CSPAN - Washington Journal 02/03/2025

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Feb. 3, 2025 06:59-10:00 - CSPAN

03:00:56

Washington Journal 02/03/2025

Participants

Main

casey burgat

32:09

john mcardle

cspan 40:12

Appearances

brian lamb

cspan 01:27

donald j trump

admin 01:11

marco rubio

admin 01:51

mark kelly

sen/d 00:58

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glenn spencer

00:14

jane graham

00:06

kristen welker

nbc 00:06

kristi noem

admin 00:20

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bill in north carolina [2]

callers 00:14

tim in michigan

callers 00:08

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Speaker	Time	Text
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		Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		And then Emily Brooks of The Hill has a look at the week ahead in Congress and House Republicans work with the Trump administration on its legislative agenda.
		And then Brett Samuels, White House reporter for The Hill, gives an update on news of the day and a preview of the action at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
		Also, former congressional staffer and George Washington University grad school professor Casey Burgett discusses his book, We Hold These Truths, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
		Washington Journal starts now.
		Join the conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		It's Monday, February 3rd, 2025.
		The Senate's in at 3 p.m. Eastern, and we're with you for the next three hours.
		We begin on President Trump's new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China.
		While the president has said foreign companies will pay the costs of the tariffs, he also acknowledged there could be pain felt by Americans.
		Meanwhile, critics have worried about an all-out global trade war that will raise prices across the board for U.S. consumers.
		Amid those debates, we want to know this morning about your buying habits.
		Do you make it a point to buy American?
		Phone lines are open for you to call.
		Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
		If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
		Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X.
		It's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
		It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
		And a very good Monday morning.
		You can go ahead and start calling in now.
		We want to know about your buying habits this morning amid these tariffs that were announced on Saturday by President Trump.
		They go into effect on Tuesday.
		Two headlines from the political media this morning about this new tariff regime.
		First from the Huffington Post, Donald Trump defending his tariffs, saying there will be, quote, some pain to make America great again, quoting from his Truth Social page from the political right.
		It's Red State.
		The headline there, Trump tariffs may hurt, but will all be worth it in the long run.
		We're asking you about those tariffs this morning.
		Here's one more headline.
		This from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.
		The editorial board has called these tariffs and trade war the quote dumbest trade war in history.
		The fallout begins is what the editorial board writes, noting that Canada and Mexico have now vowed retaliation amid the ongoing economic uncertainty.
		President Trump was asked last night about the retaliation from Canada.
		He was on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base.
		This is what he said to reporters.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Well, it could happen.
		If they do anything, we will.
		Canada's been very abusive of the United States for many years.
		They don't allow our banks.
		And you know that Canada does not allow banks to go in.
		If you think about it, that's pretty amazing.
		If we have a U.S. bank, they don't allow them to go in.
		Canada's been very tough on oil, on energy.
		They don't allow our farm products in, essentially.
		They don't allow a lot of things in, and we allow everything to come in.
		It's been a one-way street.
		We subsidize Canada by the tune of about $200 million a year.
		And for what?
		What do we get out of it?
		We don't get anything out of it.
		I love the people of Canada.
		I disagree with the leadership of Canada.
unidentified		And something's going to happen there.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		But if they want to play the game, I don't mind.
		We can play the game all they want.
		Mexico, we've had very good talks with them.
		And this is retaliatory.
		This is retaliatory to a certain extent.
		Millions of people float into our country through Mexico and Canada.
		And we're not going to allow that.
		And by the way, we have among the lowest numbers we've ever had of people crossing our border, the lowest number since my administration.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I was President Trump last night.
		The tariffs, much of the talk of the Sunday shows yesterday will show you some of the reaction on the Sunday shows.
		But this morning, we're simply asking about your buying habits amid what could be a trade war.
		How much do you buy America and how much do you make a point to buy American?
		We've already gotten some responses from you on social media, including Michael from Facebook saying, I buy as much as I can when it comes to buying American.
		One more for you this morning: Steve saying, It's hard to say, but I am on my fourth Toyota.
		And Caitlin saying, I buy the least expensive.
		A question this morning about your buying habits.
		Phone lines are open for you to call in.
		It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Derek's up first in Virginia, Republican line.
		Tell me about your buying habits.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		So when I'm.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Derek, you with us?
		Then we go to Otis in Orange Park, Florida.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		Yes, I buy the least expensive, whether it's American or foreign.
		You got to save the money in your pocket.
		However, to me, that's really not the question.
		How often we buy America?
		We got to say, what are we doing to America?
		Because, you know, the people are going to have to suffer.
		They're going to be the ones without.
		And they're your pocketbook.
		If you're Republican, you're independent or Democrat.
		Whoever you voted for, you get a chance now to see whether or not you was right.
		I just think buying America is good, but defending America have an image of what America should be is bad.
		You know, I was thinking maybe China, maybe Canada and China might decide to negotiate in China and Canada give China a lot of our business.
		These countries can retaliate.
		These countries can retaliate against the United States, but just by bycotting us, we good.
		You're always strong until you're not.
		Broken leg can take all your strength away.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Otis, it was the.
unidentified		That's what Donald Trump is doing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It was the president on his true social page saying this will be the golden age of America, saying, will there be some pain?
		Yes, maybe, and also maybe not.
		But we will make America great again, and it will all be worth it.
		The price that must be paid.
		We are a country that is now being run with common sense, and the results will be spectacular.
		Those promises coming from President Trump.
		How much do you take him at his word?
unidentified		I don't take him at his word.
		You know, a lot of people say words just to try to throw you off your game and pretend and lie to us.
		Everybody in the country knows that Donald Trump has never told the truth on a consistent basis.
		So when you say, when you're giving all these excuses, all you have to do is just turn one page.
		It's not an onion.
		It's one page.
		You can see exactly what this man is doing.
		And justify everybody happy with what he's doing until he starts reaching for that fruit that's a little bit farther up that you can't reach.
		And you don't want him to touch that.
		There's things going on to me in this country.
		Whereas we look at Donald Trump saying he's trying to put America first.
		But if you think about it, he's going after our allies to go after our allies.
		A brilliant always picks on someone smaller than him.
		He always talks about how tough he is, but he won't, but he won't go after Russia and he won't talk too much smack to you, the China president.
		So he got a problem.
		We follow him as if he's a tough guy.
		But just remember this here, America.
		This man had fire deferrals from going to Vietnam because of bone scurvy.
		If you think that's tough, you got to be able to walk the walk instead of talking to talk.
		He's never done that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Otis in Florida.
		This tariff regime, 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
		Although when it comes to energy from Canada, that number lower at 10%.
		The Chinese tariffs also at 10%.
		Again, these were announced by the White House last week.
		The executive order was signed by the president on Saturday.
		They go into effect on Tuesday.
		And amid all this uncertainty, we're asking simply about your buying habits.
		Do you buy American?
		William in Kissimmee, Florida, Republican.
		What do you think?
unidentified		Yeah, of course we buy American.
		You know, word months available.
		But you got a big change over here.
		And, you know, things ain't going to be perfect in like one week.
		You've got to have some time because there's a lot of things he's going to be doing.
		And, you know, you got to give it a little time.
		Okay.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		William, do you go out of your way to buy American or do you think you will do that more in the weeks or months or however long this tariff regime lasts?
unidentified		Well, if you do your homework and, you know, the cars, yeah, absolutely I do.
		But they're not assembled over here anyway.
		But you got everybody working at the same time.
		You got Rubio down at the Panama Canal.
		That's all related to costs.
		There's going to be a lot going on, and you got to be a little patient.
		Hey, I'm just as ticked off as everybody else.
		You know, nobody wants to pay four bucks a gallon for gasoline or more.
		But give the man some time.
		There's a lot of people that are ticked off, and the media is going to make it worse.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's William in Florida.
		When it comes to imports and exports from Canada, China, and Mexico, the Council on Foreign Relations with a chart on that starting on the import side, nearly half of all U.S. imports, more than $1.3 trillion, come from Canada, China, and Mexico.
		However, analysis by Bloomberg Economics shows that the new tariffs could reduce overall U.S. imports by some 15%.
		The Washington, D.C.-based tax foundation estimates that the tariffs will generate about $100 billion per year in extra federal tax revenue.
		They could also impose a right significant costs on the broader economy, disrupting supply chains, raising costs for businesses, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and ultimately driving up consumer prices.
		The chart there showing imports and exports when it comes to Canada, Mexico, China, and then the gray bar there, the rest of the world when it comes to U.S. imports and exports.
		Frank is in Poughkeepsie, Independent.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Yes, I'm very happy that Esau is president because he's going to bring your destruction because A, you're an immoral country.
		B, you're bad for everybody.
		You poison your water.
		You poison your food.
		You poison your people.
		You kill, murder, do anything to stay in power.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's Frank.
		This is Elaine in Pennsylvania Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I feel as though the tariff is one issue that's going to get, I feel as though he's not really being fair to the American people because he is being selective as far as what type of American person.
		Can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm listening to you, Elaine.
unidentified		And I feel as though raising a tariff, he's hitting us with so many different things so that the American people can't not even absorb one thing at a time so that they can have their public sentiment about it.
		I feel as though the tariff is going to hurt us.
		And at the same time, he's trying to do something positive, but at the same time, he's doing something negative.
		He's talking about weight, and you're going to feel this for a certain amount of time.
		At the same time, he's dismissing all those federal employees.
		So you've got all these people that's going to be out of jobs that's not even going to have money to be able to afford to live in their homes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So do you think tariffs are going to change your buying habits?
unidentified		Tariffs, well, I tell you, for one thing, I always like to buy American because Americans, the quality of the product is so much better.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How often are you looking for that label, Elaine?
unidentified		I look at it a lot.
		You know, I buy on Amazon, and I always do look at where things are made.
		I wish we had more industry in America to make more products so I can have a better selection.
		I don't even mind peeing a little bit more if it's American and it's good quality.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And do you think these tariffs on so many products from Mexico and Canada and China will get more people to do that, Elaine?
unidentified		Well, I think that people are going to second think things because they're going to have to save more money before they even be able to afford to buy it because of what the other countries are going to charge for it.
		So I think in the long run, it's going to hurt people.
		Tell you, for instance, the airplanes, I'm not going to ride after the incident with the plane crashes.
		I'm really hesitant to fly in another plane right now because is it the products or is it the management of the administration?
		So it's a lot of things that we as Americans got to look at as far as when you talk about the tariffs.
		But I appreciate you bringing this on.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Elaine in Pennsylvania.
		We are asking you this morning simply how much do you buy American amid these tariffs that are set to go into effect on Tuesday?
		The Council on Foreign Relations looking at which U.S. imports could be most affected, saying it's likely going to be cars, crude petroleum, phones, computers, and motor vehicle parts.
		A 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico will raise production costs for U.S. automakers, adding up to $3,000 to the price of some of the roughly 16 million cars sold in the United States each year, they write.
		Grocery costs could rise too, as Mexico is the United States' biggest source of fresh produce, supplying more than 60% of U.S. vegetable imports and nearly half of all fruit and nut imports.
		This is Bradley, West Virginia, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, John.
		Vietnam veteran from way back.
		And I used to be a Democrat.
		And September the 10th, on my birthday, I changed to Republican because the Democrat Party is lost out in space.
		Let me give you some examples of stuff.
		I am strictly, being a veteran, American buy if I can get it.
		I bought a pair of Skecher shoes from Amazon.
		I pulled the tongue back, and it's made in Vietnam.
		I will go barefooted before I wear a pair of shoes, shirt, or anything made in Vietnam.
		My General Electric Refrigerator, I bought it.
		And guess where it was made in Vietnam?
		I bought a brand new Buick General Motors car.
		Thought I was buying American, and I should have looked, but I didn't.
		And I'll tell you why.
		It was made in China, and they're making some Chivalays in China.
		And if I ain't mistaken, I seen an article that Ford took Lincoln over and your Lincoln Navigator two Aprils ago.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Bradley, what do you do when you find these products that you've already bought that were made in other countries?
unidentified		Very few.
		If I can look at the tag, just like I bought a hat at the Veterans Canteen in Beckley, and I looked at the tag and it said made in Vietnam.
		Upstairs, a friend of mine said, told me, I took it back downstairs and told the girl, I said, I want my money back.
		I'll go ball-headed before I wear this thing.
		And a couple years ago, the telecaster on the Saturday, I can't think of his name, John, but anyway, we were arguing about this a couple years ago, and I said they need to do away with NAFTA.
		He came back to me and said, Well, we can't do away with NAFTA, but alone.
		That is these companies is going over to these foreign countries and getting this slave and slave labor prices made and stuff.
		These cars or anything coming back here should be half of what they are in America.
		People need to wake up in America, support America, buy American if you can.
		And these companies that go over there from the United States, they need to sell it there and don't bring it back here.
		Thank you, John.
		Listen, have a good day, old buddy, and I appreciate the call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bradley out in West Virginia.
		This is Sue in New Jersey, who writes in this morning that buying American is something near and dear to my heart.
		My mom instilled this in me when I was younger and first started working.
		American made, she strongly believed was of better quality, proudly made.
		Nowadays, I've taken a looking mostly in thrift stores, estate and garage sales, or the internet to find made in USA clothing, furniture, tools, gifts, et cetera, because they are hard to find at the big box stores.
		And it is a shame.
		Asking you this morning about your buying habits, do you think those habits will change amid the tariffs that are set to go into effect on Tuesday?
		How much do you buy American is the question?
		Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, the numbers are on your screen.
		And this is Bill in Newport Ritchie, Florida, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hey, I'd like to make a comment.
		I think the tariffs from Canada and Mexico will definitely hurt from an electronic standpoint, you know, consumers, because a lot of those parts are made from those countries as well.
		And it can raise, you know, the cost for computers in the future and other electronic goods.
		And I think the tariffs are bad from that standpoint.
		And then also, of course, automobiles and a lot of other things that consumers rely upon, even some food that's grown in both those countries.
		And I think that's where the major problem is going to be in the future with the ETH tariffs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bill in Florida.
		This is Francoine, Maryland, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Some years ago, I used to run a clothing store.
		And I could tell you 95% of the products that were from the U.S. Francois, you went out there for a little bit.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		95% of what?
unidentified		Of the products that we carry outside the country and visit it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Francois, I would love to hear how your store ran its buying.
		Let me try you one more time.
		You just keep going in and out.
		Speak into the phone, please.
unidentified		Okay, can you hear me?
		Yes.
		Hello.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Tell you what, Francois, give us a call back.
		We're going to try to get that line for you.
		This is Julie in Ohio, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing well.
unidentified		Okay, great.
		Well, whether we are former Democrats who turned Republican like me or people in my family who voted Democrat again, it doesn't matter.
		I love you all.
		And I really hope that we can just find our common ground.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So Julie, bring me to this question we're asking in your buying habits.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And do you think they'll change with these tariffs?
unidentified		Oh, hell no.
unidentified		I will buy American.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Julie in Ohio.
		This is Michelle in Philly, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		So I have a Mexican restaurant.
		I do buy American as a consumer when I can get it.
		But I have a Mexican restaurant, and this is going to put us out of business.
		And I just want to say that all the restaurants across the country, this is going to be a hardship of phenomenal proportions.
		And it's going to be a hardship to the consumers, too.
		To Canada and Mexico, our allies, this isn't what you do to allies.
		You don't put tariffs on allies.
		We had the greatest trade with NASA, which is free trade.
		And all the consumers are going to pay.
		All the Canadian consumers, the Mexican consumers, and the American consumers are going to pay for this trade war.
		And I can tell you right now, there's going to be shortages.
		We're not going to be.
		This is going to put us out of business because we're not going to be able to get limes.
		We make our margaritas with fresh lime, squeeze lime.
		We're not going to be able to get lime.
		Avocados, tomatoes, onions.
		All this is going to be impossible to get, or it's going to be at a cost where we're not going to be able to pass on to our consumers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Michelle, how long have you run your restaurant?
unidentified		19 years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And what are the margins right now on what you sell?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much of an increase in, say, avocados or tomatoes makes this something that you can't make money?
unidentified		Yeah, I'll give you an example.
		A case of avocados could cost, would normally cost at a regular time period when they're not scarce in season and everything.
		It might cost $30 a case.
		But with these tariffs, they're going to go up to $300 a case.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You think that much?
unidentified		$300.
		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		And limes, limes that are normally cost $20 a case are going to go up to at least $100 a case.
		And we're not going to be able to even find them.
		It's not even going to be so, it's going to be the cost, but it's also going to be the scarcity.
		Because even right now, we're having the scarcity.
		Even before these tariffs, just the scare of the threat of tariffs has caused, and I'm in Philadelphia, I'm not in California, you know, where you can easily get things more, you know, fruit and produce.
		And it's right now, my husband and I have to drive around to a couple different stores, restaurant supply stores, because they don't have ripe avocados or they just don't have limes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Michelle, does this sound about right to you?
		This is the Wall Street Journal reporting today.
		Avocados.
		More than 80% of U.S. avocados come from Mexico, according to the U.S. Agricultural Department.
		Mexico provides about half of U.S. fresh produce imports and is a particularly important supplier in the winter time when it comes to avocados.
		It also goes into cherry tomatoes, Canada, a big supplier of cherry tomatoes, Mexico as well.
		The U.S. grows a lot of produce, but tomato production, particularly, one that could be impacted by this.
unidentified		Yeah, that sounds right, and it is right.
		And cherry tomatoes don't work for Mexican salsa, so we won't be able to use those.
		My son is saying we should switch to a Mediterranean restaurant.
		It's not that easy to switch to a Mediterranean restaurant.
		We're barely scraping by right now.
		The pandemic has put the restaurant business out of business, and it's going to be impossible.
		I mean, I think we're going to have to close.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What happens if you can you pass this along to your customers?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		At what point have you found that they'd be willing to accept higher prices?
unidentified		I mean, right now, our guacamole costs $18, and that's the going rate here in New York and Philadelphia.
		We're not in San Francisco, where I just went to visit a cousin, and you can get a decent meal in a restaurant for $15 for under $20.
		Here in Philadelphia, restaurants are charging $40 for an entree.
		Our entrees don't cost $40, but they cost, you know, steak is $32.
		It's going to put us out of business.
		And I don't know how people are going to afford groceries.
		They're going to have to not eat certain things.
		And with the bird virus that's going around, you know, and causing the egg crisis, we're in for a big trouble.
		You know, this is like tacking on more problems for the American people that are absolutely unnecessary, absolutely unnecessary.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Michelle, you said you've run this restaurant for 19 years.
		Would you want to stay in business?
		Are you considering closing?
unidentified		Well, right now it's very, this is a tough city to be in.
		There's a lot of competition, restaurant competition.
		But we have a family business.
		My son bartends.
		He does the payroll.
		My other son is the general manager.
		And my husband is a chef.
		And I do the baking and the bookkeeping.
		And I'm right now looking for a job.
		I have been looking for a job for a couple of months because the margins are so low and we're four owners and I'm trying to get off of not taking any money from the restaurant so that I can pay my mortgage and so that my husband can retire.
		He's 65 years old.
		He can't retire until he's 70 because we don't have the money.
		So yeah, definitely what Trump is doing right now, not to mention the migrant crisis and the raids that are happening on all businesses.
		You know, he's essentially ruining and destroying the country.
		And he's going to destroy the economy.
		The economy is going to tank.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Michelle in Philadelphia, a restaurant owner in Philadelphia, coming up on 7:30 this morning.
		We're simply taking your calls asking how much you buy American, what these tariffs might mean for your buying habits.
		Donald San Antonio is waiting.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I was calling the list of S's people.
		I'm trying to figure out where they keep saying buy American.
		If you read your labels, when you pick up, they have a lot of products that's coming into this country saying it's American, but it was made in another country for America.
		So when what they don't understand and bring all these factors back here with these tariffs he putting on, if they come back, he'll go to making the products, it's going to even be higher than that.
		Because who are going to go work?
		What do you know what I'm saying?
		When we trade with these other countries, we really buying cheap labor.
		Who's going to come over here in this country here and get paid whatever the pennies they're paying those people over here to work?
		This was the whole reason why they went overseas to start getting things made.
		Now Trump can come in there and tell me he's putting tariffs on all these people before he got in.
		Just go to the grocery store, pick up one urn.
		They almost won a dollar for one urn.
		So yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Donald in San Antonio this morning.
		More of your comments from social media.
		This is Kristen in Portland, Maine, saying, I'm a small business owner and I absolutely believe in buying American.
		I try to support my local small businesses as much as I can.
		However, I think this trade war is part of the smokescreen Donald Trump created to bury the headline.
		On Friday evening, he gave Elon Musk access to our treasury and all of our Social Security.
		That should really worry everyone in the country.
		Kristen in Maine.
		This is Pat in Indiana.
		Do I buy American?
		First of all, you have to find stuff that's made in America.
		We all know that most of our goods are from China and other countries.
		What I need, I buy.
		I don't spend time looking at where it comes from.
		And this is Bernice in North Dakota.
		One day I tried to buy something that was made in America.
		So I went home empty-handed.
		I would buy everything made in America, but it's simply not possible.
		We need to start making things here again.
		Rob, Greenfield, Ohio, Republican.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
		Rob, you with us.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
bill in north carolina [2] ▲ ● ▼		Hey, I just want to say, you know, I think there's more of these tariffs than just, you know, trying to, I guess it's for what they've done to us over the last 40 years.
unidentified		Canada and Mexico, they work with the cartels, you know, shipping drugs in.
tim in michigan ▲ ● ▼		People, I think that's just, you know, they can get out of it if they just work and close their borders.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Anything else you want to add, Rob?
unidentified		That's it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Rob in Ohio.
		The Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Noam, was on the Sunday shows yesterday on Meet the Press, was asked about these tariffs and what the Trump administration is trying to do with them.
		This was her response.
kristen welker ▲ ● ▼		How is this move helping President Trump fulfill his campaign promise to lower prices?
kristi noem ▲ ● ▼		You know, you've seen the president take action already this week with Colombia, and you saw Colombia react in a very positive way that was good for everyone involved.
kristi noem ▲ ● ▼		Canada, Mexico, other countries have the opportunity to do exactly the same.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So we have a strong leader.
unidentified		He has laid down exactly what he is going to do and what the consequences are.
unidentified		I encourage their leadership teams to get on board and to make sure that they're not pushing up prices.
kristi noem ▲ ● ▼		If prices go up, it's because of other people's reactions to America's laws.
unidentified		And that's what President Trump is doing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chrissy Noam on Meet the Press yesterday, also on Meet the Press, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.
		He was also asked about these tariffs and what the Trump administration is trying to do.
		This was his answer.
mark kelly ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about two different things here.
		Border security is important.
		I represent Arizona.
		We're a border state.
		There are things that we could do to strengthen the border.
		You know, we've demonstrated that Democrats and Republicans can work together to come up with real policy solutions.
		What the president has proposed here, raising tariffs on Canada and Mexico, it's going to just do one thing.
		You say it may raise prices.
		It will raise prices for American consumers.
		We saw this in his first administration here in Arizona.
		We wound up in a trade war over certain things with China for cotton producers and pecan farmers.
		They wound up, it really, really hurt their businesses.
		But, you know, beyond this, it's going to hurt American families.
		They're going to see prices go up for food, for energy, for electronics.
		I think you mentioned that for autos.
		This is not the way to handle this.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Senator Mark Kelly, yesterday on Meet the Press, we're asking you how much you buy American phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents as today's papers look ahead to what these tariffs could mean for prices for U.S. consumers.
		The Wall Street Journal, from toys to avocados, the pinch will be felt.
		They write, when it comes to maple syrup, Canada and the U.S. are the only two countries that produce this at a commercial scale.
		According to Canada's Agricultural Department, more than 60% of Canada's production goes to the United States.
		The U.S. is the largest market for Mexican tequila, which has soared in popularity with American drinkers over the past decade.
		Shots and sugary margaritas have given way more recently to higher-end tequilas intended to be sipped or imbibed with soda.
		Tequila, one of those products that could be impacted.
		Smartphones, the U.S. imposed import tariffs on a slew of industrial goods from China during President Trump's first term and again during the Biden administration to protest what has long called China's unfair trade practices.
		But most consumer goods, including smartphones, were spared to avoid the wrath of American consumers.
		And across the board, 10% tariff, as Donald Trump has posed on goods made in China, will hit smartphones for the first time and possibly cause price increases.
		The Wall Street Journal taking a look at those various sectors.
		This is Darrell East Point, Michigan Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you, John, for picking up the call.
		First thing I want people to understand is what the goal is.
		The goal is to take us from being bordered by Canada with Fenanol coming in and Mexico with Fenan law coming in, which took the lives of 100,000 Americans, even more than the Vietnam War.
		That's our goal.
		If they do these things, the tariffs will come down.
		We're cherry-picking individual items, which might cost more.
		We don't have to buy them.
		But number two, there is something we can do immediately.
		Congress can pass a law that all internet sales must make the customer aware where the country of manufacturing is, be it Amazon or television commercials.
		So we have the knowledge and the opportunity to make a thinking choice of what we want to do, whether to buy or not buy.
		That's all we have to do.
		Put the pressure on.
		We got to stop this killing of our young citizens in this country.
		ASAP, no matter what the means are.
		Thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And that is what the White House has said, that the duties would remain in place until Mexico and China and Canada stop fentanyl smuggling, illegal migration into the United States.
		And that's the debate that has been playing out since these tariffs were announced late last week.
		President Trump signing the executive order on Saturday, and they officially go into effect tomorrow, Tuesday.
		This is Darren in Colorado Springs.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
unidentified		John, can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I can.
unidentified		I think your question was about buying habits.
		Last night, me and my wife stocked up on groceries and everything.
		We heard for two years, oh, the price of eggs, the price of eggs.
		Now everything's going to go up.
		And what really gets me is this is all supposed to be about stopping fentanyl flowing into the country.
		Well, less than 1% of fentanyl comes through Canada, one of our best allies, which, you know, no, he wants to take over as a state, which is just totally embarrassing.
		And I'm a veteran, and it makes me disgusted.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Darren, did you see at that hockey game, the booing during the U.S. national anthem, the one that was played in Canada?
unidentified		Yes, one of our best allies.
		And it almost brought tears to my eyes.
		And the fentanyl, the compounds are coming from China.
		So he's only putting a 10% tariff on them and a 25% on one of our best allies and one of the biggest producers of lumber and other goods in Mexico, the fruit and vegetables.
		I just don't understand how we heard this on the right for how many years about eggs.
		Now everything's going to go.
		When do we look at ourselves in the mirror as Americans and say, you know, why is all this fentanyl coming in?
		Because we are the drug users of the world.
		That has to stop.
		We have to address that.
		Get these people off of, there'll be another drug.
		You stop fentanyl, there'll be another drug.
		We have to address the drug problem in this country.
		And it's good talking to you again, John.
		I just hope we get all out, get out from under this, but I just don't know how much longer we can be lied by this man.
		It's incredible.
		Thank you for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Darren in Colorado, this Ben and Roger in D.C. and Maryland saying it would have been nice if the Trump administration set up a manufacturing infrastructure here before initiating these tariffs.
		I think he was a little hasty and didn't plan for the repercussions.
		Buying Americans is so expensive because labor costs are more.
		But I try to buy American if possible.
		Also, GM and Ford isn't made in the U.S. anymore.
		Asking you about your buying habits.
		Do you think they'll change amid these tariffs?
		This is Carol Palm Springs, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		I buy American as much as I can.
		I search for it.
		There are good American companies.
		There are good American clothing companies.
		We here in the Coachella Valley try to buy all of our produce from right here where it's grown.
		And my take is American prices are higher because American workers get paid more and American workers live better than people in other countries.
		And I think when we get into this Trump stuff and over it, we need to have a brand new party here called the Party of America.
		So buy America, everyone.
		Thank you, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Fernando in Texas.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Republican.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, sir.
unidentified		My biggest problem is everybody's talking about buying American products, which is good.
		But I also feel strongly that Chinese product, I know this professor, I buy quite a bit of it, and I regret that I do buy it.
		But now for my own, I'm going to stop buying Chinese products because it don't last long.
		You only get, it's like they say, when you buy, I think it's supposed to last more than a year.
		Well, I bought product from China products.
		It don't even last a year.
		It lasts maybe six months.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What kind of products do you buy from China for you?
unidentified		Like skill saw, stuff like that, hand tools.
		And it's like I say, you get what you pay for, you know?
		And it's gotten to a point where I just completely stopped by.
		And then again, I'm already 70 years old.
		I hear a lot of stuff on y'all's program, which I really enjoy watching and listening.
		And a lot of people don't seem to understand.
		You're lucky.
		You're lucky to be calling.
		You're lucky to be in the United States.
		I was born here.
		I'm a Latin man.
		I was born here.
		And I appreciate every day I wake up.
		At 70, you start counting your days when you're not going to be around.
		But for people to complain, come on.
		Hey, y'all got to work together as a family unit.
		And I'm glad I have three sons, and they all got good jobs, real good paying jobs.
		They don't complain about the prices.
		You know how if they can't afford it, they won't buy it.
		And this is like me.
		My dad taught me the same thing.
		Hey, if you can't afford it, don't buy it.
		So when people complain about not getting marginalized, hey, that's the way it goes.
		Drink something else, drink milk, you know.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Fernando in the Lone Star State to the land of Lincoln.
		This is Kimberly, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		So this is really so difficult.
		You know, it's impossible to buy produce in the land of Lincoln from America in the middle of the winter.
		I go to the grocery, you know, the fish is farmed from Chile.
		The produce is from Ecuador, Chile, Mexico.
		You can't buy pro.
		I mean, our grocery prices are going up.
		I mean, they're already up.
		I know the vast majority of egg production is here in the U.S., but because, you know, no, we're not tackling avian flu, you know, eggs are going up.
		So this is ridiculous, and it's going to hurt us all.
		And yeah, I hate that this is what we're having to deal with now.
		And in terms of, you know, fentanyl and addiction, and, you know, I agree with the previous caller.
		You know, we have to get a better control and we have to, you know, treat addiction like the illness it is and get people help.
		And I mean, we're the ones who can control the flow of fentanyl.
		And for that matter, why aren't we taxing the sacklers, the biggest drug dealers in the country?
		And secondly, with Elon Musk and his allies taking over the Treasury Department, none of us are going to be able to afford anyway, anything, because they're going to bilk us and they're raiding us.
		I think people can't see that.
		We've led this person who no one elects, no one voted for.
		He doesn't even have security clearance to be doing the things he's doing.
		I don't know why we're not getting, you know, we need to, and Congress completely abdicating their responsibilities.
		You have the power of the purge, not some oligarch billionaire who wasn't elected to anything, and he's taking over.
		He's the president.
		He's the de facto president, and we're allowing this.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point.
		That's Kimberly in Illinois.
		Less than 20 minutes left this morning.
		This is Steve, Alexandria, Indiana.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I can't buy anything.
		I can't even find anything where I'm at here in the middle of the country that's not made in anywhere but China.
		You can't buy no American stuff.
		We have to buy our meat out here from the farmers out here.
		We have to go out here and black market our meat because we can't afford to buy it in the stores.
		And we just go out here.
		These farmers, they're the ones that control it all.
		There's these farmers out here.
		They've got plenty of cows and meat.
		And this problem we got with the fentanyl, this has been the Democrats is the ones that opened the borders up, and they purposely flooded it in here to kill American people, as these Democrats did.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's awful.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why would they want to purposely kill Americans, Steve?
unidentified		Why?
		Would they?
		You tell me why.
		That's what I want to know.
		Why would the Democrats open up the border?
		Why would they?
		You tell me why they would open up the border.
		And also, the oil.
		Soon as he shut the oil off in the United States, the Biden administration, the pipelines, shut everything off.
		Let Putin flow all his oil.
		Let Iran flow all their oil over in Iran and collect hundreds of billions of dollars.
		And Putin, why would they do that?
		Why would the Democrats allow that to happen?
		Trump had them down to where they were almost broke.
		Iran was.
		They didn't have no money left.
		But the Biden administration has always, the Democrats has always let Iran do whatever they want.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Steve in Indiana.
		15 minutes left for you to call in this morning.
		We're talking about your buying habits, these tariffs that were announced, signed by President Trump on Saturday, go into effect on Tuesday.
		Getting your thoughts on whether it will change your buying habits and how much you try to buy American.
		One quote from the New York Post on this topic of whether tariffs can get people to buy American.
		This quote from an analysis interviewed in the New York Post with GWI, a market research firm, with one of their stories about it.
		They write that tariffs may incentivize consumers to buy American-made products, especially among older conservative groups who already prioritize domestic manufacturing.
		But the data suggests that affordability will be the key factor and not patriotism.
		And those younger consumers who express less interest in buying domestic products may choose alternative channels to buy or get around the extra cost, the tariffs for imported goods.
		Just one of the stories about this today.
		There's plenty of stories in today's papers about this.
		It's the lead story in most of today's papers, including the front page of the New York Times this morning.
		In the lead spot, the headline there, Trump's tariff said to imperil global trading, tilts in China's favor, speed and scope seen as crippling industries and raising costs.
		Those are the headlines in the lead story today in the New York Times.
		This is Gary, Oceanside, New York, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hey, good morning.
		I didn't go to the Wharton School of Business like our president did, but I remember from high school, tariffs are designed to help manufacturing or products that are made in the United States.
		So if we're not making these products, what are we going to do?
		We don't make TVs anymore here or anything like that.
		So instead of, if they are going to tariffs, take the tariff money to help build manufacturing here quickly.
		I mean, I would love to buy a zenith that was made in Ohio, but those days are over.
		But that's the whole idea of tariffs.
		He's just using this as a ploy to pay for policies that he has no money for.
		I just don't understand.
		I don't see why people don't see this.
		Just do a little research.
		Just wiki, what tariffs are designed for.
		And that's basically it.
		Defensive issue, there's a drug problem in the United States, but keep on taking funding away for medical and public use for helping solve the crisis.
		They don't do that.
		They keep on taking money away from health.
		And that's about it.
		Thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Gary in New York to Oregon.
		Carl's in Portland.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Thank you, John.
		Anyhow, I think most of the problems that are occurring are not exactly, you know, by design.
		There's people that are poor in this country, and they're going to have a hard time buying anything.
		And people that are living outside the city, they're also going to be feeling the effects first.
		I'm hoping that the Chinese will still bring products into this country.
		That would be even a worse situation.
		But if that does happen, if the Chinese people decide it's not worth having their equipment or whatever they're selling here just sit in warehouses over here in America, I think we'll be in even hotterwater.
		So this is another knee-jerk reaction from our government to solve problems, and it's creating problems.
		It'll create problems.
		And what we do from then on is a national is going to be a national effort.
		And we're all going to have to either pull together or we're going to keep splitting apart and yelling at each other about, you know, it's everybody's fault.
		Well, let's just pull together and try to work it out and see if these tariffs do have some benefit of some kind.
		That's all I have.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Carl, in Oregon, when it comes to Chinese imports into the United States, it is in the year 2023, it was about $448 billion of Chinese imports into the United States.
		That compares to $480 billion of Mexican imports into the United States, $430 billion of Canadian imports.
		All other countries combined, it's about $2 trillion.
		You can see how the three countries that have been targeted by these tariffs stock up: Canada, Mexico, and China.
		This is Eileen, New Jersey, Republican.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hello, sir, John.
		I just want to know, why do you keep dissecting everything he does every day?
		This is not about Buy America.
		This is about Trump.
		I don't know.
		He's not even in a month.
		Let him see what he can do.
		After all, Biden, he's never had that on every day.
		about Biden, what he did to our country.
		And you get sick of it.
		And one thing that's not abyss, but the man that was in the Senate that went to bed with the Chinese woman, nothing ever happened to him.
		They never put him out of the Senate.
		I mean, you have so much to say with the Democrats about Trump.
		Have something about them.
		It would be very nice.
		Thank you, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Eileen in New Jersey to Mark in Florida, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		Hey, as far as buying things, living here in Florida, I will buy Florida produce, but it's not as plentiful as you would think.
		You can get peppers and certain things.
		As far as anything of significance, I do a bunch of research.
		Ultimately, I'm going to buy from quality along with price.
		So that's kind of the thing.
		The one thing I would like to say is these tariffs have nothing to do with what Trump says they're doing.
		This is for him to get his big tax cut.
		This is so that the Freedom Caucus can see money coming in from these tariffs theoretically, then they can vote and have his big tax bill.
		This is about him and his 1%ers getting their tax cut.
		This is really not about the fentanyl.
		And by the way, the gun pipeline between the United States and Canada and the United States and Mexico is probably a bigger problem.
		And nobody even talks about that because the Canadians and Mexicans work with our law enforcement to get this stuff under control.
		Just drives me crazy.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Mark in Florida to the Sunflower State.
		This is Sue, Wichita, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air, Sue.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, I'm a Democrat, and I mean, I buy everything that I need.
		I have my P is American.
		I buy all my food from black American farmers here.
		So, and it's not high, it's better.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So you only buy American, Sue?
unidentified		Yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you make of these tariffs?
unidentified		Well, that's up to the government, I think.
		You know, they get paid to run the laws.
		That's all I can say.
		It's up to the end.
		So you're okay with them?
		I mean, as long as they go ahead and do their job.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think they're doing their job right now?
unidentified		I think everybody's in an uproar and don't know which way to turn right now.
unidentified		But yes, I think they're doing their job best they can.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Sue in Wichita.
		This is Bo, California, Republican.
		Bo, good morning.
		Question is, how much do you buy American?
unidentified		Try to as much as we can, but there's really not a lot out there that you can buy.
		We farm out here, and, you know, even a lot of equipment is made elsewhere.
		But the main thing to think about is this.
		No other countries have the regulations and controls we have on food.
		You buy food from Mexico, they spray chemicals on that food that we've banned 30 years ago.
		And the same is true for China.
		There's no regulations on that food.
		So we're really putting ourselves at risk by buying that produce from those countries.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you farm out in California, Bill?
unidentified		We grow pistachios and forage crops for dairy farmers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And how big of an operation do you have?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And whereabouts are you in California?
unidentified		Right in the Central Park by Fresno.
		We're a small farm, about 600 acres.
		And we face the threat too.
		A lot of our crops get exported.
		A lot of milk goes to Mexico or cheese products.
		But at the end of the day, I think we're behind the president.
		Everyone I talk to has hopes that it'll drive more manufacture here and create those jobs everyone used to have.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		But with Mexico and Canada now saying they'll have retaliatory tariffs on the United States and those going into effect within days, according to the leaders of those countries, is it going to hurt your margins?
unidentified		We think it probably will.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much do you think it will?
unidentified		It's hard to tell.
		It really is.
		I mean, as farmers, we're just price takers.
		We're not price makers.
		So we will see what happens.
		About 70% of our nuts leave the country.
		So that's a concern.
		It really is a concern.
		But again, the stuff in the grocery store, everybody buys, anything that's frozen that can come from China, you don't know what they're spraying on those crops, what they're using for fertilizer.
		And that's a big risk that I think just a lot of folks don't know about.
		And if they did know, they would seek out the U.S. products.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Justin Trudeau was saying yesterday, we didn't ask for this, but we will not back down, warning that American jobs in the auto manufacturing industry in particular could be at risk.
		A first wave of tariffs, according to Trudeau, on American-made products are set to take effect on Tuesday, and they'll hit $20 billion of imports from the United States, including alcohol, coffee, clothing, shoes, furniture, and household appliances.
		On Sunday, Canada released a list of tariff targets, including products from Republican-leaning states, such as whiskey from Kentucky, oranges from Florida, appliances from South Carolina.
		A second wave of another $85 billion of goods would include tariffs on cars and trucks and agricultural products and steel and aluminum and aerospace products.
		That second phase will begin in three weeks, and then other tariffs could follow.
		That just the Canadian response there.
		This is Francesca in Florida Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing well.
unidentified		I just wanted to add to the conversation because I feel like people are missing the point that these tariffs won't make it easy for these companies to just move to America.
		And the reason why is simply because they're not going to move their operations.
		So when we're talking about, oh, we're going to make these products come to America and be made in America, it's not easily going to be done by these companies.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And so Francesca, the president said that the goal is to get a handle on illegal immigration and fentanyl and illegal drugs coming across the border to get Canada and Mexico and China to crack down on those things coming into the United States.
unidentified		What does that have to do with it, though?
unidentified		Until the president is heard.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That These tariffs will continue until they do that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That is what Donald Trump has said.
unidentified		I don't truly believe that that's going to happen.
		How does he figure that that will happen at all?
		And what does this have to do with drugs and cartels if we're taxing regular goods?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, what is a better way to handle that problem that Donald Trump has campaigned on and won an election on immigration and illegal drugs?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think he should be doing rather than using the tariff route as a stick here?
unidentified		I don't know what he can do about the drug situation, but putting a tax on everyday goods is not good for any American person.
		And it's not going to cause any companies to move over here.
		I don't think it's going to help the drug situation.
		People are going to either find different drugs or they're going to make different drugs.
		So, I'm not quite sure where the connection comes in between these drugs and goods and taxes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Francesca in Florida.
		This is Peyton in Denver.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		I'm a huge C-SPAN fan.
		I listen every morning on the way to work.
		And I just wanted to call and give my opinion about HECSAT because I wasn't able to call when all that was going on.
		And I knew this was getting out of control when I listened to that hearing.
		That made me think about it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Peyton, we've got a segment for Open Forum coming up for any topic, but we've been talking about tariffs in particular in this segment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are your thoughts on these tariffs and what it's going to do for everyday prices?
unidentified		I think it's ridiculous and out of control.
unidentified		And I think we all know that it's going to make everything else more expensive.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Peyton in Colorado, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		But stick around, more to talk about this morning.
		Up next, we'll be joined by the Hills Emily Brooks, taking a look at the week ahead in Washington.
		And later, George Washington University professor Casey Burgett joins us to talk about his new book, We Hold These Truths.
		Stick around.
		We'll be right back.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		In his latest book titled Wasteland, author Robert Kaplan focuses on the importance of technology on determining the world's future.
		Kaplan, author of 24 books, holds the chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Institute.
		In the chapter, number three, in his 177-page book, Kaplan claims, Civilization is now in flux.
		The ongoing decay of the West is manifested not only in racial tensions coupled with new barriers to free speech, but in the deterioration of dress codes, the erosion of grammar, the decline in sales of serious books and classical music, and so on.
		All of which have traditionally been signs of civilization.
unidentified		Author Robert Kaplan talks about his book, Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
		BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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		These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On Mondays, when Congress is in session, we'd like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington to do that this week.
		We're joined by Emily Brooks, House reporter with The Hill here on Capitol Hill.
		Emily Brooks, start on that plane and helicopter crash here in Washington, D.C. What's the latest in terms of how Congress is reacting to this, whether there'll be a congressional investigation here, and whether they're devising some legislation in response to this?
unidentified		Well, absolutely, Congress is going to be looking into this.
		My colleagues have already found that the heads of the Transportation Committee and the House have already received briefings about this.
		Certainly, something lawmakers who fly in and out of Reagan National Airport all of the time are certainly very concerned about the safety implications there.
		So Congress will absolutely play a role.
		It is a little bit interesting, though, in this Congress versus last, when now Washington is under total Republican trifecta control.
		I think that the Republican-controlled House and Senate are giving a little bit more leeway and room for the Trump administration to investigate and provide information both to Congress and publicly about what's going on.
		A little bit of a change in the power dynamic there from previous investigations we've seen, such as with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that prompted a whole select committee to investigate the matter.
		But we're not quite hearing of anything up to that standard yet, but certainly Congress will be investigating and playing a role.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What could a legislative response look like?
		There's been local members of Congress, Chris Van Holland here in Maryland, and some of the Virginia members as well, who have talked about there being too many flights in and out of Reagan National Airport there, that that's a safety issue.
		Is there legislation to limit the number of flights or what could they actually do?
unidentified		Well, actually, Congress just approved an increase in the number of flights in the past year's FAA reauthorization bill.
		Congress actually greenlit five more round-trip flights from Reagan to destinations that are usually further than the radius that airplanes go from and there.
		And that includes places like San Antonio, Las Vegas, I believe there's one to Seattle.
		And so those are actually slated to start in the months ahead.
		I don't believe those flights have started yet.
		So maybe that is something that Congress could reconsider.
		That was a very hotly debated topic at the time with that FAA reauthorization bill.
		And that only comes up every four or five years or so.
		So it would be a pretty heavy lift for Congress to go and limit those flights, but not out of the realm of possibility.
		Another thing that they could do is further restrict the airspace for military flights, maybe prevent any training missions as this was with the helicopter in that congested area.
		So, those are things that I think lawmakers would be looking at.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talked about the months ahead.
		I want to shift to the House agenda for the months ahead.
		You sat down at the House Republican retreat last week with Speaker Johnson to talk about his strategy for moving Donald Trump's agenda at the beginning of the 119th Congress.
		What's the strategy?
unidentified		Yeah, well, the strategy is hopefully getting everybody together.
		I think the very big theme that I saw at that retreat was just how desperate Republicans are to have some kind of unity.
		But at the same time, there are so many fractures and divisions in the very slim majority with fiscal hawks who are demanding really deep cuts on whatever they pass in this bill that's going to encompass the top priorities for the Trump administration agenda on taxes, on border, on energy policy.
		And also, you know, you have other members like in Democratic-run states looking at the state and local tax deduction cap, and that's a top priority for them.
		They want that to be raised.
		But that is going to have a budgetary impact that is going to have to be made up.
		So, right now, the timeline that was laid out last week was this week the House Budget Committee was supposed to mark up and advance the legislation that will encompass eventually the Trump administration agenda.
		But we're hearing from our sources that it's not quite clear if that will be able to happen this week because there is still so much jockeying going around about what those deep cuts should be, how deep they should be, what should be included.
		There are some top-line decisions that need to be made before they can go to the next step.
		And with almost zero margin for error in the House after Elise Stefanik gets confirmed, because Democrats are never going to vote for this, it's very hard to get all of the Republicans on the same page.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And meanwhile, remind us where we are right now in terms of government funding and that debt ceiling issue that continues to raise its head through the years.
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		That Trump administration agenda bill is not the only thing that Congress has to deal with.
		March 14th is the government funding deadline.
		Congress will have to do either some kind of full year funding through the end of September 30th or another continuing resolution, which I don't think that there's much appetite for that.
		But that is a looming deadline that Republicans may very well have to go to Democrats to help them advance because there's, like I said, all of those fiscal hawks in the House Republican conference who really object to something like a really big, massive omnibus bill that funds the government.
		They don't want that.
		And so Speaker Johnson might have to go to Democrats for that.
		At the same time, you have President Trump looking at the debt ceiling, the debt limit deadline, which is supposed to be expected to hit around sometime this summer is going to be when lawmakers must absolutely address that or risk the nation's credit rating taking a hit that could have vast economic impacts.
		So when Republicans a couple of years ago had this debt limit deadline in the minority, they used that to extract concessions from the Biden administration, negotiated some rescissions and funding from Democratic past legislation.
		And President Trump absolutely does not want Democrats who are in the minority to have any leverage on that debt ceiling deadline.
		So that is putting House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders in a very tricky situation because it's going to be very tough to raise the debt ceiling with only Republican votes.
		So it very may well be attached to something like that regular government funding that expires on March 14th in a bid to try and get Democratic support for it.
		Or it could be attached potentially to something like wildfire aid for California is something that has been floated around.
		Would that get Democrats able to vote for that?
		Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, has said that that is a non-starter.
		So it's going to be another headache for House Republican leadership to figure out how to meet Trump's demands on the debt ceiling at the same time as trying to fund the government and prevent a government shutdown and advance the Trump administration's massive legislative agenda.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		If Democrats were to try to extract something in one of these negotiations, where would they start?
unidentified		Well, they haven't really hinted yet, but I'm sure there is a lot that they could try and extract.
		I mean, the actions that the Trump administration has taken so far on like freezing funding for foreign aid for the now rescinded OMB memo about freezing grant funding.
		There's a whole lot going on with USAID and seeming to be dismantled over the weekend or put under the State Department, a lot of changes that are not quite clear and we haven't gotten a lot of clarity on there.
		Is that something that Democrats could try and get restored or that would be a priority for them?
		There's a lot that they could go through and, you know, they're probably in not any real mood to help out the Republicans.
		So they're certainly going to be looking for something.
		But that is exactly what President Trump does not want.
		So it's really a tough situation for the Republican leadership.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Emily Brooks with us of the Hill newspaper, taking your questions as we take a look at the week ahead in Washington.
		Phone numbers as usual.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202748-8002.
		Go ahead and get your calls in.
		She's with us for about the next 10 or 15 minutes or so this morning.
		As folks are calling in, we spent the first hour of our program today talking about those new tariffs Tariffs signed by the president on Saturday set to go into effect on Tuesday.
		What's the most interesting reaction you've seen on your beat to this tariff regimen on Mexico, Canada, and China?
unidentified		Well, of course, Speaker Johnson, like a lot of things that President Trump is doing, is expressing support for this move.
		But I think that this is going to expose a lot of tensions between both the more maybe libertarian-minded Republican members in Congress, like Rand Paul, Senator from Kentucky, who had a post on X over the last few days saying, Hey, you know, I thought I remember that when Republicans did not like tariffs because it was considered a tax.
		And now this is like a flagship policy from the Trump administration.
		So there could be some tensions there.
		Maybe a little bit quieter could be some tensions between agricultural state Republicans or those in agricultural districts whose constituents and businesses there could be affected by some kind of escalating tariff or trade war happening with some of the United States's largest trading partners.
		So as the market reacts and as prices get adjusted, however long this lasts I think could probably affect how people react here.
		So far, like a lot of things that Trump is doing, there's not a whole lot of criticism from the Republican side that's vocal.
		A lot of it is pretty under the radar and maybe privately expressed.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The quote from Rand Paul quoted in one of the papers today: tariffs are simply taxes.
		Conservatives, once united against new taxes, taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices.
		We won the last election by complaining about Democrats' policies, which gave us high prices.
		Tariff lovers will be forced to explain the persistence of high prices.
		That quote attributed to Rand Paul, Emily Brooks.
unidentified		Yes, exactly.
		So that could be some tensions there.
		You know, Rand Paul does tend to be, you know, more of a libertarian-leaning member, maybe has more willing to express criticism on something like this than a lot of other members.
		But certainly, I'm sure there are a lot of Republicans in states that will be affected by these tariffs or by retaliatory tariffs that are getting worried.
		And we'll have to see what the impact of the tariffs are.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me go to Mike, who's waiting in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, it is Emily Brooks of the Hill newspaper that you're chatting with this morning.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Good morning.
		I've got a question, a couple of questions, actually.
		One on Elon Musk.
		He has total access to Social Security numbers now.
		That scares me more than the tariffs does.
		To have someone that's not elected have total access to everyone's Social Security number.
		Secondly, on tariffs, I bought a handmade guitar, quote-unquote, handmade in Nebraska from a small family company in Nebraska.
		When you look at their part list, the woods come in from Canada and Brazil.
		The electronics come in from Japan.
		They assemble that in Nebraska.
		So, yes, it's made in America, but the parts all come in from offshore.
		That company is going to be destroyed by something like this.
		So it's not helping small business in any way.
		What's your thoughts on that?
		Thank you, and have a great morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Mike.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Emily Brooks.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I don't have the exact information on Elon Musk and what all he has access to, but certainly the Doge apparatus that he has set up is taking a lot of liberties and getting a lot of information.
		There has been reporting about getting access to sensitive information.
		And it is, you know, of course, like we were talking about with Democrats, causing alarm on that side about how much acts he is getting access to.
		I mean, this is not a Senate confirmed position.
		This is just something that, you know, individuals who are appointed by the president.
		So how fast they're moving.
		They're working reportedly around the clock.
		I read another report about some kind of beds in the office building where the Doge members and staff members are set up so they can work as much as possible.
		That's pretty stunning.
		So will Democrats be in any mood to get anything across the finish line with Republicans, given all of they're seeing from Doge and concerns about that?
		Maybe they'll ask for something as some kind of safeguards or check on Doge in response.
		That's just my pure speculation, but certainly something other people have an eye on.
		And to the point about the small businesses and the guitars assembled in Nebraska, yes, certainly there's all of these imports from other countries that are going to be subject to tariffs.
		That is definitely what people are worried about, that cost getting passed along to the consumer, raising the cost of prices there, but also with the impact on businesses, whether they'll be able to pay that upfront cost or whether customers will be willing to buy their products considering potential price increases.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Emily Brooks, I know we only have a few minutes left with you.
		Sometime in the next 15 minutes or half hour or so, we're expecting to hear from Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he leaves Panama from that visit to the Panama Canal.
		We're going to take viewers there when he does make his remarks.
		An article from the Hill newspaper noting that Marco Rubio has been warning Panama over the canal saying the current status there is unacceptable.
		What will you be watching for from the Secretary of State's remarks this morning?
unidentified		Well, certainly, you know, Panama, I think if there's any progress on negotiations for the United States to try and retake it, if it seems like it's positive, if he's taking a more aggressive stance, I think probably that big major tone is something that I'll be looking for there.
		But yeah, very certain much top priority of the Trump administration.
		And Republicans from across the ideological spectrum have expressed support for the Panama Canal move.
		So we'll see if there's any progress there or any action that Congress can even take to try and empower the Trump administration to look into negotiations on the Panama Canal.
		There has already been one proposed bill about that from Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota.
		So whether that's needed, we'll see.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		David's waiting in Massachusetts.
		It's Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
		Good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just have a short thing here.
		As far as his legislative agenda goes, I really believe, and I know that the current, I don't like to call him a president because his agenda is about him and him only.
		And he's going to tear this country down if he's not impeached and the Republican Party isn't disbanded because they're the ones that put him there.
		And that's all I have to say.
		Have a good day.
		Bye.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Emily Brooks, that's David.
		Impeachment.
		What would it take in a completely Republican-controlled House and Senate for an impeachment hearing?
unidentified		Yeah, I think that that's incredibly unlikely at this point.
		You know, of course, President Trump has been impeached twice in the past.
		Both times there were Democratic majorities, I believe.
		And that's something that I don't think Republican leadership would be eager to bring up in the House, certainly.
		There would have to be something, I assume, catastrophic in some sense in order to bring up impeachment articles.
		But of course, even though there were 10 House Republicans who did vote to impeach President Trump after January 6th, that was, you know, only 10 House Republicans, certainly not Republicans eager to counter signal or move against the president in that way.
		And definitely not when a lot of them are eager to advance that kind of a legislative agenda that they also agree with.
		That includes extending the tax cuts from that 2017 bill that President Trump signed.
		That includes changing energy regulations and boosting funding and enforcement on the southern border and even the northern border.
		Those are all things that Republicans in Congress want to fund.
		And, you know, as far as impeachment, I don't think anything has happened so far to even get any Republicans to even think about impeachment.
		And it would just be incredibly unlikely to see a party impeach their own president for something considering the balance of power and historically what we've seen.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Blakeland in Brooklyn, Independent.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Hi, yes.
		Thank you.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I'd like to know in regards to the tariffs that President Trump has put on Canada and Mexico that are allegedly related to unauthorized crossings of the southern border and fentanyl smuggling.
		What type of publicly available metrics is he looking for in terms of what he wants to achieve so that he may then reverse the tariffs or something of that sort.
		My understanding is that crossings at the southern border are at a low of recent years and that Canada supplies approximately 1% of the fentanyl into the United States.
		So what is he looking to, what numbers does he want to see?
		Is there anything publicly available?
		Yeah, I'm not sure exactly if there's a metric or something that the president is looking to hit.
		You know, when you're talking about border crossings, though, this is something that Republicans have brought up over and over.
		They're not only looking at the numbers of people who are unauthorized crossing the border, but they are also looking at a lot of the ways that has been legal to come across the border and into the country over the past several years and to change that.
		And so, when you're looking at the statistics and numbers about border crossings, you have to also look at Republicans will be looking at asylum cases.
		They'll be looking at whoever is approved to be on humanitarian parole while their case is waiting, they wait for their case to go out in front of a judge.
		So, those are the kind of things that are, you know, technically legal ways for people to enter the country and might not, you know, depends on what statistics you're looking at.
		So, but certainly, Republicans and the Trump administration want to drastically increase a lot of those other categories, get rid of those other pathways.
		One of the things that the Trump administration did was get rid of the CBP1 app, which was a way for migrants to schedule hearings and meetings with border officials at the border in order to expedite and have a more orderly process for getting people into humanitarian parole through that process.
		Now that's been taken away, so there's fewer pathways to be able to schedule that or to just you just have to go to the border in order to do it.
		So, you know, when you're looking at that, there's a whole lot of things.
		And I'm not sure as far as the tariffs what exactly the Trump administration is looking for in order to lower those.
		But I think it's definitely a negotiation point.
		Maybe there's something that Canada or Mexico could say that they could provide, but we'll have to see.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of metrics, as tech on X wants to know how much the federal government could save by cutting bloat from their workforce, from the full-time and the contractors, has the Trump administration, Republicans in Congress, put a number on that yet?
unidentified		I wouldn't know the number off of the top of my head, but I do know in broad terms, if you're just looking at the workforce and you're looking at the kind of steep cuts that a lot of these Republicans are looking for in order to right the federal budget, reduce the deficit, get, you know, steer the ship slowly back away from getting ever more debt, which is what so many of them are concerned about.
		Looking at the federal workforce alone is not going to be enough in order to do all of that.
		There's going to have to be, you know, programs that they are going to look to cut.
		There's talk about things like Medicaid benefits, putting some work requirements or conditions on those is being discussed as part of the reconciliation bill, the massive Trump administration agenda bill that Republicans are working on.
		So while I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, in broad terms, the workforce alone is not going to be enough to address all of those concerns.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Emily Brooks, I know you got to go start your day on Capitol Hill.
		Final 60 seconds here.
		What didn't we get to that you're going to be watching for this week?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		I think that the biggest thing is the Trump administration agenda bill, the reconciliation bill, as we call it on Capitol Hill.
		If that gets a markup, and of course, all of the Senate confirmation hearings, what movement there is on some of the more controversial nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
		That's going to be very interesting to see if the Trump administration takes any hits on that, on those two more controversial nominees, or if they are able to convince Republican senators to support them and they sail through.
		I'll be watching that as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Emily Brooks covers it all at the Hill newspaper, it's thehill.com, and you can follow her on X at Emily BrooksNews.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We appreciate your time this morning.
unidentified		Thank you so much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Here's where we are this morning on Capitol Hill.
		The Senate is set to come in at 3 p.m. Eastern.
		This morning from down in Panama, we're expected to hear from the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is getting ready to leave Panama and is expected to make remarks to the media about his visit to the Panama Canal Zone down there.
		We will take you to that when that happens.
		In the meantime, it's open forum.
		Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, the phone lines are yours to do so.
		Phone numbers are on your screen: 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
		Democrats, it's 202-748-8000.
		Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
		And we will be in open forum for about the next half hour, 40 minutes here.
		So go ahead and get your calls in.
		Again, any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about.
		In the meantime, some other goings-on today here in Washington that you can watch on the C-SPAN networks.
		This morning, academics and scholars discussing the various challenges facing the United States and progress that has been made to address them.
		The Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Tulane University hosting that discussion.
		You can watch that live here at 10 a.m. Eastern, also on c-span.org and the free C-SPANNOW video app.
		That's where we're going to go when this program ends.
		Also, today, noon Eastern, a discussion on the Congressional Review Act and how it might be used by a Republican-controlled Congress to overturn regulations that were issued before President Trump took office.
		That is hosted by the Federalist Society.
		Again, live at noon here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPANNOW app.
		4 p.m. today, a look at what Russian independent media is saying about Russian society and political trends.
		That is from George Washington University's Elliott School of Business and International Affairs, live at 4 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN, c-span.org, and of course, the free C-SPAN Now video app.
		That's a look at what's happening today.
		Here's a look from you about what's on your mind.
		It's our open forum.
		Your phone calls this morning.
		Betty is up first in Kentucky, a Democrat.
		Betty, what's on your mind?
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Are you there?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am, I am.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm listening.
unidentified		Okay.
		In 1973, the first P.O. Davis came home and they came to the Philippines.
		And I wanted to say I appreciate everyone.
		I was there and it was a horrible thing to see in one way and a wonderful the other.
		You're talking about Vietnam POWs?
		Yes, the Vietnam POWs.
		They all came to the Philippines to start with.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And you were in the Philippines?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why?
unidentified		Yes.
		Because, well, I thought my husband was working for an airlines, but he wasn't really CIA.
		And If you see the movie coming home from where they landed in the Philippines, the little boy that was hanging out beside the fence was my son, and I was there by a sign holding my baby and my daughter.
		It was rewarding, but it was very sad.
		But it happened in February of 73.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And what did you learn about your husband's job in the years afterwards, Betty?
unidentified		Well, let's put it this way: the movie Air America is a true story.
unidentified		I know I was there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		For folks who don't know the story, what's the story?
unidentified		Well, if you saw Mel Gibson's movie, what he told was the truth.
unidentified		Very much the truth.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's that story that you would want people to know?
unidentified		Well, it was a very nice thing.
		The CIA was involved in some things that were very honest.
		And I got a divorce when I saw the movie Air America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why bad?
unidentified		Well, he put my family in a very dangerous thing.
unidentified		And they were people need to see the opium fields and the poppy fields, and they'll know what I'm talking about.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Betty.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, finish your thought, Betty.
unidentified		And President Marcus was our landlord.
unidentified		So go from there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Betty in Kentucky.
		This is Dan in Maine, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		I wanted to say that I've been listening to C-SPAN for a long time.
		And the anti-Trump message and the lack of Republican callers, I think everyone must be asleep or something.
		But there is an episode that I'd like to get C-SPAN to rerun again that had to do with the D.C. National Guard.
		And I don't have the, I should have the paper in front of me, but I don't.
		But there's an episode that the D.C. National Guard talked about, the three-hour delay that happened on January 6th.
		And I've never seen it repeated on C-SPAN, but I've looked at it a number of times myself.
		And I've been trying to get the message to someone somewhere to replay.
		The fellow's name was Aaron.
		And anyhow, so it was recorded in April of 24.
		And it tells, well, it doesn't tell exactly, but it tells what happened during the three-hour delay on March 6th, which I think as a country we ought to get together on.
		But it seems like no one wants to hear that message that was given by the D.C. National Guard about their activities that day.
		And I would like to hear it on the news again.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Dan, good news for you.
		Everything that's aired on C-SPAN is available on our website at c-span.org.
		Our archives, our C-SPAN archives, very searchable, easy to search.
		So I think you'll be able to find what you're looking for.
		Just go to C-SPAN.org.
		That search bar is right there at the top of the page.
		Rich in Schenectady, New York.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
		It's open forum.
unidentified		Yes, hello.
		I am so, so disgusted in claiming to be an American.
		I don't know when, how half this country voted for this scheming, scamming Putin wannabe.
		I mean, this man, how he just pulls go, and these ignorant Trumplicans, they're not Republicans, they're Trumplicans.
		When are they going to wake up to Congress?
		When are they going to wake up to this man?
		This man is just out.
		Him and his phony, just because they got a few dollars, they think they can buy everything.
		They just want to steal everything they can, everything they can control.
		People, America, wake up, please.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's rich in New York.
		As we said earlier, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is set to give remarks this morning as he's departing Panama.
		He's just arrived there at the press conference.
		We're going to take it to you live when he begins speaking.
		We will, looks like they're getting ready to start.
		We'll listen for a little bit and see if he begins.
		And we'll show you the Secretary of State's remarks when he goes before the cameras to make them.
		He's just arrived there at the scene, getting ready to depart Canada.
		He's been touring the Panama Canal zone.
		And so we will show that when it happens.
		In the meantime, this is David in Michigan, Line for Democrats.
		Good morning.
		It's open for him.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Hello?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, sir.
unidentified		The most highly educated federal agency among those with at least 1,000 employees isn't NASA or the National Science Foundation, but the U.S. Agency for International Development.
		Two-thirds of its 4,675 workers hold a master's degree, doctorate, or other advanced degree.
		That's a quote from the Pew Research Center.
		And I'm just amazed that the other day Trump can talk about finding the brightest and the best federal workers, and then they want to take an entire agency and, in Elon Musk's words, kill it.
		I don't understand.
		I don't understand what's going on.
		It's just crazy.
		And that's all I have to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Lewis, Colorado, Republican.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		A couple of quick points.
		300,000-plus missing children.
		Thank you, Democrats.
		The COVID shutdowns, devastating.
		The only good thing to come out of it is the exposure of the education system and the terrible results that they've produced.
		The education system, it should be sent back to the states.
		Thank you, Democrats.
		With regard to tariffs, they're a tool, but the fault is with the American manufacturing who sends their products to be manufactured in China.
		Who's going to who's you can't compete with slave labor when it comes to making profits?
		The hostages have to be mentioned.
		I think there's progress being made.
		I'm not happy with it, but progress is being made.
		The Panama Canal, we built it.
		We lost thousands, 30,000-plus lives building that thing.
		We paid for it.
		Now it's being run by China.
		Thank you, Democrats.
		With regard to the border, didn't a border patrol agent just get killed by people crossing over the Canadian border?
		Thank you, Democrats.
		I mean, come on, John.
		We voted for Trump to be a change agent, and he's being a change agent.
		Not everything is going to go smooth, but I think in the end, I'll tell you what, the inflation rate over the past four years has been 5% plus.
		My Social Security benefits went up about 1% a year.
		So in the end, it's a net loss.
		The same thing with wages: inflation versus wages, it's a net loss.
		Thank you, Democrats.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Lewis, you said not everything's going to go smooth.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think there's something that hasn't gone smooth so far?
unidentified		Well, I think it's been chaotic.
		I think Musk, you know, the federal government is not Twitter, but the same principles I think can be applied.
		The federal government, look at the aid, the U.S. AID program.
		The food.
		Did you hear the story about $50 million being spent on condoms going to Gaza?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Lewis, I saw a fact check on that in the Washington Post yesterday on that.
		It was Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker, the Washington Post, giving it four Pinocchios, his worst rating for that.
		That was just one of the fact checks on that particular story that's gotten a lot of attention.
unidentified		Well, thank you for the fact checkers.
		Who's the fact-checker, John?
		Is anybody checking them?
		Did that come from PolitiFacts?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Washington Post, Glenn Kessler is his name.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		He's been their fact-checker for a long time there.
unidentified		All right, the Washington Post.
		There's a reliable source for fact-checking.
		Well, maybe that's true, but still, the U.S. AID program, when you send aid to Gaza, it's taken by Hamas.
		Is that not true?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Lewis.
		Thank you, Colorado.
		Cody, in Indiana, it's Indiana, Pennsylvania, I should say.
		Independent, good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
unidentified		Howard Stern.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Jeff, St. Paul, Minnesota, Democrat.
		Good morning.
		You are next.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Yeah, my name's Jeff.
		Going to the other gentleman that just talked about Donald Trump being a change agent.
		I would definitely say he is more focused on the agent part.
		But as far as what I'm calling in to place importance on, I would ask all Republicans and Democrats to look at what happened this past weekend.
		An unelected official tried to access our Social Security and our Medicare over $6.1 trillion.
		That's not okay.
		America needs to stand strong against Elon Musk and everything he's trying to do.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Jeff.
		This is Beth in Florida.
		Good morning, Republican.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, John.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just wanted to say a couple things.
		Number one, firstly, I am so thankful for our country being saved by President Trump.
		He has done more in the last couple of days, a little over a week that he's been in office, than the past four years.
		He's got total transparency.
		He answers everything from the reporters.
		We know what's going on.
		He is pro-American, and I am just so proud to have voted for him and that he got in by a landslide.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We're going to end it there.
		Marco Rubio is starting to speak from Panama.
		Here's the Secretary of State.
unidentified		This is evidence of the great partnership that exists between the U.S. and Panama, a country that is a friend, a brother, that we have many ties with, and a great deal of cooperation.
		What's happened in this hemisphere with mass migration is quite unfortunate.
		It's a tragedy, and we have people who, as part of this process, in many cases, people are victims or have been victimized through this irregular path that has created issues for many countries in the region.
		We also understand from the United States that most people who come in here have, as a goal, eventually making it to the United States.
		So you could say that at a certain point, our border doesn't begin at Texas or Mexico.
		It begins a lot farther down.
		And what we can do is create incentives so people don't make that trip.
		We've seen a cooperation program today that helps prevent people with criminal histories.
		And in this case, in this group, there were six or seven people with criminal histories.
		So the idea is to prevent them from going forward and creating problems in Panama, but other countries as well.
		And that would be impossible without the cooperation of the United States with the government of our friends here in Panama.
		We have worked very hard together and we will continue to do so as a part of very many things where we do have strong cooperation with our friends and partners in the Panamanian government.
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		Tragedies in the modern era.
		It impacts countries throughout the route.
		We recognize that many of the people who seek mass migration are often victims and victimized along the way.
		It's not good for anyone.
		The only people who benefit from mass migration are traffickers.
		And so this is a program that shows how cooperating with our strong allies here in Panama can help to stem the flow by creating a disincentive, by sending a clear message that if you come and you come irregularly, you may be stopped and you may be returned to your country of origin.
		And it can be done in a regular and dignified but effective way.
		And we've seen it in the numbers.
		The numbers have dramatically declined.
		This program is, and what you saw here today, was possible due to a partnership between the United States and our friends here in Panama.
		And part of it is taxpayers' dollars at work through the State Department and through the programs we provide.
		This flight today was possible due to a waiver that we've issued, and we're going to issue a broader one to continue this cooperation.
		This is an example of the kind of program at the State Department that helps make America stronger and safer and more prosperous and also strengthens the work of our willing allies like we find here in Panama.
		It's an effective program, one that works.
		In this flight alone, there were at least six or seven people with criminal records, many of whom were seeking to continue forward.
		And it destabilizes all the countries along the route and along the way.
		And ultimately, if they reach the southern border of the United States and enter the United States, it creates serious problems for us.
		This is an effective way to stem the flow of illegal migration, of mass migration, which is destructive and destabilizing.
		And it would have been impossible to do without the strong partnership we have here with our friends and allies in Panama.
		And we're going to continue to do it, and we're grateful for it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Secretary of State Marco Rubio there.
		You heard the interpretation at the beginning, and then Marco Rubio speaking as well.
		He leaving the Panama Canal zone after that visit and here on Capitol Hill.
		It's another busy morning.
		The Senate is back in at 3 p.m. Eastern today.
		Plenty of events here in Washington that we'll be covering.
		And also coming up a view from the White House today of what's happening at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
		We're going to take you there in about 10 minutes this morning on the Washington Journal.
		Until that time, it's our open forum continuing to hear from you this morning about what's on your mind.
		This is Paul in Connecticut, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		I believe.
		The fact-checking is very slim these days, especially on the Sunday morning programs.
		For these misinformed people to constantly bring up issues of loss of lives in the Panama Canal, most of those lives were lost under the French.
		The Americans took it over, and with their administrative skills and cutting down on the yellow fever and the mosquito deaths, that issue, sanitary conditions, and so forth, they were able to prevail without much loss of life.
		There has been an update of the canal undertaken by the new canal authority.
		Like so many situations with our neighbors, including our best neighbors, they're cast to the winds for political expediency and campaign promises, i.e., Canada.
		Canada was the first to stand behind us post-9/11, and they lost lives as a key ally.
		Now, isn't it amazing when you hear these people talk about the socialist state north of us, and all they can do is spread racist and genocidal talk through the official office of the president's spokesman when she lied knowingly, giggling, stating this trash about condoms going to Gaza.
		Like, in other words, look at us and the oxymoron that we're putting out: genocide being committed, loss of lives, and the symbol of condoms, which is what?
		Preventing life.
		It's no comparison.
		It was done for genocidal purposes and to prop up Netanyahu, who's soon to visit here.
		We need to stand by our key allies, but we also need to be getting the truth from our media.
		And we need to have media officials put a check on these constants.
		You know, when you hear this stuff day after day after day, and there's no, and I appreciate your pushback.
		You did push back on that fellow, but they come on with rapid fire, mistruths, and misinformation, which is partisan in nature.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, Paul, you mentioned the Panama Canal zone and the numbers of Americans who died during that construction.
		That number cited by the viewer, he said 30,000.
		The president has said as high as 38,000.
		USA Today, with a fact check after the president's inauguration, on the history of that, saying that there were multiple attempts to build the Panama Canal, and that while thousands of people did die in those efforts, the toll of American deaths does not remotely approach 38,000 lives.
		Matthew Parker, the author of Hell's Gorge, The Battle to Build the Panama Canal, told the BBC that about 25,000 people died, many from mosquito-borne illnesses, in the failed French attempt to build the canal in the 1880s.
		Parker said virtually none was American, though.
		Rather, those were largely French and Jamaican.
		During the U.S. period of construction, from about 1904 to 1914, about 6,000 people died, he said in his BBC interview, almost all of whom were from the Barbados.
		About 300 Americans died in that effort.
		Those figures largely in line with other estimates of the death toll in the effort to build the canal, which, of course, was completed in 1914.
		Richard, Oceanside, California Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, John.
		You have just been muted on the TV, but you're still on the phone.
		Thank you for being there.
		I appreciate your discussion today.
		The one I watched with Congress and Trump legislative agenda and their reluctance to openly criticize the president was a good one.
		I have in my hand, as I did last time I spoke with you, was back at the end of December on the 31st, I believe, a copy of my local newspaper, the San Diego Union Tribune, on page nine of the local section.
		This paper's been around since 1868, a political cartoon.
		I love political cartoons.
		And the last one showed the cabinet pics.
		It's kind of interesting.
		This one shows from Peter Cruper of politicalcartoons.com, a large living room, barren except for the giant reptile.
glenn spencer ▲ ● ▼		Wife speaking at her husband, and it says the title is: Can We Still Even Refer to It as the Elephant in the Room?
unidentified		And ingested apparently into this giant reptile as an elephant, the symbol of the Republican Party.
		I find that very amusing.
		That was just a couple of days ago.
		I get a kick out of political cartoons.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why do you like political cartoons so much there, Richard?
unidentified		Well, they're kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing instead of listening to people talk about stuff.
		I read, for instance, Harper's Magazine.
		Harper's Magazine has been around since 1850.
glenn spencer ▲ ● ▼		This newspaper's been around since 1868, I think it was.
unidentified		And these are a little bit more reliable than other people's opinions.
		I like the cartoons.
		You can make up your own mind.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And when you say make up your own mind in terms of how you interpret the cartoon, or exactly.
unidentified		Yeah, some people might think it's humorous.
		Some people might think it's rude.
		I don't know, but I find Donald Trump to be kind of reptilian in his ways, and that's why the cartoon amused me.
		He has those reptile-like eyes.
		And Matthew Karp, a PhD professor at Princeton, in Harper's Magazine just recently, he referred to this statement among his many others.
		He said, the orancorous reptilian, essentially unknowable right, rising from the waste like Trump, Putin, or Sauron, receives the Promethean gift of historical agency.
		I find that to be a well-written piece.
		And Sauron, you may know or remember, some people might, if I remember right, he was the evil sorcerer in the story The Lord of the Rings, if I remember right.
		It was a long time ago.
		I haven't read that book for 60 years.
		But Sauron, S-A-U-R-O-N.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I know the character, Richard.
		I tell you what, Richard, if you like political cartoons, go to C-SPAN's American History TV, C-SPAN.org/slash history.
		And there are plenty of programs in which we've covered political cartoons.
		This was one from just a couple years ago about the famous cartoonist, political cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, his cartoons from LBJ to Reagan's time.
		You can see a lot of the political cartoons in these various lectures and events that we've covered.
		C-span.org.
		Slash history.
unidentified		If that's what you're into Richards, with yours it's time to go.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead and finish out Richard, i've got.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I've got to head over to the White House in a little bit here, but what else you want to say?
unidentified		Last thing is from Merriam Webster's, the word of the day that I like to read also, and it's an adjective.
		It says, what does this word mean?
		This uh word is disputatious.
		Basically, without reading the whole thing, it means an argumentative person, especially a dude that likes controversies, and those that provoke debate or controversy for their own benefit.
		That's all I got to say, John.
		Thank you for your time and good luck.
		Trump, he's gonna need it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Richard in Oceanside California, as promised.
		Now we head down Pennsylvania Avenue to 1600.
		Brett Samuels of THE HILL Newspaper joins us there.
		White House reporter Brett Samuels.
		This morning we were talking about the Trump tariffs that he signed on saturday go into effect on tuesday.
		Plenty of reaction on the sunday shows yesterday.
		What's the most interesting reaction you've seen from your perch at the White House?
unidentified		Most part, Republicans uh have been in line with this decision to impose tariffs on on the United States' top three international trading partners.
		We have seen some Republican criticism.
		Mitch Mcconnell, on 60 Minutes was was sort of critical, saying you know that this is a move that will raise prices.
		He didn't really understand why you would do something that would raise prices uh.
		But for the most part, you know, Republicans seem to be in favor of this.
		They feel like it's uh time to impose sort of consequences on Canada Mexico, China for the influx of fentanyl into the United States.
		So they are in line with Trump on this, even though uh, you know, it seems poised to create uh, a widespread trade war.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are we expecting to hear more from the president today?
		We heard a few comments last night from the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base.
		Is he going to speak to the media today or is there going to be a press briefing today?
unidentified		Yeah, we're still waiting to hear uh exactly what capacity we'll hear from the White House, and there is an expectation we'll hear either from the president or uh from press secretary Caroline Levitt.
		Uh, you know, as far as public events, the only public event currently we're tracking here at the White House is the Florida Panthers, the independent champion hockey team, is in town to meet with the president uh, but I would expect we'll hear from him in some capacity.
		I was there on the tarmac last night uh, when he told us that he would be speaking this morning with Justin Trudeau of Canada leadership from Mexico.
		So uh, certainly we'll be closely tracking.
		Uh, you know what the White House has to say about how those calls went.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And with the president set to meet with an NHL hockey team, do you think he'll bring up the booing of the U.s national anthem at that Nhl game?
		I think it was yesterday that happened and went viral on social media.
		Do we expect the president to address that?
unidentified		Yeah, it's a great question.
		You know, with Trump, you you always sort of uh leave the door open for him to weigh in on sort of day-to-day events like that.
		Uh, you know certainly, as you Mentioned, we saw that at the hockey game, we saw it at the Toronto Raptors game, the basketball Game.
		Again, there was booing of the U.S. national anthem.
		And that's exactly the kind of reaction that I think tends to get Trump's attention and tends to sort of rile him up a bit.
		So, you know, certainly I wouldn't be surprised if we see him weigh in either at that visit or on social media in some capacity.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, staying on foreign affairs, you mentioned a visit, Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Washington, D.C. this week.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Preview what's going to be happening there at the White House and where the Prime Minister will be.
unidentified		Yes, certainly.
		Prime Minister Netanyahu expected here at the White House on Tuesday, expecting sort of a chaotic sort of madhouse atmosphere, I think, which we've seen certainly in the first couple weeks of the Trump administration where there's just sort of a huge surge of people here interested in what's happening, especially when there's a foreign leader visit, especially when that foreign leader is Prime Minister Netanyahu, who obviously has a lot of outside attention, certainly whenever he's in town.
		But certainly expecting on Tuesday to see President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu together sort of touting this ceasefire deal, which was announced during the Biden administration, but which the Trump administration has not been shy about taking credit for.
		We saw hostages released over the weekend, including one American and Israeli citizen.
		And again, the Trump White House was quick to sort of take credit and say that this was because of a deal that Trump was able to broker.
		So, you know, Trump and Netanyahu have a pretty strong relationship, and certainly it'll be interesting to see, you know, sort of the public-facing side of that relationship, especially given how fraught the Biden-Netanyahu relationship was during the last presidency.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And that was the question, the significance of this being the first foreign leader visit to Washington, to the White House in the second Trump administration.
unidentified		Absolutely, yeah.
		I think it's easy to read into that, into the significance of Netanyahu being the first foreign leader to be welcomed to the White House.
		Biden and Netanyahu obviously had their differences.
		Biden would publicly criticize Netanyahu, suggested he was making it more difficult to rally support for Israel and its war against Hamas.
		With Trump, though, he has sort of, you know, he's been very vocally pro-Israel, even though at times during the campaign he suggested Israel was losing the PR campaign, as he put it, a couple times.
		But, you know, Trump and Netanyahu have this very strong relationship.
		Obviously, Trump welcoming Netanyahu to the White House just a couple weeks into his second term.
		I think they want to sort of tout this partnership, tout Trump's support for Israel.
		And certainly it'll be interesting to see what Trump has to say about sort of the future of Gaza.
		Certainly, we've heard him talk about wanting to sort of clean out Gaza, have other Middle Eastern nations take more Palestinians in.
		So certainly it'll be closely monitored what those two have to say here tomorrow.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And then finally, Brett Samuels, just walk us through what we should be watching for in terms of Trump nominees on Capitol Hill this week and confirmation votes for nominees that were on the Hill last week.
unidentified		Yes, certainly.
		I think, you know, last week obviously was a huge consequential week of hearings with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, who's the nominee for Director of National Intelligence.
		RFK Jr. is expected to have a committee vote this week.
		Certainly Tulsi Gabbard, I think, is going to be one that is worth closely watching because there is some question about whether she will even get through the committee or whether she'd be favorably reported out of the committee.
		You know, all eyes are on Todd Young, the senator from Indiana, who's on that panel, who has sort of been critical of her nomination.
		So those I think are the two that are worth closely watching.
		There are other nominees who are expected to get votes this week.
		Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright, for example, may get confirmed early this week.
		But certainly, you know, continues to be busy on Capitol Hill, be busy here at the White House.
		There's also an expected foreign leader visit at the end of the week, the Japanese prime minister in town.
		So, lots of action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue this week.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Brett Samuels is always busy and always good to us here at the Washington Journal.
		Thanks for joining us this morning.
		If you want to see his stories, it's thehill.com.
		We'll let you start your day, Brett Samuels.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		Appreciate it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Back to your phone calls now.
		Open forum continues on the Washington Journal.
		Another few minutes here, taking your calls on whatever's on your mind this Monday morning here in Washington, D.C., and around the country.
		This is Ken in Madison, Wisconsin, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
		Go ahead.
		I was wanting to comment on something that's really important, and that's term limits.
		How about term limits for the president, which is now two, but if we made it one in five, one term, five years, every president would then be essentially a lame duck president, and he would have to get elected, get it done, and get out and pass on to somebody else who wants to be president of the United States.
		And I wish somebody would start discussing this.
		I can't seem to get through to people that we don't want to have a king there, then let's not elect him a second time.
		Also, Trump would not be running for a second term.
		Biden would not be running for a second term.
		And even Obama would not be running for a second term.
		So I think this idea needs to be discussed.
		What do you think?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So it's the re-election that's the problem, Ken?
unidentified		I think so, don't you?
		I mean, Trump got into office and he said, I'm running for a second term.
		Well, why don't you get something done first and then decide to run?
		And he was assuming he was going to get elected again.
		And he was very disappointed when he didn't.
		And he made a big deal out of it.
		And now we have him back again.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What about members of Congress, Ken?
unidentified		Well, that can be debated too, but I think let's start with the most powerful man in the country.
		They do this in parliamentary systems where if you don't have confidence in the person who's running, they say start a new government.
		And I think we should really get in there and amend the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution and make it one term, five years.
		Now, five years would mean you get three Congresses that you get to work on, not just two.
		Plus, you're going to have an election in an odd year, which allows people to really debate the issue about the president.
		But, you know, we can't do anything unless someone brings this up and starts talking about it.
		So I've had a hard time trying to get through to people on this.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ken, thanks for bringing it up in Madison, Wisconsin.
		This is Mark in Maine out on Mount Desert Island.
		It's Northeast Harbor.
		Line for Democrats.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Morning to you, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, I would agree with the previous caller about term limits, definitely, for Congress and Senate.
		But the reason I called is I would really like to see a segment or a guest concerning Elon Musk and his associates getting into the computer system with all of our social security numbers and banking information.
		So, plus the fact that I haven't heard a peep about it on any of the mainstream media and not much on C-SPAN.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mark, always appreciate suggestions.
		I imagine that's something we will certainly dive into on one of the programs, whether it's this week or the coming weekend.
		But thank you for that.
		Joan in Cleveland, Ohio, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just wanted to make a comment.
		You know, the Super Bowl is coming up this weekend, I believe.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		And what I want to tell the parents and grandparents, if you haven't gone when your children were young and in T-ball, football and that, you don't belong at these games.
		Those were the most important people in your life, and you didn't take care of them.
		There's no such thing.
		You can't make up for lost time and put the money, give the money to them to go to college instead of all this hoop-a-la.
		I myself am not really a football fan, but I am so disappointed because when I was young with mine, I made sure I went to basketball, baseball, football.
		And all you fathers and grandparents out there don't care about your kids.
		You're more enthused about the big guys playing in a Super Bowl.
		And I say you don't belong there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Joan in Ohio.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joan, are you going to watch?
unidentified		No, like I said, I have nothing to do with them.
		I did my share.
		I'm 80 years old, and all I can tell you is what I see why our kids are getting into so much trouble is because the parents don't care about their kids and going to their games.
		They're more enthused about going to the bars, having fun, and just totally putting their children aside.
		So I think it's about time these parents and grandparents start doing their job and quit worrying about the major leagues and all the other games out there.
		I really feel sorry for them because you can't imagine how much fun you have and they have when you're there watching them.
		They're always looking back to the parents and the grandparents to see what kind of reaction they're getting.
		So, you know, if they got to first base, how happy everybody is.
		Okay, if they're playing football and made it to the 50-yard line or made a touchdown, everybody's jumping for joy.
		And the same thing is with basketball.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was your favorite sport to watch, Joan?
unidentified		Pardon?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was your favorite sport to watch?
unidentified		Well, I'm not into basketball at all.
		And I only watch the Cleveland Browns when it's on TV, of course.
		And since I really don't know who's playing anymore, and it's hard to keep up with them, all I say is the Browns have to reorganize.
		And they got so much trouble about where the stadium's supposed to stay in Cleveland or move it out to Brook Park.
		You've got so much commotion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joan, if the Browns make it to the Super Bowl at some point in the future, will you watch it then?
unidentified		Well, wait a minute.
unidentified		I could watch these sports anytime I wanted to, but I'm saying for the parents now, forget about watching the Browns in any game and get to where your kids are playing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		You could miss those games.
		They're not your life.
		Those players get paid so much money, and it's like even that's even ridiculous.
		And you can't even afford to get a ticket to go to the games.
		So how much do you want to put into them?
		My life is more important than all the sports out there, okay?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joan, thanks for the call from Cleveland, Ohio, our last caller in Open Forum.
		Up next this morning, a discussion with George Washington University professor Casey Burgitt about his new book, We Hold These Truths, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
		Stick around.
		We'll be right back.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Casey Burgitt joins us now.
		He's the author of the new book, We Hold These Truths, with, as you'll notice, truths in quotation marks.
		The subtitle, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
		Casey Burgett, what are some of the truths that you believe are actually myths or even outright lies?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Where do we begin, John?
		Thanks for having me, and I really appreciate the quotes emphasis there because there are a lot of myths within our system that sometimes we fall for on accident, and sometimes they're put on us on purpose from politicians, the lobbying shops.
		This all matters.
		And so, the myths are permeating our systems all the way from the Supreme Court to lobbyist campaign finance, what members of Congress do, the filibuster term limits.
		It's a wide list.
		So, tell me where you want to start, and let's jump in.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Give me an example of one of those myths.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		One of those is term limits.
		I mean, this is my baby that it frustrates me to no end.
		Where term limits to kick out members of Congress after a certain period of time just will empower the wrong people, right?
		If you're frustrated that the president is too powerful, that unelected bureaucrats are too powerful, lobbyists are too powerful, term limits will exacerbate that power dynamic and make polarization work all at the same time.
		So, stop wanting it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Another myth that you talk about in this book, that members of Congress don't do anything.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's true.
		I often hear from my friends back home about members of Congress, they're always on races, and they're picturing them out on the playground playing freeze tag or something, but that ain't it.
		When members of Congress go back home, they're often working more hours than they even do in D.C.
		And when they are in D.C., their blocks of scheduling are 15 minutes at a time, where they're constantly racing from hearings to subcommittee meetings, back to meet with constituents.
		This is a really demanding job, and to undermine it by saying that they're not doing anything just because they're not doing what you want them to do is a really uneffective way to think about Congress, and it matters that it makes us distrust it and think that it's not working the way that it should.
		There are reasons it's not working, but it's not that one.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How about this one?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Bipartisanship is dead, something we hear when viewers call in?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		100%, and this is what I hear from my drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, too, right?
		That they need to work together.
		That all we, there's solutions out there, there's common sense solutions, and they just purposefully choose not to work for each other.
		That's sometimes true, but if you get a law, like we're about ready to have another funding government shutdown fight here, and Republicans are going to need Democratic support.
		If you get a law, you're going to need bipartisan support, right?
		Even with unified government, with Republicans in the House, Republicans in the Senate, and obviously Donald Trump in the White House, often these big bills that have meaningful differences in people's lives are going to need Democratic support to get it done.
		And when you look at the data, the bills that become laws are the ones that you have that bipartisan support, which means when members of Congress are trying to go it alone, when they're only trying to go with their own party, they're not going to get the law.
		They want the issue, they want the fight, and we should be able to spot the difference.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		There's another dozen or so myths that Casey Burgitt talks about in his new book, We Hold These Truths.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why did you feel like you need to write this book now?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		To be honest with you, it needed to be written a long time ago.
		And now it's finally a good time to look at the way of the world where we turn on the news and all of a sudden the things that we took for granted for so long, like Congress appropriates the money, Congress has the power of the purse.
		Today, you flip on any news channel, you're talking about President Donald Trump taking over the power of the purse.
		And so, there's just a wholesale lack of civics education in this country where almost a quarter of our citizens can't name the three branches of government.
		That's bad.
		That ain't good, and it leaves us vulnerable to politicians taking advantage of that ignorance and then using it to their own political ends.
		All of that is bad for institutions, it's bad for trust in government, and we need to increase trust right now way more than we need to have these partisan fights.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who'd you work with to write this book?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Almost everybody.
		Like, this was the fun part: going to find practitioners.
		We could write this book on our own, or I could sit down and write this book on my own, but I didn't want to do that.
		I wanted to go get people who live these jobs, including former members of Congress.
		We have academics, we have President Trump's former White House Communications Director to not only point out the bipartisanship of these myths, but also that people can tell their stories from the day-to-day lives that they've led, living them out.
		And some of them are honest saying, yeah, I actually take advantage of this, people not knowing the truth of this.
		Campaign Finance is one of those examples.
		So I went and got an all-star team of former representatives, the smartest and most accessible academics out there, and then some really good practitioners who have actually lived and worked these jobs every single day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's Steve Vladdick and why does he believe it's a myth that the Supreme Court has become politicized?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Steve Vladdick is one of the main voices on Supreme Court decisions where he explains exactly what's going behind.
		He has an incredibly popular book called The Shadow Docket.
		If you haven't read it, go check it out.
		And he just explains the power behind the power of the Supreme Court.
		And that myth that the Supreme Court has become too politicized breaks down the idea that the Supreme Court has ever not been politicized.
		I mean, the nominees are put forward by political actors and presidents.
		They're confirmed by political actors and senators.
		And then they decide political questions.
		And so if you're frustrated about the Supreme Court, and you should be, there's a lot of reasons to be frustrated about how it works, how it conducts its business, how non-transparent it is, then the only branch of government that can actually change it, whether it's the number of opening up Supreme Court hearings, the number of justices on the course, is Congress.
		So you're going to need political actors to get involved in the politics of Supreme Court, even though you want to think about it as this neutral arbiter.
		It never has been, never will be, and we should be honest about that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's Matt Fuller and why does he think that it's a myth that the media wants to polarize us?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Matt Fuller is now the Washington editor for Notice, where he's a longtime Capitol Hill beat reporter.
		He talks, he has a really interesting connection with a lot of Tea Party members where members of Congress look to Matt and they have really, really good, honest conversations.
		And his chapter is about the myth of media polarization, that the media is kind of an easy scapegoat, that you can't trust us.
		We now see literal presidential campaigns calling the media the enemy of the people.
		That ain't good.
		That's a reminiscent of Nixon days to foster distrust in those that are meant to give you the news.
		And the myth there with the media is that we kind of get what we want, right?
		Like this is the Netflix generation, that you don't just get in your feeds random bits of news information.
		We select it and algorithms are meant to make it more and more dialed into exactly what we want.
		So the myths are that, one, the media is this all-encompassing being that goes from the New York Times to some teenager with a phone in his basement.
		That ain't the media.
		There are very, very different standards about what they're able to report on, the levels of fact-checking that go into.
		Media sources are subject to libel laws where a lot of things within social media are not subject to those two.
		And then that it wants to polarize us.
		The people I know in the media want to tell you the truth.
		They want to tell you the stories.
		They want to tell you, they don't want to tell you only good news.
		That's a misconception, but they want to tell you what's happening behind the scenes.
		And I'm glad that they're there as a watchdog of American government.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Kind of you to say the words dialed in.
		Let me give the phone numbers for viewers to join us this morning.
		As usual, split by political party.
		Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Casey Bergitt, with us until the top of the hour and taking your phone calls this morning.
		For viewers that don't know your background, though you've been on C-SPAN plenty of times, how have you been around this institution?
		How long and where have you worked?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I love C-SPAN.
		You guys are my favorite nerds out there.
		So before I got a PhD in American government with a focus on Congress, while I was finishing that up, I worked at the Congressional Research Service, which, if viewers don't know, is Congress's private nonpartisan think tank.
		And there I focused on issues of congressional reform, making politics work a little bit better with a focus on the first branch of government.
		I worked at some think tanks around town doing the same thing but in a more public way.
		And now I lead the master's program in legislative affairs at George Washington University because I always love the teaching side too.
		So have a good home now at GW and can still think, write, and talk about the things that matter to me and fixing some political problems is high atop that list.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And time to write a book.
		We hold these truths, how to spot the myths that are holding America back.
		A quote from that book, the tough to swallow truth about our politics is that there are no quick fixes to our big problems and we have big problems, many.
		But there is no savior candidate with the cure-all political platform coming to rescue us and expecting one is actually perpetuating our dysfunction.
		The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can have the necessary and honest conversations on what to do about it, and the sooner we, the people, can return from our cliff edge of futility and engage in solutions because there are things we can do, lots of them.
		What are those things that we can do?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Dang, that sounded good.
		John, did I write?
		That's awesome.
		Thank you for reading that.
		There's a lot we can do, but the point is that we need to stop falling for this I alone can fix it mentality, right?
		And we see this playing out in the first couple weeks of the Trump administration in a way that we haven't seen before so explicitly, where we just think that if we get one more law, if we get our candidate elected into office, if we remove campaign finance perversions, then all of a sudden all these things that are at our core pretty broken.
		It's not true.
		And to keep falling for that is kind of perpetuating this doom loop of a cycle that we keep finding ourselves in, leading to the cynicism that makes people step out rather than step in.
		And we need more people to step in.
		And so a lot of those solutions, as much as I want to say all you have to do is this one, two, three, anyone that is telling you one, two, three, alarm bells should be going off in your head that maybe they're trying to take advantage of the simplistic solutions that just simply won't solve all of our problems.
		So checking who your media sources are.
		When you're talking about politics with your friends, which you probably need to do more often, we try to avoid them all the times.
		But go find a friend who doesn't think like you do.
		And then try to get to why they think that instead of trying to convince them that they're wrong or dumb or misguided.
		Those aren't helpful conversations.
		But even when you talk about news sources, when you say, I saw a thing that, don't say that.
		Say where you got your information because even if you have to say it out loud, you're going to check yourself in a way where you don't just say, hey, I saw on Reddit or I saw on Joe Rogan, right?
		That's different than saying, I saw a report from the CDC, that I saw a report from the New York Times.
		Say your sources in your conversation.
		And I bet you will be surprised at where you're equating one to the other.
		They're not the same thing.
		The other thing that you need to get involved and then get involved can take a lot of different forms, right?
		Start a book club.
		Start a conversation.
		Go to a city council meeting.
		Stop paying attention to the national politics where ironically you have the least amount of impact and start paying attention to your local politics where they'll love for you to show up.
		They're begging for people to be interested in.
		Plus, if you want politics to be a hobby and entertaining like wrestling, go to a city council meeting.
		Those things are wild.
		I really, really recommend it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me let you chat with some callers.
		This is Barbara out of Pennsylvania.
		Line for Democrats.
		Good morning.
		You're up first with Casey Bergen.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Okay, so I'm listening to what you're saying.
		And here are a couple of thoughts.
		First of all, we don't teach social studies anymore in a lot of the schools.
		And people don't know where to search for trusted information.
		Then they don't trust documented information from government sources.
		We have 21% or one out of five people in the country that are actually illiterate.
		They can't read.
		And then you have the project 2025 that wants to eliminate the Department of Education and replace it with people that don't even have a teaching degree.
		And there's one more thought.
		I remember, and people can Google this, Trump said to a group of Israeli people that he, quote, loves the poorly educated.
		And they cheered.
		This is what we're dealing with.
		So thanks for listening.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Barbara in Pennsylvania.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Casey Burgett.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Barbara, thank you.
		And you're right on.
		We do teach social studies, but what we don't teach, if you've talked to previous generations, what we don't teach is civics.
		It's one thing to know the organization of Congress and the House versus the Senate.
		It's another thing to know the date of when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
		But it's a very, very different thing to be an active participant in our democracy, right?
		To show up to meetings, to read a ballot, to understand the power structures between who has decisions over what authority right now.
		That's being, that's a civics lesson.
		And we need to reinstitute civics in the classrooms.
		And I like to think of this book as kind of that parting or that entry point into our civics education, knowing that it's not in our classrooms anymore.
		And so I'm right with you, Barbara, that we need to kind of reorient ourselves to teach folks before they become voters how to become a voter.
		It's really backwards to think that we just send 18-year-olds out into the world without the training to be an active participant in our democracy.
		So I'm right there with you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do we need to just get back to the founders and their infinite wisdom?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		John, that's a good transition.
		That's chapter one in the book where it takes down the myth that the founders had everything decided for us back in 1787, right?
		That we don't need to update our government because they had it all right and all we need to do is follow their instincts, follow their lessons.
		And this is one of those instances in politics, this is often true, where two things can be true at the same time.
		They were geniuses and we can still improve their work product, right?
		And the irony here is that they gave us a method to do that.
		They were under no illusions that they had every answer for their time, let alone in 250 years when we have Bitcoin and Google and Amazon, things they couldn't even comprehend.
		And they left us a way to update our system through the amendment structure and Congress to make sure that we have a functioning democracy in the time in which we live.
		And we need to take advantage of that more often than we have.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The caller Barbara had mentioned that people don't know where to go for trusted information.
		You worked at the Congressional Research Service.
		When members of Congress have a question about an issue, they turn to the Congressional Research Service, CRS, as it's known on Capitol Hill.
		Where did you go for trusted information?
		What advice would you give to the people that Barbara is worried about?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is where that media chapter really comes back into play.
		So government data is very trustworthy.
		And start looking at the sources where people cite, right?
		And so on the media side, when you look at those big legacy media, I know they're getting trashed all about town right now, but when the legacy media sources report a story, we should be educated about how many levels of fact checking go into getting a story reported out.
		This ain't a blog, right?
		These are people's careers where if they report misinformation, especially if they do it on purpose for some sort of partisan slant, their career's over.
		That's a very, very different calculation than just throwing something up on Wikipedia, throwing something up on a blog where your opinion is intermersed with fact.
		Those news sources where it is legacy media.
		And don't confuse cable news with news, right?
		Cable news is right there in the name where they've literally argued in court with Fox News saying we're an entertainment company.
		And knowing that as you select these news channels takes a lot of, puts some onus back on us, the consumers, because they're giving us what they want.
		In a profit-driven model, they're not going to give us what we don't want.
		That's how they go out of business.
		They're giving us what we've proven to want.
		And we like the salacious.
		We like the dramatic.
		We like the partisan fights where we pretend we don't and we tell our friends we don't.
		But our consumption habits are telling a different story.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To Texas, this is Andrea Independent.
		Good morning.
		You're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Mr. Cassie, I just want to say thank you, God, for coming on this channel so serious.
		This is my second time calling in.
		And my first time, I actually talked to John, and I was talking about how American people are so ignorant with voting and that they don't know the basics, which is what you had already cited, which is the three branches of government.
		So I just appreciate you reiterating that.
		I had wrote a lot of stuff down, but I know I don't want John to cut me off.
		So let me just get to this point.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I won't cut you off, Andrea.
unidentified		So you have said a lot of stuff, which my question that I had came out, but I'm going to ask you anyway, because I want you to reiterate it because as we know, people don't hear you until you say it at least three times.
		So I wanted to ask you to, can you share with us how we can become actively involved in this political democracy, or I don't want to offend nobody,
		this republic democracy that we have, and also how people can help themselves to discern between where they are being, they are falling into a tribal group versus an educated citizen.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		No, I appreciate it, and I appreciate the kind words at the top.
		And I'm going to take the second part first because it's actually a chapter within the book where we like to claim political independence, right?
		I vote the issues, not the party.
		And whichever candidate speaks to my issues, I'm willing to jump from D to R to I so long as I'm finding that right person.
		The data don't support that.
		We actually, even when we claim political independence, we are much, much more likely to reverse engineer our vote to support the conclusions we already came to the ballot box with, right?
		We're willing to explain some behavior from political parties that we support when we're willing to blame political actors in the other party for doing the exact same thing, right?
		We are not equal and we're not showing up to the table with this pros and cons listed to ultimately decide who our candidate is.
		We are partisan beings and it's important to recognize that so that then we can do what my best recommendation is for people who are struggling to get involved.
		And the first thing you can do is just pause, right?
		To not respond emotionally, not respond out of defense of defending your position or your candidate or your party, but actually try to hear people.
		When you ask questions, that's very different.
		When you end sentences with a question mark rather than an exclamation point, different conversations start happening.
		And you'd be surprised with people with whom you'd fundamentally disagree with, who you never gave a chance before.
		You start hearing them, you hear who they are and why they came to those conclusions.
		That's a much different conversation.
		And if we can make that snowball, where my conversation with her and him turns into one that I'm having with 20 people, imagine how many people we can reach instead of starting yelling at.
		That's just a different model to follow.
		And it just starts with something as simple as pausing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your opinion of the filibuster?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		My personal one?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		So the filibuster is one of the biggest misconceptions out there, right?
		Where we picture like the Jimmy Stewart, Mr. Smith goes to Washington where there's this principled lawmaker standing on the Senate floor and just making this really emotional appeal to stop a piece of legislation from happening, okay?
		That's what people think is happening when things are filibustered.
		That's not what happens in 2025.
		The filibuster has taken a very, very different tone and method right now where it is used to block legislation from ever receiving a vote, right?
		So right now, the filibuster in the Senate is actually assumed.
		It's assumed, where you don't even see someone going to the floor to actually make that speech on the floor of reading Charles Dickens or a chicken noodle soup recipe.
		They don't even have to go to the floor at all.
		It's assumed.
		The last time we had a talking filibuster was Ted Cruz almost a decade ago.
		So the filibuster, when we think of that it forces politicians to the table to compromise to get over that super majority threshold of 60 votes in the Senate, it doesn't happen.
		Right now it's just used as this cudgel to keep things off the floor so that we never have to take these tough votes.
		Voting exposes people.
		It puts people where they stand and it makes people and especially voters know, what does my politician think?
		When you don't vote, you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and politicians love that because they can take advantage of being able to tell this audience this thing and this audience this thing and there's no no vote with their name attached to it to back it up.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Down to Port Charlotte, Florida, this is Fred Republican.
		Good morning.
		You're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified		Well, good morning and thank you very much.
		Casey, I have one quick question.
		Is it myth or truth that members of Congress and Senate partake in insider trading?
		Thank you very much.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Insider trading.
		I don't know.
		I don't have any firsthand account of members of Congress trading on information.
		But what I will say is that when you talk to everyday Americans and say, should members of Congress be able to trade stocks on industries and companies they oversee, they're often privy to top secret information before the public is, if the public ever is.
		That just creates even the appearance of a conflict of interest that I think members of Congress should be wise to respond to.
		So do I have personal instances of members of Congress trading or profiting on the information they have before the public does?
		No.
		But I still think that even the appearance of that conflict of impropriety just gives reason for people to distrust in an institution at a time when we need to raise the trust levels as high as we can get.
		So that STOCK Act, the thing that they've been debating for a couple Congresses now, I think they'd be wise to bring it up and respond to people's immediate distrust of a system.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's Steve Israel and why is he writing the chapter on the myth of politicians being bought and paid for?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the campaign finance one, this is the one that a lot of folks are going to want to talk about when we get outside the Trump news cycle.
		So in probably 12 years from now.
		But Steve Israel is a longtime member of Congress from New York and he wrote that chapter because he actually led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee where it is elected members for Democratic candidates and his job was to go recruit candidates and mostly to fundraise for those candidates to run for congressional seats.
		So he was literally the one in the room telling people to dial for dollars and that you have to meet your quotas and this is the amount of money it's going to take for you to win your seat and then especially come back after you won that first election.
		So he's the perfect person to write about what the incentives are to raise a lot of money in politics, but also where the actual influence is.
		We think that it's a, you're buying your seat to get in, right?
		Or that people are showing up with these brown paper bags like in an LBJ memoir and buying votes.
		That's not where the money influence is.
		It's kind of this mutually assured destruction, this Cold War mentality between R's and D's that we have to raise more than you.
		If you raise $100 million, we have to raise $101 million.
		And it's not necessarily buying votes at all.
		They're not changing their voting behavior, but more just raising a bunch of money because the other side's going to do it too.
		And these campaigns are really expensive.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		About 20 minutes left with Casey Burgett, George Washington University, professor and author of the book, We Hold These Truths: How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
		We'll head to the Keystone State.
		This is Ernie Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, John.
		I have two premises here that I want to object to all the rhetoric that Casey is spilling out tonight or today.
		One is he's omitting that there's a thing called censorship.
		People cannot say what they really want to say anywhere because they get cut off.
		And on top of that, there's an old adage that the fish rots from the head down.
		He's telling you to go to your city council.
		Powers is not flowing from the bottom up.
		Forget about that.
		That's a myth there.
		The other thing that he's omitting is ownership.
		All these media formats and all these channels and newspapers that he cited, 90% of them are owned by one tribe of people who have a monopoly on what we're going to hear and see on TV.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Casey Burgett.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the censorship question.
		I like that we can call in and voice our opinions while still claiming that we're being censored at the same time.
		So we need to check our media, right?
		And the point that we need to make is that we get what we want, and we shouldn't equate blogs and sub stacks with the news organizations who literally have to be subject to libel laws for reporting misinformation.
		So I get the frustration with the media.
		We're literally told, speaking of rotting from the top down, we're told by politicians not to trust the news sources unless they agree with us.
		And then they start putting out those and recommending those with clear partisan slants because they're obviously more favorable reporting.
		So there are some misunderstandings about what it takes to be a member of the media and what laws and requirements they are in terms of reporting their stories.
		And that's something that the media needs to get their message out better so that people do trust us and we can't keep falling for this.
		Trust them, but not that person type of media reporting.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Cleveland, Ohio, this is Laura, Line for Democrats.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yes, good morning.
		I have a couple questions.
jane graham ▲ ● ▼		One is about January 6th people that were let out of jail.
unidentified		Were any of those people charged with, I think it's called sedation, you know, treason, like against the federal government sedition, whatever it's called?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A question on January 6th, Casey Burgett.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you address that in your book?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		I don't take on January 6th at all, but I will say personally, I live about par five away from the Capitol, and this affected us, this community.
		People actually live in this area.
		And to say nothing of the, I know some members of Congress, I know a lot of staffers, and then especially the police officers who were there.
		And this is a personal thing for a lot of folks who lived through that event, though.
		I know that if you, it can be an abstraction, something that just will go down in the history books.
		That wasn't that way for us that day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Rich in Wisconsin Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Casey.
		Hey, question.
		A couple topics I just want to breeze over quickly.
		So when Barack Obama used the five eyes in the Intel community to spy on Hillary's opposition after they had found that she had this private server and then everybody in his cabinet was communicating with her over that server, which means that he had knowledge of it.
		Wouldn't that make him complicit in, I don't know, if somebody was getting that information and then for them to go after Trump for asking questions about the money laundering through Zelensky in Ukraine after they started the coup in 2014 and then they impeached him for it and then Joe Biden pardoned everybody who set him up for the phone call that they impeached him for.
		And then when they couldn't get him that route, they took him to court in favorable jurisdictions with people that came out of the Justice Department.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A lot of topics there, Casey Burgitt.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I'm going to avoid almost all of them because the point of this book is not to be they did this so we can do this or what about ism that is just incredibly unhelpful.
		You'll never win those debates and they shouldn't be debates in the first place.
		This book, the purpose of this book at this time is to talk about what we think is wrong and what is actually wrong.
		Because I think any caller and I can agree that there are a lot of things that we can and should do on policy fronts, right?
		From education to healthcare to immigration to climate change.
		There are things we must do in 2025, but we can't get there because we're distracted and having the wrong conversations over and over and over again.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What about the pardon power?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is that a conversation we should be having?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		But the Constitution does give the president the pardon power.
		So to change it, it's a conversation worth having, would take a constitutional amendment.
		There is a route to do that.
		And it should be kept in mind that the pardon power was given to a president at a time where there wasn't all of these layers of court cases that you can appeal.
		This was kind of a break class in case of emergency type power that obviously presidents, as their want to do, have extended and extended and extended, right?
		And so now we're having conversations that the founders never had in their brains as a potential.
		So if we want to change it and we're worried about it, there are routes to ameliate those concerns with a constitutional amendment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To the natural state, this is Willie in Arkansas.
		Democrat, good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Yeah, my question is, all the stuff you say, you know, we have learned through the books, civics, and social studies and stuff.
		Now, we learned all that back in the day.
		Okay.
		Now, they got, you know.
		My question is, they got, you know, somebody doing something different here lately.
		So what we learned.
		Why call?
		What's the problem?
		With something, you know, the same stuff we learned back in the days, we can't, it don't associate with us today.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Question about education again, Casey Burgitt?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's the same point, right?
		That civics is different than history, and civics is different than government even.
		One is an active participation requirement or knowledge, and one is kind of just knowing the theory behind it.
		Theory and practice are a very, very different thing.
		And we should to expect people to just know the theory and then go out and be a good player, it doesn't work like that.
		We should get people involved.
		And the younger, just like learning a language, the better, right?
		How to read a ballot.
		We in the United States have an incredible number of elections, right?
		Which means we're constantly facing this high-stakes emotion of showing up, deciding to get out, knowing what our city council does versus our mayor versus our state legislature.
		There's a lot to learn.
		And to pretend that it's simple or that the minute you turn 18, that you're ready to go do that and decide things for not only now, but in decades from now, generations from now, is just not a helpful way of conducting a government that requires the participation and the knowledge of its citizens, right?
		So if we want to have a government that requires the knowledge of its citizens, then let's educate our citizens in what it takes to have such a government.
		And that takes a lot of practice, and we should be purposeful about that instead of just pretending that the minute you turn 18, you're ready to go make decisions about everyone's future.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Houston, Roberto, Independent, good morning.
unidentified		Perfect timing.
		I'm a retired history government teacher, civics teacher, and what you're missing, and all of your guests miss this point, you have to practice democracy at your level.
		So I was a student council sponsor in high school in two different schools here in Houston.
		That's very important.
		I was in student council when I was in second grade, and I was elected treasurer.
		I'm sorry, I'm sorry, recording secretary.
		Guess what?
		I vote every time.
		You have to practice it.
		You just can't keep saying, take civics class, listen to what's being said.
		Three forms of government in the United States.
		All that goes in one ear, out the other.
		You've got to practice.
		The other thing is, and John, I hope you keep this number.
		It's a number you can call to get the name and telephone number of your representatives and your senators.
		That's how you get involved.
		Call these offices.
		Q02-224-3121.
		And my question is to you, I think Trump is losing it.
		We have an amendment to the Constitution.
		It was not used against Biden.
		I think eventually, because he only had four long years, I don't think he's going to last.
		We need the vice president to take over within the four years.
		So that has not been implemented.
		How do we implement that?
		So thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Roberto in Houston, the number, he gave out the number to the Capitol switchboard here in Washington, D.C., which you can get your member of Congress and call their offices directly.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Casey Burgett to what he said.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Amen to the first part about what he's saying, that practice is actually a key here, that it's not even enough to learn civics.
		You got to do civics.
		It's an active thing.
		And that means literally showing up, right?
		One of the biggest barriers to entry is kind of the fear of the unknown or the fear that I might make a mistake or I don't know what I think about this politician or this candidate or this policy.
		So therefore, I'll take a step back.
		No, it's got to be the other way around.
		And he's exactly right that you need to show up early.
		You see it in practice before you're ever being called on to be a decider, right?
		It's really helpful to see it and even mock it up in our classrooms and in our participation at the most local level.
		So completely agree with that.
		With the 25th Amendment question to basically have the cabinet kick out the sitting president of the United States and elevating the vice president, that's a route.
		That's an available option.
		It's a pretty dangerous one.
		There's a slippery slope out there to catch that.
		But the route is used or the route is available.
		If the cabinet thinks that the president of the United States is unfit for the job, they have that ability to do that to elevate JD Vance in this instance.
		There was conversation about that, obviously, in Biden's administration and then even in Trump's first term.
		But right now we don't see that as a likely scenario.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming back to the chapters of your book, who's Jane McManus and what did you ask Jane McManus to write about?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is the chapter that is not like the others, right?
		The myth is that sport, keep your politics out of my sports, right?
		And the underlying assumption there is that people are often frustrated when they turn on the TV and an athlete is making a political statement or making their stance heard.
		You can remember Colin Kaepernick kneeling at the national anthem, obviously intermingling sports and politics.
		But sports and politics have always been connected.
		Not only because athletes are some of the most revered people in the United States who have a genuine platform and they should be able to use it just like we expect anyone else, but also that sports conversations often precede political conversations, right?
		When we think about the black athletes raising the fist within the games against Hitler, these conversations can often foster a faster way to process a lot of the things that we're struggling with culturally.
		And given the amount of love and attention and support we give our sports figures, going back to the days of Roman emperors, sports and politics have always been intermingled.
		You don't have to shove it down your throats when you're watching the Super Bowl, but they should be recognized as kind of this helpful platform that not only sports figures can use, but we can use to bring ourselves together when it's oftentimes really hard to see each other outside of their party labels.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		These myths that your book focuses on, did they all start around the same time?
		Are these something that myths that have emerged in just the past couple decades?
		Or have we been dealing with a lot of these myths for the entirety of this experiment that is happening in the United States of America?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question, and it's individualistic to each of these myths.
		But what I will say right now is that the trajectory of them is getting worse and not better.
		We're falling for them more.
		In fact, we're even using them as defenses of what we believe and who we support rather than checking our assumptions, right?
		And as my therapist wife will tell you, that if you want to make genuine change, you can't start at the conclusion.
		You've got to start at the beginning.
		What are you getting wrong about how you see the world?
		And then you can have some helpful conversations about what to do about it.
		And so a lot of these things are actually been weaponized by political parties and politicians who use the ignorance of voters because it, ironically, puts them in office, right?
		So you run against Congress to win a seat in Congress.
		You run against the administrative state to control the administrative state.
		It's kind of this perverse incentive.
		And actually, to be able to point and say, this is who to blame, even though it's never that simple, that's a way to garner support for yourself and your position.
		So blame lobbyists, blame campaign finance, blame term limits, all these things can be used to accumulate political power and ultimately mold the government and policy in your image.
		It's a tough, tough, tough doom loop that we need to escape from.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is this your first book?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		This is my first book people will read.
		I've written a book on Congress and how it really works, but it's for an academic setting.
		This is purposely for people.
		It's supposed to be accessible.
		It's supposed to use stories to make the points.
		It's supposed to use people who you've heard of to kind of put them within the myths themselves to see where they're kind of taking advantage of the American voter ignorance out there.
		But I'm hopeful that this is kind of seen as like an entry point into understanding government where I know that it's incredibly easy to step back from because there's just so much information out there.
		This is an evergreen book.
		Yes, it's applicable right now, but it will be applicable in two years from now, four years from now.
		So you should use it as kind of this resource, that you don't need to open it up on page one and crank through all the myths at any one time.
		You can kind of go chapter by chapter of what's of interest to you or even what's dominating the news headlines today.
		They're all applicable.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's the most interesting myth to you that we haven't gotten to yet?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Hmm.
		I think lobbyists is a big one.
		There's a lot of misconceptions about lobbyists, and everyone has kind of this house of cards mentality where, again, they're showing up on Capitol Hill, bribing people, bribing members of Congress.
		And what lobbyists do, their power, it doesn't come from money, which is what most people think.
		It's actually information, where members of Congress and their staffers really struggle.
		They don't struggle with access to information.
		They struggle with the processing of information, right?
		To be able to decide and write legislation on a Tuesday that has Ukraine aid in it, whether we're shuttering USAID tariffs, who knows all of that stuff to the degree to which we expect members of Congress.
		So they're just inundated with information, and Congress really lacks the capacity to process that information in a way that makes them effective at their jobs.
		And when you don't know the answer to something, you do what any of us do.
		You Google it probably first, and then when that doesn't work, you go find someone who does know that information.
		And who does in federal politics?
		That's lobbyists.
		Lobbyists' information.
		And so we think of them as really influential because they're money.
		It's because of their information.
		So we should have conversations about access problems with lobbyists because there are huge discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots.
		And that lobbyists, you're not showing up on Capitol Hill, at least most people aren't showing up on Capitol Hill to lobby directly.
		Meaning that if you want someone to get in members of Congress's ear about an issue you care about, you're going to need an intermediary.
		Those are lobbyists.
		So you love the lobbyists who are advocating for things you believe in.
		And it's easy to hate the lobbyists who are advocating against things you don't.
		It's just a misunderstanding of how the system works.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Time for a couple more calls with Casey Burgett.
		This is James New Jersey Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, I just have a quick question for the professor.
		I've been watching these Senate hearings over the last couple of weeks.
		And it just occurred to me: seeing all the grandstanding and showboning, it's not just the Dems, it's the Republicans too.
		This will never happen, but how about we not televise these hearings publicly?
		The Supreme Court does not televise their hearings publicly, and we've done all right with that.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		It's actually a really good question, and this is something there's been this debate since the 70s.
		Post-Watergate is when they flipped on the cameras, and that was to get around the distrust of the government that it was happening at that time, that sunshine is the best disinfective, right?
		But actually, we've seen some perverse incentives over some unintended consequences when you flip on the cameras, as the caller noted, that they're going to play to the cameras, that they can reach millions of people by creating a viral moment, which means there's an incentive to go create a viral moment, not only to raise your brand, but also fundraise to be known as this type of question lawmaker.
		And so, there's been a growing debate of have we gone too far with our public transparency.
		And so, your question gets down to the root of like, does the public have a right to know what's going on within these committee hearings, with on the floor of the House?
		Should we have privatized votes?
		And this gets to a long-standing debate about privacy, transparency, and is there such thing as too much transparency where you start incentivizing the wrong behaviors that, as the caller mentioned, it's pretty undeniable when you flip on a committee confirmation hearing to not see those that are really trying to be very public in their questioning to create a brand for themselves instead of trying to get at the root of the question and have a good faith back and forth with these nominees.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think personally that there's such thing as too much transparency?
		This network has for years tried to put cameras in the Supreme Court, and we every day try to put cameras in as many hearings as possible.
		We have meetings every day about which hearings we think we can cover with limited resources to show the public what's happening on Capitol Hill.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm sympathetic to the transparency debate, but at the end of the day, I think that if I have to choose, and it's really hard to have a middle ground solution here, right?
		If I had to choose between knowing what my members of Congress are doing and voting on and saying versus not, I'm going to choose knowing every single time, right?
		That I think that too much distrust can be weaponized when you close the cameras off.
		And to say nothing of that we want our people to be involved and to be involved means seeing it in action.
		I'd rather know that.
		And to me, at the end of the day, if you're taking a different vote because the cameras are on versus off, then you don't deserve the job in the first place.
		If your name is going to be attached to it, then stand up, put your chest out, and put your name attached to it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Time for maybe one more phone call.
		This is Brigitta in Maryland.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I was wondering what your thoughts are on Elon Musk's staff.
		They've been plugging into hard drives inside the Office of Personnel Management, Treasury Department, and the General Services Administration, and it doesn't seem like anyone is reporting on this.
		And I would like to get your opinion.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼		So this, I mean, the Elon and Doge question is kind of the final boss of a lot of these misplaying out, a fundamental misunderstanding of presidential power and who has the power of the purse, which is unquestionably, constitutionally, Congress.
		And so Congress needs to step up and say, hey, I support you, even Republicans in Congress.
		I support you, President.
		Even I support you, Donald Trump, but this isn't how it's supposed to work, right?
		So Congress needs to step up and make its play, its place known as just a constitutional separation of powers instrument because it was not supposed to work like this, where you have a private citizen.
		He has not been appointed to anything official.
		Doge isn't even, it's this in this in-between place of a government agency, a quasi-government agency, but there's been no act of Congress to establish it, authorize it, let alone fund it.

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