As we always have and as we always will together, because in this moment, we will show those who came before us and those who will come after us that this chamber, this body, and this state that we understood the assignments.
unidentified
Thank you all very much.
God bless this state, and let's leave no one behind in our work.
On Friday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, along with Governors Jared Polis, Kevin Stitt, and others, will speak to the National Governors Association.
They're expected to discuss energy reliability and resilience and how to reform and accelerate energy projects.
Watch live at 2:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org.
Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days.
We'll explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians, authors, and through the C-SPAN archives.
We learn about accomplishments and setbacks and how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to the present day.
Saturday, the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency.
At the height of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt defeated President Herbert Hoover in a landslide.
In his inaugural speech, he said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Early in his term, the president called for a special session of Congress to tackle the economic crisis.
Dozens of bills were passed to put people back to work and improve living conditions.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who later coined the phrase, First 100 Days.
Watch American History TV's series, First 100 Days.
Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2.
Well, it was last week that President Trump had a phone call with Vladimir Putin of Russia.
This week, top U.S. and Russian officials met to discuss the future of Ukraine.
And after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed frustration about being excluded from those talks, President Trump has amped up his criticism of Zelensky.
President Zelensky talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that basically couldn't be won.
That never had to start and never would have started if I was president, not even a chance.
And it didn't start for four years, never would have started.
But a war that he, without the U.S. and Trump, will never be able to settle.
They'll never settle that war without our involvement.
That's why they did such a great job this weekend.
That's why Saudi Arabia did such a great job this weekend in hosting.
The United States has spent $200 billion more than Europe, and Europe's money is guaranteed.
They get their money back.
It's a form of a loan.
Nobody knows that.
I know that.
I said, why isn't somebody saying, you know, we do it the same way?
And we spent much more money.
We have to equalize.
But while the United States gets nothing back, so they get their money back.
It's a loan.
We just give our money.
And we had a deal based on rare earth and things, but they broke that deal.
But they broke it two days ago.
We had a deal because I said we're spending $350 billion and Europe gets their money back in the form of a loan and we don't.
We're just giving the money hand over fist.
That's the Biden administration for you.
But they're no longer dealing with the same United States as they were dealing with a few months ago.
Why didn't crooked Joe Biden demand equalization and that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us and that there's a very big, beautiful ocean of separation.
This is, you know, we're helping Europe.
We're trying to help Europe.
On top of this, Zelensky admits that half of the money that we sent them is missing.
They don't know where the money is.
He said, well, we don't know where half of it is.
That's great.
Wonderful.
He refuses to have elections.
It's low in the real Ukrainian polls.
I mean, how can you be high with every city is being demolished?
It's hard to be high.
Somebody said, oh, no, his polls are good.
Give me a break.
Every city is being demolished.
They look like a demolition site, every single one of them.
And the only thing he was really good at was playing Joe Biden like a fiddle.
He played him like a fiddle.
That's an expression we use, yes, sir, to say that he's pretty easy, pretty easy.
A dictator without elections.
Zelensky better move fast or he's not going to have a country left.
President Trump from late yesterday, taking your phone calls this morning as we talk about the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship, what's happened in the past 48 hours.
Here's some quotes from just yesterday from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking to Ukrainian TV, saying President Trump unfortunately lives in this disinformation space, saying at a news conference yesterday that he wished Donald Trump's team had more truth, and then tweeting this out yesterday afternoon, saying he spoke with U.S. Senator Republican Lindsey Graham.
We greatly appreciate the bicameral and bipartisan support of the U.S. Congress to the Ukrainian people in our fight against Russian aggression.
As always, he said, Senator Graham is constructive and doing a lot to help bring peace closer.
It's all important that security guarantees remain on the table, he said, and that they work for Ukraine for real and lasting peace, saying thank you for your support.
Vlodimir Zelensky yesterday on his ex-page.
Here's some of the headlines in this morning's major papers about this relationship and where it goes from here.
Allies fear the U.S. may realign its Russia policy.
As the Washington Post headlined, Donald Trump appears to move closer to Putin.
This is the front page of the New York Times.
The headline, Trump calls Zelensky a dictator as feud grows.
The news analysis piece from Peter Baker, a hero to Biden, is a villain to his successor.
This from the Washington Times this morning: Donald Trump topples the U.S. stance on Ukraine.
Some of the headlines, we'll go through some of the reaction in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
And we mostly want to hear from you.
Phone lines open with numbers for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as usual.
This is Doug Upfirst in Ohio, line for Democrats.
Good morning.
unidentified
Well, hello.
First of all, Trump's the one who wants to be a dictator, not Zelensky.
And, you know, the Republican Party ought to be ashamed of themselves for keeping supporting this man because he's a one-to-be king.
And if he wants to be king, he can be Louis XVI.
But I support Ukraine all the way because they're trying to stop the evil threat of the communists all over the world.
You give them an inch over there.
Hey, I'm Putin.
And then Geo think he can take China, North Korea will think they can take South Korea, and the world being a bigger mess.
And Trump's making it a mess as it is here at home.
And now he's trying to make it a mess overseas, too.
And we ain't going to turn Gaza into a gosh darn resort for anybody.
You know, I'm just upset with the man the whole time since he's been in.
It's been the longest month of my life watching this guy cut up my beautiful democracy the way he has.
And I just hate the man and everything he does anymore.
He's destructive.
He's the most destructive thing this country's had since King George III.
Like I said, if he wants to be a king, he can be Louis XVI of France.
Vladimir Zelensky talking about his call with Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator.
No question in Lindsey Graham's mind about who's to blame here.
This was his tweet yesterday, his ex-post, I should say.
When it comes to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I blame Putin above all others.
If you're looking for American politicians to blame, Biden and Obama are on the top of my list.
They were pathetically weak in handling Putin and failed to protect Ukraine from invasion.
To the chorus of Democrats who now love Ukraine after they were invaded, where were you before Putin's invasion?
Why didn't you up your game as I encouraged you to Lindsey Graham saying, finally, President Donald Trump is Ukraine's best hope to end this war honorably and justly.
I believe he will be successful and he will achieve this goal in the Trump way.
His comments on X. More comments from other members of Congress will go through, but we continue to hear from you.
Mountain Home, Arkansas, Republican Joel.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call this morning.
I support President Trump and I voted for him.
I'd just like to say a few things.
Now, we have given this country $200 billion.
We got a state here, North Carolina.
We have not taken care of those people.
And they are out in the cold today.
They are nobody.
I just can't believe what we are doing.
And the reason I'm saying this, we pulled out of Afghanistan and we left all that equipment over there.
And then Iran and those people got that equipment, selling it on the black market.
Now, this president didn't have to take all this on.
He's a billionaire.
And we've got $36 trillion in the hole now.
And if we can't meet this payment each year, and the payment is much as our budget is each year now, what does the people not understand?
I just wanted to say that all the Republicans who are going to be calling in and who still believe Joe Biden was too cognitively impaired to be president, I don't know why they're not saying the same thing about Donald Trump because it's clear something's going wrong with him.
There's no sort of proof that you can show me from him that Vladimir Selensky is any kind of dictator.
Vladimir Selensky is a hero who cares about his people and is trying to save them from war.
Why doesn't he share the same rhetoric about Vladimir Putin?
Why doesn't he share the same rhetoric about Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-un, who he seems to get along with very well, might I add?
I just want to say that, like I said, all these Republicans who think that Joe Biden was too cognitively impaired to be president, I think Trump and his team of geriatric fucks with erectile dysfunction should be taken out of office.
Plenty of criticism about this decision in the major national print papers this morning on the op-ed pages, including from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout.
He puts more pressure on Kiev for a deal than he does on the Kremlin.
This is the Washington Post editorial board this morning.
U.S. government's biggest cut is in global credibility right now, writing about Ukraine.
Cal Thomas writing in the mostly conservative pages of the Washington Times op-ed pages.
No substitute for victory.
Putin must be defeated is what Cal Thomas writes.
This is from Nicholas Kristoff in the pages in the New York Times.
Their op-ed pages, a humiliating month to be an American, and it goes on.
If you're looking for support for Donald Trump's criticism of Ukraine, conservative media online has a few articles on it, including Alex Marlowe writing for Breitbart.com.
Yes, Zelensky is a dictator is the headline of his piece.
And then Red State is another one of those websites that you can go to.
The headline on Red State's website talking about Donald Trump slamming dictator Zelensky.
And then JD Vance tags in and hammers Vlodimir for bad mouthing the president.
Getting your reaction this morning, there's plenty for you to choose from.
This is Doug in Newport News, Virginia, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I don't understand why everybody's upset.
Yes, I support Ukraine.
I believe Trump still supports Ukraine.
But when Trump asked for Ukraine to give us rights to start paying some of the money back to help them, everybody's upset.
Why are we the world sucker?
Draining Resources Without Loss00:15:37
unidentified
I did 20 years in the military and retired.
I've been over there.
And I can tell you, we should have been getting paid in the Gulf War.
If you give Trump time and let him run his course, he knows what he's doing.
Yeah, he likes to piss people off, but that's just part of the strategy.
You remember, yeah, if you remember, everybody sat back when Hitler went into Poland and just said, okay, it's just Poland, let him have it, until he ended up taking almost all of Europe.
And then we had to get involved.
It's time we stopped being the police of the world.
Anyway, Trump Putin is maneuvering to have Trump do the same thing he did in Afghanistan when he made that peace with the Taliban and left the Afghan government out of it.
The military, the government folded like thin air.
That's what left the equipment there.
And that's going to be the same thing in Ukraine if we pull out and Ukraine can't make it.
And they'll end up losing.
And you'll have a mess like the last gentleman just said.
So we have to do it now or else we're going to spend troops later.
Why make Russia great again with the equipment we leave there like we did in Afghanistan, like Trump did in Afghanistan?
One more thing.
Oh, yeah.
You know, Putin's maneuvering this.
He is not, make no mistake, he's going to take Ukraine and he's afraid of a democratic and free Ukraine more than he is NATO and Ukraine.
If a free and democratic Ukraine, Russia citizens see that, you know, right on their doorstep, it's the end for Putin.
He knows it.
It's not NATO.
It's a free and democratic Ukraine.
And this martial law in Ukraine, how can you get a vote?
You can't get an honest vote, and Trump himself should know about honest votes.
Bob focusing at the end there on the criticism about delayed elections, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal bringing up that point when Donald Trump makes the criticism of Vlodymir Zelensky as a, quote, dictator.
They note that Ukraine has delayed elections while it is operating under martial law and fighting a war for survival.
Its constitution allows it to do this.
They note Britain under Nazi siege didn't hold an election during World War II, asking the question, was Churchill a dictator?
Also on the topic of Afghanistan, they touch on that as well.
The oddity so far, they write, is that Mr. Trump seems to want a peace deal more than Mr. Putin does, which is the opposite of leverage in any negotiation.
Mr. Trump wants to be able to claim that he brought peace as promised as a candidate.
But a cautionary tale is Joe Biden.
President Biden tried to wash his hands of Afghanistan, but instead his retreat set in motion a chain of global crises that defined his presidency.
Mr. Biden tried to sell his withdrawal as a triumph of military logistics, but the public knew better.
Americans may have a similar reaction if they see Russia emerge triumphant and realize this was not the peace that they had in mind.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
This is Charleston, West Virginia, Alberta, Democrat.
Good morning.
unidentified
Thank you, Doug.
I appreciate the time and energy.
But he hyperlies everything, and he's been spewing the answer on his thing last night of what he thinks of the United States.
And the three things was love, respect, and strength.
But in my total observation, love.
He only loves his special ones.
Respect, there is none except for the elite.
His strength, by bullying everyone who's not in his boat.
But also we can loop this up or, you know, there is a loophole here.
I mean, actually, Trump's mother was born in the United Kingdom.
So, you know, it's funny that Zelensky used the phrase, he said something about Trump being in a disinformation bubble.
Funny that he uses the word disinformation because that word was pushed by the CIA a few years back when we had COVID.
And you notice all the media outlets started using the words misinformation and disinformation overnight at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Now, with Zelensky using that phrase, it's funny because it was the CIA that actually put him in place.
What if that was the phrase he chose instead of disinformation?
unidentified
Well, I guess that would just be putting it in layman's terms.
But the fact that he was using disinformation and misinformation, those were literally, those words came from the same people that started using the words conspiracy theorists.
The thing about Zelensky is, is you know that a month before Zelensky even came into power in Ukraine, Victoria Newland, there is a tape of her, and you can look this up on YouTube.
She was speaking at a conference.
She was literally naming the people who she wanted to be in Zielensky's cabinet.
Victoria Newland is the same deep state operative who got us involved in Iraq, in Afghanistan.
Did you ever support spending for U.S. dollars going to Ukraine to help fight this war?
unidentified
I don't think I'll tell you why.
If I could put it this way, there is a move.
We had 13 countries who were involved in NATO to begin with.
Vladimir Putin has been telling us for 25 years that Ukraine was the line for NATO.
And Biden sends Kamala Harris over there three days before Putin invaded and says in front of television cameras, we'd like to invite Ukraine to join NATO, knowing very well that that was the red line.
And I'm not saying that Putin is a good guy.
I don't know why Democrats, you know, Democrats seem to hate Russia now.
They didn't seem to hate it so much when it was the Soviet Union.
That's kind of curious.
But let's put that aside for a second.
Two things can be true at once.
Yes, Putin is a bad guy, but that doesn't mean Zelensky is not a bad guy.
He got rid of all television stations over there except for skate run television and radio.
He closed down Orthodox Christian churches, and he canceled elections.
And so the NATO alliance between U.S. and the European NATO countries has single-handedly taken a small country like Ukraine and decimated what is what was once considered one of the premier military forces in the world within four years and no American life spent.
unidentified
So this is a great thing for America.
And pulling back is really hard, honestly, to see what's going on.
To see a man like Donald Trump, who is clearly compromised, morally corrupt, and to listen to Americans speak about this man as if he is some kind of savior for America, it's very worrisome for the future.
It is 7.30 on the East Coast, and we are taking your calls on the rift that we have seen in just the past 48 hours between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, asking you what it could mean on the international stage, what you think it means here at home.
Phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and independents as usual.
And also, we've been taking you through some of the reaction on Capitol Hill.
Here's a few more comments from X, from members of Congress.
Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, putting the Ukrainian situation together with the budget framework that the Senate is working on right now, and the House as well, saying, I'm not voting for a budget framework that facilitates more taxpayer money to Ukraine, period.
This is Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna saying the deep state in Washington wants the Russian-Ukraine war to persist forever at the expense of American taxpayers.
We can't let this money laundering scheme continue.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman, saying the Ukraine war has always been a deep state funded and controlled money laundering operation and proxy war against Russia.
Zelensky is an actor and a green jumpstute that extorts money from everyone, she writes.
Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, saying that Donald Trump and his American oligarchs are openly aligning themselves now with Putin and his Russian oligarchs.
This Putin-Trump alliance means abandoning our allies, supporting authoritarianism, and undermining our Democratic traditions.
The independent sender there.
This is Mark Mourner, Democrat from Virginia.
President Trump should really have a conversation with his own intelligence officials before he again blames Ukraine for being invaded by Russia.
And Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic sender, saying there always was Trump-Russia.
There still is Trump-Russia.
The early actions of the Trump administration signal the continuing force of Trump Russia.
Feel free to add to the list.
But he starts noting his.
Some of the posts' yesterday reaction on X, and we're mostly interested in your reaction this morning.
Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
JC is an independent.
Mobile, Alabama.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Listening to Trump's rhetoric, it's surreal what's happening.
It's actually difficult to believe that this is really happening, but nonetheless, it is.
Replay Of Munich00:01:48
unidentified
That someone could have it or be orchestrating it, stating it, conveying it so absolutely backwards.
We're seeing right now a kind of replay of the, we could say the ghost of Neville Chamberlain is stalking.
It was fitting that the recent meeting was in Munich, the famous site, infamous site, where Chamberlain came back and said that, and yes, unfortunately, it's a sort of a comparison to Hitler.
It was a historical fact that Neville Chamberlain said that Adolf Hitler was a man we could deal with and trust and believe in.
And three different times he signed pacts that he brought back to England saying that Adolf Hitler was someone that could be trusted.
We remember several years ago, Vladimir Putin gave a grand and sweeping speech in which he called up the greatness of Russian from antiquity, the Russian Empire, that he wanted, he was open about it.
Give him that.
He wanted he aims to restore, reconquest the old czarist Russian empire, and he's doing an excellent job of it.
Now, one other thought on we all have heard of the Nobel Peace Prize.
If this thing somehow ends up being a Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Trump or perhaps Trump and Putin, what it should be is it should be the Nobel Appeasement Prize, not the Nobel Peace Prize.
He is appeasing Vladimir Putin.
Also, noticeably absent were the war crimes, the vast numbers of hideous, vile war crimes that have been documented and verified.
Also, the thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children who have been absconded, kidnapped, and brought into Russia forcibly.