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Feb. 18, 2025 06:59-10:01 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal 02/18/2025

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pedro echevarria

cspan 36:56

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donald j trump

admin 02:09

eugene vindman

rep/d 00:45

hakeem jeffries

rep/d 01:37

michael whatley

r 00:56

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anthony j hilder

00:05

barack obama

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bill clinton

d 00:02

george h w bush

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george w bush

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jimmy carter

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jonathan karl

abc 00:02

ken martin

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marc lotter

r 00:03

rollye james

00:04

ronald reagan

r 00:01

wayne paul

00:22

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Speaker	Time	Text
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		Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		Then, Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul discusses Trump administration trade and tariff policies and how they might impact the manufacturing sector.
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		Washington Journal starts now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is the Washington Journal for February 18th.
		What changes would you make to the political party you belong to?
		A recent Gallup poll shows Democrats wanting more moderates to have a voice within their party.
		Republicans largely saying they wanted to see their party stay the way it currently is.
		The DNC's new chair spoke about how he plans to change his party, especially after the last election.
		President Trump in recent comments taking credit for the viability of the GOP.
		To start the program this morning, if you think changes are needed for the political party you belong to, call and let us know.
		Here's how you can do so.
		On the phone lines, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 2027-8002.
		If you want us to let us know about those changes you would like to see your party and you want to text us about that, 202-748-8003 is how you do that.
		And as always, you can post on Facebook, Facebook, and on X. Facebook.com/slash C-SPAN is how you do that.
		And on X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
		Here's the Gallup poll from last week taking a look at questions asked about members of political parties and changes they would like to see within those parties, just some of those results.
		One of the questions was when it comes to preferences, saying that if you had to choose, what would you rather see the Democratic Party become more liberal, stay the same, or become more moderate?
		If you had to choose, would you see the Republican Party become more conservative, stay the same, or become more moderate?
		When asked in 2021 for Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 34% of those saying they wanted to see their party more liberal, 31% saying they wanted it to stay the same, and then more moderate, 34%.
		Go to 2025.
		Same question to Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
		29% of those saying they wanted their party to become more liberal.
		22% saying they wanted to stay the same.
		45% of those questioned saying Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents more moderate is what they wanted to see.
		When asked of Republicans in 2021, 40% said they wanted to see the party more conservative, 34% saying stay the same, and 24% saying they wanted to see the party more moderate.
		Going flash forward to 25, 2025, 28% of those conservatives, Republicans, and Republican-leaning independents, 28% saying they wanted to see the party more conservative.
		43% of those saying when it comes to their party, they wanted it to stay the same.
		And then 27% saying they wanted their party to become more moderate.
		That's the Gallup poll.
		And we're taking our own poll of sorts when it comes to the party you belong to.
		If you think it needs changes and you want to tell us what you think those changes should be, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
		And for Independents, 202748-8002.
		And as always, you can text us your thoughts too at 202-748-8003 and post on our social media sites as well.
		One of those other categories, specifically for members of the Democratic Party, saying that if you had to choose, would you rather see that Democratic Party become more liberal, stay the same or more moderate amongst those who identified as liberal Democrats, saying that they wanted the party to become more liberal?
		45% of those, 22% of those saying stay the same, and 30% saying more moderate.
		When it comes to those who identified as moderate Democrats, 14% saying that the party should be more liberal, 22% saying it should stay the same, 62% of those saying that the party should become more moderate.
		There's more there for the Gallup poll if you want to take a look at that.
		That came out just recently.
		More Democrats favor party moderation than in the past is the title.
		So when it comes to those party modifications you would like to see if you think your party does need those changes.
		Luke in Miami, Florida, Democrats line starts us off.
		Luke, good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, Pedro.
		It's my first time calling.
		Yeah, I think absolutely that the parties need to change.
		I've been really disappointed in the Democratic Party recently.
		I think that they're stuck in a lot of positions that are just extremely unpopular with the voter base, especially these social positions.
		There was an incident recently where someone that was like a chair of the Democratic Party or something was like, you know, trying to deal with pronouns and it was just a complete mess.
		I think a lot of those positions are just incredibly unpopular.
		And, you know, I think that if the recent election is anything to go by, if the Democratic Party wants to win, it needs to abandon some of these weird positions that it has.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So as Luke, let me ask you then, what's a specific position perhaps you have that maybe that would differ within most in your party?
unidentified		Yeah, well, I don't think that we should be having these transgender athletes that are like competing in women's sports.
		I think that they have an unfair advantage.
		And I think, you know, I mean, statistics I've seen say that like over 60% of the general American population, you know, doesn't think that they should be participating in these sports.
		And I think, you know, positions like that where we have clear statistics that most people just don't want these things that the Democratic Party refuses to change on is just, you know, it's really putting them out of touch with the American people.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Luke there in Miami, Florida, on our Democrats line about changes he would perhaps want to see within the party he is belonging to.
		Raymond in Mount Vernon, New York, Republican line, you're next up.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
		My thing is I just want to know, is term limits a possibility in this country?
		Because it seems like people are in office too long.
		Should there be an age requirement for term limits for Congress, Senate, and Supreme Court justices?
		Just my question.
		I don't know.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, narrow it down to your party.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Would you want to see those within specifically your party be term limited as well?
unidentified		Everybody, yes.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why is that?
unidentified		Well, I feel like, you know, like they're like they've been in office for so long, and, you know, like they always bickering back and forth.
		You know, politicians, you know, that's what they do.
		I understand, you know, but it just seems like they're in office too long.
		I just asked just to see if that's a possibility term limits.
		That's what I asked.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Raymond there in New York, Gallup, taking a look at the issues of the Republican Party as well.
		Here's the question they asked on their recent poll saying that if you had to choose, would you rather see you rather see the Republican Party become more conservative, stay the same, or become more moderate?
		Conservative Republicans, as they identified themselves, 38% of those saying they wanted to see the party become more conservative, 45% saying they wanted the party to stay the same, 16% saying that the party, Republican Party, should become more moderate.
		And then amongst moderate Republicans, as I identified themselves, 10% of those saying they wanted to see the party become more conservative, 36% saying they wanted the party to stay the same.
		And then 50% of those polled by Gallup amongst moderate Republicans saying they wanted the Republican Party to become more moderate.
		So you may reflect those ideas.
		You may not.
		Call and let us know.
		Democrats line in Wisconsin.
		Mike, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		As a Democrat, the problem that the Democrats have is a number of things, but the biggest one is they don't have a simplified platform.
		I went back the other day and looked at FDR's platform in the early 30s, and that's what the Democratic Party needs.
		Too many fringe ideas.
		They need to focus on three to five big ones that they can communicate simply to the American people.
		And it's really not left or right or conservative or liberal.
		It really is relevant, what is relevant to the American people.
		And they need to focus on those things.
		For example, one of the big ones that we need to do is the campaign funding.
		Citizens United has destroyed the country with money in Washington.
		We need to reform that.
		We've got to go back on the issues where we made mistakes and refocus.
		And that is one campaign finance reform and stay relevant in terms of the American people.
		It's really not a left and right, but Democrats went with some very fringe issues where, for example, the NCAA in terms of the sexual change rule, there are 10 people participating in the NCAA out of 511,000 student athletes, and we're focused on 11 of them.
		I'm not saying they shouldn't participate.
		What I'm saying is that's what was focused on.
		And it defocuses the relevance of the party, and it dissipates what's meaningful to the American people.
		The relevance is the important thing.
		The other thing is we've got to round up some representatives that are able to communicate.
		And I call it the New Deal 2.0, that need to focus on that.
		One of the other big ones is we have a rich and poor issue in the United States.
		We need a sovereign wealth fund where we dilute every public corporation in the United States by 25%, and that becomes a sovereign wealth fund.
		I did the calculation.
		It's about Two times, or it's like, excuse me, it's about half the national debt.
		And that would be equity held by the Treasury of the United States on behalf of the American people with restrictions on how it can be used, etc.
		Anyway, that's my thought for the day.
		Have a wonderful one.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mike in Wisconsin, there with a list of ideas of how his party should change on our independent line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, if you are independent and you want to give your thoughts on the party you're part of or at least lean towards Mike in Orlando, Florida, you're next up.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello, Pedro.
		Pedro, I've been an independent, registered independent since 1974.
		I've been hoping for a viable third party.
		It was kind of happening when Ross Perot made his run there.
		And I, you know, of course, we got close to 20% of the vote.
		But as I get older, I don't see a viable third party.
		So here's my suggestions.
		First, for the Republican Party.
		Their party has turned into nothing but a spineless people that are just basically Donald Trump's shoe polishers, bootlickers, whatever you want to call them.
		The Democratic Party needs major change.
		First off, and I'm above 65.
		If you're 65 to 70, it's time to retire.
		We need young voices, AOC, Maxwell Frost from Florida.
		These things happen to change.
		But I just don't understand why these old fossils want to keep on going when it's time for younger people who are energetic and ready to get in there and fight.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that they don't have the opportunity to do so?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What keeps them from doing that, do you think?
unidentified		You're talking about the younger people from getting positions?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Okay.
		I just think the older people and me being one of them just don't want to give up that power and prestige of being in D.C. and calling the shots.
		Now, I understand.
		Oh, my God.
		Here comes a younger person.
		But Pedro, I taught school for over 25 years.
		There are very good younger people who can take a stand and actually take over this party.
		And as again, me being up in that upper age there, I don't understand how these people that get to be 70, 80 years old can do it on a daily basis.
		I mean, I'm strong, in great shape, and I don't want to do it on a daily basis.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mike, there in Florida, giving us thoughts for more younger voices within the party.
		Maybe that's one of the things you see as far as what your party needs.
		You can call and let us know.
		Maybe you think there's no changes needed to your current state of the party.
		You can let us know those thoughts as well.
		202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, Independents.
		202748-80002.
		In California Democrats line, this is Oscar.
unidentified		Hello.
		Oh, hi.
		How are you doing this evening?
		I want to, can you hear me okay?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
		So I, you know, it's the Democrats need to focus, you know, refocus and on money, on this money separation.
		They need to make it, they need to make things simple, simplify things and not cluttered up with all unnecessary issues.
		And they need to just stick to that because there's what the Democrats are good at, and that's digging into the corruption and stuff.
		Not that they're not doing it either, but they're good at finding discrepancies in the Republican, you know, with the Republican Party.
		So they could do that all they want, but they need to refocus on just making it about these billionaires, just getting away with, I mean, doing away with the Constitution practically.
		I mean, we know it.
		And Republicans, you know, come on.
		I mean, you've got to be seeing this.
		I mean, you guys voted the guy in office.
		So just, I mean, we both, the both parties need to refocus on this because I think that's what it's all about.
		It's big money and just, you know, leaving the poor working class behind in everything across the board.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Oscar there in this early morning for him in California, giving us his thoughts as well.
		One of the people making their thoughts known to is the new head of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, appearing on MSNBC, talking about the new role he has and what he saw was job one as he described it for his party.
		Here's some of his thoughts from yesterday.
unidentified		When I ran, I said, we need to get the DNC out of D.C.
		And someone said, well, what do you mean, moving the headquarters from D.C.?
		No, it's a mindset change.
		It's really focusing back on the states, building a 57-state party strategy, up and down the ballot, contesting every race in all 3,244 of our counties.
		We have to be organizing everywhere, which is, by the way, the name of this tour.
		We're going to be talking with voters, with union members, with farmers, door knocking for candidates, holding listening sessions throughout those red, purple, and blue states that we're visiting this week.
		We need to get the DNC out of D.C., out of the beltway, reconnecting our message back with voters.
		That's job number one, right?
		So many parts of our coalition left us this last election cycle, right?
		We know that from Latino voters to working class households to young voters to women.
		You can go down the list.
ken martin ▲ ● ▼		The only two groups that we overperformed with in the last election cycle were wealthy households and college-educated voters.
unidentified		That's a damning indictment on the Democratic Party.
unidentified		We got to do a better job.
ken martin ▲ ● ▼		So that's why we're getting out there to these states this week to reconnect our message to the voters.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Some of you posting on Facebook this morning, this is Cindy Castro saying that when it comes to the party and what they should do, I think speaking to the Republican Party is primary every Republican in name only or rhino as the acronym goes that doesn't support the president's agenda.
		Michael Safko saying a very strong ethical oversight based on logic and knowledge that removes rumors and mistrust.
		Misbehavior must not be tolerated.
		And then Heather Collins saying that the 99% needs to make the change.
		Party politics describing as a noun, the politics that relate to political parties rather than to the good of the general public.
		You can take some of those ideas if they are your own.
		Call us this morning or share them on our tech service 2027-488003.
		You can post on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Independent Line, this is Bill in Florida on the changes needed for your political party.
		Bill, good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning to you too as well.
		I definitely think there has to be, as far as an independent myself goes, I think there needs to be more transparency in all government institutions at all levels, whether it's county, city, state, federal.
		Also, as far as certain positions, as far as like, you know, attention plans, insurance, that type of thing needs to be changed, you know, medical insurance and also, you know, how they handle our tax money in general, which, you know, is kind of like, you know, nothing's accounted for.
		I mean, it's all over the map.
		Pardon me.
		And I just think that, you know, all parties, including independents, they need to start really, you know, being more active as far as the election process goes.
		And it's sad that more younger people aren't.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Bill there in Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Eric, who joins us from Maryland, also on our independent line.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yeah, thanks.
		I was a Democrat for my entire life up until after the 2016 election.
		So I'm going to respond that way.
		Democrats' biggest problem is they just lie about everything.
		And it's just the most extreme, they accuse people of the most extreme things that just aren't happening.
		I mean, and it continues through today.
		I mean, I was at party meetings where I had leader heads telling people in the room that their own relatives wanted them dead.
		And when I asked them if they believed this, after a second or two of contemplation, they actually said yes.
		And that's the mentality of the Democrat Party these days.
		And as far as the Republicans go, you know, in Maryland, we call it what they don't call us independent.
		They call us unaffiliated.
		So I've been unaffiliated since after the 2016 election.
		But Republicans can't get their act together.
		They fight all the time.
		There's no party.
		And George Bush days when he went online and the party message just wasn't, there was no party message for the Republicans.
		But the Democrats, they just, the party message is just ridiculous.
		So Eric, let me ask you from a mile away.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric, you're breaking up a little bit, but let me ask you, when it comes to that party messaging, particularly amongst the Republicans, and I think you were talking about maybe disagreements or infighting.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, but why do you think that exists?
unidentified		You know, the Republicans have always been that way.
		Since I first looked into political parties as a kid, when I first went to vote and decided what party I was going to belong to, the Republicans have not had a coherent message that they all stick to.
		You see the Democrats, when they go and say something, you can literally see that they got the memo because every one of the Democrats is using the same words.
		Identical words.
		So that's also a tip for propaganda.
		But Republicans don't have a cohesiveness, and they always fail in the end because they don't have a backbone.
		At least I can say about the Democrats, no matter if they're going down the wrong path and sinking the ship, they're going to open the hole bigger in the bottom just to sink it faster.
		That's their way of doing it.
		They all get together and do it all the way.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		But Republicans, they never get it done in the end because they can't work together.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric, they're giving us thoughts from Maryland.
		Let's hear from Michael.
		He's in New Hampshire.
		Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Pedro.
		Good to talk to you.
		I've been voting since 1968 as a Democrat.
		And the first thing I think they need to do is find somebody to stand up against Trump.
		Because if they don't, it isn't going to matter what direction they move because their jobs are going to be meaningless.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So who is that person, do you think?
unidentified		Right now, Chris Murphy from Connecticut seems to be the best to me right now.
		Chuck Schumer, he wants to introduce a bill that says what Trump is doing is wrong, and what's that going to do?
		That's not going to do anything because everybody knows what he's doing is wrong, and they need to do something to stand up against him, to stop him from what he's doing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What is it about Senator Murphy that you think brings the, or as far as what he brings to the table, why do you think he would be the best figure, or at least at the head of the head of the case?
unidentified		Right now he's the most vocal and he has some, you know, he's not bending to Trump like the rest of the Democrats are.
		Nobody's come up with a plan yet to stop what he's doing.
		And, you know, it's going to continue.
		And if it does continue, being a senator, being a Democratic congressman isn't going to mean a thing because it's not going to do anything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Michael there in New Hampshire, Democrats Live giving us thoughts this morning.
		Also, this is Kristen from Portland, Maine, texting us this morning, saying, as Democrats, we need to be more moderate, rational, with a touch of dark humor.
		Bring back Al Franken to run with Senator and astronaut Mark Kelly in 2028.
		It's not too soon to find true leaders to combat Trumpism.
		Again, the way you share on our text, 202-748-8003.
		Edward in Jersey City, New Jersey, on changes you would like to make to the party you lean towards, in his case, and on our independent line.
		Edward, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
		I'm here in New Jersey as an independent voter.
		I got mail from the Board of Elections saying, you know, in the state, by law, you have 55 days to register with the party before you can vote in the primary, which is a shame.
		You know, I'll be obviously changing my voter affiliation right now.
		I'm unaffiliated to Democrat because there's not a Republican in the state that will even come to my community and visit to talk about issues, to talk about their platform.
		So that's one thing.
		But yesterday, I was watching Washington Journal with Mr. John, and he interviewed Ron Williams.
		And his new book, Pedro, The Eyes on the New Prize, puts this whole context and my or this whole conversation in some context, in my view.
		And, you know, with the Democratic Party, why I'm not registered as a Democrat outright, simply because Akaula already mentioned it.
		Old, mostly white men representatives in D.C., okay, during Barack Obama's term, he didn't go to Ferguson.
		That's what we were looking for.
		Somebody to speak to all our grievances.
		Ron Williams talked about the current disdain for the government and political leaders.
		He's so correct.
		Like many of us, although you see many of us pulled away from the Democratic Party for Kamala Harris, you know, why?
		Because the status quo just won't do.
		So if the Democratic Party is only going to afford us more of the same, then they should be ready to lose.
		But what that party needs is someone who's younger, someone who's more progressive.
		And there you go.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Who is that person, do you think?
unidentified		You know what?
		And it doesn't necessarily have to be someone that's younger, but it's younger views.
		You understand what I'm saying, Pedro?
		Like Bernie Sanders, who is the opposite of younger, but his views across the board.
		You understand what I'm saying?
		Many young people care about climate change, free government, medical care, housing for all, human rights.
		The Democrats don't get this picture.
		They don't get it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Edward there in Jersey City, one of the people making recent comments about the state of the party, the Republican National Chair, Michael Watley, appearing in an interview that took place last week, talking about future plans for the Republican National Committee and the party.
		Here are some of his comments.
marc lotter ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Chairman, it's always nice to play with the lead, isn't it?
michael whatley ▲ ● ▼		It absolutely is.
		And it's not surprising, right?
		The president made it very clear throughout the course of the campaign, this is what we're going to do when we get into office.
		And he has hit the ground running.
		You know, we look at the personnel that he has put in place at the White House and the cabinet.
		You look at the policies that he's moving forward with with his executive orders and executive actions.
		Everything is lined up the way that he told America he was going to do it.
		We had a mandate coming out of that election.
		He's implementing that mandate.
		And we're seeing the results in the polls.
unidentified		And I know you're always so busy.
unidentified		What's next for the RNC?
michael whatley ▲ ● ▼		You know, right now we are doing everything we can to support the president in this agenda because this is an American agenda.
		It's a common sense agenda.
		We want to see these cabinet nominees get moved through.
		And then we're already into the 26 election cycle.
		You know, so we know that the main question the president's going to have is a two-year presidency or a four-year presidency based on what happens with the elections in the House and the Senate.
		We're going to be ready to hit the ground running.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is from Facebook.
		Wesmore posting that, speaking as an independent, saying term limits is the first category for him, period.
		And then when it comes to Republicans, what he says is to kick MAGA out.
		They make you look stupid.
		It looks like your party going to a quote of civil war and Democrats getting rid of figureheads like Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, and others saying they make you look stupid, they taint your party.
		Go promote the younger generation.
		Again, if you think that's some of the changes you need to your party, are there other changes you think they're needed as well?
		202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents 202748-8000 to post on our social media sites in Texas too.
		The New York Times took a look at the Democratic Party and concerns some within it saying are missing the chances, so to speak, on remaking the party.
		Amongst what they wrote, they wrote this, there's almost universal agreement on a diagnosis of the party's problem with the working class.
		The question is if there will be any consensus on a treatment plan.
		Some favor shedding unpopular policies or reprioritizing new ones.
		Others focus on improving the messages deployed to sell those policies to voters or on how to deliver the party's message, whatever it turns out to be, in a fractured media environment.
		Already a blizzard of organizations are holding focus groups, conducting polls, and studying voting patterns to assess the severity of the situation, especially the party's worrisome decline with groups once held sizable advantages like younger voters and Latinos.
		That's the story from the New York Times.
		Let's hear from Randall calling in on our line for Democrats, changes you'd like to see to your political party.
		Randall, hello.
unidentified		Okay.
		I guess some of the changes, it would be helpful, I'm 64, that you probably might want to move with secession plans and have younger people coming up.
		But the truth of the matter, the Democrats did articulate a platform.
		It's just that for some reason, a majority of people, as you can see, they voted against their interests.
		They voted on sentiment.
		Trump did not articulate any kind of a platform.
		That's why you know it was all sentiment.
		And sentiment is emotional based.
		You can say that those emotions were, you know, based on like, you know, racism and so forth and aspirational on what they want Trump to be and not what he is.
		So.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Randall there in Austin, Texas.
		Jeannie, Independent Line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I feel politically homeless.
		I'm a registered Democrat.
		I didn't even vote.
		First time in my life, I did not vote.
		And the reason was I was just disgusted, of course, with either one of the parties.
		So, you know, Trump or Kamala.
		I was no way.
		And I think they are not listening.
		The Democratic Party.
		I'm pretty, I want to just register the independent now, but I haven't done it yet.
		But I want to do that now because I don't relate to anybody.
		I will stay politically homeless and I will not vote again.
		In the presidential election, if they do not let more than two, three, four parties debate, but both parties did not allow it, Trump or Biden.
mary in colorado ▲ ● ▼		And they need someone like Matthew McConney, young, you know, with younger views, but common sense and not cruel and mean like Trump is.
unidentified		Trump is just a land-grabbing man.
		I want to own Gaudna to all the Republicans listening, really?
		Having meetings without Ukraine or European, you know, NATO.
		What a joke.
		I mean, I really wanted to give that man a chance, but he's a liar.
		Everyone's, you know, and MAGA's not going to last, guys, letting you know right now.
		You think MAGA's so powerful right now with all the bro attitude?
		And Elon Musk, guess what?
		I'm looking at it like I'm hanging in.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, Jeannie, then, all those things said, you talked about more openness within your own party as far as hearing from other voices.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that doesn't happen?
unidentified		Oh, because they're not listening at all.
		There was no compassion from Biden or Kamala the whole time they were in office until the election started.
		Can you believe that?
		Not once.
		We feel you, people.
		We know you're hurting financially.
		Me and my husband had $11,000 saved in 2020.
		And that might be peanuts to somebody.
		To us, that might as well have been $11 million.
		We are now under $1,000.
		We had $11,020.
		This is where we're at, and this is where we're still at.
		And Trump's going to get a lot of trouble.
		Trust me, this Love Fest is going to get ready because he's lying about the price of Timmy.
		And it's never going to come down.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Jeannie there in Austin, Texas, giving us their thoughts on political parties as some of you have during this first half hour.
		You can continue on and make those suggestions if you wish about how to make changes to your political party.
		Or if you want, we will transition to a set of open forum and you can make other thoughts when it comes to the world of politics as well.
		So if you want to participate in this open forum and you want to give us a call and let us know your thoughts on the state of politics, as you see at 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and 202-748-8002 for Independents.
		Again, if you want to participate, you can still make the comments about your political party within Open Forum.
		That's fine.
		If there's another topic within Open Forum you want to participate as well, feel free to do that.
		We'll do that for the next half hour up until our first guest at 8 o'clock.
		Let's go to Ron.
		Ron in Illinois, Republican line.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, I just think it's great.
		This 70% approval rating just shows you that he's in line with what the American people want.
		I think it's hilarious that these Democrats can't figure out the fact that they're on the wrong side of history and don't make this, you know, so focused on this Trump derangement syndrome they have that they're going to continue to lose elections.
		They are obviously not in line with what people in America want.
		And I think it's hilarious these people are all getting all upset about what he's doing.
		He's doing exactly what he said.
		I don't understand why Democrats would even think about standing up for this wasteful spending of my tax college.
		I work hard every day.
		And my tax money is going to some rapper in Gaza or reassignment surgery in these third world countries.
		That's not what I want my money to go to.
		And I think what exactly what they're doing is what needs to be done.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So you talked about the president.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as the party is concerned, do you think any changes are needed within the party as it currently stands?
unidentified		Well, you know, I think it's something.
		No, I don't.
		I think they finally aligned as a party which the Democrats have been able to control every one of their members for years.
		And even, you know, none of them stood up on their, you know, for themselves.
		That's the only way to get things done in Washington is to have that cohesion.
		And, you know, the Republicans are finally doing it.
		And I just love watching your show, watching all these people, these Democrats that are just losing it.
		And it's just fun.
		It's a fun news cycle for Republicans.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's Ron there.
		It's Ron there, Illinois, kicking off this open forum.
		He talked about the, alluded to the state of the party.
		One of the things in the Wall Street Journal focuses on a certain Republican within the Republican Party, Senator Mitch McConnell.
		The headline, Diminished McConnell, makes a lonely stand against Trump, saying this, out of leadership, Mr. McConnell, Senator McConnell, has the ability to more freely speak his mind on Mr. Trump's nominees.
		He has voted against three so far and more forcefully break with the president on foreign policy, but it isn't clear if colleagues will listen or whether he will find himself increasingly persona non grada like other Republicans who have crossed Mr. Trump.
		It was in comments about Mr. McConnell voting against some of the nominees that the president has put up.
		The president making these comments in the White House, not only talking about Mitch McConnell, but the current state of the Republican Party as he sees it.
		Here are some of those comments from last week.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Well, I feel sorry for Mitch.
		And I was one of the people that led.
		He wanted to go to the end and he wanted to stay leader.
		He's not equipped mentally.
		He wasn't equipped 10 years ago mentally, in my opinion.
		He'd let the Republican Party go to hell.
		If I didn't come along, the Republican Party wouldn't even exist right now.
		Mitch McConnell never really had it.
		He had an ability to raise money because of his position as leader, which anybody could do.
		You could do it even.
		And that's saying a lot.
		But the fact is that he raised money and he gave a lot of money to senators.
		And so he had a little loyalty based on the fact that as leader, you could raise a lot of money.
		Senators would call me and they say, he wants to give me 20, 25 million.
		Can I take it?
		I'd say, take the money.
		Take the money.
		But he, so he engendered a certain amount of, I don't even call it loyalty.
		He was able to get votes.
		But I was the one that got him to drop out of the leadership position.
		So he can't love me.
		But he's not voting against Bob.
		He's voting against me, but that's all right.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Jody in Corpus Christi, Texas, independent line.
unidentified		Hey, you know, I'm listening to these Democrats just cry, cry, cry, Trump, Trump, Trump.
		But they ought to look at their house.
		The House schedule came out from Scalise's office.
		And out of our 365 days in a year, our House is only working, guess how many?
		136 days of the whole year.
		They want to raise.
		They're already making 174.
		Of the 136 days, that comes out to $1,249 a day of their working schedule.
		I think we've got a bigger problem there than Trump, Trump, Trump.
		These Democrats ought to get on the high horse about, hey, we want you working.
		We want you in session.
		We want our spending.
		We want our appropriation bills done.
		We don't want CRs and omnibuses and everything come March 4th.
		I think they've worked two weeks until March.
		No, they work seven days until March 14th.
		We've got a bigger problem than just Trump Trump Trump.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Jody there in Texas, the House out this week, the Senate back in session, expected to vote to confirm Howard Luttnick as Commerce Secretary today, later on in the week, expected to advance a vote on Kash Patel as FBI director.
		Stay close to C-SPAN's twos, particularly when it comes to actions of the Senate.
		This is Rob from Michigan talking about money issues as well within the Republican Party, saying that the GOP needs to pass a balanced budget, provide authorizing legislation to the president to cut funding if needed.
		And then Danielle from Oregon saying we need more exciting fresh candidates.
		Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are not that.
		I remember when Clinton was campaigning for Democrats, he said, I was president 25 years ago, and if I'm still a year younger than Trump, new blood and raise social security seniors will love you.
		Going back to how we started this hour, you can continue on making those thoughts to our other things with In Open Forum.
		Let's go to Ray.
		Ray in Pittsburgh Democrats line.
unidentified		Yeah, hi, Pedro.
		The thing I wanted to talk about was again with this Democrats and what they need to do in their party.
		It's really simple.
		They know that when the Republicans argue among themselves, this is in national elections.
		They fight and they fight and they fight.
		But in the end, when they go into that voting booth, they vote for their party.
		The Democrats have that problem.
		There are groups, they wouldn't vote for Harris because they didn't like how she stood on this, or there was a group in Michigan they didn't like the Palestinian situation, or there was this other group they didn't like this.
		And they said, oh, well, we're not going to vote for a Democrat, or we're not going to vote at all.
		And that's the reason the Democrats lose.
		They should have learned this by seeing what the Republicans did this time.
		They stuck together.
		They got all three houses.
		They got three houses, two houses in the presidency.
		The Democrats, that's what they need to do.
		They can argue all they want.
		They could fight.
		They could argue.
		But when it comes time to go into that voting booth, if they aren't stuck together, then they're going to end up with what they got now.
anthony j hilder ▲ ● ▼		I'd like one of these people who didn't follow Harris or didn't vote.
unidentified		I'd like them to get onto the line now and tell me how they feel about now, how the situation is for Palestine or women's situations, anything like that now, that they didn't bother to vote for a Democrat when they had the chance.
		So maybe one of them would call in and explain to me how much better it is that they withheld their vote or they didn't vote at all or voted for somebody else.
		That would be nice to have on the program, Pedro.
		But thanks for taking my call.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ray in Pittsburgh Democrats line.
		This is Jay in North Carolina, Republican line.
		You're next up.
		Hello.
		Hey, good morning.
unidentified		Thanks for taking my call.
		So my opinion is that I feel that Trump is doing a fantastic job.
		I was a skeptic of him in his first administration, but I think he's proven that he is really fighting for America and trying to straighten the right the ship that has been almost sunk by the former administration.
		As far as politicians are concerned, it just makes me so sad and sick to see these 70, 75, 80, 90-year-old politicians in office just sitting around doing nothing and just affecting our country in such a negative way.
		The amount of money that, number one, that they waste and that they're spending and that they're getting is just abhorrent.
		And I think that I hope this administration is able to make some changes in that as well.
		But I think that people like Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and all these politicians that have been hanging around for multiple decades, including the former President Biden, who was in for more than 50 years, that's the problem.
		Our country is just mired in these people that just are ideologues and have no care for the American people.
		They're just wasting money.
		And as the previous caller said, you know, they're not no one's, I mean, they're doing very little work for the amount of time that they should be spending helping out the American people and trying to solve the problems that we have.
		The great thing is that with this new president in office, I think he's doing a great job in controlling the border.
		I think that's a main issue of what's been causing a lot of our problems as well.
		But the fact that he's got people like Elon Musk and others that are looking into fraud and waste, I think it's a fantastic thing.
		And I think that we need to continue putting the pressure on.
		And I think the Democrats really should wake up and come around.
		And these Elon Olmars and AOCs and things like that, they just need to really just sit down and let the adults take over right now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Jay Bear in North Carolina giving us this thoughts this morning.
		The New York Post reporting that it was the Social Security Administration's acting commissioner reportedly residing over the weekend after a dispute with the Department of Government Efficiency over the Elon Musk-led group's efforts to access sensitive government records.
		Michelle King, a career federal worker who had been with the SSA since 1994, quit over the Doge disagreement Saturday and was replaced by Leland Dudick.
		Mr. Dudek, sorry, who has been supportive of Doge's effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and the federal government will serve as acting commissioner of SSA until President Trump's pick to lead the agency, Frank Bisigano, is confirmed by the Senate, according to the outlet.
		When it comes to Doge itself, this is a story that you'll find on Politico's website.
		Who's in charge of Doge?
		Not Elon Musk, according to the White House, saying that this is Kyle Cheney reporting that Elon Musk is not the leader of Doge, the mysterious Trump administration operation overseeing the effort to break and remake the federal bureaucracy.
		In fact, he's not even technically part of it.
		The White House said in court papers Monday night, in a three-page declaration, a top White House personnel official revealed that Musk's title is senior advisor to the president, a role in which he has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.
		That explanation provided to a federal court by Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House's Office of Administration, seemed to directly contradict the way President Donald Trump and Musk have spoken publicly about the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, widely seen as a must-driven project to shrink and dismantle key aspects of the federal government.
		This story adding that the sworn statement in SEDS deepens the questions surrounding Doge.
		If you want to read more Politico is the website where you can find that story.
		Let's hear from Robert in Texas, Independent Line.
unidentified		Good morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Morning, Your Honor.
unidentified		Yes, thank you.
		I think there's two things wrong with the political apparatus in this country that should be addressed.
		One is, again, term limits, as a previous caller put out, and I think it should apply to all three branches of government, including the Supreme Court, of course.
		And the other one, I think we need to get back to some kind of political Consensus about what constitutes donations to electric elections and take a hard,
badass uncle sam in new orleans ▲ ● ▼		hard look at this, you know, Citizens United, because I think that is basically abdicating our basic premise of that this government is about we the people.
unidentified		You know, corporations are not individuals.
badass uncle sam in new orleans ▲ ● ▼		I don't know how that ever came out in that direction, but I think if we did those two things, our government would be such so much more equal and cohesive with each party and maybe three parties, four parties.
unidentified		You take the money out of it and you put them all on an equal footing, maybe we would turn the corner to something really bright for the future in this country.
		And term limits, I think, go hand in hand.
		You kind of get complacent in your job after a certain amount of time.
		And, you know, we have it for the president, so there should be no reason we don't have one for the Senate and for the House and for the Supreme Court.
		Okay.
		That's my opinion.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert there in Texas.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Milton in Baltimore, Democrats line.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Hi.
		Good morning.
		So I just want to relay something that I had a conversation I had with my philosophy professor.
		And kind of like talking about how we could solve the Trump problem.
		And what he told me was that he said, you know, Milton, you know, you can't get out too far ahead of this social issue.
		He said, you know, you're smart, you're bright, but you're black.
		He said, and no white person in America is going to follow a black person to their death with you in front.
		So therefore, the solution is going to have to come from white people.
		And unfortunately, 50,000 or more of them are going to probably have to perish before they even get up to fight.
		So don't you get out there in front of them because you'll just be father to Caddy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
		Jim in Florida, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, Pedro, I like to talk about how money is claimed, how money is spent, and how the business side looks at it and the government looks at it.
		Now, Eon Musk has been given the responsibility of finding out where the monies went in the government side.
		He went to USA and he found out there was a lot of checks written to different organizations that shouldn't have been written.
		It's common sense what they did.
		So we can never reclaim that money, but we can stop it from going out in the future.
		That's the government side.
		That's protecting the taxpayers' money.
		Let's go to the business side.
		There's an organization that's run by the government called Bank.
		They go to the banks and find out what the banks are doing, the bank examiners.
		So they go to the bank and the bank, they say, well, you've made some loans you shouldn't have made.
		You've made some personal loans that if they default, it's very hard to get your money back from those.
		But let's say they have a house that they financed and it's when they're the default.
		So they don't want a house.
		The bank doesn't need a house.
		But they've got $100,000 that they need to get back.
		So they put a bid out.
		They put a bid out.
		They say, the lowest bid we'll accept is $100,000 on this house.
		And they put, and the bids will close at noon this Friday.
		I'm an investor.
		So I invest.
		I make a bid of $125,000.
		I get the bid.
		I go to the bank, give them the money.
		They gave me a clear title.
		The bank got their $100,000 back.
		They made $25,000.
		Then, whatever I make on the House and later on is what is the profit I make.
		What I'm trying to say is the bank examiners are no different than what Elon Musk is doing for the taxpayers.
		The same thing.
		And that's what I have to say.
		And I appreciate you taking my call.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Jim, there in Florida, Elon Musk, the New York Times saying expected to gain access to systems within the Internal Revenue Service.
		A story appearing this morning saying that the systems contain the private financial data tied to millions of Americans, including their tax returns, social security numbers, addresses, banking details, and employment information.
		The examination of the IRS's systems represents the latest move by members of Mr. Musk's team to push the boundaries of access to government data beyond what is typical for political appointees.
		This also says that Gavin Kleiger, a young software engineer who was brought into the Office of Personal Management as part of the Doge effort, worked at IRS headquarters on Thursday, according to two people familiar with Matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
		He will be assigned to the IRS as senior advisor to the acting commissioner.
		And the story adding that as of yesterday or Sunday evening, he had not gained access to sensitive IRS data, according to two people interviewed for this story, which you can find at the New York Times.
		From North Carolina, Independent Lying.
		John, good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Thanks for taking the call.
		I've come sort of a bad throat today, but I heard the lady on there other days claimed that the Republicans and Trump didn't care anything about children.
		I don't know how in the world she could say that.
		They've been having emotions.
		I don't know what the fuck she's trying to tell everybody.
		But look at Trump Sunday at the race.
		That is just a regular old American people.
		And that's what I am.
		Two plus two equals four.
		I don't care what you say about anything else.
		It's still the same thing.
		And I didn't see Biden with his granddaughter going around.
		And anyway, that thing they've been on for every day about them singing.
		And I never heard such filthy talk in my house.
		I mean, even Mimin and I didn't make no difference.
		The word hears every word of that.
		They're going to have to be, they're going to be standing in front of him and they're going to have to answer the crew.
		It wouldn't be no excuses made.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Glad is in Michigan, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello, Pedro.
		Pedro, yeah, the other caller who was talking about the Arabs that didn't vote for the Republicans, for the Democrats.
		Well, you know, they looked at their whole family and lifestyle of their family members and Gaza got destroyed.
		So why would you vote for a Democrat when you had a president that played a major role in that destruction?
		But I'm going to tell you, I voted for Kamala Harris only because I wasn't going to vote for Joe Biden.
		But before that, I was real interested in the guy that was on your show with interviewed by Mimi.
		His name was Chase Oliver, an independent, 38-year-old man that worked in the food industry, had great ideas.
		He could walk between the lines, but he was against the war in Gaza.
		And he had some good ideas.
		I hope he runs four years from now because he'll be around 42 years old.
		We need some youth.
		We need some youth and working class people.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Glenn there in Michigan, the Associated Press reporting that top diplomats from Russia and the United States meeting today in Saudi Arabia to discuss improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.
		Talks that represented a rapid and major change in American foreign policy under President Trump.
		No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which came as a beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago.
		President Zelensky said his country won't accept any outcome from this week's talks if Kyiv doesn't take part.
		European allies have also expressed concerns they are being sidelined.
		Beyond that, Ukraine, the meeting that was attended by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Leverov, and other senior officials had been expected to focus on thawing relations between the two countries whose ties have fallen to their lowest levels in decades.
		No new sound coming from those meetings, a picture that you see there at the onset of the meeting between the heads.
		As we show you that, we'll go to Republican line.
		This is Conrad, Pennsylvania.
unidentified		Yeah, how are you doing?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, I was just calling in.
		I'm listening.
		I'm a registered Republican.
		I'm listening to Democrats and Republicans point their views.
		They all are crooks because none of this stuff couldn't have happened unless they all participated.
		All the money that's stolen behind the scenes, they all had to vote for it.
		So it's not one party's fault.
		They're all in cahooks.
		If you don't have no money, you're not getting nothing in Washington.
		If you're not cutting no check, Elon must cut a check.
		If you cut me a billion-dollar check, you can come stand in Washington, D.C. with me too.
		I listen to all these callers.
		They got everybody brainwashed.
		It's about money.
		If you don't have no money, you ain't getting nothing.
		And Angel votes, we can't afford to run for office.
		It might cost you $2 million run for office.
		The bottom line is this: I just hope that when this is all over with, all these people they laying off, they've been working there 34, they will vote us.
		All Donald Trump is going to do is get every Republican throwed out of office in the next two years because these are Democrats being laid off, Republicans, independent.
		Do you think they're going to vote for an elected official after getting booted off the job they've been here for 25 years?
		No.
		Anybody calls you on that phone is probably retired.
		It ain't affecting them.
		Well, all the people that's getting booted out of themselves have been there 25, 30 years.
		They're going to bring their voices.
		They're going to be heard during this election.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Conrad there in Pennsylvania.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to David in Philadelphia, Independent line.
unidentified		Hi, Pedro.
		I think the Democratic Party really needs to focus on rebuilding right now.
		If they have beyond any chance of taking the House and the Senate back to stop this dictator, okay?
		And I think, and they forgot one golden rule: putting Americans first.
		The border crisis, the crime.
		I think it's time for really the Democratic Party to go back to its core values and find them what they are, or Americans first.
		That's all I got to say.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, when you say rebuilding and when you say core values specifically, then what should they emphasize?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What should the Democratic Party emphasize?
unidentified		Like what Roosevelt did, the great, the New Deal.
		You know, what the Democratic Party stands for is the working class.
		You know, when Barack Obama went for reelection, that's the message he conveyed to the people.
		And he won re-election, even against all odds.
		That's what the Democratic Party needs to do.
		Again, what they really stand for is the middle class.
		Taxes.
		You know?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		David there in Philadelphia.
		One more call.
		This will be from Charles in Illinois Democrats line.
unidentified		Good morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Morning, you're on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		I'd like to make two short points very quickly.
		Point number one: everybody is saying that Trump is getting so much done in such a short period of time, they don't realize for whatever reason that you can't do everything in such a short period of time.
		You don't have time to audit.
		You don't have time to pull the records that they're going into are complex, and they're doing it because this plan was already in place.
		And I don't think they're looking in the records, they're just putting out the information.
		Point number two: very quickly: the information that Musk is accessing is the same as they tell us every single day to protect your information from identity theft.
		This is exactly what they're doing right now that they've already told us that you should protect yourself from.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thank you, sir.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Charles in Chicago, finishing off this round of open forum.
		Thanks to all of you who participated during the last hour during this phone segment.
		Two guests will join us throughout the course of the morning.
		Coming up next, we're going to hear from the Alliance for American Manufacturing's Scott Paul.
		He'll talk about the Trump administration trade and tariff policies, how they may impact the manufacturing sector.
		Then, later on in the program, CSIS Middle East Program Senior Fellow Natasha Hall on the C-SFIRE as it currently stands between Israel and Hamas and Trump Administration Gaza plans plus other topics related to the Middle East.
		All that coming up on Washington Journal.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Scott Paul joining us.
		He's the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing here to talk about the state of manufacturing, particularly with new initiatives from the Trump administration.
		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
unidentified		Great to be with you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How is it best?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How do you describe who you represent to people?
unidentified		Yeah, we're pretty unique in Washington.
		We have the steelworkers, the United Steelworkers Union, which is North America's largest industrial union, and domestic manufacturers who have steel workers in their plants.
		And so it's a select group and in mostly what I think people would call heavy manufacturing, very domestic-oriented.
		And we've been around for about 16 or 17 years now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as those you represent, how would you describe the state of the steel industry?
unidentified		Well, the state of the steel industry, I would say, is stable, okay?
		Not great, not horrible, but stable.
		And in a lot of ways, that's pretty good because it had been in freefall for several decades.
		And so there have been some developments in the economy lately, the infrastructure money.
		There have been tariffs in place on important steel since 2018.
		So there's been a fair amount of stability in steel, whereas in the decades prior to that, it had been just on a pretty downward trajectory.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Do tariffs, how much do tariffs lend to the stability or instability of the market, the steel market?
unidentified		Yeah, well, when it comes to steel or aluminum or kind of commodity materials like that, they can be extraordinarily helpful.
		And the reason is this.
		You know, we're a big steel consumer in the United States.
		We don't supply all of that market from here at home.
		And our market is generally very open to imports.
		The challenge has been, particularly with China, is that you have these massive firms that are owned by the Chinese Communist Party that have dominated the steel industry.
		They make more than half the world's steel now.
		They can't possibly consume all of that at home.
		So that ends up somewhere else.
		Again, not necessarily a problem, but the problem is that they're going to sell it at bargain basement rates, unfairly traded.
		It doesn't reflect the actual price of even making the steel sometimes.
		And that drives other firms out of business.
		And so we saw that happen in the United States about 15 years ago, and it was devastating to the steel industry.
		And so that's why you have this need for tariffs so that you have a support level of steel in the United States that can satisfy the rest of our manufacturing needs and that it doesn't get any lower.
		We're down to the point now where there's a couple of kinds of metals where there's only one or two plants that make it.
		That didn't used to be the case at all.
		But that's left us pretty vulnerable.
		And so what we've said is, look, we can't go down any further.
		It would be detrimental to national security.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You probably saw this question coming.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So when the president says I'm going to put tariffs on steel and aluminum, exactly what does he mean by that and how does it work?
unidentified		Yes.
		And so I would, first of all, characterize this as a restatement of policy because, and there's a couple of layers to it.
		Over the last couple of decades, there have been some tariffs put in place on some steel that has been what we would call unfairly traded, which is what I just described.
		It's very selective, depends on the country, depends on what the problem is.
		In 2018, President Trump utilized one of the aspects of trade law called Section 232.
		We get into all this trade jargon.
		But basically, it means I can impose tariff if there's a national security rationale.
		And he did that on steel and aluminum in 2018, 25% for steel.
		The issue was there was a process put in place to exempt a whole bunch of different products, thousands of them, as a matter of fact, and exempt some countries from that as well.
		Now, what has happened over the last six or seven years is that you have seen those imports creep back into the U.S. market.
		And so that relief didn't, you know, was no longer as effective as it once was.
		And you've seen some surges in steel come from Mexico and from Vietnam and some other places, not necessarily China, but it's like whack-a-mole.
		It's working its way around.
		And so this is basically pressing the reset button on those tariffs and saying we're going to start this over again at the 25% level with all countries and all products.
		And you're going to have to work very hard, basically, if you want to get an exemption or an exclusion to that.
		And aluminum, which had also been covered at 10%, that's rising to 25% as well.
		All of this is scheduled to take effect next month in March.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So for those who depend on steel for manufacturing in the United States, what happens to the price they pay or ultimately the price they charge for the things they make?
unidentified		Yeah, it's a good question.
		Obviously, it depends on what the demand is as well.
		And what we learned from the last round of steel tariffs is that a net effect at the end of it is that because of currency devaluation and some other things like that, there was not a lot passed on to the end-use consumer.
		And let's think about, let's take an automobile as an example here, okay?
		Because I think there's a lot of steel in an automobile, but the actual price component of steel in an automobile is pretty low.
		And so it's impacting a very small percentage of that price of an automobile.
		So that doesn't necessarily need to be passed on to consumers.
		And what we found with the last round of tariffs is that there was an ability to renegotiate some manufacturing contracts.
		There was the ability to seek some efficiencies.
		There was part of this currency devaluation that really meant there wasn't a large price impact.
		And I will say, I would go talk to audiences of steel consumers, and I would defend the tariffs, which is not an easy thing to do.
		And I will tell you, Pedro, the principal complaint I heard is that I can't find enough workers.
		I'm still hiring.
		I can't find enough workers.
		I can find a way to deal with the steel tariffs if there's a transparent process and I know what it's going to be, but I'm still struggling finding workers for my factory.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Scott Paul with us, and if you want to ask him questions about manufacturing in the United States, particularly in light of tariff policy and other issues, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and 202-748-8002 for independents, you can text us at 202-748-8003.
		Post on the social media sites as well.
		What about the idea of retribution by these other countries?
		And what does that ultimately do for the price of steel?
unidentified		Yeah.
		Well, I mean, there was some retaliation to the tariffs.
		And let's be clear, it's not only the steel and aluminum tariffs.
		There's a lot of tariffs, as you know, with respect to China and other potential tariffs down the road.
		What we saw the last round is that there was some retaliation, but Congress and the administration put into place some mechanisms to compensate the domestic producers for that.
		I would anticipate that there'd be a similar mechanism this time.
		I would also say this, is that people talk about trade wars, and it's a little more complicated than that because there's differing trade tariff rates, trade disagreements that happen all the time.
		And so I know it's a catchy headline, but that doesn't really capture the truth.
		But here is the truth.
		We're the largest consumer market in the world.
		We consume 20% of the world's products, even though we're 5% of the people.
		We know how to consume.
		Our market is generally very open.
		We actually are not nearly as trade exposed as a lot of other countries are that depend on their imports coming into the United States to generate national wealth.
		And so we hold far more cards than any trading partner that we're dealing with.
		And so we should not be afraid to utilize that.
		I mean, we have more ability to escalate than most, if not all, of our trade partners do.
		So it would be very dangerous.
		And we saw this with the China tariffs as well.
		And we may be talking about that.
		But China decided when Trump applied the latest round, the 10% tariff, just to do basically a nominal amount, like to investigate Google, which doesn't do a lot of business in China, to reopen a case against NVIDIA and to do some very, very narrow tariffs that were much more of a symbolic than what we're doing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Push policy initiatives to get that done.
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When you talk about then assistance from the government, if these tariffs, if the tariffs do impact steel ultimately or other things, isn't that picking winners and losers then if the government gets involved to compensate?
unidentified		Not necessarily because fundamentally trade policy has been picking winners and losers over the years.
		And the bargain we made is that we're going to give up market access and we're going to expose our manufacturers.
		In return, we're going to have allies first in the Cold War and then hopefully with respect to China 25 years ago, that didn't work out.
		And we'll also make gains in services and financial services and what have you.
		What we've learned from all of this is that it's been very one-sided.
		We have a trillion-dollar trade deficit in goods annually, a trillion dollars that we're bringing in more than we're taking out.
		And we're a very entrepreneurial, innovative country, and we can be very cost competitive too.
		And that's called a trade policy out of whack.
		And so this is resetting it a little bit.
		And traditionally, with respect to trade policy, there has been some compensation of people who have been impacted by trade.
		It hasn't been generous enough.
		But there's been a long history of that since the early 1960s in the United States.
		So again, that's not an unusual circumstance for our economic or trade policy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Scott Paul joining us, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
		First call is from Akiva in New Jersey.
		Republican line, you're on with our guests.
		Good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		You're on.
		You're on with the guests.
unidentified		Paul?
		Mike.
		Good morning, Pedro.
		Good morning, Representative Paul.
		I have a question for you, Mr. Paul, and that is mostly just a few.
		And that is, well, during the 2019, 2019, they said we have the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.
		And And meanwhile, Democrats say that if we have tariffs, we will have taxes raised and every middle class, or at least most Americans, will feel the pain and feel the impact.
		And so my first of two questions is, one, why do Democrats think taxes might go up even though during the first Trump administration in 2017, 2018, 2019, the unemployment the unemployment rate was low?
		And second of all, during the first Trump administration, some alleged comedians like Seth Meyers said that Trump has made things worse for some people like farmers, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, saying that they are having their things worse on us because of tariffs.
		Is that true or is that a fabrication or is that a lie?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Akiva, there in New Jersey.
		Thanks.
unidentified		Akiva, very good question.
		And I would say this.
		The question about passing along costs to consumers is an unsettled one.
		There's a couple of ways that it could go.
		I mean, if a tariff is charged, there's definitely going to be revenue collected.
		And it's going to be up to that company whether it passes along the cost to consumers, whether it absorbs it, whether it renegotiates contracts, whether it moves the manufacturing out of China to another country that's not impacted by tariffs.
		There's all sorts of things that could happen there.
		And it is true that the evidence based on that round of tariffs was that there was a negligible contribution to inflation compared to other things like energy costs or housing costs.
		Now, I will say that doesn't necessarily mean that's always going to be the case.
		If there is a universal tariff applied to every product everywhere, again, depending on what these companies depend to do, there could be some costs passed on to consumers.
		And so I don't want to pretend like there is not a cost associated with this.
		There certainly is.
		There's also a cost of inaction, which is what I was describing, is that we saw decades of erosion of our manufacturing base in this country, and that impacted millions of lives, hundreds and thousands of communities across the country, and put us in a national security position that is dangerously exposed.
		And so, again, there's going to be a trade-off to this.
		Think about it like the Cold War, where we built up the military in part to make sure that the Soviet Union couldn't challenge us.
		And there was a cost to that because there were different priorities within our budget.
		It took 40 years to see that come to fruition.
		And so I don't expect that things are going to turn around with respect to China or any other country right away if we do some application of tariffs.
		It's going to take some patience to do that.
		But I would argue that it is worth the cost of having that national and economic security for the United States.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		By the way, viewers, if you work in the manufacturing sector and you want to give your thoughts there as well, 202748-8003 is the number to give your perspective on this topic.
		Independent Line in Indianapolis.
		Ishmael, hello.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen.
		Good morning to you all.
		Quick comment on a couple of questions.
		A quick comment is, you know, tariff is very complicated.
		With a different administration, rather Democrat or Republican, you know, they can't put those tariffs or lift those tariffs.
		My question to Mr. Paul is, what is the long-term impact for tariff?
		And which sector of economy in our country will get direct hit that they will see that?
		And then when we're going to sustain to be independent for steel manufacture in the future.
		Those are the questions.
		And I thank you very much for your time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		College, thanks.
unidentified		Ishmael, great question.
		And I would say, you know, Indiana is the largest steel producing state in the country, so it's relevant to that state.
		So again, what happens with respect to tariffs?
		I don't want to get too much into history here, but for most of our history, we've used tariffs as an economic development tool and for some revenue collection as well.
		It's less important for revenue collection now, but it was called the Hamiltonian model.
		We'll put some tariffs in place, we'll build up our industry, we'll do some internal improvements, and we'll be able to develop economically.
		And it is what made us the second industrial, industrialized country in the world after Great Britain.
		And it is a model that Germany and Japan and Korea and many others have followed.
		And so it is a very legitimate tool in economic policy.
		Now, what happens in the 21st century with all of this, especially when we have all of these relationships and we've been bringing tariffs down over a number of decades?
		And that's a really important question.
		You know, honestly, with China in particular, and I'll answer it this way, because the question is very broad.
		You know, if you look at the goods that China supplies to us and that we buy a lot of, it includes Christmas and party decorations, but also smartphones and laptops.
		And you can kind of laugh at the first one because we can probably source that from anywhere else.
		But truthfully, it won't be the easiest thing in the world to shift laptop and smartphone production to other locations, much less to the United States.
		Now, that's underway.
		Some companies are doing it.
		But that's where you could see a little bit of an adjustment issue.
		Now, and again, with respect to steel, you know, we need a base capacity of steel in the United States to preserve our economic security.
		And the tariffs are part of that guarantee.
		We also need a healthy economy.
		We need to be making investments in our economy.
		And I think that's an important aspect that we can't lose sight of as well.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to steel, how much comes from China, say, compared to Canada and Mexico?
unidentified		Yeah, well, these days, and in part thanks to the tariffs, we see less and less steel coming in directly from China, Pedro.
		The challenge is that Chinese steel ends up going to Vietnam or to Malaysia and then coming to the United States indirectly, not necessarily subject to a full tariff.
		And then we've also seen steel imports surge from Mexico.
		There is a lot of North American trade in steel.
		And our challenge is not with Canada.
		There's generally fair trading relationships there.
		There are some issues, but there's generally fair trading relationships there.
		I think they are a little bit with Mexico because we have seen a surge of steel coming in.
		And I think the Biden administration recognized that too and was prepared to take some actions on it.
		And so that's where you see a lot of the challenges.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada wrote a recent opinion piece for the New York Times, Christopher Freeland, and wrote this about Canada's perspective and all this, saying in 2018, Canada imposed dollar-for-dollar retaliation on $16 plus billion in Canadian dollars in U.S. steel, aluminum, and other imports, deliberately targeting products from red states like Florida, orange juice, and Wisconsin cheese.
		Mr. Trump may not care about the objectives of people in Canada, but he does care about American workers and businesses.
		If exporters feeling the squeeze from tit-for-tat tariffs start calling the White House, the pressure on the administration to reverse course will grow.
		What do you think of that perspective?
unidentified		Yeah, well, I mean, I think that from her perspective, that's probably the right argument.
		I don't know that ultimately it's going to be a winning argument, and I articulated this before.
		The impact of any trade measures that we would apply to Canada would have a massive impact on their gross domestic product because of the size of the economy there.
		The impact of any trade measure that Canada could apply to the United States, yes, there might be some targeted impact, but it would not be felt economy-wide in any way, shape, or form, because our economy is too large.
		And this would be a very, very small and select subset of it.
		So if there were to be an escalation, I certainly hope there wouldn't be, Canada is not going to come out on this.
		It's going to do a lot of damage to the Canadian economy.
		It would have some impact on some industries in the United States, but it wouldn't impact our economy as a whole because of the size of the GDP that we have.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Edward works in the manufacturing sector from Pennsylvania.
		You're on with our guests.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I would love to talk as far as about the machine tool industry.
		Mr. Trump talks about bringing manufacturing back to America.
		In order to have manufacturing, you have to have a viable machine tool industry.
		And during the 60s, we did right after World War II.
		But our worthy Congress, step by step, allowed people from not only Asia, but also from Europe to come in and basically butcher our machine tool industry in this country.
		The machine tool industry was run by family organizations at that time.
		And now, as far as we have nothing left, you talk about making more steel here in America.
		Ween United, Mesta, all the large companies that made steel mills.
		Matter of fact, they made them right here in Pittsburgh.
		They're gone.
		They're never coming back.
		If you talk to Nucor, they would tell you that all the things that they're buying for their new plants is coming out of Europe, coming out of Japan.
		We've lost it.
		And I don't know how Mr. Trump expects, as far as to build an industry, any industry in manufacturing, without a viable machine tool industry.
		I appreciate your time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Edward, thank you.
unidentified		I agree with Edward completely.
		I think that, I mean, machine tools are something that people don't see, but when you're in manufacturing, you know how important they are because they're the things that are in the factories that are, you know, that are helping to produce and convert raw materials into something that's useful up the value chain.
		And it's true, we did lose a lot of that industry to Europe, to Asia.
		But I will say that I think a couple things show that if we have a policy, we can do it.
		And I think this is an ode to industrial policy, which gets a bad name sometimes, but it is highly effective.
		Like we've had an industrial policy for agriculture, and that's why we still produce a lot of agricultural products in the United States.
		The same goes for fossil fuels.
		Whether you agree with the utilization or not, it's been an effective policy.
		We are producing more fossil fuel output than we ever have in the history of our country.
		That was even before Trump took office.
		Now, the last administration, the Biden administration, took that notion, applied it to semiconductors with bipartisan support in the Congress.
		And so as a result, we've seen a rebirth of semiconductor, high-end semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.
		There are a dozen or more factories under construction in the United States that are going to put us back into the semiconductor game.
		And so I will say tariffs alone, not going to bring machine tools back.
		But if you have tariffs combined with that sort of muscular industrial policy, it's quite possible to do it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Democrats line from South Carolina.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jermaine, hello.
unidentified		Hey, how are you doing?
		Good morning.
		I got my original question answered, so I'm not going to ask that one.
		I have another question.
		As far as getting the steel from China, producing it domestically, speaking as a consumer, how is that going to help the consumer?
		Would the price of goods that we buy that contains these products be cheaper, or will the prices remain the same?
		It's a good question, Jermaine.
		And it's important to understand that no one buys a ton of steel directly.
		No consumer does.
		But steel's part of other products.
		And we used the automobile example before.
		And even there's a lot of steel in an automobile, but in terms of the purchase price, it's a very small part of that purchase price.
		And so, you know, and already most of the steel that these auto manufacturers are utilizing is coming from the United States or North America.
		So it might not even be subject to a tariff, okay?
		So there is very little that's passed on to the consumer there.
		But I will say this, you know, if you believe that the overriding responsibility of the government is consumer efficiency, that gets you to a different policy point than if you believe it's the national security of our people.
		And that is fundamentally what the government is supposed to do, is supposed to guarantee and safeguard our national security.
		And so, again, I'm not going to pretend like there is no cost to this.
		There could be some cost.
		The question is, is it a cost worth bearing and how will it be distributed?
		How much will these very innovative companies that can figure out all sorts of different ways to get more efficient, how much are they going to absorb?
		How much are they going to pass along?
		But it's worth it at the end because we're getting to the point where if, God forbid, we had to mobilize for something, we do not have the capacity to churn out the military equipment or the armaments in a way that we did, say, 50 or 60 years ago.
		And that makes us extremely vulnerable.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Does your organization represent U.S. steel?
unidentified		We do.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I was going to ask you because we saw President Biden push back against the idea of Japan buying the steel and refurbishing it.
		President Trump did the same.
		What do you think about that hesitancy from the presidents on another country buying U.S. steel?
unidentified		Yeah, we haven't taken a position on that because we have stakeholders on every side of that issue.
		I will say this, just, you know, we're at a point in time where it makes sense, no matter who it is, to invest in the steel industry of the United States rather than offload the assets like they were doing for the last 30 years.
		And so the fact that there's investment that may be coming into steel from some source, I think, is a good sign for the industry without stating an opinion on the purchase.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What investments were the countries interested in making to U.S. steel specifically?
unidentified		I'm sorry, say that again.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Investments was Japan interested in doing if they were to buy U.S. steel?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How would they change that company?
unidentified		Well, I believe that they propose making $3 billion in investments as part of that.
		I mean, there's other companies that have expressed interest in purchasing U.S. steel.
		And in the past, you've seen, again, a lot more interest in investing in the steel industry in general in the United States because they see the United States market as being a good and a healthy one moving forward as opposed to the past where it was shrinking and shrinking because of the import penetration that was coming.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is U.S. steel an outlier as far as the need for investment or are other steel companies in the same shape or same condition where they need outside investment to help improve their business?
unidentified		Yeah, well again, the difference is investment versus rescue or having a vulture come in.
		And in the past it was a lot of mergers and acquisitions in steel and a lot of downsizing.
		There was a wave of steel bankruptcies at the end of the 90s, the beginning of the aughts, where you saw more than 30 steel companies, some brand names, Bethlehem and others, that went out of business, just disappeared.
		They had been part of the American landscape for generations.
		And so that's not the situation that we're in.
		But we also can't afford to take the tariffs off because that's where we would end up again, and we don't want to see that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Scott Paul joining us for this discussion.
		He's the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
		Kathy is up next.
		She joins us from Georgia.
		Kathy, hello there.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I enjoy watching your show every morning, and this one just sort of hit home.
		I don't know if I'm asking, I'm not going to really ask a question.
		I just want to make a comment.
		I was born and raised in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains in Spruce Bunde, North Carolina.
		And even in high school, and I graduated in 1975, you could, I worked all through high school, a job.
		I didn't have a choice.
		And so I could go from one manufacturing plant to another to get a job with hosiery.
rollye james ▲ ● ▼		And this is a small 2,000 population town.
unidentified		Hosier mills, blue gene factory, every major furniture builder, Henry Don, Ethan Allen, Broy Hill.
		I mean, there was always some place to work up there.
		And I was very fortunate, and I was able to go to college on a veteran scholarship.
		And so I got out of there and got a better job.
		But I had five brothers and sisters who lived up there.
		And over the course of 20 years, this is in 1975, mind you, when everything was sort of rosy in little Spruce Bund, North Carolina, every manufacturing plant is gone.
		Right now, they're ravaged by Halloween.
		We lost every major furniture builder, the hosiery mills, the blue jean factories, everything.
		The largest employer now is Walmart.
		And I'm sort of whining, commenting, complaining, and just perplexed because I've seen my family suffer from it in many, many families in this little town in the mountains.
		So if you can just shed some light on that, and if there's a chance that any of these jobs would ever come back to these little towns all across America, I guess I'm sort of looking for hope.
		Is there any?
		Kathy, I would say there is hope.
		It's not going to look like it did in the 1970s.
		But there is the possibility to attract new factories to communities.
		It takes some policy to do that.
		It takes a reversal of the free trade policies that we saw over the last couple of generations that led to the demise of manufacturing in these small and mid-sized towns in a wide variety of industries, as you articulated.
		And it takes some investment in the skills of the workers and in innovation.
		And again, we've seen some proof points where it can be possible.
		And the idea, again, is not to reimagine manufacturing as it was, say, 50, 60 years ago.
		That's not going to happen.
		Things are much more automated now.
		That doesn't mean there's not going to be good jobs.
		And just to Kathy's point, when a Walmart comes to town, you're not going to get any other economic development.
		It's not going to bring anything with it.
		When a factory comes to town, you are going to get other things with it.
		You're going to get folks who supply that factory.
		You're going to get more activity at the hardware store, the grocery store.
		You might even get a Walmart if you are able to attract a factory.
		And so it is possible to do that.
		And we've seen new factories come online over the last 15 years ago because reshoring has become more of a practice, less reliable coming from China.
		And so you see more companies looking at bringing work back to the United States.
		We just need to scale it up.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Richard from Baltimore, Barryland.
		He asks, what percentage of American manufacturing employs illegal workers?
		And I'll expand that to the question of where does immigration policy fall into those you represent?
unidentified		Yeah, I would say that from a manufacturing perspective, it's not a problem at all.
		In fact, it's part of the solution.
		The immigrant workforce has been a massive part of the solution, particularly in a lot of these communities that have been hollowed out where the kids left seeking opportunity elsewhere.
		And these family-owned factories are seeking workers.
		And refugees, immigrants have helped to fill that void.
		And they are not taking jobs from anyone.
		There are 400,000 open jobs in manufacturing now.
		It's not like folks are getting squeezed out here.
		If you talk to any manufacturer, and I'm sure that a lot of them voted for President Trump, they will say that their workforce and having some refugees or having some immigrants as a part of that is going to be key to keeping them running at full strength.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What are your employers doing to make sure that those that don't belong in the United States undocumented workers aren't working in factories?
unidentified		Yeah, well, I know our employers who are all steel worker represented.
		I mean, there's a very deliberate process that workers go through for all of that, through trading and all the checks.
		And so, again, it's not an issue, and it's not seasonal employment.
		I guess this is the other thing.
		It's not casual seasonal employment.
		This is like this is shift work where you're there.
		And so it's a completely different circumstance.
		And actually, immigration, again, is going to be part of what it's going to take to see more employment in manufacturing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Russell.
		He's in Winchester, Virginia, worked in manufacturing.
		Russell, thanks for calling.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Good morning, guys.
		Yeah, I've recently retired from an industry, and we had a really steel-intensive.
		I'd like to go back and revisit the tariffs from the first time.
		I think it was like a 20% tariff on the Chinese steel that was put down.
		And I'm thinking while I'm working, well, this is a good thing because now Well, I go back and start buying steel from Ohio again, as we had before they made the switch to Chinese.
		But then it was within a month, probably close to three weeks after the tariffs were instated.
		U.S. Steel announced, well, we're going to up our prices 20%.
		And all of a sudden, the manufacturing, expanding the customer base, all that was out the window.
		Because no matter where you bought it, you were paying more.
		All we did was put a surtax on it and send it on to our customers.
		And that's just money that's coming out of people's pockets.
		U.S. Steel had a chance to expand its manufacturing base, but they chose, no, we're going to reward our shareholders.
		All it does is cost the consumers more money.
		Now, that's pretty much what I got to say.
		Oh, and you were talking about us being a consuming nation.
		We should import more because we consume a lot more than anybody else.
		But whatever, and good luck.
		And I think all this is going to do is just beat the inflation horse and feed it good.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Russell and Virginia, thanks.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I think, again, the evidence with respect to the steel tariffs is that overwhelmingly, what happened is that these companies were able to make investments in their factories that have been deferred for decades because they didn't have the resources to do it.
		And they modernized and they became more efficient.
		Now, when steel prices go up, it's because demand is increasing.
		Okay?
		It is a very demand-sensitive industry.
		And so it goes up, and believe me, it comes down too.
		And it comes down to a level where it costs more to make the steel than they can sell it for in the United States.
		And that's what all the dumping from China and other countries did.
		And so I do think that on net, it is well worth having the steel and aluminum tariffs in place to protect a basic level of production in the United States and to provide that stability into that choice.
		And I would just say, I'd much rather have U.S. companies that are in competition with each other dealing with the prices than having these state-owned Chinese firms set the prices as well and being hostage to them.
		I don't think that's a good position for us to be in.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The caller made this point towards the end, but there's a viewer who sends us a text saying, Mr. Paul, what if we had a consumption tax?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't it be a better way to reducing consumption and thus reducing the pricing of imports?
unidentified		I don't know.
		It is the answer to that.
		I mean, we do not have a tax system that's built on a consumption tax.
		And so I think that's highly unlikely to have.
		I mean, that's kind of the European model and something that this administration is very concerned about because they believe it also serves as a non-tariff tax on our imports going into Europe.
		So I'm not sure that that is the answer.
		I think just more balance in our trade policy would be a good starting point.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Senator McConnell has an op-ed in USA Today.
		He talks about trade and tariffs, particularly towards his state.
		The headline says Kentucky can't afford tariffs in the trade wars.
		But he makes this point saying trade wars with our partners hurt working people most, and the president has better tools to protect American workers without forcing our families and businesses to absorb higher costs.
		He doesn't elaborate on those, but are there other avenues besides tariffs that could make up for ultimately higher prices for people?
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah, again, if you trade theory is complicated, Pedro, I'll just say, and it's very unsettled.
		But one of the things that we saw when these steel and aluminum tariffs were imposed before is that the value of the U.S. dollar went down a little bit.
		And that actually on net makes the imports less expensive than they otherwise would be.
		Now, does it negate the effect of them?
		Not necessarily.
		They can still be impactful.
		But the idea behind the tariffs is that you're either going to generate the revenue or you're going to get the jobs back.
		It's going to be one or the other.
		I'd like to see the jobs come back, right?
		I'd like to see the firms start to reshore more work rather than to pay the tariffs because that is an option for some of them as well.
		But again, with respect to Senator McConnell, for his entire career, he has been a free trader.
		And so it's not surprising this.
		But I do think that he would agree that China has not played by the rules.
		And so far, what we've seen in place from the Trump administration right now is a 10% tariff on Chinese products kind of across the board.
		We've seen some steel and aluminum tariff announcements.
		They'll take effect next month.
		We'll see what happens between now and then.
		We both know that things can change very dramatically here.
		But that's what we've seen so far.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Al.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Al joins us here in Washington Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Good morning.
		I went to Georgetown in the late 70s, and I watched the demographics of the nation change overnight during that election of 1980 when Carter was drugged out and Reagan came in.
		And I see something similar happen this most recent election cycle where overnight everybody is now in favor of the current administration.
		I grew up in West Virginia.
		I mean, my family was from down in coal mining country, and I saw the U.S. steel divest in the coal mining regions of the country.
		So when that lady was just talking about North Carolina and manufacturing jobs, the whole state of West Virginia literally just dried up.
		And I'm hearing drill, baby, drill, and I'm hearing all of this stuff, right?
		But what I'm really guess I'm curious about is what are we going to do to bring America back, even with these dynamic election changes that we've seen?
		And so I'll stand aside now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Al, thank you.
unidentified		Simple question.
		How do we get America back?
		Well, again, part of it is I think there has been a realization, and I think this is true.
		I think this was true from the Biden administration.
		I think this was true in the Trump administration, is that we have to reorient our trade policy.
		Instead of just negotiating free trade deals and giving away market access, we need to demand a level playing field, and we need to be able to utilize tariffs as one of the tools for that.
		I mean, keep in mind, and I'm just going to say this, Biden signed a tariff proclamation to put 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, okay?
		So that is like, you know, so when progressives are like saying, oh, Trump's doing that, I was like, look, you know, Biden was doing something, this is a similar thread to trade policy here.
		And I think it's a welcome one, but that is not alone the answer.
		I do think we need to invest in our workers, our community colleges, our career and technical education programs.
		We need to continue to be massively innovative.
		We need to continue to build out our infrastructure and to explore all energy sources so that we have an energy advantage in this country for generations.
		There's a lot that we need to do and that we can do, and I think we're well positioned to do it.
		Now, in this Washington, can we get it done?
		I'm not sure.
		Like, there's, you know, it's a vote, you know, one way or the other.
		So I'm not holding my breath, but there is a pathway to kind of get back that economic strength.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		AmericanManufacturing.org is the website for the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
		Scott Paul serving as its president, as the president.
		Thanks for your time.
unidentified		Pedro, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Excuse me.
		Up next, we'll hear from CSIS's Natasha Hall.
		She is going to take a look at the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
		Also, the issue when it comes to those recent announcements by the Trump administration about its desires for Gaza.
		That coming up on Washington Journal.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Natasha Hall joining us.
		She's with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
		She serves as their senior fellow for the Middle East program here to talk about MIDI's policy in the Trump administration.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		A little bit about the program you represent.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Generally, when it comes to issues of the Middle East, what's the perspective that you have?
unidentified		Well, I mean, certainly we're seeing some seismic shifts in Middle East policy, the likes of which we've never seen before with U.S. policy, including the displacement of Palestinians for the first time in U.S. policy.
		But we're also seeing some seismic shifts in how the administration is dealing with geopolitics, other sort of great power competitors in the Middle East as well, in places like Syria.
		And so this can be very concerning.
		If we see sort of a pullback of the United States in some of these places like Syria, does Russia come back in, right?
		So I think that's kind of what we're looking at right now.
		How are these sort of seismic shifts that are happening in the region that have been going on for about a year now?
		How is that going to affect U.S. policy and be affected by U.S. policy?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As we talk, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Riyadh talking with the Saudi Crown Prince, one of those topics is Gaza.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How are you viewing this meeting and what comes out of it, particularly when it comes to Gaza?
unidentified		Well, it's really interesting that President Trump has essentially laid down a gauntlet that no one really accepts, which is what is, for them, tantamount to ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
		President Trump has said, you know, this is hell on earth, and so we should just remove them and then reconstruct Gaza to create the Riviera.
		And, you know, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, these are all countries that would be affected in terms of stability by even just these statements, let alone the actual implementation of the plan.
		But President Trump keeps reiterating that this is an actual plan that they plan to implement.
		And so I think what's happening right now is that Arab countries are trying to get together to form some kind of alternative plan for President Trump, because they do know a lot of their stability is very dependent on the United States, not just in terms of aid, but also in terms of military and defense spending.
		The United States has spent decades trying to stabilize these countries and working towards a peace agreement between these countries and Israel as well.
		So this is a huge moment for the Arab countries to get together and try to formulate some kind of alternative.
		It remains to be seen if the Trump administration is going to accept anything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as the countries that themselves and the potentially of them taking in of Palestinians, what's the willingness, as you currently see it, for these other countries?
unidentified		Well, it's just not feasible.
		It's not feasible in the case of Jordan, which is a country that still right now operates on a water deficit.
		I mean, this is a country that is very, very resource poor.
		In addition to that, it's already housing about 60% of its population are Palestinian refugees that have been forcibly displaced from what is now Israel and the West Bank, you know, decades past.
		So this is a really volatile issue for King Abdullah of Jordan as well.
		If he is seen to be facilitating the forced displacement of Palestinians, I mean, this really calls into question the stability of the monarchy.
		And I mean, the same goes for Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well.
		I've heard from Saudi diplomats when it comes to normalization.
		This was even months ago before the Trump administration came into power.
		They said, you know, our guy's head is on the chopping block, meaning Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
		And so they can't be seen to be facilitating this kind of plan.
		So they are working very hard around the clock to try to create some kind of alternative that President Trump would accept.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our president and the King Abdullah at the White House last week talking about these issues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I want to play a little bit about the exchange with reporters, get your perspective on.
unidentified		I think we have to keep in mind that there is a plan from Egypt and the Arab countries.
		We're being invited by Mohammed bin Salman to discussions in Riyadh.
		I think the point is how do we make this work in a way that is good for everybody?
		Obviously, we have to look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region, especially to my people of Jordan.
		And we're going to have some interesting discussions today.
		I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children that are either cancer children or in a very ill state to Jordan as quickly as possible.
		and then wait for, I think, the Egyptians to present their plan on how we can work with the President to work on Gaza challenges.
		The President, excuse me, wave, just please.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know that what you just said, 2,000 children with cancer or other problems.
		And that's really a beautiful gesture.
		That's really good, and we appreciate it.
		And we'll be working on the rest with Egypt.
		I think you're going to see some great progress.
		I think with Jordan, you're going to see some great progress.
		Three of us will have some others helping, and we're going to have some others at a very high level helping, and the whole thing will come.
		It's not a complex thing to do.
		And with the United States being in control of that piece of land, a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time.
		And the Palestinians or the people that live now in Gaza will be living beautifully in another location.
		They're going to be living safely.
		They're not going to be killed, murdered, and having to leave every 10 years.
		Because I've been watching this for so many years.
		It's nothing but trouble.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So I'll miss all those exchanges, but a couple of things to pull out.
		The president said it's not hard to control.
		What gives the United States authority at this point to even make these ideas?
unidentified		Well, I mean, it's against international law for certain.
		This is sort of harkening back to imperial days where I think stronger countries would simply take over other countries, right?
		And this is what the world order that was created essentially by the United States after World War II was meant to stop, essentially, in order to allow each country, regardless of their weaknesses, to have sovereignty and territorial integrity.
		And so this is quite troubling, I think, not just for Gaza, not just for Palestinians in the region, but I think more generally, if we look at Russia, which is seeking to take over Ukraine and other parts of its near abroad and has been for some time now, if we look at China and its interests in the South China Sea and Taiwan, I mean, this essentially gives excuses to our adversaries to pursue those kinds of imperial ambitions.
		So this is a bit troubling.
		I mean, certainly the United States does not have sort of the legal ability to do this, but certainly the most powerful country in the world can do quite a bit if it actually wanted to.
		Now, whether or not that would pan out for U.S. stability or Israeli security is an entirely another thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Earlier on, it was King Abdullah.
		It said, we want to try to make this work for everybody.
		What was he saying?
		What wasn't he saying in that statement, do you think?
unidentified		I mean, it was a very painful interaction to watch.
		I think King Abdullah was trying to do what he could in a fairly awkward situation.
		And you saw him also offer to take in 2,000 Palestinian children, I think, to somewhat distract the president from this much grander plan of displacing 2 million Palestinians as well.
		But he's in a very, very awkward situation.
		Jordan is very heavily dependent on the United States in terms of U.S. aid.
		But also, there's thousands of U.S. soldiers in Jordan.
		So their stability, the defense of the country, is heavily reliant on the United States.
		So King Abdullah knows this, and he knows that he has to provide something to the United States.
		He has to emphasize the strong relationship between the United States and Jordan and really sort of cozy up to Trump whether he sort of likes to or not.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our guest is with us, and if you want to ask her questions, it's 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002.
		If you want to text us your thoughts, you can do that at 202748-8003.
		For all that said, what would you say then is the future of Gaza without U.S. involvement or anything else?
		And given its current condition, what's the future and what are other countries' involvement in shaping that future?
unidentified		Yeah, well, this could be one of the reasons we saw the gauntlet laid down by President Trump in such a dramatic fashion.
		There was a bit of debate on whether or not the oil-rich Gulf countries, for example, would even help with reconstruction, depending on whether or not there was some kind of avenue towards a Palestinian state or a Palestinian authority-like entity governing Gaza.
		None of these countries wanted Israel, for example, to reoccupy the Strip, and we're not going to do anything if that was the case.
		Now, we're seeing oil-rich Gulf countries and others actually get together and think about creating a reconstruction fund, not just a reconstruction fund, a Trump reconstruction fund.
		So, they're really trying to, I think, really stoke, I think, the ego of President Trump and really try to get something implemented that would actually work for them.
		Egypt has been working on a plan to reconstruct the Strip, you know, with Palestinians remaining in that territory.
		But it sort of remains to be seen if Israel would accept any of this, especially because what we've seen is that Hamas still ostensibly controls the Gaza Strip.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's their role then in the future as well?
unidentified		I mean, their police are sort of still patrolling the area.
		And after over 15 months of devastating conflict, they're still there.
		And I think that tells you something right away, that you can't really put down the self-determination ambitions of a people, right?
		And so this is going to be very complicated because if it's not Hamas, it's going to be a different insurgency.
		It could be a worse insurgency than what Hamas is, right, in the future from all the trauma that we've seen from the past year and a half.
		And so, I mean, I think that, you know, this is going to be very, very difficult because we've seen most of the Gaza Strip essentially wiped out.
		Part of the initial plan, the ceasefire plan, was that mobile homes and tents had to be allowed into the Gaza Strip to provide some kind of accommodations for all of these displaced Palestinians.
		Most of them are displaced.
		And hardly any of them have gotten through.
		And so I think this is also Israel's sign that they are amenable to Trump's plan that these people will actually be removed from Gaza for reconstruction.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Natasha Hall, joining us.
		Our first call for you comes from Bill.
		Bill is an Arkansas Independent Line.
		Bill, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		It's a very interesting discussion and something that's come up just recently I've seen.
		I'd like to point out a few historic elements and ask your opinion on that.
		One is after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, not coincidentally, September 11, 1922, the Palestine and the Transjordanian mandate were made by the League of Nations.
		And then they carved out all the other nations, as you mentioned.
		Then after, of course, World War II in 1948, that map was just reinvented to the same almost exact map to become Israel.
		So it seems to me that it's a two-state dilemma.
		There's really no two-state solution.
		What do you think of us going forward regarding that?
		And how it's interesting that the Islamic terrorists sometimes pick these dates, 9-11, 2001, 9-11, 2012, Benghazi, October 7, Bush declares war on terrorism, October 7 in Israel, they're hit.
		How do we get through the two-state dilemma and take care of Palestinians when it was all carved out by Western societies anyway?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Bill in Arkansas.
unidentified		Well, thank you, Bill, for that question and sort of the historical context.
		Certainly, I think it is very difficult to foresee a two-state solution now.
		I don't think it has anything to do with history at this point.
		I think it has far more to do with the past 25 years of the buildup of Israeli settlements.
		We've gone from something like 50,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank to 750,000 Israeli settlers in areas that were deemed illegally occupied by Israel in just 25 years or so.
		So, I mean, the two-state solution is difficult to foresee because Palestinians in the West Bank don't actually have control over much of their infrastructure, including water infrastructure, electricity, et cetera.
		Israel really has the final say over all of that.
		And so to imagine a two-state solution, you would have to imagine some kind of land trade.
		Now, we've seen those happen in negotiations in the past, but it simply didn't actually occur.
		And so, I mean, I think that it's possible, but it would really require a United States to be pushing on Israel, which it's, you know, the most far-right government and society we've seen, you know, since the establishment of the state of Israel right now, in order to put pressure on them to move forward with the two-state solution that most U.S. presidents have said that they want.
		But otherwise, I mean, most Palestinians that you would speak with today are fine with a one-state solution as long as they get freedom of movement and equity and basic human rights.
		So, I mean, it's more of, I think the onus is on the United States that has been promoting the two-state solution for decades now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert is a New York Republican line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, you're next up.
unidentified		Yeah, hi, thank you.
		The idea that 60% of the population of Jordan is Palestinian refugees is really just a repetition of a trope that's really been promulgated by the Arabs since the creation of Israel in 1948.
		They're really, how can you refer to people as refugees after multiple generations?
		It's already been well over 70 years since the state of Israel was established to call these people refugees.
		Even the people of Gaza, on the one hand, they say we're refugees.
		On the other hand, they say we're not leaving.
		You can't have it both ways.
		At some point, there has to be a recognition that the state of Israel is here to stay and that the Israelis have rights not to be bombarded constantly by rockets every six or seven years.
		That's my comment.
		Thank you for taking the call.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert in New York.
unidentified		Yeah, thank you, Robert in New York.
		I mean, as someone who's Jordanian and part Palestinian, I can tell you that many Palestinians in Jordan still very much identify with Palestine as the place of their birth or the place of even their grandparents' birth.
		The thing about refugees, and this is according to U.S. law and international law more broadly, is that refugees have the right of return.
		And this has never been the case, obviously, for Palestinian refugees.
		They have not, in many cases, been given citizenship.
		Many of them are stateless in places like Lebanon and Syria.
		And that has really exposed them to vulnerability.
		Now, in Jordan, I can tell you that most people who have a father that is not Jordanian do not have citizenship.
		And this is a big problem of statelessness, essentially, for many Jordanians or Palestinians in Jordan as well.
		So this is not a resolved issue by any means.
		And I think that, you know, my overall point with regards to this is that because so many Jordanians and Palestinians and people of mixed descent, which is most Jordanians by now, feel so strongly about this issue that it would destabilize the country, whether you like it or not.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Alan.
		Alan in Indiana.
		Democrats line.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Good morning.
		Thank you for accepting my call.
		I'm a big fan of Washington Journal, long time watcher.
		The question I have to ask is this.
		Why has the United States always shown such blind allegiance to Israel?
		I kind of totally disagree with your previous call in that I think Israel does not have the right to exist.
		Palestine was invaded by displaced European Jews 77 years ago.
		And it was a shame that at the time the United States had a ban on European Jews coming here.
		I think anti-Semitism was rather high around the turn of the 20th century.
		And the people didn't want to go back to Europe because there was anti-Semitism there.
		And I guess England wouldn't take them or something.
		But it was just decided, let them dump in Palestine because who cares?
		But this Palestine was a, it may say a sovereign state.
		It was a location that's been there for over 2,000 years.
		And these people came in and invaded.
		And the United States has supported this occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people for 77 years.
		And I never understood why.
		They have, Israel has nuclear weapons.
		They have something called a Simonton Amendment that the United States will not give any foreign aid to any country that has foreign weapons.
		That makes sense.
		I agree with it.
		And a simple solution to this is I think our government should end foreign and military aid to Israel, cut off trade, and actually try to deal with the Palestinian people started in the Gaza Strip to make up for 77 years of occupation abuse.
		So why does the United States support this occupation?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Alan there in Indiana.
unidentified		Thank you.
		I will handle this question delicately.
		I mean, I think Israel does have the right to exist by a UN mandate, actually.
		So it's interesting to actually see sort of the debate between the United Nations and Israel over the years, because Israel has been formed essentially because of the United Nations.
		So if we're looking at the situation today, though, in reference to the caller's question about the United States' blind allegiance to Israel, I mean, I think this is a real question.
		A lot of it does have to do, unfortunately, with lobbying in the United States, which is an issue with regards to Israel and many other issues for Congress members.
		There's also a very, very close security alliance.
		We have our ammunitions depots, you know, for strategic weapons in Israel.
		We have provided more weapons per cap on a per capita basis to Israel than any other country in the world.
		So it is challenging to understand why it's been so difficult for the United States to move peace talks forward, because it does have a considerable amount of leverage when it comes to the Israeli side of these negotiations.
		And if anything, you've only seen it get worse.
		And if you look at a map of the West Bank, for example, from 40 years ago to today, you see how it's increasingly difficult to see what a Palestinian state would actually look like.
		So I think that especially what we're seeing today, it's really challenging to see how this is amenable to U.S. security over the long term.
		We have seen actually terrorists very far back before 9-11 saying that the Palestinian issue is one of the sort of galvanizing issues for them.
		So I don't really entirely understand why we can't move forward with a peaceful resolution to this conflict or at least mitigating conflict over the years.
		But right now we're in the most challenging position I think we've ever been because we have such a far-right population but also cabinet in Israel.
		You also have a prime minister that is trying to push off charges against him that would potentially put him in prison.
		And so you have all of these different moving pieces.
		And then with this administration in particular, but also with the last one, it's very clear that the United States is not going to sort of use its leverage in favor of maybe a more sustainable solution for the Palestinian issue.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as using the leverage, how would that be applied?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the best use of that leverage, do you think?
unidentified		Right.
		I mean, well, last year we saw a deal for 20 billion in U.S. arms sales to Israel.
		Just a few days ago, we saw 8 billion more, including 2,000 pound bombs, which a lot of human rights groups have said is not needed in a place like Gaza, but also really, truly devastating.
		We're talking about enormous radius of blasts in densely urban populated areas.
		I mean, just to give people some context, in the sort of anti-ISIS coalition fight in eastern Syria, we use these kinds of bombs maybe a handful of times in a much larger expanse of territory.
		So we have a lot of leverage.
		We also protect Israel diplomatically at the UN and other multilateral fora.
		So there's quite a bit of leverage there, but we haven't really seen it being used in the previous administration and certainly not in this one.
		But it is there if it needs to be used to sort of push something forward that would be what I think what President Trump has said he wants, which is a more sustainable resolution to this issue.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned Syria.
		It's been since late last year since rebels there overthrew the government, the dictatorship of al-Assad.
		What's been happening in the country since then and what concerns do you have about the current condition of the country?
unidentified		Right.
		I mean, it's been truly astonishing.
		I have to pinch myself every day as someone who's been working on Syria for the past 15 years to see what's going on.
		I mean, we saw a man, Ahmed Al-Shaddah, move from being sort of malign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head to becoming the president of Syria, accepting calls from high-level officials around the world and visits.
		He just spoke to President Putin.
		I'll remind callers that Russia was instrumental to Bashar al-Assad's survival for the past 14-some years.
		And so this is a truly momentous thing that is happening and truly an opportunity, I think, for the United States to come in and really challenge Russia's place in the region, a region that the United States has historically had sort of premacy over Russia in, and also to keep Iran and Iranian proxies out.
		But unfortunately, what we have seen in recent weeks is sort of a pullback of the United States when it comes to Syria.
		We still see the sanctions that were placed because of the last regime and its war crimes.
		Those are still on Syria.
		We've seen the elimination of foreign aid in many cases, and so I'm seeing a lot, I'm talking to a lot of NGOs that are basically having to shut down in Syria.
		And this is precisely the moment where the United States should be really involved, I think, in the formation of what is hopefully a new country that is better for the Syrian people and the region itself.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Greg.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Greg is in Los Angeles, Republican line.
unidentified		Ms. Negasha Hall, you're very interesting.
		Very, very good guest this morning.
		I can listen to you for a long time.
		But my question is, President Trump said that the Gaza Strip could be the Las Vegas of the Middle East.
		It has so much to offer as the Las Vegas with the luxury hotels and how many jobs that would bring in.
		What are your thoughts on that?
		Thank you for your call.
		Yeah, I believe he said the Riviera of the Middle East.
		I mean, certainly it can be, but it should be the Riviera of the Middle East with the existing population still there.
		I mean, if we can bring in jobs for Palestinians that have been suffering without jobs for many, many years now, well, great.
		But I think the main issue with that plan is the forced displacement of Palestinians away from the new Gaza Riviera.
		I've actually heard this plan multiple times before, and it makes sense.
		I mean, Gaza has a beautiful long coastline.
		The problem is a lot of it is filled with sewage right now because the Israelis have attacked wastewater treatment plants, and we've seen sewage flowing through the streets and into the water.
		And we'd actually seen some progress on that in recent years because of funding from European donors and others.
		But, you know, all of that has been destroyed.
		But, you know, I think for most Gazans, probably President Trump's plan would sound wonderful if it weren't for their forced displacement being part of that plan.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The president's former Israeli ambassador David Friedman in the first term had a recent op-ed taking a look at this idea for Gaza.
		And he said this, in part, he said, here's a secret I learned from direct conversations with Gaza residents.
		Most civilians in Gaza were desperate to leave long before the latest war began for the simple reason that living under Hamas rule was a nightmare even before Gaza was turned to rubble.
		It is nothing but a smear to suggest that allowing desperate civilians to voluntarily leave a war zone is a crime.
		It's the Gazans' leaders as opposed to their movers who have committed war crimes.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean a lot to unpack there, I think.
		So a lot of Gazans want to leave now, I would assume, because they're in a desperate situation where there isn't aid and there are no homes for them in the winter.
		We've seen tens of thousands of children missing limbs without getting adequate care, third-degree burns all over their bodies.
		So most certainly, if you're a parent, you want to get your kid to adequate health care and in a safe place.
		The thing is, that doesn't really take away from the illegality of it.
		I mean, we saw this in Syria.
		We were just talking about Syria, where Bashar al-Assad essentially had a sort of siege, starve, and surrender campaign in multiple parts of the country, where it would bombard the population, besiege it, starve the population, even use chemical weapons on the population.
		And then eventually, yes, the population, in many cases, capitulated and was effectively transferred to other parts of the country.
		Now, we still consider that a crime under international law, under international humanitarian law, at least, right?
		Because there was a reason for them to want to or be forced to essentially be transferred to a different location.
		So, I mean, I think you have to look at sort of the totality of the circumstances there.
		I have not heard a lot about Gazans wanting to leave simply because Hamas was in power.
		I think certainly they were quite cruel to a number of people.
		But, you know, they were in power for many reasons.
		In addition to the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, through the Qataris, had been supporting Hamas for many years to essentially discredit and divide Palestinian leadership.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're listening to Natajah Hall of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
		Let's hear from Eddie.
		Eddie, on our independent line, also in Los Angeles.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yes, good morning.
		This is what I've listened to a couple of callers call, and they were talking about this as a Christian nation.
		And I just heard another voter call, and he was wondering why the United States backed Israelis so much.
		I believe it's because, maybe you can help me with this.
		This is part of the Europeans.
		This is what they do.
		They go in with religion and they take over your country.
		This is the same way America did here.
		Instead of the Palestines, you have the Native Americans and you have the black folks.
		We don't have a Gaza, but we have a reservation and a ghetto.
		And it's all patrolled by the military.
		So there's no difference.
		We're just looking at a microcosm of it.
		But don't you find it funny that a country that claims to be so Christian would send weapons of mass destruction to the holiest place in the world, the place where the Ten Commandments come from.
		I will not lie, steal, or kill.
		This is what Europeans do.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Eddie in Los Angeles.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I'll try to take some of that.
		I mean, I think that religion has been used as a sort of a reason for U.S. support of Israel, the sort of Judeo-Christian values and whatnot.
		You know, the issue with that is I don't suspect this is actually a religious issue for Palestinians.
		There's many, as you probably, Nezikalar probably knows, Christian Palestinians and Muslim Palestinians.
		This is more of an issue of territory and sovereignty and self-determination, as you point out.
		I think, you know, if you look back to the beginning of Zionism and sort of the Zionist project, and you look at the founders of Zionism, like Jabotsynsky, they did talk about being settler colonialists.
		This was part of the way that they were able to talk to Europeans and essentially get support for this project.
		That's their words, not mine.
		And so, you know, I mean, I think this is Israel was basically born during a time when there was a lot of division, artificial division of borders by European countries in particular.
		Israel was sort of part of that, obviously.
		But, you know, the fact remains that we're now in a current situation where I think we have to deal with the current front lines.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call, and this will be from Kevin in Kentucky Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, thank you for taking my call today.
unidentified		Regular listener, do appreciate the show.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		I would like to comment on President Trump's Gaza and his overall comments about it.
unidentified		I noticed that nowhere in there did he have much to say about possibilities of the United States taking some of the refugees that he has proposed to push around.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		I think that might take the sting out of some of that conflict over there that Jordan's going to have in the neighboring countries.
unidentified		Given the size of America compared to Jordan and all the other countries over there, sort of Saudi Arabia, maybe the United States should propose taking possibly no less than 20% of those refugees.
unidentified		I've heard estimates of 2,500,000.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		So that would be a mere 500,000 Palestinians.
unidentified		And then once Gaza's all built, they go back.
		And that's basically how his thought pattern is going there.
		So I think he should consider possibly taking in some of those refugees.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Kevin and Kentucky, thanks.
unidentified		I mean, Kevin, you bring up an interesting point and I think a good point as someone who has worked in refugee resettlement with the U.S. government.
		The issue with it, of course, is that President Trump has shut down the resettlement program that received bipartisan support for so many decades.
		He did that during the first administration.
		He's done it today as well.
		So, you know, the United States was essentially absent during the worst displacement crisis since World War II, which was Syria.
		We've taken a pittance of Syrians, Syrian refugees, to the United States, which have also helped with the stability of those surrounding countries.
		Again, a drop in the bucket, as you mentioned, but I think a fig leaf to our allies that are taking in so many refugees.
		We're still working on what to do about the Afghan refugees, the people that helped the United States government during the long war there.
		They have also been left in the lurch in many situations.
		So, you know, the notion that we would take Palestinian refugees as well, I think, is a good one, but I just don't see it happening with this administration, unfortunately.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		All right, the guest for the website for our guest organization is csis.org.
		Natasha Hall is the Middle East Program Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
		Thanks for your time.
unidentified		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Coming up, we're going to have an open forum.
		And if you want to participate in that, you can call the numbers 202748-8001 for Republicans, Democrats, 202748-8000 Independents, 202-748-8002.
		But first, there are more than 60 new members of the House of Representatives now in place, and we're going to meet many of them this week.
		Starting tonight at 9:30 on our main channel network, C-SPAN, you can meet these members of the 119th Congress.
		We'll talk to them about their lives, their past careers, and why they ran for Congress.
		Here's some of what they had to say.
unidentified		And I'd spent time in technology, obviously, time in education, and worked a lot on helping others do the same thing that I did, a lot of angel financing and mentoring of other startup companies.
		And when September 11th happened, it really hit me in the chest.
		I thought, this country's been good to me.
		You know, what have I done to deserve it?
		And I didn't have a good answer.
		And I was actually moose hunting in Alaska when September 11th happened.
		So I was one of the last people on the planet to find out about it.
		I didn't see it on TV.
		And I got stuck there because the borders were closed.
		I couldn't fly over Canada.
		And as soon as I could get home, I walked into a recruiter's office.
		I said, hey, I've got a pilot's license.
		I used to, you know, was a researcher at NYU.
		What can you do with me?
		And the recruiter says, how old are you?
		I go, 34.
		He goes, good.
		35 is a cutoff.
		So ended up getting recruited into a, actually it's interesting because first, yeah, I was non-prior military.
		I had no idea what I was doing.
		And so they sent me out to take the ASVAB, the vocational aptitude battery, and to say what you're good at.
		And I come back with my test scores.
		And the recruiter rolled his eyes, said, okay, well, you qualify for any job that I offer.
		I said, well, I want to do something meaningful.
		He says, well, have you ever thought about going into Intel?
		I never thought about going into anything.
		And so I just said, I want to do something meaningful.
		And so I talked to him a little bit.
		And I said, you know, it sounds like I'm going to be sitting in a dark room staring at a computer.
		I don't think I'm going to thrive there.
		And so then he has this other guy, Chief Rhodes, comes in and talks to me.
		And he says, I've got this horrible job.
		You know, I lose my hearing, my back hurts, my knees are blown out, but it's the best thing I could imagine doing with my life.
		I said, well, what do you do?
		He says, well, we take these 22,000-pound helicopters and we fly them in formation 50 feet off the deck in the middle of the night with night vision goggles on.
		We go out in the desert, we find busted up kids and we bring them home.
		And the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I go, that's me.
		And so I got sworn into a combat search and rescue squadron.
		Being a physician is inherently about trying to help people and make a positive difference in people's lives and listening.
		You know, when I spend most of my day as a doctor sitting in a room alone with a patient and listening to what's on their mind, to what's bothering them, to what hurts, and then talking together to figure out a health plan to go forward.
		Being a legislator is a lot like that.
		You know, we door knock, we have town halls, we listen to our constituents, gather that information, and then come up with a plan, which sometimes is in the form of a bill or some kind of legislation.
		So I come from a science-based background, so I like evidence and facts, and I try to pursue policy that is evidence-based in that same way.
		This began with my grandfather, also named Nick Begich.
		He first ran for Congress in 1968 and was not successful in that race, ran again in 1970 and beat a gentleman named Frank Murkowski for the seat in 1970.
		Served until 1972, when sadly he was on a plane flight, disappeared, was never found in 1972.
		It was late in the election cycle and actually he ended up winning the race anyway.
		There was a special election, of course, because the plane was not found, he was not found.
		And winning that special election was Don Young, who became, as many people know, the longest-serving Republican in U.S. House history.
		So moving forward from that, I have an uncle named Mark Begich.
		Mark Begich was a United States senator from Alaska, defeated Ted Stevens in 2008 and served one term in the United States Senate.
		So I do come from a line of traditional Democrats, but I was actually raised on my mom's side of the family.
		Mom's side of the family is conservative Republican, father's side of the family is Democrat, and of course I'm a Republican.
eugene vindman ▲ ● ▼		So I was a deputy legal advisor.
		I was a lieutenant colonel assigned to the White House on a detail.
		Deputy Legal Advisor on National Security Council staff.
		The chief ethics official on the National Security Council staff.
		And so I worked right across the hall from my twin brother.
		And he had the portfolio of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova.
		He listened to the phone call.
		He heard the president's attempt at extortion and he reported it directly to me.
		We talked about it briefly and we knew we had a duty to report that call.
		We record her up the chain, and the rest is history.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, this is open forum.
		And if you want to participate, 202-748-8000, one for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 2027-8002.
		If you want to send us a text, you can do that at 202-748-8003.
		And as always, you can post on our social media sites at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN at C-SPANWJ on X. Joining us now to give us a sense of what's the week ahead like for the White House is Taylor Popolars.
		He's with Spectrum News.
		He serves as their national political reporter.
		Mr. Popolars, thanks for your time.
		Great to be here, Pedro.
		Mr. Populars, what do we know as far as the agenda for this week for the White House?
		A lot going on in previous weeks, but what are they looking for this week?
unidentified		Yeah, it's a slightly quieter week.
		I'm hoping not to jinx it by saying that, but the president is right now down in Florida.
		He went to his Mar-a-Lago club last Friday, and he's staying in Florida at least through tomorrow, Wednesday, because a White House official confirmed to me tomorrow he's set to attend a Saudi-backed investor conference in Miami before returning here to the White House.
		We know that on yesterday, the President's Day holiday, President Trump went to his golf club that's near Mar-a-Lago and he played some golf.
		Today, he doesn't have any public events scheduled, but the White House tells us he's going to sign some executive orders later this afternoon.
		And then later on toward the end of this week, we expect him to speak at CPAC, the conservative conference that'll happen here in Washington.
		But right now at the White House, it's pretty quiet.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Can you elaborate more on the investor conference and the purpose of that?
unidentified		So it's interesting.
		There are some limited details about it, but this is a huge gathering of kind of global financiers that is essentially hosted by prominent Saudi Arabian investors.
		And we know that the president is going to speak there.
		He's expressed interest in having Saudi Arabia invest more into projects here in the U.S. Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy country.
		They have a giant trillion-dollar wealth fund that the president has spoken directly about.
		What's interesting, though, of course, is on this very day, some of Trump's top advisors are meeting in Saudi Arabia with their Russian counterparts to talk about the Russia-Ukraine war, and Saudi Arabia is serving as the host of that.
		So it's just interesting that both of those are kind of happening one day after the other.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		For those meetings taking place in Saudi Arabia, we saw concerns from the Ukrainian president about having a seat at the table so far as the discussions are concerned.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What is the White House saying about those concerns and the part that Ukraine will play in all of this?
unidentified		So we heard from Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly after these initial meetings wrapped in Saudi Arabia.
		They were essentially going on overnight, and he indicated that this was kind of a first step after President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone last week.
		Now, Rubio has said that Ukraine will have a seat at the table, but as you alluded to, Ukrainian President Zelensky is really frustrated that neither he nor any of his representatives were at this meeting in Saudi Arabia.
		This was just U.S. and Russian officials with Saudi Arabian officials serving as host.
		But the Trump administration insists that Ukraine will have a voice in these negotiations and that this is just the beginning.
		But Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said that this was a very productive first meeting.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Later on this week, we're expecting more nominations to be put through the Senate.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The Commerce Secretary, the FBI director, the White House, as far as their optimism concerning the FBI director's part, where are they as of today?
unidentified		They're feeling confident, especially after other controversial nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard were able to get confirmed by this Republican-led Senate, but that's dealing with a slim majority.
		They're expecting Kash Patel to be able to sail through, especially because those other nominees cleared that benchmark.
		People like Howard Luttnick, the incoming commerce secretary, they're expected to sail through as well.
		But really, the GOP has succeeded in staying united behind President Trump and allowing all of his nominees to really get through without a lot of issue.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Popolars, he wasn't a nominee for a position, but Elon Musk consistently in the news over the last couple weeks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the White House doing to at least give the message out when it comes to Mr. Musk's ability to do his job, but not only the independence he has from the president, but who he actually reports to being the president of the United States?
unidentified		Yeah, this is really fascinating and kind of ever-evolving.
		There was actually a court filing released overnight where the Trump administration said that Elon Musk is essentially serving as a senior advisor to President Trump and that he's technically on paper not even affiliated with the so-called Doge, Department of Government Efficiency.
		But we know that Musk has kind of free access to the Oval Office, that he's been one of the president's top advisors throughout the last couple of weeks.
		They're even appearing later tonight on a pre-taped interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity that was taped last week here at the White House.
		So Musk is playing a direct role.
		Democrats are really voicing frustration over it.
		I even asked the White House press secretary a couple weeks ago about the apparent conflict of interest of Musk owning giant companies that have federal contracts with the government worth billions of dollars that he hasn't separated himself from while now being a special government employee.
		But the White House insists that he's doing everything by the book and that he'll essentially police himself and that right now he and the president have a great relationship.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Populaz, you're a member of the press, the back and forth over the last couple of days about the Associated Press' ability to cover, particularly over their views on the Gulf of America.
unidentified		Yeah, this has been kind of a bubbling issue that especially members of the press have been paying attention to.
		For several days in a row, the Associated Press has had reporters and photographers barred from everything from Oval Office events to press conferences to even a seat they had reserved on Air Force One to go down to Florida with the president.
		We've seen the White House Correspondents Association that helps represent all of us express concern about this and call for the White House to kind of reverse everything.
		But the White House is arguing that because the AP, which serves a global audience, is not recognizing kind of the America-only guidance that the Gulf of Mexico should now be called the Gulf of America, they feel they have the authority to bar the AP from various events.
		There's been a whole lot of members of the press here over the last few weeks, so they have been also saying, oh, there's a bunch of other media who we can bring in to fill their spot who will adhere by our guidelines.
		But press advocates argue that this is concerning because if there are other times that the administration kind of changes wording on something and insists that everybody follows along and a news outlet doesn't, this could foreshadow that they could also be potentially banned from an event.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Taylor, before we let you go, a quick bit about the thing you mentioned earlier.
		The president's returning to CPAC later this week.
		Tell the audience the event and what to expect.
unidentified		So CPAC is a years-long conservative kind of gathering, and it's taken place in various places over the years, but it's set to happen in Maryland, just across the river from D.C. In many ways, it's transformed into being the gathering of the Trump MAGA movement and kind of the Trump wing of the Republican Party.
		President Trump has spoken there year after year, and he gets a hero's welcome.
		But all the prominent kind of Make America Great Again influencers, members of Congress who are aligned with Trump, they'll all speak at this conference over the course of the latter part of the week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
		And we expect to hear from the president there, where I'm sure he'll give a long address talking about his accomplishments of the last few weeks and his goals for the months ahead.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Taylor Popolars is with Spectrum News.
		He's their national political reporter, and you can find him online.
		What's the website for the news website?
unidentified		SpectrumNews.com or Spectrum News Local, if you look it up.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Populars, thanks for your time.
unidentified		Thank you, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Two open forum.
		Thanks to those of you who called and wait, starting with Les, Les and New York, Republican line, you're first up.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I'm very upset with the open borders.
		I served in Denmark with 11th Special Forces one time and we were actually attacked by some Muslims.
		And they destabilize places and they don't integrate.
		There's been an awful lot of people killed in the United States by illegal aliens.
		Illegal aliens were identified over 20 years ago as a future problem to destabilize countries.
		And that's what's going on in Europe right now.
		You keep having drive-bys and people plowing into crowds and everything else.
		And I served with a sergeant in special ops once, and his favorite line was, never trust the CIA.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Marilyn, up next in Ohio, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Marilyn, thanks for calling.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yes.
		I was calling about the Gaza and other subjects as much as I can get in.
		Usually when we talk about a two-state, Republicans are the first ones to call in and talk about the Bible, the Holy Land, and prophecy and how sinful it would be.
		But yet they're going to let America own Gaza.
		And he's going to use the tax dollars that he's taken away from America to help build up that country so he can plant his hotels, casinos, and golf courses.
		He's going to use that money for Panama and all the other countries he's wanting to take over.
		Those costs money.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Pat is next.
unidentified		Another thing is the policy of the Republican Party is to give more to the rich and take from those who have the least.
unidentified		They're the first to call up here and defend the rich man.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Pat is in New York, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, can you hear me?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yep, you're on.
unidentified		Yeah, I just want to say that we were looking at the last interview regarding Gaza again.
		You know, we know the history.
		We know the injustice.
		We know the power of the lobby in this country, which takes away the democracy that we supposedly have because we're controlled by the money of an elite minority.
		The solution, from the northern border of Gaza, going to the sea, we should create that new state of Palestine.
		And it would help us politically.
		It would help us internationally.
		We would get the agreement of a lot of nations that are against us.
		It would lower our security problems by doing the right thing and showing the old American belief in doing what was right as compared to doing what's wrong.
		And also help perhaps even make Jerusalem an international city with no flag and protecting what is the new borders of Israel and the Israeli people within it while protecting the Palestinians.
		It would be a show to the world that we're doing the right thing and it would work for us.
		It would alleviate a great deal of animosity against this country and help us in so many ways.
		And, you know, that's the solution.
		We should talk about solutions and we should be real about them.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Pat in New York, the New York Times reporting that Russia released another American held on drug charges Monday.
		What the Kremlin acknowledged was a goodwill gesture in the eve of those talks between senior Russian officials and the U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia.
		The American Caleb Byers Wayne was arrested February 7th in the Moscow airport on charges of carrying a small amount of marijuana in response to a question about Mr. Wayne's release.
		Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters that the talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday would be about restoring relations between Moscow and Washington and, quote, so certain events can be viewed in this context.
		It's not clear how broad the talks will be, but they will focus on the war in Ukraine.
		The U.S. team is led by officials that President Trump is named to negotiate to an end to war.
		That's from the New York Times.
		Let's go to Carolyn.
		Carolyn in Missouri, Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, this is Carolyn.
		I have a question.
		I want to know if all the convicts are running the White House and they're taking away the legal rights to people that are standing for the law.
		They're closing down the FBI.
		I have a case with the FBI, a mortgage fraud case.
		They are killing us as well as the people that are not in this country.
		Trump is not taking care of the people of the United States of America.
		He's taking care of his own personal pockets, him and Elon Musk.
		I want to know where the law is going to stand up for the people that are standing up for the law.
		I'm waiting on a case to be resolved.
		He's closing down FBIs.
		He's closing down the CIAs.
		He's closing down all of these businesses, these companies that help the people here in the United States.
		When is he going to start helping the people in the United States to stand on the right side?
		But I don't think he can.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Okay, Republican line.
		This is Becky in Ohio.
		You're next stop.
		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		I just am getting disappointed in hearing some of these people from Ohio that's a Democrat, from Missouri that's a Democrat, insinuating that Trump is trying to hurt us.
jody in minnesota ▲ ● ▼		He's trying to help us from all this fraudulent things that are going on with the government.
unidentified		Elon Musk isn't even getting money and paid for doing this.
		He is doing it on his own.
		Trump hired him to do that to, and he's allowed.
		It's an executive.
		It's just like anybody else that goes in to be a president can hire their own staff to take care of the business that needs to be taken care of.
		So people to say that we are, he's a criminal, it's not true.
		He's just trying to help the people.
		He's helping us people by finding out what's going on with our money.
		I'm a taxpayer.
		You're a taxpayer.
		They're a taxpayer.
		I can't believe they're so upset about this.
		We need to stop the spending.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Kentucky is next.
		Independent line.
		This is Henry.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I'm calling to object to Kash Patel being made the FBI director.
		He's a confessed anarchist that wants to destroy the FBI.
		Our last route to keep the rule of law are the courts.
		But other than the U.S. Marshals Service, the only other agency to enforce court orders is the much larger FBI.
		Admittedly, both agencies operate under the direction of a loyalist Department of Justice, but cutting the FBI would cripple enforcement of court orders and, too, would also cripple national security.
		Thanks for hearing me out.
		Listeners have to at least the end of Sunday to tell red state senators to reject Kash Patel.
		If Cattell is confirmed, it'll be like Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, and May Day all rolled into one for Mr. Putin.
		I urge listeners to sink Mr. Patel.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Henry in Kentucky there, the Associated Press reporting that in a surprise announcement, a top Hamas leader says the militant group will release six living Israeli hostages on Saturday, the bodies of four others on Thursday, including the remains of the Bibas family, for whom many Israelis had embodied the captives' plight in Gaza.
		Israel has said it is gravely concerned about Sherry Beebas and her two young sons, but has not confirmed their deaths.
		Hamas said they were killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier, early in the war.
		That's reporting from the Associated Press.
		Let's hear from Alice.
		Alice is in Oklahoma Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes.
		Little Reef, what's going on?
		It's so much better.
		So hello?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Oh, there's so much going on.
		I'm 96 years old, and I've never seen such mess going on in my lifetime.
		Trump said he's going to make it better again.
		When was it better than it is now?
		That's all I need to know.
		When was it better?
		If people ain't got no job, how they gonna be better?
		How they're gonna be better?
		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Alice there in Oklahoma, The Hill, reporting that the Department of Government Efficiency, at least from their part, had a post, saying on its website that it has found $55 billion in savings through a combination of efforts, including a reduction in the federal workforce.
		It said it estimated it had realized the $55 billion in savings by canceling or renegotiating leases and contracts, selling assets and canceling grants, finding regulatory savings, making programmatic changes to the government, and reducing the workforce.
		The U.S. Agency for International Development is listed as the top savings, where Doge found total contract savings and contract savings as a percentage of the federal government.
		The story from The Hill says that Musk and his Doge team quickly moved to dismantle that agency, which provides food for those in need around the world in the first month in office.
		There's more there.
		The Hill is where you can find that story about the efforts of Doge.
		Let's hear from Alabama, Independent Line.
		This is Alonzo.
		Alonzo in Alabama.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my phone call.
		I'm just calling in reference to the importance of voting.
		And for the ones who voted for Donald Trump, this is what you are getting.
		And you're getting the grocery bills are still high, groceries are still high.
		Eggs are still high.
		We have a situation dealing with the bird flu, which no one wants to talk about.
		And right now, this is what you voted for.
		And you want to say that he's helping.
		Well, this is a lot more commotion and confusion.
		And right now, we need some stable, not something that's going to be done to cause people to be more concerned about how much money it's going to need to go and purchase groceries.
		It's ridiculous.
		I have heard nobody talk about how high groceries are right now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Judy, up next in Tennessee, Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, I tried to get in earlier when you had the Middle Eastern specialist on.
		She didn't address the fact that Amnesty International has condemned the Israeli state, that the Israeli state's true mission is to cleanse the whole area of Israel, any Palestinians.
		This was founded by European non-religious Jews to dispossess the Palestinian people.
		People should look at on the Academy Awards, there is a documentary, No Other Land, found by a Palestinian and an Israeli of the Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, which is going on right now.
		This is blatant colonialism, and we don't need to have the name of the United States in there or Trump.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Judy Ver in Tennessee.
		Here are some things to watch out for of the various networks today.
		One o'clock this afternoon, afternoon, a discussion on U.S. allies and the Trump administration and partners are navigating the second Trump administration's presence in Washington, D.C.
		It's live from CSIS.
		That's at 1 o'clock.
		You can see that on C-SPAN2, our app C-SPANNOW, and our website at c-span.org.
		Later on this afternoon, around 4:30, I'll look at charges that elite colleges are not committed to free speech and rigorous academic instruction.
		This is at a forum hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.
		You can see that on our main channel, C-SPAN, as well as the app and the website.
		And then this evening, 6 o'clock, former Republican New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu on democracy and the Trump administration policies.
		This is at an event hosted by George Washington University.
		If you want to watch that on our main channel, C-SPAN, you can do that.
		As always, though, you can follow along on our app that you can download from the store of your choice and c-span.org.
		They're available, too.
		And in Tennessee from our Republican line, you're next up on this open forum.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		I'm thinking that remembering what Trump campaigned about, he said on day one that he was going to do something about the border, the immigration problem.
		And he also said he was going to do something about the groceries.
		He kept talking about the groceries are so high in the stores.
		And he said he was going to do that too on day one.
		So he should do both of them because he promised to lower the prices of groceries and three times more that we're having to pay for our utilities and everything else.
		And so he should keep his promise, like he said.
		He said he was going to do it on day one.
		The immigration, take care of the immigration problem.
		And he was also going to do something about lowering the prices that we have to pay for for groceries and everything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go to Dave in Las Vegas, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		How are you doing today?
		First of all, Trump is a communist fascist dictator.
		He's broken every law in the book.
		The Constitution says when he did that, he got people killed.
		When he sent them up to the White House, he got those officers killed.
		And then the ones that killed the officers, he pardoned them.
		There's something wrong with this guy mentally.
		And now he's starving millions of people all over the world, cutting U.S.AID, which is a good thing.
		There's something wrong with this guy.
		He's going to, we're in a crisis.
		People need to march on worship engine.
		Elon Musk shouldn't even be near the trade department.
		He wasn't elected.
		This guy is the biggest liar, the biggest con office guy in the world.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Diane, Diane's in Iowa, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're next up on this open forum.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hi.
		Good morning, Pedro.
		You're the guy.
		Donald Trump is a felon.
		I think everybody in the United States knows somebody that's a felon, and we all know how they treat you.
		It's like an alcoholic.
		You know, listen to me.
		But where's that $55 million that they think they found that saved America?
		Where does that go?
		Is it going to go back to the taxpayers or is it going to go towards a deficit?
		Because a deficit is growing right now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Should it go back to the taxpayers or the deficit?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What would be your choice?
unidentified		I don't know because they don't even know.
		We got a rich guy that's going to try to make all his stuff better.
		He put a tariff on steel and aluminum.
		What is his truck made of?
		It's really sad that I emailed Grassley and Ernst.
		It's not even worth to reply back because they're marching soldiers.
		And it's like, like yesterday, I didn't know in Des Moines they were going to the Capitol.
		It's freaking freezing here anyways.
		But I so want to do stuff.
		And I'm in a little town.
		Yeah, I'm rural, but the Democrats here aren't reaching out to us.
		And there's not many at the state house anyways.
		It's Iowa.
		Oh, man, don't even start me on COVID-KIMI.
		She's just to waste what she's doing to her children here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Diane there in Iowa.
		The House is out this week.
		The Senate is back, but with the House out and government funding running out on March the 14th, it was Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, talking about what would be needed, at least from the Democrats in the House, when it comes to agreeing to a spending deal to keep the government open after March the 14th.
		Here's a bit of that exchange from Sunday.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		Republicans have consistently shut down the government in the past, and it would be no surprise if they do just that this time around.
		There's a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate.
		They have a responsibility to make sure that government remains open and can function.
		As Democrats, with respect to any spending agreement, our view, our test is whether that spending agreement meets the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety, our national security, and certainly the economic well-being of everyday Americans.
		Rosa DeLauro is the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
		She's in off and on conversations with her Republican colleague in the House, as well as our Republican and Democratic colleagues in the Senate.
		We'll see how that unfolds over the next few weeks.
		But we are going to make sure that any agreement that is ultimately signed off on has to be one that meets the needs of the American people, and it has to be implemented fully in compliance with the law.
jonathan karl ▲ ● ▼		Just quickly before you go, have you had any conversations with the White House?
unidentified		Have you talked to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles or the president about this?
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		I have not had any conversation with the White House, but I do expect that as we get closer and closer to March 14th, that those conversations will perhaps intensify.
		And at the end of the day, what we have been clear about is that this budget that is working its way through the House of Representatives is a non-start.
		Every single Democrat opposed it a few days ago in the budget committee, and I believe that that will continue to be our position because it's out of control.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from our independent line in Indianapolis.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is James.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Pedro.
		This is a great format that C-SPAN offers.
		You're doing a great job.
		I enjoy hearing everybody's opinion.
		Honestly, I did vote Democrat this past election for Paris.
		Everybody needs to know elections have consequences.
		He is our president, Mr. Trump.
		And whether we like it or not, we need to rally and come together in a civil manner and move forward.
		I think a lot of good things could come.
		I'm grateful to hear him say that he's not going to touch Social Security or Medicare.
		That's, you know, something anybody can look up.
		You can hear him respond to that direct question.
		So you just have to trust him on that.
		And if anything does go awry in terms of Social Security or Medicare, it'll wash out in the next election cycle.
		But I enjoy everybody's comments.
		This is just wonderful where common people can just call in anywhere from the country and be heard.
		So thank you, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		James in Indianapolis, let's hear from another one from our independent line.
		This is from North Carolina.
		Stephanie, hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning.
		We've got a lot going on here.
		For all the MAGA people, what makes them think that Elon Musk and everybody up there that's destroying our country is not making money off of it.
		They're making salaries.
		They were hired.
		They have jobs.
		So they're not working for free.
		And for the Democrats in Congress, I think they should just let the budget come to a screeching halt.
		They're not going to do anything that they say they're going to do if they pass it anyway.
		And the senators just want more money on this immense thing they're trying to pass with more money for the wall and more money for defense when the defense gets 90% of the budget to begin with.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thanks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Stephanie there in North Carolina.
		And then this is Rosa.
		Rosa from Ohio, Democrat Slime.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I'm well, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How about yourself?
unidentified		Okay, I'm good.
		I just wanted to say, okay, I'm 87 years old and I'm on Social Security.
		Now, if they cut Social Security and everything, what are we going to do?
		And I figured that the Republicans do not care anything about us.
		They only think about themselves.
		And that goes for Trump.
		And as far as Moses is concerned, they need to get rid of him.
		I don't know what's what, but I would wish that they wouldn't cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Diane in New York, Republican line, last call in this open forum.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Diane, go ahead.
unidentified		Well, thank you.
		I am very upset about these people that call in and have such disregard for the truth.
		Do they realize there are checks going out, Social Security checks, going out to people that are 360 years old?
		Trump and Musk, Musk found this recently.
		There's millions going out to people that are over 100 years old, 200, 300 years old.
		So I would praise President Trump and thank him for finding waste in the government.
		Musk is only finding the waste.
		Trump is initiating and redoing all the waste in this government, and they are not after a penny for themselves.
		So please, America, get behind your president.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Diane, Diane in New York, just to show you this from PolitiFact, to Diane's point, this is a story that's been going on for the last couple of days as far as the age of certain Americans supposedly still getting Social Security checks.
		Some of the things from PolitiFact finds that government oversight agencies have warned for years that Social Security should do more to improve its accuracy rate and curb improper payments.
		Audits showing that fewer than 1% of Social Security payments are improperly made, but because the program is so big that even the tiny fraction means that large dollar amounts are spent.
		And then the explanation for the 150-year-olds receiving checks could relate to arcane coding practices, according to experts.
		You can see more of that, though, and read more about that if you want from PolitiFact and other sites.
		That's it for the program today.
		Another edition of Washington Journal comes your way tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
		We'll see you then.
unidentified		On Capitol Hill, the U.S. Senate gavels in at 3 p.m. Eastern.
unidentified		Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker will deliver the annual reading of George Washington's 1796 farewell address, which rotates between the parties.

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