate. | ||
| Several hours of debate led up to last night's vote with members speaking in favor and in opposition of Pete Hegseth. | ||
| One of the members speaking in his favor was Republican Roger Wicker, chair of the Armed Services Committee. | ||
| Here are some of his remarks. | ||
| The president has made his choice and he's putting his team together to strengthen our military and to get us ready. | ||
| And the person he's chosen to lead the Defense Department is Pete Hegseth. | ||
| The more I have seen of this young man over the time that we've had a chance to visit and over the time that he's been questioned and actually put through a number of trials, | ||
| the more impressed I am with his character and with his ability to withstand the slings and arrows that we see in politics and in government today. | ||
| Pete Hegseth is ready to put forward the program of President Donald Trump. | ||
| And he has satisfied me that he will be a change agent in the Department of Defense and that he's the person we need. | ||
| He's the president's choice and we owe it to this commander-in-chief to put him in this position unless he's not qualified for the office. | ||
| He's a major. | ||
| Mr. Hegseth is a retired major from the Army National Guard. | ||
| He's had multiple combat tours of duty and then he's come back and he's had some struggles. | ||
| He's had some PTSD and there are thousands and thousands of his comrades who have experienced the same thing, experienced problems after they came back. | ||
| But he's overcome those. | ||
| And those thousands of young officers and people who've been in combat for the United States are watching the United States Senate tonight, even so. | ||
| And they're watching to see whether we've listened to the dreams and to the plans and to the hopes of this young man as the next Secretary of Defense. | ||
| For this first hour, we are hearing your thoughts on the Senate confirming Pete Hegseth as the new Secretary of Defense. | ||
| We'll start with Patricia in Fort Washington, Maryland, who's a former member of the military. | ||
| Good morning, Patricia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I am calling in. | ||
| I was a sergeant in the National Guard as well as the Army Reserve. | ||
| And I just was calling to say that I'm very disappointed this morning in the selection. | ||
| You know, one thing that we were told, especially when I went through the NCO, which is non-commissioned officer training, is that we are to be respectful, we are to be kind, we are to be leaders. | ||
| And unfortunately, this leader that was selected yesterday, he's made a lot of despairing remarks against women, despairing remarks against minorities. | ||
| Yes, we all sometimes fall down, but we get back up. | ||
| He's had a known history of drinking and alcohol abuse. | ||
| I'm sorry to say they say sometimes in life you line up and you make a list of good things about a person and bad things about a person. | ||
| And if the bad things outweigh the good things, whenever, whether it's a job or anything, then that's the direction you go. | ||
| Well, he has too many bad things in his column. | ||
| And it's just very tragic to see that this is the selection out of all of the individuals that are in the military who have served honorably, that this is the candidate of choice that was selected is very disheartening to me. | ||
| It's not a great day for me as someone who has been in the military for 13 years. | ||
| You know, we, the soldiers, we like to have someone that we can look up to that has great values and that has empathy towards others. | ||
| And unfortunately, this man doesn't. | ||
| He wears a symbol on his arm that is very demeaning towards minority. | ||
| So, again, I'm not happy with the selection, but it's been done. | ||
| I just hope and pray that he be a good leader since he has been selected. | ||
| And I just, you know, hope and pray that going forth that everything will be okay. | ||
| But he really has no experience at all. | ||
| And it's just, I'm very disheartening. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller ever here at the C-SPAN. | ||
| I listen all the time. | ||
| So I am very surprised I was able to get through today and the first caller because I've been trying to get through to C-SPAN almost like two, three years. | ||
| So I was shocked when I called this morning that I was able to get through. | ||
| Well, we love first-time callers, Patricia. | ||
| So glad you were able to get through. | ||
| We'll go to Betty and Swamp Scott, Massachusetts, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to say I watched last night in utter disgust. | ||
| The only one that had any courage to vote against us was two women and an old man who's not going to run again. | ||
| The Republican Party have betrayed the country and themselves. | ||
| This Pete Hex is just a litmus test. | ||
| Donald Trump put the worst people possible out there just to test his power over the Republican Party, just to see, guaranteed he'll fire Pete Hex within a month. | ||
| He knows he's not qualified. | ||
| He knows it. | ||
| This is just a test to see how far he can push the Republican Party, and he pushed them. | ||
| That was Betty in Massachusetts, Theodore and Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Theodore. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just hope, as far as the good thing is, that Major the new Defense Secretary, I pray for him that he goes back and looks at his different things because I share the same things, but I'm talking as a U.S. citizen. | ||
| And secondly, with the new nomination, I was too old being public servant in lower realms, but I think that it's a sad day, and I pray that he does learn and put people around him and does the right thing because I think that we might have a wartime president and defense secretary, | ||
| and we might, hopefully, we don't go to war, and hopefully, we're still here because I wasn't happy with the nomination, but it is what it is. | ||
| And I say thank you for your call and being out there for your service. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's hear from Edward in Maine is on the line for former military. | ||
| Good morning, Edward. | ||
|
unidentified
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Morning. | |
| I mean, I'm completely dismayed, but not shocked. | ||
| Because Donald Trump really only wants people in who will tow his wine and do whatever he wants and praise them whenever they walk into the room with him. | ||
| I just, the point of the Senate is to decide if someone's qualified, right? | ||
| And this guy has been accused of rape. | ||
| He paid large settlement to the woman who accused him of rape. | ||
| He was accused of abusing his wife. | ||
| His own mother wrote a letter accusing him of abuse. | ||
| He ran a very small veterans organization he was fired from because he was drunk all the time and he was abusing people. | ||
| And if he couldn't run an organization of 20 people, how in the name of heaven is he supposed to run the largest organization on the planet? | ||
| I mean, but he's in good standing, though, right? | ||
| Because he's been accused of rape, as have, you know, Donald Trump, as was his former AG nominee. | ||
| It's like Donald looks for people who aren't good, right? | ||
| Because he's in good company. | ||
| There's so many smart, brilliant people out there that could do the job. | ||
| Why on earth choose someone like this? | ||
| It's like Trump is just trolling the country. | ||
| You know, there's a million good Republicans. | ||
| I wouldn't really like their policies, but they're good people who could have run for president. | ||
| But Republicans chose this human mess to be our president. | ||
| And then Susan Collins, I'm from Maine, once again, voted against the party when it didn't matter at all because she was the one who was going to pass, which is what she always says. | ||
| Shame on America. | ||
| Shame on the country. | ||
| Shame on the people that voted for this maniacal idiot who just fired 17 inspectors generally. | ||
| That was Edward in Maine on the line for former military. | ||
| Yesterday, after the vote, it was Pete Hegseth, the new Secretary of Defense, tweeting his thanks. | ||
| He tweeted out, thank you for your confidence, Mr. President. | ||
| Thank you for the tiebreaker. | ||
| Mr. Vice President, thank you, senators, for 50 votes. | ||
| This is for the troops, for the warriors, for our country. | ||
| America first. | ||
| Every day, we will never back down. | ||
| The tweet came after President Trump reacted last night to the vote, the confirmation vote, while visiting California to talk about the wildfires. | ||
| Here is part of his remarks. | ||
| No, I'm honored to have Pete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Pete's going to be a great Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. | |
| And we're honored to have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm on this. | |
| I couldn't hear you. | ||
| Did you say you were speaking to him on the phone? | ||
| No, I did speak to Pete. | ||
| Yeah, in the play, in the helicopter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Pete is going to be a great Secretary of Defense. | |
| Are you disappointed that McConnell don't know? | ||
| I didn't even know that. | ||
| No, I don't know. | ||
| I just heard that we won. | ||
| Winning is what matters, right? | ||
| Trump had spoken to reporters before leaving for that trip. | ||
| Yesterday, according to the Washington Post, Trump had worried aloud to reporters early on Friday that Hagseth might not have the votes to get confirmed amid speculation that McConnell and Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina might vote against his nomination. | ||
| Tillis, who told reporters he was conducting his own research into the allegations against Hagseth, said that he had met with Hagseth for two hours on Friday and concluded he would support him. | ||
| But Mitch McConnell did vote against the confirmation in a statement that McConnell put out after the vote says, in part, the most consequential cabinet official in any administration is the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| In the face of the gravest threats to the U.S. national security interest since World War II, this position is even more important today. | ||
| Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interest. | ||
| Mr. Hagseth has failed as yet to demonstrate that he will pass this test. | ||
| As he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they ever have been. | ||
| As the 29th Secretary of Defense, Mr. Hagseth will be immediately tested by ongoing conflicts caused by Russian aggression in Europe and Iranian-backed terror in the Middle East. | ||
| He will have to grapple with an unfinished fiscal year 2025 appropriation process that without his intervention risks further harming the readiness of our forces. | ||
| I wish Secretary Hagseth a great success and I look forward to working closely with him to restore American hard power. | ||
| Every member of the uniformed service will be looking to him for decisive, principled, and nonpartisan leadership. | ||
| Let's hear from Russ in South Boardman, Michigan, line for former military. | ||
| Good morning, Russ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm retired military. | ||
| I was in the infantry. | ||
| And I'm happy they got a combat soldier into the office. | ||
| There's no room for the woke and all the other stuff that they've been doing. | ||
| The Army doesn't need anything but training on how to do its job. | ||
| It doesn't need my father retired for 35 years. | ||
| I've seen the Army evolve my whole life. | ||
| And I retired in 95. | ||
| And I think he'll do a good job. | ||
| I honestly do. | ||
| Russ, as a retired member of the military, what would you like to see him focus on first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Getting the woke soldiers and the officers in line. | |
| They literally need to go in line and quit all the other external. | ||
| It's not an experiment. | ||
| I mean, they need to train as they would do in combat. | ||
| And as far as females in the Army, I don't have a problem with females in the Army. | ||
| Females in the infantry? | ||
| When we went to Desert Storm, my rook weighed 187 pounds. | ||
| That's not counting my vest, my helmet, my LBE canteens, weapon. | ||
| If a woman can put on 187 pounds and then put on all the other stuff, which adds up about 240 pounds, and she can walk, our first march was seven and a half miles in the desert. | ||
| If she can do that, she can get in a foxhole right next to me. | ||
| If she can't, then she don't need to be there. | ||
| That's the whole story. | ||
| If you can put it on and go, no problem. | ||
| If you can't put it on go, you need to find a new job. | ||
| That was Russ, member of former member of the military, retired. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's hear from Alan in Durham, North Carolina, line for independence. | |
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| First of all, just give me a little bit of time because this really bothers me to listen to these individuals. | ||
| However, this is just how America is. | ||
| And somebody used to say, you know, elections, they have issues where you won't be used. | ||
| If you make a bad decision, it will hurt you. | ||
| First of all, this gentleman, this is the reason why Orban kept visiting here because of dictatorship. | ||
| This man is selective. | ||
| Just like the woman said, he's putting in people just to see how far he can go. | ||
| He knows this man is not qualified. | ||
| And now he got rid of DEI. | ||
| Isn't this a DEI candidate? | ||
| They're selective. | ||
| This is a racist system. | ||
| And if it comes to people of color and women, they always want to go back because white men always want to have power. | ||
| Trump doesn't believe in people of color and women and other people, or well, the type of people that he thinks, because it's all about putting people in position loyal to him, not the Constitution. | ||
| And yes, elections have consequences. | ||
| That was the word I wanted to use. | ||
| And due to all the things that he's doing, the people who have voted for him, they're going to see this country just go down. | ||
| Everything that Martin Luther King did, and we celebrated his birthday Monday, this man is going to come and take away even civil rights, okay? | ||
| The Supreme Court is going to help him. | ||
| The country's going back. | ||
| And white women and women of general are going to go back, okay, because of this man. | ||
| People of color are going to, a lot of people of color are not even going to be able to get into the military because of this man. | ||
| And you're going to have a problem with women. | ||
| It's going to be all about white men. | ||
| That's all it's going to be about because they think they're better. | ||
| They think they're superior. | ||
| This is a racist country. | ||
| And it really bothers me when people say America is great again. | ||
| When it has been great due to the segregation and slavery and what this country's been to. | ||
| Go back, wait, why? | ||
| Go back to the 50s. | ||
| That's what this man wants to do. | ||
| He wants to bring this country back to the 50s where white men have control. | ||
| And it's going to suffer just like you're going to get rid of all the Hispanics. | ||
| But certain black people, as well as Hispanic people, you're going to get what you deserve because this man does not care about nothing but white supremacy and money. | ||
| All right, got your point, Alan. | ||
| We'll go to Juanita in West Virginia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Juanita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It just kind of makes me sick to hear people, just like the one that just spoke. | ||
| Trump is not about white supremacy. | ||
| He is about making the whole country better again. | ||
| And I think they're doing, they're trying to do to Heg Seth what they were trying to do to Trump, smear campaigns, and oh, it's not going to work. | ||
| And you're going to see, well, look at what we just went through the last four years. | ||
| It can't get worse. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| Give Heg Seth a chance. | ||
| And as far as Trump appointing him because he knows he will do what he wants him to do, well, yeah, we just don't want to sit here in a deadlock. | ||
| We got to move forward. | ||
| And I believe we will. | ||
| I disagree with several of our callers in. | ||
| No, I think Heg Seth will do good. | ||
| He may need a little guidance, but you hear that he is backing from our military people that know what it takes out there in the field. | ||
| So, yeah, I'm giving him a heads up. | ||
| That's Juanita in West Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve in Texas on the line for former military. | |
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| I punched the wrong line. | ||
| Let's go to Steve in Texas. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm in Harker Heights, Texas, next to Fort Cavasos, formerly Fort Hood, which many, many military people are proud of. | ||
| The thing is, here in Central Texas, or in this particular area, we all get along. | ||
| People talking about racism and Pete Hegseth being a racist. | ||
| He's former military, and in the military, you have to be colorblind when you're in combat with other soldiers. | ||
| And that's the attitude, the feeling I get here in this area, that everybody gets along. | ||
| And I believe it is primarily because of the military, the military retirees. | ||
| And I think that Pete Hegseth will do a great job insofar as the military. | ||
| Yes, he is inexperienced insofar as the politics. | ||
| And that could be his downfall, but I hope not. | ||
| I hope he gets the right people to assist him. | ||
| And he can make it through the swamp. | ||
| But to be quite honest, he has people screaming and yelling and pointing fingers already, and he hasn't even gotten his first day in yet. | ||
| I wish him luck. | ||
| I think he will do great. | ||
| And I can tell you that the military people and former military people around me in this area, which is mainly what we are, are very much supportive of Pete Hegseth. | ||
| And I think it was a great choice by Donald Trump, who I don't believe is a racist, and will do a great job for our country. | ||
| So thank you for letting me talk. | ||
| That was Steve in Texas on the line for former military. | ||
| Let's hear from Will in Baltimore, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Will. | |
| Good morning, Ceasefan. | ||
| Well, here we are shutting down DEI officers, saying government hires will be merit-based. | ||
| Well, Pete Hegseth has disqualifying accusations, no merits. | ||
| Most of the Trump nominees are questionable, to say the least. | ||
| And this is the very reason we need DEI. | ||
| Qualified people of color have been overlooked in this country for centuries. | ||
| It's sewn into the fabric of prejudice. | ||
| Trump's first week in the office has been filled with feeding red meat to his rabbinist extremist supporters. | ||
| Border policies, DEI closings, first rights. | ||
| He's a racist. | ||
| I'm sorry, America. | ||
| You've made a huge mistake. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That was Will in Maryland. | ||
| John in Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Oh, yes. | ||
| Thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| Yes, I listen to many people. | ||
| You know, this country is not just for America, but also for the world. | ||
| So we have to see how we elect these people. | ||
| And many people criticize President Trump, but they don't realize that there are many people that criticize many leaders that are running this country. | ||
| Also, they don't see bad things, but nobody says anything about them. | ||
| The problem in this country is the media. | ||
| Media is supposed to work for the nation, for the people. | ||
| But media is cohosed with big money. | ||
| Media wants to make money. | ||
| So They try to batmouth also people that they they don't agree with. | ||
| But this is this time in history, this this nation, somebody, President Trump, he's a very rich man. | ||
| He don't need to run it for president. | ||
| He has money. | ||
| He can do everything he can go away with all this war. | ||
| But he loves this country and he loves his people. | ||
| So that's why he's willing to sacrifice himself to be president. | ||
| So look at many presidents that already run in this country. | ||
| How many dare do things like this? | ||
| How many people that accuse president before? | ||
| You know, I feel very sad to see American people don't see that, and they don't see also that in this nation we have free country. | ||
| So anybody can, any come here and propaganda, all kind of thing. | ||
| And people believe in them, believe in all those lie that communists bring into this country, and people don't see even in school. | ||
| Okay, got you. | ||
| Got your point, John. | ||
| We'll go to Cindy in Tennessee, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Cindy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My name is Cindy, as you said, and I'm absolutely disgusted. | ||
| This man, Hag Seth, he has no business in this office as a woman. | ||
| And I have been raped. | ||
| I have been, I mean, this is horrible. | ||
| I can't even believe that Donald Trump would try to appoint someone in this position. | ||
| But, of course, Donald Trump was convicted of quite a few things and should be in jail right now, but he's our president. | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| But as a woman, Hag Seth is an absolute disgrace to all women in the United States of America and all over the world. | ||
| And I just think this, I'm just appalled. | ||
| And that's really all I have to say as a woman. | ||
| And thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That was Cindy in Tennessee. | ||
| Bobby in Washington, D.C., line for former military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Bobby. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'd like to thank Senator Charles McConnell for showing his true colors. | ||
| He knew this was going to pass, but he had to fly his no Trumper flag, make sure everybody understands where he stands. | ||
| The new Secretary of Defense will not have any cross-dressers, not have any of the woke guys standing in frontline infantry units. | ||
| That type of criteria absolutely destroys unit cohesiveness and the ability to conduct a mission. | ||
| Everybody knows that. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| Nice, Bobby, in Washington, D.C., let's go to Elizabeth in Dayton, Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Elizabeth. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, Elizabeth. | ||
| Okay, I am. | ||
| Let me say this. | ||
| I'm an 80-year-old woman living in Dayton, Ohio. | ||
| I have voted in every single election since I was 18. | ||
| That's a lot of years. | ||
| And I must say, members of my family are former members of the military. | ||
| There's certain criteria to be an officer and a gentleman. | ||
| Pete Hegseth does not have those qualities. | ||
| I am really scared to death of what he's going to do to our Defense Department. | ||
| I'm appalled at what has happened. | ||
| We now have a president who does not really care about anybody. | ||
| And it's just really disgusting. | ||
| I'm thinking very seriously of leaving the country. | ||
| I'm a Jewish woman. | ||
| I can't bear the thought of Elon Musk and what he did the other night. | ||
| It's really disgusting. | ||
| I don't know what else to say. | ||
| I'm totally and completely opposed to Hagseth being confirmed as Defense Secretary. | ||
| He will ruin our military. | ||
| He will ruin us. | ||
| That was Elizabeth in Ohio yesterday during Senate debate on the floor leading up to the vote. | ||
| It was Democratic Senator Jack Reed. | ||
| He's ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. | ||
| He was one of those members who spoke against Hagseth and his vote to be and his vote to confirm him as Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Here are some of his remarks. | ||
| In his hearing before the Senate Observatory Committee last week and his writings and comments, Mr. Higstead has not proven that he is qualified to be Secretary of Defense. | ||
| He has been questioned about allegations of significant personal misconduct, including alcohol abuse, infidelity, sexual harassment and abuse, and toxic work environments. | ||
| He refused to really address or take ownership of these allegations. | ||
| As a result, he leaves himself open to having his personal history subject to exploitation by adversaries, which is the last thing we need for the leader of the most powerful military in the world. | ||
| If confirmed, Mr. Hegsted would be giving orders to men and women of every race, religion, and sexual orientation. | ||
| His orders may result in these men and women risking and perhaps losing their lives. | ||
| These men and women must trust that the Secretary of Defense giving those orders respects and supports them. | ||
| Instead, Mr. Hagsted has disparaged military personnel with racist and sexist comments. | ||
| He has derided diversity in the ranks, and he has openly opposed women in combat roles. | ||
| How can we expect our military to overcome recruiting challenges, maintain retention, and remain the most ready and lethal fighting force in the world if they do not have respect for their leader? | ||
| Who would want to follow the orders of someone who belittles them? | ||
| Last night, after the vote, the Senate reached a deal on additional pending cabinet nominations. | ||
| This tweet from Craig Kaplan, our Capitol Hill producer, it says that the Senate will be back tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. | ||
| They're going to vote at 11:30 a.m. to confirm Christy Noam to be DHS Secretary. | ||
| That was originally supposed to be happening tomorrow at 4 a.m. or on Sunday, 4 a.m., 4.15 a.m. | ||
| They will also be voting to advance Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Besant. | ||
| Just about 25 minutes left in this first hour of Washington Journal. | ||
| Let's hear from Rick in Iowa, lying for former military. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I guess, you know, my comments stem from what was my late, late Carter, is when I came in and left after second Bush. | ||
| I guess I want to make my comment through the eyes of a career Air Force guy, not me. | ||
| And it was, this guy was the best supervisor I ever had. | ||
| When I met up with him, he was a master sergeant. | ||
| Not surprisingly, he went on to become a command chief of a large fighter wing out west. | ||
| But a few things he mentioned, this is some 20 years ago. | ||
| He had gone up to headquarters there, and one thing he mentioned to me right off was, I am telling you, Rick, we have way too many general officers up there. | ||
| They're just stumbling over each other. | ||
| When I went to his retirement, I remember him telling me they were actually wanting him to go up to headquarters. | ||
| And his comment was, you know, Rick, when I get so far away from them that I can't see the whites of their eyes, I'm not wanting to do the job anymore. | ||
| So he got out of the service and went on, did other great things. | ||
| But the way I see Pete is this is a guy who can still see the whites of their eyes. | ||
| And he's going to be surrounded by the very best in our military. | ||
| He's going to ask the right questions. | ||
| He's going to ask questions that probe into how is the warfighter doing from the Air Force, Navy, all of them. | ||
| And like I said, he'll be surrounded by folks who can help him answer questions. | ||
| I'll tell you another thing. | ||
| I go to a site every now and then. | ||
| There's active duty, there's retired folks on there. | ||
| There was a comment in there that I was absolutely, I just can't believe it. | ||
| You'll do a rack and stack if you want to do promotions. | ||
| You know, you pick the folks that you think are most likely and who you think should be promoted and you send them up. | ||
| This fella, this is an officer said it got kicked back to him and it said, not enough variety. | ||
| I want to, let me tell you something. | ||
| I told you that the fellow that I was telling you about was the best supervisor, bar none. | ||
| His thing was, here's the standard, meet it, or you're just not going to get the mark that you want. | ||
| This guy, he was black. | ||
| Let me tell you something. | ||
| When I first came into the unit, they were talking about, they said everything about this guy. | ||
| Man, he's mean. | ||
| He'll rock your world, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| Yeah, he just wanted you to meet the standard. | ||
| But in all of that conversation, I never heard the word black because it didn't matter. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| And it hasn't mattered. | ||
| So all those folks that are saying that the military is racist and whatnot, almost 25 years I can tell you, I did not see that. | ||
| And let me tell you one last thing. | ||
| We used to call, it wasn't mentored. | ||
| You got tour mentored. | ||
| He showed me a picture of, he was like, hey, I saw this guy, and he was my great mentor and whatnot. | ||
| He was black. | ||
| He was at headquarters at the time. | ||
| I'm just telling you, I think that's a non-starter with me. | ||
| And I just, I wish Pete the very best. | ||
| And I think he's going to make, he's going to do great things for the working man, as we say, in the service. | ||
| And that's about all I got to say. | ||
| That was Rick in Iowa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go to Shirley in Lake City, Florida, Line for Republicans. | |
| Good morning, Shirley. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi, Shirley. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, I can. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| I just want to say, I come from a military family. | ||
| My daddy, who has torn, he's gone now, but he spent 20 years in the Navy. | ||
| He was in World War II and Korea. | ||
| He was out on the submarines. | ||
| He taught submarine mechanics at Charleston Naval Base in Charleston, South Carolina. | ||
| Two brothers, Air Force. | ||
| Another brother, Army. | ||
| A nephew, retired Air Force a few years ago. | ||
| Another nephew in the Navy went into the Navy Reserves after that. | ||
| We lost his father this week, my brother, no veteran. | ||
| That nephew was on that ship that went to New York to help the people with COVID. | ||
| And I was just disgusted when I heard how that governor wouldn't let the people on the ship to get help when our president sent help and the discrimination against our president and everything. | ||
| I never, ever can recall my father, any of my brothers ever talking about a different race. | ||
| Everybody was just people. | ||
| And when my father retired and moved to Florida, he bought a farm. | ||
| And believe me, a real working farm. | ||
| I stood in a red wagon at eight years old handing tobacco to my grandmother for her to string it. | ||
| The whole family knows nothing but work. | ||
| And we don't look at people at color. | ||
| We look at them as people and neighbors, and we love everybody. | ||
| And I just think I don't understand why Democrats just want to cut all the Republicans down for being discriminatory when we can get along if they would just stop so much confusion and division. | ||
| I see more on their side than on Republican side. | ||
| Shirley, what are your thoughts on Pete Hegseth being confirmed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we ought to give him a chance. | |
| And according to President Trump, if you don't do your job, he will get rid of you. | ||
| And that means do the job correctly and get in there and listen to, he'll have people telling him and guiding him and giving him the responses and information that he needs. | ||
| And we don't need 10 supervisors over five people. | ||
| You know, get the people in there that we need and get rid of the ones we don't need and overpaying on the budget and everything. | ||
| And I just think we should give him a shot at it, you know. | ||
| That's Shirley in Florida. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rick in New Jersey, lined for former military. | |
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I was in the military in the middle 70s. | ||
| Spent four years after, and it was very unspectacular four years. | ||
| I didn't, I wasn't in combat. | ||
| It was the end of the Vietnam War. | ||
| None of the guys in the barracks experienced combat either. | ||
| It was very time. | ||
| It was part of it was the Carter administration. | ||
| So a lot of the guys in the barracks were doing drugs and drinking and popping pills. | ||
| This was run-of-the-mill stuff. | ||
| This was Simon Dozen stuff. | ||
| As He refers to Pete Hegseth. | ||
| That's not who you want. | ||
| You want the exception to the rule. | ||
| You don't want the everyday man. | ||
| You want a leader. | ||
| You want somebody who didn't do those things, who had the emotional strength to not do those things, who shows the maturity. | ||
| Now, if I'm, am I right? | ||
| Did he actually attend Princeton University? | ||
| We'll go to Cheryl in Ohio, Line for Independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Cheryl. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| The hypocrisy, the absolute hypocrisy of the Democrats to bring up accusations of rape and Cheryl, are you there? | ||
| And sexual assault on Pete Hegseth is appalling because the Democrats elected a president accused of rape and sexual assault, and evidence was hidden. | ||
| And that isn't Donald Trump. | ||
| That was Joe Biden. | ||
| And remember the name, Tara Reed. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Cheryl in Ohio. | ||
| And Cheryl talking about some of the allegations against Pete Hegseth from Fox News, Concerned Veterans for America, the nonprofit advocacy group at the center of many of the accusations brought up during his confirmation hearing. | ||
| The New Yorker reported in December that Hegseth was forced out of the CVA, the group he once ran over allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. | ||
| After the vote, the concerned Veterans for America tweeted out this statement. | ||
| In part, it says, the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense presents a real opportunity to prioritize the security and prosperity of our citizens and our champion, champion prudence and effectiveness in our defense strategy and to focus our Department of Defense on our most vital interest. | ||
| In its statement, there you see on the screen it says, as veterans and military families, we have borne the burden of our country's defense policies. | ||
| CVA is committed to ensuring the future use of our armed forces is focused, principled, and aligned with the values that have kept Americans secure and free for almost 250 years. | ||
| For the future of our country and the prosperity of the American people, we must modernize the military. | ||
| We are excited to partner with Pete Hegseth to achieve those goals. | ||
| Just under 15 minutes left in this first hour, we'll go to Cindy in New Jersey, Lineford Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Cindy. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| This is a sad day in America. | ||
| First of all, we have a president who's a convicted felon. | ||
| Now we have a defense secretary who is abusive to women. | ||
| Donald Trump has come into this office. | ||
| He has taken away. | ||
| He went back as far as 1965 to the civil rights. | ||
| White women, remember, at that point, it wasn't just for black people, it was also for white women as far as the civil rights go. | ||
| The people that he is choosing in his cabinet right now are unqualified. | ||
| If you look at his cabinet, there is not one person of color. | ||
| Right now, this is not to bring America great again. | ||
| As far as I'm concerned, it is to make America white again. | ||
| This is appalling. | ||
| I am scared as an African-American woman as to what's going to happen to this country when it comes to people of color. | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| Cindy in New Jersey. | ||
| Tony in Buffalo, New York, line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tony. | |
| Yes, I just like to mention, you know, during the hearing, you know, the Democrats brought up the headset, you know, personal background regarding adultery. | ||
| And one senator responded and said, Republican Senator responded and said to the Democratic senator, when senators come in at night and vote on a bill and they've been drinking, they never ask them to step down. | ||
| When there's senators that committed adultery and politicians that committed adultery, they never step down. | ||
| You know, we're not all perfect. | ||
| If they're looking for Mr. Perfect for the Department of Defense, I mean, that's his, you know, to me, that's his personal life. | ||
| Now, in a professional life, there's some things going on, but you know what? | ||
| I believe in Donald Trump's decision. | ||
| I believe that obviously, you know, President Trump knows that, hey, if he doesn't, like some have said, if he doesn't do the job, he's not afraid to fire any individual who doesn't do their job. | ||
| So I feel safe with his decision. | ||
| And I feel that, you know, and the last is I'm a veteran. | ||
| And I'm going to tell you right now, I would want nothing but a veteran leading me who's been in the battle, who smelled the smoke of gunfire and had bullets going over their head. | ||
| That's the type of leader I would want leading me. | ||
| You know, in the past, they've had the Department of Defense be civilians. | ||
| And it just, you know what? | ||
| You know, they couldn't even spell military, let alone be the Department of Defense. | ||
| And now we finally got a true hero, and they're just trying to pick up every little thing in his background to try to disqualify him. | ||
| I think it's appalling and disturbing. | ||
| And I wish him the best of luck. | ||
| And I believe in President Donald Trump's pick. | ||
| And if he doesn't do the job, he's going to fire him. | ||
| That was Tony in New York. | ||
| Wanted to follow up on a question. | ||
| Rick in New Jersey, one of our earlier callers had about Pete Hegseth's background from CBS News. | ||
| It says that Hegseth was valedictorian at Lake Forest High School in Minnesota and then attended Princeton University, where he played basketball. | ||
| From there, he joined the Minnesota National Guard and later the Army National Guard. | ||
| He was sent abroad three times as part of a security platoon at Guantanamo Bay, an infantryman in Iraq, and counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. | ||
| Hegseth does not have senior military or national security experience. | ||
| It also says between his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he served in a $110,000 a year role as executive director of Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy group that advocated for then President George W. Bush's Iraq surge. | ||
| Just a few minutes left. | ||
| Ronnie in Georgia, line for former members of the military. | ||
| Good morning, Ronnie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I watched the proceeding last night, and I'm so upset I couldn't sleep because that office is one of the highest of all offices that's for the military, for the Department of Defense. | ||
| A week ago, we watched the seating of our 39th president, and the men and women in uniform stood there taking his remain from point A to point B. | ||
| And I watched, we see the military personnel at Marine One and Air Force One and at the White House and at the conflict in the embassy overseas. | ||
| If any one of those personnel would have had just alcohol problems, they would have never taken that post, not counting the military personnel that's at the tomb, once the tune of the unknown soldier. | ||
| For 20 years, I served this military United States. | ||
| I'll do it again. | ||
| The person that's in the Department of Defense has to be above the rest of the people. | ||
| And this guy, our national defense is in harm way because at any time we have our enemies out there know this guy has a drinking problem. | ||
| They know we have a problem with women, and they can use this against that individual to get our national defense. | ||
| This guy is not the person that we need serving as Secretary of Defense. | ||
| My God, they could have found someone better. | ||
| I served with Austin, the last Secretary of Defense at Fort Bragg. | ||
| I was a senior non-commissioned officer. | ||
| This guy did what he had to do. | ||
| And yes, people are talking about there's no racism in the military. | ||
| How do they go through that and say it's not? | ||
| Because I went to the military in 1974. | ||
| There was a position that I, as a private, we went in that we were taking out doing our job. | ||
| We couldn't do our job. | ||
| We had to do something different because the people they won in there was white soldiers. | ||
| And they took over our job that we were trained for by the military because it was easier. | ||
| And it's a sad day. | ||
| I'm going to say this. | ||
| I'm getting off the phone. | ||
| It's a sad day for the United States of America that Trump could not find a one better to put in that position. | ||
| It's a slap in the face to all military personnel that's on their post now, that doing their job now. | ||
| They can not have any blemishes on their record, especially those that don't know no special detail. | ||
| Like I said, Air Force One, Marine One, the Tune of the Unknown Soldiers, Embassy Guards at the White House. | ||
| They can't have any blemishes. | ||
| Are they going back? | ||
| Did they do? | ||
| They're going back to their unit to be UCMJ, discharged from the military. | ||
| And the guy that's going to be over these individuals is an alcoholic, it's an adulteress, and we're going to put him in charge of our military. | ||
| Maybe I'll be able to get some sleep tonight. | ||
| Right now, it's a sad day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Ronnie and Georgia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Karen in Pennsylvania, Line for Democrats. | |
| Good morning, Karen. | ||
| Hi, thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My reaction to this is: I'm literally afraid. | ||
| The first lady or second lady talked about he may only have the job for a week and then get fired, but if he doesn't, I'm afraid of what's going to happen because at the level that they suck him, if he makes a mistake, there's going to be war probably on our soil. | ||
| And I just can't imagine that all the things that Christ talked about, that Jesus talked about in Matthew 24 and 25 are going to happen in my lifetime. | ||
| It just scares me. | ||
| But the other thing is that I don't think he was testing Republicans. | ||
| Trump was testing Republicans by putting them in there. | ||
| I think he was testing the Constitution. | ||
| He was trying to put that constitutional, you know, the changing the birthright citizenship. | ||
| He says in the Constitution because if he gets away with that, he's going to change elections because he wants to be king. | ||
| He doesn't want to be. | ||
| And you know, another thing is, Trump started out with the slogan of make America great again, and he stuck with that. | ||
| But I believe he changed. | ||
| I think his new slogan, the one he's not saying, and the fact that he's surrounded by three very rich, influential South Africans, I think he wants to take this country to minority rule. | ||
| That's what I think he's really up to. | ||
| It's Karen in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Wanted to show some of the reaction after the vote from members of the Senate. | ||
| They were putting out statements on ex. | ||
| Mark Wayne Mullins, senator from Oklahoma, said, We did it, America. | ||
| It was an honor to be in the fight with my friend and your defense Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| The Hagseth family is the best. | ||
| This from Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who's a veteran herself. | ||
| Tonight, despite claiming they want to bring mediocrity back to our military, nearly every meritocracy back to our military, nearly every Republican chose to confirm someone who is so obviously lacks the merits to serve as our Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Shame on those who put their features to Trump ahead of our national security. | ||
| A couple more. | ||
| This from Dr. Roger Marshall, Senator of Kansas, said, Congratulations to Pete Hegseth, our new Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Pete will bring transformative change, refocusing our military on lethality and recruiting efforts. | ||
| I can't wait to see what a great job he does. | ||
| And one more from Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. | ||
| He says the Department of Defense is the largest and most important agency. | ||
| Pete Hegseth has limited management experience, and what experience he has has been unsuccessful. | ||
| I respect his service, but I do not think he has the skills, experience, or character to be Defense Secretary. | ||
| Pete Hegseth is the second member of Trump cabinet, Trump's cabinet. | ||
| To be confirmed, you can find all of the confirmation hearings, including Pete Hegsets, on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| And you can follow us for more confirmation hearings as they come up. | ||
| Just a few minutes left. | ||
| Byron in North Carolina, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Byron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| You know, this is party. | ||
| People have taken party over the security of our nation. | ||
| And it's, like they say, it's a real, real sad day. | ||
| But, you know, what are really disgusted with is the Democrats. | ||
| I think the way that they question this guy up there and the way the Republicans question people when they questioned the border guy, when they questioned Biden's Attorney General, they just drilled him. | ||
| And they just talked to this guy like it was normal. | ||
| I heard no one say, ask him have he been to any kind of treatment for alcohol. | ||
| More than likely, this guy is an alcoholic. | ||
| When you pass it out and stuff like that, you got a real, real problem with alcohol. | ||
| They didn't address none of that. | ||
| I didn't hear if he's more likely to get that call at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| His position is the more likely position to get it. | ||
| And he could just call drunk. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| And the Democrats did not even ask him if he ever been in any kind of treatment. | ||
| All he said, well, I'll stop drinking if I get appointed. | ||
| It don't work like that. | ||
| If you've got an alcohol problem, it is a disease. | ||
| And, you know, I really see the Democratic Party as having to be reinvented like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party switched before because they are super weak. | ||
| I can see all his appointments getting through. | ||
| The people up there, you know, you got Corey Booker, you got a lot of smart Democrats now, but they won't put them up there. | ||
| They put all these old people that halfway can't think. | ||
| And they let the Republicans outthink them on their feet. | ||
| And this kind of thing happens and everything. | ||
| But this is Trump. | ||
| This is Trump. | ||
| And I hope that, you know, maybe this is the best thing for America to wake the people up. | ||
| I noticed that as far as the Democrats, I had a lot. | ||
| I'm an independent, but I had sense enough not to vote for Trump. | ||
| A lot of people made that mistake to stay home. | ||
| Not that they voted for Trump, but they made the mistake of staying home because they were disgusted. | ||
| And I don't blame them with the Democrats and especially the hell up, ma'am. | ||
| Yes, I'm here, Byron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm looking at the Democrats now. | ||
| They're saying, oh, you can't deport anyone. | ||
| These are the people that voted for Trump. | ||
| You know, the Hispanics, and I know it's wrong to deport all these. | ||
| You know, you got a lot of good people over here that's going to get caught up into this. | ||
| But sometimes you got to let the people suffer over a whole. | ||
| Somebody got to be sacrificed. | ||
| We'll need to leave it there, Byron, because we are out of time for this first hour. | ||
| But next on Washington Journal, Amish Adalja, Dr. Amish Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, will join us to discuss President Trump withdrawing from the World Health Organization. | ||
| And later, Axios crypto reporter Dale Bradydale will discuss the cryptocurrency industry, including potential regulation under the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| We'll visit George Washington's Virginia home, Mount Vernon, to tour recent renovation and preservation efforts at the historic property. | ||
| On Lectures of History, Duke University professor Cecilia Marquez discusses Latino migration trends in the 20th and early 21st centuries and how Latinos shaped the culture, development, and economics of the American South. | ||
| On the presidency, historian Lindsey Chervinsky speaks at the Boston Athenaeum about second U.S. president and Massachusetts favorite son, John Adams. | ||
| His presidency unfolded against the backdrop of the politics and personalities of the new nation. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| next week on the c-span networks the house is out as house republicans hold their annual retreat The Senate will be in session as they continue to hold hearings for several of President Trump's cabinet nominees, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| He'll appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Thursday. | ||
| Also, on Thursday, Kash Patel will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee as he seeks to become FBI Director. | ||
| Then, Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. | ||
| Watch next week live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN: Democracy Unfiltered Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea, it's a process, a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss President Trump withdrawing from the World Health Organization is Dr. Amish Adalja. | ||
| He's a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, thank you so much for being back on the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Why don't we start by talking about the World Health Organization? | ||
| Remind our viewers what it is, what their mission is, and who's involved with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The World Health Organization is a kind of a subsidiary or related organization to the United Nations, and it was formed in the 1940s, 1950s, and after the wake of World War II. | |
| And what it is, is a convening place for most countries of the world, you know, close to 200 countries, to talk about health issues that affect the globe, to respond to infectious disease outbreaks. | ||
| And they have a very, very, very big footprint. | ||
| The part that I really focus on myself as an infectious disease physician is their role in communicable disease control. | ||
| And this is the way that we learn about outbreaks. | ||
| This is an organization that has regional offices for the Americas, for Africa, for Asia, for all over the globe, where they kind of have some reach into all countries and have relationships with the ministries of health, the health departments, the healthcare system in those areas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they do provide support. | |
| And I think most importantly, what they provide is situational awareness of what's going on in the world. | ||
| And what does the U.S.'s current involvement in the World Health Organization look like? | ||
| What's the give and take? | ||
| What are we contributing? | ||
| What are we getting out of being part of the organization? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the U.S. is the largest single donor country to the World Health Organization's budget. | |
| So the World Health Organization is funded by donor countries having dues that they pay, and other organizations can also contribute. | ||
| For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a major contributor to the WHO. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then not only does the United States pay dues, the United States also does collaborative grants with the WHO, giving the WHO grants for projects that they may be engaged in. | |
| That comes not just from the Health and Human Services Department, but also from the Department of Defense that works with the WHO. | ||
| And then there are many employees, for example, that work at the CDC that are technically CDC employees that are what we say is called they're second into the WHO where they're basically working at the WHO, but they're technically CDC employees. | ||
| And what the U.S. gets from the WHO is a big seat at the table for where a lot of issues relating to communicable disease control arise. | ||
| So, for example, when there's an outbreak in a country on the other side of the globe, it's the WHO that gets notified, and then the U.S. gets notified because it's a WHO member. | ||
| And, for example, if there's something where there's a new organism discovered, a new virus discovered, that sequence, the genetic sequence, will be given to the WHO, which will then be given to the U.S., which will then be given to our pharmaceutical companies. | ||
| So, there's a lot of benefit there, but I think the biggest one is that you want to know what's going on in the infectious disease world as close to real time as possible. | ||
| And being part of the WHO allows that to occur because there are many places where the CDC doesn't go, where they don't have great relationships with the Ministry of Health, but the WHO does. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then, so I think that that's what I think is the greatest value is having a convening place where we can learn about what's happening on the other side of the world, and we in the United States can be more proactive about preparing for something or getting resources to stop something from spreading. | |
| That's what the WHO kind of offers above and beyond what we do domestically. | ||
| Dr. Amish Adalja will be with us for about the next 35 minutes or so on this topic. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines, Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Also want to let you know that if you are a medical professional, there is a line for you, and that is 202-748-8003. | ||
| And of course, you can also find us on X, and you can text in your comments at that same number. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, this week, President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization. | ||
| What can you tell us about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, this is something that he did during his first term as well, but it's not an instantaneous action that occurs. | |
| So, when he signs that declaration saying that he has an intention to withdraw the United States from WHO, that starts a year-long process where sort of those activities wind down. | ||
| So, we're still in the WHO as of now, and we'll be up until January 20th when the anniversary of that order was signed. | ||
| So, what that signals is something that he's kind of talked about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This isn't something that's surprising. | |
| As I said, he did it during his first term, but since he was not re-elected, that never really came into action. | ||
| And President Biden reversed that decision. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But what it does, I think, is reflect, and we could talk about this, some of his frustrations with the WHO and people's frustrations with the WHO. | |
| But I do think on balance that this is a very drastic way to address concerns that are legitimate, and I think it will end up being the wrong thing to do if your goal is to increase the United States' resiliency to infectious disease. | ||
| And when we talk about the, you're saying that we have a year left if we do end up ultimately withdrawing from the World Health Organization, what impact is that going to have on the U.S. when we are no longer part of that organization? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the biggest impact is what I alluded to earlier, is that we don't have the ability to know what's going on with infectious disease outbreaks all over the world immediately, that there will be a lag, that we won't be at the table when those types of outbreaks come to light, when people are making decisions about public health emergencies of international concern, thinking about what resources need to go. | |
| The U.S. would be more acting unilaterally versus being part of the organization that is the first that's notified and kind of crafts that response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I think that's what we're losing out on: our ability to know immediately what's going on and coordinate a response with those other countries. | |
| It's also the case that, and I'm sure you're going to ask about this later, is that there are reforms that are needed at the WHO. | ||
| It's much less likely that those reforms actually occur if the U.S. is not at that table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, there are real reforms, real issues that need to be addressed at the WHO. | |
| But in the U.S. has been at the forefront of bringing these to light, if the U.S. is not part of the WHO, it's not going to be able to actually fix these issues. | ||
| And I think it's important to know that we need a world organization that deals with communicable diseases because this is different. | ||
| It's not like heart attacks. | ||
| It's not like, you know, it's not like hypertension. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is something when it comes to infectious disease, they're a global phenomenon, meaning that they are trans because many of them are transmissible. | |
| They're communicable. | ||
| They get from person to person. | ||
| And they don't recognize a border. | ||
| And with the speed of travel and the rise of megacities and how quickly you can get from one side of the globe to the other, every country, in order to be resilient domestically against infectious disease, has to be looking all over the globe for threats that may emanate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's why a communicable disease organization that covers the globe, covers the planet, is something that's valuable to everybody. | |
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We will start with Mitch in Louisiana, line for medical professionals. | ||
| Good morning, Mitch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning to the organization. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi, Mitch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I'm just wondering if he has practiced at all. | ||
| Do I practice? | ||
| Have I practiced medicine? | ||
| Yes, I just worked the day before yesterday. | ||
| So I do practice infectious disease, emergency medicine, and critical care in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. | ||
| And I have done that since I started my residency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm about 50% clinical, and the other 50% of my time is spent with the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins. | |
| And Dr. Adalja, you also have experience with types of infectious diseases. | ||
| What can you tell us about your experience there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I focus a lot on emerging infectious disease. | |
| That's where my research, my policy interests are. | ||
| But I take care of patients with all sorts of infectious diseases from an MRSA infection of the skin to bloodstream infections to COVID to influenza to HIV to MPox. | ||
| When you're an infectious disease physician, you round in the hospital and other doctors consult you on their cases. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that can be something that sounds pretty routine, like an infection of a prosthetic hip, but it also could be something like a traveler coming back from a different country that has a fever or someone who has cancer, an organ transplant, and has an unknown infection, and you've got to sort of sort that out. | |
| So it's a very challenging and intellectually stimulating job where anything can happen and any case can be a very, very important case. | ||
| And I certainly saw lots of COVID cases. | ||
| I took care of COVID cases before we actually were able to test people for COVID. | ||
| So I can't even count how many COVID-19 cases I've taken care of. | ||
| And in the last couple of weeks, I've been actually seeing a lot of influenza cases, which influenza is high right now in the United States. | ||
| And that's translating into patients in the hospital with influenza. | ||
| Let's hear from Maureen in Pennsylvania, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Maureen. | ||
| Maureen, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi, Maureen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, doctor. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Thank you for coming on the C-SPAN. | ||
| I just have a question or two. | ||
| With the World Health Organization, America has paid $500 million towards this organization. | ||
| We have donated or gave them that. | ||
| Why are we not only doing $39 million like China and then taking that other $400 and some million dollars and maybe making Flint, Michigan water healthier for our American citizens and get the Appalachian mountain people, health care, better health care, more electricity, water, help us before we help? | ||
| You have to do a hand, not a handout, a hand up. | ||
| And with the American people, we are suffering. | ||
| I am lucky enough to live in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. | ||
| So I'm going to rattle on, but go ahead, sir. | ||
| So I think those are real issues that need to be brought up at the WHO: how much do other countries contribute versus how much does the U.S. contribute? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so I think that is a legitimate issue that should be discussed. | |
| But I don't think that withdrawing from the organization is the solution to that because there's still value to be had by being part of the WHO. | ||
| So when it comes to determining how much each country should pay, that's an area where there needs to be real reform, that it shouldn't be the United States shouldering the bulk of the burden. | ||
| And I think that's something that President Trump and his team needs to address. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I don't think that by removing the ability of the U.S. to actually get disease alert outbreak updates from the WHO or being part of that is worth that. | |
| And that there are priorities that the U.S. has to continue to fund, and that is our own health security. | ||
| And being part of the WHO is part of that. | ||
| But I do think this is a legitimate criticism that you bring up and one that needs to be taken to the World Health Organization and addressed seriously. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I don't think that withdrawing from the organization is the solution or helps that matter. | |
| I think it ends up backfiring because if they do follow through with the withdrawal, we will be more vulnerable. | ||
| And any lag that we have in knowing about an infectious disease threat is going to cost lives here domestically. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to delay vaccine development. | |
| It's going to delay hospital preparedness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think that, yes, this is important, but I don't think withdrawing is the solution to it. | |
| Dr. Adalja, you are talking about the impact to the U.S. What about the impact on the rest of the world if the U.S. were to withdraw and also the organization, the World Health Organization itself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because the U.S. is a major contributor to the WHO, the WHO is funded by donor countries. | |
| If the biggest contributor is no longer part of it and no longer contributing, that will cause a serious budget crunch. | ||
| And whether that budget crunch can be filled by other countries or other organizations remains to be seen. | ||
| But we need the WHO to be fully funded and operational. | ||
| We need to make sure that they can do things that they need to do to keep the world safe from infectious disease threats. | ||
| So I think that if the budget is such that they're not able to do the activities that they need to do, then it also makes everybody less safe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the other side of that is that if the U.S. is not contributing, other countries may. | |
| And one of the real issues with the WHO that people have addressed time and time again is the influence of countries like China, which is an authoritarian country, which has been very non-transparent when it comes to the early days of COVID. | ||
| China's influence, the WHO, will only grow with the U.S. absence. | ||
| And China has been doing a lot unilaterally in places like Africa, increasing its sphere of influence. | ||
| These are things that go beyond infectious disease, that have geopolitical importance, which I'm not really qualified to speak about. | ||
| But those are issues that people have raised. | ||
| But I think they'll only become more acute if the U.S. is not part of the WHO. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's hear from Michael in Gainesville, Florida, line for Democrats. | |
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Dr. Adolje, in addition to the WHO, I believe Trump has also asked that the CDC not communicate with anyone in the public. | ||
| And when I reached out, because if you detect the flu in an animal or a human, you're supposed to report it and test it, I think, to see if it's avian flu. | ||
| And if it's a pet, I have a concern that the vets are having people treat the animal instead of doing what to protect and prevent it evolving into a more severe outbreak. | ||
| You know, we put down tens and hundreds of thousands of animals because a few workers might be exposed. | ||
| Well, we should also, I think, euthanize pets. | ||
| And when I called Florida vets to see what they're told to do, I was tried to be given a $100 Walmart thing. | ||
| So when I went to the website, it shows it's active. | ||
| But apparently, if you call in, even if you're a vet, they give you $100 Walmart card. | ||
| And there's no actual reporting occurring. | ||
| So if you have a pet that is sick, should you euthanize it? | ||
| Because if you bring it home to your family and your family's friends, you're exposed. | ||
| You're increasing that exposure to humans dramatically. | ||
| And if it spreads within pets, we're risking a world outbreak by not euthanizing our pets if they come down with bird flu. | ||
| Is that the correct thing to do? | ||
| Should we euthanize our pets? | ||
| So there's a lot there. | ||
| So yes, so right now we're in the midst of a bird flu outbreak that's primarily spreading among dairy cattle as well as poultry and wild birds in the United States. | ||
| And we've had about 60 plus confirmed cases in humans, but we have seen animals, including pets like cats, be infected by this. | ||
| The caller asks about euthanizing animals. | ||
| And I don't think that that's standard practice. | ||
| It's on a case-by-case basis, depending upon how ill the person is. | ||
| And veterinarians do have protocols that they can put in place in terms of testing a pet for bird flu. | ||
| And the CDC doesn't have much to do with animal health. | ||
| It's more the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, that has some veterinarians there. | ||
| And fortunately, their ability to communicate has not been constrained. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you can get information from the USDA and from the American Veterinary Medicine Association as well. | |
| These are important questions. | ||
| And that's kind of the bad aspect of what's happening here with this communications halt from the CDC is that people have legitimate questions and they need to know that their questions are being answered. | ||
| And while there often are pauses like this when there's a change in administration, the scope is very large and there needs to be a carve-out for things like avian influenza because there are real questions and this is a dynamic evolving outbreak that not just the general public, but clinicians and public health practitioners need to know that the CDC is there and listening and telling them if something important is happening. | ||
| Just in the last week of President Biden's administration, there was a guidance change that went out through the CDC's health alert network. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These things need to not be part of everyday Washington politics. | |
| And unfortunately, the CDC is increasingly being kind of a captured organization that answers to the West Wing and not to, and is not, you know, answering to infectious disease physicians and public health practitioners. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's not what we want. | |
| And so I sympathize with the caller's frustration over this issue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's hear from Scott and Corvallis, Oregon, Line for Independence. | |
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
| Yeah, hello from the Beaver State. | ||
| I'm a science guy. | ||
| I studied neuroscience in the 80s and I've been a fan of molecular biology ever since. | ||
| I have a theory on why the U.S. pulled out of the World Health Organization, and I'd like to give your take on it. | ||
| It has this COVID backlash, the excessive restrictions, the lockdowns. | ||
| Do you have a quick opinion on that? | ||
| And I'd like to give you a brief story. | ||
| So I think that this is the restrictions didn't necessarily come from the World Health Organization. | ||
| Those actually came from the U.S. government, primarily state governments. | ||
| And I don't think that, you know, in different countries that are members of the WHO did different things. | ||
| If you look at countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were some of the best countries when it came to COVID-19, they didn't do overly aggressive lockdowns. | ||
| So I don't think that that's part of it. | ||
| I think there are issues with the early days of COVID and the transparency that came from China over the first cases and how quickly China knew that this was an efficiently transmitting virus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are real issues that do have something to do with WHO withdrawal. | |
| But I think that this is a political action. | ||
| I think that President Trump has supporters that voted him into office that don't like the WHO, don't like the issue of international organizations. | ||
| And this was something, again, that he did in 2020. | ||
| And some of the rhetoric seems very similar to some of the rhetoric you see regarding the NATO, the U.S.'s involvement in NATO about other countries paying more of the budget. | ||
| So I don't necessarily think this has anything specific to do with COVID policy other than the transparency, the lack of transparency from China and the WHO initially not being aggressive about that lack of transparency. | ||
| Let's go to Kelly in North Carolina, Lion for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kelly. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Doctor, isn't it true? | ||
| I have two things to talk about, and I'll make them quick. | ||
| Isn't it true that if we signed up with the WHO, which we are no longer with them as of Trump's executive order, that we give up our sovereignty if there is a pandemic? | ||
| And this is for the whole world that has signed up with the WHO. | ||
| So that was the first problem. | ||
| And we would be told what to do with our bodies and everything else the whole time that we're under that pandemic. | ||
| And another thing is that I was wondering, were you a part of the project? | ||
| I can't remember exactly what the name of it was. | ||
| I believe it was some numbers project something that happened a couple of years before COVID where I do know that the hospital that you're connected with there, Johnson and I'm forgetting the name of it. | ||
| Johns Hopkins, that's it. | ||
| That it would be that whole project was everyone sitting down at the table and like Bill Gates and I know Johns Hopkins and then there were other hospitals and other people like the CDC and such. | ||
| And you did an exercise. | ||
| I watched the whole thing online. | ||
| You did an exercise, or I shouldn't say you, but the hospital and all of them. | ||
| And it was exactly what turned out to happen to all of us with COVID. | ||
| Can you? | ||
| Dr. Adalzia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so the first part, the WHO and sovereignty, that's a large, largely, that's completely misinformation. | |
| There's no sovereignty that's given up. | ||
| The WHO doesn't have any kind of enforcement power or an army or anything like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the U.S. has been part of the WHO, like I said, from the 1940s and 50s. | |
| And we've had multiple pandemics since then. | ||
| We've had a pandemic in 1957, a 1968, a mini-pandemic in 1977, 2009, and COVID. | ||
| And nowhere was U.S. sovereignty breached. | ||
| I think that's just complete misinformation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's used to really make political points, but there's no actual reality to that with respect to the WHO. | |
| And we are still part of the WHO for this year. | ||
| So it's not, so again, it's not as if we've instantly removed ourselves from the WHO. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So regarding exercises, yes, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and predecessor organizations have always done exercises for pandemics, for bioterrorism, where we do what are called tabletop exercises, where we come up with a scenario of what we think might happen and then put decision makers in a room and see how they would react to try and figure out where the gaps are, where the problems are. | |
| And this is a very valuable type of thing that we do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we have done ones where we thought about coronavirus as causing a pandemic because we had seen what happened with SARS in 2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012. | |
| So coronavirus was used for a tabletop exercise. | ||
| And we did predict a lot of the things that would happen because, and it's not because we have some kind of hand in it. | ||
| It's because it's very, if you're a subject matter expert in infectious disease and you understand how policymakers work, you can figure out where their mistakes are going to be. | ||
| And you can understand the characteristics of a virus, how it's going to transmit. | ||
| We know what happens during respiratory virus pandemics, and we know, get tripped up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We know where there are issues. | |
| And that may make people think that we're kind of nostradamous, but it's not. | ||
| It's more about making sure that people actually understand these gaps. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And unfortunately, people don't often listen. | |
| Policymakers will come to some of these tabletops and they have all these great ideas that they come back and they leave with, but they don't actually implement them. | ||
| So these types of tabletop exercises are very important for understanding where the constraints are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But they're only good if people actually implement those policies. | |
| And what we saw was a really lack of proactivity in terms of the U.S. government when it came to COVID. | ||
| We basically allowed this virus to spread unchecked for January, February, half of March before actually doing something, had no ability to test for several months after that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And when you do all of that, of course, you're going to get the full force of the virus. | |
| And it didn't have to be that way. | ||
| And we could have been like Taiwan and South Korea if we were proactive and if people would have watched our exercises and then taken those lessons and actually made them part of policy. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, a lot of public health experts will say that it's not if but when we come to another pandemic, a viewer on X asked the question: Do our pandemic preparedness plans rely on our membership in the WHO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, they don't rely. | |
| Our pandemic plans don't rely on membership in the WHO. | ||
| However, the WHO is part of our pandemic plans, meaning that our first notification of a pandemic would probably come from the WHO because it's not likely to occur. | ||
| It's less likely to occur domestically. | ||
| It's more likely to occur in other parts of the world than in the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So in that sense, the WHO would be an important first signal that something was amiss. | |
| And it wouldn't just start as a pandemic. | ||
| It would be very similar to what happened with COVID. | ||
| You hear about a spreading respiratory disease in some part of the world, and then you take that information and start to prepare for it. | ||
| So our pandemic plans would be greatly enhanced by participation of the WHO, having access to that information, having access to any kind of samples and lab samples that might be given to the WHO first, or even just sequencing data, and then the coordination because we live on a continent with other countries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is going to be very important in terms of coordinating what's going on in Canada, what's going on in Mexico, what's going on in the Caribbean islands. | |
| All of that is going to be really important to our area of the globe during a pandemic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think our pandemic plans are only enhanced by being part of the WHO, but certainly we do pandemic planning for the domestic aspects of the problem that are kind of independent of the WHO, but everything is kind of integrated with the WHO. | |
| Let's hear from Margaret in Indiana, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Marco, good morning, Doctor. | |
| I have a daughter that's in medical research, and she loves it. | ||
| Very interesting and engaged. | ||
| And without it, well, that would be the extinction of man. | ||
| So people don't really realize the reason that they are existing and that they are continuing to thrive. | ||
| It's because of science minds. | ||
| So I don't forget the fact of anybody being a science denier. | ||
| Also, I'd like to say that I predict there'll be two pandemics occurring here in 25 due to the evolution of the COVID. | ||
| That many people still haven't gotten vaccinated. | ||
| And that's why you have the continuum of people trying to research and keep people alive. | ||
| And, you know, when you have somebody denying on the other side, it's very difficult to do so. | ||
| But hopefully we'll proceed and progress with research and try to make cures for cancer and all those other things. | ||
| Thank you and have a blessed day. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So I agree with the sentiments of the caller there that science, medicine are very responsible for human flourishing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The fact that we have lifespans that reach up to 80 years, these are all the results of science and medicine improving human lives, individual human lives. | |
| Let's hear from Shelby in Bluff City, Tennessee, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Shelby. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you, doctor. | ||
| My question is on RSV. | ||
| Has research advanced to try to figure out how to help people that come down with RSV? | ||
| I had a friend that died from it. | ||
| They gave her anabolics. | ||
| They gave her everything. | ||
| She passed away. | ||
| So I'd like for you to be able to speak on the research and hopefully continue in what you think maybe really causes RSV. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So she's asking about RSV, which stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus. | ||
| So this is a virus that's been infecting humans for hundreds and hundreds of years. | ||
| And most people get infected by the age of two. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the most common cause of infant hospitalization. | |
| And everybody knows it as an infant disease. | ||
| But what people don't actually know is it's also an adult disease as well. | ||
| That as you get older, your immunity wanes and you can get infected with RSV. | ||
| And sometimes those cases can be severe. | ||
| It has a comparable burden to influenza in terms of hospitalizations and deaths. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it is something that is just underappreciated as a disease of older adults. | |
| There have been major breakthroughs. | ||
| We do have vaccines. | ||
| There are three vaccines that the FDA has approved for RSV prevention that are targeted towards elderly individuals, older people, or those with other underlying conditions that put them at higher risk for RSV. | ||
| And then one for pregnant women to protect their developing fetus so it develops antibodies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we also have an antibody that we can give to newborns to protect them. | |
| But as the caller said, there's not any really great treatments once somebody gets RSV. | ||
| So if you get RSV, you're usually treated with supportive care in a hospital, which might mean IV fluids, oxygen, severe patients in the ICU. | ||
| There is one antiviral that we give to really immunocompromised individuals called ribavirin, but it's not for everybody because it has a lot of side effects. | ||
| And there are clinical trials going on to make RSV antivirals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're still progressing. | |
| So we don't have any great treatments for RSV. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it is certainly a major problem. | |
| And it's been a problem for a very, very long time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think the vaccines that are available now for older individuals are the best tool that we have to reduce the burden in the older population. | |
| We just need more people to take them. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, something that you brought up earlier are reforms needed at the World Health Organization in a statement response to the executive order announcement. | ||
| The WHO put out a statement and they said that over the past seven years, they've implemented the largest set of reforms in its history to transform our accountability, cost-effectiveness, and impact in countries. | ||
| What do they need to focus on now and moving forward? | ||
| It's really about increasing the pressure to have transparency when it comes to disease outbreaks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Lots of countries don't want to say they have an outbreak. | |
| And I'm not just talking about China and COVID-19 or China and SARS, but also Saudi Arabia and the Middle East respiratory syndrome. | ||
| We just saw it in the last week with Tanzania and Marburg, where they initially denied that there was a Marburg outbreak. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That has to be part of the WHO's mission to make it the norm that countries do not try to hide disease outbreaks and that they're very forthcoming with all the information. | |
| That's one thing. | ||
| Another thing is right now we're in the middle of an impox outbreak in parts of parts of Africa. | ||
| One of the best tools to staunch an impox outbreak is a vaccine. | ||
| There are multiple vaccines out there, and there was a major delay at getting them into place in countries like the DRC because the WHO wanted to put these through what's called a pre-qualification process. | ||
| And that was already after the FDA, the European Medicines Association, the UK equivalent of the FDA, the Canada equivalent of the FDA had all approved this vaccine. | ||
| The WHO did a separate approval process, which really delayed getting vaccine there. | ||
| So those types of inefficiencies need to be rooted out when you're responding to an infectious disease outbreak. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that may be very hard with a large bureaucratic organization. | |
| But what we want it to be is very nimble and very responsive. | ||
| We saw problems after the Ebola outbreaks in 2013 and 2014 with the WHO not really being able to coordinate well with its Africa office, and that led to delays and issues that occurred. | ||
| So it's really those types of things that need to be done. | ||
| But again, also, just to not leave out, there is a question of undue influence of China and the early days of COVID and how much information was withheld from the WHO and how the WHO reacted to it. | ||
| The WHO has been much more aggressive now with pursuing these questions with China and asking for more transparency, but they weren't so at the very beginning of this outbreak. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And some of the visits from the WHO to China were not very informative. | |
| And the WHO basically served as a useful role for China to say that they were complying and being transparent when they really weren't. | ||
| And we still don't understand what was going on in 2019, in October, November, December with COVID-19 and those first cases. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go to Richard in Maryland line for Democrats. | |
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| My question is: the sharing of particularly neuroscience between countries. | ||
| It is, I'm aware, they do share, correct? | ||
| Yes, and that's not really a WHO issue, but yes, all kinds of scientific exchanges are occurring in all different fields through the standard medical and scientific researchers and their journals, their conferences. | ||
| Yes, so science is generally shared between countries and includes neuroscience. | ||
| We'll go to Darryl in Washington State Line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Darrell. | |
| Yeah, hi. | ||
| My question is: throughout all of COVID, I never saw an expert on aerosols and how they spread through the air and how they are transmitted. | ||
| And we have all these experts on the disease itself, but rarely do I ever see an expert on how the virus that is transmitted by aerosols, how aerosols actually, how they move in the air and how they dissipate quickly, I mean, extremely quickly under certain conditions. | ||
| And under other conditions, they will stay mobile in the air for quite a while. | ||
| And I can't understand why the WHO or anybody hasn't consulted experts in aerosols when we have a disease that's transmitted through the air. | ||
| So that's a good question and an important issue. | ||
| And I think that this was something that was overlooked in the early days of COVID, where the aerosol biologists, the aerosol, aerosol scientists were saying that COVID was not just spreading through large droplets, but also was spreading through aerosols that were going short distances and sometimes long distances. | ||
| For example, inquires where we saw major super spreader events. | ||
| So aerosol biologists did get involved later on. | ||
| That was part of our mask guidance challenge, change, sorry, our mask guidance changes. | ||
| And so they have been more at the table. | ||
| All of the stuff that you see about clean building initiatives, like individuals, if you just Google the name Joseph Allen, he's a major aerosol scientist. | ||
| He's been very prominent on clean buildings and telling people to increase filtration levels in buildings. | ||
| That's all in the wake of COVID-19. | ||
| But yes, certainly in the early days of COVID, the aerosol aspect was not well incorporated and only later on became incorporated. | ||
| But it is now a robust part of how we keep resilient to infectious diseases, really thinking about the air that we breathe indoors. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One last call for you. | |
| We'll go to Thomas in Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Thomas. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I have a couple of questions for the doctor. | ||
| And I'd like to say good morning to him. | ||
| But my questions are with two questions. | ||
| With the U.S. paying $500 million or whatever it is, then we should already be up. | ||
| We should be like five or ten years already paid up. | ||
| And my next question is with the immigration problem. | ||
| These immigrants are coming from countries where there is not the health kind of system that we have here. | ||
| But no one is telling us about what kind of diseases they are bringing into the countries and act like they're not sick. | ||
| These people are sick because they don't have the health care system or policies to treat them. | ||
| So we know that they're coming in with illnesses that can affect the American population, but I have never heard you say anything. | ||
| And one of the words on your title is security. | ||
| So why isn't there been alerts to the public about people coming from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela? | ||
| These people are coming in untreated and untested, but nobody from your organization is giving the American people the heads up. | ||
| So a couple of things there. | ||
| So first of all, I've already said that the WHO and the funding formula that they use is something that needs to be addressed and rectified. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think that this is a real issue that people can, that the U.S. can bring to the WHO to change the way this budget is done. | |
| So I've sort of answered that question earlier. | ||
| And then the second question is about diseases and immigration. | ||
| And I think that this is also a lot of misinformation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, there are countries that have higher prevalences of certain infectious diseases, but that's never been shown to be a major threat to the U.S. | |
| Yes, we've had some measles outbreaks and quarantine and measles and need for quarantine and isolation at the southern border, but that's not the predominant way that we get these infections. | ||
| So when you look at the measles outbreaks that have occurred in 2024, most of those were U.S. travelers that went to other countries that they themselves were not vaccinated. | ||
| Most of the infectious diseases that we worry about are not from people that are crossing a border undocumented, but more for people who are traveling for vacation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's where those types of cases come. | |
| We had major measles outbreaks at Disneyland, places like that, where people are traveling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And remember, our vaccination rates aren't that great. | |
| And the best way to protect ourselves is to have high vaccination rates against vaccine-preventable diseases. | ||
| And some of the countries in Central and South America that the caller mentioned have higher vaccination rates than the U.S. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think that people have this idea that it's all these diseases are coming across the southern border, but that's not necessarily the case. | |
| They're coming on airplanes from people who are traveling from countries like Europe, from Israel, from other places where there may be higher levels of measles, for example, in Europe and Israel, for instance, and where there are lower vaccination rates. | ||
| So I think that this is just something that people think about and use without actually looking at the numbers. | ||
| And we saw this during COVID-19, where the Trump administration and the Biden administration put in place this thing called Title 42 to protect us from COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It did not protect us from COVID. | |
| It was used to keep people from crossing the border, and COVID was used as an excuse. | ||
| And we're already seeing that, that they're trying to reinvoke Title 42, or at least some concern that they're going to do that, trying to pick an infectious disease. | ||
| That's not how you protect a country from infectious disease. | ||
| It's by building up public health surveillance systems, making sure our hospitals are shored up and really having good situational awareness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not about closing borders. | |
| The infectious diseases will get through any border, and they always do. | ||
| Dr. Amish Adalja is senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. | ||
| You can find his work and more about the organization at centerforhealthsecurity.org. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Next on Washington Journal, Axios Kryptos reporter Brady Dale joins us to discuss the cryptocurrency industry, including potential regulation under the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| We'll visit George Washington's Virginia home, Mount Vernon, to tour recent renovation and preservation efforts at the historic property. | ||
| On Lectures and History, Duke University professor Cecilia Marquez discusses Latino migration trends in the 20th and early 21st centuries and how Latinos shaped the culture, development, and economics of the American South. | ||
| On the presidency, historian Lindsey Chervinsky speaks at the Boston Athenaeum about second U.S. president and Massachusetts favorite son, John Adams. | ||
| His presidency unfolded against the backdrop of the politics and personalities of the new nation. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 4 p.m. Eastern, Geometric AI founder Gary Marcus looks at the potential and risks of artificial intelligence and the perspective regulation of the tech industry in his book Taming Silicon Valley. | ||
| And at 5:15 p.m. Eastern, sociology professors Chris Benner and Manuel Pasteur discuss the discovery of lithium in California's Salton Sea region and the role of the mineral in the electric vehicle industry with the authors of the book Charging Forward. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern, Gib Kerr argues that Robert E. Lee has been unfairly canceled in America, including at Washington and Lee University, where Lee served as president from 1865 to 1870 in his book, On Cancel, Robert E. Lee. | ||
| Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, Democratic Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, author of It Takes Chutzpah, shares his thoughts on having the tenacity to pursue progressive goals through strong alliances, hard work, and focus. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the Trump administration and the cryptocurrency industry, including potential regulation, is Brady Dale. | ||
| He's a crypto reporter and author of Axios Cryptos Newsletter. | ||
| Good morning, Brady. | ||
| Thank you for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Great to be here. | ||
| Let's start by just talking about and clarifying for those who may be unclear or not sure what it is. | ||
| Explain what cryptocurrency is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I mean, you know, cryptocurrency is a lot of things. | ||
| I mean, the technology has been around for 15 years now. | ||
| It all started with Bitcoin, though. | ||
| And Bitcoin was the first way that people could control and own value themselves on the internet without recourse to any third party. | ||
| So, you know, right now, if you want to store dollars electronically in some way, there's just no way for you to do that yourself on your own. | ||
| You know, you have to have a bank or a fintech or something like that to do it, which means you have to trust them. | ||
| You have to trust them that they'll record your transactions correctly, that they won't take them from you, that kind of thing. | ||
| And we might feel confident about that sort of thing here in the United States, but a lot of parts of the world that's just not as reliable. | ||
| So Bitcoin created this ledger that exists everywhere and nowhere that people can hold value on. | ||
| And really the responsibility to keep it and to keep it safe is entirely up to them and they can transact with anyone they want. | ||
| So that's the core idea. | ||
| There's this decentralized ledger that's controlled by thousands of people that allow people to transact. | ||
| And then from there, all kinds of things have been built up. | ||
| So, you know, not to go into too many details here, but to just add one more level, another really important blockchain that came along was called Ethereum. | ||
| And Ethereum took that idea of giving the people the ability to transact with whoever they want in this decentralized, you know, kind of anyone can access it sort of way and added a new layer to it, which is this idea of smart contracts, which are really just, it's just a blockchain that you can put computer programs on. | ||
| And that opens up all kinds of use cases. | ||
| It allows you to run kind of automated sort of systems that can do different things like allow you to have someone to trade with or allow you to do different kinds of loans. | ||
| You know, it's recreating, it is, you know, a lot of folks say it's recreating finance as we know it, and that's true, but it's recreating it out in the open in a way that has more transparency than we've ever seen in the financial world so far. | ||
| So there's tons more I can say, but I think that's a good place to start on what cryptocurrency is. | ||
| And something you mentioned is storing it. | ||
| How does somebody acquire it before they store it? | ||
| And then once they have it, where does it go? | ||
| And what can it be used for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, so, I mean, where it goes, you know, it's just on whatever blockchain that it's on. | |
| So it's on the internet is where it is. | ||
| That's where cryptocurrency is. | ||
| It's this thing that's native to the internet. | ||
| It doesn't exist any other way. | ||
| So it's sort of a little bit abstract on that level. | ||
| How do you get it? | ||
| I mean, the way most people get cryptocurrency is they just buy it with dollars or whatever their local currency is on some cryptocurrency exchange. | ||
| There is another way to get it most of the time. | ||
| You can earn it in some way. | ||
| So the big way to do that with Bitcoin is you've probably heard of Bitcoin mining. | ||
| It's pretty hard for a normal person to get involved with Bitcoin mining now on their own. | ||
| I mean, you can, but it takes a little bit more doing. | ||
| But there's other networks that are a little bit simpler that you can mine or do other kinds of work that's useful to the network and you'll earn cryptocurrency. | ||
| The reason why all these networks have some kind of coin that provides value is because no one controls them, because they exist kind of all over the place, they need some way to create an incentive for folks to keep the networks up, to keep them safe, to keep them secure. | ||
| So they have this money that's on there. | ||
| So, you know, Bitcoin miners earn fresh Bitcoin by logging the transactions on the Bitcoin network. | ||
| And so they get it directly from the network that way. | ||
| But most people just buy it. | ||
| And what does the current crypto regulation look like in the US? | ||
| Is it regulated? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It isn't. | |
| I mean, this is a hotly debated point. | ||
| I would argue that by and large, it isn't really regulated in that what I mean specifically by that is, you know, as I said, cryptocurrency is this network of money that exists on the internet. | ||
| There isn't a company that's in control of these networks, right? | ||
| It's just a new thing in the world. | ||
| We couldn't do this before cryptocurrency, before the internet. | ||
| We couldn't have an organization that people weren't running, but that is something that was enabled by the idea of the blockchain. | ||
| So that's just a new thing under the sun. | ||
| And our existing financial regulations just haven't dealt with that. | ||
| They haven't thought about how you deal with regulating a thing that doesn't have any humans in control. | ||
| So in that way, it hasn't really been regulated because new rules haven't been written for it that sort of take into consideration the way cryptocurrency really works. | ||
| There's some aspects of the industry that are regulated. | ||
| You know, I mean, the CFTC keeps an eye on some of the spot markets that are out there. | ||
| There have been certain financial products that have been approved, most famously the Bitcoin ETFs, and then also there was ETFs or the next biggest network, Ethereum. | ||
| So there's aspects of it that are regulated, but mostly what we've seen in the last few years, and this has been the complaint from the industry. | ||
| And as a person covering it, I think their characterization is accurate, is we've had this situation where it's regulation by enforcement. | ||
| So the SEC has come in and cracked down on companies that are trying to live within the law, even though the law hasn't quite caught up to how this industry works yet. | ||
| So, you know, we're looking forward. | ||
| The Trump administration has said they're going to start the process of rolling out some new rules. | ||
| And so I think we will start to see rules that are made to suit this new industry coming out and it will be sort of regulated in a way that acknowledges that the world has changed somewhat. | ||
| Brady Dale, crypto reporter for Axios, will be our guest for the next 35 minutes or so. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Brady, you've had a busy week as a cryptocurrency reporter. | ||
| There's been a lot going on. | ||
| And one of the things that's happened is President Trump signed an executive order establishing a presidential working group on digital asset markets. | ||
| Rolls right off the tongue. | ||
| Tell us about who is part of that group. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| All the big guns of the cabinet are in there. | ||
| So, you know, it's like the head of treasury, the head of the SEC, the Attorney General. | ||
| You know, everyone who's touching financial markets is meant to come to the table. | ||
| I mean, it'll probably be their staff actually that come to the table, but they're all meant to come together and start figuring a way, figuring out whether or not we have existing rules that stymie the cryptocurrency industry out there and what we can do to change it. | ||
| A couple of things that folks found notable about it, you know, the preamble of the executive order includes the words the right to transact, which is sort of a thing that people in the crypto world really care about. | ||
| So it looks like somebody in Trump's team has really done their homework on it and has come to kind of really understand sort of the priorities of the industry and is taking those seriously now. | ||
| So yeah, within like, I think 180 days, we should see some new rules proposed. | ||
| And the SEC, actually, which has been sort of enemy number one of the industry, has already gotten started. | ||
| They've already created their own crypto working group. | ||
| That happened even before the executive order because, you know, it's an independent agency. | ||
| So they'd started a day before. | ||
| So a lot of things are changing now. | ||
| We have some callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Ice Fem in North Carolina, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ice Femme. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Oh, Cub's got a question. | ||
| I'm a bitch about Bitcoin stuff. | ||
| I have my account robbed and transferred into Bitcoin. | ||
| You know, they did a whole lot of it. | ||
| They did it really fast. | ||
| I give them credit, right? | ||
| But my question is: what's backing this currency? | ||
| I mean, right now, the dollar is backed by the United States. | ||
| It's usually a replacement possible. | ||
| What's going to back this money? | ||
| Who's going to? | ||
| I mean, what if everybody pulled their money out at the same time? | ||
| What makes it not a policy scheme? | ||
| Can you explain that to me? | ||
| Because I got ripped off on Bitcoin. | ||
| I'm sorry, but I don't like that. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, this is the downside of not having a third party involved, right? | ||
| Individuals who use these cryptocurrencies, it's, you know, possession is the entirety of the law and these cryptocurrencies. | ||
| You know, it's your responsibility to keep it safe. | ||
| And so there is this danger that if somebody steals it from you, which you're right, happens all the time, there's no way to get it back. | ||
| So that's the risk people are taking on when they choose to go into a trustless currency. | ||
| And it's not a risk a lot of people want to take. | ||
| In terms of what's backing it, you know, I mean, this is a hotly debated topic. | ||
| At the end of the day, when you look in the history of money, all money is kind of a belief. | ||
| It's a faith. | ||
| You know, the United States dollar is the most powerful money in the world. | ||
| It's the faith that people will want to continue to transact with the United States, but that's really all it comes down to at the end of the day. | ||
| Bitcoin, you know, it is this massive network of people who are involved securing the network. | ||
| And so if you believe, if you want to have some kind of money that doesn't have any, the state doesn't really have control over, if that seems valuable to you, then you'll buy into Bitcoin. | ||
| And it seems that many people do believe that, but, you know, more people don't, and so they haven't bought in. | ||
| So yeah, where the value of any money comes from is something that has had philosophers scratching their head for a very long time. | ||
| But, you know, the U.S. dollar isn't backed by anything either, other than just sort of the faith and credit of the United States. | ||
| And so it's much the same for Bitcoin. | ||
| Bitcoin is backed by a bunch of people who make money off of guaranteeing that it keeps functioning. | ||
| And either way, you just sort of have to believe in one system or another. | ||
| Diane in Rosemade, California, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Diane. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Am I on with the call? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Diane. | ||
| I've never been on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| My concern for Ravi Dale this morning, and my question comes from in California, at least, and as the country spreads this, I'm wondering what the role of crypto may play in moving at least our country into becoming a cashless society. | ||
| In California, the two largest worldwide destinations for tourism are Disneyland and Not Study Farm. | ||
| Those two parts do not take cash for the majority of the entire park. | ||
| I'm 70 years old, and it's a concern of mine. | ||
| And again, I'd like to know what role crypto may play in the eradication of cash. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| Wow, that is an interesting question. | ||
| I don't really, I honestly don't really know how to answer that for you. | ||
| I will say, you know, when Bitcoin was created, Satoshi Nakamoto's idea was that it was meant to be digital cash. | ||
| So, you know, what's nice about cash, right, is you can just hand a bill to somebody and that transaction is settled right there. | ||
| That's just it. | ||
| You know, whereas if you do a transaction with, say, a credit card, which is probably what they're doing at Disney World, you know, that you're talking about, there's actually a ton of things that happen behind the scenes. | ||
| A lot of people get involved. | ||
| It's not just you and your bank and the other person that are involved. | ||
| There's tons more entities involved there. | ||
| It takes a long time before that is really settled. | ||
| With Bitcoin, settling happens almost as fast as it happens with cash. | ||
| And so it's trying to emulate the same thing. | ||
| I don't feel like I'm really answering your question super well, but I will say people in the crypto world are as concerned about that issue as you are. | ||
| I mean, people in the crypto world, at least the OGs of the crypto world, the people who have been around for a really long time, they love cash too because they like the fact that they can have transactions. | ||
| No one's really watching. | ||
| It's instant settlement. | ||
| That is very appealing to them. | ||
| The world is globalizing. | ||
| Cash doesn't work if you want to transact with another continent. | ||
| And so they want to give people a way to have a cash-like experience, but that's also on the internet. | ||
| So there are, I would say, with cryptocurrency, more similarities between cash and crypto than is immediately obvious. | ||
| Now, on the flip side, a thing you might have heard about that is a developing trend around the world is countries are trying to make cash versions of fiat currency. | ||
| It's usually called central bank digital currencies. | ||
| China is way ahead of most of the rest of the world on this. | ||
| And that's been of great concern for folks because when the state is running it, that gives the state a lot more legibility of our lives. | ||
| We're able to track a lot more things. | ||
| And that's something that a lot of people in the blockchain world would rather get out ahead of the state on, create a product that everyone's using that isn't quite so surveilled before the state can really do it. | ||
| The Trump administration in their new executive order has said, we're not going to work on this as long as I'm in office. | ||
| So all work on CBDCs has kind of been shut down for the next four years. | ||
| So that's not happening here. | ||
| But, you know, it is a complicated question. | ||
| And like you, I am somewhat concerned that cash may go extinct as well. | ||
| On the flip side, you know, folks need to transact on the internet. | ||
| You know, so that tension just that tension just exists. | ||
| And I'm not sure which way that particular buck is heading, to be honest. | ||
| Brady, the executive order that President Trump signed, I want to show you in our audience some of the things that it outlines. | ||
| It includes evaluating the creation of a strategic national digital asset stockpile, prohibits agencies from establishing, issuing, or promoting central bank digital currencies, and revokes the Biden administration's digital asset executive order framework for international engagement on the industry. | ||
| What sticks out to you from those? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the most notable thing to me in that list, I mean, I just talked about the CBDC thing, so we're going to go into that one, but I think that's interesting. | |
| But the most notable thing to me on that list is the digital stockpile. | ||
| You know, I was there in Nashville when Trump stood on stage at Bitcoin 2024 and said that the U.S. would establish a stockpile, specifically of Bitcoin. | ||
| He said Bitcoin at that time, so that we would hold on to the Bitcoin that we have. | ||
| It might be interesting for your listeners to know, when people hear that, the conclusion they jump to is like, oh, is the U.S. government going to start buying Bitcoin? | ||
| And that is a possibility. | ||
| There are folks who talk about that. | ||
| But what then, you know, the nominee, the nominee Trump meant when he said that was, we actually, the U.S. government actually already has like $20 billion worth of Bitcoin. | ||
| And it has that not because it bought it, but because it seized it from different criminals. | ||
| And so his idea was we could establish a stockpile by just not selling that Bitcoin. | ||
| You know, normally when we seize valuable property from criminal organizations, the U.S. Marshal Service just sells it off over time and puts that towards funding law enforcement, towards victim restoration, things like that. | ||
| But Trump said, well, what if we just held on to our Bitcoin for a long time? | ||
| And then if it continues to go up in value, then maybe we can use that to pay down the debt or maybe we just sit on it forever because it gives the U.S. a strategic advantage with Bitcoin in some way. | ||
| So, a lot of folks thought that Trump was just going to do that on day one. | ||
| He was just going to tell the U.S. Marshall Service, stop selling our Bitcoin. | ||
| He didn't do that. | ||
| It's a topic they're going to study for a while now. | ||
| So, politically, that was pretty disappointing to people in this, particularly in the Bitcoin world. | ||
| And we all just have to wait and see what that group comes up with in terms of whether or not they do think the stockpile is a good idea and what they want to do. | ||
| But, yeah, that was the thing that jumped out at me from the executive order, besides just sort of establishing that working group, like you mentioned before. | ||
| Let's hear from Dave and in New York, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I'm a little concerned. | ||
| I don't want to try and go fast. | ||
| I just want to point out a few things. | ||
| Like, you had the dot-com bubble, right? | ||
| And everybody was on TV pumping up the dot-com, pumping them, pumping them, pumping. | ||
| You never heard anybody question like the price value, but the PE ratio or anything. | ||
| That blew up. | ||
| They came in, they bailed it out. | ||
| Then the housing went screaming, right, because of the bailouts. | ||
| Nobody ever questioned everybody pumped the housing, pumped it, pumped it. | ||
| That blew up, and they had to print like $5 trillion out of thin air to bail out all the degenerate scammers on Wall Street. | ||
| Now, the COVID thing blew up. | ||
| They printed another $5 trillion. | ||
| Now, the Fed balance sheet down to about $7 billion or whatever. | ||
| All that, all this Bitcoin is another scam. | ||
| It's another ignorant, degenerate gambling scheme. | ||
| There's thousands of crypto coins out there. | ||
| And Wall Street's pumping this Bitcoin and it's pumping this AI ignorance. | ||
| And when this blows up, the morons are going to come rushing in and bail all the degenerates out, print another how many trillions of dollars to bail out more. | ||
| And then I'm going to get crushed by the massive inflation that everybody's crying about for the last, I don't know how many years, electing Donald Trump, right? | ||
| Because of the economy, because of the inflation, the total destructive disaster. | ||
| And then we're going to have to pay the price for the degenerates. | ||
| Brady. | ||
| I would be surprised if that were true in this case. | ||
| You know, I mean, there's no question. | ||
| I mean, I'm not going to debate with you for one second that irrational exuberance doesn't tend to hit the cryptocurrency market. | ||
| It does, for sure. | ||
| And I wouldn't be surprised if it hit again within the next year. | ||
| However, we have already seen several big rounds of massive excitement and then gigantic drops in the cryptocurrency world already. | ||
| You know, it happened in 2013. | ||
| It happened in 2017. | ||
| It happened in 2021. | ||
| There were no bailouts. | ||
| This is not a community that the broad world feels the need to save when they run into trouble. | ||
| I would be wildly surprised if there were a bailout the next time it happens. | ||
| You know, you could be right and I could be wrong. | ||
| Maybe there will be, but that would blow my mind. | ||
| I wouldn't be surprised if we saw another gigantic, way too excited, way too fast run happen again. | ||
| But I don't think at the end of it, there'll be bailouts. | ||
| And actually, the thing that I'm really watching, I expect people will get overexcited again and prices will go up too high, too fast. | ||
| Again, I think that'll happen. | ||
| What I will be interested to see, however, every other time that there has been a big run-up, prices have fallen somewhere between 80 to 90% from the peak before. | ||
| They always, interestingly, they never quite fall to the, they never quite fall below the prior peak, which suggests that there are a certain number of people who come in and have bought in for good. | ||
| You know, they sort of create a floor. | ||
| What I'll be interested to see after this next round of this next bubble that hits, which I expect one will, is if it only falls like 40%, 60%, but it doesn't fall to like 80% like it did before, that would suggest that the whole market has become somewhat more stable. | ||
| And we'll just have to see. | ||
| So that's what I'm watching is if it doesn't fall as far as it has every time before. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| There is this chance that there would be some kind of bailout if it gets like too wild. | ||
| But that would be, I put the odds of that at like 1%. | ||
| I just can't imagine it happening, but I have been wrong before. | ||
| Brady, you were just talking about the, we could see an increase in interest in people and build up this bubble. | ||
| One of your recent headlines, Trump's meme coin attracted a lot of new to crypto buyers. | ||
| What can you tell us about this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So yeah, meme coins, man, this has been the hot topic. | ||
| So two things were exciting in the crypto world over the last year. | ||
| One of them was Bitcoin. | ||
| And that was because, well, there was a halving, which is sort of when the supply of your Bitcoin slows down, it happens every four years. | ||
| People always tend to get excited about that. | ||
| And then we had Bitcoin ETFs, which is a little bit easier to understand. | ||
| That is a situation where that was, you know, people could now buy Bitcoin in their brokerage accounts. | ||
| That was a very big deal that happened last year. | ||
| So for those reasons, you know, Bitcoin, you know, went up a lot all through 2024. | ||
| Very strong year for Bitcoin. | ||
| One of the best years Bitcoin's ever had. | ||
| On the other hand, the other thing people are doing is this thing called meme coins. | ||
| And meme coins is just really this gigantic social gambling game that people play around just like ideas. | ||
| And so there's meme coins for anything you can think of. | ||
| There was a meme coin for that little pygmy hippo that everybody was talking about. | ||
| That was very popular for a while. | ||
| So it's just, it's just silly stuff. | ||
| And people are basically making bets with each other about which one of these meme coins will become the most exciting. | ||
| And these meme coins are just, they're tokens that run on some blockchain. | ||
| Remember earlier, I said there's this whole idea of smart contracts. | ||
| That allows you to use a blockchain to create lots of other little minor cryptocurrencies that aren't as important. | ||
| So the big thing that happened in the last week, I mean, this was really, this was a surprise to everyone. | ||
| And I know people who are deep, deep in the crypto world and tend to know what's going on. | ||
| Just before the inauguration, President Trump released his own official Trump meme coin on the Solana blockchain. | ||
| There had been lots of Trump coins before. | ||
| Many people had created Trump, created coins that were sort of inspired by the president. | ||
| But this was the first one the president really released. | ||
| And, you know, it blew the world's mind. | ||
| Word spread very quickly. | ||
| Tons of people were like, oh, if the president is doing a meme coin, this makes the market legitimate. | ||
| And so lots of people got in. | ||
| They bought. | ||
| Most people who got in, they just seemed to buy a little bit, you know, like usually like much less than $1,000, maybe more like $100 or so. | ||
| But tons of new people were like, if the president's going to create a meme coin, I need to get in the cryptocurrency market now. | ||
| So at first, the coin went up a ton in value. | ||
| It's lost about half of that now. | ||
| It's floating around half of the height it got to. | ||
| It seems like a lot of people who got in haven't really lost money. | ||
| They've mostly made like a tiny bit. | ||
| But yeah, it's this mind-blowing thing where the president has released a token for his administration. | ||
| And, you know, notably the thing that people are commenting on about it, it's a thing you can buy from the Trump organization. | ||
| So it's kind of a way to funnel money somewhat indirectly, but to the president. | ||
| And so that's obviously created some concerns. | ||
| But it also has generated a ton of interest in the cryptocurrency world and has convinced some new entrants that maybe this stuff really will stick around. | ||
| Let's talk with Mary in Philadelphia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning, C-SPAN, Mr. Dale. | ||
| I just want to let people know that it's very difficult to retrieve money based on offshore accounts, this cryptocurrency industry. | ||
| When you're dealing with other countries, when does it become taxable to the people, the individual? | ||
| We had tried to get monies back from the Panama papers that was in the United States. | ||
| So people need to be very careful when they're dealing with other countries because I've worked with the government and we tried to retrieve money under the Repatriate Act under President Obama. | ||
| Now we're looking at cryptocurrency, which we know nothing about. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And please let me know when does the money become taxable for the American people. | ||
| Thank you and you have a good day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thanks for the question. | ||
| Well, I think the first thing to say on that is thanks for reminding me. | ||
| It's always good when you're talking about cryptocurrency just to put a note of caution out there. | ||
| You know, this is a new technology. | ||
| It works differently than everything they're used to. | ||
| It's highly volatile. | ||
| Anyone who's thinking about getting involved in cryptocurrency should exercise caution. | ||
| Specifically on the taxability. | ||
| So I wouldn't be surprised if some things changed around this the next few years. | ||
| But right now, the IRS looks at cryptocurrency as property. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So you create a taxable event anytime you sell it. | ||
| That's really as simple as that. | ||
| And sales, if, you know, probably this isn't what most people listening to this would do, but for those who get deep into the cryptocurrency market, they might start really, you know, a prior caller said there's thousands of cryptocurrencies out there. | ||
| That's absolutely right. | ||
| The main thing people do with cryptocurrencies so far is they trade them, which means they move around between those thousands of cryptocurrencies trying to, you know, make a little bit of money. | ||
| Even if you trade like, you know, Dogecoin for XRP, which are two, you know, alternative cryptocurrencies that are big, but not nearly as big as like Bitcoin or Ethereum. | ||
| Even if you trade between those, in the eyes of the IRS, even though it didn't become dollars, it went from like Dogecoin to XRP, that's still a sale. | ||
| So anytime a sale is made, whether there was profit or there was loss, that becomes a taxable event. | ||
| And at the end of the year, everyone needs to add up all of their sales, all of their trades, and figure out if it was a net profit or a net loss and report back to the IRS. | ||
| So that's how the taxes work at the end of the day. | ||
| Obviously, it gets more complicated than that. | ||
| You should definitely consult your accountant, but that's the core idea is every time there's a sale of any kind, you know, that is taxable in the eyes of the IRS. | ||
| Let's go to Clark in West Virginia, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Clark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mr. Dale. | |
| Yes, I'm a 73-year-old disabled coal miner. | ||
| Now, the currency that I dug was about two miles underground. | ||
| Now, I heard you say that United States currency was not backed by anything. | ||
| Unless I forgot about it or didn't see it, I thought gold. | ||
| Of course, I know we've printed more money than gold. | ||
| We can mine it. | ||
| But this crypto stuff, as far as I, this is, tell me what, is this stuff tangible? | ||
| Can you handle it other than out there in the computer world? | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| Tell me what this stuff is all about. | ||
| How do you trade it? | ||
| What do you do with it? | ||
| So to your first question, no, the U.S. dollar is not backed by gold. | ||
| We still have a ton of gold in Fort Knox, but it's really not doing anything. | ||
| It was under the Nixon administration that we let the dollar float, and we've let it float ever since then. | ||
| So it did used to be backed by gold once upon a time. | ||
| $35 could buy you an ounce of gold, but that hasn't been true since the 70s. | ||
| And so, yeah, it's a common misconception that gold is back in the U.S. dollar. | ||
| We still have a giant pile of it, and the main reason we still have that giant pile is because people who have invested in gold would flip out if the U.S. government started selling all that gold that they have because it would dampen the value of their gold. | ||
| So, you know, that's why we hold on to it. | ||
| It's not doing anything for us other than that. | ||
| We're actually encouraging an expense. | ||
| We're incurring an expense by keeping it secure. | ||
| Where does the value of Bitcoin come from? | ||
| You know, like I said, this is the ongoing quandary of all money. | ||
| It is not at all tangible. | ||
| There's no way that you can ever touch a Bitcoin. | ||
| It really is just a string of numbers on the internet that are secured by a bunch of people maintaining copies of this ledger. | ||
| So it has value because people believe it has value, because it has risen in value over time. | ||
| And I think the main thing sort of philosophically that people believe in about Bitcoin is it is a form of value that no one can censor, that no government can say this person can't transact with that person. | ||
| If you believe that there is a chance that somewhere in the world, anywhere in the world, there might be some group of people who might have their freedom restricted by a government who wants to control the way that they can spend money because you really don't have any freedom if you can't transact other people. | ||
| If you believe that might be happening, happen anywhere, something like cryptocurrency is valuable. | ||
| So, you know, people believe in it because there are thousands of entities all over the world who are keeping the Bitcoin ledger secure. | ||
| So that's the value proposition. | ||
| But in terms of like anything in particular about backing it, you know, there isn't piles of gold out there backing Bitcoin either. | ||
| I mean, it's just this free-floating asset that over the last 15 years, more and more people have come to trust and buy into. | ||
| And because they want it, the price of it has gone up. | ||
| But yeah, this is the weirdness of money. | ||
| It's always hard to figure out where the value comes from. | ||
| Let's go to Kay in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kay. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I have read many, many articles asking what is, trying to explain to me what is cryptocurrency. | ||
| And the guest, thank you, has tried to do that, but he's using words like token, coin, mine, earn, string of numbers, all without definitions as to what they are. | ||
| What is a coin? | ||
| A coin to me is a penny or a dime. | ||
| Well, I'm open to a different kind of coin for sure, but what is it? | ||
| It sounds from what you say, it sounds a lot like barter and the kind of thing that the establishment of the central bank back in the 1700s or early 1800s was designed to avoid. | ||
| That is having different currencies for different people. | ||
| And if you're living in Raleigh, you can't buy something from Richmond because they have different currency there. | ||
| So if you could just enlighten a person who just speaks plain English as to what it is, and then words other than token, coin, mine, earn, lots of people controlling what is cryptocurrency in plain English. | ||
| And I'll hang up and listen and thank you very much. | ||
| Yeah, this is one of those things you just kind of need to mess around with it before it starts to really click for folks. | ||
| You know, I always recommend if you really want to understand it, buy a little, make a few transactions. | ||
| It'll start to make more sense then. | ||
| The simplest answer I can give you, and I don't know if this will satisfy you, is it is money native to the internet. | ||
| And just like the internet doesn't have any tangible nature in the world, you know, it's purely electronic, it's purely kind of up in the sky or in everyone's computers. | ||
| That's the same for cryptocurrency. | ||
| So it is money that exists purely on the internet. | ||
| That's sort of the best way that I can put it. | ||
| And it is a set of books. | ||
| You know, I said ledger before, but it's a record of all the transactions that anyone's ever made, you know, in whatever the different cryptocurrency is. | ||
| And so all of those transactions exist forever out in public. | ||
| Everyone can take a look at that whole list of transactions. | ||
| And because every transaction that's ever been made is publicly viewable to everyone, people can know that there haven't been any mistakes and that no one has any coins or assets that they shouldn't have. | ||
| But yeah, it is, I can't argue with you. | ||
| It is all pretty abstract and sort of takes a while to wrap your head around. | ||
| I don't know if I can make it any easier than that, but that's my next attempt. | ||
| And I'm sorry if it doesn't quite cut it. | ||
| Brady, we appreciate your time in explaining this to all of us, including myself. | ||
| Wanted to ask you about potential regulation. | ||
| One of the things that the Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets is going to be working on is legislative proposals. | ||
| What do we know about what those may look like and how Congress may approach those challenges they may have getting through the legislative bodies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the main thing we know is that the two top priorities for Congress are these two ideas of market structure, as they call it, and stablecoins. | |
| So market structure is just a question of which entities in the government will regulate which kind of crypto assets, which comes down to, and I'm sorry, the prior collar, this gets kind of abstract too, but there's this question of which cryptocurrencies are securities, which I mean, basically just means financial assets that require a lot more scrutiny by the government. | ||
| They need to, you know, there has to be a lot more paperwork done, a lot more things kept an eye on, that kind of thing. | ||
| So that's securities to keep it super simple. | ||
| And then which ones are commodities? | ||
| So like coffee and like gold, you know, assets the government believes, look, this is a trustworthy asset. | ||
| No one's really in control of it. | ||
| It's very hard to manipulate. | ||
| So we can just let it freely trade, you know? | ||
| And so they're trying to, the government is trying to come up with a way. | ||
| They're trying to come up with rules where they can say, all right, these cryptocurrencies are big enough and widely enough traded and are hard enough to control that we trust them. | ||
| So they go over to the commodity side. | ||
| So they aren't as heavily regulated. | ||
| And these cryptocurrencies, for other reasons, we got to keep a much closer eye on them. | ||
| So that's market structure. | ||
| That has been the hot topic in the crypto world as long as I've been covering this topic. | ||
| And I've been covering it for over seven years now. | ||
| So we may see the government deal with that. | ||
| And then the other thing, the other top priority for the government to deal with, the other piece of legislation they really want to do is around stable coins. | ||
| So what are the rules for stable coins in the United States? | ||
| Who can issue them? | ||
| How do they have to be managed? | ||
| And what stable coins are, you know, another kind of abstract thing, but a little bit less is stablecoins are just cryptocurrencies that represent US dollars. | ||
| So someone sticks a dollar in a bank account somewhere, maybe they buy a treasury, and somebody, you know, some bank or some fintech organization issues a token on a blockchain that represents that dollar. | ||
| And that allows that dollar to move around at the speed of the internet, you know, with sort of less controls on it than we have with existing dollars that move around. | ||
| Like I said before, most transactions you make with a dollar, there's way more people involved in that transaction than you realize. | ||
| A stablecoin, it's not like that. | ||
| It's a very secure way to move the money around, but it's faster and there's fewer hands in it. | ||
| So stablecoins have turned out to be the killer app for cryptocurrency. | ||
| It's the thing that has proven to be of enormous value to the world. | ||
| And the Trump administration sees stablecoins as good for the United States and the dominance of the dollar because they've given people all over the world a way to access dollars that they didn't have before. | ||
| Because in lots of other countries, it's just against the rules for the banks to let you hold dollars. | ||
| If you have dollars and put it into a local bank, they'll turn it into the local currency, right? | ||
| But people in a lot of the parts, a lot of other parts of the world, they want dollars because they trust dollars. | ||
| So stablecoins have given them a way to access dollars. | ||
| Some people believe that's good for us. | ||
| And so we want to create some kind of legislation that sort of governs how stablecoins are issued in dollars in the United States. | ||
| A lot of lawmakers are excited about stablecoins. | ||
| Some are skeptical of them, that's for sure. | ||
| But it's sort of seen as a top priority to deal with those two things, to deal with that from a legislative standpoint. | ||
| So stablecoins and this regulatory thing, this market structure question. | ||
| That's the two hot topics. | ||
| We have time for a couple more calls. | ||
| Matthew in Dearborn, Michigan, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Matthew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| I have three questions. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Who pays for all the power for the servers that keep the ledger? | ||
| Two, I don't care what kind of computer you got. | ||
| They can crack any somebody will come along with a way to crack it. | ||
| They crack the government's computers. | ||
| They crack corporate computers anyway. | ||
| And last is gangsters. | ||
| Doesn't this encourage the gangsters a free way to move around money without people knowing? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's see here. | ||
| So we got power. | ||
| We got gangsters. | ||
| And oh, security. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So on power, who pays for the power? | ||
| The miners pay for the power. | ||
| That's the deal. | ||
| So you're mainly talking about Bitcoin here. | ||
| Bitcoin's really the only, I mean, there's a few others, but Bitcoin's the main cryptocurrency that uses a lot of power. | ||
| Most of the rest of them use a different system, but it's not as much power. | ||
| But yeah, the miners pay for it. | ||
| This is the business of Bitcoin mining. | ||
| So Bitcoin miners look for the least expensive sources of power in the world. | ||
| They go there, they set up servers, they pay for the power to run the Bitcoin mines, and then they earn it back by generating Bitcoin. | ||
| So they're paying for it. | ||
| In Texas, in particular, they found one of the problems we have as we're heading towards a greener grid is new power sources get set up and there aren't enough customers to use those power sources immediately or they it's not available at the right times and so bitcoin miners have shown up to a lot of those new power sources and they become that first customer which allows them to bring you know new new sorts of power online so that's That's something we've seen out there. | ||
| So, yeah, Bitcoin miners pay for all their power, unquestionably. | ||
| So, that's who's paying for it. | ||
| On the security, you're right. | ||
| Everything certainly does get hacked. | ||
| For whatever reason, you know, Bitcoin, the Bitcoin network in particular, and really these other cryptocurrency networks too, the well-established ones, they have all been this giant attack surface for hackers for, you know, remember, Bitcoin is 15 years old now for a very long time now. | ||
| And as far as we know, folks have not managed to hack them so far. | ||
| And this is something that is checkable. | ||
| You know, you can verify that the ledger all makes sense because, like I said, all the transactions that have ever happened are out there. | ||
| You can quickly verify that there's no more Bitcoin in existence than there should be. | ||
| You know, it should all match up. | ||
| And people are checking this constantly, 24 hours a day. | ||
| It's being checked and rechecked. | ||
| And no one has succeeded in hacking these networks yet. | ||
| And I think that's because the architecture of them is just so very different than other computer systems, as we know. | ||
| So far, it hasn't been. | ||
| But you're right, it is a concern. | ||
| It could happen anytime. | ||
| And then the third question: oh, yeah, crime. | ||
| Yeah, you know, cryptocurrency is widely used for crime. | ||
| I don't like to be dismissive of that. | ||
| But at the same time, everything that's useful is used by criminals. | ||
| You know, I always like to say, roads are used by criminals, the internet is used by criminals, and duct tape is used by criminals. | ||
| So if it's useful, criminals will use it, but if it's useful, other people will use it as well. | ||
| So, you know, it's the job of police to stop crime. | ||
| That's why we pay for law enforcement. | ||
| But if it is useful to people who are outside the law, it's going to be useful to people who are inside the law as well. | ||
| One last call for you, Deborah in Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Deborah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I'm a retired tax lawyer, and I just don't get this why it's even called currency. | ||
| If you can't buy something with it without incurring a tax, if you wanted to buy a car with appreciated Bitcoin and the IRS looks at it as property, you're going to have the Earl Isaac gain equal to the basic difference between the basis and the Bitcoin and the price of the car. | ||
| Until you can go to the grocery store and buy a gallon of milk with this without paying a tax on it, I really don't understand why this is even called currency. | ||
| I don't pay a tax when I buy something with a dollar, no matter what the dollar is trading for on international arbitrage markets. | ||
| It's just an entirely different thing. | ||
| Yeah, and you're getting into all kinds of interesting points there. | ||
| You know, most people would acknowledge the use case of something like Bitcoin now for most people really isn't to use, especially here in like America. | ||
| It really isn't to use it as a currency. | ||
| That was the original idea. | ||
| Turns out that what it seems to be more valuable for folks for is an alternative way to store value, a way to make a bet in the future, a way to hedge against inflation. | ||
| You know, it's turned out to have other uses. | ||
| Now, there certainly are people in the world who do make transactions with it. | ||
| You know, to your point, if you've had a bunch of appreciated Bitcoin and you use it to buy a car or something, people have certainly done it. | ||
| And of course, they've had to pay taxes on it. | ||
| But if you spent $1,000 and it turned into $20,000, that kind of thing has happened for people. | ||
| They don't care a lot. | ||
| So yeah, it's had a different sort of use case. | ||
| Now, there are other parts of the world in which currencies aren't as stable and cryptocurrencies have been valuable for making actual on-the-ground transactions. | ||
| And so that's something we've seen. | ||
| Also, remember, I mentioned stable coins before. | ||
| Stable coins are cryptocurrencies that stay stable. | ||
| That's kind of where most of the on-the-ground transactions we see happening out there with cryptocurrency. | ||
| They're being done with stable coins. | ||
| And one last point. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| This whole idea of property is something that the cryptocurrency world has pushed back on. | ||
| A topic that Congress has been discussing for, again, as long as I've followed this industry and which maybe they'll take up, you know, again sometime soon is the idea of some kind of de minimis exemption, like what you have, for example, if you transact with foreign currencies, you know, some kind of thing where if you make a small purchase, you know, probably not a car purchase, but if you buy, you know, if you buy some coffee or you buy some things at a grocery store, if it's less than, I think, | ||
| numbers like $600 or $1,000 been thrown around, that wouldn't be subject to taxation. | ||
| So it could function more like a currency in that case. | ||
| But we just don't have those kinds of rules in the U.S. now. | ||
| We haven't agreed on what that number should be. | ||
| So you're absolutely right. | ||
| It doesn't really function well as a currency on that level here in the United States because we need tax rules to make a call on it. | ||
| And so far, the IRS has decided to just treat it all as property. | ||
| That could change. | ||
| So far, it hasn't. | ||
| But the U.S. is just one chunk of the world. | ||
| And the U.S., people in the U.S. don't super need alternative ways to transact as much as other parts of the world do. | ||
| And that's why we see sort of uptake of cryptocurrency happening more quickly elsewhere in places where money isn't quite as stable. | ||
| The main reason people use it here is because they're making a bet on the future that Bitcoin will become more and more valuable. | ||
| So it really isn't, it isn't really used as a currency very much in our part of the world. | ||
| Our guest is Brady Dale. | ||
| He is a crypto reporter for Axios. | ||
| You can find his work and subscribe to the newsletter he authors, AxiosCrypto, at axios.com. | ||
| Brady, thank you so much for being with us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Next on Washington Journal, it's open form. | ||
| There's a public policy issue you'd like to talk about. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House is out as House Republicans hold their annual retreat. | |
| The Senate will be in session as they continue to hold hearings for several of President Trump's cabinet nominees, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| He'll appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Thursday. | ||
| Also on Thursday, Kash Patel will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee as he seeks to become FBI Director. | ||
| Then Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. | ||
| Watch next week live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A, part two of our interview with historian Nigel Hamilton, author of Lincoln vs. Davis. | ||
| He talks about the military face-off between these two American presidents during the Civil War and the impact the Emancipation Proclamation had on the war's outcome. | ||
| From that moment, the 1st of January 1863, the South was doomed. | ||
| Until then, Jefferson Davis had been allowed by Lincoln to frame the war as a noble white southern fight for independence. | ||
| Pure and simple. | ||
| But from the moment that Lincoln said no, you, Jefferson Davis, and your commander-in-chief, Robert E. Lee, have attacked the North, which is what they did in September of 1862. | ||
| It's the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, if you like. | ||
| Once you attack the North, you change the whole game. | ||
| Nigel Hamilton with his book, Lincoln vs. Davis, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
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| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy, unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open forum for the duration of today's show. | ||
| But I also want to let you know that over on C-SPAN 2, the Senate has gaveled in for more legislative or more action today. | ||
| They are expected to vote on the confirmation of Christy Noam to be DHS secretary today, followed by a vote to advance Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Besant. | ||
| That is expected to happen at about 11.30 a.m. | ||
| You can watch over on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| We'll get straight to your calls. | ||
| We'll go to David in Indiana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to comment on the earlier first hour regarding Peace Egg Seth nomination and confirmation. | ||
| Once again, C-SPAN has done the attack mode again, but that's fine. | ||
| He's our defense secretary. | ||
| The hypocrisy of the Democrats are remarkable. | ||
| You had a buffoon as a commander-in-chief who couldn't even, you know, hold his last cabinet meeting. | ||
| His wife had to do it. | ||
| And you're worried about the Defense Secretary not being of a right demeanor. | ||
| I find it interesting coming up soon that you're going to get the JFK, MLK, and RFK assassination results. | ||
| That's going to include FBI reports. | ||
| And you'll find that Martin Luther King was one of the biggest persons from infidelity. | ||
| When he was assassinated, he had a woman in his room and it wasn't his wife. | ||
| That's a fact. | ||
| It's an FBI report. | ||
| So the hypocrisy is still alive and well. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We'll go to Kojo in Virginia, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kojo. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Ceasefund. | |
| I just want to comment about the IC rates that is going on. | ||
| I think the president campaigned on bringing information down. | ||
| That is all we are all concerned. | ||
| What is it now that all these farm workers are running? | ||
| What is it going to do to the inflation that he promised is going to bring down in day one? | ||
| At the end of the day, most of the workers that work at the farms are immigrants. | ||
| And I don't know, the indigenous people are going to go out there in Florida in the hot sun to do those work. | ||
| And then we'll talk about health care, where most of these immigrants are the ones taking care of our elderly here, which most people are not willing to do that. | ||
| So as much as Mr. Trump or President Trump promised to deport people, he also looked at the consequences in the long run as to how it's going to affect the American people for the promise that he made in terms of coming out here and bringing inflation. | ||
| Now, now gas prices are going up, groceries going up. | ||
| That's not what we have promised. | ||
| So I think the president should reconsider this and see how best he can do. | ||
| Even if there are bad people that he has to deport, that is fine. | ||
| But not this wholesale thing that everybody is going and restaurants all over the internet. | ||
| People are running away. | ||
| People are not going to work. | ||
| And it's going to affect the economy that he promised. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's all I want to say. | ||
| Let's hear from Paul in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
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This message is for this question, I should say, is for Braille Daily with regard to cryptocurrency exchange rate for one Bitcoin. | |
| What institution, whether it be a bank or any institution, can I exchange Bitcoin for U.S. dollar? | ||
| I want to know what the net amount in U.S. dollars would be for one single Bitcoin. | ||
| And I don't want the answer to be it doesn't work that way. | ||
| If you have a Bitcoin registered in your name, one full Bitcoin, what is the amount that you get to put in your hand for U.S. dollar currency on that moment, that net amount? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David in Riverside, California, line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, David. | |
| Good morning, Tammy, and good morning, America. | ||
| And thanks to C-SPAN for Open Forum. | ||
| I am very happy that Trump is president and trying to make America great again. | ||
| A lot of his policies sound really good to me. | ||
| More importantly, though, America needs to turn back to the God of the Bible. | ||
| If we did, we wouldn't be dealing with gay issues or high divorce rates or drug addiction and murder like they are and suicide and drug overdoses. | ||
| The only way I can see forward in America is back to before the hippie movement and the sexual revolution in the 1960s. | ||
| There are only nine countries in the world out of 200 that allow abortion up until birth for any reason. | ||
| America is one, and among them is also China and North Korea. | ||
| Most Americans think America is going in the wrong direction, and they aren't sure why. | ||
| We need to return to the God of the Bible and the morals of the Bible, and we can breathe free again. | ||
| America will be okay, and that will make America great again, and the world can regain its confidence as well. | ||
| As America goes, so goes the road. | ||
| President Trump can lower taxes, end DEI, build the wall, and change America in lots of different ways, and he should. | ||
| But unless we make America Christian again and moral again, it'll all be minor and reversible change. | ||
| Thank you, Tammy. | ||
| This is David in Riverside, California. | ||
| President Trump was in North Carolina and California yesterday, touring damage from the floods there last year and then the wildfires in California. | ||
| During his trip out to California, he sat down with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and heard from individuals about the devastation that the wildfires caused. | ||
| Here is an exchange between the president and Mayor Bass during that event. | ||
|
unidentified
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And the number one thing that we are going to do immediately, and you will see this happen, is to clear out the debris. | |
| And you know, we're concerned right now over the weekend because of the potential rain, but we are going to move as fast as we can. | ||
| But we want you to be safe, and we want you to be back in your homes immediately. | ||
| But the people are willing to clean out their own debris. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
|
unidentified
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And they can. | |
| You should let them do it because by the time you hire contractors, it's going to be two years. | ||
| If a family are willing to get a dumpster and do it themselves and clean it out. | ||
|
unidentified
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And they can do it. | |
| There's not that much left. | ||
| It's all incinerated. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right. | |
| And, you know, it's just going to take a long time if you do. | ||
| You can do some of it, but a lot of these people, I know that guy right there that's talking. | ||
| I know my people. | ||
| You'll be on that thing tonight, throwing the stuff away, and your site will be, it'll look perfect within 24 hours, and that's what he wants to do. | ||
| He doesn't want to wait around for seven months till the city hires some demolition contractor and then it's going to charge him $25,000 to do his lot. | ||
| I think you have to. | ||
| You have emergency powers just like I do, and I'm exercising my emergency powers. | ||
| You have to exercise them also. | ||
|
unidentified
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I did exercise them because I looked. | |
| I mean, you have a very powerful emergency power, and you can do everything within 24 hours. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| And if individuals want to clear out their property, they can. | ||
| Well, yes, but you know that you will be able to go back soon. | ||
| Mr. President. | ||
| We think within a week. | ||
| That's a long time a week. | ||
| I'll be honest. | ||
| To me, everyone's standing in front of their house, they want to go to work and they're not allowed to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
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And the most important thing. | |
| For people to be safe. | ||
| In a programming note for you at 3:30 p.m. Eastern today, President Trump will return to Las Vegas for the first time since his election to deliver remarks on tax policy. | ||
| He's expected to address his no tax on tips proposal, which he first outlined at a rally in Las Vegas last year. | ||
| Again, you can watch that live at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| We'll go back to calls. | ||
| John in Ohio, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, the previous caller was talking about Martin Luther King's assassination. | |
| And I've seen a very important article that points out that the speech that is allowed by the media to be read every commemoration of Martin Luther King is a very pretty but platitudiness that every right-winger and racist could claim, pretend to agree with. | ||
| But the one and most important speech that Martin Luther King said was his most important, he wanted to be his legacy, is totally censored. | ||
| Every year is called, and you can look it up, the Martin Luther King Beyond Vietnam, Breaking the Silence speech. | ||
| Martin Luther King Beyond Vietnam speech. | ||
| In it, he says the United States government is the greatest purveyor of violence and imperialism in the world, and it goes around the world with interventions that support desquad dictators that kill thousands of people in pursuit of furthering the profits of American corporations. | ||
| You'll never that is on tape and in print, but it is censored by our so-called free media every year. | ||
| And there is another one called the deep state and gladio crimes of the U.S. Empire, Gladio, G-L-A-D-I-O, the deep state and the gladio crimes of the U.S. Empire. | ||
| And it brings out things that the so-called free press, actually prostitute media in this country, has suppressed and has been brought out by some CIA and Pentagon people who are completely persecuted and censored, while all of the yes men purveyors of the propaganda of the CI and the Pentagon are given every opportunity in every platform, | ||
| throughout the media. | ||
| And I think people should get that article called the CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s by killing JFK, RFK, and MLK, Global Research. | ||
| Global research. | ||
| Got your point, John. | ||
| We'll go to Angela in Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have three things I saw this week that makes me sure Trump is not for America or the working people. | ||
| Let's start with the cryptocurrency. | ||
| Right now, the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Financial Services Committee are trying to make rules and regulations around crypto. | ||
| They don't know anything about crypto. | ||
| Really, nobody does, not even the people that run it. | ||
| So whatever rules and regulations they make, there'll be a million holes in. | ||
| You could drive a truck through. | ||
| But the financial service companies that you have your 401ks with and the banks will feel secure with the rules. | ||
| And they'll invest your money in that and their money in that. | ||
| And that will be the next financial collapse bailout. | ||
| Second, the tariff. | ||
| Trump said this week, by February, Canada and Mexico will have 25% tariffs. | ||
| He told the World Economic Forum this week that all countries and all businesses that are not physically in the United States will have a tariff. | ||
| That is called across-the-board tariffs. | ||
| Everything you buy, you will pay more for. | ||
| And what is he going to do with that tariff money? | ||
| Is he going to put that tariff money into the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund? | ||
| Is he going to put that tariff money into the debt? | ||
| Or is he going to give it to Elon Musk to go to Mars with? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And lastly, third, infrastructure. | ||
| He did exactly what I predicted this week. | ||
| He put an executive order to pause the infrastructure money. | ||
| So my husband puts in underground water and sewer pipes in cities and small towns. | ||
| That's coming to a halt. | ||
| So good luck with your old water and sewer pipes. | ||
| No, he's not for the working people. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAM. | ||
| Angela, we'll go to Joel in Illinois, Line 4, Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Joel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, great. | |
| Okay, well, thanks for taking the call. | ||
| Look, my main concern is actually these super PACs, specifically AIPAC. | ||
| That's the, let's see, American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. | ||
| I live in the St. Louis area right over the river, and there was a congresswoman named Corey Bush who lost her primary. | ||
| And she was to her, she's blaming APAC. | ||
| Now, from what I understand, there were four former congresspeople who lost their primaries, two Republicans and two Democrats. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I think that the AIPAC, you know, you can label me anti-Semite if you want to, but I think that AIPAC could become too powerful. | ||
| I'm not the biggest fan of the squad or the quad or whatever. | ||
| But I think they have a point here about holding Israel accountable. | ||
| Now, what happened in L.A., we're all concerned about it. | ||
| We all cried over it. | ||
| And I can understand why maybe mismanagement of resources led to the severity of those wildfires. | ||
| I'm not here to debate that. | ||
| I know it's tragic, but anyways, but as Americans, we stood idly by and watched our tax dollars annihilate 48,000 Palestinians. | ||
| I know that number is, you know, you can debate that number. | ||
| But if you take a look at what Gaza was before and Gaza is now, our tax dollars led to that similar destruction. | ||
| That could have been preventable. | ||
| And we sat here as Americans and watched our tax dollars do that to a people. | ||
| And don't tell me they're all terrorists, every one of them, because they weren't. | ||
| Let's be reasonable. | ||
| And I'm just concerned about the strength of that political action committee and where it's steering this country. | ||
| That was Joel in Illinois. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Claudia in Texas, line for Republicans. | |
| Good morning, Claudia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm going to try to speak as intelligent as I can. | ||
| I'm a former Democrat from Boston, and I now live in Luddock, Texas. | ||
| I am part of the Republican Party. | ||
| So this is what I want to say. | ||
| I've heard a lot of your callers today on both sides of the fence. | ||
| And I still, growing up in the Democratic Party, I can understand where they come from. | ||
| But what I'm seeing is the common bond between all political parties is this. | ||
| Everyone, and I'm talking about Trump in particular, everyone is seeing him as, I hear people saying that he wants to be a dictator. | ||
| He wants to control and all this good stuff. | ||
| So nasty stuff, I should say. | ||
| So when I think about the farmers, and I hear both sides say we need the immigrants, and it depends on what party you talk to. | ||
| Some call them illegal immigrants, undocumented. | ||
| Some call them legal immigrants. | ||
| We need them to work the farms. | ||
| We need them. | ||
| If we don't have them, our farms are not going to be able to be harvested properly or whatever. | ||
| And there's no Americans that are willing to do that job. | ||
| Well, two things about that. | ||
| Number one, on both sides, maybe not exactly, but it's kind of a form of slavery that both sides complain about. | ||
| You want to exploit people for lower wages or dirty jobs that American people are not willing to do. | ||
| And that's every party. | ||
| So for me, what I've watched over the years, I'm 60 years old, is complacency in our country, total complacency. | ||
| And it's been like a water drip. | ||
| And the reason I say a lot of drift is that we've all been primed to think or to be dependent on this help from the government. | ||
| One of Reagan's biggest sayings is, you know, be afraid when the government shows up and says, I'm here to help you. | ||
| Now, we're blaming Trump for trying to be a dictator and take over, yet he's trying to dismantle all the rules, the policies that these farmers are being subjected to. | ||
| So, for example, a farmer was telling you you have to use certain inputs that cost astronomical amounts of money that we don't even manufacture here. | ||
| So, they're stuck paying all this money in order to continue farming, but then they have to use this low-cost labor. | ||
| It's just a vicious cycle. | ||
| So, for me, making any sense is this. | ||
| My generation, us today, someone has to take the hit. | ||
| When you're detoxing from a drug, there's a period you go through. | ||
| It's painful. | ||
| And I've never been on drugs. | ||
| I've never taken one, but I can empathize with anyone that probably has and how painful it is. | ||
| We have to take a hit. | ||
| We have to detox from the government. | ||
| So, when these regulations are pulled out from under our feet, whether it's welfare or SNAP or subsidy government-subsidized programs, we need to help our neighbors. | ||
| I don't care what your party is. | ||
| You see someone hungry, we have to help each other. | ||
| We need to let Trump deregulate, allow our farmers to afford to run their farms without depending on government subsidies or they go under. | ||
| It's all control. | ||
| That was Claudia. | ||
| We'll go to Lou in Portland, Oregon, Lineford Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it sounded like from your callers in Open Forum, which is good. | |
| People have different issues and different perspectives, always helpful. | ||
| I was thinking about in Oregon, local responses to Trump practices in the first week, which may tie into national things, of course. | ||
| Oregon Gray Panthers is holding Protect Our Communities event on Valentine's Day in Portland. | ||
| Gray Panthers is an advocacy group for social justice, traditionally elder and disabled advocacy. | ||
| We have an alliance with 80 groups that are protecting immigrants and people of color and people who are one of the many targets of the Trump administration. | ||
| I wanted to add, based on people who had phoned in, that I'm someone that used to live in Los Angeles, in Las Vegas, and in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. | ||
| So I know some of the places that Trump's been visiting and targeting this week. | ||
| I think community responses is really helpful, both by Democrats and independents, to Trump's agenda. | ||
| And in Portland, Oregon, Keith Wilson is a sign of hope in our city. | ||
| He just got elected mayor. | ||
| He hasn't been elected to an office before, but his primary issue is housing and social justice. | ||
| There's also a couple people I thought I would try to mention. | ||
| Kale Turn is with Apano, which is Asian Pacific Action Network. | ||
| Kale's helping organize this forum for harm reduction on Valentine's Day in Portland, as well as a newly elected congresswoman who's a doctor from Oregon, Maxine Dexter, who's been very focused on gun reform and social justice and housing, along with health care now that she's in Congress. | ||
| I guess my question for you, and I know you pretty much answer what people talk about here and there, is do you think that, and maybe you're not allowed to say your opinion as moderator, the Trump agenda in the first week has been helpful or not so much? | ||
| Or would you say it just depends? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That was Lou in Portland and CSPAN host moderators. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We don't offer opinions or comments like that. | |
| That was our last call for today's program. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific with another edition of Washington Journal. | ||
| Until then, enjoy your afternoon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Coming up Sunday morning, Wall Street Journal White House reporter Natalie Andrews discusses week one of the Trump administration and veteran journalist Marvin Kalb on his new book, A Different Russia, Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now or online at c-span.org. | ||
| This afternoon, President Trump will return to Las Vegas for the first time since his election to deliver remarks on tax policy. | ||
| He's expected to address his No Tax on Tips proposal, which he first outlined in a rally in Las Vegas last year. | ||
| You can watch that live at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org. | ||
| American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| We'll visit George Washington's Virginia home, Mount Vernon, to tour recent renovation and preservation efforts at the historic property. | ||
| On Lectures and History, Duke University professor Cecilia Marquez discusses Latino migration trends in the 20th and early 21st centuries and how Latinos shaped the culture, development, and economics of the American South. | ||
| On the presidency, historian Lindsey Chervinsky speaks at the Boston Athenaeum about second U.S. President and Massachusetts favorite son, John Adams. | ||
| His presidency unfolded against the backdrop of the politics and personalities of the new nation. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
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