And we both knew how lucky we were to have flexibility with our jobs that allowed him to focus on the full-time job of trying to get better and me to focus on the full-time job of caring for him, of loving him, of marrying him.
And eventually when he found out that his cancer was terminal to walk him to his passing and I decided to run for office because I do not believe that in Delaware, our state of neighbors, or here in the United States in the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth at that time and that ability to get care should be a matter of luck.
unidentified
I believe it should be the law of the land.
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Today, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser will speak about the future of the nation's capital over the next four years under the second Trump administration.
Live coverage from the National Press Club gets underway at 11 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
Also on C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org.
Yes, I think a great example of this is on immigration.
For pretty much my entire life, we've been told we have two options on immigration, more illegal immigration or more legal immigration.
But actually, if you look at public opinion polls, Gallup last summer and Harvard Harris back in 2018 had a famous poll.
It shows that the vast majority of Americans want to drastically reduce all immigration.
Not because we don't like immigrants, not because we have anything against people from various countries.
We just happen to have right now the largest foreign-born percentage of the population ever.
It's very difficult to assimilate people, and I think a lot of people believe we just have to put the brakes on this, especially with illegal immigration as such a serious problem.
So I think this new coalition is formed in part because people just feel that neither major political party has really represented them in recent decades, which breeds opportunity.
I think that there's been a multicultural push for some decades now not really to assimilate immigrants, to view America less as a melting pot and more as a salad bowl, as I was taught in school actually.
And so this is just reflected in public opinion polls.
The Harvard Harris poll came out and said that most Americans want the cap on legal immigration to be 500,000.
Now, when you drill into the numbers, you realize we take in between a million and 1.2 million people per year.
That's a lot of people.
The movement of people into the country over the last 60, 65 years is the largest movement of people in recorded history.
So it's no knock.
I like people from all over the world.
But at a certain point, you need to make sure that you maintain some kind of social cohesion.
Well, even reducing illegal immigration will have an effect on the economy, of course.
And this has been the way that mass migration has been sold, not just in the United States, but in Europe, which is that the economy will collapse if we don't take in people from around the world.
Which is why I think you're seeing more of a focus now on family policy, on encouraging people to get married, to have children.
And so it's a thorny social problem, without question.
It has to be done carefully.
It has to be done in an intentional way.
But as JD Vance said the other day, this was at the Munich Security Conference, he said, you know, the United States is not merely an economic zone.
Our chief goal is not merely to tick up the GDP.
We're a nation.
We're citizens with rights, with traditions, with a way of life.
And so we need to balance that as well and make sure we don't put the cart before the horse.
If you'd like to join our conversation with Michael Knowles, you can do so.
Our lines are 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and 202748-8002 for Independents.
The Washington Post, Ipsos, has put out a poll, and I wanted to share the results on the question, do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?
And right now, his approval of U.S. adults overall is 45%, 53% disapproved.
Of course, it's an even longer standing conflict that goes back not just to the Biden administration, but to 2014, to the Obama administration.
I suspect he's referring to Zelensky as a dictator because Zelensky has suspended elections and has instituted martial law for all intents and purposes in Ukraine.
So there's a kind of funny argument right now for the people who want to continue the war ad infinitum.
They say that this is a war for democracy and there's a great fear.
Newsweek had an article about this just last week.
So there's a great fear that if Ukraine holds elections, the voters might kick out Zelensky.
It's strange that President Trump hasn't called Putin a dictator who has been in power for 25 years, holds sham elections, and all of his critics end up poisoned.
Well, just to use the example of the last 20 or 25 years now, Trump's administration is the only administration during which Vladimir Putin did not further invade another country.
He invaded Georgia under Bush.
He invaded Crimea under Obama.
He went into Ukraine even further in 2014.
Then under Trump, he kind of stopped.
And then under Joe Biden, of course, he launched this massive invasion.
So I think President Trump's most precise comment on Ukraine is that the war would not have started on his watch.
And people say that Trump boasts or he exaggerates.
In that example, though, we have clear historical evidence.
But what I'm even more confident of is that Joe Biden could not do that.
What I'm more confident of is Barack Obama could not do that when this war broke out in 2014.
So I'm willing to give President Trump a chance here.
And the question for the people who don't want President Trump to try to broker a peace is, what is your idea for the end of the war?
You know, as of right now, it seems to me the American grand strategy, stated explicitly by many people within and without the government, is to allow Ukraine to remain a meat grinder so that we can reduce the capacity of the Russian military, which is a euphemism to just kill more Russians, and to sacrifice an entire generation of Ukrainians in order to do it.
This does not seem to me a moral view of the war, and it does not seem to me sustainable when we're talking about a conflict that could easily expand.
It could even lead to potentially a global conflict when we're dealing with a major nuclear power.
So President Trump here has a realistic vision of foreign policy, and I think he's much more interested in peace than many people in Washington.
And I think a lot of Americans voted for him because of that.
We'll start with Al in Watertown, Tennessee, Independent.
You're on with Michael Knowles.
unidentified
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
I'll first ask the question to make a couple of comments.
I would like the guests to address the bifurcation of the Republican Party.
You have the MAGA Trump crew versus the GOP establishment.
You see that even in the call-in categories.
About 40% of people are independents, about 30% Democrats, and 30% Republicans.
But of the Republicans, I would say half of those are MAGA.
So only 15% of your call-ins are MAGA Republicans.
The next thing, the moderator brought up the Putin being a dictator in his election records.
Well, I'll remind everyone that people in Washington, D.C. vote for Democrats about 94%.
That's only matched by African dictators.
And the format where we have the New York Times, Washington Post, as a fact check in the topic generation, you know, the New York Times took $29 million from HHS, and they used that to forward government narratives and cancel people.
The Washington Post took money from USAID.
Politico took USAID money.
So when you spread all of those newspapers out, understand that that's not news.
There has been a big split between the older Bush-Romney wing of the party and this new Trump wing.
And the way that this is often presented in the establishment media is that this is a hostile takeover of the Republican Party or somehow the true Republicans have been rejected.
It's a great threat to the party.
However, I can't help but notice, Trump has grown the party.
So when you look at 2024, first popular vote win in 20 years, that is an expansion of the party.
When you look at Trump getting one in five black male voters, 46% of Hispanics, something like 48% of women over 45, and then the most shocking number to me was 40% of women under the age of 30.
We were told this was the voting group that was most inclined to vote for Kamala, a huge portion of them, that's a number from the AP, that they voted for Donald Trump.
I think, I don't know.
I totally understand that Trump has changed the Republican Party.
But if I'm looking at those numbers and I'm a GOP strategist, it's pretty clear he's changed the party for the better.
I just want to bring up, since you did mention Newsweek and the caller mentioned the New York Times, here's a fact check that says the U.S. government did not give the New York Times, quote, tens of millions of dollars.
Just to clarify that, let's talk to Pat in Huntington, West Virginia, Democrat.
Good morning, Pat.
unidentified
Good morning.
I want to kind of put a little comical air on it.
The Republicans, every election cycle, come up with some kind of a make America great again or some kind of a mantra that they go through that they use.
And I'm reminded of Andy Griffith's show where Barney makes a U-turn and he gives a ticket to Gomer for making a U-turn.
And Gomer tries to stop Marney and give him a ticket and he says, citizens arrest, citizens arrest.
Well, the Republicans' mantra this time has been waste, fraud, and abuse.
And if you listen to it, it sounds quite a bit like waste, fraud, and like citizens' arrest, waste, fraud, and abuse, waste, fraud, and abuse.
I think there is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.
I think most Americans would agree.
In fact, I think most Democrats in this town, especially those who are familiar with the government, would acknowledge, yes, there are some inefficiencies that could be corrected.
Trump is more than welcome to have his face on Mount Rushmore, though I think it would be more fitting to put his face on Mount McKinley.
He's taken a great interest in President McKinley.
He's renaming that mountain back to Mount McKinley.
So, you know, Trump's an American original.
He shouldn't be up there with those four other guys.
He needs his own mountain.
Now, also in unrealistic scenarios, there's this question that's been raised as to whether or not Trump will serve a third term.
He's obviously term limited by the Constitution.
It's worth pointing out, however, that President Reagan, great St. Ronald, did campaign in his last year in office and after he left office to repeal the amendment that term limits the president, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
It seems a little bit like a Rube Goldberg political machine for Trump to become the Speaker of the House, and then, I don't know, the other two guys leave and he becomes the president.
It reminds me of people in 2018 who said, here's one weird trick for Bernie to get the Democrat nomination.
You know, I think that's not going to happen.
And more importantly, for Trump's legacy, getting back to what we were talking about a little earlier, Trump has legitimately changed the Republican Party.
I think he's done this for the better.
And I think in many ways, he has restored some of the best aspects of the Republican Party.
And so the question for his legacy is going to be what happens after Trump does leave office.
And I think there are a number of contenders who could pick up the mantle for President Trump.
But I think you're going to see his legacy not merely through Trump installing himself as Caesar and remaining president until he's 500 years old.
I think you're going to see it in his political successors, and there are many of them.
I want to just ask you about some things that some of our callers in our last segment said, that they're worried that President Trump will announce some sort of a national emergency, a state of emergency, and suspend elections, that there won't even be elections after this.
I take it you, number one, disagree with that, and number two, believe that the Republican Party would stand up to that and refuse to go along with that.
You know, what Trump has done most conspicuously in his first month in power is reduce his own power because he is streamlining the federal government.
He is reducing the size and scope of the government.
He is trying to get all of those inefficiencies out of there.
So very few future dictators would remove their own powers, their first acts in office.
By slashing his budgets, by slashing the scope of the executive branch, I think that's exactly what will happen.
And in fact, that's the stated goal of President Trump's actions.
Now, you get back to this question of elections and the peaceful transfer of power.
I'm old enough to remember Bush v. Gore 2000 when Democrats did not accept the results of that election.
Hillary Clinton referring to President Trump's first election as illegitimate.
I think Stacey Abrams is still pretending to be governor of Georgia somewhere.
So if anyone is going to question the results of elections or to hold on to power illegitimately, I would have a greater fear that that would come from Democrats than from Republicans.
Here is David in Flemington, New Jersey, Independent.
Hi, David.
unidentified
Good morning, and thank you.
I think an area where Republicans and Democrats could come together to really stop abuse would be in the community action programs that stand in the middle of the money stream between the federal government and Head Start.
Head Start is a highly emotional issue because it is iconic from Lyndon Johnson.
And it's in Project 2025 because it is such a red flag.
But the bipartisan piece is that these community action programs around the United States collect, I don't know, in the range of a billion dollars a year, and they are not monitored by either Republicans or Democrats for how they use the money.
Here in Flemington, the minute Flemington dropped below the federal poverty line, the Community Action Program headquartered in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, rushed into Flemington and filled it with programs, including Head Start and Early Head Start.
And I'm not debating the lives of children, okay?
That's cruel.
I'm not debating who should get it, how long you should be here, et cetera, et cetera.
But what this community action program in Phillipsburg and what they do around the country, they treat those federal dollars as their own.
They pay their executives whatever they blame well, please.
And I know, as a matter of fact, they pay poverty wages to the employees who are not federal employees.
They are employees of these private community action programs.
And they pay them such a low wage, but just above the poverty line themselves where they can't get Medicaid or food stamps, they are outrageous in terms of benefits.
You know, when you zoom out to the 30,000-foot view, nobody in the country objects to educating children.
When you zoom out to the 30-foot view, nobody in the country objects to the efficient and just use of the government and some kind of staff or executive office to carry that out.
The devil's in the details.
So, of course, that is the case.
I think a lot of what you've seen from the cuts at USAID are just highlighting for people how absurd some of the uses of their taxpayer dollars are.
One example that came out last week was Rory Stewart, the former UK politician who's now a professor at Yale.
He recently picked a fight with JD Vance.
Rory Stewart was complaining that his wife's non-government organization had a contract with USAID, and they were going to stiff this NGO, Stewart's wife, for a million dollars left on the contract.
And he was quite upset about this.
And we asked, okay, well, what does the organization do?
And it turns out that one of their initiatives is to teach Afghan citizens about the modern art of Marcel Duchamp, the man who called a urinal a great work of art.
And I said, look, I'm all for interesting art, but it seems to me there would be better uses of that money, both for the people of Afghanistan and for just that lesson, for one lesson?
Never president, but the Democrats keep putting up women who are very bad candidates.
So Hillary Clinton was one of the most detested figures in American public life.
And Kamala Harris was an extremely weak candidate.
She was at a disadvantage in part because she never had a real primary to go through.
In fact, the one time she ran in a primary, the previous presidential election, she was out almost immediately.
She was the first candidate out.
So nobody really wanted her.
You know, conservatives like plenty of women figures in politics.
Maggie Thatcher across the Atlantic is probably the clearest example.
But we have lots of great governors.
There are plenty of very strong, powerful women in the Trump administration in particular.
But the two candidates that the Democrats put up, well, let's just say, as President Trump says of some of the countries sending illegals here, the Democrats are not sending their best.
Well, I think the first order of business is to stop the abuse.
I say this as a Catholic myself.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was certainly quite scandalized to see that during the Obama, or during the Biden administration, rather, the FBI was spying on Catholic parishes.
And then the FBI came out and lied about it and said it was only one field office.
We later found out through memoranda that it was multiple field offices, viewing Catholics as extremists, traditionalist radical ideologues, whatever nonsense euphemisms they used.
That is completely unacceptable to spy on Christians simply for practicing their faith.
The traditional faith of this very country, as a matter of fact.