CSPAN - Washington Journal 02/17/2025

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Feb. 17, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:28

Washington Journal 02/17/2025

Participants

Main

john mcardle

cspan 38:49

juan williams

fox 37:37

Appearances

addison mcdowell

rep/r 00:37

brandon gill

rep/r 00:32

sarah mcbride

rep/d 00:55

Clips

barack obama

d 00:14

bill clinton

d 00:05

donald j trump

admin 00:19

george h w bush

r 00:04

george w bush

r 00:08

jimmy carter

d 00:07

justice neil gorsuch

scotus 00:03

martin caidin

00:05

rima laibow

00:17

ronald reagan

r 00:03

sean hannity

fox 00:06

Callers

eben in california

callers 00:03

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		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, presidential historian Alexis Koe talks about the significance of President's Day.
		She'll also discuss her recent year-long cross-country project for the think tank New America, asking people, How should a president be?
		Then, Fox News senior political analyst Juan Williams on his new book, New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		WASHINGTON JOURNAL STARTS NOW. GOOD MORNING.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Monday, February 17th, 2025, President's Day in the United States.
		And though designated in the federal calendar as George Washington's birthday, the holiday's proximity to Abraham Lincoln's birthday linked the two and eventually expanded the holiday to a celebration of all American presidents.
		So, this President's Day, we're asking our viewers, who's your favorite president and why?
		Phone line split as usual by political party for you to call in this morning.
		Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
		If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
		Otherwise, catch up with us on social media.
		On X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
		It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
		And a very good Monday morning to you.
		Happy President's Day.
		You can go ahead and start calling in now.
		As you're calling in, we take you to the Desiree News, their opinion piece this weekend encouraging Americans to study Washington and Lincoln on President's Day.
		They write in that piece.
		Other presidents have, of course, done noble things and guided the nation through perilous times, but none was as foundational as Washington and Lincoln.
		They were, of course, not perfect men, they write.
		They succeeded despite their imperfections and because of their humility and their trust in God.
		The nation's first president set the tone for the job and for the nation's collective identity.
		The 16th made preservation of the Union non-negotiable and he laid the foundation for a modern America.
		The Desiree News, their piece that was published yesterday, each year beginning back in 1896, a member of the United States Senate has read from George Washington's farewell address.
		That reading taking place on the floor of the Senate.
		It's going to happen tomorrow afternoon.
		Last year, it was outgoing Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat from Maryland, who read George Washington's farewell address.
		These were the final words of that address.
unidentified		With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country, to settle and mature its recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.
		Though in reviewing the instances of my administration, I am conscious, I am unconscious of intentional error.
		I'm nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.
		Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend.
		I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence.
		And that after 45 years of my life dedicated to his service with the upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The farewell address of the nation's first president yesterday, the nation's 47th president, was at the Daytona 500 following the previous weekend when he was at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
		As the Washington Post writes yesterday, he was relishing the attention at the nation's, one of the nation's most watched TV events.
		That trip into the Daytona 500, they note just a quick trip up the coast from Mar-a-Lago.
		He shook hands with drivers before NASCAR's signature race.
		He reveled in the applause as fighter jets screamed overhead and some attendees were chanting his name.
		Quote, this is your favorite president, Donald Trump told the drivers by radio as the presidential limousine, the Beast, circled the track.
		He said, I'm a big fan.
		I'm a really big fan of you people.
		There's the Beast circling the track with President Trump at the Daytona 500.
		This morning, we are asking you on this President's Day, who's your favorite president and why?
		That's our question for this first half hour of the Washington Journal today, a three-hour program on this President's Day.
		We hope you join us for all of it.
		And we'll start in California with Perry, line for Republicans.
		Perry, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's your favorite president, Perry?
unidentified		Teddy Roosevelt.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why Teddy Roosevelt?
unidentified		Well, just such a historical figure.
		One of the interesting things about Teddy Roosevelt was him and his brother Elliot actually watched the funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln from the second-story floor of the house they lived in in New York when the procession went down.
		I believe it's 57th Avenue.
		I always thought that was kind of a historical thing that a president should actually see another president as famous as Abraham Lincoln in a very sad way, but it was kind of like a destiny for him to become president.
		And just so much history with him.
		Even after he left office, he was big as life.
		Everywhere he went, he was just somebody who was a true world leader in the White House and out of the White House.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think history will say about his or is saying at this point?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's been long enough for history to have its thoughts about his attempt to return to the White House, the leader of the Bull Moose Party.
unidentified		Oh, yes, that was something else.
		And of course, we know that he almost was assassinated with his return.
		And there was another little funny story about how, like, after his presidency, he actually had to go to court.
		And over, I forget what it was over, but when he was told that he couldn't stand up and speak because he was such a powerful orator.
		And actually, FDR actually, I believe he was in the assembly, actually was a witness.
		And he said, how do you know this man?
		He says, I think it was by blood and by relationship or something.
		It's kind of funny what FDR said, too, because he was actually called to testify for his cousin.
		Well, Perry.
		That was interesting.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Teddy Roosevelt fan.
		You mentioned FDR and Teddy Roosevelt both making the top five in the historians survey of presidents.
		This survey, the most recent one done by presidential historians and coordinated by C-SPAN, helped put that together and have done it over the years four different times.
		The most recent one in 2021, the top five in that historian survey: Abraham Lincoln, then George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower.
		That's what more than 100 presidential historians said was their pick for the presidents on a variety of presidential leadership criteria.
		We want to hear from you this morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
		This is Linda, also in California, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hi, yes.
		My favorite president, and I don't see how it could ever be another, is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
		And that's because of his vision for America.
		He was of Brahmin's heritage from back east, but he felt America needed to be a place without great differences in income, in money.
		There should not be a tremendously wealthy class and many, many, many poor workers living in fear for their families' future.
		He supported unions.
		He supported peace.
		He was intelligent.
		This was this, he was just what I think.
		He envisioned America the way my folks envisioned America and the way I was raised.
		Actually, I was raised a Roosevelt Democrat Goddard.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Linda, you say he supported peace, and yet one of the best known things about him was his leadership of the United States during World War II.
unidentified		Yes, it's ironic, but that's his intelligence.
		And it has spread to thinking.
		Yes, I agree.
		I'm glad you added that to it.
		Yes.
		And even as he deliberately set it up, I still liked, I loved his economic view.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Linda, thanks for the call from California to Massachusetts.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, Line for Democrats, who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		My all-time favorite was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
		And there were three things.
		One was his big, great support for Social Security, and I believe it was in the mid or late 30s.
		Then the WPA, which helped millions of people get back to work when there was no hope during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
		And his greatest accomplishment was taking us from the Great Depression.
		By 1945, we were the world's number one economic and technological giant.
		And that's my feelings about Franklin D. Roosevelt.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, thanks for the call from Massachusetts.
		Jack in Ohio, Columbus.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Hello, can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I can, Jack.
		Who's your favorite president?
		All right.
		Domino is next in California.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Hello, good morning.
unidentified		First of all, I have to say that I, as an Italian American, my favorite president has to have been George W. Bush because he showed the American people that when you're president, he's getting a little bit bored.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Herbert in Georgia.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
unidentified		My favorite president is London Johnson.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why LBJ?
unidentified		Because he signed the civil rights bill, and we see, and that caused one of the presidents of Obama, which is another favorite, to become a biracial president in the United States of America.
		And by him signing that civil rights bill, it was very beautiful because this was America foundation of three generations with here, the European, the Indian, and the black American, the first generation.
		And I think that we should have a part of American history.
		You know, and I appreciate London Johnson for doing that because, you know, he went against his own people, went against his own Democrats.
		Whereas now, you've got these Republicans who don't even want to go against their own president for democracy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Herbert, I wonder what your thoughts are of this recent Gallup poll about a survey of Americans, about their feelings about living U.S. presidents.
		And among those, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, Barack Obama, with the highest favorability rating, 59% of Americans responding to the Gallup poll saying they have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama, just 36% saying they have an unfavorable view.
		That is a stark difference from Americans' views of Joe Biden, just 39% saying they have a favorable view, 57% saying they have an unfavorable view.
unidentified		Well, you know, John, to be honest with you, see, they look at the darkness of Obama.
		But Obama was racial.
		He was the bad.
		He was white and black.
		He was racial.
		And that said, that said.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm listening, Herbert.
unidentified		Well, John, I like Obama because, yeah.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Herbert, you got to stop listening through your phone and just listening from your TV and just speak through your phone.
		Easiest way to have the conversation here.
		By the way, more discussion about Barack Obama.
		He plays a major role in the book by Juan Williams of Fox News, his new book out just last month, New Prize for These Eyes, the Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		We're going to be having that conversation in the last hour of the Washington Journal today.
		So stick around for that discussion and your calls with Juan Williams.
		Back to your calls this morning about your favorite president and why.
		This is John West Palm Beach, Florida, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		My favorite president is Andrew Jackson because he ended the Fed and there were no debts.
		The United States had no debts, no $34 trillion in debt under Andrew Jackson.
		He paid off all our debts, sold all the assets, and closed down the Fed.
		That's why I love him.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And John, what do you think presidents have said about the national debt and their views in the national debt since then?
		It's more than $34 trillion.
		It's about $36.5 trillion and counting today, at least if you go by USDebtClock.com.
unidentified		I don't know how to answer that.
		I don't think they even care.
		The Fed is the president's bank account.
		And Closing, if we had to pay off that $34 trillion by selling our assets, listen to this.
		We have 800 million acres of federally owned land.
		If we had to sell every acre, it would cost $50,000 per acre to pay off the debt.
		That's pretty big.
		I think you get 10,000 an acre tops.
		I don't know.
		I don't know.
		That's just a little calculation I like to make.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And here's another way to look at it, John.
		And this again from U.S. Debt Clock.
		The debts per U.S. citizen, $107,000 each U.S. citizen would have to pay to pay off the national debt if you went by just per taxpayer in this country.
		$323,000 per taxpayer to pay off the national debt.
		Jack is in Athens, Texas.
		Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, sir.
unidentified		My favorite president, I'm a Republican, but it might seem a little bit strange, but my favorite probably would be Bill Clinton.
		He was a pretty smart guy.
		He got a lot of stuff done.
		He let Congress get a lot of stuff done.
		He did welfare reform, get along with really neat stuff.
		And of course, he took credit for it.
		Plus, just for entertainment value alone, Clinton was a great guy.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jack, what do you think about Bill Clinton since he's left office?
unidentified		Not really much, nothing.
		You know, I think that they'd make a lot of money.
		But I think he was just a smart guy, a really slick politician.
		Newt Gingrich did a whole bunch of stuff while he was in office, and the Congress did.
		And, of course, he took credit for it.
		Pretty smart stuff.
		Anyway, that's all I got.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Jack in Texas.
		If you want to learn more about Bill Clinton after leaving office, he wrote a book about it.
		And we aired it this weekend.
		His discussion about that book on C-SPAN's book TV.
		You can find that conversation.
		It was just a few years ago that he sat down for that interview.
		C-SPAN.org, if you type Bill Clinton into the search bar at the top of the page, you can find Bill Clinton and other presidents talking about their books, about their memoirs.
		This is Bill in New York, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		Yeah, I think I was going to go with Abraham Lincoln being that, but we know that they would have had to free the slaves anyway because of them acting up, I guess you could say, just to be fun about it.
		But I would think that it would be a toss between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
		John Kennedy, John Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
		John Kennedy wasn't able to accomplish much that he would have, but Lyndon B. seemed to held it up for him, right?
		Even though that we know that he used the N-words a couple of times, it's been said.
		And that, you know, but what he did, he signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.
		He declared war on poverty.
		He had done so many things for the poor.
		And he also thought about the environment.
		And also, he signed Medicare.
		So, yeah, Lyndon B, even though he was a little racist, I think he did a lot of great things.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bill in New York.
		This is one of the headlines from the Washington Times today.
		Keeping the president in President's Day, the holiday becomes increasingly focused on retail instead of George Washington.
		It is a focus on the history of President's Day.
		And we're asking you this morning on this President's Day, who's your favorite president and why?
		This is Rod in Michigan, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, my favorite president is Nixon.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why, Nixon, Rod?
unidentified		Back with then, I was going to college of Michigan State and the state paper come out, and my birthday was on the front page.
		And I says, What's that there for?
		I was number two in the draft, and then Nixon called it off, so I'm still alive.
		I'm happy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Rod in Michigan.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Rod, did you know many people who ended up going to Vietnam?
unidentified		Oh, many.
		One of our best people in my hometown died over there.
		I just voted for McGovern.
		But Nixon saved my life, so that's why he's my president.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Rod in Michigan.
		Shirley is in Del Ray Beach, Florida.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I'm going to say President Barack Obama because he was, of course, the first African-American president that this country ever had.
		He's the first.
		He was transformative.
		I want to say everybody voted for him.
		Of course, they didn't, but everybody voted for him.
		It showed the world that the country could go forward.
		And once the present president is no longer here, we will have to go back to rebuilding our country.
		But he moved us forward.
		Then we had to go backwards, as life seems to make us do as a country.
		We move forward five steps, we go back ten.
		And that's my choice.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Shirley in Florida.
		This is Bernard in Illinois, Independent.
		Good morning.
		Who's your favorite president, Bernard?
unidentified		Mr. President Lincoln and Mr. Kennedy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why is that?
unidentified		Because they were both good men.
martin caidin ▲ ● ▼		And I believe they really knew strayed this country out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What makes a president a good man, a good president?
unidentified		A gentleman and he freed the slave, Mr. Lincoln did.
unidentified		And Mr. Kennedy stood his ground.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where did he stand his ground, Bernard?
unidentified		What particular was the Keyword missile crisis?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bernard in Illinois.
		Also been looking for your social media posts as well.
		Here's a few of those who are watching and writing along on social media.
		Kelly on Facebook saying it's Donald Trump, best president since Reagan, peace through strength, and already not already bought like most politicians.
		They hate him because they can't control him.
		They never wanted the waste, fraud, abuse, and money laundering exposed.
		Another quote from Jim on Facebook saying it's Coolidge for his quote when he said his greatest accomplishment was minding his own business.
		The exact quote, according to the Coolidge Foundation, perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding the minding of my own business.
		March 1st, 1929 is when Coolidge said that.
		James Antle saying is Teddy Roosevelt, war hero, made food and drugs safe for people to consume, protected nature by establishing the National Parks, attack trust during the Gilded Age, the last president to skinny dip in the Potomac, and he drank a gallon of coffee a day.
		This is Joe saying it's Grover, Cleveland, just for his name.
		And Mrs. Dutton saying Ulysses S. Grant and Bill Clinton looking for your Facebook posts, your social media ex posts as well.
		And of course, your calls.
		This is Bill in Pennsylvania, Republican.
		Who's your favorite president?
		Why?
unidentified		Donald Trump.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why Trump, Bill?
unidentified		Trump's a businessman.
		He's not a politician in the traditional way.
		And people were tired of how things were going for years and with all the politicians.
		And we dug ourselves into a big hole and Trump's trying to get us out of it.
		He's a businessman first.
		I just believe he's going to end up being the greatest president of all time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Bill, I'm not sure you saw, but it was recently that Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, member of the House, a Republican, introducing legislation to arrange for the carving of President Trump's image in Mount Rushmore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about that?
unidentified		That's a bit premature.
		Time will tell, but I think she's jumping the gun a little bit on that.
		Nancy Pelosi wanted to put Biden's head on Mount Rushmore.
		You know, that was very premature as we saw how history ended up playing out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bill in Pennsylvania.
		This is Carol in Iowa.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Well, actually, I have three presidents.
		Franklin Roosevelt, because he got his Social Security, and I'm as old as that.
		Then Barack Obama.
		I still remember the crowd watching him at his inauguration.
		The tears on the faces of the black people.
		And it felt their happiness because it was long overdue.
		And third, I'm going to say Joe Biden.
		I miss him.
		History is going to show how much he did for us in the four years.
		He brought us through the COVID.
		He made so many executive orders that Trump has in and just thrown out the window.
		And we're going to have to recover from that.
		And it's going to take us four years.
		It's going to take us four years for another Democrat to come in and fix all that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Carol in Iowa.
		Just a reminder, to turn down your television when you're getting ready to speak through the phone.
		Makes it easier.
		This is Ricky in North Carolina.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Yes.
		My favorite president is John F. Kennedy.
		My name is Ricky Mason from North Carolina.
		And I believe John F. Kennedy was the best president that this country ever had.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why, Ricky?
unidentified		Because John F. Kennedy, at the time that he was president, and as far as I can remember, in the 60s, he stood for the country and the people, and he cared for the citizens of the United States, where there was a lot of programs that was not implemented in the government.
		And the government, to me, at that time, was on one accord, the Republicans and the Democrats, to come together and to make programs that was feasible to help less fortunate people here in America, like social service, I mean, social services and social security.
		And he put all those programs and those things in health care and for children and all this stuff that now that where Donald Trump and the Mars man is in there and is trying to disintegrate all these programs that was to help us here in America and not only America,
		but others that we concerned this country with foreign people, helping them with AIDS of health care and food and stuff like that when crisis appeared, even when Martin Luther King was protesting for the civil rights movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Ricky, you mentioned all these different programs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Jonathan, known for one of his most famous comments from his inaugural address, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
unidentified		Right, exactly right, exactly right.
		And therefore, and I like that quote, and you're right that you remind me of that because he did ask that question.
		And therefore, it was not what the country could do for you, but what you could do for the country.
		So, therefore, that means that the government and the people was willing to pull together for what the government could do for the country, then what the people could do for the government to help those programs or help those situations much better for all humans or all mankind.
		I will put it in that way.
		And I just say John F. Kennedy was one of my greatest presidents that put all these accolades of good things in place for mankind in our country.
		And for those that are, even when Castro wanted to disseminate those Cubans and stuff like that, John F. Kennedy had those people exported here to the United States to help that situation out.
		It was just so much that I believe if he was to live out his terms of life or what have you, then he'd have even done greater more stuff that we can not even, I guess, not even think of stuff that was needed here in this country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Ricky in North Carolina.
		A few more of your social media comments.
		This is Andrew saying President Obama is my favorite because he saved America from the 2008 financial crisis, expanded health care to tens of millions of people, and streamlined assistance to small business.
		And this is John on Facebook.
		It's FDR, a man of personal wealth, and certainly not a perfect human being.
		He did more to help the economy and the American working class people than any other president.
		Darrell, North Carolina Independent, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Good morning.
		My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln.
		As a descendant from African slaves with the condition of the human heart, it could be highly likely that I wouldn't be free today.
sean hannity ▲ ● ▼		But then I would also like to add my second favorite president is Donald J. Trump.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why is Trump your second favorite, Darrell?
unidentified		Well, because of what he wants to do for this country.
unidentified		I think he is, his tactics may be seen as divisive, but I think his heart is that he wants to return America or get America into a much better place for all Americans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Darryl in North Carolina, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around, though.
		Plenty more to talk about on this President's Day, including up next, we'll be joined by presidential historian Alexis Koe.
		We'll talk about her effort to cross the country and ask Americans about their feelings about presidents and how a president should be.
		And later, Fox News senior political analyst Juan Williams discusses his new book, New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		Stick around.
unidentified		We'll be right back commemorate President's Day by shopping online at cspanshop.org where you can save up to 25% on apparel, accessories, and drink wear.
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george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, C-SPAN's book TV and American History TV viewers are familiar with Alexis Koh.
		She's a presidential historian, author, sub-stacker, senior fellow at New America.
		And Alexis Koh, we've began our program today asking viewers who their favorite president is and why.
		Is a presidential historian allowed to have a favorite president?
unidentified		I don't have a favorite president.
		That's one of the first questions people always ask me, and it's professional.
		But so I try not to pick favorites, but you have to understand that I see them on their best days and their worst days.
		I read all their personal letters and diaries.
		So it's hard to feel that way, but I do feel about them the way people will feel about sort of distant family members who are a little bit difficult, but you love them anyway.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And you've written about them as well, have written one book about George Washington, writing another book about JFK.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What drew you specifically to George Washington and now JFK?
unidentified		I love presidents who have been so mythologized that it's really hard to get a sense of who they really were and what they really did.
		And I feel like it's a puzzle that I want to put together to solve to the best of my ability.
		And what I usually find very early on in the process is that many of the things that we take to be axiomatic about the president are in fact not at all.
		And that's where it gets really fun.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On myths about America's first president, this being George Washington's birthday, the official designation for the federal holiday.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are some of the myths out there about America's first president?
unidentified		We heard one recently at the inauguration when a prayer was given.
		There was a preface, and the preface included one of the greatest myths, which was that Washington kneeled to pray at Valley Forge.
		There's a painting that was painted decades later, but even without any sort of corroborating evidence, there's no one who said that he prayed.
		There's no eyewitnesses.
		He didn't say it.
		It doesn't seem likely because he was a deist, meaning that he didn't believe that God would interact with people on earth.
		So it's definitely not what he would do.
		So that's one that comes up a lot.
		And of course, that he couldn't tell a lie.
		And he was a spy master, so he could definitely lie and he liked it a lot.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe's book about George Washington, You Never Forget Your First, A Biography of George Washington came out in 2020 in the process of writing another book about JFK.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a title for that book yet?
unidentified		Young Jack, 1917 to 1957.
		So I stop right before the presidency.
		It's right after he wins the Pulitzer.
		He has a child and he's very much primed for it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why stop before his presidency?
unidentified		Because there's a spate of books, I feel like, every month about Kennedy's presidency.
		And I really believe that so many of them are excellent.
		However, his early years and particularly his time in Congress, which was the training ground that the founding fathers had wanted presidents to go through, has been treated a little bit like a flyover estate.
		It goes very quickly.
		People rush through it.
		It's more like this happened.
		These are plot points.
		And then we get to the presidency.
		And one of my goals as a presidential historian, one of the things that I really push back on is this idea of destiny, because as we all know, as we live our lives, nothing is a foregone conclusion.
		It's a series of efforts and decisions along the way that really make a difference.
		And so I just wanted to slow down and focus.
		And it's been great fun.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Along with your work as an author, you're a senior fellow with New America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's New America?
unidentified		New America is a bipartisan think tank located in Washington, D.C., and has offices throughout the nation.
		And it's a really wonderful and encouraging environment in which my fellowship project, which has been going on now for a couple of years, asked the question, how should a president be?
		And in 2024, New America, aided somewhat by some of the stops that I went to, sent me on a discussion tour across the country.
		13 stops.
		A few were virtual because I really wanted to meet people in different places.
		I give talks all the time at universities and historical societies and libraries, but not everyone goes to those talks.
		And so I talked to, for example, Jamal Bowie on TikTok because he sort of owns that platform and it's a fantastic way to interact with a very different subset of people.
		But at the same time, I also went to the Ohio State University and spoke at their National Security Institute.
		And so it was really a wide range of venues in which I got an amazing overview of how the country feels.
		And of course, I wasn't just doing this because it was an election year.
		We are about to turn 250 in 2026.
		That is America's 250th.
		And that's a really important moment in which New America, as part of this fellowship, has three goals that we think about.
		We want to feel pride in the founding, a reckoning for the ways we've fallen short, and aspiration towards a better future.
		And so I was trying to reconcile all those things, all 250 years plus what comes next.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And we want to give you a sense of how America feels this morning.
		And we do that with our phone lines.
		They're open to talk to Alexis Coe this morning, presidential historian, and this effort with New America, this question, how should a president be.
		Here's the numbers for you to call.
		It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
		Independence, 202748-8002.
		And Alexis Coe, maybe some guidance on that question.
		When you say, how should a president be, do you mean as a leader, as a person, as a father or husband?
		What do you mean?
unidentified		All of the above, each tour had a specific focus.
		At the New York Historical Society, one of my guests was Dr. Kevin Young, who runs the Museum of African American History, one of the Smithsonians in Washington, D.C.
		And we talked about historical reckoning.
		Obviously, talked about national security at the Ohio State University.
		And I think one of the really interesting points was I would open the question up to the people I was talking to and also to the audience and ask them about attributes, but also in specific situations.
		So how much preparation does a president need?
		Should they go through Congress?
		Do we want outsiders?
		What are actual traits?
		Like empathy was really interesting.
		And authenticity emerged as one of the major attributes that people really liked, but it's not quite what we think it should be.
		And there's a little bit of a disconnect between what we think we want in leaders and who we actually get as leaders.
		And so that's where the fun comes in because complexity is not a liability.
		It's just more to figure out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When you say authenticity, what was an example that would be cited to you as an authentic president?
unidentified		Well, I started the tour in January of 2024, and this came up quite a bit, which was that, you know, one of the things I will back up and say that the reason I wanted to do this project is not just our 250th.
		As a presidential historian, I am sometimes treated like a comet box for the presidency.
		And I was experiencing so much cynicism, unprecedented cynicism after Donald Trump from 2016, but during his presidency after, but also during Biden.
		And that was really interesting to me.
		And so authenticity to them, for example, was empathy was talked about as an attribute that they wanted.
		And Biden, of course, was well known for empathy, but not at that point.
		There was the belief that he was not empathetic because he, Gaza, was mentioned often.
		And then a couple of times on the tour, which I thought was really interesting, is that while we see Biden surrounded by family, and of course, we know he had a really close relationship with both of his sons, and he's never met one of his granddaughters.
		And so that was something that people would mention.
		And so there is this authenticity that you show up in every way and that you're not empathetic just to a certain group of people.
		Consistency is really important, as well as not just campaigning as an authentic person, but actually maintaining ties with the electorate after the campaign is over.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think we're more cynical in general, or are you finding we're more cynical about our leaders, about our presidents these days?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean when you say the cynicism that you found?
unidentified		I have often experienced a lot of questions about the presidency and the kind of person who would want to be president.
		But I think that there has been a sharper edge of late as I have progressed in my career.
		It's certainly different.
		And in the last four to eight years, it sometimes feels confrontational and less about learning and more about learning and seeking understanding and having really fruitful conversations and more about making points or snapbacks or nothing that really moves the conversation forward.
		And so it does seem as if people have grown tired of the same old conversations about the presidency, but they have to also be willing to have more.
		And so that's a challenge that I feel like I face.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me let you chat with some callers have some already for you.
		Alexis Coe, presidential historian, joining us on this president's day.
		Dwayne is up first, an independent out of Illinois.
		Dwayne, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I thought I'd throw Harry Truman into the conversation today and try to inject a little humor into the conversation.
		I recall touring the Truman's home in Independence, Missouri.
		And for us baby boomers, it would remind you of just going to visit your grandparents' house when you were a kid.
		They were just ordinary people.
		But there were extraordinary things in their house, and one of them was Bess Truman's official White House portrait.
		And in light of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump taking things that they shouldn't have taken from the White House, I thought it was humorous that Bess took her official White House portrait.
		And when she was asked to return it, told them to go pound sand.
		She was going to keep it with all she had to put up with.
		She thought she deserved it.
		And so to this day, her official White House portrait, which belongs to the White House, is in their home in their home in Independence.
		I thought that was kind of humorous and reminded me just what real people the Trumans were.
		And I guess I could call him my favorite president.
		Thanks for listening.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Dwayne, thanks for the call.
		Real people authenticity.
		Alexis Coe, what do you take from that?
unidentified		I thought that was a great suggestion about how to spend President's Day.
		It's this really ill-defined holiday.
		And a couple of years ago, I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, and the headline was something like, George Washington would hate President's Day because there's nothing really, it's not like 4th of July, at least you have some sort of community gathering.
		I love going to presidential homes and libraries and museums because you get the intersection of the personal and the professional.
		We have to remember, I used to host a podcast for Audible called Presidents Are People Too, and they are at the end of the day, people with their own proclivities.
		Now, I think there's a pretty big difference between taking a portrait and taking sensitive materials that could put the country at risk and also could deny people like me the ability to understand the presidency in retrospect.
		And this is a problem throughout not only the president's, the executive branch, but also Congress.
		They love to declare their own papers personal.
		And so I think that it's a really interesting conversation.
		But I do think that we view these places, these establishments like presidential libraries and museums as a celebration or place of reverence.
		And when I, when you, and some of them very much are, but a lot of them challenge and embrace some of the darker aspects of the president's life and decisions and try to contextualize that.
		And I'm thinking of one shining example is Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, and also my neighbor, which is FDR's Hyde Park.
		I go there about once a week and just love it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On presidential places, an interesting discussion in the Associated Press story today about President's Day.
		You're quoted in that discussion, focusing on the monuments here in Washington, D.C., and what they tell us about the presidents Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington's, the Washington Monument.
		Explain what your concern was about how we relate to George Washington and the Washington Monument.
unidentified		That is not my favorite monument.
		I feel like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, they have far superior ones because they have features, they have words, and Washington is this unifying figure, but he's just an obelisk.
		He's really tall, but it's sanded, and you don't really see any part of him.
		You don't interact with it at all.
		And I think that's a real missed opportunity.
		I am, you know, we have talked a lot about monuments over the last, I would say, decade, but I ascribe to Frederick Douglass's idea that monuments should exist in their original form, but you can improve upon them.
		And so when I look at Washington's monument, I think there's so much room for conversations about different parts of his life.
		The title he had the longest in his life was master.
		At 11, he inherited 10 slaves, enslaved people, when his father died.
		And so that's something that we have to talk about because at the end of his life, that number swelled into it was over 213.
		That's really significant because he couldn't have become who he was without them.
		And when we call someone like Washington or Jefferson a man of his time, we have to remember all those people were as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On monuments and memorials, I think the newest one in Washington, D.C. is the Dwight Eisenhower Memorial just off of the National Mall.
		Have you visited that one?
		What are your thoughts on that newest memorial?
		We're showing a picture of it to viewers now.
unidentified		I have not visited it, which is a tragedy to me.
		Unfortunately, when I'm always in D.C., I'm hitting the archives and I am giving talks.
		But I think that any addition is a wonderful starting place for a conversation.
		And so I'm excited about it.
		But I do also want to caution people when we put importance, when we emphasize these monuments and the names on the sides of buildings and schools.
		I always tell people when they worry about Washington being canceled, best of luck.
		I don't know how you do that.
		He is, if you cancel George Washington, you're canceling America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me head to Montana.
		This is Greg waiting on our line for Democrats.
		Greg, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me okay there?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Okay, my copper, my copper, my service dog, wakes me up for this in this first-time caller.
		And I just started the program.
		My question is: how do you feel about the last two presidents?
		Roughly, you know, how do they compare or rank, if you would, with respect to empathy, which I feel is real important.
		An example would be just empathy toward the poor versus the rich, or just caring for the common person, animals in particular, say, or just the common person.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Cole.
unidentified		That is a really interesting question.
		Animals are a significant part of the story you will get at one of the presidential libraries and museums that we just talked about because they're something that charms the nation, FALA for FDR.
		Washington had many dogs and he gave them interesting names.
		One was named Sweetlips.
		I think that the way that a human interacts in general with an animal is really telling about their person.
		As far as empathy, I would say that early days of COVID are hard to get out of my mind.
		Donald Trump was very focused on his own experience as president.
		And the thing is, every president enters office with an agenda.
		Not all of them face a pandemic, but they have faced terrorist attacks and many other challenging issues.
		And their presidency is buffeted by these events that are outside of their control.
		It's not necessarily the resume they have leading up or the attributes that they have.
		It's how they react in the moment and their ability to grow.
		The story with every president that people love to tell that I often doubt is that they have some sort of evolution.
		I think that that is rare.
		Someone like Kennedy, and one of the reasons I wanted to write about him is I really feel like he did have an evolution.
		And his empathy grew as he experienced the world.
		So it's really about where you start out.
		I'm not sure if it's as much about empathy as having an insatiable curiosity about people and a diverse set of people.
		And the presidency is so tied to power, and obviously that's important.
		But many of the people who the president serves do not have that kind of power or capital.
		And so there has to be an innate interest in them and their lived experience.
		So I wouldn't rate either, you know, 10 out of 10.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On the animals side of what the viewer was talking about, is it true that it was Harry Truman who said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog?
unidentified		Yes.
		Yes.
		This is very true.
		Yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why are we so obsessed with presidents' pets?
unidentified		I think that presidents for us, we didn't want a monarchy, but we certainly are very interested in monarchies.
		I'm always fascinated by the reaction to a royal wedding, and Americans will get up early.
		The thing is, we evicted a monarch.
		We didn't want one, but we do love a great story.
		And so we like to know things about our presidents in a really easy way to perhaps feel okay with them on a personal level, even if you disagree with everything that they're doing, as one of the callers said.
		You know, they don't exactly like the medium, but they feel like the message is good, is to see them with a dog.
		And when you don't see, or a small child, for example, Barack Obama was always so charming and seemed so innately good when he would interact with children.
		And that is something that makes them, again, human.
		So presidents are people too.
		And that is really lovely for people to see.
		Otherwise, they're always in suits and they're in front of a firing squad of media.
		It's an intense moment.
		So we don't really see them relax in this way.
		That's candid.
		It's not a photo.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Take you to the Hawkeye State.
		This is George in Clear Lake, Iowa, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes.
		I'd like to speak with the guest as a reassessment of, for example, Herbert Hoover's as a president and also kind of his parallel with Jimmy Carter, because both were despised in their presidencies, but both were great men in terms of their humanitarian work.
		Hoover, particularly before he became president, in fact, he wasn't even a politician at that point, other than the fact that he was the vice president.
		And of course, Jimmy Carter with his humanitarian work after his presidency, and Hoover also.
		But I'm particularly interested because I just recently visited the Hoover Library in West Branch this past January before it was closing for its renovation for the next year and a half.
		And the thing about it was it was right after Jimmy Carter had passed away.
		So I'm interested in hearing about her particular parallels there.
		And also the fact that, you know, everybody's talked about Roosevelt and the way he got us out of the Depression and that kind of thing.
		But the interesting thing about that is that he, the things that got us out of the depression after his initial work were things that Hoover tried but was not able to do while he was president.
		Anyhow, I'll just stop and quit talking and babbling at this point and let her talk.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		That was a really good question.
		I don't think you were babbling.
		I think that all these things are connected.
		I went to go see Carter Speech in Plains, Georgia, I think around 2015, 2016.
		I remember I was selling my Washington book that weekend.
		And it was incredible to see him give a sermon and to grapple.
		His grandson had just passed away.
		And he said, you know, I'm angry with God.
		And he talked about that.
		I think what both of those men have in common that maybe didn't make for the best presidency, and this is true with Rover Cleveland, our other non-consecutive president, is that they were completely inflexible.
		They were stubborn.
		And sometimes that can be a good thing, and sometimes that can be a bad thing.
		With Carter, it was a very good thing outside of Washington because he's obstinate about certain.
		And I think that he did, you know, within the presidency, for all the many reasons, he's not ranked as one of the top 10 presidents.
		I think that his adherence to a sort of moral standard really changed the way the United States interacts with different countries.
		That's changing now, but I think it really set the tone for decades of international outreach and relations.
		But with Carter, he was very stubborn.
		He was a micromanager.
		I always, when I think of Carter, I always like to explain this as he managed the White House tennis sign up, like for the courts, the sign-up for staff.
		Why would a president do that?
		That's not something he should be doing.
		But he had these obsessions.
		Now, later, when he had this incredible career after the presidency, in which he eradicated guinea worms, he oversaw free and fair elections throughout the world.
		He was sent by many presidents to negotiate and listen to other leaders on behalf of the United States.
		I think that that was a really important attribute.
		It just doesn't always make for the best president.
		And I think Carter will be someone who we think about differently in the decades after his death.
		And that's true for every president.
		They go through a process and evolution after their death as far as public opinion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jimmy Carter, also known for his writing career, wrote more than 30 books over the course of his lifetime.
		I know you said you can't have a favorite president, Alexis Coe.
		Do you have a favorite presidential book?
unidentified		Oh, well, I mean, now I've read Profiles and Courage so many times.
		I don't know if it's my favorite.
		I very much, you know, Carter rivals Teddy Roosevelt in terms of his prolific output of books.
		I don't think that I could write these researched, annotated, you know, cited books that fast at all.
		But I respect it.
		And I think that this is a moment in which we have to celebrate political courage, which is essentially what political, what Profiles and Courage is about.
		And the political courage that Carter exemplified in every book is amazing.
		So we've been talking a little bit.
		Gauss has come up a little bit.
		He wrote a book called Peace Not Apartheid.
		A documentary followed him during that book tour.
		And that was a really challenging book tour.
		That was a long time ago.
		People still have a hard time even bringing up the subject.
		And so if you think about a former president going out with a book with that title, it's provocative, it's meant to, and he was ready to fight that fight.
		And I think about that a lot.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Profiles and Courage, I believe, published before JFK was president, correct?
unidentified		Yes, that's where I leave off in my book.
		It was published in 1956, and then he wins the Pulitzer in 1957.
		And that has always been a subject of debate.
		And I'm so excited to say that I figured out how he won it.
		I figured out the decision at the jury and at the executive level.
		And I think I substantiate that he did write it, but there were other things that went wrong.
		It's an incredible feat.
		He really wanted to write a second book.
		His thesis was turned into a book.
		So imagine a fresh Harvard graduate, the son of an ambassador to the Court of St. James, but who had been a total disaster in that role in the lead up to World War II, who then publishes a book, it becomes a bestseller.
		We're talking about Kennedy.
		Then he goes to war.
		He gets a purple heart.
		He goes into Congress.
		It's an incredible story, but he wanted to win a Pulitzer.
		He wanted to be a writer.
		He was a man of letters.
		He loved literature.
		And so this book was all his hopes and dreams in a lot of ways.
		And also not.
		I would say that the writing is inferior to his first book because he was recovering from back surgery.
		He was on a lot of painkillers, and it's not the most organized.
		His research also was a little bit outsourced, but he did write it.
		He recited a lot of it, but he wrote it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And your book on JFK, when is that coming out?
unidentified		If people want more on that story next year, just around this time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Meanwhile, with us this morning for about another 20 minutes on the Washington Journal, Alexis Coe taking your calls.
		This is Sally in Bluemont, Virginia, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		I just wanted to tell a little story about John F. Kennedy.
		When I was in fifth grade, I went on a trip to Hyannisport with my fifth grade friend, and we were sitting out on the dock, and John F. Kennedy and his mother came out to go out to their sailboat.
		And he was not yet president.
		He was a senator, and he was the most gracious, nice person, came up to us and sat down on the dock with us and talked for about an hour about sailing and Hyannis Port and all the different things that kids would like to do.
		And then he and his mom got on the dock and went off sailing and then waved to us and they saw us again coming off the boat and invited us to a football game that the whole family had in the courtyard in Hyannisport.
		That's my story.
		I've always kept it with deep connection.
		Sally, who won the football game?
		I don't remember, but probably Kathleen.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sally, thanks for sharing your memories.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		That's a great story.
		And what I love about that story, too, in presidential history sort of trope is mothers are very much maligned.
		They're either these like thorns in the side of the presidents.
		They have to overcome the obstacle of their mother in order to succeed.
		And that's the story we hear about Washington.
		That was my major contribution to Washington studies that that wasn't true.
		That's the story we hear about Kennedy.
		And I would say that's not quite true either.
		And so I love the story because he's going to sail with his mother.
		And I believe all that happened.
		They were an incredibly gregarious, friendly bunch.
		There were nine children at one point, not at the point where she met JFK.
		At that point, he had lost his beloved sister, Kick, who was his best friend, and his eldest brother.
		He was the second oldest, his eldest brother, Joe Jr.
		They were always playing competitive games, touch football.
		This is well known.
		I really enjoy that story.
		Hyannis Port, of course, is where they would summer.
		They had two homes that they would divide their time between, one on Cape Cod and one in Florida, Palm Beach.
		And so it's nice to hear, it's really nice to hear that story.
		And then he would be interested in talking to two fifth grade girls on his way to the presidency.
		I think the thing about JFK and the thing about a lot of presidents that wouldn't necessarily work for 18th and 19th century presidents is that we now see charisma playing quite a role in a president and how the nation interacts and remembers them.
		And of course, JFK had it in ample supply.
		And that was true from the time he was a young child.
		He was always quite witty.
		His mother would write down things that he said that were very funny.
		He would often ask, you know, after the story of, he would listen to stories around Christmas and he would say, okay, I know what happened to Jesus, but what happened to the mule?
		But he would deliver it as a joke.
		So he really knew how to talk to just about anyone.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talked about this before when we chatted with you for American History TV about your substack.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		But what is dad history?
unidentified		Dad history is something that I, you know, I put as a placeholder in the introduction to You Never Forget Your First, My Washington biography, and it ended up being a part of the book.
		It is a genre that, I mean, it's usually presidential history.
		People, when I was taking my Washington book out to publishers, I maintained that if presidential history was written in a slightly different manner, if it was interested in not just power and it treated the people around the presidency as more than one-dimensional figures who were there just to propel the story forward of the president, that other people would read it, people of color and women.
		And there was a lot of pushback, but it happened.
		But traditionally, presidential history is considered the realm of men.
		I mean, it literally is.
		And most presidential historians are men.
		I'm the first presidential historian in over 100 years who's a woman to write a book on George Washington, which is hard to wrap your head around because there are so many books every year published on him.
		But it is very much a for us, bias, about us kind of genre.
		And I think that that's unfortunate, but we see on Father's Day all the presidential biographies.
		They come out and they're front and center in all the bookstores and the libraries.
		It's dad history.
		It's the book you know will be a winner with your dad.
		And they're usually around about this thick.
		They're a size matters crowd for sure.
		They really like these heavy tomes.
		And they like the same kind of, I call it a visual coffin on the cover.
		It's usually the same five portraits of Washington, including the Washington, the dollar bill, which is a pretty severe Gilbert Stewart portrait in which his jaw is tight and his lips are quite straight because he's wearing dentures that are particularly uncomfortable.
		And the verbal coffin is the title.
		Obviously, I want a different direction, but it usually says George Washington, a life.
		George Washington, a president, George Washington, a biography.
		There's just not a lot to turn your head if you're not already inclined to read that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You never forget your first is the title of Alexis Coe's biography of George Washington.
		Came out in 2020.
		She's taking your phone calls this morning.
		This is Meredith in Makato, Minnesota.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you guys hear me okay?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead.
unidentified		All righty.
		Good morning, Alexis.
		It's really inspiring as a fellow history person, a fanatic to hear you talk about the president.
		So I just wanted to say thank you for doing this project.
		And I really quickly just wanted to say kind of what I value in a president.
		And I wanted to give a little bit of background.
		So my family has voted very bipartisanly over the past Lord knows how many years.
		My grandparents voted for JFK voted for him in 1960 and then voted for Johnson.
		And then this kind of switch happened where they started voting for Nixon and Reagan.
		And ever since Bill Clinton was first elected, they've been voting mostly blue.
		And what the long history of our voting history has taught me is that I value a president who takes the time to know their constituents to fully understand them, who is inclusive, who shows no bias.
		And that's why in the 2028 election, I will be writing in Chapel Run for president and for vice president Skibbity Toilet.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Meredith in Minnesota.
		Ken is in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me okay?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, go ahead, Ken.
unidentified		Good.
		Alexa, this is a question for you on more current and recent presidences.
		My curiosity, and maybe you could explain this to me, is the separation of powers is a thing that I'm questioning.
		And in the past, we were told that Congress, the House, had the power, the purse strings.
		But it's kind of obvious from what Biden had done with the drawdown of the National Armory, he did that and usurped that.
		So I'm kind of wanting you to educate us on where that should really stand, what the structure should be.
		And does Trump really have the power to enforce Musk to do these cuts to bring down the debt, which I totally agree with.
		And I think he should be authorized to do that under the powers of the presidency.
		Could you comment on that, please?
		It's an interesting evolution, the powers.
		And of course, we're all really concerned or excited about it in your case.
		And I think that that is a story that begins with George Washington before he was president at the Constitutional Convention.
		George Washington didn't want to go.
		Martha would not go with him.
		He writes all these letters saying she won't leave the state of Virginia because she hated to travel and she had just been away for eight years for the American Revolution.
		And George Washington, that was his second retirement.
		He had already retired from the Virginia militia.
		Had the British monarchy given land-owning white men like Washington a little bit more slack, we might be a different country.
		He wanted to be at the center of his country's story and he didn't really care which one that was.
		But he's at the Constitutional Convention and there's so much to figure out.
		They have to write a constitution, the Articles of Confederation, they're not working.
		And so he is sitting there.
		He's pretty silent, but he's presiding on a platform.
		And as everyone is fighting this out, they get to the presidency and they look at him and they think, okay, he gave up power.
		He gave up power after the American Revolution, which allegedly King George said, if he does that, he's the greatest man who ever lived.
		People had given up power, but they had often not, especially in that position.
		And it was an incredible thing.
		And he also was very eager to do it.
		He kept writing to Thomas Jefferson and other members of Congress asking, you know, how do you want me to do this?
		I really want to be home for Christmas.
		And when he gets to the Constitutional Convention, people around him assume no matter, you know, parties have started to form, but no matter what they believe at the role of government, how big, how small it should be, that he will be in charge.
		And this is a man you can trust.
		So why not just leave it to him to figure things out?
		And so it's incredibly vague as far as the powers of the presidency, including term limits.
		Washington set all these precedents.
		And then as time has gone on, when presidents have routinely violated these precedents, many in small ways and some in big ways, like the peaceful transition of power, then there has been usually a response from Congress.
		A lot of times that response has been just in words, but sometimes there have been efforts made.
		And one of them we can see is term limits.
		So after FDR, he died in his fourth term, then Congress passed term limits, and it was based on Washington's decision to leave after two terms.
		And then as you, again, with FDR, we have this expansion of FDR want to go to war.
		Of course, Congress has to authorize a war, but the president can send troops abroad.
		So there's already that tension.
		And as time has gone on, the presidency has tested those limits and tested those boundaries more and more.
		And it has been a real failure of Congress not to respond in real time when a lot of those challenges have been totally unacceptable.
		And I think that's what we see now.
		But there is the intention of the framers was checks and balances.
		We know that.
		And so I think we will see a lot of these.
		You know, I am not a constitutional scholar, and I'm certainly not an attorney, or I'm not, I'm not, I haven't studied quite as much, but I do know that these are going, they are in the course and they will continue to be in the courts because there is a lot to suggest that someone like Elon Musk, an unelected person who suddenly seems to be co-president, doesn't have quite these powers.
		And we do know that the president doesn't necessarily have a lot of the powers that he is saying he does.
		So we will see.
		We will see how it works out.
		This is definitely the wild west of presidential studies.
		I can't even call it history because it is, there has been nothing like it before.
		We spent so much time saying he's unprecedented.
		This is truly the moment.
		But I have actually a piece coming out today on MSNBC saying that we've been saying he's precedented, but he's also unprecedented, but he's also quite precedented.
		Everything that you can say, someone has tried from the transactional presidency to bigotry in the office that has always existed.
		He's just a spectacle about it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned you're not a constitutional scholar.
		Ethan in Tennessee wants to know what are the qualifications of a presidential historian?
		How do you become one?
unidentified		I have a graduate degree in history, and otherwise, I would say it's just a proclivity.
		I spend a lot of time in the archives and looking at primary sources and interacting with the world of history.
		And a few people have introduced themselves as history enthusiasts and history buffs.
		And I think that, you know, these relationships coexist.
		There are certain professional standards that I have to adhere to and that I want to adhere to.
		And I'm recognized in various ways.
		I'm very excited any day now, C-SPAN's presidential rankings will arrive in my mailbox.
		And that's always a really fun, fun time.
		So that is, that's the, those are the qualifications.
		But then many people who we regard as presidential historians don't necessarily have the qualifications.
		So Ron Turneau, for example, I don't think does.
		Many of them don't hold Michael Beschloss, who's considered a great, I think he's great.
		He has an MBA.
		And so I think it takes a certain, like anything like the presidency, it takes personal attributes, certain qualities, and then hopefully a lot of academic rigor because that's what matters.
		There can be different approaches, but everything has to be based on the same sources.
		We have to all be working off the same letter, for example, and quoting it as accurately as possible.
		Once we do that, we can go wild with how we interpret it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe also with a history substack study Mary Kill.
		If you want to learn more about that, she sat down for an interview back in December about it with C-SPAN's American History TV.
		Though, when I was looking at the substack recently, you called Thomas Paine one of America's first influencers.
		Explain.
unidentified		In pamphlet form, yes.
		He was really important to the American Revolution.
		He was able to make things go viral to speak in the parlance of our time.
		He, I think I called that one no pain, no game.
		And it was for his birthday.
		He was, he wrote these galvanizing pamphlets that Washington really very much relied on.
		And this is talk about Washington politics in a nutshell.
		They were, you know, the best of friends when Washington really needed him.
		Like we would call it lifeboat friends at this point.
		And then Paine sort of revolution hopped.
		He next went to the French Revolution and America inspired a global reaction, a sort of age of revolutions.
		We had one of the least bloody, which was very much credited to George Washington with the peaceful transition of power.
		But Paine got in trouble with the French during a time of a lot of unrest.
		And he was in jail, as was the Marquis de Lafayette.
		And he wrote to Washington and asked for help, and Washington couldn't intervene.
		James Monroe was the ambassador, and he was working to help him.
		But then Thomas Paine wrote an open letter to Washington.
		He wanted to send it on his birthday, and Monroe, who was no fan of Washington's at that point, talked him out of it.
		But Paine basically wrote, one day people will figure out, were you an apostate?
		Were you ever really a decent person, a decent leader?
		Only time will tell.
		And it was really the first, Monroe and Paine wrote the first presidential tell-alls, but they were very important to our country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just a short amount of time left with Alexis Co.
		Let me try to get one or two more calls.
		This is Zenobia in Arizona, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is very refreshing this morning.
		I woke up and I saw you, LC Span, and I'm so happy to be able to speak for the first time ever.
		And I'm very interested in the type of president that we as a nation here in America should have would be a president, like you mentioned previously, for humanity, a president that is not self-serving, who looks out for the people that he has sworn to protect and provide.
		And there's an old scripture in the Bible that says, when a wicked king rules, the people mourn.
		But when a righteous king rules, the people rejoice.
		So you fast forward to today, to today, to the present president.
		The people will rejoice when a ruler is righteous in his way of how he treats his people in the nation that he serves.
		So I would like to see more of the humanity and the kindness and integrity be present in these next four years.
		I think the people would rejoice more.
		Of course, the president is not perfect, but at the same time, if the people are at his forethought, then I think the people will rejoice.
		And that is what I wanted to say.
		I'm so happy to be able to do this.
		This is the first for me, but I thank you for this.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Zenobia, you can call in once a month on the Washington Journal.
		Hope to hear from you down the road.
		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		Oh, I think that's a wonderful sentiment.
		I think that a lot of people feel that way.
		And certainly, something that is really important to the country and when a president has been really effective is when they can be a unifier.
		And that's not all the time, right?
		We can't win them all, but you should be able to win quite a bit.
		I like to say that something that was really important, we recently had a plane crash that we watched, and we heard from President Trump very, very quickly about it.
		And before he had received too much information about it, he declared who was wrong.
		The families were still discovering who had been a victim on the plane who had died.
		And it reminded me of Ronald Reagan and that his speech after the Challenger crash when throughout the nation, everyone had gotten up early to watch this launch and school children had experienced for the first time seeing people who they knew the names of blow up in front of them.
		And Peggy Noonan, who's still, she's a writer at the Wall Street Journal, and she was, I think he said, get the girl because he needed a more sensitive, a sensitive writer.
		And she had not really gotten a lot of time as a speechwriter at that point.
		She wrote this incredible speech.
		And there are quotes in it: like, we're used to being dazzled.
		Life is tough.
		This is a part of it, but we have to move on.
		We have to come together.
		And I think that is such an important point that relates to what the caller was saying: that we do want someone who makes us feel okay.
		That's why I also suggest people read presidential history.
		It won't necessarily tell you that, but it will tell you that things were never totally okay.
		And so there is some comfort to be found there.
		But I do think that we need a unifier and someone who can be less divisive.
		At the same time, Donald Trump, as compared to the first election he won, did win the popular vote.
		It was not a landslide, but he won it.
		And so we have to understand and try to reconcile that with our desire for unity.
		And also look at the very large number of people who did not show up.
		And another caller who said that he was going to write in, for example, a very popular singer right now, Chapel Rowan.
		I understand the humor in that, but if you want third parties, really start working for third parties.
		If you want a more humanitarian president, work towards that.
		You, citizenship is challenging and it is active, and we're not used to that as Americans, but it is going to be necessary if that is the kind of president you want to see in office.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just over 39 years ago, January 28th, 1986, it was just after 5 p.m. in the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan ending that address to the nation with these words: The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.
		We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and wave goodbye and slip the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.
		Ronald Reagan.
		Time for one more call.
		This is Mary in Michigan Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		This is, I'm from snowy northern lower Michigan.
		I was wondering about, I'm nervous, where does the money come for the presidential libraries?
		Is it all donated?
		And who does the design, the contents, the upkeep, and the security?
		The reason I was wondering, because I had read where President Trump received, was it $20 million from a story that was done by ABC News, but it had to go for his presidential library.
		It couldn't go for anything else.
		And also, I want to mention: I have, you know, my favorite presidents in that.
		And I think the older you get, the more you remember.
		You know, obviously, the more you remember in that.
		But for me, a lot of it was the likability and what their wives and their children did.
		And I remember a lot of their mothers, like Lillian Carter.
		I mean, to me, if a lot of these men, and of course it's been all men, 47 men or whatever, if it wasn't for their wives, wives, and their families, they would have never been president.
		And my book club, we're the unofficial Pete Budajudge fan club, and we have a Congress, Senate, and a governorship up in 2026.
		And my 92 and 95-year-old ladies that are in my book, have been in the book club forever, are hoping that Pete Budajudge takes one of those prizes in Steers, Michigan.
		So thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Mary in Michigan.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Co, I know we're already a little over time, but I'll give you the final couple minutes here.
unidentified		Oh, I think that's first of all, watching Pete go at Mayor Pete, as we still sort of call him sometimes, watching him go on Fox News or I saw someone recently call for him to sort of have an opposition briefing every day.
		And I thought that is actually brilliant because he's wonderful to watch.
		And he always, I mean, if you look at clips from him when he was in college, he's just a really fast thinker.
		He's articulate and he's incredibly empathetic and he really cares.
		And he is no nonsense.
		Versus we have a lot of politicians who just sort of rail and do seem inauthentic.
		So I understand that very much so.
		I think that there is a lot of opportunity.
		The Speaker of the House, the current Speaker of the House, the reason he's in office is because the first time he ran, he ran unopposed.
		And so I think that it's a wonderful idea to look around.
		The money is always the central issue here.
		AOC has said that she probably will never be president because no one would give her enough money to do so.
		So that is true.
		Presidential libraries, with the exception of Mount Vernon, George Washington's presidential library, they're usually they have some ties to the government and they get funding from the government.
		And then that allows some oversight.
		And I think that Mount Vernon would have a better presentation of examples, for example, slavery, if that was true.
		But they do very much rely on a board.
		And out in Mount Vernon, you have the ladies of Mount Vernon who tend to be conservative and don't necessarily want to tell those stories.
		And so they sort of dictate what the experience is and how a million people, you know, millions of people a year experience presidential history.
		The Obama Library is more of a community center.
		It's being built still, but it has, I've never seen a presidential library with a giant slide in it or a basketball court.
		So that's incredible.
		There's just constant fundraising, also constantly running out of money.
		It is not a comfortable position.
		And a lot of the, they're not, you know, every president doesn't get a presidential library for this reason.
		It's very hard to raise money.
		But I think that they're wonderful centers of learning.
		And again, something that if you live near any sort of presidential home, museum, library, go today.
		It would be a wonderful moment to interact with this history and this day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Koe is a presidential historian, senior fellow with New America, author and sub-stacker.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Appreciate your time and happy President's Day.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		You too.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up a little later this morning on the Washington Journal, 9 a.m. Eastern, we'll be joined by Juan Williams.
		We'll talk about his new book, New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		And after this break, we're going to return to our question about who's your favorite president and why.
		Phone numbers for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents on your screen.
		Go ahead and start calling in.
		And as you do, we want to show you one of some of our new member interviews.
		New members of the 119th Congress have been sitting down with C-SPAN to talk about their lives, their careers, why they ran for Congress.
		It's 9:30 p.m. tonight.
		We'll be showing several of those, but wanted to give you a little bit of a preview so you tune in later this evening.
brandon gill ▲ ● ▼		After graduating, I worked in finance for several years, first as an investment banker and then as an equity analyst at a hedge fund for several years.
		So got to really see experience the private sector.
		Got to work long hours once again, but got to see a little bit of what the real world is like, how our global financial system works, and what is the plumbing of the global economy.
		I think it provided a really strong foundation, not only for what I'm doing now, but for a general understanding of how this world really works.
sarah mcbride ▲ ● ▼		The most formative experience in my own life was serving as the caregiver to the person who would become my husband, Andy, during his battle with cancer.
sarah mcbride ▲ ● ▼		And for anyone who's been diagnosed with cancer, particularly if you've been diagnosed in your 20s, as Andy was, you know it is like a punch in the gut, unlike anything you've ever experienced.
unidentified		You never expect to hear that word at such a young age.
unidentified		But from those first moments after his diagnosis, Andy and I knew how lucky we were.
sarah mcbride ▲ ● ▼		We knew how lucky Andy was to have health insurance that would allow him to get care, that would hopefully save his life.
		And we both knew how lucky we were to have flexibility with our jobs that allowed him to focus on the full-time job of trying to get better and me to focus on the full-time job of caring for him, of loving him, of marrying him.
		And eventually when he found out that his cancer was terminal, to walk him to his passing, and I decided to run for office because I do not believe that in Delaware, our state of neighbors, or here in the United States in the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth, at that time and that ability to get care should be a matter of luck.
unidentified		I believe it should be the law of the land.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		So in 2016, we lost my little brother Luke to a fentanyl overdose, fentanyl that's here and shouldn't have been.
unidentified		And so we lost my little brother.
unidentified		He was 20 years old, and it was tragic.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		And I tell people it's like losing an arm and having to go through life without something that should be there that's not.
unidentified		So it drove me to do this and to run for Congress.
		That's why I'm here.
		Tell us more about how you felt when that happened.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, it was the hardest part was the shock.
unidentified		The shock of like this was very unexpected and it hurt that way.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		But having to see my mom and my dad and what that did to them, you know, losing a son or daughter is very different than losing a sibling.
unidentified		And as a father now, I understand that.
		But, you know, it was shocking.
		And then you just, you've got to figure out how to move forward.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		And you can either stop and just feel bad for yourself or you can do something about it.
unidentified		And I wanted to do something about it.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's about 8.30 here on the East Coast and a half an hour here to continue with this question that we began our program with today, asking you who's your favorite president and why.
		Phone lines for you to call in.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		Go ahead and call in as we show you some of the headlines from the national papers this President's Day, including this from the Washington Times, keeping the president in President's Day.
		Holiday becomes increasingly focused on retail instead of George Washington.
		The official designation of the holiday in the Federal Register is George Washington's birthday.
		Here's another one from USA Today.
		The headline there, President's Day is not just for mattresses, a history of President's and President's Day.
		We want to know who's your favorite president and why setting aside this 30 minutes to do so.
		There's the numbers on your screen.
		And this is Deborah in Raleigh, North Carolina, Democrat.
		Deborah, good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
		Good morning.
		My favorite president would have to be Thomas Jefferson.
		He was deeply flawed.
		Yes, he held slaves.
		And yes, he did not emancipate them.
		I think he might have had his own private reasons.
		It doesn't excuse that, but his mind was so brilliant.
		And he is the one that imagined and upheld the separation of church and state.
		And if you go anywhere, almost anywhere else in the world, I don't think you'll come up with that.
		But to me, that was brilliant.
		Separating church from state.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, if Thomas Jefferson were somehow able to look to today, how do you think he would feel about that particular issue, the separation of church and state in the United States today?
unidentified		How he would feel?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		Oh, I think he would still be even more so in favor of a secular government.
unidentified		Even when you go sometime, well, anyways, thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Deborah in Raleigh, North Carolina.
		The C-SPAN Historians Survey.
		It's been done four times over the years.
		The most recent one in 2021.
		Taking a look at the presidents, ranking them by historians, by presidential historians, more than 100 on various individual leadership characteristics from public persuasion to crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations.
		Here's what those presidential historians say is the top 10.
		They include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington in second, Franklin Roosevelt in third, then Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson there at seventh, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, and rounding out the top 10, Barack Obama in that latest list.
		Again, the one done in 2021.
		LBJ comes in just out of the top 10 at number 11, followed by James Monroe and Woodrow Wilson.
		You can explore the results yourself at c-span.org, or you can give us a call this morning and let us know who's your favorite president and why.
		This is Austin in New York, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
		I think my favorite president would actually have to be Teddy Roosevelt.
		I'm a big fan of the National Parks.
		Also, when it comes to his foreign policy, a big fan of, you know, obviously the Panama Canal opened up a lot of economic opportunities for us.
		And also, I dig the expansion of the Navy.
		I'll just leave it at that.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Austin, New York.
		This is Cliff in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Independent.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Bill Clinton.
		I made the most money in my history of being self-employed.
		Probably the most prosperous time.
		Only guy I ever really took on the Defense Department and cut the budget, balanced the budget.
		And I had friends that were personal friends with him.
		And he was one of the most likable guys you'd ever meet.
		But he's still all-time favorite.
		And then I guess JFK would be my second one.
		I wasn't quite old enough to understand politics, but I really, really liked him.
		So I studied him for years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Cliff, what line of work were you in in the 90s, and why was it so profitable for you back then?
unidentified		We did, we were in the car business, but we're also in the construction plumbing business.
		And it seemed like everything just clicked for all the years he was in business, you know, that we were in business back then.
		And everything just seemed a lot easier for the, you know, for the middle class than it is now.
		Things were a lot cheaper.
		It seemed like there were way more opportunities.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How do you feel about opportunities today, Cliff?
unidentified		It's tough right now.
		I'm semi-retired, and this is probably the toughest I've seen, the construction business.
		You know, of course, we got a lot of Mexican guys working that are really good tradesmen, but you just can't get people to show up and work sober anymore.
		That's the problem.
		So, you can't really grow your business.
		It's just, and then everything just tripled or quadrupled in price.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Cliff in Oklahoma.
		This is Rita in Ohio, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's your favorite president, Rita?
unidentified		Kennedy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why JFK?
unidentified		Because of the saying he said, it's not what your country could do for you, it's what you could do for your country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And how do you think Americans view that saying today, Rita?
unidentified		It's in sad shape.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Rita in Ohio, a new book about John Kennedy and the relationship with Nikita Khrushchev and their interactions in the early 1960s.
		It's called A Different Russia.
		It's by Marvin Kalb, a longtime professor and journalist and author.
		He was on C-SPAN recently to talk about that book.
		If you want to learn more about Kennedy and Khrushchev and hear Marvin Kalb's voice, you can do so at c-span.org.
		This is Summer in Tennessee.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
justice neil gorsuch ▲ ● ▼		So, my favorite president was Bill Clinton.
unidentified		He was the first one I voted for, and I just thought he was a great president.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why did you think he was such a great president, Summer?
unidentified		Her deficit down.
		I had money in my pocket.
		I didn't live paycheck to paycheck.
		It was just a good time.
		You know, the 90s was a great time.
		And I miss him.
		He wasn't perfect by no means, but he was a good president.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What line of work were you in in the 90s?
unidentified		Well, I was in high school, so I was working at McDonald's.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Summer in Tennessee.
		This is Mac in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		I have a tag between Jimmy Carter and Kennedy.
		The rest of them won't presidents.
		Most of them must leave owners.
		Anybody that votes must leave owner needs to think.
		We call him as a black man.
		I'm not voting for Barack Obama.
		He did a lot of bad things to me.
		He wasn't that bad, but he wasn't that great.
		But I must say it is there.
		Bill Penta, we thought he was good, but right now he's stealing everything out of Haiti.
		So I'm the map.
		Y'all have a nice day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Mac in the Virgin Islands out to Durango, Colorado.
		This is Phyllis, Republican.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		John, I'm going to be 80 this year.
		And the president that stuck in my mind since I'm a little kid, I guess through my family, was President Eisenhower.
		Everything was good.
		Father knows best and all that.
		Am I on?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In what ways was everything good, Phyllis?
unidentified		What did you like about happy days and all the 50s?
		I think it was the 50s, right?
		And I just got it stuck in my head from my family that he was the best.
		I always looked at him as the father of the country, a good man.
		He served in the military.
		And I think he started the highways across America, as I was told.
		I don't know.
		Is that true?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Phyllis, also known for warning about the military-industrial complex.
		Any thoughts on that?
		That's something that certainly gets a lot of attention.
unidentified		Yeah, when anybody asked me who was the best president, I always say I is in hell.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You like Ike?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You like Ike.
unidentified		Yeah, I like Ike.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Phyllis and Durango.
		This is Kathleen in Kentucky, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
		Go ahead.
		Go ahead.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's your favorite president, Kathleen?
unidentified		Well, I have two favorite presidents.
		My number one favorite was Abraham Lincoln.
		Kentucky-born.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Kathleen, just listen through your phone to me.
		You don't have to watch the TV or listen to the TV.
		You said he's Kentucky-born, although Illinois known as the land of Lincoln these days, right?
unidentified		Yes.
		And I like him because he freed the slaves.
		And I just adored him.
		I just think that he was the greatest.
		And my second favorite was Barack Obama.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why Obama, Kathleen?
unidentified		Because he was, I just think that he was really a great president.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Kathleen in Kentucky, the bluegrass state to the Keystone State.
		It's Rose in Rockwood, Pennsylvania.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Oh, hello there.
unidentified		How are you today?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's your favorite president?
unidentified		My favorite president is Donald J. Trump.
		And I will tell you why, because he is running this country like a business.
		And just like he was so successful in his business ventures, he's making our country successful.
		And he is actually, he thinks outside of the box.
		I think that's what I like most about him.
		And as he's so in tune with like a few of the callers, said JFK, and ask not what your country can do for you.
		Ask what you can do for your country.
		That's what he's about, too.
		He's not about just giving money away, the welfare state, and especially he doesn't want U.S. money to go to foreign enterprises.
		That's why all his accent right now on getting rid of U.S. AID because all that money was going overseas.
		Hey, thank you very much for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Rose, before you go, there's a member of Congress that wants to put Donald Trump's face on Mount Rushmore to add a fifth face to Mount Rushmore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think, would you support that?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		100%.
		And there's actually, if you look at Mount Rushmore, from an artistic viewpoint, you can actually see where President Trump's face would fit.
		So, yes, I agree because he has done so much for this country.
		And there's so many things that he has done that people don't even realize they take for granted.
		And he will pull this country back to where it should be and make America great again.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Donald Trump was at the Daytona 500 yesterday and took the presidential limousine out on the track at Daytona 500.
		There's some of the video of Donald Trump there in the presidential limousine at the Daytona 500.
		This is Kevin in Massachusetts, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		George Washington.
		And first is because he refused an offer to be king, straight up.
		And then after that, he like made his cabinets in Congress or whatever.
		He didn't like get all his buddies and people that he agreed with.
		He picked people that didn't agree with him.
		He picked people that hated him.
		And he picked all these different people who came from different walks of life and threw them in a room together and said, figure it out.
		And they did, for better or worse, whatever happened, how things were the real reality of America back then.
		And an honorable mention to Lafayette, who was Washington's best buddy, really kind of in a lot of ways, in alleged, supposedly, Lafayette had a huge influence on George Washington's and how he, you know, had what happened with African Americans back then.
		Like, I guess Lafayette made Washington have an epiphany or something.
		I don't know.
		That's all.
		Thank you for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Kevin in Massachusetts.
		Here's a little presidential history, presidential artifact in today's Washington Post about George Washington.
		For sale, a rare wartime George Washington letter for $150,000 on April 26, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, a large British raiding party attacked an American supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut, burning houses and barns, destroying stores, and shoes, and tents, and medicine and food.
		It seemed like a huge loss for the American forces under George Washington, who had been leading the battle for independence from Britain for almost two years.
		But on May 7th, Washington wrote a letter to a worried subordinate saying that the raid had not been a disaster.
		The loss at Danbury is to be regretted, he said, but I cannot consider it important in the light that you seem to.
		The British forces had been repeatedly attacked by American militia as it retreated.
		Despite the raid, Washington realized that the British force, which included pro-British loyalists, had inflamed the countryside against them.
		I am inclined to believe in the future they will pursue such measures with a great degree of caution.
		That letter, more than 240 years old, was for sale.
		Its auction price, $150,000, a focus on that letter from the RAB Collection of Pennsylvania, as it's known, 1777 letter, $150,000 price tag.
		This is Patty and Frederick, Maryland, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is so very, very exciting to listen to.
		I will immediately say I'm not an academic related to presidential history, but at 76 years old, I think I might want to start studying it.
		This is amazing.
		The thing I wanted to say is that my answer to the question is more based on sort of gut emotions and also looking at the world right now.
		And the first president that came to my mind is Jimmy Carter, who wasn't on any realist.
		But what I saw and what I heard just recently, you know, reviewing his life, was his intention to consider the whole world in his actions.
		And with his own hands, he went out and was trying to be the change that he wanted to see in the world.
		And he had the habitat for humanity, that word humanity, right there.
		I guess I'm feeling strongly right this minute about him because of what the world's feeling like at the moment.
		But the emphasis on global and doing what you can for the world, I just felt that was very, very important and timely right now to be pondering.
		Each of those presidents react to the world situation in their own ways.
		They all have strengths and weaknesses.
		But I was particularly drawn to him.
		And Barack Obama, of course, in my mind, the inspiration, just that unifier, that ability to speak in a way that helped us all rise up and think about people who weren't being served and who needed attention.
		And took that fun a level than a lot of the academic rigor that goes into people deciding those things would use.
		But that's just from me.
		And I'm headed to a rally today in Frederick, Maryland, along with hopefully lots of cities right now, just to try and put a voice out there to ask for individual help to help presidents know what might serve us all best.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's the rally, Patty?
unidentified		It came through me through like the UCLA.
		It's just kind of a go and say your piece.
		It's a protest, but it's just people voicing what their big concerns are around things that are happening unlawfully, things around immigration.
		And in our town, there's legislation that's not helpful for immigrants.
		It's, you know, people are going to be allowed to maybe go into churches and do raids.
		And so it's just people kind of realizing their voice might matter and speaking up.
		And it's probably going to be on lots of subjects.
		But he's in Frederick, and they said the TV cameras might be there.
		I don't know what else is going on around the world, but I'm there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is it with the 50-51 movement?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Patty?
unidentified		I think so.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A story on that from today from NPR.
		And Patty, thank you for the phone call.
		Protests set to take place in several major cities across the U.S. this President's Day.
		These demonstrations are being organized by the 5051 movement, which stands for 50 Protests, 50 States, One Movement.
		The protests are in response to what organizers describe as the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration that marks the second nationwide protest by the group following an event held on February 5th.
		NPR writing about those series of protests in various cities today.
		This is Gary in the land of 10,000 Lakes, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, everybody, and all my veterans friends out there.
eben in california ▲ ● ▼		I really like President Kennedy and stuff.
unidentified		And one of my mother's friends had a friend over in Hibbing there, and they were the FBI men.
		And they took care of John John and Carolyn.
		And I really like them and stuff.
		And another thing, I think Trump's doing a pretty good job.
		I'm kind of a fence writer.
		I worked at Demise for 30 years, and I kind of vote for the guy I think that's good.
		It doesn't matter what your party, that's just the way I am.
		And I appreciate that President Biden voted against that steel for NIPON buying our steel company.
		And now Trump, he's against it too.
		And so I hope everything goes good now.
		And I kind of been watching Fox channel.
		I never watched that before, but there's a lot of different things they say.
		All these congressmen and people are making so much money.
		It's unbelievable how much they make.
		Like Pelosi, she made $300 million, and she's been here a long time.
		And I think that's a lot of money for anybody to make.
		And all these people, people don't realize that all these people are making so much money in Congress.
		It's unfair to the people.
		And thank you very much for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Gary in Minnesota.
		You mentioned Fox News.
		Juan Williams of Fox News will be joining us in about 10 or 15 minutes this morning to talk about his new book, New Prize for These Eyes, The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		Stick around for that discussion as we take you to the land of Lincoln.
		Tom, Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		To me, without question, the greatest president in the history of the country has got to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
		He's my idol and sort of the just amazing four-term president who got America through the Great Depression and through World War II while he was in a wheelchair, mind you.
		And he also created Social Security, which we still use today and rely on and other safety net programs for Americans during what was probably the toughest part of American history, you could argue, or modern history at least in the 20th century.
		And just in the modern sense, I would choose Bill Clinton, who I'd say had a great economy because he worked with, in a bipartisan fashion, with Duke Gingrich and John Kasich to bring down the national debt.
		And he also had a surplus by the end of his term economically.
		And he also expanded our global reach economically, international trade after the Berlin Wall had come down.
		And we had a successful military operation in Bosnia under Clinton.
		If it weren't for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he would have left office as probably one of our greatest presidents.
		Thank you for your time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Tom, you mentioned FDR after FDR.
		They changed the rule of presidents being able to run for as many terms as they want.
		And do you think that was a good idea?
		Do you think two terms for a president is enough?
		Do you think we should be able to elect presidents to a third term if we want to as a country?
unidentified		No, I think two terms are enough now.
		And I would argue that this talk of Donald Trump going three terms is ridiculous, especially since he was impeached twice, or any president going too long.
		Because sometimes power goes to their heads and winds up, you know, more corrupt and you can't get rid of them.
		There's plenty of capable people to be president.
		So I think the two-term policy is appropriate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Tom in Illinois.
		This is Kevin, Atlanta, Georgia, Independent.
		Good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		My favorite president is Andrew Jackson, who is being maligned because it's become very unfavorable to address the most grievous problem in our country, which is the money.
		Andrew Jackson was actually the only president to completely pay off the national debt.
		And he did so by recognizing that it was the Congress's refusal to simply print the money and instead allow middlemen through the bank to earn interest on it that was a parasite that was hurting the entire population.
		In contrast to Donald Trump, I heard some callers claiming Donald Trump as their favorite president.
		Andrew Jackson served with distinction in several different conflicts.
		And if I recall correctly, Donald Trump avoided his draft summons to serve in the Vietnam War.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Kevin in Atlanta.
		This is Jennifer back in Illinois.
		This is the independent line.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Well, the greatest president, of course, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is deeply despised by today's Republicans and always has been ever since he served.
		And the worst president is the man we have in there now, and we have to get him out of there.
		He never should have been elected in the first place.
		How the hell did this man get elected?
		The reason is racism.
rima laibow ▲ ● ▼		White men especially wanted to make sure that the blacks in this country got no further and they were moving and getting more and more benefits for themselves through Joe Biden, and they wanted to stop that as soon as possible.
unidentified		White men in this country gave us Donald Trump, and he's going to be the downfall of the United States.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Jennifer in Illinois.
		This is the New York Post editorial board, their headline of their piece from yesterday, this President's Day.
		Remember what George Washington Can Teach Us and Donald Trump.
		The editorial board writing, though rarely honored these days exactly on February 22nd, his actual birth date, President's Day is officially still Washington's birthday, and that's entirely right and proper, they write, as every American should happily honor our first chief executive.
		Washington was a man for the ages, born a Virginia aristocrat.
		He carefully cultivated his virtues, self-control, moderation, civility, his strengths, physical and moral, to become the most widely admired presence, first in the 13 colonies and then in the new nation.
		As president, he also set the future course of the U.S. government itself.
		He understood he was setting precedents that had to last, even as many disagreed on what precise form our government should take.
		It was Washington who emphasized that America was a republic when he rebuked those who wanted a monarchy or an exalted president.
		As we move through the aftermath of a bitterly fought presidential election, they write, it's important to remember George Washington's example.
		The editorial board of the New York Post.
		This is Terrell in Owings Mill, Maryland.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Actually, I have three, if I can say.
		I like Jimmy Carter because I bought my first home.
		I like Bill Clinton because I bought my second home.
		And I like Barack Obama because I bought my last home, and he was a good unifier.
		Okay, can I give you two of my worst?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sure, Terrell.
unidentified		Okay.
		My worst was one of my worst times in my life was from 1984 to 1988 under Ronald Reagan.
		And I was a steel worker for Bethlehem Steel.
		And I almost lost my first home under Ronald Reagan because he didn't help the steel workers.
		Okay.
		And the other one is, okay, can I ask you a question about Ronald Reagan?
		Did Ronald Reagan have dementia?
		Because I remember back watching the news that I remember hearing the newscaster, one of our national news people, say that he was falling asleep at G7 meetings, and that's a form of dementia.
		Can you tell me whether he had dementia or not?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Terrell, maybe a presidential historian might be better.
		Ronald Reagan diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994.
		There has been plenty of research about when those symptoms started.
		But you mentioned Ronald Reagan.
		This is Michael on Facebook saying Reagan was his favorite president.
		He made conservatism mainstream.
		He had previous experience in the entertainment industry and in politics.
		He had a great sense of humor, and he got on well with his political opponents.
		That's from Facebook looking for your comments on social media, asking you who your favorite president was and why.
		This is David in Indiana, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My favorite president, I think our favorite president was Abraham Lincoln.
		Because of all the other presidents we had, Lincoln was the only president of a disunited states.
		The others were united, but he's the only one that had that distinction, and he served very well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		David, Abraham Lincoln is the president that is known to have the most books written about him.
		Said that he perhaps has the most books written about him besides Jesus Christ.
		That is something from the publishing industry.
		Have you read any Abraham Lincoln books, David?
unidentified		It's been quite a few years ago when I was back in high school.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What did you read about Abraham Lincoln?
unidentified		Well, I read about that he was very poor, you know, had very humble beginnings, but he was honest, very honest, he was known for his honesty, and it was very difficult for him to work his way up, but he did.
		And he ran against a very popular politician and beat him.
		And he was for the people.
		He really was for the people.
		And he paid for it with his life when he was assassinated.
		But he's the only president of the disunited states that we had.
		And that makes a big difference to me.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's David in Indiana, one of the many books about Abraham Lincoln.
		This one recently out from the historian Nigel Hamilton, Lincoln versus Davis, Jefferson Davis, is that Davis, the war of the presidents.
		And it was featured on C-SPAN's book TV.
		BookTV.org is where you can go if you want to watch Nigel Hamilton talking about his book.
		One more call here.
		This is Debbie Wading in Ohio, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Well, good morning.
		Thank you.
		I'm torn between two.
		I love Teddy Roosevelt, but my favorite is Andrew Jackson.
		And I like to look at someone's backstory.
		He was born very poor.
		He was orphaned early.
		Our only president to have been a prisoner of war at the age of 14 in the American Revolution.
		We all know the famous story.
		He refused to polish a British soldier's boot, and the soldier took a sword to his face and scarred him.
		Andrew Jackson was also hero of the War of 1812.
		And unfortunately, he did shoot a man in a duel, but it was to protect his wife's honor, and he could have chosen a proxy, and he didn't.
		I always felt that he was a fighter and a tough person and a great president.
		And I think Andrew Jackson was our best.
		Teddy Roosevelt, second, and Donald J. Trump third.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Debbie in Ohio, our last caller in this segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around an hour left this morning in that time, conversation with Fox News senior political analyst Juan Williams.
		His new book is out.
		It's New Prize for These Eyes, The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Commemorate President's Day by shopping online at cspanshop.org, where you can save up to 25% on apparel, accessories, and drinkware.
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jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core, a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
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		And I think about all of the opportunities that weren't afforded her, you know, coming out of segregation.
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		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Author and Fox News political analyst Juan Williams joins us now.
		His latest book was released last month, New Prize for These Eyes, the Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		And Mr. Williams, what do you mean by America's second civil rights movement?
		How is it different from that first movement began with Brown v. Board of Education, shaped America in the 60s and 70s?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, John Eifach wrote about that in a book that was published nearly 40 years ago called Eyes on the Prize, America's Civil Rights Years.
		And I don't know that it was the first civil rights movement.
		Some people say maybe what happened after the Civil War, Reconstruction, the like was a first movement.
		But I, you know, growing up in America during that time, for me, it was the first civil rights movement.
		I think it's the major civil rights movement of the 20th century, 1954 to 65, as you said, beginning with Brown v. Board.
		And the idea there was that the federal government would enforce civil rights laws as applying to all people, regardless of their race, black, white, whatever.
		So you say the schools should be integrated, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 64 and the Voting Rights Act of 65.
		Everybody has the right to vote.
		That's the first movement in my mind.
		I think we're now in the midst of a second movement.
		And in the second movement, times have shifted.
		People ask me, well, if there's a second movement, where's Dr. King?
		And I say, we don't have a Dr. King in the second movement.
		They say, what's the agenda for the second movement?
		I say, well, there's an obvious agenda in terms of Black Lives Matter and issues like how the policeman kneeled on George Floyd's neck for several minutes until he died.
		So that's a clear agenda.
		But it's very different than the legislative agenda ending segregation as law in the first movement.
		Now you have a movement where, you know, I like this analogy.
		In the first movement, you had the Great March on Washington.
		One day, 250,000 people.
		After George Floyd, you had marches in the thousands all over America.
		In fact, all over the globe.
		You could have been in Paris or Buenos Aires.
		And there were millions of people, even just in the United States, more than 26 million people marching.
		And you can see this is a bigger movement.
		And whereas, as I said, you had people ask me, asking me about where's Dr. King in the second movement?
		Who's the leader?
		I say, you know, this is a 24-7 movement.
		And you see it online in memes, messages, images.
		And you saw, of course, the image of the George Floyd case.
		It wouldn't have blown up the way it did unless you had social media amplifying it 24-7.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When did the second movement, as you describe it, when did it begin?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I think it began really in 2004 when Barack Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
		It's a famous speech because I bet that you can even remember that he said, we are not a black America, a white America, Latino America, Asian America.
		We are the United States of America.
		And when he said that, everybody was like, wow, this is a different vision of America coming from a black leader.
		Typically, if you think back to Dr. King or even forward to Jesse Jackson, Alice Sharpton, people have been talking about the problems in black America or the debt owed to black America given slavery and rampant discrimination.
		But here was a young black man standing up and saying, you know what?
		My story wouldn't have been possible in any other country but America.
		It was an optimistic, forward-looking vision.
		People thought we could have a new way of thinking about race in America.
		And suddenly this concept emerges of a post-racial America.
		And now you have discussions about, well, how can America be different, especially given the fact of huge demographic shifts that in the first movement, 90% of America was white.
		Second movement, it's like 60%.
		Blacks are still about 10, 13% of the population, but Hispanics are the largest minority and Asians the fastest growing minority.
		So it's a different conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me bring viewers back to that moment, July 2004, the Democratic National Convention.
		Barack Obama gets up to speak.
		Here's about two minutes.
unidentified		Now, even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us.
		the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers, who embrace the politics of anything goes.
		Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America.
		There is the United States of America.
		There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America.
		There's the United States of America.
		The pundits.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states, red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats.
unidentified		But I've got news for them too.
		We worship an awesome God in the blue states and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states.
		We coach Little League in the blue states and yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
		There are patriots who oppose the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
		We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Juan Williams, where were you that night?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		In the Boston Fleet Center for the speech.
		It was a really interesting moment, John, because I was there as a political analyst for Fox News, and I'm standing there with some of the politicians.
		I saw the image you had there of Jackson.
		I think I was right there.
		And, you know, people were talking.
		It was like a convention.
		You know, it's like meet and greet.
		How are you?
		This important person's walking by.
		No one was paying attention to an unknown state senator from Illinois.
		But as he spoke, you could, something was changing in the arena.
		Suddenly, there was more quiet.
		And then as you saw, people started responding in the standing ovations.
		You could tell something was happening.
		And it was a very special moment, obviously, in terms of the political career of a future president.
		But I think something else was happening in terms of the start of a second civil rights movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned Jesse Jackson.
		What was the relationship between Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama?
		Or kind of more broadly, the old guard of the first civil rights movement and what emerged as, as you describe it, the second civil rights movement.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's pretty clear that Jackson did not see Obama as the man to rise really to become the next great black politician after him.
		Jackson comes out of the civil rights movement and Dr. King and has an image, a theory of civil rights that's quite different.
		I think he hoped that his son, Jesse Jackson Jr., who went to Congress, would become sort of the next great civil rights black political leader.
		Instead, here comes this young man from the same state that Jesse Jackson's in, Illinois, with a very different take on things, much more looking, as I said, much more optimistic, forward-looking.
		And it, I think, maybe hits a low point when Obama is speaking about the issue of black men and families and responsibility to children.
		And Jackson says, you know, why is he talking down to black people?
		Why is he lecturing black America?
		And then, you know, says something awful.
		He could lose a body part or something, you know, that kind of thing.
		And of course, that relationship was never a very good one.
		As you see subsequently, when Obama goes to the White House, he uses, or really turns to, Al Sharpton as his emissary to the black community.
		And Jackson, you know, Jackson is sort of left out of that cycle.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In the second civil rights movement, you talk a lot about the dynamic between Barack Obama and what he represented.
		And as you mentioned, Black Lives Matter and what that means to the second civil rights movement.
		Explain that dynamic.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, Black Lives Matter emerges after the murder of Trayvon Martin.
		So Martin is murdered in 12, the verdict's in 13, I believe.
		And what happens is when you have the verdict, when the young man, this young man, you know, coming home with the Skittles and the iced tea, a volunteer security guard confronts him.
		He thinks the kid looks suspicious or something.
		They get into a confrontation.
		The kid is shot.
		But the police don't arrest the killer right away, and it's only under pressure.
		And then when he's tried, he's acquitted.
		And that's when three women out west say, you know what, that child's life mattered.
		I don't care if you think he was dressed in a hoodie and looks suspicious or whatever, that child's, Black Lives Matter.
		And that takes off.
		And of course, you have other cases that occur after that.
		Eric Garner, for example, maybe most famously Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which I referenced at the start of the book about whether Obama will go to Ferguson.
		It's in that period that you see now there's something different, a different kind of civil rights structure taking place.
		Because again, no Dr. King, no hierarchy.
		This Black Lives Matter movement is kind of all over, and it's all over the internet.
		And it can be in one city under one group of people, another city under another group of people.
		And it's just a different kind of movement.
		And then you get what I think is really striking is the opposition forms.
		And it forms in part in opposition to Obama.
		You get the Tea Party opposition, not only to spending and the bailouts for the financial institutions.
		You know, they're saying he's bailing out Wall Street, not Main Street.
		But then, of course, with the Affordable Care Act, I think it really, really takes shape.
		And there you see it, again, very racial, very angry.
		People saying, oh, you want to take away my health insurance?
		Oh, you want to raise my taxes to take care of these near-do-wells, these poor, disproportionate people of color in America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I want to get to the opposition, but I want to stay on the leadership structure of the Second Civil Rights Movement, because you help explain it in your book, New Prize for These Eyes, through the history of that first civil rights movement.
		Page 108 of your book.
		Here again was a split that had been evident a generation earlier in the first civil rights movement.
		The split was between the nonviolent compromising strategies of Dr. King versus the militant, by any means necessary demands of leaders like Malcolm X and SNCC and groups like the Black Panthers.
		In the 21st century's second movement, the split became a canyon between Obama's gradualist approach and Black Lives Matter's call for immediate action.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		It really is striking, and I think this is one of the ongoing tensions and dramas of even this moment in the Second Civil Rights Movement, John, that you see that the people in the leadership of Black Lives Matter, and especially some of the activists in the local communities, can you imagine they refuse to meet with the person who has the grandest pulpit, the bully pulpit in American life, the president of the United States, and the president's a black man.
		You would think, oh yes, they would see an opportunity here to influence public policy and politics, but in fact they're sort of dismissive of politics and politicians as, oh, you know, those people, they're kind of cynical about the role of politics in American life and don't see it as honest and authentic.
		And so they move away from it.
		And President Obama is very damning ultimately about this and says, you know, you got to understand the nature of politics as compromise and working with people and staying in the fight.
		You can't just turn your back on it.
		And of course, from that perspective, it leads to the defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 because you see black turnout really go down and the questions about, oh, is Hillary Clinton dedicated to this movement and all that?
		It's a really, to me, fascinating.
		I think that's why I was taken with it, aspect of this story, which is that you wouldn't anticipate in thinking about a second civil rights movement that in fact they would turn on black politicians.
		Arguably, again, going back to the way you asked the question, how this is rooted in the first movement, the first movement, when you think about the Voting Rights Act, the great hope there is that there will be more black politicians to better represent the interest of black Americans.
		There will be more women politicians to represent the interests of women, Latino, et cetera.
		Now you get in the second movement young people who are saying, look at the, we've had a black president.
		We had black mayors, black governor.
		I don't necessarily see that there's more employment.
		I don't see that there's less violence.
		I don't see that there's better schools.
		So there's complaints about these black politicians coming from some of the activists in this second movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Juan Williams with us talking about his new book, New Prize for These Eyes, and he's with us until the end of our program today.
		Want to invite viewers to join the conversation.
		You can do so on phone lines as usual.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		As folks are calling in, you wrote Eyes on the Prize after the first civil rights movement, as you describe it.
		You're writing New Prize for These Eyes amid the second civil rights movement.
		How did that change how you, as an analyst and as a historian, wrote about these two movements?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I think the big difference here is that, you know, after I wrote Eyes on the Prize, it was people who had been in the movement initially who reacted so well.
		Now, Eyes on the Prize, America's Civil Rights Years, was a companion volume to the PBS series of the same name done by Henry Hampton, just a brilliant filmmaker in Boston.
		This time, I'm on my own, John, and I think one of the big differences is, as you point out, Barack Obama's alive.
		When I wrote Eyes on the Prize first, Dr. King, the leading figure, was passed.
		And it's also the case right now that I think it's evident in a second civil rights movement that we are constantly or consistently working on an emerging third civil rights movement.
		And I didn't have that in mind when I wrote Eyes on the Prize about the first movement.
		I saw it as a contained separate thing.
		The second movement is not like the first movement, as I've been discussing with you.
		But what you see is it has roots in the first movement, but it's its own entity.
		And I think now, especially now, as we see the arguments that are ongoing coming from the Trump administration, especially over diversity, equity, inclusion, you see these arguments forcing conversations about identity politics, as President Trump calls it.
		Is race a legitimate consideration in hiring?
		Is it a legitimate consideration in who gets into college?
		Is it a legitimate consideration in cultural representation, who's on TV or in the movies or in any way like that?
		Is it a legitimate issue to be considered in terms of police action or, you know, in the classroom?
		Whose story is told as American history?
		You know, I'm shocked.
		I got to tell you, even as I come in here this morning, I heard on the radio that in eastern Maryland, they've had to cancel a Frederick Douglass Day parade because the National Guard has been told under Trump edicts, his executive order, they are not allowed to participate to support a Frederick Douglass Day holiday.
		And as you know, for a while, the Air Force stopped making mention in videos for recruits about the Tuskegee Airmen.
		Again, we're not going to mention diversity and the fact that this group of black men, even in a time of rampant, awful segregation, flew jets, airplanes to fight for the United States of America against oppressive forces in Europe.
		This is unbelievable.
		But this is an ongoing conversation that we're in the midst of right now as I'm writing this book.
		We're in a conversation about what's the legitimate role of race in American society that is a society more diverse, more mixed than ever.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So why do you think Donald Trump won more black voters in 2024 than any Republican in nearly 50 years, doubled his support among black men from 2020?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In light of everything that you just described, explain those numbers from the 2024 election.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, as I said to you before, I think a lot of young activists, but especially young black men, are of the opinion, well, wait a second, the status quo is not exactly great for me.
		You know, in terms of employment opportunities, in terms of high rates of incarceration, I think it's still one of every three young black men is going to have some moment in dealing with the criminal justice system in this country.
		And so they're saying, look at the schools, look at the job picture, look at the opportunities for me going forward in this country.
		And they're looking for change, and they're looking for disruption, I think, and they have a lot of anger at government and all the rest.
		In that sense, there's some populist connection with the kind of grievance that President Trump offers so aggressively to white America, especially white men.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Juan Williams with us this morning, taking your phone calls, and there are plenty for you already.
		This is Richard in Maryland.
		It's Brentwood, Maryland.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen.
		Mr. Williams, before I ask my question, I just want to say that you are cut from the same cloth as Martin O'Gransky called Rowan, calling balls, balls, strike strikes, and files, capital F-O-U-L, as they are, as you do every week, or when you're on the panel on Fox News.
		As it relates to Barack Obama, I think the greatest political advice that he ever received was what Congressman Wrangel told him in 2006 or 2007 when he was thinking about, oh, he declared to run.
		Congressman Wrangel said that Obarack Obama is a smart guy.
		He has a great future in politics.
		But he wasn't ready for that job yet.
		He wasn't saying that in a demeaning way, but he knew the experience that it requires to be a president of the United States.
		And Mr. Obama just did not have that.
		He told him that, you know, be a senator, learn sausage making.
		I think that's something you would have told him if you'd had the chance to do so as well.
		And so he didn't learn.
		Some things you do have to compromise on, but sometimes you have to make a fist.
		A vein has to pop out your neck and fighting for what you really, really believe in.
		And as you just mentioned, the Frederick Douglass story, I saw that.
		It was most troubling.
		On NPR this week, I saw, to add to that, a most troubling story was that high school students for Caucasians in high schools are holding auctions online at Snapshot trying to auction off their black students or schoolmates.
		And that's equally as troubling.
		And one even had the audacity, I mean, the awesomeness, the ugliness to say that possibly we need another holocaust.
		So we are in troubling times, Mr. Williams, but thank you for your until tying efforts to put a straight name in this discussion.
		Richard, thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for the call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me let Juan Williams jump in.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think, you know, one of the things that I wanted to jump on here with Richard was I remember when Ebony Magazine, Richard, in 2009, I believe, ran a cover, and it said, in our lifetime, and it had a picture of a black president.
		It's unbelievable for you, for me, that this occurred.
		And I think that when you think about, you know, some of the advice and people who were cautioning Obama about moving too quickly, I think a lot of people, those people, were backing Hillary Clinton at the time, thinking she's more likely to win and that Obama needed to bide his time and, as you said, learn the sausage making.
		But incredibly, there was a black president in our lifetime.
		Obama rose up.
		Not only did he win once, he won twice, so he won re-election.
		The question is, you know, what are the consequences?
		It's like, what are the ripples of this?
		And part of that story has to do with, interestingly, as John was talking about, we're at a moment when so many young black people, young activists, question, what's going on with black politicians and why there haven't been more results from the election of black people into high office in this country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In our lifetime, are we really witnessing the election of the nation's first black president?
		That's the cover of Ebony Magazine.
		And it was a March 2008 edition.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I just wanted to make sure, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Looking ahead to the election that year, Juan Williams, in your book, New Prize for These Eyes, you're somewhat critical of Black Lives Matter and how they've tried to further this second civil rights movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you see as the failings of Black Lives Matter?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, in a way, you know, we could start with something like defund the police.
		That's well known as a slogan, but actually, you know, it comes from a small slice of people.
		And what it does, though, is it feeds the opposition because most people say, wait a second, we live in a society where there's violence, there's crime, and we need police.
		And so then it made them seem like they were out of step.
		And I think it distracted from their main message or their attempt at a main message, which is about delivering on equity, inclusion, justice for all, and raising awareness of racism in American society.
		But I think there's another level, and I find this part tragic, which is in their reluctance to engage in sort of hierarchical leadership, they also didn't engage in accountable leadership.
		So you get people who are saying things, doing things like defund the police, all different places and claiming their Black Lives Matter.
		And it's also the case that huge amounts of money flowed into Black Lives Matter.
		And the accountability for that money, oftentimes, not there.
		No transparency.
		And then reports about money going into pockets of friends or relatives or being misspent or unaccounted for totally.
		Again, hurting the larger agenda of Black Lives Matter.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Could or should Barack Obama have done more to hold the movement accountable?
		You say he, that moment in 2004, he started this second civil rights movement.
		Could he have been more of that voice or did he try to do that?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, first, let me just say he didn't say that he started.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I said he started.
unidentified		Yes.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		And he's always said, you know, he's not the post-racial president.
		He's not the black.
		He's the president of the United States of America.
		So I think it was a very difficult dance for him.
		I mentioned to you at the very start of the book, I talk about Ferguson and the question about does he go to Ferguson?
		And ultimately he doesn't.
		But the question is there because there'd never been a black president.
		There'd never been the idea that you would send a president into a race riot type situation.
		But with a black president, there was the notion that maybe he could offer some kind of soothing message that would resolve this issue.
		But when it comes to Obama, I think you've seen Obama in various speeches, and this is part of the difference with Jesse Jackson and others.
		He's been very clear.
		You've got to have compromise.
		You've got to.
		You may be so resolute and so righteous in your indignation over a racist act or whatever, but you've got to deal with politics and people and even people who oppose you in devising some resolution to the problem.
		And so Obama was, I think, always reaching out, trying to get those young people not only to work with him, but at times to come to Washington, to come to the White House.
		It was extraordinary.
		But what is so interesting to me is the disdain, especially even you can see it persist, among young people who say politics is just not for them or they don't trust it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		St. Paul, Minnesota, this is Mark Line for Republicans.
unidentified		You are on with Juan Williams.
		Mr. Williams, you made reference to Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
		It is my recollection that with the Trayvon Martin situation, that there was an eyewitness who said that he was grounding and pounding George Zimmerman.
		With regard to Michael Brown, rather, it's my recollection that there were multiple witnesses who indicated that the hands up, don't shoot incident never happened, that the police officer, Darren Wilson, I believe was his name, Darren Wilson, that Michael Brown was struggling with Darren Wilson to get his gun away from him.
		I'm wondering, Mr. Williams, do you feel that both of these individuals in these respective incidents were faultless or blameless?
		Thank you.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, not faultless and certainly not blameless.
		Look, in the Trayvon Martin case, I think it's reported very clearly that Trayvon Martin was coming home with a drink and candies and was not involved in any criminal activity of any kind.
		Nobody says that.
		When he was stopped by this volunteer security guard, confronted.
		Then they get into a struggle, ground and pound, whatever.
		Some fight breaks out, but Trayvon Martin's not the one with the gun and not the one who shoot.
		And obviously he is the one who sadly is killed at 17 years of age.
		So, I mean, that's the fact of that case.
		And in the other one, there's lots of arguments about, you know, exactly what took place in, you know, hands up, don't shoot.
		Was it said?
		Was it not said?
		But again, what's obvious in that case, and there, Darren Wilson, the police officer, was found not responsible.
		But again, what happens is the young man's body is left in the street for several hours.
		People are alarmed by this.
		People feel like, you know, again, I don't know what the young man had done or what he was up to.
		They say, but black lives matter.
		Why would you treat him in this fashion?
		So I think you have to understand sort of the larger picture here.
		Some people, I think, especially on the right, would say, oh, well, there's some way that you could say that these young men were responsible for their demise.
		And I think there's a larger picture that says, okay, these young men, certainly not in Trayvon Martin's case, though, may have been up to something or something was going on.
		But is that the end result that we, black, white, Asian, Hispanic would want for our own child in this situation, that they would end up dead like this?
		Obviously not.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Question from Edward in Keyport, New Jersey.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Williams, will we end the racial wealth gap in our lifetime in America?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		So this is a key point in terms of the second movement.
		I'm so glad you asked this question because again, there's all this conversation about things like the phrase systemic racism or critical race theory.
		And it's oftentimes said in a very condemning way that what is this?
		You know, what are you talking about?
		But again, this is a part of what we're dealing with in the second civil rights movement.
		And much of this comes back to income inequality, John.
		And people saying if you look, you know, I talked to before about poor quality schools, especially in black and Latino neighborhoods.
		And we still have hyper-segregation, high levels of black and Latinos in schools attended by blacks and Latinos, almost to the exclusion of whites.
		And then you come forward from that toward employment opportunities, high rates of incarceration, mass incarceration, even on death row.
		You look over the last 40 years, it's like 30 plus percent of the people who've been executed are black men when blacks are about 13 percent of the population.
		So you come to understand all of this then makes for this moment in a second civil rights era.
		Even as people say to me, Are you sure this is a second movement?
		It's just not a first movement.
		No, this is different.
		And again, the demographics are different.
		The imperatives are different.
		The agenda is different.
		And the leadership is different.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Akron, Ohio.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Mike Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for C-SPAN.
		Yes, I was raised Catholic.
		As a Catholic, I had quite a bit of Catholic guilt, as it is.
		I don't see any need for white guilt, but I do believe I benefited from white privilege.
		There's no doubt about that.
		I went to public schools up to the eighth grade, went to an all-boys Jesuit high school after that.
		And I'm in love with Paul Francis.
		I hope he gets better.
		I'm a Jesuit through and through in that regard.
		But I must say that I went to Kent State back in 1971, and I had a black roommate, very informative, to say the least.
		We were both worried about the four students who were shot and killed at May 4th in 1970.
		And he was also concerned about the Jackson State, which happened a few weeks earlier in Mississippi.
		Very tremendous times at that time, to say the least.
		I remember him telling me how difficult it was for his parents to switch parties back in 1964.
		They said that they loved Kennedy, but in 1960, he had charisma, but they voted for Nixon because Nixon was true to Eisenhower and they liked Eisenhower.
		But in 1964, they changed Goldwater scared them, and he said they broke down in tears that to leave the GOP was not an easy job for his parents to do, but they had to do that.
		They voted for Linda Johnson.
		I learned a lot having a black people in the college, more than I could ever learn in the textbook.
		One last thing, if I may say, when it comes to President Obama, I remember watching somebody on Fox News, I think they were on the Bill O'Reilly show, and they criticized his heritage, claiming that his father was an anti-colonialist from Kenya, and his mother was a hippie from Kansas.
		Now, I think, wow, was hippie from Kansas in 1962?
		Did they have hippies in Kansas back then?
		I mean, hippies on the East and West Coast are diamond dozen, but a hippie from Kansas must be extremely precious.
		In other words, they were insulting both sides of his family, both his mother and his father.
		I think that's just beyond the pale.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Mike in Ohio, Juan Williams.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, look, you know, if people get personal ad hominem in these attacks, and especially someone such a high profile as Obama, I just think it's unfortunate.
		And again, because it's petty is why I think it's unfortunate.
		It really doesn't speak to the historical significance of what Obama did in terms of becoming the first black president, but even on a larger scale, and this is what I've written about in New Prize for These Eyes, helping America launch a new civil rights era in which we think about race differently.
		And I think a lot of the kind of pettiness that you referred to is from people who really don't want to open their own eyes to what's taking place now in this new era where you have, as I said, about a 60% population that's white,
		not 90%, and in which you have varying voices, people of different races, not only black, but the Latino, the Asians, immigrants, high rates of immigration, creating a kind of churn in the discussion about what is appropriate in this multiracial, multi-ethnic America.
		What's legitimate in terms of consideration of race opportunity and the rest?
		It's very difficult.
		And people, I think, sometimes have a nostalgia for when it was simply, you know, a mostly white America, and you didn't have to hear all these contesting voices raising different issues.
		It's, you know, discussions of race can make us uncomfortable.
		But when you hear something like Donald Trump, President Trump the other day, after a plane crash, say, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion is to blame without any evidence, you think, something's going on here.
		Why would the president of the United States stoop to that level?
		Why would he do that?
		You know, he's the guy who said that Black Lives Matter is a hate symbol.
		He's the guy who pardons insurrectionists with ties to white supremacist groups.
		He's a guy who's been endorsed by the KKK.
		And you understand something very important in terms of racial discussion and racial tension is taking place in America at this time.
		And that's why I wrote New Prize for These Eyes.
		We're in the midst of a second civil rights movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And you begin your new book with this quote from Barack Obama from before he was president at the 2007 Selma Voting Rights Commemoration.
		Here's the quote.
		The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way.
		They took us 90% of the way there.
		So the question, I guess, that I have today is what's called of us in this Joshua generation.
		What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy, to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?
		What is the Moses generation and the Joshua generation?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		So I think, John, you and I both seen the Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall here in Washington, D.C. Dr. King is a revered figure.
		That's the Moses generation.
		If you wanted to personify it and say it's just him, obviously you have people like Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis, the former congressman who was the head of SNCC.
		You think of them as people who were, again, parting the waters, if you will, the Moses generation, to create a moment of opportunity for their children to come.
		We are now living through here in the early 21st century, the Joshua generation, the young people who are now trying to establish a new way of life in terms of race in America.
		And Obama, in that speech, is asking what is called on us to do.
		What is our responsibility to live up to the great sacrifices that were made by people in that first civil rights era?
		And again, to me, it's very clear that we have to establish an agenda that allows for alliances to be built.
		And when I say alliances, I'm talking about between Black Lives Matter and MAGA, you know, the Make America Great Trump people.
		I'm thinking they have to talk to each other.
		I think you have to allow Black Lives Matter.
		You were asking me about them earlier.
		I don't see that you saw Black Lives Matter create alliances with people who were invested in abortion rights and abortion opposition and say, wait a minute, there's an opportunity for people to work together on what is a powerful political issue in this era.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Was the fear of losing sight of the goal of the Black Lives Matter movement if you start to do that and you make those alliances?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I think that could be, John.
		I mean, you know, it's just not clear because, again, you didn't have a set group of people as the leadership.
		It was diffuse of Black Lives Matter.
		And so you had different people with different agendas and different willingness to reach out.
		You had some people who were willing to reach out to the LGBTQ community, others who were not.
		You had people who were willing to say we have to have discussions with politicians, local politicians, and others who were not.
		So it's not clear.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So do you think this will be the lesson of the second civil rights movement?
		You talk about a third civil rights movement.
		Does a third civil rights movement, in your mind, more likely have a Martin Luther King figure, male or female, somebody that is leading that movement, talking about accountability, making those alliances, and less diffuse than what we've seen in the second?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure about if it's going to be less diffuse or more concentrated and centralized in terms of that leadership.
		But I think that, to your point, you think of someone like a Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who was in the state legislature, but then led, even as a politician, very civil rights activist type policy in terms of fighting voter suppression that then led to Georgia electing a Jewish senator and a black senator.
		I don't think there's any question that was powerful, progressive action by a politician.
		Or was it by an activist?
		Well, she's a politician.
		Do you get people like that now in a third movement?
		Do you get the alliances across racial lines, maybe even across political lines?
		But that's what you need.
		I think in this moment with so much tension around President Trump and race, people tend to forget that Black Lives Matter is still well thought of by a majority of Americans.
		You know, it used to be like 60% of white people embraced Black Lives Matter after the George Floyd incident.
		70% of Latinos, 80% of blacks, well, now it's about 50% plus, but it's still a majority of Americans think this is right.
		Think that diversity, equity, and inclusion, even as Trump attacks it, think that, you know what, we do have to make sure there's a level playing field for all of us, regardless of race in America.
		And we have to understand the history of this country and the disadvantage given to people of color and women.
		People think, oh, yeah, of course, that's, but you wouldn't know it in this moment because everything is so polarized and people are at each other's throats.
		And, you know, but yes, in terms of a third movement, you're going to have to have leadership of some kind that's willing to form alliances and do business with politicians, win elections.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		About 15 minutes left with Juan Williams this morning.
		The book, again, just out last month, New Prize for These Eyes, the Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		Juan Williams on his book tour.
		He'll be out in Tucson next month.
		And C-SPAN's Book TV will be covering the Tucson Festival of Books.
		So you can see Juan Williams there as well.
		And you have about 15 minutes left to call in and ask him your questions.
		This is Lonnie in North Carolina.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Yes, top of the morning to all you guys.
		I was just thinking about the election we just had and a lot of people saying that a lot of blacks didn't show up for Kamala.
		But look, I want to let you guys know that I'm a black African American and I do love this country.
		But I was just thinking about all the white women who was about abortion and all the Hispanics who was about at least trying to get ahead in America, just like the Palestinians and just like the old white women who talk about the eggs are high and the bacon is high.
		Can you tell me something?
		We talk about a lot of things about civil rights, but it just felt to the point of civil, but not right.
		All I know is this.
		We got a president in there right now who will do everything he can to eliminate the black race.
		It's all about us.
		It's not about the Hispanics or the white women.
		It's about us.
		He's now going through the archives of the Kennedy who assassinated both of them and Martin Luther King.
		Now, I want to remind you: when it comes to the end of this, and I want to see if you can speak on this, there's going to be things that's going to come out that's going to try to get the black America in the streets again.
		But I hope my people don't fall for the yokey-doke.
		They want us in the streets for him to show his dominant power.
		But I just want to see if you can respond on that for me, please, if that could be one of the scenarios of this white racist.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		You know, so again, to me, I, and, you know, I'm a journalist, and I, you know, I try to, John was asking me before what was the difference between writing about a first civil rights movement that was in the past and writing about a civil rights movement, the second civil rights movement, and new prize for these eyes that I see taking place right now.
		So you're talking about something that hasn't happened, that could happen.
		I hope it doesn't happen.
		But I understand what you're talking about because I see, you know, it's unbelievable to me the kind of antagonism being directed at people of color, progressives, Democrats from this White House.
		It's, you know, I think they're trying to stir people up.
		And I don't know what, you know, to what end.
		I don't know.
		It plays to grievance politics, I guess.
		It might be like skin the liberals, you know, go after the Democrat.
		I don't, but it's not bringing us together.
		It's not unifying politics.
		And you said you think it's aimed all at blacks.
		Who can ignore the fact that the president of the United States recently promoted or hired a man who wrote that if you want things done right in America, you have to get a white male to do it.
		And, you know, the guy wrote this in October.
		He's working for Trump now.
		This is, you know, or talks about immigrants poisoning the blood of the nation.
		These are things that are very divisive.
		And to your mind, it could be that he wants people in the streets.
		He wants people angry and stirred up.
		And then he's going to display his power.
		Well, we've seen a little bit of that again with Black Lives Matter.
		If you remember after the George Floyd case, people protesting in Lafayette Square and Trump coming out of the White House with General Miley and others and people being pushed aside and beaten.
		You know, I hope not, but maybe you're more prophetic than I am, but I hope not.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When January 6th gets talked about, and especially in wake of the pardons, Donald Trump often points back to Black Lives Matter and riots in cities and cities burning.
		You talk a little bit about that in the book.
		What do you make of Donald Trump making that comparison or switching to that discussion when January 6th comes up?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Oh, again, it's self-serving.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		You know, again, I think it's so telling, John, that the way that he talked about Black Lives Matter protests would make you think that these were overwhelmingly violent, disruptive protests.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Cities burning.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Cities burned litter.
		And yet, when people who monitor protests globally looked at the Black Lives Matter marches and protests in this country, they said 90 plus percent were peaceful marches.
		So instead of focusing on the good, here was Trump picking on instances where there were fights or there was a fire or somebody looted a store and saying that is the true nature of Black Lives Matter.
		And it's just not true.
		And again, I just want to reiterate, more than two-thirds of white Americans supported Black Lives Matter after the George Floyd murder.
		And most of the people who marched were white Americans.
		I mean, but you wouldn't know that listening to the kind of rhetoric that you heard from President Trump back in 2020.
		And so when he talks about the cities and the, you know, cities are corrupt and filled with crime.
		And I think, you know, again, think about his claim of election fraud.
		Where was it aimed?
		At those very same cities.
		What's going on in those cities?
		Higher populations of minorities, especially blacks.
		And he's saying that somehow they're not with him.
		They're cheating him.
		You know, to me, it's a very not only divisive, but demagoguery of a type that can lead to trouble.
		And I think you heard some of that from our previous caller.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chris in Birmingham, Alabama, writes this.
		We will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March.
		Do you see any landmark legislation on the horizon that is needed for our country to continue to progress?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, after the George Floyd case, there was a big effort here in Washington at police reform.
		And it was interesting to me.
		You saw people like Mitch McConnell and others say, yeah, I'm open to this, you know, open to this idea.
		But it was stopped ultimately.
		You know, the police unions and working with some people who were far right wouldn't agree to the terms necessary for a police reform bill.
		I think that would make a big difference in terms of legislation here in the second civil rights movement because the whole notion of police brutality and how police deal with young black people, you know, think about the argument over stop and frisk in New York and other places and what's legitimate, what's not legitimate, what's antagonistic and what's fair.
		This is the conversation that we need to have.
		We need to have an honest conversation about race and policing.
		Here I'm sitting talking to John.
		I'm a black man living in Washington, D.C.
		I often say to people, I know that if I'm shot and killed on the street, it's more likely that the shooter is going to be a black teenager than a white cop.
		So I want to have a conversation about violence, crime, police.
		I go into the corner stores and the drugstores and see the things, the key items that are locked up because of high levels of theft and shoplifting.
		I think this is ridiculous.
		This is crazy.
		This is a conversation that we as Americans can have and need to have, but at the moment we're not having because things are so polarized and people are told don't have that conversation.
		You could say the wrong thing.
		You don't want to take that risk.
		I think we need to take that risk.
		And I think that's sort of the optimistic vision.
		You know how Obama's famous campaign sign was H-O-P-E, hope.
		And my hope is that we are now maybe post-Trump at the point where people will say, you know what, we need to have an honest conversation in this country because we are such a racial mix.
		And for us to succeed and not allow the Chinese and the Russians and others to divide us, we have to come to some understanding among ourselves.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just a few minutes left with Juan Williams, the book again, New Prize for These Eyes, the Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		This is Stephen in Dewey, Arizona, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd like to just say that the people, the minorities that I know that voted for Republican this time, in all respect to Juan and his views, is they don't want to be told how to think.
		And there's a lot of that going on on the other side.
		Being told that you have to vote Democrat because of your minority status, I think a lot of people are turned off by that today.
		I'd like to know Mr. Juan's comments on that.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		Anybody who's trying to tell you how you should vote or what you should do, I think people will get turned off.
		And we were talking, John and I were talking earlier, John asked me why is it that about a quarter of young black men and it's 50% of Latino men voted for Trump, given what we're discussing here this morning.
		And the answer is they don't like the status quo, I think.
		They don't want to be told how to think about their circumstances and about their opportunities in life and what they see as an uncertain future.
		They want politicians who are speaking to their interest and helping them move forward and their families move forward.
		But, you know, again, when you think about those young people, you have to understand that even today, now that Trump is in office, the numbers have shifted.
		Now it's the case overwhelmingly, like 80% plus of blacks disapprove of what Trump has been doing, this kind of attacks on DEI that we've been discussing, John.
		But it's interestingly, Latinos are almost in the same place, close to 80% opposition, or I think it was 69%, 70% opposition to Trump at this moment.
		Now that he's in office, whites still approve of Trump, and that's why his numbers, I think he's over 50% approval generally at the moment.
		But you should understand that where you saw some erosion in terms of black and Latino and even women support for Trump during the election, now, as Trump is in office and the chaos ensues and the racial division ensues, you're seeing again that blacks and Latinos in particular are coming together in opposition to Trump.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The final paragraph of your latest book, New Prize for These Eyes, ends this way.
		The second civil rights movement is the door to a burgeoning third civil rights movement.
		You've talked a little bit about that.
		What are the goals in your mind?
		What would be the goals of a third civil rights movement?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		I think when I talk to you about conversation, honest conversation, leading to us as Americans trying to achieve justice for all and a sense of common destiny and common goals, I think that's the goal of a third civil rights movement.
		It's, you know, it's John saying, Juan, I see you as human, and Juan saying, John, I see you as human.
		I understand we're both in this together.
		We're both trying to do a good job.
		We're both journalists, whatever.
		Both live here in this town or whatever.
		But we want some progress.
		We don't want to just be locked in to the anger, the division, the polarization.
		We want to have some sense of progress and movement, movement in terms of race relations in a positive light.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So it begs the question in our final minute or so here, how does the second civil rights movement end?
		Your book is about the rise of America's second civil rights movement.
		How does it end?
		When does it end?
		And how does that third movement begin?
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		So if you think back, let's stick with the first to second movement.
		I'm not sure that I would say at this moment the first movement ended.
		What I saw was that a second movement began with Obama opening this door to the idea of post-racial.
		We could get away from the arguments and the kind of principles that defined the first civil rights movement, which was segregation, slavery, segregation, legal discrimination, and the like.
		So you start a second civil rights movement in post-racial terms.
		And I think a third civil rights movement, John, comes when people, again, say we need to move beyond this kind of very acidic division that's taking us nowhere.
		But how do we do it?
		And I don't know if we rise up and say as a group, you know what, I understand that there is no right and wrong.
		Instead, there is an America in which we see each other as our best opportunity for a good future for our children.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The book again, New Prize for These Eyes, The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You know the author, Juan Williams, and we always appreciate your time.
juan williams ▲ ● ▼		John, thanks for having me this morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And that's going to do it for us.
		This morning on the Washington Journal, we'll, of course, be back here tomorrow morning.
		It's 7 a.m. Eastern.
		It's 4 a.m. Pacific.
		In the meantime, happy President's Day.
		Have a great Monday.

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