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|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Charter Communications supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hagman talks about House GOP strategy to advance President Trump's legislative agenda. | ||
| And Maryland and Democratic Congressman Glenn Ivey discusses recent actions by the Trump administration and the role of Democrats in the 119th Congress. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| It's Thursday, February 13th. | ||
| Yesterday, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone and have agreed to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine. | ||
| President Trump then spoke to Ukraine's President Zelensky in a separate call. | ||
| Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Hagseth met with NATO allies in Brussels. | ||
| In remarks yesterday, he ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and said that Ukraine's objective to regain all territory lost to Russia is, quote, unrealistic. | ||
| This first hour, we're getting your reaction to those developments. | ||
| Here's how to call us. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can send a text to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's two-hour Washington Journal. | ||
| The House is set to come in at 9 a.m. Eastern this morning. | ||
| Well, we'll start with a portion of President Trump at the Oval Office answering questions yesterday about his conversation with Vladimir Putin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| When and where did you plan on meeting with Vladimir Putin and were there any preconditions? | ||
| No, we had a great call and it lasted for a long time, over an hour this morning. | ||
| I also had with President Zelensky a very good call after that. | ||
| And I think we're on the way to getting peace. | ||
| I think President Putin wants peace and President Zelensky wants peace and I want peace. | ||
| I just want to see people stop getting killed. | ||
| We're very far away from that particular war, but that's a vicious war. | ||
| Probably a million and a half soldiers killed in a short period of time. | ||
| I've never seen anything. | ||
| I have pictures that are, you wouldn't believe it. | ||
| You wouldn't believe what you have to look at. | ||
| Young, beautiful soldiers that are just being decimated. | ||
| And it would be nice to end it immediately. | ||
| But we had a very good talk with people didn't really know what President Putin's thoughts were, but I think I can say with great confidence he wants to see it ended also. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| We're talking about Ukraine this morning and the developments around that. | ||
| This is NBC News. | ||
| By the way, you remember that Mark Fogel, the American school teacher, was released from Russia yesterday. | ||
| This is the news about what was exchanged. | ||
| So Russian money launderer to be freed in exchange for Mark Fogel. | ||
| It says that Alexander Vinnick will leave behind $100 million worth of digital assets in the United States as part of the deal to free him. | ||
| It says that the Trump administration has agreed to send a convicted money launderer back to Russia in exchange for the release of American Mark Vogel. | ||
| Alexander Vinnick is in American custody and awaiting transport to Russia, expected to happen by the end of the week. | ||
| As part of the deal to free him, he will leave behind $100 million worth of digital assets in the United States. | ||
| That's a picture of him. | ||
| He was arrested in Greece. | ||
| And you can read the rest of that at nbcnews.com. | ||
| Let's talk to Sid first in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I support residents from the ceasefire deal. | ||
| I think BidHeck said the Secretary of Defense is right in moving forward in ending this war. | ||
| You know, there's really a lot of Russians who live in Ukraine, so there's really no reason for NATO membership. | ||
| And also, the fact that at this point, really, the best way to end the war is to just end with what is going on. | ||
| So I support President Trump's strategy. | ||
| And also, in the end, really, they need to start giving us back some rare earth metals. | ||
| All that money we gave to Ukraine was not for free. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And Sid, this is what Sid was talking about about rare earth metals. | ||
| Actually, this is not coming up for me, but we will get that for you. | ||
| So in the meantime, let's hear again from President Trump talking about his conversation with Russian President Putin and about the ceasefire. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| We talked about the possibility, I mentioned it, of a ceasefire so we can stop the killing. | ||
| And I think we'll probably end up at some point getting a ceasefire in the not-too-distant future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you view Unified as an equal to whom? | |
| Do you view Ukraine as an equal member of this peace process? | ||
| It's an interesting question. | ||
| I think they have to make peace. | ||
| Their people are being killed, and I think they have to make peace. | ||
| I said that was not a good war to go into, and I think they have to make peace. | ||
| That's what I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The whole thing. | |
| That was the president yesterday, and we're taking your calls. | ||
| Sid had mentioned the rare earth minerals, so I wanted to update you on that. | ||
| So this is the Kiev post. | ||
| It says, U.S. Treasury Secretary met with Zelensky and Kiev to kick off rare earth peace deal. | ||
| This is Scott Besant. | ||
| This was his first, he's the first U.S. official to visit Ukraine. | ||
| It says this. | ||
| Besant will hold discussions focused on U.S. access to Ukraine's critical minerals, energy resources, and the future of state-owned enterprises, according to a source. | ||
| It says the announcement came after Trump started floating the idea of exchanging mineral access for continued U.S. security support on February 3rd. | ||
| We're putting in hundreds of billions of dollars, Trump said. | ||
| They have great rare earth, and I want security of the rare earth, and they're willing to do it. | ||
| Zelensky quickly reacted by stating that he supported the idea. | ||
| Quote, we are open to the fact that all this can be developed with our partners who are both helping us to protect our land and pushing the enemy back with their weapons and sanctions packages. | ||
| And this is absolutely fair. | ||
| That's what Zelensky said on February 5th. | ||
| So we'll talk to Stanley now. | ||
| Eldorado, Arkansas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Stanley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Thank you for taking my call this morning. | ||
| Yes, we do need to stop that war over there. | ||
| It's been the end. | ||
| And the rare earth minerals, that is very important for trade and everything, and for peace and everything. | ||
| And he will stop this war here pretty quick. | ||
| And if I may, another subject. | ||
| This Reverend Al Strotman. | ||
| I don't know where he got his paperwork at, but he's not surely no Reverend. | ||
| The way he talks on TV, stirring up people. | ||
| And that Maxine Waters, she's even worse than he is. | ||
| Because every time you see her on TV, she's starting riots. | ||
| For a person to only make $170,000 a year, where did she get that $5 million mansion at? | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go back to our conversation on Ukraine. | ||
| Here is Democrat Morci Kaptur. | ||
| She's the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine caucus. | ||
| She was on the floor of the House yesterday to reiterate that Ukraine needs to be at the negotiating table and that its original border has to be maintained. | ||
| Here she is. | ||
| Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, has stated a negotiated peace will require an exchange of territory. | ||
| Working with our closest and most valued allies in NATO and the free world, the United States must do everything possible to bring full liberty to Ukraine and move Russia back into her own borders. | ||
| The international community must safeguard those borders, and those negotiations are yet to come. | ||
| But we have some hope this morning, if we are serious, about making sure the dividing line between the free world and the suppressed world is clearly drawn and safeguarded. | ||
| Getting your calls this morning on Ukraine. | ||
| Rush is an East McKeysport, Pennsylvania, independent line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| You're the last person I talked to on C-SPAN months ago because I was still up in the air. | ||
| I was for Bobby Kennedy, of course, but I was up in the air, and people always say I beat her on the bush. | ||
| At the end, you said, okay, well, who are you going to vote? | ||
| But at any rate. | ||
| So, wait, who did you vote for? | ||
|
unidentified
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Only you, pardon. | |
| Who did you end up voting for, or do you not want to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trump. | |
| Well, Trump, especially when Bobby wants, you know, it's going to be confirmed here sooner or later. | ||
| I don't know what they're going to do. | ||
| They're supposed to do it today. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's at 1030 Rush. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you. | |
| On the Ukraine thing, I listen to, I don't watch a whole lot of TV. | ||
| I'm a big Tucker Carlson fan. | ||
| I followed him for 26 years when Fox got rid of him. | ||
| It seems like all the podcasts I listen to have been fired from Fox. | ||
| Judge Netanyahu, not Netanyahu, Napolitano, O'Reilly, Megan Kelly, Dad Bongino. | ||
| But mainly I listen to this Napolitano. | ||
| And he has on this Professor Jeffrey Sachs, teaches at Columbia, I believe. | ||
| And he gives the best description of all the world history that the United States have been in. | ||
| And actually, I even knew this one. | ||
| In 2014, under Obama, this Newland, I forget her first name. | ||
| Victoria. | ||
| Pardon? | ||
| Victoria Newland. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, Victoria Newland. | |
| So we went over there and we overthrew, now I get the name, there was a Portoshenko and another guy. | ||
| Overthrew their government in 2014 to put another guy in because the guy that was in there wanted to be too close to Russia and we shifted away from the EU and this and that. | ||
| So we got this other guy in and then that's the you know, I don't want to get into stupid stuff, the burisma thing and we know what happened there. | ||
| And then so I do believe Trump when he says that war would have never happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now everybody says, well, he's a Trump supporter or what or you know, a Putin lover or something. | |
| Well, heck. | ||
| No, I think I believe him. | ||
| I think that he just doesn't want to see people getting killed. | ||
| I don't either. | ||
| I went through the Vietnam. | ||
| I'm 73 years old. | ||
| So Rush, do you think that Ukraine should be at the table or should this just be negotiated between the U.S. and Russia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| Ukraine will be at the table. | ||
| In fact, Zelensky was at the White House. | ||
| It may have been either before Trump was even elected and was behind him. | ||
| I'm sure Zelensky. | ||
| But here's the thing: Zelensky made a comment. | ||
| I heard him say it less than a week ago. | ||
| Oh, the United States says they've given us hello? | ||
| Yes, yes, we're here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They say they've given us $177 billion. | |
| I only seen $77 billion of it. | ||
| So there's, you know, there is a lot of this stuff going on here, not just with the Ukraine, but with everything. | ||
| But they're not going to get that land back. | ||
| You say they're not going to get. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a border thing. | |
| But Donansk and the other one that borders Russia, those are a lot of Russian people in there. | ||
| They're not going to get that land back. | ||
| I even think Hegzeth might have said that yesterday. | ||
| That's not going to be in the deal. | ||
| And the 2014 borders are unrealistic. | ||
| Okay, so, well, here's what Zelensky said in response. | ||
| So here's the newest thing that we've got. | ||
| I had a long and detailed conversation with President Trump. | ||
| I appreciate his genuine interest in our shared opportunities and how we can bring about real peace together. | ||
| We discussed many aspects: diplomatic, military, and economic. | ||
| And President Trump informed me about what Putin told him. | ||
| We believe that America's strength, together with Ukraine and all our partners, is enough to push Russia to peace. | ||
| John, Easton, Pennsylvania, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Amy. | |
| The reason this war started is when NATO was formed, okay, Poland and them kind of countries were moved into the, you know, the war on the other side of the wall, you know, the communist Europe. | ||
| Ukraine was not included. | ||
| And neither was Crimea and all them other countries here. | ||
| Okay, so you're saying Ukraine was not included in NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, in the border. | |
| If it was, Putin would have never been able to cross that border into Ukraine. | ||
| If there would have been a nuclear stockpile there, there would have been a military presence there and everything else. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, so there was nuclear weapons in Ukraine as part of the Soviet Union since they were part of the Soviet Union. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| And they gave them up. | ||
| Oh, on the American side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like in Europe, in Germany, and all that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So what are you thinking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We weren't there. | |
| It was wide open. | ||
| Ukraine was wide open. | ||
| So, what do you think about what's going on now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, what's going on now is Putin is getting old, and he's a dictator, and a dictator needs a place to go. | |
| And there isn't a country in this world that'll take him except for the United States. | ||
| And the minute Trump got elected, that was his ticket to come here. | ||
| And the only reason Trump wants him here is because he wants to get his hands on his money because Putin has been stealing from the Russian people for years. | ||
| He's got trillions of dollars all over the freaking world in bank. | ||
| And that's all Trump wants to do is get his hands on that. | ||
| And Putin will be living in this country, and we wouldn't even be knowing him. | ||
| And this is who knows? | ||
| We might have a chance of getting democracy in Russia again. | ||
| This is Eric in Newport, New Hampshire, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, that Putin coming to America thing, you think he wants to come to America. | |
| He's got so much money, he can go anywhere in the world. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, anyways, this Ukraine thing, yeah, it's a great, it's a great development. | ||
| I mean, it took what Trump a month. | ||
| He said he was going to do it overnight, you know, but you got to give him credit. | ||
| He did it in about a month. | ||
| And, you know, I mean, I think that's a great thing. | ||
| One of the things that will come out of this, our funding of the Ukraine effort, we sent billions over there. | ||
| We can't even reconcile our own DOD books. | ||
| And that's been well acknowledged for, I think, eight years. | ||
| We don't know where the money goes. | ||
| How do you think that's going to end up with the billions of dollars that we sent to Ukraine for a country half-bombed out? | ||
| That would be concerning, and I hope to see. | ||
| But Trump's doing a great job. | ||
| He's answered more questions in the last months than Joe Biden did in his 40 years combined. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| I'm glad that one more thing. | ||
| I'm glad that the Fort Liberty is now renamed back to what it should be, Fort Bragg, 82nd Airborne, all the way. | ||
| This is Jeffrey and Henderson, Nevada Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Jeffrey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Go right ahead. | ||
| What do you think about Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Ukraine is fighting for their freedom. | |
| And I thought that we in America stood for freedom. | ||
| And I think that we should back Ukraine as long as they're being attacked by another country. | ||
| I thought we stood for it. | ||
| It gives me liberty or gives me death. | ||
| And I think Ukraine is doing a meritorious job in fighting for their freedom. | ||
| Jeffrey, do you think that Ukraine should give up land in exchange for peace? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No. | ||
| So then, how does the war end? | ||
| Does it just keep going? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, then Russia should stop attacking them. | |
| Russia started the war. | ||
| Russia should just pack up and go back home. | ||
| And how do you get Russia to do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess you continue to fight them as long as they're being attacked. | |
| That's just like if somebody came into your home and tell you, okay, I'm taking over your home, Jeffrey. | ||
| Lay down your arms. | ||
| I'm taking over your home. | ||
| Your wife belongs to me now. | ||
| It's almost the same. | ||
| Let's take a look at what Defense Secretary Pete Hegset said at NATO headquarters in Brussels yesterday about the Trump administration's approach. | ||
| We are at, as you said, Mr. Secretary, a critical moment. | ||
| As the war approaches its third anniversary, our message is clear. | ||
| The bloodshed must stop, and this war must end. | ||
| President Trump has been clear with the American people and with many of your leaders that stopping the fighting and reaching an enduring peace is a top priority. | ||
| He intends to end this war by diplomacy and bringing both Russia and Ukraine to the table. | ||
| And the U.S. Department of Defense will help achieve this goal. | ||
| We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling Allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield. | ||
| We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. | ||
| But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. | ||
| Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering. | ||
| A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again. | ||
| This must not be Minsk 3.0. | ||
| That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. | ||
| Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. | ||
| If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5. | ||
| There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. | ||
| To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine. | ||
| So, Defense Secretary yesterday in Brussels want to know what you think about that. | ||
| The numbers are on your screen, and we'll hear from Brian in Venice, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for having me on. | |
| I'm really concerned about this. | ||
| I feel as if we're almost living in Britain in the 1930s. | ||
| Pete Hegseth, he shows up. | ||
| He used to show up at work drunk all the time, and now he's Secretary of Defense. | ||
| All the Republicans are terrified of Trump, so they just vote for all his people. | ||
| Well, Hegseth is kind of like having Neville Chamberlain. | ||
| Peace for the world. | ||
| Halt held up this big piece of paper coming back from Berlin talking to Adolf Hitler. | ||
| So, what do you think is going to happen, Brian? | ||
| You think that Putin will get everything he wants? | ||
| What do you think it would look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Putin will get everything he wants, and he's like Trump. | |
| If their lips are moving their line, they'll destroy Ukraine. | ||
| I don't trust them. | ||
| And then, what happens if Ukraine is destroyed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, and then he'll be a bigger threat to the rest of Eastern Europe, especially Poland, in places like this. | |
| The ignorance I hear coming from mega supporters. | ||
| I'm sorry, mega supporters. | ||
| You think you know all this history? | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| You don't. | ||
| You watch what happens with this. | ||
| And not only that, it's like Trump wants us to practically pull out of NATO. | ||
| That's what kept peace for so many years in Europe. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| We can't have that. | ||
| Trump, he just thrives on ignorance and anger. | ||
| Ignorance and anger. | ||
| United States, I never dreamt in my life a president of the United States would give up everything to a dictator of Putin. | ||
| And now it's happening. | ||
| That's about all I'm going to say. | ||
| Please wake up, people. | ||
| Please. | ||
| All right, Brian. | ||
| Let's go to Chevy Chase, Maryland at Republican Line. | ||
| Jim, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I'm just getting tired of these Democrats calling up. | ||
| Trump does not want us to get out of NATO. | ||
| He just wants each one of those countries to pay their fair share. | ||
| And I love what Trump is doing. | ||
| He's in there a month, and he's done so much on all these issues that are so important. | ||
| The border, taking care of the wars. | ||
| And in terms of Ukraine war, I feel the solution would be to have Russia keep the land that they've occupied, but have the ability for Ukraine to join NATO. | ||
| Now, I know that Pete Hedzik said that couldn't be done, but why? | ||
| That seems to me to be the solution. | ||
| Because if Ukraine was part of NATO, then that would end any kind of attack from Russia. | ||
| And I think it would stabilize the area. | ||
| You think Russia would accept that? | ||
| I mean, that's kind of a red line for them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is a red line, but the thing is that they would be able to keep the land they've they've occupied. | |
| So to me, it's a win-win for both countries. | ||
| And that would stabilize the area because then Russia would not be able to go into Ukraine anymore because then they would NATO countries would defend it. | ||
| So Jim, I know you can't see this, but we've got on the screen the Ukraine and the area that we're talking about here. | ||
| So Russia controls all the area in pink. | ||
| There's a small sliver of land in Russia, in the Kirks region, that the Ukrainians are controlling at this point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think they should be allowed to keep that? | |
| Yeah, I mean, I think that could be worked out. | ||
| But I think the main point is that Russia, you know, I don't think they want to give up the land they've occupied. | ||
| And I think Pete Hedzek has already said that that would not be a point. | ||
| So to me, it's clear, you know, if you tell Russia that they could keep the land they have, but in the future, you won't be able to go and attack Ukraine anymore. | ||
| And all the European countries would be happy because then they know that the area would be stabilized. | ||
| So I think that would be the solution to this area. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Let's talk to James next. | ||
| Newark, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, titling. | |
| Yeah, good. | ||
| Heidon Feetben. | ||
| That'd be all. | ||
| Now, I've been done in Russian politics since 1956. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're listening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, good. | |
| And like, I really think this is a good deal. | ||
| I know way too much information about both countries, all these years. | ||
| I'm 31 years young by now. | ||
| And like I think it's a good deal. | ||
| But we don't know what the deal is yet, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you think would do? | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I discussed John John McCain back in early 2000 that Russia beast Ukraine. | |
| And John McCain turned against me for that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And like, um, yes, Russia beast Ukraine. | |
| I already knew that from being with Russian people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Don't know I can't get into details. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| So I got what's one Eastern Ukraine. | ||
| And what should have Eastern Ukraine? | ||
| Not Russian Ukrainians to move to Eastern Ukraine. | ||
| All right, James, let's hear a little bit more from Defense Secretary Hagsef from NATO headquarters in Brussels yesterday. | ||
| Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO. | ||
| As part of this, Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine. | ||
| Members of this contact group must meet the moment. | ||
| This means donating more ammunition and equipment, leveraging comparative advantages, expanding your defense industrial base, and importantly, leveling with your citizens about the threat facing Europe. | ||
| Part of this is speaking frankly with your people about how this threat can only be met by spending more on defense. | ||
| 2% is not enough. | ||
| President Trump has called for 5%, and I agree. | ||
| Increasing your commitment to your own security is a down payment for the future, a down payment, as you said, Mr. Secretary, of peace through strength. | ||
| We're also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe. | ||
| The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. | ||
| We must, and we are, focusing on security of our own borders. | ||
| We also face a peer competitor in the communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail. | ||
| That was the Defense Secretary yesterday. | ||
| I want to share with you an editorial from Bloomberg and get your reaction to it. | ||
| It says, talking to Putin won't be enough to end Ukraine war. | ||
| The Russian leader says he's ready to meet. | ||
| He won't negotiate seriously until the costs of fighting are steeper. | ||
| It says that later this week, White House envoys plan to discuss with their European counterparts how to end the nearly three-year war in Ukraine. | ||
| For any negotiations to produce a durable settlement, however, the U.S. and its allies must show they're willing to enforce it. | ||
| To date, Russian President Putin has demonstrated no serious interest in peacemaking. | ||
| Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine and believes it holds the upper hand on the battlefield. | ||
| Putin set out to subjugate the whole country, walking away with parts of four war-ravaged regions after taking more than 600,000 casualties would hardly be a triumph. | ||
| He has repeatedly denied Ukraine sovereignty and set preconditions for talks, including forcing Ukraine to effectively disarm and abandon its NATO ambitions designed to make it easier to restart the fighting. | ||
| You can read the rest of that at Bloomberg. | ||
| We'll talk next to Catherine, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Catherine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just was calling in reference to Donald Trump seemingly siding with Putin on the settlement. | ||
| And I'm as old as Donald Trump. | ||
| He's actually three months older than me. | ||
| And I don't understand why he doesn't remember Khrushchev at the UN. | ||
| He took his shoe off and he was banging it on the table and he was saying, we will bury you. | ||
| And my feeling is everything Donald Trump is doing is to bow down to Putin. | ||
| Putin was the one who started the war. | ||
| I'm so sorry that he lost 600,000 troops. | ||
| He's devastated the Ukrainian economy and the population there. | ||
| But I think to bow down to his demands would be to giving in to him. | ||
| And I do believe that when Khrushchev retired, he also moved to the United States and he lived in Florida. | ||
| And I'm wondering if that I was laughing when I heard the guy who was saying when Putin retires, he's going to move to the United States. | ||
| I'm sure Trump will have a spot for him right at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| I say stand firm, which is going to be unfortunate for the United States with Donald Trump there. | ||
| I don't know what the solution will be. | ||
| But I just say he should bring up the words of Khrushchev, we will bury you, and remind himself of that before he makes any deals with Putin. | ||
| So thank you very much. | ||
| All right, Catherine. | ||
| A couple of things for your schedule later. | ||
| This is at 9 a.m. | ||
| Today we'll have the Senate will have the vote on Kash Patel's nomination to be FBI director. | ||
| You can see that over on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Again, 9 a.m. live, the vote for Kash Patel at the Senate Judiciary Committee. | ||
| So that is not the full Senate vote. | ||
| That is the Senate Judiciary Committee vote. | ||
| Then at 10 a.m., President Trump's nominee to serve as Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, she testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. | ||
| She led the agency dealing with small business during the first Trump administration and is co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment. | ||
| That's 10 a.m. Eastern live on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Both of those you can see at C-SPAN now, our free video app and online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Also, RFK Jr. is set to have his confirmation vote. | ||
| That's set for 10.30 a.m. this morning. | ||
| That will be followed by a vote on Brooke Rawlins as agriculture secretary. | ||
| So be sure to stay with the C-SPAN networks for all of those. | ||
| Chris, Dunloing, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Chris. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Listen, I have really enjoyed the show this morning, and I'm so entertained by these Democrats talking about Trump's lining up with Putin. | ||
| Listen, the Ukrainian invasion happened on Joe Biden's watch. | ||
| All these Putin aggressions seem to happen when Democrats are in the White House. | ||
| So if you want to talk about who's lining up with Putin, they allowed these things to occur. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Donald Trump is going to fix them. | |
| And the American people have decided that he's the only one that can do it. | ||
| So there's nothing funny going on other than Donald Trump fixing the problems that Democrats created with their weak, weak leadership. | ||
| So Chris, what do you think the deal should include for ending the war in Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's going to have to be some concessions of land, and people shouldn't go crazy about that. | |
| The most important thing is the fighting needs to end. | ||
| And Joe Biden wasn't able to do that. | ||
| This president will do it. | ||
| And make no mistake, when he does, the Democrats will have some problem with it. | ||
| But lives will be saved. | ||
| The war will end. | ||
| And Donald Trump will do it. | ||
| Josephine in Livingston, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Unfortunately, when you get older, you've sort of been there, done that, sort of observed what's going on. | ||
| I have to give a new name to Trump, Neville Chamberlain. | ||
| Easement. | ||
| He is already given up his chips. | ||
| And what are you talking about? | ||
| Oh, you want to create the Soviet Union again. | ||
| That's Putin's words. | ||
| Don't forget. | ||
| They tell you they communicate. | ||
| He's been in power for 25 years. | ||
| He too, that country, has sort of democratized where he'll be only in power for five or six years. | ||
| Watch Trump do the same little stunt. | ||
| I'm just saying, bottom line is he's already told him, you want those 20% of Ukraine? | ||
| You got it. | ||
| You want him not to be a NATO? | ||
| You got it. | ||
| What are we negotiating? | ||
| He's already told Putin, what do you want? | ||
| I bow down, I kiss your feet. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| Remember, he said, I'm going to create the Soviet Union again. | ||
| He went into the state of Georgia, going George W. Bush. | ||
| He's trying to go into Moldavia. | ||
| He's trying, where are your heads, folks? | ||
| The man is a killer. | ||
| The kind of thing that's going to be on CNN about Moggovi. | ||
| Who the heck did Makovy? | ||
| But Putin, what is wrong with you? | ||
| He is a murderer. | ||
| You don't negotiate with a murderer. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David in Lynchburg, Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning, Maria. | ||
| I still see you up in my house in the background there. | ||
| I'm a Vietnam veteran. | ||
| Wait, David, we're having trouble hearing you. | ||
| Say it again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I should. | |
| Sorry, we can't. | ||
| David, do me a favor and call back, please, on a better line. | ||
| We're having trouble hearing you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But we definitely want to hear your comment. | |
| I'm a Vietnam veteran. | ||
| I don't support it all the way. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Frank in Englewood, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPEN. | |
| Good job on the non-biased reporting. | ||
| First of all, I really think that these Monday morning quarterback individuals who are calling in and criticizing our president for what he's doing, they need to spend more time on their knees and away from the tiki bar as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| The way I see it is the president is doing his best to end the war and to end the massacre of so many young people that are dying in these wars in Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| It has to come to an end. | ||
| He said he was going to try to bring this war to an end. | ||
| Let him try to bring the war to an end. | ||
| Yes, there's going to be compromise. | ||
| Yes, there's going to be a loss of land. | ||
| But the war needs to come to an end, just like the hostages need to be released immediately. | ||
| For President Trump to do all this within three weeks is incredible. | ||
| And what I see is I see the hand of God moving across this country, moving across this world to carry out his will. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| God uses people to do it. | ||
| And if he uses Trump, so be it. | ||
| No matter if you like him, if you don't like him, God is going to have his will and his way carried out in this country and in this world. | ||
| And that's my take on this whole thing. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Politico with the headline, Trump and Putin stun Europe with peace plan for Ukraine. | ||
| U.S. President announces that talks with Russia's leader on ending the war will start, quote, immediately after his defense chief warns that Ukraine's peace goals won't be met. | ||
| That's at politico.com. | ||
| And this is Carol, Sacramento, California, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I don't know how much I can contribute to everything, but I do agree with one previous caller about, you know, that the war has to end. | ||
| And I do have to commend, although I'm sure we'll get a lot of nasties from people about Biden just giving equipment and artillery and the things that they needed to try to save Ukraine's democracy. | ||
| So we saved lives there. | ||
| The problem is going to be when you put two narcissists together, which are Putin and Trump, the man with the most money will win. | ||
| And that may not be good for us. | ||
| And we need to think, too, that when we supported Ukraine, I'm sure there were some deals about, well, we're going to give you this trillions of dollars to save your democracy. | ||
| And we may have needed some of their raw materials in the end. | ||
| But don't you think that Tesla and Elon are going to need those raw materials? | ||
| So let's think about that too, which we raped, or I should say, Tesla raped Australia for raw materials to make their batteries. | ||
| Now we're going to do that to Ukraine because there's some deals going on that we're not aware of or things that aren't being transparent. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I want the war to end as much as anybody, and I want lives saved. | ||
| And I was glad that we didn't send any of our troops over there, and I don't think we should. | ||
| And this is a posting on X by Anders Foe Rasmussen. | ||
| He's the former NATO Secretary General. | ||
| He said this. | ||
| President Trump is a businessman, and he must know that it would be a mistake to give away leverage before a negotiation even begins. | ||
| Peace through strength is a winning formula. | ||
| And I wonder what you think about that, whether the Defense Secretary should have said immediately that Ukraine would not get what it's looking for, which is their territorial integrity prior to 2014, or NATO membership. | ||
| This is Jonathan, a Democrat in North Las Vegas, Nevada. | ||
| What do you think, Jonathan? | ||
| And Jonathan, you got to just talk into your phone. | ||
| Mute your TV. | ||
| Jonathan, you're there? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Jim in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Republican. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Jim? | ||
| Grand Forks, North Dakota. | ||
| Let's try Butch. | ||
| Temple Hills, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Oh, good. | ||
| Go ahead, Butch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't figure out, for God's sake, that everybody see know that Trump is not truly honest about anything. | |
| He lies about everything, and he didn't have the education to be the president. | ||
| And yet, these oligons are in place to destroy America. | ||
| And most of the Republicans somehow, for some reason, do not understand anything. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Marty is next in Van Buren, Arkansas. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I was just my thoughts on it are, you know, reminding us, you know, how we got here. | ||
| We say that Trump is easy on Putin and that he is sympathetic, but I think we forget that Putin's biggest problem with this whole thing is pushing NATO towards his border. | ||
| And I would think of that as if China and North Korea and Russia had a military pact to come to each other's aid and they call Canada and say, we want you in, we would have an issue with that just like Putin. | ||
| And so I don't think his some of some of his concerns are to be brushed off by the U.S. | ||
| And I think Trump is wise to hear him out and consider. | ||
| I don't think that the war is necessarily justified, but I don't think we talk since the 90s, a chain of events has gone on that is far more complex than we can have in a two-minute conversation. | ||
| And so the best thing to do is to understand that history and what's really going on rather than blaming Biden or blaming Trump or whoever. | ||
| Where we are now is more complicated than anyone listening in the radio will ever know because we're not in those closed-door meetings. | ||
| And let's talk to Fritz in Clarksville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I can't believe the ignorance of people about this situation. | ||
| My wife is Russian, who was born in Odessa, Ukraine. | ||
| And we travel back and forth to Russia a couple times a year for the past 12 years or so. | ||
| And Russia's economy is doing great. | ||
| There's new construction everywhere. | ||
| They're not losing. | ||
| They're not going to lose. | ||
| And as far as they're worried about Russian aggression, how is Austria doing right now? | ||
| That has been a neutral country since the 1950s, I believe. | ||
| And unaligned, and Russia never attacked, the Soviet Union never attacked Austria, and they're doing just fine. | ||
| And that's what they wanted Ukraine to be. | ||
| It's neutral. | ||
| And they could have traded with Russia, could have traded with the West, been independent, and no problem. | ||
| No, the United States went in there and did a coup via Victoria Newland, John McCain, that bunch. | ||
| And we started that war. | ||
| Russia put a red line in the sand, said, nope, you don't in Ukraine. | ||
| They put up with it in Poland and the Baltic states. | ||
| So Fritz, you're not saying that Russia was justified in invading Ukraine? | ||
| Is that what you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| They were. | ||
| What would we have done if Russia had put in or China had put in tried to move into Mexico and been on our border with and make Mexico part of some alliance there? | ||
| A defensive alliance. | ||
| Which is what NATO is. | ||
| A defensive alliance, which is what NATO is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, they were defensive when they bombed Yugoslavia, you know, Serbia. | |
| All right. | ||
| Well, Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed and sworn in yesterday as the Director of National Intelligence. | ||
| I want to share with you what Mitch McConnell said, Senator Mitch McConnell said on why he voted no. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| He said, the nation should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the president receives are tainted by a director of national intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment. | ||
| Edward Snowden's treasonous portrayal of the United States and its most sensitive lawful intelligence activities endangered sources, methods, and lives. | ||
| Japan is among America's closest treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific, and the risk of conflict in the region is the product of Chinese aggression, not Western, quote, threat inflation. | ||
| Russia's escalation of its unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine threatens American interests and is solely the responsibility of Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Entrusting the coordination of the intelligence community to someone who struggles to acknowledge these facts is an unnecessary risk. | ||
| And that was Senator McConnell, only Republican to vote against Tulsi Gabbard's nomination. | ||
| She is en route to Munich to meet with allies there on her first trip on her, essentially her first day. | ||
| And this is Michael in Madison, Wisconsin, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| I just want to say that just shows you how stupid McCondo is. | ||
| You know, he shouldn't be goofing off anyway in the first place, messing around with our money and our government. | ||
| This whole pile of garbage that we have right now with the, I don't want to start a war with the MAGAs, but you asked for it and you got it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's where we're sitting right now. | |
| Looks like we lost him. | ||
| This is Butch in Sandwich, Illinois, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was just calling. | ||
| I think we definitely need to end this war in Ukraine and Russia because it's costing us so many billions of dollars. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| The thing is, I truly believe that things are going to calm down just like they are over there in Israel. | ||
| And then in five years, 10 years, it's going to be all over again. | ||
| We're never going to be out of wars. | ||
| It's just a constant thing. | ||
| And for some reason, we just, I don't know, but I think the people in like Poland, I think they realize they realize they rely on gas and oil from Russia, don't they? | ||
| So, I mean, they're suffering too. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| Could I please say one more quick thing, please? | ||
| Sure, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what people are complaining about? | |
| All this money being spent this and that. | ||
| It's the Democrats and Republicans are both. | ||
| They passed these 400-page bills, or 800-page bills. | ||
| And I wish you could show where Ronald Reagan said this bill is 10 pounds, and this one's 1,000 pages or whatever. | ||
| And he held them up and he said, if you give me one more bill like this, I will not sign it. | ||
| So, I mean, we got to start passing these bills one at a time. | ||
| Well, thank you so much for your time. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| This is Mike Pence, former vice president, posted on X yesterday: Mr. President, Ukraine will only, quote, be Russian someday if the United States abandons them to Putin's brutal invasion. | ||
| As you just said, quote, when America is strong, the world is at peace. | ||
| Stand firm. | ||
| If Ukraine falls, it will only be a matter of time until Russia invades a NATO ally. | ||
| And he was referring to a CBS News headline where Trump, it says, Trump says Ukraine, quote, may be Russian someday. | ||
| And that is on X. | ||
| This is Abigail in Nashville, Tennessee, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| What do you think about Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, I find it very interesting that the negotiations are between Trump and Putin. | |
| Why is Zelensky there for the negotiations? | ||
| It's like Putin and Trump are going to decide what Putin wants, and then Trump's going to tell Zelensky, okay, here's the deal. | ||
| I mean, why should Trump and Putin be negotiating without Zelensky? | ||
| And, you know, the war needs to come to an end, but Trump and Putin are looking for what they can get, Trump especially, with the raw materials that Ukraine is rich in and their wheat. | ||
| It's just, it's just nobody in his cabinet that was voted in by everybody is qualified to be in the positions they're in, just like Trump isn't. | ||
| So, you know, it's going to get a lot worse before the four years is over. | ||
| And we just hope that our democracy will survive it. | ||
| And in other news, the New York Post is reporting this headline. | ||
| The Department of Justice announces lawsuit against New York, Governor Hogel, and state Attorney General James over, quote, sanctuary status. | ||
| That's in the New York Post. | ||
| And this is Roy in Wake Forest, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, Mimi. | |
| I've got a question for you. | ||
| Why do all these Democrats believe that there are these strong ties between Russia and Donald Trump? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| What do you think about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's because of the fake Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which was investigated and found out to be fake and purchased information from Hillary or by Hillary Clinton, and I think McCain even had something to do with it. | |
| And it was investigated that that was all false information. | ||
| Is that not correct, Mimi? | ||
| Go ahead, Roy, with your comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, so, well, so you won't even agree to that. | |
| You correct Republicans all the time. | ||
| Sandy is in Orlando, Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Sandy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| My dad was in World War II, and his brother was with Patton going through, and he helped to go into the camps and free some of the people that were the Jewish prisoners. | ||
| Now, we all know Trump is a draft dodger. | ||
| He doesn't know anything about war. | ||
| He didn't want to go to war. | ||
| He gave up and he coordinated an agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan. | ||
| So what happened there? | ||
| The other thing that bothers me is who's talking about the 10,000 kids that supposedly Putin and Russia took from Ukraine. | ||
| Trump doesn't care about kids. | ||
| Why did he make that part of the deal, that they get the ten thousand kids back? | ||
| But he won't even know how to do that because they won't have a way of tracing that. | ||
| But he doesn't care about kids. | ||
| He doesn't care about the war. | ||
| He's going to want to build some kind of hotel or properties in Russia. | ||
| And isn't this all just, you know, this has nothing to do with Trump wanting to have peace in the world. | ||
| He wants to have real estate in the world. | ||
| So anyway, that's my only comment. | ||
| Olker in Royalton, Minnesota, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| Yeah, about three years ago I called about the same subject. | ||
| And I said, first time in written history, Europe is united from Finland to Spain. | ||
| Never had that before in history. | ||
| And to me, that this Dylan an indication, the trust towards the East Bloc, that that gets worn down, Hungaria and so on, that people get weak. | ||
| Sure, three is a long time, but we should think twice. | ||
| I think our government here should think twice before making a deal with Russia, because, yeah, I don't think they're trustworthy, my opinion, anyway. | ||
| And this is Steve in Muskegon, Michigan, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
| I do have something to say. | ||
| You know, one of the things is that Trump himself, the people in these picks, Trump and Elon Musk, they're businessmen. | ||
| America is a business. | ||
| We're losing as a business. | ||
| As far as the negotiation going on over there in all these wars, he's trying to negotiate two different wars that were started under the Biden administration. | ||
| And one of the things with Ukraine, they have a right to be in NATO. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know that is a red line, but we have enough power to stop that from going any further. | |
| They've already taken a fifth of Ukraine. | ||
| Ukraine has taken some of Russia. | ||
| There's going to be a land loss, but there's no way that Trump can come in and try to bulldoze Putin. | ||
| So one of the things that needs to be done is be negotiating that there's and that lady was right. | ||
| There are 10,000 kids or more that was been taken. | ||
| Those kids need to be released back into Ukraine. | ||
| And Putin needs to be satisfied with what he's got and let the Ukrainians be Ukrainians because by definition, the Ukrainians were Russians. | ||
| They didn't even really want to go to war. | ||
| Putin made them go to war. | ||
| And one of the things is that we try to defend as much as we could for Ukraine by sending billions of dollars over there. | ||
| But this has got to come to an end. | ||
| It doesn't matter if the Democrats think that he's inclusive with Putin because that's just an absolutely ridiculous Clinton statement. | ||
| That's just something that he has no interest in. | ||
| He just wants this war to come to an end before it becomes a World War III. | ||
| Because if it gets any closer to the European Europeans goes into a war, we're going to be drawn into that war. | ||
| So it needs to stop. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is what Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, said on X. | ||
| A land swap between war criminal Putin and Ukraine to end the war is a fair deal. | ||
| Ukrainian-occupied Russian territory for Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. | ||
| And that's all the time that we've got in this segment. | ||
| But coming up, we'll talk to two lawmakers about President Trump's legislative agenda and Congress's role. | ||
| Up first, we have Republican Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, a member of the Natural Resources Committee, which will be key in pushing the president's energy priorities. | ||
| And later, we have Democrat Glenn Ivey of Maryland of the Appropriations Committee, ground zero for government spending battles yet to come. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Starting next week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | |
| On Monday, at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, the first African-American ever elected to Congress from Oregon. | ||
| My mother graduated in 1970 from one of the last segregated high schools in the state and the country, rather, in South Carolina. | ||
| And I think about all of the opportunities that weren't afforded her, you know, coming out of segregation. | ||
| And I bring that perspective to Oregon, saying, you know, my mom was a rural kid that didn't have a lot of opportunities, but I'm going to make sure that I bring that forth for all of the kids in Oregon. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all next week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN Shop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | |
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
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| Shop now or anytime at c-span shop.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined by Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican of Wyoming, a member of the Judiciary Committee, and also the Natural Resources Committee. | ||
| Welcome back to the program, Congresswoman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| It's wonderful to be here. | ||
| As I just mentioned, you serve on the Judiciary Committee, so I want to ask about the recent attacks by Elon Musk and other allies of President Trump attacking essentially the federal judiciary and saying that they don't have the right to rule and that they should be investigated. | ||
| Elon Musk saying that the judges should be impeached. | ||
| What's your take on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm going to disagree with your basic premise. | |
| I don't see it as an attack. | ||
| I think under our form of government, we're able to criticize anyone who's in public service, whether they are in the judiciary, the executive, or the legislative branch. | ||
| I think it's perfectly appropriate to criticize a decision if you disagree with it. | ||
| And in fact, as an attorney, I've done that in the past with judges that I have had. | ||
| I don't think that that's all that atypical. | ||
| Where I would agree with Elon Musk and President Trump is I find these decisions to be very strange. | ||
| And the reason that I say that is that we have been just bombarded for years with the idea of this all-powerful executive branch. | ||
| And that's the bureaucracy and the administrative agencies. | ||
| And the president has the right to do things such as under the last administration, you saw people claiming that the president had the right, for example, to forgive billions of dollars in or millions of dollars in student loans, hundreds of millions of dollars in student loans, despite the fact that Congress never passed a law allowing the president to forgive student loans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they were doing that through the Department of Education. | |
| And they were saying the president has the right to do that because he oversees the Department of Education. | ||
| Sorry, who said that? | ||
| Because the judiciary blocked it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They did, but there were many people in the media and mainstream media who were perfectly comfortable with the idea that the president had the authority to do something through an agency that is contrary to what Congress says. | |
| But leaving the media aside, let's just stick with the three branches of government. | ||
| Do you think that the judiciary has overstepped its bounds? | ||
| Do you think that there's any ambiguity as far as what their role is as compared to the president and the Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not a matter of rules. | |
| They are defined by Article 1, 2, and 3. | ||
| It's about whether the decision is the right decision. | ||
| So that's what they're attacking. | ||
| Elon Musk and the President are there saying legally what these judges are saying are not, that their decisions are not legally sound. | ||
| We all have the right to criticize or disagree with a judge if they issue a decision that we disagree with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so I don't have any problem with them saying these decisions are legally suspect and they should not stand. | |
| What are they going to do? | ||
| They're going to do what we always do. | ||
| They're going to appeal them. | ||
| It isn't that they're going to defy them. | ||
| They're going to appeal them up through the process. | ||
| The president has already said that. | ||
| We know that's what the Department of Justice is going to do. | ||
| And that's the correct process to follow. | ||
| The Department of Government Efficiency, the subcommittee in the House that's led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, they held their first hearing yesterday. | ||
| We covered it on C-SPAN. | ||
| If you missed it, it's on our website. | ||
| But I want to play you a portion of the top committee Democrat. | ||
| This is Representative Melanie Stansbury. | ||
| And she had some remarks, and then I want you to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I also want to point out that literally, while we've been sitting here for the last almost two hours getting lectured on fiscal responsibility, literally the Republicans just released their plan to raise the debt limit while we were sitting here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they want to raise it by $4 trillion. | |
| Okay, guys, like literally, I'm just like without words. | ||
| Inflation is going up. | ||
| You want to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. | ||
| You want to gut Medicare. | ||
| You want to gut Medicaid. | ||
| You're talking about going after Social Security after promising that you wouldn't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, really, what the heck is going on here? | |
| We're not trying to take down Elon Musk as a businessman. | ||
| This dude is literally breaking the law inside of the federal government. | ||
| And for a party that is supposed to be the party of law and order, in quotes, I really do not see you holding him accountable and doing your most basic constitutional responsibility in the separation of powers. | ||
| What do you think, Congresswoman? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think she understands the relationship between the debt ceiling and what we're doing in terms of a budget or the spending or what Doge is doing. | |
| Those are not necessarily related. | ||
| Raising the debt ceiling is simply to pay the bills that have already been incurred. | ||
| And so I find it rather strange in light of the fact that we're only one month into this administration and we've got bills coming due because of the last administration. | ||
| And so we're raising the debt ceiling so that we can pay the bills that were incurred by Joe Biden. | ||
| So I find it to be a very strange argument, and I find it to be rather bizarre that she's attempting to equate cutting spending through Doge and identifying programs that we don't want, don't need, and shouldn't be funding with paying the bills that have already been incurred. | ||
| That's just strange. | ||
| She also said that Elon Musk is breaking the law and that you, the Republicans in Congress, are not holding him accountable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, what I would ask is: how is he breaking the law? | |
| No one seems to be asking that question. | ||
| He has been appointed by the president, again, just like any other appointee or special employee of the presidential office. | ||
| He has been appointed and tasked with going in and looking at how the government is spending money. | ||
| He is doing that. | ||
| I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how that would be breaking the law. | ||
| And I think that's the question we need to be asking these folks. | ||
| It's easy to throw things around, it's easy to say something like that. | ||
| I'd like to see the proof of how he's breaking the law. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation and ask Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican of Wyoming, any questions, you can do so. | ||
| She'll be with us for about 20 minutes. | ||
| The lines are Republicans, 202748-8001, Democrats, 202-748-8000, and Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| Earlier this week, a group of about 30 House Democrats, led by Representative Glenn Ivey of Maryland, he'll be our guest after your segment. | ||
| They wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging them to reject Kash Patel as FBI director. | ||
| I'll just read you a little bit of that. | ||
| We'll put it on the screen for folks to read. | ||
| Tis the nomination of Mr. Patel, an individual with almost no law enforcement experience and a history of politically charged and inflammatory statements, is clearly a break from tradition and one that deserves extensive scrutiny as a result. | ||
| He has published a list of political appointments in his book and has promised to shut down the FBI headquarters on his first day in office. | ||
| The FBI director is not a position for an erratic political actor focused on retribution. | ||
| It continues, but I'd like you to respond to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just think that the rhetoric and the hyperbole is just off the charts in terms of making those accusations. | |
| Kash Patel has extensive experience in dealing with the issues that he will be as the head of the FBI. | ||
| One of the things to understand is that prior to 9-11, it was the field offices for the FBI that did the vast majority of the work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was obviously an FBI office in Washington, D.C., and they did work as well. | |
| But our field offices were fairly independent, and they actually function much better. | ||
| It was after 9-11 that the head of the FBI that Mueller brought everything here to Washington, D.C. and stockpiled all the power here. | ||
| And if you talk to people who are long-term FBI employees and people who have dealt with the FBI, they will tell you that that's when the FBI became politicized. | ||
| So moving the work back out into the field offices where it should be and reducing the footprint here in Washington, D.C., I see as a very positive thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I think you're seeing is just the caterwalling about the idea that we would start trying to take power out of Washington, D.C. and returning it to the states where it belongs. | |
| Again, there's nothing that is stated in that paragraph that you just read that is entirely accurate for what's happening. | ||
| Kash Patel is absolutely qualified. | ||
| Including he has published a list of political opponents in his book. | ||
| Well, I would like to see how that is written because I think it's very common in this place to take things out of context. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what they're referring to there. | |
| I think, again, let's read the book and see what it says and then compare it to the letter and then I can comment on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But just commenting on what they say about what he allegedly wrote, I don't know if that's accurate. | |
| I have not read Kash Patel's book. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Okay. | ||
| We've got a bunch of people waiting to talk to you, so we'll go to calls. | ||
| Kyle is in Buffalo, New York, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Kyle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Ceasefan. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I think the problem is some people are just nervous. | ||
| I think with the whole Elon Musk issue, whether it be legal or not, I think the problem is you have a billionaire who is in charge of slashing government waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| So I think that's the problem. | ||
| You know, I don't know the legal legalities of it all. | ||
| And that's pretty much what I really had to say. | ||
| And why does that bother you, Kyle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, you know, I don't know if it's fake news or not, but you hear about his background with the apartheid in South Africa. | |
| And just, you know, anytime you're talking about a billionaire, it's just a tough situation because you know they didn't get their money honestly. | ||
| You know, I'm sure a portion of it is, but there's a lot of people you have to step on and crush to get into that type of position. | ||
| And so I just think a lot of people, even myself, just feel a little uncomfortable having a foreigner in charge with our books, I think. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, let's get Congresswoman Hageman to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Musk is a naturalized citizen of America. | |
| I don't think that there's been any legitimate allegations about apartheid or anything, him being associated with that in any way whatsoever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Apartheid ended in Africa several decades ago. | |
| As bad as it was, that has nothing to do with Elon Musk. | ||
| Whether he's a millionaire or a billionaire is irrelevant to whether he is actually identifying waste, fraud, and abuse that we should not be paying for. | ||
| One of the things that I find interesting about this discussion is that when he identifies these programs and the way that our money is being spent around the world, I would bet you that 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country, Republican, Democrat, Independent, apolitical, would say, we're spending money on what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're $36 trillion in debt. | |
| We're spending a trillion dollars a year on interest. | ||
| Our interest payments are higher than what we spend on defense, and we're paying what in Guatemala? | ||
| I mean, I think it's very legitimate for us to go in and look, you know, pull up the hood, start wiggling around in there, figuring out what's going on under the hood here in Washington, D.C., and how money's being spent. | ||
| That is not the wrong thing to do. | ||
| I want to ask you about something that's on the front page of the New York Times this morning about Elon Musk since the caller brought him up. | ||
| Under Trump shake-up benefits for Trump, for Musk Empire, firings undercut litigation and inquiries, it's talking about all the It says at least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves, which is must-move, have more than 32 continuing investigations pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk's six companies, according to review the New York Times. | ||
| And of course, you know that he's a major government contractor as well. | ||
| So does that give you pause? | ||
| Do you feel that that might be that his actions with Doge could be enriching himself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Identifying ways in which we're wasting money has nothing to do with enriching Elon Musk, number one. | |
| Number two, it is very, very, very common. | ||
| Isn't it convenient to have federal employees that are investigating you fired and just say, look, we're saving money? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not seeing that happening. | |
| And I'm going to, again, object to the basic premise of your question. | ||
| I have a very hard time believing things in the New York Times after they pushed forward with the Russia-Russia-Russia collusion hoax for years and have yet to apologize for all of the dishonesty and the lies that they told during the course of that and many other things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The New York Times is not known for being necessarily accurate in their reporting. | |
| That's number one. | ||
| And number two, having dealt with administrative agencies through 30 years of litigation and trial experience, it is not uncommon for them to bring enforcement actions against people, and they've done absolutely nothing wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's why we're innocent until proven guilty in this country. | |
| So having an action brought against you or an enforcement action or an administrative proceeding, that doesn't mean a lot until it's resolved. | ||
| Patrick is a Republican in Huntingtown, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Patrick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Fine. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I've been a registered Republican my whole life. | |
| And, you know, having to vote this last cycle, do you know, it's part of my duty as a citizen. | ||
| I had a hard time voting for him, but I did so because of the things he promised. | ||
| You know, life is hard. | ||
| Blue-collar work is hard. | ||
| And I have to pay bills. | ||
| I have to feed a family of five. | ||
| He's not making things cheaper. | ||
| Things are more expensive, including gas. | ||
| I don't see how rooting through these departments and putting people on leave, especially you offer people buyouts, but the only ones taking them are the ones that were going to retire already. | ||
| So you're actually costing us more money because these people are now getting nine months of free pay before they retire. | ||
| And I heard yesterday that they're buying $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Musk. | ||
| That doesn't seem like cutting government waste and spending buying electric cars that only have a 300-mile range. | ||
| So maybe you could explain why my tax dollars are going to be going towards buying electric cars that are armored. | ||
| I'm assuming it would be the cyber truck. | ||
| Why would we be buying $400 million worth of those? | ||
| Congresswoman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not aware that we are going to be buying $400 million worth of armored Teslas. | |
| So I don't believe that that is something that is happening. | ||
| You indicated that you heard that yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not going to deal in rumors, number one. | |
| Number two, he's been in office for one month. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The inflation rate that you're seeing is, in fact, 3% year over year. | |
| Again, that is not Donald Trump's fault. | ||
| That is because of the profligate spending and the policies for the past administration. | ||
| I think that it is very disingenuous to try to blame someone who has been there for one month and attempting to cut the cost of government for the increase in costs. | ||
| The inflationary pressures were baked in the cake because of the IRA and the amount of spending that the federal government has done. | ||
| The fact that he's going in and attempting to cut that federal spending tells you that we will eventually be able to bring that inflation down. | ||
| As far as gas prices, his entire energy policy is based upon the idea that we need to be energy independent and that we need to be producing domestically. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The increased cost is when we have to import energy. | |
| We have all of the energy in the United States, not only to meet our current demand, but our demand into the long-distant future and to be a net exporter between our coal, oil and gas, uranium, etc. | ||
| We have the ability to be entirely energy independent. | ||
| And as we move towards that, and as we continue or start building again the infrastructure necessary, you will see prices decrease. | ||
| So, Congresswoman, this is what I found about Patrick's question. | ||
| This is Fortune magazine that says State Department might buy $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Dogehead and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. | ||
| It says this: that the State Department included a line item in its procurement forecast to buy armored electric vehicles valued at $400 million amid Musk's vast cost-cutting spree across the federal government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that we ought to look at that and see if that's something we would buy. | |
| I don't think we ought to be buying electric vehicles. | ||
| So I'm with you on that. | ||
| Patrice is a Republican in Spartanburg, South Carolina. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| First of all, let me say I think I love your jewelry. | ||
| I love your jewelry. | ||
| And I'm so glad I'm shocked that you aren't here today. | ||
| But let me go ahead because I know they like to move things along. | ||
| I think it's ludicrous that folks are complaining about the transparency on government spending. | ||
| But my question is: what does this administration plan to do about child trafficking, one, the media, two, and then the treason that has gone on? | ||
| The treason, what do you mean, Patrice? | ||
| Can you be more specific? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it has been a lot of treason that has gone on with this last administration. | |
| So, what I would say is that in terms of the human trafficking and the child trafficking, I think it is one of the most horrific legacies that we will have of the Biden administration. | ||
| They lost over 300,000 unaccompanied children that came across the borders. | ||
| What that means is that they are working in sweatshops, they are being sex trafficked, or they are no longer with us. | ||
| It is absolutely a horrific state of affairs, and it is the fault of both HHS and the Department of Homeland Security, Mayorkas, and the head of HHS. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They just allowed 300,000 children at a minimum to disappear. | |
| The human trafficking over the last four years has been absolutely off the charts. | ||
| And mostly women and girls and children are the ones that have suffered. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to be finding those children. | |
| I know that Mr. Homan is working towards that. | ||
| I know that Christy Noam has also made that a priority. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a horrific situation. | |
| I often said that Maorcas was the largest human trafficker in U.S. history, and I will stand by that statement. | ||
| It was devastating what has happened over the last four years. | ||
| Over 12 million illegal aliens have come into this country, many of them children under horrific abusive situations, paying coyotes and the drug cartels, the human traffickers. | ||
| It is a tragic, and we need to get our arms around it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to make sure it never happens again. | |
| Richard, a Democrat in Augusta, Georgia. | ||
| Richard, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a lot of issues with the Congress, but I'm going to start off with this, Congressman Hagman. | ||
| Do you support the George Floyd Police Reform Act? | ||
| And also, do you support the John Lewis voting rights bill? | ||
| Because I know for a fact that Burgess, Donalds, and Senator Tim Scott, three black men, voted against the voting rights bill. | ||
| How can they do that? | ||
| when we've been struggling to have a right to vote for the longest. | ||
| Now, also, about Elon Musk. | ||
| Is he running the country or President Trump? | ||
| How many does he have, those people he got working for him have security clearances to be doing what they're doing? | ||
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I've had a top secret security clearance, and I know what it takes to get one. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Why is it that you guys want to keep supporting a man that's a convicted felon, a criminal of sexual abuse and fraud for all these years? | ||
| And you talk about oil efficiency. | ||
| The country has not built a refinery. | ||
| We've been producing oil since the Barack Obama years. | ||
| Okay, Richard, we've got a lot to handle there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have a lot to unpack. | |
| Richard, thank you for your service. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| As far as the security clearances, I am confident that every one of the people who are working with Doge and under President Trump have the necessary clearances to do the work that they're doing. | ||
| It is absolutely President Trump who is running this country, and I find it rather rich, actually, that you would ask that question when you can see how incredibly active and intellectual and intelligent President Trump is, and especially when you compare him to President Biden, who we all know was suffering from severe dementia for several years, if not all four years of his presidency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As far as him being a convicted felon, again, the lawfare against President Trump was absolutely off the charts. | |
| And as an attorney, I was horrified as to how our courts have been weaponized against one man for political purposes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We never want to return to that again. | |
| That is not who and what the United States of America is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As far as the voting rights bill, everybody has the right to vote. | |
| We have worked very hard to make sure that it is easy to vote, but we want to make it hard to cheat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every single person who has the right to vote in this country can vote, and it's actually pretty easy to vote in this country. | |
| So I'm going to push back a little bit on that. | ||
| As far as the refinery, I agree with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to be building refineries. | |
| We haven't built a refinery in this country since 1979, and I'm hoping under this administration we can do that. | ||
| And the George Floyd policing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The George Floyd Police Reform Act. | |
| I'm not going to get into the middle of telling the police how to do their job. | ||
| I don't think that that is my responsibility. | ||
| I think they have an extremely difficult job in New York, in Chicago, in Atlanta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think it's extremely difficult, and I'm going to support the police. | |
| If they do something wrong, we address it. | ||
| But for the most part, I think that they are there to protect us, to take care of us, and they take their job very, very seriously. | ||
| And I'm going to support our law enforcement. | ||
| Let's talk to Joe, Hackensack, New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with Representative Hageman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| Ms. Hagerman, I was just wondering, listening to you, you are such a breath of fresh air. | ||
| Have you ever considered for 2028 running for president? | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| Joe, you're so kind. | ||
| I like representing Wyoming right now, but thank you for the compliments. | ||
| Jerry is a Democrat in Sewell, New Jersey. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Ms. Hageman, one, I want to give you a lot of credit for coming on to C-STAN because I see how aggressive Mimi is with you and the questions and how she addresses you. | ||
| And I give you a lot of credit for standing up to that. | ||
| I am a registered Democrat. | ||
| I have never been so embarrassed by my party as I have been since Trump got in. | ||
| I mean, watching them lose their minds and watching the media lose their mind and twist and turn different things. | ||
| I watch every station, NewsNation, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Newsmax. | ||
| And I cannot believe the lies and the way they can twist something. | ||
| And I am very proud, I really am, of President Trump exposing all that he is exposing. | ||
| I hope he can save us some money. | ||
| I hope he can keep us out of wars. | ||
| And I don't understand how people are not in agreement with that. | ||
| But thank you very much. | ||
| Jerry, can I ask, did you vote for President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| I did. | ||
| Representative Hickeman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jerry, I think what you have voiced is the fact that he is actually appealing to a very broad base of people. | |
| What you've said, everything that you've said is very common sense there. | ||
| And I'm going to tell you that I do work with some very good Democrats. | ||
| Glenn Ivey, who's going to be the next guest, I think that he is a wonderful man. | ||
| He is a very thoughtful man. | ||
| I think he's a good man. | ||
| I do, I have to question the approach that the Democrats are taking to where we are for the very reason of what you've described. | ||
| As a Democrat, you voted for President Trump and you voted for what he promised he was going to do, which is cut spending, root out the waste fraud and abuse, return power to the states, produce domestic energy, be stronger on the world stage, all of those things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think that we can all wrap our arms around that. | |
| That's why I'm so surprised at the reaction to Doge, because exposing these things, again, I don't care if you are a Democrat, Independent, Republican, or you've never voted in your life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you look at the way that USAID has been spending our money, it is common sense to say, whoa, I don't think we should do that. | |
| I think we ought to be making sure that the kids in Philadelphia can read and do mathematics. | ||
| We need to be focusing domestically on what we are doing because a strong America makes for a safe world and a weak America makes for a very unsafe and unstable world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is important that we focus on the issues here. | |
| And Jerry, I think that that's what you're saying. | ||
| We have to put these differences aside and do what's best for America. | ||
| Cookville, Tennessee, Republican Ronald, you're on with Representative Hageman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I don't think this country realizes how close we come to losing everything we have. | ||
| These Democrats ought to get a backbone and realize what Trump did the last four years when he was president. | ||
| He's back now. | ||
| Had he not got in there, all you Democrats would have lost everything you had. | ||
| Look what he's done. | ||
| Check, see what he's done. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's go to Rochester, Minnesota, Democrat. | ||
| John, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yesterday, a local small business was raided here in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic. | ||
| And this local small business has employed two individuals for many years, very illegally, but they were valued, skilled employees. | ||
| Now, this local small business is being forced to shutter their doors. | ||
| What is Congress doing about this? | ||
| We hear nothing about an immigration bill that was being what is being done about immigration to provide for these small businesses. | ||
| Our Congressman Brad Finstead is silent. | ||
| He's like a cockroach hiding in the darkness. | ||
| We hear nothing from him, no town halls. | ||
| We're not hearing anything. | ||
| What is going to be done? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, John, I was just in your lovely state last week. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| My mother's from Minnesota. | ||
| We already have immigration laws on the books that address this. | ||
| And if you need to have foreign labor, there is a legal way of doing so through a variety of visa programs. | ||
| And so, to the extent that people believe that they have to have that kind of labor, I would encourage them to follow that law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not going to apologize for enforcing the law. | |
| And I'm not going to apologize for our Department of Homeland Security and our Custom and Border Patrol, et cetera, enforcing the law. | ||
| I'm just not going to. | ||
| The challenge that we have is we have 12 million illegal aliens that have come into this country over the last four years at a minimum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
By the way, those were Joe Biden's numbers. | |
| I think the number is higher. | ||
| I think most people think the number was higher. | ||
| That was the official number that came out of the Biden administration. | ||
| We have to be able to enforce our laws. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have to be able to secure our borders. | |
| And until we do that, we are not going to be addressing immigration reform. | ||
| And I think the way that you're suggesting, we have to be able to enforce our borders. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am sorry that that happened. | |
| I don't know the facts of that circumstance, but I'm not going to apologize for enforcing the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm not going to sit here and promise that we're going to change it because of that situation. | |
| And, Representative, I just wanted to update on the situation with the cyber trucks. | ||
| This is the latest we got, which is from Business Insider. | ||
| State Department removes mention of, quote, armored Teslas from its 2025 procurement list, replaces it with, quote, armored electric vehicles. | ||
| So that is the latest. | ||
| We want to be completely accurate about that. | ||
| That is $400 million. | ||
| It says it will be buying armored electric vehicles instead of specifically Teslas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, I come from an oil and gas state. | |
| I kind of like the gas-fired ones, the gas-powered ones. | ||
| And that's Representative Harriet Hageman, Republican of Wyoming. | ||
| Thanks so much for coming in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, and I think you do a wonderful job with me. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| After the break, we'll be joined by Democrat Glenn Ivey of Maryland about how Democrats are pushing back on the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days. | |
| We'll explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians, authors, and through the C-SPAN archives. | ||
| We'll look at accomplishments and setbacks and examine how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to the present day. | ||
| This Saturday, the first 100 days of Ulysses Grant's presidency, Grant was a famous Civil War general who won the White House in 1868. | ||
| His campaign slogan was, Let us have peace. | ||
| Issues during Grant's first 100 days included reconstruction, the payment of Civil War debt, voting rights, and the fight against the KKK. | ||
| Watch American History TV series, First 100 Days, Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Starting next week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | ||
| On Monday at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, the first African-American ever elected to Congress from Oregon. | ||
| My mother graduated in 1970 from one of the last segregated high schools in the state and the country rather in South Carolina. | ||
| And I think about all of the opportunities that weren't afforded her, you know, coming out of segregation. | ||
| And I bring that perspective to Oregon, saying, you know, my mom was a rural kid that didn't have a lot of opportunities, but I'm going to make sure that I bring that forth for all of the kids in Oregon. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all next week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are joined now by Representative Glenn Ivey. | ||
| He's a Democrat of Maryland and on the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Congressman, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Your district borders Washington, D.C., home to 50,000 federal employees, another 20 to 30,000 federal contractors. | ||
| So I want to start there. | ||
| You recently held a teletown hall meeting with federal workers. | ||
| Can you tell us about how many people attended and what you all talked about? | ||
| Well, it's about 20,000. | ||
| We capped it at 20 and bumped right up against it. | ||
| Mainly people who are interested in the government employment issue because that was the focus of that town hall. | ||
| There's a lot of concern and confusion about what's going on, what the Trump administration is doing with these flurry of executive orders. | ||
| There have also been a number of court rulings that have put in injunctions in place that have delayed some of what's going on with what the Trump administration is trying to do. | ||
| They're just trying to figure out what their rights are and how things might play out for them personally. | ||
| And then the larger issue on that front is the impact of, you know, if you scale down the government this quickly and fire, you know, a lot of government employees, what services won't be delivered to the American people and how that's going to have an impact on them across the country. | ||
| And what are you telling your constituents, Congressman, the ones that are either afraid of losing their job or have already lost their jobs? | ||
| Well, the ones that are afraid of losing their jobs, you know, there's some that are in different places. | ||
| If you're on the probationary period, they're very limited rights that you have. | ||
| But if you're not on probation anymore, you know, government employees have a series of rights that are in place to protect them from unfair termination. | ||
| And rightly so. | ||
| They got these jobs based on merit and competition. | ||
| And so we want to make sure that they have protections in their jobs so they're not forced out for political reasons. | ||
| There are also collective bargaining agreements that unions have reached with the federal government that provide an extra set of rights as well. | ||
| So we talk through those issues with them and how we think things might play out. | ||
| We offer up information to them as things become available. | ||
| This is rapidly evolving, as you know, and so a lot of them have questions about how things might be changing. | ||
| Another issue that popped up was whether they should take the quote-unquote buyout, the opt-out that was proposed by the Trump administration. | ||
| Our recommendation was no for a couple of reasons. | ||
| One was we didn't think the money had been appropriated to do what was proposed. | ||
| Basically, the offer was if you resign today, we'll pay you for the next six months or so, even though you're not working. | ||
| There's no money appropriated for that as far as we know. | ||
| Also, we were concerned about enforceability. | ||
| If you accept the agreement, the terms that were floated in the essentially contract that the Trump administration sent didn't have any kind of enforcement clause. | ||
| So if you accept it, but they reneg on the deal, what can you do? | ||
| It's not clear based on what was sent. | ||
| But lastly, the government is supposed to be providing services to the American people, not paying people to not show up for jobs. | ||
| So as I've been telling people, the Sopranos have no show jobs. | ||
| The federal government doesn't and shouldn't. | ||
| I just want to go back to something you said about probation. | ||
| Are all federal employees when they're initially hired in a probationary period, and how long is that period? | ||
| It's one year, and not all federal employees, but most. | ||
| There are many that are hired. | ||
| Like, for example, when I was a federal prosecutor and I was hired by the U.S. Attorney's Office, I didn't get civil service protections for that position. | ||
| So I was essentially an at-will employee for my entire term there. | ||
| But most people have probationary periods, and then if they get into the civil service structure after a year, they do have a degree of protections. | ||
| And those that are in favor of what Doge is doing are saying, what's wrong with going through the federal government and seeing where the places are that we can save money, if there's fraud going on, if there's waste going on, that should be a good thing. | ||
| What's your response to that? | ||
| Well, I agree that going after waste, fraud, and abuse is a good thing and should be done, but they're not going about doing it the right way. | ||
| So just a couple of points to make on that front. | ||
| Every major department in the federal government has an office of Inspector General. | ||
| The first thing the Trump administration did when they came in was fire all of the IGs across the board. | ||
| I think they fired 19 at this point. | ||
| And when Doge came in, the IGs were already gone. | ||
| So instead of consulting with the people who were doing these investigations, and some of these investigations might have been, you know, midway done, maybe not even completed, they didn't consult with them. | ||
| They fired him and moved him out and decided to start from scratch. | ||
| Secondly, they brought in a group of people who apparently don't have any kind of investigation experience. | ||
| And the other part of it, too, is none of them seem to have had gone through any kind of vetting process. | ||
| They don't seem to have security clearances and they're being given access to highly personal information, Social Security number, financial information, and health medical data that we don't want to necessarily have made available for any circumstances whatsoever. | ||
| You want to make sure the people that see it actually have the clearances and protections to handle it in the right way. | ||
| But the biggest issue, I think, with the Musk effort here is that he's got obvious conflicts of interest. | ||
| He owns businesses that are doing a lot of work with the government and have major contracts. | ||
| And there are open investigations with respect to at least two of his companies I'm aware of. | ||
| And he had access to some of that information, which he should not. | ||
| So there's a lot of concerns about what Musk is doing, but there's a right way to do it. | ||
| I think a lot of this would have been done instead of just firing employees before you even got there or trying to force them out. | ||
| Do the investigation first. | ||
| If you identify waste, fraud, and abuse, deal with that, fire people or send them to be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. | ||
| But they did it, they put the cart before the horse. | ||
| They started firing people right away and not doing investigations. | ||
| And Congressman Ivey, how are Congressional Democrats responding to this? | ||
| Well, certainly we're opposing what Musk is doing from that standpoint. | ||
| And you've seen, you know, we've done protests and demonstrations at some of the departments. | ||
| Department of Labor was one that I was at maybe a week and a half ago. | ||
| In some instances, we've had members of Congress go to these buildings like USAID, but they were denied access to even getting into the building, which is astonishing to me. | ||
| You know, even the public, everybody should be able to at least get into the building. | ||
| Senators and congressmen should certainly be able to get in and make legitimate inquiries as to what are you all doing and what are you looking at. | ||
| And who stopped them from going into the building? | ||
| security that was at the building that was, I think, told to do that by the Trump administration, because we've never had that happen before. | ||
| And we have Congressman Glenn Ivey with us, a Democrat of Maryland, until the House gavels in in about 20 minutes. | ||
| If you'd like to call in, you can do so now. | ||
| Republicans 202748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| The White House Press Secretary, Caroline Levitt, addressed charges that Trump's actions were causing a constitutional crisis. | ||
| I want to play a bit of that and then have you respond to it. | ||
| Now, before I take questions, I would like to address an extremely dishonest narrative that we've seen emerging over the past few days. | ||
| Many outlets in this room have been fear-mongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House. | ||
| I've been hearing those words a lot lately. | ||
| But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority. | ||
| We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law. | ||
| And they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. | ||
| This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump. | ||
| Quick news flash to these liberal judges who are supporting their obstructionist efforts. | ||
| 77 million Americans voted to elect this president. | ||
| And each injunction is an abuse of the rule of law and an attempt to thwart the will of the people. | ||
| As the president clearly stated in the Oval Office yesterday, we will comply with the law in the courts, but we will also continue to seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions and ensure President Trump's policies can be enacted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman Ivey, your reaction to that? | |
| Well, it's a little interesting. | ||
| I mean, the first injunction that was put in place, which is on birthright citizenship, was put in place by a Ronald Reagan appointee. | ||
| So her, you know, suggestion that these are all quote-unquote liberal judges, I think, is just factually incorrect. | ||
| But beyond that, I think if the Trump administration wants to criticize judicial decisions, that's one thing. | ||
| I think where we get more concern is when you have people like Vice President JD Vance say things like, we might have to remove some of these federal judges. | ||
| And I think Elon Musk actually went even further yesterday and talked about impeaching these judges. | ||
| That's problematic because that's an intimidation effort at judges who are not doing anything wrong from my perspective. | ||
| Even the one that was reversed yesterday with respect to an injunction. | ||
| I'm not saying because he reversed his position, he should be impeached. | ||
| And remember, impeachment is for high crimes and misdemeanors. | ||
| It's not like just because I disagree with him on policy issues. | ||
| So when they start talking about impeachment, that's another level because it really goes to the heart of judicial independence and undermining that in a way that I think is not based on preserving separation of powers and checks and balances that the framers put in place. | ||
| And she mentioned that the media were fear-mongering that there's a constitutional crisis. | ||
| Do you believe that there's a constitutional crisis right now in this country? | ||
| I can't say that we're there yet, but it feels like, based on some of the things that the Trump administration is saying, certainly about judges, is heading it in that direction, laying the found work, the foundation for it. | ||
| But I don't know that we're there yet. | ||
| And the other piece of it, too, is Congress. | ||
| You know, the Republicans control the Senate and the House. | ||
| House and Senate Republicans aren't doing anything to impose any kind of checks and balances on the White House. | ||
| That's their call. | ||
| But the bigger concern is the impoundment conversation that's coming out of the Trump administration. | ||
| And impoundment means we're going to ignore the constitutional power of the purse that was given to Congress and say, look, we don't care if you appropriated money for a particular purpose. | ||
| The president's going to decide to hold the money and use it for what he wants to use it for. | ||
| If you do both of those, and you totally undermine the separation of powers in the three branches of government, if you get to that point, that could be a constitutional crisis. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right, Congressman, we've got callers waiting to talk to you. | ||
| First is Perry in Montgomery, Alabama, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Perry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Representative Ivan. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| The Democrats come on these shows and then they don't understand about the talking points that the Republican have to give to these people while these people vote for them. | ||
| And so it is going to take something to hurt them to realize that you're voting the wrong way. | ||
| But when it comes to the Democrats, you've got to understand also that the Republicans got their media that are going to push everything they say and they're not going to mention anything else, but Democrats do not. | ||
| So C-SPAN, MSNBC, and all those other places are not going to push your points for you if you don't come up with some kind of viable means that you're going to let these people know about these policies that are going to hurt them. | ||
| And so these policies that are going to hurt them is going to hit them hard, and then they're going to come back around and say they're thinking it should be the Democrats that rescued them. | ||
| It's going to be too late then by the time you get through four and five and ten years. | ||
| And some of these things are going to hurt people for years. | ||
| All right, Perry. | ||
| Go ahead, Congressman. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's good points there. | ||
| You know, the communications issue for Democrats, I think, is very significant. | ||
| I think it's one of the main reasons we lost the White House in 2024. | ||
| We didn't do a good job of explaining to the public the positive things that the Biden administration had done for them, certainly from an economic standpoint. | ||
| And, you know, Trump was very effective in communicating his positions. | ||
| And he did it through not just the legacy media, but also a whole network of, you know, whether they're podcasts or other means, where he was reaching Republicans and, you know, persuadables that the Democrats weren't speaking to. | ||
| So I think that's a fair point. | ||
| As far as the other aspect of that, depending on how this plays out, yeah, a lot of people could really be hurt by some of the policies he's putting in place, especially from an economic standpoint. | ||
| If he moves forward with these tariffs, that's just basically a tax increase and increased costs for Americans across the country. | ||
| And I'm not sure why he would want to do that. | ||
| The economy he got from Biden is in pretty good shape. | ||
| In fact, we're doing better than most of the Western world on that front. | ||
| But, you know, he's not doing the things he said he would do. | ||
| He's done a lot of big flurry of activity when he got in, but very little to address the economy in ways that he talked about doing. | ||
| And I hope he'll get focused on that in the very, very near future. | ||
| Here's John, a Republican in Schiner, Texas. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks, C-SPAN, Mr. Harvey. | ||
| I have a couple of concerns. | ||
| First, you just mentioned that you're concerned about the independence of the judiciary. | ||
| We all know the Democrats attacked the Supreme Court. | ||
| Chuck Schuman stood on the Senate capital steps and threatened the Supreme Court. | ||
| You threatened to pack the Supreme Court. | ||
| So your hypocrisy is unbelievable. | ||
| But what really concerns American people is the Democrats just don't seem to care. | ||
| Listen, this is not your money. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| The fact that you can sit there nonchalant and go, well, the processes and lie about Medicare, Medicare, we're not going to take it away. | ||
| The government is corrupt to the bone, okay? | ||
| We need to fix it. | ||
| And if you don't want to do it, then quit. | ||
| But it's not your money, it's ours, okay? | ||
| Which part of that don't you understand? | ||
| All right, John, we'll get a response. | ||
| Well, you know, I got voters that sent me here to Congress, and they feel a little bit differently about it than you do, at least as far as how the money should be spent. | ||
| For example, Title I dollars for education, I think we should be sending money around the country to help low-income districts in red and blue states hire more teachers. | ||
| I think that's a good thing. | ||
| Meals on Wheels, I think, is a good thing. | ||
| Cancer research, I think, is a good thing. | ||
| And I think most Americans support those things. | ||
| You might not, but I think most Americans do. | ||
| But the democratic process is aimed at making a decision about where the money should go based on what the elected leaders determine. | ||
| I'm on the appropriations committee. | ||
| That should be the function of what we do. | ||
| And the president obviously has a say in that, but I think that's the way it should work. | ||
| On the judiciary piece, you know, I never took a position about impeaching Supreme Court justices or federal judges. | ||
| I've just never said that. | ||
| I think it's okay to disagree with judges for the rulings that they make and the decisions they reach, but to start talking about impeaching them just because you don't agree in this instance with the injunctions they put in place, that's not the right way to go. | ||
| And that certainly isn't the structure that the framers put in place. | ||
| This worked pretty well for us for the past two and a half centuries. | ||
| Here's Harry, an independent in Inverness, Florida. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Inverness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| Congressman Ivey, I wanted to talk about the Elon and Doge. | ||
| I think the bigger concern is not so much that they're not qualified or they don't have the background checks. | ||
| The problem is that they're basically hackers. | ||
| And this is a data heist. | ||
| Elon owns a data center in Texas and a Starlink network. | ||
| And if you were able to suck all this proprietary data into the data center and train the data center, train the AI, you would have kind of like ChatGTP meets J. Edgar Hoover, if you will. | ||
| So like type in the congressman's name and up comes everything, basically, all your bank information, medical information, everything you've ever watched on Netflix, every webpage you've ever been to, on and on. | ||
| And that information could be weaponized and used for doxing purposes on X to oppress and manipulate the United States. | ||
| And unfortunately, I think that's what's already, that's what's happening, and there's nothing so far has been stopping it. | ||
| So that is my concern. | ||
| I think that's a fair concern. | ||
| And, you know, there are other aspects of that, too, that go to the conflicts of interest issue. | ||
| You know, taking all this information and using it, for example, to benefit some of his companies. | ||
| The issue potentially that was raised with respect to the Consumer Protection Board that was just shuttered or they're trying to shut down was that he's got an interest in moving forward with a business interest that could be regulated or limited by what the CFPB does and they wanted to get it out of the way. | ||
| I don't know if that's true or not, but back to my original point of vetting these people. | ||
| We need to make sure that we know what interests he's got, what conflicts there might be, so we can separate that out. | ||
| And if there are too many conflicts and you can't wall them off from those, and frankly, that's what it feels like. | ||
| He's multi-billionaire with interests, just a web of interest across the board. | ||
| Maybe he shouldn't be in that position to do that. | ||
| I think that it might be too much power and too much access to information for him to have under these circumstances. | ||
| Here's Steve in Mentor, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Congressman, what do you think about the separation between the Democrats and the Republicans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
and just move to states where the Democrats want to live and then let the Republicans, you know, do whatever they want to do. | |
| There's an old saying, you can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. | ||
| So if they want to go down that road, I think that there's a peaceful separation. | ||
| People that are Democratic leaning, let them move to the states. | ||
| People that want to, you know, not drink the water or drink the Kool-Aid, let them do whatever they want to do. | ||
| Period. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I mean, I appreciate the comment. | ||
| There are a lot of people already voting with their feet. | ||
| I mean, one of the things of sort of political segregation, I'll call it, where people are moving to places where like-minded people live already, I think there's a lot of that underway. | ||
| The challenge, though, is I think there are a lot of decisions that have to be made for the country as a whole, especially with respect to foreign policy and national security and the overall economy, that I think we all need to be thinking and working together. | ||
| So, you know, even though we don't necessarily think alike, we need to think together and try and work to do the best things for the nation as a whole and move it forward in a positive way. | ||
| Because, you know, if we do it the right way, the rising tide will lift all votes. | ||
| All right, Congressman, and I know you have to run, so I want to be respectful of your time. | ||
| Representative Glenn Ivey, a Democrat of Maryland, he's on the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| And we've got about five minutes left before the House is scheduled to gavel in. | ||
| A couple of things to bring to your attention, and that is for your schedule later today. | ||
| So in about five minutes, the Senate Judiciary Committee will meet to vote on whether to send Kash Patel's nomination for FBI director to the full Senate for consideration. | ||
| This comes after an initial vote was delayed by one week at the request of Democrats on the committee who continue to call for a second confirmation hearing with Mr. Patel. | ||
| You can watch that committee vote live at 9 a.m., so just under five minutes away on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| That's also on our app and online. | ||
| Also today at 10 a.m., President Trump's nominee to serve as Education Secretary, that's Linda McMahon, she'll testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. | ||
| She led the Small Business Administration during the first Trump term and is co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment. | ||
| Again, that's 10 a.m. C-SPAN 3, also on the app and online. | ||
| Now, we're expecting the vote for RFK Jr. for health secretary to be at 10.30 a.m. this morning. | ||
| That should be followed by a vote on Brooke Rollins as Agriculture Secretary. | ||
| So a lot happening today. | ||
| If you missed anything from yesterday, including the discussion at NATO headquarters with Pete Hagseff, that is online at c-span.org in its entirety. | ||
| And just to make sure that you have this information, This news from the Hill. | ||
| Judge won't halt Musk federal worker buyout program. | ||
| So, federal judge declined to further pause a federal government buyout program, enabling the government to forge ahead with its fork in the road program. | ||
| The judge had extended the timeframe for federal employees to decide whether to take the unusual offer, which gives employees eight months of pay and benefits if they wish to depart government. | ||
| On Wednesday, the judge found that unions who had sued over the directive did not have standing to do so. | ||
| He said this, quote, the unions do not have the required direct stake in the fork directive, but are challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees, and this is not sufficient. | ||
| So that has happened. | ||
| However, it says OPM is, so here's from the administration. | ||
| It says this. | ||
| The Office of Personnel Management is pleased the court has rejected a desperate effort to strike down the deferred resignation program. | ||
| As of 7 p.m. tonight, so that's Wednesday night, the program is now closed. | ||
| There is no longer any doubt the deferred resignation program was legal and valuable, the agency said in a statement. | ||
| So that has closed down. | ||
| That is not available for employees to take that if they wanted to take it. | ||
| So again, that program closed as of 7 p.m. Eastern yesterday. | ||
| Let's go back to the calls. | ||
| This is Anthony in Pikville, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning to you. | |
| I did have a question for the congressman before he left. | ||
| I wanted to ask if he felt that the federal employees who are going to be forced to take this buyout will actually get paid because Congress has had the first turn. |