| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | |
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
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| On Mondays, when Congress is in session, we'd like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington. | ||
| And to do that, we're joined once again by NBC News senior congressional reporter Scott Wong. | ||
| And Mr. Wong, of course, President Trump set to address members of Congress and the nation tomorrow night, Tuesday night from Capitol Hill, that joint address, as it's being called, it's not officially a state of the union. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right. | |
| What are we expecting? | ||
| Well, this is going to be a big speech by President Trump because it is his first major address to the United States Congress since taking office, and especially since implementing all of these Doge cuts that has been so controversial and widespread across the country. | ||
| We have seen the Democrats protest these cuts at the federal agencies. | ||
| We have seen the reaction from town halls around the country protesting Republicans who have been supportive of Elon Musk and this Doge department. | ||
| And so we will hear directly from the president. | ||
| I think it will be a victory lap of sorts looking back at President Trump's first month in office, saying, look, I campaigned on these promises and I have carried out and fulfilled a lot of these promises to scale back the size and scope of government to really go after spending. | ||
| We didn't really know that he was going to do these mass firings, but we're going to hear from the president about how he thinks these mass firings have gone so far. | ||
| How much do you think that Friday night's blow up in the Oval Office is changing the speech right now? | ||
|
unidentified
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How much he's going to focus now on Ukraine and peace and minerals deal? | |
| What are your thoughts? | ||
| I think it will be a big, major part of this address simply because it is in the news. | ||
| It is the biggest story at the moment. | ||
| I think everyone at this point, several days out, has now seen the blowup in the Oval Office between Zelensky, President Trump, and Vice President JD Vance. | ||
| This is an important deal in the eyes of the president, this mineral deal. | ||
| He thinks that this is the path to peace between Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| Clearly, Zelensky wanted more. | ||
| He wanted security assurances from the United States, which the President Trump was unwilling to give him in that moment. | ||
| They walked away from the deal. | ||
| Zelensky returned to Europe and Ukraine, where he was received well in the European community and did receive some additional support, financial support, as well as verbal support from European leaders there. | ||
| And so, but to go back to my original point, this is an important deal for Trump to get done. | ||
| He sees himself as a deal maker. | ||
| And so a lot is riding on this mineral rights deal. | ||
| And I think we will expect to hear from the president on that point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We mentioned it's not officially a State of the Union address, but all that pageantry will be there. | |
| Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States and the guests, we're expecting President Trump to have guests, and members of Congress always have their own guests to try to make their points. | ||
| What do you know about any of those things, the guests in the audience who might be referenced or guests that members of Congress are bringing? | ||
| Well, we do know that Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, sent out to his rank-and-file Democrats to say, look, invite guests who can demonstrate being impacted by some of President Trump's policies, who have been hurt by some of President Trump's policies. | ||
| People like VA workers who are supporting veterans and veterans with disabilities, USDA workers, NOAA workers, federal government workers who sort of do the work of the country that is oftentimes unseen, | ||
| as well as people like who are impacted by potential Medicaid cuts that we have heard so much about from Democrats as the Republicans try to advance their agenda, including tax cuts, and also figuring out how to pay for that agenda. | ||
| What Democrats say will come out of the pockets of people who are recipients of Medicaid. | ||
| That obviously has been disputed by Republicans. | ||
| We'll see when the rubber hits the road what actually happens on that front. | ||
| And the other thing I would also mention, John, is that we're going to see a lot of the cabinet members, very likely key members of Trump's cabinet, who just had very bruising confirmation hearings before the United States Senate. | ||
| So you'll see some of the senators sitting there with some of the cabinet members who have recently had rough goings. | ||
| But so far, everyone has made it through and gotten through and been confirmed to President Trump's cabinet. | ||
| And so that'll be an interesting dynamic as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
9 p.m. Eastern is when this all gets underway. | |
| Of course, that pageantry starts in the half hour or so beforehand. | ||
| Members start arriving hours beforehand to get those prime seats on the aisle. | ||
| One thing afterwards, of course, is always the response to the president's speech this year. | ||
| It's Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, the Democrat, to deliver the response to the joint address. | ||
|
unidentified
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What do viewers need to know about her and how important this is for her? | |
| She has served in the House of Representatives for several years. | ||
| She is now a freshman Democratic senator from Michigan. | ||
| What's important to know about Slotkin is that she outperformed Trump in the 2024 election in the state of Michigan. | ||
| Trump won Michigan. | ||
| She, as the Democrat, won the Senate race in that state and performed, outperformed by quite a bit. | ||
| Meaning, many people who marked Donald Trump for president had to also mark her for senator. | ||
| So she has some cross-party appeal. | ||
| Also, she has a national security background. | ||
| She is a former CIA analyst. | ||
| And she was instrumental. | ||
| Interestingly, she has a history with Trump. | ||
| She was instrumental. | ||
| She was one of the handful of National Security Democrats in the House who had been resistant to pursuing impeachment. | ||
| We're talking about the first Trump impeachment back in 2019, early 2020. | ||
| But at one point, they all came together and wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post. | ||
| These are the National Security Democrats. | ||
| Alyssa Slotkin was one of them. | ||
| Said that we now believe it's in the national interest to pursue impeachment against Donald Trump. | ||
| Remember, this was the issue pertaining to Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| This was the famous phone call between President Trump and Zelensky, where there were allegations that President Trump was withholding Ukraine funding. | ||
| It's kind of a full circle moment now that we're once again dealing with Zelensky and Ukraine. | ||
| But that's sort of Alyssa Slotkin's background. | ||
| She's an interesting choice, and I think people should tune in. | ||
|
unidentified
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What makes for a good response? | |
| How high or low is the bar here? | ||
| Well, that's a funny question because there's an ongoing joke on Capitol Hill that delivering the response to the State of the Union is oftentimes the worst possible job because there's so much potential to flub it. | ||
| You know, people often remember the times when people have whiffed at those responses. | ||
| Marco Rubio's infamous, you know, grabbing the glass of water off camera and then coming back on camera is one of the more memorable ones. | ||
| Of course, things turn out okay for Marco Rubio. | ||
| He's now Secretary of State. | ||
| But oftentimes these are not very memorable speeches unless you have a major flub like the Marco Rubio incident. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The week ahead in Congress is our topic. | |
| And again, that joint address, a major component of the week ahead here on Capitol Hill, all eyes on Washington on Tuesday night. | ||
| Scott Wong with us for this conversation this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Phone numbers for you to join the conversation: 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | |
| Republicans, 202748-8001. | ||
|
unidentified
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Independents, 202748-8002. | |
| As folks are calling in, give us an update on where we are on funding the government past March 14th. | ||
| We saw Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appear on our network, Meet the Press at NBC, over the weekend. | ||
| He said that Republicans want to push forward on a full-year CR that would carry the government, fund the government. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is available to watch online at our website, c-span.org. | |
| We are going to leave it here and take you live now to the Capitol, where the House is gabbling back in after a short recess. | ||
| We expect more speeches from members. | ||
| Live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Chaplain Kibben. |