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Palestinians Want Gaza Sites Transferred00:15:19
unidentified
Live today on C-SPAN.
At 10 a.m. Eastern, the House begins work on a bill to permanently classify fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs, the most restricted level.
On C-SPAN 2 at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, the Senate will debate and vote on a couple of President Trump's nominations, including Scott Turner to serve as Housing and Urban Development Secretary, and later Russell Vogt's nomination to be White House Budget Director.
On C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m. Eastern, a House Oversight Committee hearing looks at ways to increase government efficiency and reduce federal spending.
These events also stream live on the free C-SPAN Now video app and online at c-SPAN.org.
Coming up on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live.
Then, North Carolina Republican Congressman Pat Harrigan, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and a member of the Armed Services Committee, talks about his priorities and the House Republicans' agenda.
And Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, discusses Elon Musk's efforts through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Also, the Washington Bureau Chief of the Christian Science Monitor, Linda Feldman, and her reaction to President Trump's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the president's comments about the Gaza Strip.
And later, Victoria Guida, politico-economics correspondent, reviews President Trump's use of tariffs to achieve policy goals.
During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump proposed his vision of the Middle East, proposing that the United States should seize and gain control of the Gaza Strip, develop it, and hold, quote, a long-term ownership position, close quote.
No specifics were offered, but there was not only international reaction, but also reaction from Capitol Hill for the first half hour of the program this morning.
Your comments on the president's proposal of this takeover of Gaza.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
If you wish to text us your thoughts this morning on this proposal that was floated by the president, 202-748-8003 is how you do that.
And as always, you can post on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
Here's how the major papers took a look at this proposal from the president yesterday.
This is the Washington Post.
Move Gazans to another country is the headline Trump urges.
The subhead proposals that U.S. control enclave in an age-old conflict, President Risk New Fuhrer.
This is from the Washington Times from their headline, middle of the page, but above the fold, Trump floats a U.S. takeover renovation of Gaza from the Washington Times.
The Wall Street Journal, Trump urges U.S. takeover of Gaza.
President calls for Palestinians to be removed in major break from policy.
And then the New York Times, Trump proposing takeover of Gaza as U.S. territory, brazen plan to relocate all Palestinians and rebuild the war-torn enclave.
These comments were made in a joint press session with the Israeli Prime Minister.
You can see that whole session if you go to our website at c-span.org or app, but that's where the proposal for the Gaza Strip came up.
I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there, and frankly who's been really very unlucky.
It's been very unlucky.
It's been an unlucky place for a long time.
Being in its presence just has not been good, and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there.
Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck.
This could be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth.
It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, twelve.
It could be numerous sites or it could be one large site.
But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and we'll make sure something really spectacular is done.
They're going to have peace.
They're not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilization of wonderful people has had to endure.
The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative.
It's right now a demolition site.
This is just a demolition site.
Virtually every building is down.
They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious.
They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again.
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.
We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.
Do a real job, do something different.
Just can't go back.
If you go back, it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years.
I'm hopeful that this ceasefire could be the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and for all.
With the same goal in mind, my administration has been moving quickly to restore trust in the alliance and rebuild American strength throughout the region.
Those comments made yesterday, again, you can see them in full on our various platforms.
You can comment on this proposal by the President for the Gaza Strip 202-748-8001 for Republicans, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 2027-8002.
Here's how Axios takes a look at the comments made by the President yesterday, saying there are two ways to view President Trump's epic, historic, shockingly unexpected declaration Tuesday evening that the U.S. should seize control and develop and hold a long-term ownership position in the war-destroyed Gaza.
One, it was a wild bluff or bluster to gain leverage in the Middle East.
It's like threats of trade tariffs against Canada and Mexico, all-consumingly controversial, yet instantly ephemeral.
This strikes most Republicans as the right interpretation, or two, the other.
It fuses several Trump obsessions, his hope for a grand Middle East peace deal, his belief Gaza will be a hellhole for decades to come, and his genuine intrigue about developing the seaside land.
U.S. officials tell us Trump's words were premeditated and mirror ideas he floated to some staff and family members privately.
So these were made yesterday.
Let's hear from you as far as these comments from the president.
David in Arizona, Democrats line, you're first up.
Hello.
unidentified
Good morning.
Just am so confused about what this has to do with making America great again.
All I see is that it's making Trump great by getting him a place to build new condos and stuff.
There was a story he put out about a lady going in to buy two apples, could only afford one.
Well, I don't even think she can afford one now.
Egg prices have gone crazy.
Waffle House is charging 50 cents more per egg.
So how is this making America great?
I am really confused.
Pedro, I thank you for all the hard work you put in and appreciate you.
David in Arizona from New York and Grand Isle in New York.
Michael, Independent Line.
unidentified
How are you doing?
Yeah, I see this as a big international form of real estate terrorism, just like I saw the Los Angeles fires recently, where there's where you notice in Los Angeles and the coast of California, all the golf courses are pure green, plush.
You're sitting on a Pacific Ocean there where you could desalinate the water and put those fires out.
Now we're over in Gaza threatening to throw people out.
Who's these people of the world he's talking about?
Is this the homeless people in LA in that?
We're going to send them out there and give them condos?
Who are these people of the world with this real estate terrorism that they're using our military for?
Michael there in New York, the Wall Street Journal in its analysis of the proposal yesterday, or at least what was said by the president, quote, Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, a Trump ally, called the proposal, quote, interesting, but also, quote, problematic, and said his constituents wouldn't like the idea.
Senator Ruben Gallego, the Democrat from Arizona, a former Marines, said the president was outlining a, quote, invasion of Gaza.
Middle East experts were stunned.
Khalid Eljinjindi, a former senior advisor to the Palestinian Authority and negotiations with Israelis, called Mr. Trump's proposal, quote, totally bizarre and incoherent, going on to say none of it makes any sense.
Is he looking to develop Gaza as some kind of massive beachfront property?
Is he talking about a U.S. occupation of Gaza?
Will the U.S. force out 2 million Palestinians as part of the plan?
He asked Mr. Oljindi at Georgetown University now.
Let's hear from Bernie.
Bernie is in New York.
Democrats' line on this proposal floated by the president yesterday.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning.
I think he's a genius.
I mean, he's really a bonfire genius.
Metternich and Bismarck have nothing on the greatest president of all time.
My only problem is I think that we should take France.
I don't understand why he's looking for the Gaza Strip.
You got to watch the language colors, especially when you call in the Wall Street Journal and its analysis.
Sorry, the Washington Post and its analysis following up saying that U.S. allies Wednesday began rejecting the president's proposal to take over Gaza, permanently moving Palestinians and turning the enclave into a, quote, Riviera of the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia immediately rejected the displacement of Palestinians, adding that it would not establish diplomatic relations with Israel, a long-term U.S. foreign policy goal without an independent Palestinian state.
Britain and France reiterated their stances for a two-state solution.
Reactions from Egypt and Jordan, key regional U.S. allies who have found themselves thrust into the spotlight of Mr. Trump's second term have been cautiously muted.
This story adding that far-right Israeli leaders applauded plans to permanently displace the Palestinians from Gaza while the Hamas militant group said it would, quote, pour oil on the fire.
Robert is in Michigan, independent line.
Hi.
unidentified
Good morning.
This is Robert calling from the fascist Caspian town of the state of Michigan.
I haven't called in a while, but I have one question for both Republicans and Democrats who voted for Trump.
If he would have proposed to take over Gaza like he's doing now, plus this Canada business, plus Iceland, plus Panama, and change the Gulf of Mexico in the Gulf of America, would they still vote for him?
And I would say the answer would be yes, because there's that many stupid people in this country.
It was after the comments that were made that the National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Wickoff, talked about those challenges in rebuilding Gaza in a five-year period, which was negotiated under President Biden.
Here are some of those comments from yesterday.
unidentified
Palestinians say that they want to go home to Gaza.
Mr. President Trump has spoken about cleaning out Gaza.
So what does that look like?
Would there be a situation where you could forcibly remove people from Gaza?
So Let me just expand on what the National Security Advisor said, because we talk about this all the time.
In any city in the United States of America, if you had damage that was 100th of what I saw in Gaza, and I went there at the direction of the president and the national security advisor, so we would know right uphand, right, you know, right very specifically what was going on, nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes.
That's how dangerous it is.
There's 30,000 unexploded munitions.
It is buildings that could tip over at any moment.
There's no utilities there whatsoever.
No working water, electric, gas, nothing.
God knows what kind of disease might be festering there.
So when the president talks about cleaning it out, he talks about making it habitable.
And this is a long-range plan.
They've dug tunnels underneath there that have basically degraded the stone that you make that would form foundations.
The disposal effort in Gaza is, we estimate, three to five years just to dispose of all the things before you can look down but believe beneath the surface of the soil, and then before you get a master plan done.
And the president is intent on getting it all done correctly.
So to me, it is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years.
Again, those comments from yesterday, also on exit Speaker Mike Johnson posting on X yesterday, the United States stands firmly with Israel and the people of the Middle East, which haven't experienced peace in many, many years, violence and hatred, do not have to define the region's future.
Then he goes on to say President Trump took bold action in hopes of achieving lasting peace.
From Congresswoman Bethan Dunn of Texas, the world is looking to the United States for leadership.
And President Trump is delivering a lasting peace.
Today's announcement put Hamas Iran and all our enemies on notice.
The U.S. will not continue the status quo that has empowered terrorists.
She goes on from there.
Let's hear from Mary in Michigan, Republican line.
unidentified
Yeah, just curious, you know, does the U.S. stand with all the other ethnic bodies?
Do we stand with Ireland?
Do we, I mean, we're standing with Israel here heavily, and it has waged war with Palestine.
Two points.
There is a Gaza marine natural gas field off the coast.
Nobody has talked about that.
You ought to get some experts in there to discuss that.
There's a huge body of natural gas right there on the coast.
And of course, there are ulterior motives going on here.
From the Wall Street Journal this morning, this adds that Egypt, I'm sorry, the Washington Post, this adds that Egypt and Jordan have hotly resisted Mr. Trump's attempts to cajole them into taking Palestinians during the reconstruction of Gaza, a process he said could take 10 to 15 years.
Also, in this story, it adds that ahead of the meeting between Benjamin Yetanahu and the president, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Turkey, another country that has been involved in brokering an end to the conflict, released a joint statement rejecting any proposal to displace or resettle Palestinians to, quote, countries outside the Palestinian territories, either for short-term or long-term purposes.
From Elizabeth in Maryland, Democrats line.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
My position is that Trump is just insane about Gaza.
He wants to remove the Palestinian people and put them in Egypt or Jordan.
And as you just said, Egypt and Jordan reject that.
He wants to cleanse Palestine of all the Palestinian people, which is ethnic cleansing.
It's racist.
It will destroy all the Palestinian people.
He sees Palestine.
He sees Gaza as a tourist destination.
He's insane.
He wants to send U.S. troops into Gaza.
Why U.S. troops into Gaza?
U.S. doesn't belong in the Middle East at all.
U.S. doesn't belong in the Middle East at all, especially not in Gaza.
Let the Palestinian people live.
Let them, they want to stay in Gaza.
They want to live their lives.
They want to rebuild Palestine.
Let them stay in Palestine and let us help with aid to the U.S. and to the World Pool Kitchen.
That's what Trump can do: send money to the World Fukushima and to all the U.N. agencies to help the people in Palestine.
That's all the U.S. can do.
And Trump is crazy about overtaking Gaza and sending U.S. troops in and turning Gaza into a tourist destination.
I just wanted to thank all the progressives who sat out voting for Kamala because they were convinced the Democrats were going to perpetuate genocide since obviously they got their man Trump who is now actively interested in committing genocide.
You asked another caller earlier about why he is a genius because the idea what he's doing, putting a friendly neighbor next to Israel, who's been attacked since 1948, is a good idea.
Taking land that is destroyed and building it and making apartments and condos and places where people can live, inviting the people back onto the land with a bunch of other people from the world that like to live in peace.
I think that's a wonderful idea.
And for the caller who called them unstable, I think we should all be unstable like Donald Trump.
Can I ask you, Mark, why you think that rebuilding this land would automatically turn people into a friendly neighbor?
unidentified
By rebuilding and making a place nicer to live would be fantastic.
It would be what you and I would want.
It would be what America would want, a place to live, a nice place to live, not a place where Israel would have to worry about being attacked every day.
You know, people are acting like the Palestinian people aren't human.
We look at that devastation and we are comparing it to the natural fires that happened in L.A. That's not what happened.
Our bombs, our tax money, fell there, destroyed them to the point of almost annihilation.
Biden committed a genocide.
We could have stopped it with just having not sent any more bombs.
We could have demanded because Israel exists because we supplement them by billions of dollars.
That's how they exist.
It's not that I'm anti-Israel.
I'm anti-war.
How can you ever, how can anybody think in this society when we've seen it over and over again, especially in the Middle East, that we're going to have peace with a neighbor with a gun?
He's over here trying to start a war, Trump and his cronies.
Okay, Kim in Sacramento there giving her thoughts.
Some Democratic senators giving their thoughts as well on X.
The Democratic senator from Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, writing, crazy but catastrophic and consequences for all sides.
It's deeply destructive indeed, just to suggest it, threatening progress towards peace and stability and sustaining and expanding the Abraham Accords and returning hostages.
Senator Chris Koons, Democratic senator from Delaware, Gaza is among the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Millions of people without enough food or clean water living with disorder, chaos, and disease to suggest that we take over Gaza while gutting USAID, freezing life-saving programs, and firing American aid workers is insane.
That's Steve in Illinois finishing off this half hour of your calls.
Thanks to those of you who participated.
Two guests, three guests joining us throughout the course of the morning, but legislators, two of them will be joining us.
The first one, you'll hear from North Carolina Republican Pat Harrigan.
He is going to discuss, he's an Afghan war veteran, member of the Armed Services Committee, to discuss legislative priorities in the House Republican agenda.
Later on in the show, Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee, will discuss those recent airline disasters and also concerns over the influence of Elon Musk upon Washington.
Those conversations and more coming up on Washington Journal.
unidentified
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He's Republican serving the state of North Carolina, also a member of the Armed Services Committee, as well as the Science, Space, and Technology Committee members.
Let's start with your military background, because I think it would probably inform what you do on the Armed Services Committee.
Tell us a little bit about that.
unidentified
Well, so I'm a West Point graduate, and then I went into the infantry, then went into the special forces, had a couple tours to Afghanistan in that time, and then I got out, started a company that's in the defense space, and then decided to run for Congress after the fall of Afghanistan.
So I've had a heavy defense focus for quite some time in my life.
With your service in Afghanistan, you've seen what's happened while you were there and after that.
How does that inform decisions when you make not only, say, in Afghanistan, but other matters of foreign policy on the Armed Services Committee?
unidentified
Yeah, I think it certainly heavily informs the direction that I think this country should go because I think we made a lot of mistakes in 20 years during the global war on terror, not just in Afghanistan, but all across the Middle East.
We spent an awful lot of money that we have burdened on our children's children, and we did not achieve strategic outcomes that were productive for the United States of America.
And so we've got two existential crises right now, in my opinion.
One of them is debt.
The other one is China.
And as that informs the direction by which we move forward in the defense space, both of those things deserve, I'd say, the equal amount of respect.
When you see efforts on China that you talked about, I know it falls in the space of economics, but when you see tariffs being placed on the country that the president announced, how does that fit broadly into foreign policy and particularly with armed services?
unidentified
Yeah, I think President Trump is simply trying to get a better deal for the American people, right?
He does not like countries that manipulate their currency, that subsidize their market economies, and create an unfair playing field for American manufacturing and American innovation.
And so I think he's just trying to level the playing field.
He did that in his first term.
He's doing that again.
And I think that that makes America more competitive from a defense perspective, particularly when you start talking about Section 232 tariffs, right?
That is very specifically to protect U.S. national security and very important manufacturing interests that we have to have here in the United States in order to provide for our national defense.
I imagine those would include those in the state of North Carolina as well when it comes to that manufacturing.
unidentified
Absolutely right, all 50 states.
And that's just a reality that we have to contend with.
And we've got to make sure.
I think a lot of people don't really care if we get ties or our suits from China, but I do think that they care if we get critical minerals that go into our fighter jets or chips that go into all of our governmental computers.
When it comes to being on the Armed Services Committee, what would you say is the focus in the months ahead, particularly now that Republicans and Republicans control the House and the Senate?
unidentified
Yeah, I think that there's a very clear problem with our defense spending, right?
We are at a near historic low.
We've never spent less on defense since World War II.
We're at 2.9% of GDP.
Right now, China's a seven.
And so we have a very serious concern with the amount of money that we are investing into our defense.
I personally have a serious concern that the military that we have today is not the military that we need in order to win against China should we not be able to successfully deter that conflict, which is what everybody really cares about more than anything else.
But we've got to be strong in order to not fight.
And so the way that we're going to accomplish that is, number one, we've got to reinvest in our industrial base, and we've got to get our industrial base into a paradigm where we're producing the low-cost solutions to our enemy's high-cost problems, because right now, it is the other way around.
We're the ones who are producing the high-cost solutions to our enemy's low-cost problems.
And that causes us to lose the economics of war.
And history is very unkind to countries that lose the economics of war.
What's an example of a low-cost solution to a high-cost problem?
unidentified
A Stinger missile, right?
Look at the experience that America had in Afghanistan in the 1980s with the Mujahideen.
We were providing circa $1985, $8,500 Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen that were using that to shoot down Soviet aircraft that cost the Soviets between $2 and $8 million to produce.
And so $8,500 investment, $2 to $8 million return on that investment.
That is a fantastic investment.
We should have made that investment.
We did make that investment.
Not only did we cause the Soviets to lose Afghanistan, shortly thereafter they actually lost their country over it.
And so what we're doing today, though, is we're sending $2.6 million Patriot missiles to Ukraine to shoot down drones that Russia's manufacturing for $50,000.
And if you want to ask him questions, 202-748-8000, 1 for Republicans, 202-748-8,000 for Democrats and Independents, 202-748-8002.
Text us your questions or comments at 202-748-8003.
Elon Musk has been tasked to find savings and cost savings throughout the government.
Should he apply that type of philosophy towards the Defense Department?
unidentified
Absolutely.
And I'll work with him to do that.
Because, you know, yes, on one hand, we need to increase our defense expenditures.
Number two, and I would say in parallel with increasing those defense expenditures, we absolutely have to change the philosophy by which we're acquiring military technology and hardware.
And I think that we need to institute a principle that if it, as Pete Hegseth has said, Secretary Hegseth, we are going to align capabilities to threats.
I think that if the cost of what it takes for our country to produce the capability exceeds what it costs our adversaries to produce the threat, we should not acquire the capability.
And that needs to be the driving force behind the revolutionary attack that we take on our defense industrial complex moving forward.
That's how we're going to push these defense contractors into actually providing low-cost solutions to our enemies' high-cost problems.
You've seen Mr. Musk and how he's been impacting Washington over the last couple of days.
Should he apply that kind of philosophy to the Defense Department?
What's the role of Congress in either agreeing on these cut savings or pushing back on some of the savings?
unidentified
Yeah, I think that what Elon Musk is doing is necessary.
I think what he's doing is he's simply diving into the P ⁇ L on the balance sheet of all these different agencies that make up the federal government, and he's throwing up red flags where he sees them.
And at that point, it's up to either the president with executive authority or Congress with legislative authority to do something about that, to choose to do something about it in the first place, and then what the particular course of action should be to get the American taxpayer a better deal for the money that they're spending and respect their tax dollars again.
To what degree are you concerned about Mr. Musk's approach and either the president's or Congress's ability to say, wait a minute, do this, but don't do that, or at least how much control over his actions?
unidentified
I think anytime that you are messing with government expenditures, it's going to create a backlash because people like to get the money from the government.
I mean, our society has become very, very good at voting themselves money.
And at some point, you look at $36.2 trillion worth of national debt.
You look at a deficit spend rate of $1.8 trillion a year.
I think it was a mistake that China was given most favored nation status.
I think at the end of the day, I disagree with your assertion that Republicans exclusively were behind NAFTA.
I think that was President Clinton.
And look, you're from North Carolina.
I'm from North Carolina.
I know what NAFTA did to our well-paid, highly skilled labor force, particularly in the furniture industry, which is what we had to deal with in the 10th District 25 years ago.
Folks are now just getting back to the income and quality of life that they lost 25 years ago due to NAFTA.
But I think you hit on a broader topic, which is President Trump is kind of his own enigma, right?
I think you've got to look at the number of votes that he received versus the number of votes that Republicans received in Congress.
He received over 77 million popular votes, and Congress only received 74.6 as Republicans.
And so I think we've got to be understanding that folks across this country, they didn't necessarily vote for Republicans.
They voted for President Trump and his policies.
And so to some extent that that might cut through the partisan cord that you were talking about, I think people should pay attention to those numbers.
And look, I think with Israel, we've got to pick sides.
This country historically has sided with Israel.
And the reason behind that is because they're the good actor in the Middle East that we can depend on.
They are our greatest ally in the Middle East and one of our greatest allies across the world.
And so we've always been supportive of them.
We cannot forget that their response to defend themselves was due to terrorist attacks that happened on October 7th.
And that should inform our perspective that we must understand that they don't live in a safe environment.
I think President Trump is trying to shake things up with this Gaza deal.
For 100 years, Gaza has been a problem.
It continues to be a problem.
Any solution that any country has ever moved forward on has not worked, it has not borne fruit.
And we continue with the same cycle of violence over and over and over again.
So I'm excited to see President Trump try something new here.
With respect to Elon Musk, I think that very clearly we have serious problems in our government.
I mentioned earlier that we're $36.2 trillion in debt.
At some point, this debt bomb will catch up with us, and it will cost us the world's reserve currency if we don't immediately arrest it.
So what Elon Musk is doing right now is perhaps one of the most important things that could possibly be done at this point in time for the future of our country.
We have to remember that the dollar is printed on paper, the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
If we lose status as the world's reserve currency, that is worth nothing.
And so I am extremely excited about what Elon Musk is going to come up with that president can act on and Congress can act on to get this country's fiscal health back under control.
And then look, at our border, one of the biggest issues that we have in Congress is looking at our border situation, the invasion that we have had across our southern border, and seeing that we have all the laws on the books already to enforce our border.
The problem is, is the Biden administration and other officials at the state and local levels choose to selectively enforce that law.
When we look at the crisis that we have at the southern border, it's not because of a lack of law.
It's because of a lack of authority that our border patrol was given to actually enforce the law.
Same thing with ICE.
And so President Trump is restoring those authorities.
What Congress is doing is we're going to tack on now teeth and penalties into legislation to go after mayors that allow for their cities to become sanctuary cities, that just completely float federal, flaunt federal law, and do their own thing, not enforcing our laws, and allow endless amounts of fentanyl to come across our border, killing 300 Americans per day, killing nine North Carolinians per day, by the way, and allowing some really horrible, dangerous,
violent folks into our country that has overall increased crime and decreased law and order.
I'm excited about the direction that we're going, and we're making a lot of progress for only being a month in.
Why do you think the president's proposal from yesterday is a good idea?
unidentified
I think it's a good idea because it's something that is different.
And you've got to understand that this idea has been floated for a long time since the beginning of several days after October 7th.
have just been saying, we're stuck in this cycle of violence between Israel and Gaza.
It's not working.
And this concept of potentially resettling Palestinians in a friendly nation and rebuilding Gaza into something that is worth visiting, is going to be a stable actor in the future world order, I think is something that is very important.
Military Readiness Concerns00:13:45
unidentified
It is worth trying, and it's certainly worth investigating.
Look, I actually landed a helicopter in the Walmart parking lot of Burnsville the day after the storm.
I was up there trying to do what we could as private aviators, helping y'all out, getting people out, bringing y'all supplies.
I know how badly hit Burnsville was.
And it's heartbreaking to see what happened in the aftermath of what transpired between early October and where President Trump was sworn in on the 20th of January.
It's really frustrating.
And I think all North Carolinians share that frustration.
Disaster response is supposed to be locally executed, state-managed, and federally supported.
And I think most of us that are seeing ClearEyed could say that this disaster response has been locally executed, but it's been state mismanaged and it's been federally obstructed.
And that stops now.
And I think you saw President Trump flying down to Asheville, flying down to Western North Carolina, fulfilling a promise that he made during the campaign to never forget about Western North Carolina,
naming some very powerful folks in North Carolina to oversee and effectively provide oversight to what is happening at the state level and the federal level and trying to work the synchronization between emergency management of North Carolina that operates at the state level and FEMA that operates at the federal level and increase that interoperability and make sure that those funds flow,
that they flow from the federal government to the state government and from the state government to the local executors who are actually going to make life better.
I know you've got a lot of infrastructure problems up there in Burnsville.
And so there is a heavy, heavy, heavy emphasis from President Trump on getting the Corps of Engineers up there to fix that right now.
I wanted to bring attention to something that I don't think has been a part of the conversation in regards to the recent Musk actions.
I'm a federal contractor myself and the recent decisions to clean out the federal workforce are extremely concerning to me because I think a lot of people forget that the federal contracting complex is designed to do the least amount of work and make the most amount of money.
And the more that we divest from our federal workforce, the more that we are relying on these firms and agencies that take advantage of these contracts.
And I've seen this firsthand.
So I think it might be worth examining contracting relationships instead of cleaning out the federal workforce where people actually have an incentive to do a good job.
And just in closing, I want to say one thing that as a federal contractor, I aspired to work for the federal government because I knew it was a place where I could actually make a difference and inspire change and actually realize change.
In a contracting firm, you don't realize change.
You're moving things around.
And I think this whole directive by Musk is severely misplaced.
So I just wanted to share that comment.
Thank you.
Grace, I certainly appreciate that perspective.
And thank you for what you do.
And I appreciate your aspirations.
And I think, look, we've got to step back and understand that everybody has those same aspirations, right?
We're all Americans at the end of the day, and we're all trying to push the ball forward in the right direction, in a productive direction for the country.
And we've just got to step back with this $36.2 trillion worth of debt, this $1.8 trillion deficit that we have each and every year.
And we've got to say, we've got a revenue problem, we've got a serious spending problem.
And we've got to look at both sides of that equation or this whole thing isn't going to work.
And we're not going to be able to raise our kids in the country that we grew up in.
And so that's going to be a little bit painful.
But a lot of what's going on right now is just idea generation and throwing up red flags.
And I'd just be cautious about thinking it's any more than that at this juncture.
The president early on directed several executive orders directly to the military.
And I want to ask you a few questions about it.
One of them dealt with discharged soldiers over COVID, bringing them back.
You have legislation taking a look at the same thing.
How do those two things work in concert?
unidentified
Yeah, they're basically identical, which was fantastic.
And so we were very happy to see the ideas that Senator Cruz and I had to reinstate the 8,400 service members that were wrongfully dismissed from the military for refusing the COVID vaccine and reinstating their benefits, particularly their GI benefits, their health care benefits, and their ability to serve.
We were excited to see President Trump take that.
We felt like we struck a chord with that one.
And however it gets done, nobody cares about the credit.
We care about the outcomes, right?
That's what we're focused on up here.
And so the one thing that remains from our legislation that is very, very important is that our legislation took away authority from the President and the Secretary of Defense on what the vaccine schedule should be for our service members, and it put it in the hands of Congress.
And what that does is that slows that process down in the future.
And so we will not have willy-nilly or kind of just, you know, spur of the moment ideas on what our vaccine schedule should be, what we're pumping into the veins of our service members.
It's going to require the broad consensus of Congress in order to do that in the future.
And that's what is most important so that this doesn't happen again.
We don't have politicization of vaccine mandates again.
And just to show the folks at home just some of the elements of the American Act, Americans Act to Restore Justice for Service members as we're talking with our guests, the President put out an executive order called Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, in which he said this.
Consistent with the military mission and long-standing DOD policy, expressing a false, quote, gender identity divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.
What do you think of that idea?
unidentified
Yeah, I think that President was right to dismiss trans individuals from the military.
I don't think that they ever should have been let in.
I think you've got to step back and you've got to look at our overall readiness in the military and say, okay, hey, we need to focus on deployability.
And you've got to understand for folks that aren't in the military, you can be non-deployable because of a toothache.
We have to understand that with the surgical changes that happen and with the hormonal drug cocktail that trans folks have to be on for their entire lives, they are, when you make that decision, you are committing yourself to be a medical patient for life.
Those folks do not belong in our military.
They are not ready to deploy at any given time.
And that ultimately harms our readiness.
It harms the culture of our military.
And I think President Trump made the exact right decision.
Is that just deployment or any aspect of the military?
unidentified
I think it's any aspect of the military.
And you've got to understand that we had, I've heard numbers of upwards of 15,000 trans troops come into the military because it's the one place in the federal government that you can have all of your surgery and all of your drugs paid for simply by signing on the dotted line to come in and serve.
I don't think that that's the right intention for service.
There was a recent opinion piece by Staff Sergeant Patricia King of the U.S. Army, retired, identified herself as the first openly transgendered infantry soldier.
She said this, the truth is those calling for a trans military ban hide behind rhetoric about quote standards without understanding that every transgender person currently serving has met them.
The military doesn't lower the bar for anyone, certainly not for us.
If anything, we've had to clear it while dragging extra weight.
Every trans service member had to prove themselves twice, first to meet the standards of the chosen branch and then again to justify their continued existence.
unidentified
I couldn't disagree with that statement more.
That is so far off base, it's not even funny.
Look, as a former special operator, I can tell you that there's been a systematic reduction in our standards in the military in order to meet whatever cultural norms that our executive branch at the time wanted to in place.
This has drastically harmed our military readiness and our ability to actually win our conflicts.
So I want to go back to what you were talking about earlier about the efficiency of our weaponry and defense spending.
You know, we have a cost-plus model in defense spending, and it's historically led to massive inefficiencies, cost overruns, and ultimately lack of accountability.
There are some emerging defense companies that are coming out like Andrew.
They're advocating for like a fixed price and performance-based contract.
So given that, what do you think specifically with regards to reforms would be needed to actually ensure greater accountability and then, you know, also fostering the technological advancements?
And look, we do need to move to a fixed firm model.
There's no question about it.
When we give cost plus and we give effectively unlimited rein, what ends up happening in our contracts is that these big five contractors, they come in, they underbid the contract knowing that they can win it and that they will eventually get paid a cost plus whatever their expenditures are as they overrun both on time and money on these contracts.
And ultimately, that delivers a very poor outcome for the American taxpayer.
And it really sets our defense back.
And so, yes, there are new innovative companies.
There are hundreds of them.
You mentioned one of them, Andrew.
That's probably the most commonly recognized company that is really providing disruptive outcomes in this space.
We need to continue moving forward with companies like that underneath fixed firm contracts.
Our guest is a member of the Armed Services Committee, also a member of something called the Four Country Caucus.
What is that?
unidentified
So the Four Country Caucus is an actual bipartisan group of Republican and Democrat veterans that are intent on increasing the number of veterans that we actually have in Congress.
And I think this is a really important thing because we are now at a point where we're so divisive between Republicans and Democrats that we fundamentally don't agree on the problem statements that underlie the solutions that we're trying to overlay on top of those.
I think in this country, we've always disagreed and have had very healthy debate on what the solutions to our problems ought to be.
I think we're in a new paradigm where we don't even agree on the problems themselves.
Veterans do, though.
And it doesn't matter what party they come from because we have a common experience that gives us a realistic expectation of the way that the world works.
Veterans, even Republican and Democratic veterans, we are not arguing whether the grass is blue and the sky is green.
We know that the grass is green and the sky is blue.
And that is something that will be a tremendous force for the future of this country, for the future of our Congress.
I think, as you know, three cycles ago, we were at historic low of veterans at 11% of Congress were veterans.
Historically, in the time after World War II, all the way through the end of the 70s, we were in the 60 to 70 percentile range of our members of Congress being military veterans.
Well, later on in the program, here from Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, he's going to talk about, amongst other things, the actions of President Trump and Elon Musk over some government operations.
But first, open forum.
And if you want to participate, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, Independence 202-748-8002.
We will take those calls when Washington Journal continues.
unidentified
This weekend, at 2 p.m. Eastern, historians discuss President Lincoln's views on race and slavery.
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This week, we focus on the early months of President Andrew Jackson's first term in 1829, including his policy agenda and controversies surrounding his cabinet.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern on lectures in history, Louisiana State University journalism professor John Maxwell Hamilton talks about the U.S. government propaganda efforts during World War I. Exploring the American story.
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A couple of updates as far as confirmations are concerned.
This is from Politico and others reporting that it was yesterday that the president's nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday evening, 54 to 46.
Bondi, a staunch Trump loyalist, will now assume the role of the top federal prosecutor.
She's poised to be a key figure in efforts to transform the Department of Justice, which the president said he intended to go after, intends to use to go after his political adversaries.
Also, yesterday, when it comes to confirmations, the Senate confirming the president's pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs with broad support from Democrats.
Former Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican who played a key role in defending Mr. Trump in his first impeachment, received a 77 to 23 vote.
Only Democrats oppose the notion.
Only Democrats oppose the nominee who will now inherit an agency that has historically struggled to provide quality health care to the millions of veterans it serves.
Let's hear from you.
This is Kevin in Indiana Republican Lying.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Pedro, I was just watching Mr. Harrigan speak, and, you know, he gives me faith that this country will survive.
It will survive no matter what type of administration we put in there.
Because as long as we have individuals like that that have common sense, that are articulate, that have fought for this country, that understand the values that this country stands for, and sees how the rest of the world is in reality and what this country is not based on that.
I think that guy gives me hope.
And I've got a 24-year-old son who just got back from Afghanistan as a combat Marine.
And I can tell you, he changed, Pedro, from the time he left here as a fine young man, but came back a very seasoned, disciplined, mature individual.
And it was because his service in the military gave him a perspective that I don't think he could have gotten going to college in these woke institutions that tear down America and tell us how bad we are and that we were always bad.
And that this country was founded on racism and on all these other things that destroy and divide us as a country.
He saw, he worked with all kinds of races and individuals who were his brothers, that they had bullets flying over their heads, and all they were concerned about was protecting themselves and each other and getting their mission completed.
And that bonding that Mr. Harrigan, Representative Perrigan talked about, and that understanding, that common understanding of reality versus emotion and this utopia on earth that the sometimes extreme left tries to create, and sometimes even the extreme right, I think is what's messing our country up right now.
I would like to comment, and I couldn't get in when Mr. Harrigan was on, but I just want to remind you, don't forget to take him down from the top of the flagpole because he had to been run up there.
I've never seen anyone.
He must be somebody that the president is so proud of for everything that the president's ever done, ever said.
It's just you got to get back to doing the right thing.
But also, Pedro, I just wanted to bring up February 1st.
You had a comment from a Democratic representative, and he said about the guacamole and beer at 5.53 p.m., and he was allowed to text again, and you broadcast twice from Senator Schumer his opinion.
And I don't think that's really fair that he should be able to call in twice because everybody else has to do it only once.
But all in all, you guys do fantastic work, and I really do mean that.
Again, I see where you're going with that, and appreciate that in the sense that we were talking about the issue when it comes to the tariffs, and he was posting directly about them that we showed both of those.
Yes, I would like to say Donald Trump diverted the service altogether.
He should not even be our president, but he is, regardless of that.
All the American companies that are operating in China and all that should be made to come back to America, spend their money here, hire American people, pay them the wages that they need, cut ties with China altogether, operate solely from America.
I don't think that's going to happen.
We can get out of China.
We can cut China off, and China will not have a hold over America as it has.
And as far as the Palestinians, they should resolve their own problems.
Trump should not be trying to take over their prime land.
That's all he wants to take over their land.
He should not have the right to do that.
Israel needs to leave the Palestinians alone.
That's Palestinians' land that they're on, and they know that this war could be in.
Gaza is attacking the Palestinians and Israel because they should settle their own problems.
Okay, Aaron, they're in Virginia when it comes to the nomination process.
The Hill reporting that it's Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. both on Tuesday cleared crucial hurdles towards winning Senate confirmation, handing President Trump a key win as he looks for an early display of loyalty from GOP lawmakers.
Gabbard and Kennedy overcame high-stakes committee votes that went down to the wire in their bids to lead the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the Department of Health and Human Services, respectively.
Skeptical Republicans on each committee made the decision to back them in the final days before those votes after Trump officials, including Vice President Vance and other Republican leaders, cajoled them into maintaining an unblemished slate of nominees who have gone through the committee process.
One of the people on the Senate floor talking about his decision to support Robert Kennedy was Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.
He's the chair of the Senate Health, Education, and Labor and Pensions Committee, explaining that yes vote.
Based on Mr. Kennedy's assurances on vaccines and his platform to positively influence Americans' health, it is my consideration that he will get this done.
As I've said, it's been a long and tense process, but I've assessed it as I would assess a patient as a physician.
Ultimately, restoring trust in our public health institution is too important, and I think Mr. Kennedy can help get that done.
As chairman of the Senate Committee with oversight authority of his position, I will do my best to make sure that that is what we accomplish.
unidentified
I want Mr. Kennedy to succeed in making America healthy again.
His success will be tied to the health of our nation.
Yes, I'm just calling to say, with the representative that was on from North Carolina, how come he said that he landed a helicopter over there where the guy from North Carolina was having with a flood or whatever took over?
But he never mentioned that those people shouldn't return back to their home.
But yet he is willing to support Trump to not allow the Palestinians to return home.
And the last thing again is that they got Eli Musk got access to the U.S. Treasury.
Access to the U.S. Treasury while Trump is doing all these distractions to keep people off the eye of the ball of them coming into the back door of the U.S. Treasury while distracted on other things.
What about the price of eggs?
What about gas?
I went and filled my code with gas.
It was 303.
Today it's 333.
Eggs, none on the shelf.
So when is America going to wake up and understand that all this is a fraud?
Let's hear from Frank in Alabama, Independent Line.
unidentified
Good morning, Pedro.
I was just fascinated this morning to see Ben Naniahu and Trump together and the 21 charges that Benjamin Nahu had over there in Israel.
Vance Huntsville Tax Breaks00:05:52
unidentified
I'm wondering when y'all are going to really talk about his crimes and when he is going to ever go to court.
And do you think with Trump being convicted and president, I think that's almost a non-issue, it appears.
And so I wait the time that Ben Naniyahu or his subordinate, whoever, will come on the show where we can really talk about what's really going on with him, especially with him kind of co-signing this advocation of Comass moving them to another nation when they stealing all living on stolen land basically in May 14, of course, 1948,
when they gave Jews their land and all that.
But let me say this, though.
That gentleman, Pat, that was just on, he should have been Vance.
He would have been a better price president, I think, that Vance would be because that guy, he really had it together.
And I know it probably had something to do with his aeronautics.
And he talked about the Huntsville project.
And also, I would hope you guys would do something about that big installation from what is it there in Colorado, Colorado Springs, whatever was to bring that whole outfit to Huntsville and then Biden counseled it.
And I'm just wondering if Trump is going to try to bring it back to Huntsville.
Frank Fair in Alabama, the Associated Press reporting that the Trump administration said yesterday it's pulling almost all U.S. Agency for International Development workers off the job, out of the field worldwide, moving all but to end a six-decade mission to shore up American security by fighting starvation, funding education, and working to end epidemics.
The administration notified USAID workers in emails and a notice posted online the latest in a suddenly dismantling of the aid agency by returning political appointees from President Donald Trump's first term and billionaire Elon Musk government efficiency teams who call much of the spending of the programs overseas and wasteful.
It was yesterday that several Democratic leaders got together to introduce legislation called the Stop the Steal Act, pointed directly at the actions of Elon Musk, specifically his actions at the Treasury Department.
So today, Leader Jeffries and I are joining together to push legislation to prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department's payment systems and protect Americans across the country.
Our bill aims to do a few simple things.
One, deny access to special government employees, employees that don't have to disclose their conflicts of interest or any other ethic agreements.
Two, to deny access to anyone with conflicts of interest or lack of appropriate clearance.
And three, include personal tax information into existing privacy protections.
We call our legislation Stop the Steal.
Whatever Doge is doing, it's not democracy.
We know what democracy is like.
It's out in the open.
It's not secret.
You do two sides debate, and then the elected officials make decisions.
Democracy doesn't work in the shadows.
Democracy doesn't skirt the rule of law.
And it doesn't give special privilege to the ideas and needs of a group of ultra-wealthy people at the expense of American families.
Of course, we should talk about reform.
Reform's a worthy cause.
Everyone agrees we should find ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of government.
But you know what history shows?
When it's done in the dark of night, it always leads to bad results.
When these Doge people decide to cut a program, have they even talked to the people who run the program?
Have they even done a little research?
Have they heard the other side?
Or are they just in such a rush to cut anything they can so that they can keep tax breaks and give deeper tax breaks to the wealthiest of Americans?
The Washington Post this morning looks at the legality of actions taken by Doge from the reporting, says that specific concerns include the terms of the quote deferred resignation that Musk Teams is offering to purge the civil service, which experts say runs afoul of federal spending law, and whether Musk staffers will use the Treasury's payment system reverse spending that's already been approved.
Two federal employee unions sued Monday to block Doge from accessing that system.
Late Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson wrote to Congress that Doge associates only have, quote, read-only access to it.
Several federal officials said that they're worried about Doge's taking control of government systems that hold America's personal information, including student loan data.
And others have raised privacy concerns about the agency's vow to use artificial intelligence on a government database.
More there.
The Washington Post is where you can find it.
This is John in Illinois Democrats line.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, Pedro.
I just have three quick points I wanted to read off real quick.
So it's good to know that it only took $10,000 from AIPAC to want to ethnically cleanse Gaza, like the last guest said.
It's truly gross.
It's even grosser that the plan, according to Jared Kushner, would be to build luxury condos on top of a genocided peoples.
John Dickinson: The Forgotten Founder00:07:52
unidentified
Second, crime is down despite all the scary migrants coming in.
But again, this is what fascists do: set people who are hurting against those with no power, like immigrants, like gays, trans, or DEI or whatever.
The goal is to privatize the gains and socialize the costs.
Lastly, it's super annoying living in this fourth Reich where Elon Kinzigheil and the terrorist Netanyahu, who has an arrest warrant from International Criminal Court, can come hang out at the White House.
And the media just pretends like they aren't Nazis.
Well, they are.
If Chuck Schumer is the best we got as resistance, we're cooked.
And what I see going on is Netanyahu, he's been after that land for a long time, and he's got a few reasons for doing it.
And I don't call it a war, call it genocide, what he did.
And he wants to get all them people out of there so Israel could take over that land for themselves and make the American taxpayer pay for it.
And years ago, when Obama was president, Netanyahu told him, he said, we need double the billions you usually give us every year because we got to build our contractors, have to need work to build new housing for the Israeli people to live in new housing on occupied land.
Now, they're going to try the same thing with Gaza.
In other words, you use American money to clean the whole place up, and then the Israelis would take it over.
They've been looking to expand.
All they look to do is expand over there.
And that's what's going on.
And I can see right through it, but most people don't.
And Trump is saying going to send these people to somewhere with a wizard of Oz or some make-believe place is going to be wonderful, but he don't name the place.
And then when you talk to Egypt and the other countries, they don't want the Palestinians.
And Trump says, yeah, the other countries were willing to take them in.
Everything is the whole plan is for them to, for Israel to expand into Gaza and take it over.
James in Florida there, if you're interested in the topic of Doge and its actions, an event today at 10 o'clock, you might be interested in watching on C-SPAN 3 the organization or the group Doge.
The effort is designed to increase government efficiency, reduce unnecessary spending.
This event will feature Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Citizens Against Government Waste President Thomas Schatz testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about those efforts on government efficiency.
That hearing you can see at 10 o'clock on C-SPAN 3, also our app C-SPANNOW and our online as always at c-span.org.
John in Falls Church, Virginia, Democrats line.
unidentified
Go ahead.
Yes.
Good morning, Pedro.
Doing an excellent job of informing us what's going on.
I'm not an anti-Trumper.
In fact, I'm actually moving towards his views.
I was just curious if you could look into and inform us, please, Pedro, of how Mr. Trump expects to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza, please.
And that's all.
Thank you so much.
And oh, yeah.
Remember, everybody, we're the United States of America.
Bill in Alabama, finishing off this round of open forum.
Thanks to those who participated.
Two more guests set to join us during the course of the morning.
Up next, Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen.
He's a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee.
He'll talk about those recent airline disasters, also President Trump's actions on the federal workforce.
And then later, we'll hear from Politico's economics correspondent Victoria Guida as she discusses President Trump's use of tariffs to achieve policy goals.
John Dickinson is one of the most significant founders of the United States who is not well known by all the American public.
Author Jane E. Calvert is trying to change that with her new biography, Penman of the Founding.
John Dickinson is known for his nine essays under the title Fabius, published anonymously in newspapers during the time that the states were deciding on whether to approve the new Constitution.
John Dickinson of Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania was the only founding figure present and active in every phase of the revolution, from the Stamp Act crisis through the ratification of the Constitution.
unidentified
Author Jane Calvert talks about her book, Penman of the Founding, a biography of John Dickinson.
On this episode of BookNotes 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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Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories.
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It isn't just an idea.
It's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
Democracy in real time.
This is your government at work.
This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
There are lots of legality questions concerning what Elon Musk is doing.
It's unclear what his authority is and what authority his 19 to 24 year old Dickens-like kids who are running amok in Washington, screwing things up and casting people who have careers and children and families' lives in chaos.
It's unclear what authority he has and what laws he's violated in breaking, going into buildings and taking over computers and the access to the computers without security clearance and seeing classified data and what they might be doing with it.
But the fact that they're in possession of it and maybe putting it on different servers might raise problems concerning hacking.
So there's all kinds of possible law violations.
You've got to remember, Elon Musk is the man who said when we had our first budget proposal before the administration had come in, he sounded the alarm.
He was our Paul Revere, saying how terrible the bill that Speaker Mike Johnson proposed in working with Democrats to deal with the past budget was wrong because number one, legislators, congresspeople were giving themselves a 43% pay raise.
Outrageous.
Well, he was right, it had been outrageous.
It was true, but it was a 3% pay raise, not a 43% pay raise.
He said the bill gave the D.C. government $3 billion to build a stadium, a football stadium in Washington.
False.
Gave D.C. and some variations to a lease at RFK Stadium the rights to RFK Stadium in the area around there, but nothing about any money for a football stadium.
He said it gave Ukraine $60 million or $60 billion.
I don't know what it was.
It was outrageous.
It gave nothing.
And he said we cut off the opportunity for the Republicans and others to look at the January 6th papers.
Noah established a process where they could go in and see them.
So Elon Musk is a man who can't even read a bill and understand it.
He reads bills and he puts out language that is false to the American public, which is scary.
And some people are just amazed.
Because he's the richest man in the world, doesn't make him the smartest man in the world.
There have been a lot of rich people that weren't so smart.
And you can start with the President of the United States, who has said that we have given $50 billion worth of condoms to Hamas.
We have not done that.
We gave some condoms to a place called Gaza that's in northern Africa, not Gaza that's in the Middle East.
He doesn't understand his geography, and he said it two or three times.
So in response to criticisms from you and other Democrats, including Senator Schumer, Mr. Musk responded like this, saying hysterical reactions like this is how you know that Doge is really working, is doing work that really matters.
This is the one shot American people have to defend, defeat bureaucracy, the rule of the bureaucrats, and restore democracy, the rule of the people.
We're never going to get another chance like this.
Well, one of the first things I learned in Congress, and I've been just my 19th year, was from some senior members who were Republicans.
And some bills came up to take money from USAID, and they told me, and they were experienced guys, they were conservatives, they were old traditional Republicans.
They said USAID is one of our most important programs because it not only helps people, which is important directly and on a one-on-one level, but it helps America because we're seen in the world as a helper in crisis situations where there's poverty, where there's need for water, need for food.
We do a lot.
We do more than anybody.
And the other people out there doing things for these people are Russia and China.
If we're not on the playing field doing the good things that people respect about America and it says USAID from the American people, then Russia and China get all the perks and they get all the minerals that we want to get from the Congo and from wherever else in Africa.
They provide lithium batteries that make Teslas and give Elon Busk a bunch of money.
I don't know if they're efficient or not, nor does Elon Musk.
I know that they don't get much money, much less than Musk made last month.
He made $126 billion in inflated values of Tesla and other investments that he has.
But I don't know that they're inefficient.
Just because you say they're inefficient, you know, the agencies, the people that are supposed to be responsible in our government for rooting out fraud, abuse, and waste.
Fraud, abuse, and waste.
That's all you hear.
It just trips off their tongues.
Those are the IGs.
Trump fired all of the investigator generals, and he fired every one of them.
None of them did anything wrong.
He did it illegally.
He was supposed to give 30 days' notice to Congress.
He gave no notice to anybody.
And he took out the people whose job as independents are supposed to root out fraud, abuse, and waste.
And he put in Musk, who doesn't know what he's doing.
We're in the minority, both in the House and Senate.
So we can't, it's a lot we can't do.
The Congress can have a standing to pursue in court, but the Democratic caucus, which is a minority, cannot.
And individual congressmen don't have standing.
But we work with legal groups and we're going to work with legal groups to bring lawsuits.
The government employees union brought recent lawsuits concerning the firing of certain officials and these letters they put out to suggest people should voluntarily quit and they'll get this great, they go to Tahiti or the Bahamas, have this fabulous vacation, and then have eight months of free pay and blah, blah, blah.
It's a wonderful deal.
You know, Donald Trump is famous for not paying his subcontractors, his contractors on jobs.
He doesn't pay.
The man is not somebody you want to do business with, and the man's nobody you want to make a deal with a contract with because he doesn't fulfill his promises.
So I hope the government employees stick with their lawyers and we're going to stick with their lawyers.
The ACLU brought lawsuits on the deportations, many of which are illegal.
First, they made it sound like they were only going to pick up violent criminals, and I can see picking up violent criminals, although I think violent criminals should be probably in jail for being violent criminals and convicted of rape or murder or all these crimes they say they committed.
And that these people, yes.
But it showed they picked up half the people they picked up had committed no crime at all.
And then the little girl that they've got there being as the press secretary said, oh, but they were criminals the day they came into the United States because they came in illegally.
So by that, they committed a crime.
Well, if that was the basis of committing a crime and picking somebody up and deporting them, why'd we have to pass Lake and Riley and use that poor girl's death and murder, which was atrocious and awful and something that makes everybody's heart bleed, make her the name of a law that only says that you can continue to pick people up for misdemeanors like shoplifting.
If their crime can be just coming into the country, you didn't need the Lake and Riley law to make shoplifting and other nonviolent crimes basis for deportation.
We're seeing a whole bunch of just throwing pictures out and platitudes and symbolic things without taking action.
What have they done to reduce the price of eggs?
Zero.
What have they done to help the working man?
Have they talked about increasing the federal minimum wage?
Not at all.
They're doing nothing about the economy except for billionaires.
And all this is to save money with this Doge thing to try to say that they can raise money for the tax cut they're going to have to continue the Trump tax cuts, his only success in his first term, to give billionaires who are living the life of 564,000 Rileys a pay raise.
I'm not as brilliant as Einstein, and of course you aren't either.
I don't believe Albert Einstein said that.
Albert Einstein was Jewish, and in the Jewish religion, there's nothing about abortion.
And in fact, there's some things in the Old Testament about a fetus not being considered alive until it's born because there were so many deaths during pregnancy and women and families suffered so much they didn't want the families to suffer and because of the child fetus not being brought into this world that it wasn't considered a life so that the mother would not have so much heartache.
And that was something I think was a brilliant thing that was put in the Bible in the Old Testament by those folks.
And it was a way of life that we had that concerned the living and made sure that their life went on in a positive fashion.
I don't think, whatever you read that, you better Google it.
When we talk about the tariffs that Trump is imposing, from my understanding, tariffs are supposed to bring jobs to the United States.
I heard a clipping from a few years back of Elon Musk, who's saying that robots will be taking over many jobs.
Do you think that these tariffs are going to bring warehouse jobs and other jobs to the United States for humans, or is it another way for Elon Musk to get even richer and have these jobs that's really going to hurt humans in the United States and it would be operated by robots?
He cut out more jobs at Twitter than you can imagine.
He's not for employing people.
He's for making money and making money however he can.
One of the things he did at Twitter is he cut out the folks whose job it was to look at tweets and find ones that were blatantly false and created problems for America concerning particularly vaccines, but also political, and took some of those tweets down, and that wasn't satisfying to him.
He wants to put out all these conspiracy theories and vaccine nonsense.
As far as jobs, no, Musk is not for jobs.
Musk is for Musk.
And tariffs are supposed to theoretically produce jobs, but they raise the price of goods.
The American public pays for those tariffs.
We would pay for it in larger prices, and as prices go up, jobs will go down.
He hasn't done anything about the price of eggs, the price of bacon, the price of toast, zero.
And Musk doesn't care, and Trump doesn't care.
They care about billionaires and get their main objective of what they're going to do with their big reconciliation bill, which they can do with just a majority and not have Democrats involved, is to give billionaires a large, large tax cut.
They need to be paying more to help people.
There are so many people in this world, this country, that need health care, and they've got none of proposals about expanding health care to people, nothing realistic.
The Democrats brought you the American, the ACA, Ford's Obamacare, Pelosi Care, whatever you want to call it.
And it's provided health care to many, many, many millions of people, and that's what we need to continue to do.
But don't believe Musk if you're thinking about jobs.
And as far as these tariffs, the tariffs that we've got now, we've got tariffs now, they have not increased jobs and production in America.
It has not worked.
You know, it's just he's gotten something about McKinley and this mountain in Alaska that was Denali.
And he's got this in his mind.
He loves the word tariffs.
See what he took his tariffs off immediately when Mexico and Canada came and said, we'll do this or we'll do this.
Mexico already had 10,000 plus soldiers on the border.
Canada's going to spend billions of dollars for a problem that doesn't exist.
The fentanyl comes in from the South, not the North.
This guy is so messed up, and he's so taken advantage of, and he's so incompetent.
We have a child president, a man-child president, and it's dangerous.
The Wall Street Journal says that the tariff war was the dumbest idea ever in economics.
The Wall Street Journal and David Brooks, a conservative New York Times columnist, wrote about stupid, and he said stupid is not knowing what comes next.
Taking Gaza, the United States taking it, that means we have to wipe out Hamas.
Hamas still has lots of soldiers and lots of weapons.
You want our soldiers to go down in those tunnels and find Hamas?
I don't.
And nor do our soldiers.
That's not what America First was supposed to be about.
He brings up things with no thought about what's going to happen.
Take that land, the Palestinians' land, and put casinos on it and bars and gambling halls and strippers and hookers.
And the fact that social media spreads a lot of these lies and that now all the social media billionaires have come to Trump and said, all right, we want to give you a million dollars for this and a million dollars for that and sit in the first row with the inauguration.
They're stopping their fact-checking, which on social media means when they put lies out, somebody's there with responsibility.
And Zuckerberg and these others have said, we're not going to do it, and we're just going to let it flow.
These lies are out there, and Trump's the one that started, it got worse and worse and worse.
And people have followed him and put out lies, and there's so many lies out.
You know, this thing with Trump and the condoms, it's just ludicrous, and he repeats it over and over and over again that we're giving all these condoms to Hamas.
I mean, I don't think Hamas is having a bunch of orgies.
We do have a new Attorney General, at least it seems, as of yesterday, receiving that Senate vote, Pam Bondi, when she's sworn in as a member of the Judiciary Committee.
I mean, I've heard some people say she's a good lawyer, and that's fine and good.
I just remember that the first person that Trump suggested for Attorney General was Matt Gates.
And that was the most ludicrous idea ever.
I mean, that was really nuts.
Here's a guy that, when the ethics report had it, had been soliciting and paying for 17-year-old girls to come to sex parties he had in Florida and in the Bahamas, that he had issues about his use of his political fund as his government fund to pay this and that and what he had done and the lies he put out about these parties and the drugs that he'd used, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And he was as bad as George Santos.
And he was going to make him Attorney General of the United States.
So I don't know where Pam Bondi is.
I do know that she took when she was Attorney General about a $25 million contribution.
I think that's what it was.
Pretty sure it was $20,000,000 or $25,000.
It might have been just $25,000.
It was a lot of money.
And she took this money from Trump.
And as soon as she took it, she refused to go along with the other attorney generals to sue Trump University for fraud, which ended up being a multi-million dollar agreement that he signed to admit that he was fraudulent and getting people to get to go to Trump University and what they got.
And then he was banned from ever being on a board or involved in a 501c3 charity in New York State for years.
And Bondi, when she took that contribution from his PAC, which was illegal, it wasn't from his pack, it was from his charitable foundation.
And it was illegal for him to put it in a gift to a politician, which he did.
And she took that, and then she didn't join the lawsuit.
So I hope she has stronger ethics now and she'll stand up to Donald Trump and be an independent United States Attorney General.
But I don't expect it.
I expect her to be, her to weaponize the Justice Department and the FBI, and that's a very serious problem that America will incur.
Kingsport, Tennessee, from Andrea, Republican line.
unidentified
Hello.
The reason I'm calling is because I want to stand up for Elon.
People are saying he's not so smart.
Well, let me tell you, he was a bullied child, and all he did was read and watch movies, and he learned a whole lot.
He's the one that put together the Tesla.
He's the one that put batteries to make things work around the world.
He's the one that goes into countries and helps them by, you know, putting all these things up in the air so that we can have all have everybody can be in touch.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk were friends many years ago.
They worked together.
So Donald knew who he was hiring when he brought on Musk.
And he's a fast reader, and he's going over all these things that the Democrats have all put out all these billions of dollars that they're giving to other countries for no reason.
And the only reason that we were working with another, he wants to do Gaza is because they have nothing.
There's no way they can rebuild that country.
And he's wanting other countries to rebuild Gaza.
He's not taking it from America.
He's taking it from other rich countries.
I believe that if we let Trump alone for a while and let him do what he wants to and let him start making America great again and then go attack him after you know, after he starts doing the things at the border, he got reaction from the borders and he got them to stop people coming across the borders and he got, he got he.
I think that Kingsport's pretty and it's nice and all that.
I don't know about Musk necessarily being that brilliant and starting, and my understanding is he bought Tesla from the people who originally came up with it, just like he bought Twitter from the people who came up with it.
He was smart to buy it, but he ruined Twitter and I don't know what he did at Tesla, but I knew he.
A lot of people quit and left.
Some of them went and started this, another electric car company, and and, but he didn't come up with the idea of it and and he got bullied.
Yeah, he did.
He was in South Africa.
You remember his family was there when they had apartheid and he was, and it's also it's.
I've not verified this.
I hate to put Put it out by there, but I've talked to my staff, and some people have said that USAID was part of the support that came into South Africa when there wasn't a right after they broke the shackles of apartheid and the African-American majority and Nelson Mandela came to power, and he didn't like that.
And that's why I guess he supports these neo-Nazi parties in Germany, the most far-right parties, and he tells them on the anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz, where the survivors of Auschwitz gathered for that program, that the Germans need to remember their great history and not to get past the past.
That's not what the Jewish people who were the victims of the Holocaust said and what the righteous Gentiles say.
They say, never forget, so it won't happen again.
He, though, knows he and his family were down there in South Africa in an apartheid world that put Nelson Mandela in jail for 30-something years in Robin Island, and he's forgotten because it makes his heart feel better not to be cognizant of and honest about what he and his compatriots did when they ruled South Africa.
Well, first, I want to say we have not had a classified briefing.
We will have some soon, I think.
That was a terrible tragedy.
I grieve for all of the victims, both in the airplane and in the helicopter, but I don't believe that they should have been flying that helicopter at that time when there were still planes coming into DCA airport.
And it said that that was a special route that they were going to plan to use and have used and were rehearsing for use if there was an attack on America, particularly in the time, a nuclear attack, to get Pentagon officials and other leaders in our country out of our country into some underground, special, safe area, and that it ran down the Potomac.
Well, they could have run down the Potomac at one in the morning.
And why they had to do their drills when there were still planes coming in to land at DNA was foolish.
And that's the fault of the head of the Defense Department, the Secretary of Defense, who just got in, who has no business being a line employee at a small business, is the charge of the Defense Department.
And whoever at the Defense Department decided that a helicopter ought to be flying that route at 9 o'clock at night, that person needs to be fired.
It was the decision to put them out there that caused the crash, and that's no question about that.
Secretary Hagseth has no business being the Defense Secretary, just like Robert Kennedy has no business being in charge of health.
Robert Kennedy is an anti-vaxxer.
He said the polio vaccine needs to be retested.
I had polio.
I'll tell Robert Kennedy, who's been somebody I've known for a long time and get along with, and he used to be fine.
I think he went off the deep end.
I don't know what the brain, the worm did to the brain.
But we need the polio vaccine, and we need all the vaccines.
And the worst thing that you could do with the vaccine is to tell your children not to take it.
And he told the people at Samoa for their children not to take the measles vaccine or the mumps vaccine.
I forget which of the M diseases it was.
And they had 81 deaths and lots of illnesses.
But Trump has appointed an awful cabinet.
It's not certainly, you know, he talks about DEI.
A, DEI has not killed anybody.
That's number one.
Number two, he talks about DEI.
He talked about his cabinet.
His cabinet is about as least DEI as you can be, except he took some of the least welcomed Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr. and put them in his cabinet.
He took this guy out of Fox News.
He put him at the Defense Department.
He's had other people that are substandard, and he needs, and it's basically almost an all-white cabinet.
He's got one or two black guys.
Think that's it.
You know, he could find some better people.
But what happened in that crash, the Defense Department should not have had those drills when there were still passenger airplanes coming in, and that's the first place to look.
Don't look to the pilots, don't look to the air traffic controller, look to the Defense Department.
Thank you for your service in Vietnam, and thank you for calling in.
I think your nickname is a good one.
He deserves it.
You know, he's talked about putting an iron dome, kind of using the terminology and the defense mechanisms of Israel to protect the, and that works there.
It's a small country, and it's a small amount of missiles that have come in from Iran and the Houdis, et cetera.
But he talked about putting an iron dome around the United States.
When he first talked about it, I thought he was talking about protecting us from Russia and China and getting the iron dome on our northern borders to protect from missiles coming over the North Pole.
Well, lately, with the way he's acted with his tariffs, putting it against our friends in Canada and New Mexico, his iron dome might be to protect us from Canada and Mexico.
Representative Steve, I'm sorry, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a member of the Transportation Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee, also a member of the Judiciary Committee.
In about a half hour from now, we'll take a look at the tariff policy employed by the Trump administration, Victoria Guida, from Politico.
We'll talk about the specific tariffs and the goals of the administration and using those.
But before that, we will go to another round of open forum.
If you want to participate, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
We'll take those calls when we return.
unidentified
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I could not resist after hearing Representative Cohen make a rear-end out of himself.
I've never heard anybody so disparaging of other people who are trying to make this country go.
We need to work together.
Calling Mr. Trump, President Trump, all kinds of names.
I never heard out of Representative Cohen's mouth anything, not one word of what the Democrats want to do to help the American people.
All they can do is name call and all that.
So I just, I'm embarrassed to, I almost turned the show off, but I said, no, I have to call because I've never heard such disparaging talk on either side.
I've never heard a Republican come on your show and talk like that about Democrats.
So that's all I have.
And thank you for stopping him on his last comments.
He just kept rambling on, and I appreciate you stopping him.
First of all, I called just about a month ago on the 6th, right before the vote count, and I got to talk from 43, in five in the morning, for our time, I mean, from 43 to 45.
And another couple of minutes was cut off.
And it's important because four years ago, we tried to stop this stuff with what happened on the 6th and to no avail.
And then you're supposed to be open here.
And somehow we got cut off and didn't get that.
I want to say that yesterday there was Senator Murphy from Connecticut, Democrat, was on NPR for seven minutes.
And he said we've got a constitutional crisis.
Folks should listen to that.
And he said that the Democrats have to reach out to Republicans and other folks and do this together.
Also, the special prosecutor, Hook Smith, who quit a week and a half ago or so, just because Justice said they couldn't go after it, because they thought they couldn't go after a current president.
Okay, I don't know why we don't have the number.
Democrats don't have the numbers in the justice for the House or the Senate.
But the state of California is having hearings on this, and they need money for the fires are climate-related, and the Trump tried to pull us out of the climate as an existential threat.
And you talk about truth and all this and science.
This is extremely important stuff.
So I think we need to talk.
He said, call your Congress.
I called our Congressman as Ted Liu.
He's on the Justice Committee in the House, and this fellow was on the Justice Committee as well.
So it should be what I wanted to ask them what they're doing about it.
And also, you know, it had to do with keeping Trump off the bat, the 14th Amendment, Section 3.
And we mentioned the National Constitution Center, impartial, bipartisan, et cetera.
But we followed up trying to explain that.
We saw Trump talking like a mob boss trying to get 11,000 votes out of Georgia.
And they had 10,000 demonstrations on Monday or Tuesday.
Ms. Feldman, we heard the president float this idea for Gaza.
What's been the follow-up on that?
unidentified
The follow-up is that people are just beside themselves that he said that.
I mean, I was in the East Room last night when he had that appearance with Benjamin Netanyahu.
The room was packed.
I was behind the cameras, but I could hear people gasping.
And you didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I mean, is he serious?
He wants to turn Gaza into the Riviera.
He was suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza, which seems to be in the same vein of his desire to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal and his joking, not joking comments about making Canada the 51st state.
But this is a serious kind of incursion into Middle East policy that could have serious repercussions.
There was reporting that, and maybe you can follow up for what you know as far as those being premeditated before the comments came or if it just came off the top of his head.
unidentified
It's hard to know with Donald Trump.
He does have a habit of acting in the moment.
He reads the room.
He's intuitive.
He goes on his gut.
And sometimes it seems that he thinks he puts on his old hat as a real estate developer.
He sees what he sees the potential for a beautiful piece of property, oceanfront property, and he thinks, oh, we can develop this.
And he's, I'm just, this is just speculating.
All we can do is imagine what's going on in his mind.
The idea of moving two million Palestinians out of Gaza.
Egypt doesn't want to take in Palestinians.
Jordan has said no.
The whole region is, they're either in an uproar or scratching their heads.
La Defeldman, when it comes to the actions of Elon Musk, what are those within the White House saying about the actions that he's taking?
unidentified
So they're just saying to hold tight that this is a process, that Elon Musk is doing what Donald Trump wants him to do, although Donald Trump has suggested that maybe he's gone a bit far.
I mean, around Washington, every federal worker, every federal agency is, if not in an uproar, they're at least very vigilant, standing by, watching their inboxes, you know, trying to buck each other up.
It's very hard for morale.
It's hard for people to do their jobs while in the middle of all this turmoil.
And the last part of that, could you elaborate on what this executive order would do and then who's directly impacted by that?
unidentified
Right.
It's an order to the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to not allow trans girls and women to take part in sports.
So I would imagine it goes, any powers that they would have that could go down to the local level, any funding that would go to entities that involve girls and women's sports, for example, that they could try to go in and stop a trans person from competing.
I just want to talk about the man from California who thinks Trump is so terrific.
And I understand that Trump had the right and privilege of opening up a reservoir full of water and letting it run down California thinking it was going to reach Los Angeles and who he thinks need water.
And I understand that water was for the farmers in California when the growing season comes.
And I don't understand why he had the right to go there and get the College of Engineers to do that.
And what is that man who lives in California talking about when he says Trump is doing a terrific job?
This goes along the lines of making Gaza a Riviera and all that.
Yeah, I just want to encourage the listener to have listeners to have a little bit of creativity of thought.
At one point, Beirut used to be the Paris of the Med before it was destroyed by decades of war.
In regards to Gaza, Trump is not talking about bringing, you know, a battalion of Marines in there and fighting street to street like they did in Fallucha.
He's talking about after the population has decreased to bring EOD teams in there to render the area safe.
They want somebody to bring, who's going to spend money to rebuild Gaza if it's just going to be destroyed again in 10 years or 20 years from war.
They want invested partners that value the place.
Trump looks at the Middle East and he looks at the opulence of Kuwait and Doha and the Emirates and Bahrain and says, why can't that be something that is going to take place in Gaza?
Do we want the UN to come in there and do what they did in Haiti and cause a cholera outbreak and rape the local populace?
I mean, come on.
We need to come up with solutions.
And I want to hear somebody have what is an alternative solution to what's going to happen.
You're going to have disease.
You're going to have famine.
You're going to have continued war.
There needs to be some resetting.
And I remember a president maybe, I don't know, 40 years ago or so that decided, you know what, this wall that goes across this country should be torn down.
We need to think outside the box and change the narrative.
I was listening to your guest this morning question Pete Hagsworth's qualifications, be the head of the Department of Defense.
I wonder what his qualifications are.
Debbie's Concerns About Time00:10:48
unidentified
Everybody questions everybody else's qualifications, but take AOC, for instance.
What were her qualifications?
And she's a member of Congress.
That's kind of unbelievable as far as Elon Musk goes.
That's what Trump was hired to do, get people like Elon Musk to drill into all these slush funds that the government had that's causing the country to be so far in debt.
He is someone independent, very intelligent.
He knows how to get things done.
He's drilling in deep, and he's finding where all this waste, rob and abuse is.
I've got a couple of issues that are running around in my head concerning some of the policies.
I don't know who's giving Trump advice or where his advisors coming from because evidently who is advising him isn't really clear on the issues that are going on because of some of the things that he's coming up with.
I also know that he pardoned Hirschner's father and made him ambassador. in Jerusalem.
They have a lot of dealings with the Israeli government over there.
And to me, this sounds like a real estate deal that's related to the family.
Also, I have an issue with him saying that he's going to take our criminals to El Salvador and possibly other countries.
That sounds like he's planning on something that Russia would do as far as hiding some of his political opponents.
And these are kind of my own conspiracy thoughts.
But if you look at the tendencies, all we're going through is massive chaos that is going to weaken our stability around the world with these other countries.
I don't think that, my understanding, I don't think they're closing an agency, but I do think they have the right to review funding and how those decisions are made and what priorities are being funded.
I think that's probably true of any administration when they come in.
There are lots of programs authorized and funded through that agency, some of which I think are operating in the way in which they were intended, some which aren't.
And I think that's the determination the administration is in the process of making and trying to determine, again, how the various programs are authorized and funded under USAID, how those dollars are being spent, whether they're being spent wisely and well and consistent with the purpose for which they are intended.
And I think as you perhaps saw yesterday when Secretary Rubio responded to some questions around this subject, indicated that for a very long time, Congress has been trying to get answers about USAID, those programs, how they're funded, why they're funded, what they're being used for, and have not been able to get that information.
The focus of Mr. Musk reportedly is turning to the Education Department.
This is from the New York Times this morning saying that workers on Mr. Musk's team are conducting a review.
They reporting that in an all-hands call with the employees in the Department's Office of Civil Rights Tuesday, Craig Traynor, the office's acting assistant secretary, signaled that the moves are part of a broader effort by Mr. Musk, the world's richest man, to reshape the federal government.
Quote, you probably know that Doge, the Doge team is like the other federal departments, is here working on the President Trump's promise to the American people to reform the federal bureaucracy.
So we're going to increase efficiencies in OCR and Ed generally, Mr. Traynor said.
According to a recording of the meeting obtained by the New York Times, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, the Musk team's presence at the Education Department is the latest sign of the billionaire's expanding government influence, which already stretches into more than half a dozen agencies.
His allies have gained access to closely held financial and data systems and helped rapidly dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development last week.
Miracle is next in Maryland, Republican line.
unidentified
Hey, Pedro, good morning.
Good morning.
I just wanted to just wanted to.
I've been listening to everyone speak about how Trump is how he's just doing a bad job and everything.
I just had the guy that just came in, the Democratic guy that just came in.
And I just want to speak a little bit about immigration.
Being an immigrant myself, I feel like it's highly unfair, you know, for people like us that paid our time and paid for everything and withted our time to migrate here, do doing things the right way.
And most times, I feel like Trump is like he's not giving enough time.
I feel like people should allow him.
He's just been in the office barely a month.
They should allow him to at least give him some time to get his job.
I feel like he meant well for this country.
And that's all I just want to say.
I feel like everyone is on him, and I feel like he has a good plan.
And with Elon Musk, I feel like they have a good plan in line to get this country to a better place.
It's like, you know, he just got in barely a month.
I don't even know if you have enough time for everything I have to say.
I'm going to refer to the last gentleman.
He's saying they should give him enough time.
What he's done within the last two weeks is absolutely unacceptable and outrageous to allow a foreigner, to me, a terrorist, to go into our government and go through our records and go through and get documents that Congress can't even, people in Congress can't even have access to.
It's absolutely unacceptable.
There's no way Elon Musk, and he has access to Starlink and everything else.
He'll go.
How do you know what he'll go in there to do?
Number one, number two, they got something on the web called Dark MAGA, which refers to Elon Musk.
And it refers to everything that they got a plan with Trump.
They got a plan, anything they're going to do to destroy the United States, just like they destroyed Gaza.
There's too much going on, and they keep getting us to focus on other issues.
People need to wake up.
They need to look at that website, go to Google, go to YouTube.
There's something called Dark NAGA, and you can see everything they're planning on doing, including IG.
So my first comment is that the previous guest that you had on, Steve Cohen, I would just like to say that I was really disappointed that y'all allowed him to stay on there for so long.
And, you know, the way he was attacking all the C-SPAN callers who didn't line up with his beliefs and everything.
And then him attacking Donald Trump's dead mother, that was just like totally uncalled for.
Second of all, I would just like to say that Donald Trump has only been in office for like two weeks.
People need to calm down.
And, you know, the Biden administration spent so much money that Donald Trump basically doesn't even have any money for his presidency.
So he's having to try to figure out how to source money and how to put his plans into action.
And then, third of all, you know, I'm a Christian and, you know, the Bible is very clear on, you know, man and woman and homosexuality.
And this is a Christian nation.
Our money says, and God we trust.
We take the Pledge of Allegiance, one nation under God.
And when we get married, you know, they're pretty much reading from the Bible, too.
John in Texas, finishing off this round of open forum.
Thanks for all of you who participated.
One more segment to go before the House comes in at 10 o'clock, looking at the tariff policy of the Trump administration and its intended goals.
Joining us for that discussion, Politico's economics correspondent, Victoria Guida, who joins us next after these messages.
unidentified
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It isn't just an idea.
It's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
Democracy in real time.
This is your government at work.
President's Tariff Tactics00:15:35
unidentified
This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
What we've seen the president actually do with tariffs, what does it say about what he wants to do with tariffs?
unidentified
So he has a lot of different goals, and that makes sort of parsing his moves a little bit difficult.
It's hard to always predict what he's going to do.
This most recent round of tariff threats that in the case of China, actual tariffs imposed, he did put a 10% new tariff on China.
It was related to border security.
So he's talked about the flow of undocumented immigrants over the border, the flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl.
And he has particularly faulted Canada and Mexico, which obviously are at both of our borders, but also China, because some of those fentanyl shipments come in from China.
This is separate from some of his other tariff threats that are still coming.
And so there's a lot of different things that he might be doing with tariffs.
Is that Canada and Mexico specifically, or are there other aspects there?
unidentified
So the Canada and Mexico tariffs are actually still on the table.
They're just on pause for a month for now.
You know, he reached agreements with each of those governments.
The Mexican government, for example, is putting more troops at the border.
And Canada, too, is ramping up its border security efforts.
And so it's a little bit unclear what might happen at the end of that month, whether there might be a reduction or a removal of the tariffs entirely, or whether they might still go into force, because that's still on the table.
But in terms of future tariffs, I mean, he's threatened tariffs on particular sectors.
He's talked about higher tariffs on steel, aluminum, microchips, pharmaceuticals, copper.
But then he's also talked about putting tariffs on various countries like economies like the European Union.
And then he's also talked about a universal tariff, the potential to just put tariffs on everybody.
What's the intended goal of having such a broad tariff policy?
unidentified
So there's a couple of different goals there again.
One of them is, you know, President Trump sort of fundamentally talks about trade as it being unfair where, you know, the U.S. has, in many cases, no tariffs at all or lower tariffs than many of our trading partners.
And that's because, you know, the United States is a net importer of the world's goods.
But also, you know, Republicans are looking at cutting taxes.
They're looking at extending the tax cuts that are expiring and also potentially expanding them.
And the administration is pretty serious about wanting revenue to help sort of offset some of that lost revenue.
And so that's one of the reasons why you could see, you know, people aren't sure whether the universal tariff is just a threat or whether he'll actually do it.
But one of the reasons why you could actually see it is because the administration is serious about wanting new revenue.
You had an event at Politico yesterday and one of those people was Peter Navarro.
We have a little bit of him, but set up a little bit about what he brought to the table when it comes to talking about the president's tariff policy.
unidentified
So Peter Navarro, who's a senior counselor at the White House, he has been with President Trump since the 2016 campaign.
He's been with him sort of the whole time.
He's one of the few people who was in the White House the first time and is there again the second time.
And he's somebody who is really pro-tariff, really pro-he particularly is a China hawk.
And he's somebody who wants to see the U.S. take a particularly hard line approach on protecting our domestic industries.
And there are different sort of factions in Trump's coalition.
Some of them might be a little, want to see tariffs used a little more strategically, maybe more as like a negotiating chit on things like border security, but really anything, and not necessarily have quite as many tariffs actually deployed.
But Peter Navarro is somebody who is really plays into that part of President Trump's instincts where he's the tariff man, as he says.
Our guests with us until the House comes in at 10 o'clock.
And if you want to ask her about this tariff approach of the president, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003 from that political event yesterday.
And I think he came to understand that this is a drug war, not a trade war, that what the president is concerned about in this case is American science.
So we got the news yesterday on a call.
unidentified
He was on a call.
President Art of the Deal.
We're getting a fentanyl czar.
We're getting billions of dollars spent on this.
We're branding terrorists, drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
And there's a number of other steps.
A lot of that's Canada, though, was back from yesterday.
So this gets back to what I was talking about initially, which is he has tariffs threats for all sorts of different reasons.
Now, with Canada and Mexico, we've had a free trade agreement with them for decades, right?
We had NAFTA that was signed in 1994.
We actually had a free trade agreement with Canada before that.
And then President Trump in his first term actually renegotiated NAFTA, and there's a new deal called the USMCA, and that's actually going to be under review next year.
And so one of the big question marks is, you know, why was President Trump doing this if we, you know, he negotiated a deal with them for largely no tariffs to suddenly put 25% tariffs on everything, 10% in the case of Canadian energy?
That would be a huge overhaul of the deal.
And so the point that Peter Navarro has been making, which is the same thing, you know, we're hearing from all across the Trump administration, is basically this doesn't actually have to do with USMCA.
This is just about the border.
Now, the practical effect is still to sort of, would be to blow up the deal because it would sort of render the tariff provisions moot if they were to take effect.
But the point is, this isn't about unfair trade practices at all.
The president ran his campaign on helping people with the economy and improving the economy.
There have been those that said tariffs would go counter to that.
How does the White House balance those things, square those two things?
unidentified
So it's a little bit complicated to try and figure out exactly the extent to which he intended to put these tariffs on or still intends to put these tariffs on, right?
And so, yeah, I sorry, can you repeat the question?
They square trying to improve the economy when they know the tariffs could be ultimately bad for the economy.
unidentified
Right, exactly.
So, inflation, right, prices have gone up.
And so, one of the big questions about tariffs is whether they're going to raise prices.
And so, I'm not, this is where I was sort of going initially: was, you know, it's unclear the extent to which he really intends to put these really high tariffs on or use them as a negotiating chip because some of these really high tariffs, you know, they're not necessarily going to pass directly through to consumers, right?
A 25% tariff isn't necessarily going to mean a 25% price increase, but it is probably going to mean a price increase.
And a lot of this stuff is, you know, stuff we buy.
Canada, Mexico, and China are our three largest trading partners.
And so, you're talking about a whole range of goods.
And so, that is something that I think is a really pressing question.
And the Trump administration just sort of, you know, blazes past some of those trade-offs.
But those trade-offs are something they're going to have to deal with.
Economics correspondent Victoria Guida of Politico joining us for this conversation.
Let's hear from Corbin.
Corbin joins us from New Jersey.
Republican line, you're on with the guests.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Hi, how are you doing today?
I just have a quick question about tariffs.
I think the tariffs are a good bargain and chip to coerce other nations and or the organizations globally to be more cooperative in America's needs.
But I want to, because you talked about pricing, I know the tariffs aren't going to be very good, but do you think this administration will also go after something like the federal income tax too to help ease with putting more money in maybe America's pockets?
So this is a top priority for the Republican trifecta, right?
Not just the White House, but also Republicans in Congress, is the tax cuts that President Trump got passed under his first term are expiring at the end of this year.
And so the idea is they want to extend those.
And President Trump also ran on potentially adding more.
So for example, he ran on no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security.
He talked about potentially lowering the corporate tax rate even further.
And so it's unclear to what extent they're going to be able to do that.
One big question is, you know, we already have quite a large amount of federal debt, and taxes are revenue, right?
So there's two halves of the debt.
There's the spending, but there's also the revenue.
And so if you reduce revenue, what that means is you're going to increase the debt even more.
And so the limiting principle on how much he might be able to cut taxes is the extent to which they're going to add to the debt.
And this is where sort of the tariffs come back in, where they want tariffs to fill at least part of that hole.
It's definitely not, there's not enough money there to sort of offset income tax, which is the vast majority of revenue that the federal government brings in.
I mean, it can be hard to generalize about the effect of tariffs because it depends on the industry, right?
It depends in part on the extent to which we have domestic production of that thing.
Usually if there are fewer imports, that offers less competition to domestic production, which should give people more flexibility to raise prices, but they're not necessarily going to.
For a lot of things, though, to produce things, we need to import inputs into manufacturing those things.
And you were talking about things like lumber and wood, right, which are inputs into building all sorts of things, steel, aluminum, right?
And so if you increase the price of those inputs, that can increase the price of even domestic manufacturing.
The first time around, it seems like companies ate some of those costs.
But what's a little bit dangerous here is that we just had a bout of inflation.
And so people now are much more used to a little bit of inflation than they were before, right?
Because before the pandemic, we had about 40 years where inflation was very low.
And we just had this bout of inflation.
And so the question is whether businesses will feel a little bit more flexibility to raise prices compared to where they were before.
And there's also a question as to whether, you know, they already had those tariffs from China and from some of these other places.
So maybe they don't have nearly as much room to really put their costs anywhere else but on consumers.
So it's going to vary sector by sector.
But yeah, in general, it's definitely not going to push prices down.
You hinted at this, but you recently wrote something about the limits of the tariff approach by the president.
Here's the piece.
The Trump tariff threats are about to hit a limit.
You kind of write in the fact that they have to fill the Treasury somehow.
Could you elaborate on that?
unidentified
Yes.
So his early approach has been on border security, but also, you know, you all may remember there was that spat with Colombia that lasted a day when Colombia refused to allow two military planes carrying deported immigrants to land.
And in response, Trump threatens to put tariffs on Colombia.
Columbia ultimately backed down.
And what I write in that piece is that President Trump really likes being unpredictable in this way.
Markets React to Tariffs00:11:44
unidentified
He really likes being able to potentially use tariffs as negotiating leverage for anything.
But the point that I'm making in that piece is eventually he will have to actually have a more structured approach.
And whether that's the form of a sort of universal tariff or there's also more formal investigations that you can do to put tariffs on particular products on particular countries, because if you want revenue, that actually requires putting tariffs in place.
Are they all part of this process of determining how tariffs will look in the future in the Trump administration?
unidentified
So they're all advising the president.
I mean, you know, I'm not going to shock anyone when I say President Trump makes up his own mind.
But he's also very influenced by the people around him.
They shape how he thinks about things, even though he has sort of a core love of tariffs.
And so, yes, you know, so we have Peter Navarro.
He mentioned in that clip you played earlier, Stephen Miller, who's one of his policy advisors, and he's been around also since the first administration.
So, he's played a big role, especially in this early push on border security.
Howard Lutnick is his nominee to be commerce secretary.
He hasn't been confirmed yet, but he will be soon.
He's a key player on this.
Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary.
Besant comes from a hedge fund background, and so he's somebody who understands markets very well.
And so, he will play a really interesting role there.
And as the president tries to figure out how to craft policies without freaking out markets, Besant is a key player there.
To what degree do you think, because you said markets, we saw the markets after the announcement of the tariffs against China and Mexico, we saw them go down.
To what degree did the president change his mind due to that versus the other things he said in conversations both with the Mexican president and the Canadian prime minister?
unidentified
So, it definitely was a way of gauging market reaction.
And markets were unhappy.
And you could see, you know, when markets opened on Monday, they opened way down.
And then, once it became clear that, you know, at least with Mexico and then eventually with Canada too, that things were getting paused, you saw an immediate market rebound.
The question is whether this was always sort of how they wanted things to go, right?
And actually, it's kind of interesting if you think about it because he did put a 10% tariff, additional tariff on China.
And people were so relieved they didn't put the tariffs on Canada and Mexico that you actually got a relatively muted market reaction.
So, it's possible that maybe they were sort of gaming things that way.
But I don't think that in this case, the market reaction was the primary factor.
But in the future, if it looks like he is putting tariffs in place, markets will not be happy about it.
And that could temper some of what President Trump's doing.
Hi, I just want to talk about the price of eggs and how the Democrats are complaining that Trump can't get the price down.
You know, the guy's been in office a little over two weeks, and the whole reason behind the AIDS shortage is because of the bird flu that the Democrats decided to kill all the birds.
They need to look at the records what's really going on.
They point the finger right away at everything this man has done, and he's just got in office.
And look at what he's done in two weeks.
It's like warped speed.
People need to take, you know, give him a little credit for the things he has done.
And look at all the wasteful spending he found.
You know, it's like I'm very proud of what he's doing.
You know, he's talking for us, the people who pay the taxes.
A lot of bureaucrats are taking the money and using it for other things that we don't want.
So, you know, take it or leave it, Elon Musk is not the best guy out there.
But you know what?
He's finding a lot of wasteful spending.
And I like what these guys are doing.
Let them do their job.
You know, let's watch and see what happens.
You know, there's a lot of corruption going on, and we need to get it right.
The reason why those have been really soaring in recent weeks is because of the avian flu.
That's not only the flu itself has killed chickens, but also, you know, for safety measures to prevent it from spreading further, a lot of chickens have been slaughtered.
And so that prevents there from being nearly as many eggs.
I'll take it further, which is, you know, we heard a lot of rhetoric during the campaign from President Trump, also from former Vice President Kamala Harris, talking about lowering prices.
And presidents just don't have that much ability to lower prices.
There are areas where they have more levers.
So for example, in healthcare, because of the government's role in things like Medicare and Medicaid, they do have more of a role there.
But in general, I think that politicians tend to overstate their ability to actually get prices down.
You know, we do also have an inflation-fighting authority here in the United States, the Federal Reserve.
They've been keeping interest rates somewhat higher as a means to keep a lid on inflation.
Unfortunately, that also keeps costs higher because that means that everyone pays a higher interest rate on things they need to finance through debt.
So prices are probably not generally going down.
There may be certain areas, you know, on any given day, some prices are going up, some prices are going down.
But overall, the overall price level is not going back down.
And I think that that's one of the things that Democrats have sort of been jumping on is, you know, President Trump campaigned on lowering the price of everything.
And that's just not something the government can do easily without causing a recession.
I suppose that some will also say, make the news that Waffle House is making, putting a 50-cent surcharge on eggs for their services.
unidentified
Right, yeah.
And eggs, I mean, that's a really painful price.
Like when you think about how eggs are everywhere, right?
You know, you eat it for breakfast, you use it to make, you know, bake.
And so that's a really politically salient price.
And that's why it's very interesting because, you know, so many of the government promises can be sort of more distance, right?
There's multiple levels between the policy that gets made and what people actually see.
And promising to lower prices is a risky thing to promise because people will know, right?
Like you go to the grocery store, it's been very clear.
I mean, inflation is, I'm not telling anybody anything they don't know.
You know, it's one of the main reasons probably President Biden was so unpopular was specifically because of inflation because people don't like paying more money.
You know, and the people in the news media pedro, y'all sit around and y'all discuss this guy like this is serious.
unidentified
This is nonsense that's going on.
And Miss, you sitting up there just calling when he said he was lowering prices, just calling a lie.
He was lying to get in office.
Every other line.
And I would tell people this right here before I like say before I go, you remember at the beginning of COVID, you know, he was saying it was only 15 people.
The people who know this 34-time and convicted Trellon, who come who know the book, everything Trump touches fails.
People know that if he said it was 15, that was probably 150,000.
Let's hear from Sabrina in North Carolina Independent Line.
unidentified
Okay, so I'd like to start out and say that I support Trump.
I think that what he's doing is very clever.
But this is my question.
With the new tariffs going on, and they're starting to collect money from other countries, is it in the works that the American people get a lifting of the liens on the federal income tax returns?
Since the revenue is going to be coming from tariffs instead of the American people, I was wondering, does that mean that we might actually get some economic relief off of these tariffs?
Is that in the works?
So that's a very complicated question.
In terms, so first of all, the tariffs are paid by the U.S. importer, right?
So it's not necessarily the case that that money is not being paid by Americans.
It's just potentially being paid for by a company, right?
And in some cases, actually, particularly because of the way that this new 10% tariff on China is implemented, actually now they've suspended what they call the de minimis threshold, which means that even if you buy something that's below a value of $800 from China, it will actually still face a tariff.
So you, as a regular person buying something online from China, could actually still face a tariff.
In terms of income tax, you know, as I mentioned earlier, it's part of the Republican agenda to extend the tax cuts.
There might be some additional income tax relief on things like no tax on tips.
I don't know that the actual income tax rate will go down for the various brackets.
That's all to be negotiated.
It's possible.
So, you know, when you talk about lowering the burden on Americans, it really depends on how you're thinking about it, right?
You know, from a price perspective, probably not.
From a tax perspective, potentially, although people forget a tariff is also a tax.
It's just a tax on imports.
And so it all depends on how that sort of distributes through the economy.