| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Always with the intention of going back home. | |
| My mom has a little bit different of a story. | ||
| When the revolution hit Iran in 1979, they had grown up in a monarchy in Iran, but with more freedoms. | ||
| A theocratic regime, the Islamic Republic, took over and my mom's family was at risk. | ||
| Her father was imprisoned for supporting the prior government and being anti-the new regime. | ||
| And so she fled Iran by herself and was able to come to the United States. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all this week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| And on Friday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern, join us on C-SPAN 2 for a special 24-hour marathon featuring more than 60 of our exclusive interviews with the newest members of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Our first guest in the morning is Neera Tand, and she's the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, also served in the Biden administration as the Domestic Policy Council Director. | ||
| She did that from 2023 to 2025. | ||
| Welcome back to the program. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| You're just back to the center. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am. | |
| What brought you back? | ||
| Well, I thought this was an incredibly important moment in history. | ||
| You know, obviously, I have deep concerns about the Trump administration, but I also think it's really important for the broad center left to develop its own agenda. | ||
| I think it's, I do think there's a competition of ideas between the parties. | ||
| And, you know, once you've been through an administration, I think it's important to have, to develop a new agenda on the economy, education, crime, immigration, you know, just the problems that people are experiencing in their own lives. | ||
| And so I'm really excited for the work we'll be doing in the center at the center to address challenges people are facing. | ||
| When you work in an administration like you did in the Biden administration, now you come to this new job. | ||
| What do you bring with it? | ||
| How does it help inform what you do going forward? | ||
| Well, I loved my job as chair of the Domestic Policy Council. | ||
| And I really saw how government works in every creak and cranny. | ||
| And, you know, I think there are a lot of ideas that we had that some we didn't roll out, some we did. | ||
| And I think it was really a moment of deep reflection to see why some ideas, some strategies didn't resonate as much with the public. | ||
| You know, I think the president had an agenda, for example, to reach out to working class people. | ||
| You know, we had the Invest in America agenda, and most of those jobs created and through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation, the Infrastructure Bill, those jobs, most of those jobs went to people without a college degree. | ||
| Yet I think we didn't, those messages didn't really resonate. | ||
| And I think it's an important moment for all of us, again, on the broad center left to really understand what did and did not work. | ||
| And then also think through how we solve people's problems. | ||
| Education, I'll take the example of education. | ||
| Our public schools have not been improving. | ||
| Many have been declining. | ||
| And I think it's really incumbent upon us for those of us who believe in public schools and public education to have ideas about how we improve student performance, how our schools improve and compete in the 21st century, how we ensure that kids are reading on grade, how they learn math on grade. | ||
| And I think those are just ways in which we have to actually answer the mail. | ||
| Again, I think fundamentally, at a very large level, we can get into what Trump is doing every day. | ||
| But he is offering ideas. | ||
| I think they are destructive, but I think the best way to oppose him is not to just critique, but offer an alternative. | ||
| People have to have two visions of change in front of them to choose from, not Trump's policies versus a status quo. | ||
| And I think if we just allow that change, you know, that decision between change and the status quo, then it really puts us in a bad place. | ||
| Let me take your example then. | ||
| The Trump administration says, say, at the Education Department, if you reduce the amount of staff, you give states more power over the control of day-to-day operation of the school. | ||
| That's going to improve school overall. | ||
| How would you answer the mail on that one? | ||
| And what's the alternative idea that the Democratic Party should present then? | ||
| Well, I think this is a great example, right? | ||
| The Department of Education does two things, right now does two things, really at a really disproportionate level when it comes to school. | ||
| It funds education for kids with disabilities, and it funds student loans, and basically it's the backbone of the entire student loan system. | ||
| I think it's important to make the case that it's vital that we protect those issues. | ||
| But fundamentally, there is no evidence that if you just send everything to the states, the states will by themselves improve performance. | ||
| Because right now, states are responsible for education, and we are seeing declining performance. | ||
| Now, I think the way to make the compelling case of why dismantling the Department of Education is a bad idea is by saying, here are the ways that we think it's important to improve school performance. | ||
| Getting kids to read on grade, ensuring that kids are in school, dealing with learning loss instead of seeing the declining student enrollment that we've seen, absenteeism. | ||
| And the Department of Education plays an important role in doing those things. | ||
| It can work with states to do them to ensure kids are reading on grade, giving them information about best practices. | ||
| The Department of Education actually has a role on school performance. | ||
| And I think, you know, we have to develop those ideas, but I actually think making it clear about why a Department of Education is part and parcel of improving school performance for all children is a reason you can give people to ensure that there is a Department of Education going forward and why it's important to them and their children and their children's schools that a Department of Education exists. | ||
| Callers, if you want to ask our guests questions, it's 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8000 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8000 to you can text us your questions or comments at 202-748-8003. | ||
| It was the president's former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who said this about education in light of what you were just saying, saying the education department is a misnomer. | ||
| It educates no one. | ||
| Instead, it functions as a bureaucratic middleman that adds cost and complexity as well as radical political agendas at every turn without adding value anywhere. | ||
| The proof is in the outcomes. | ||
| The department's stated purpose is to close the gap between high and low performing students. | ||
| It spent $1 trillion since 1979, ostensibly in pursuit of that goal, but the results show that the gap is wider today than it was three decades ago. | ||
| She goes on from there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you kind of hinted at that, but how would you respond to that? | ||
| I would say that Betsy DeVos has had an agenda for a very long time, which is the dismantling of public schools. | ||
| That's why she has supported school choice programs, not just school choice, but basically the dismantling of public schools in Michigan. | ||
| That was her calling card before she was Secretary of Education. | ||
| But I would say we have had moments, we have had improved school performance over the last two decades. | ||
| We've seen a decline in the last couple of years. | ||
| There's been a big problem with learning loss. | ||
| But what we really know about kids learning is that kids are not reading on grade by third grade. | ||
| Their numeracy, math skills are really declining. | ||
| And there are great public schools that are making, who are actually teaching low-income students, and they're improving. | ||
| And let's learn from those schools. | ||
| And this is actually a good reason for a Department of Education when you have a best practice in one state, moving it, ensuring that all states can adopt it. | ||
| And I think the idea that we're going to throw in the towel on education as a national priority is ridiculous. | ||
| Education is more important to our competitiveness than ever. | ||
| But I do think if we want to answer Betsy DeVos, the right way to do that is to say, here are the ways in which we want to improve public education, education in the country. | ||
| Here are strategies to do it. | ||
| And it is important that we fight Donald Trump on taking away funding for low-income schools, which is a big function of the Department of Education, its support for low-income schools and IDEA and other initiatives. | ||
| But that, the idea that we would just not have a national priority around Department of Education is absurd. | ||
| This other idea of answering the mail, so to speak, that you said, how would you say to Republicans who are very intent on reducing the size of government through Doge, through other means? | ||
| What do you think about the effort overall? | ||
| I think the Doge effort has actually become massively counterproductive, just to say. | ||
| You know, I think there are many ways to improve government efficiency. | ||
| In fact, when I was in the White House my first year, I oversaw the U.S. Digital Service, which is now the home of Doge. | ||
| And when we worked at the U.S., what we did at the U.S. Digital Service was really trying to improve customer performance, basically consumer experience. | ||
| We wanted to make programs work better so that the Social Security Administration or the IRS basically serve the customer, the American citizen, the American public better. | ||
| And I think that is crucial. | ||
| Obviously, there's a lot of friction points in government. | ||
| They're very frustrating. | ||
| We shouldn't make them improve. | ||
| But the idea that you would cut staff of people who are looking after the nuclear arsenal, that you would cut staff, the people who are servicing seniors, is really not about government efficiency. | ||
| It's about slashing services in order to pay for a gigantic tax cut for Elon Musk. | ||
| And I think that is a perversion. | ||
| I'm happy to talk to Elon Musk every day, any day, about how we can make this government work better for customers, for citizens. | ||
| There are a million ideas to do that. | ||
| But when you put someone in charge of firing people in charge of the nuclear arsenal and nuclear safety, and then they have to be rehired a week later, in the private sector, you would fire that person. | ||
| If an HR person in a company did that, you would say, you know, you're fired. | ||
| Neera Tanda joining us. | ||
| And our first call is from John. | ||
| John on our Independent Line. | ||
| John is in Massachusetts. | ||
| You're on with our guest. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| My home state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi, Nira. | ||
| Yes, there's two sides to every coin. | ||
| I'm just curious, all these negative narratives from the mainstream media aren't working. | ||
| The sky isn't falling, chicken little. | ||
| So I'm sick of the Washington Post and New York Times articles you guys keep talking about. | ||
| And I'm just curious, when did John Kerry get confirmed for the Biden administration to spend all that money on the climate stuff as our climates are? | ||
| And if those, you know, I don't remember us confirming him, and he spent all that money. | ||
| He would not testify in front of the Congress or the Senate or answer any questions to what he was doing, spending our money. | ||
| But you're worried about people cutting our money. | ||
| And if these inspector generals were doing such a great job that got fired, why didn't they find all this waste fraud and abuse that we're finding now? | ||
| So you can complain about Elon Musk all you want, but he was, it is legal. | ||
| And so like I say, it's not working. | ||
| We're not believing all your lies anymore. | ||
| You guys can't fool us with this. | ||
| You lied about Biden's cognitive decline for years, and he went into dementia. | ||
| It's absolutely ridiculous. | ||
| Okay, Tom, thanks. | ||
| So I'll just take a few of those issues in turn. | ||
| First and foremost, I don't think people should be arguing with me about people being angry about what's going on. | ||
| Honestly, the reality is that Americans are very concerned about our economic projection. | ||
| Of course, we had a massive sell-off in the stock market. | ||
| There's more consumer confidence is tanking. | ||
| There are concerns about inflation and recession. | ||
| You know, that's not me. | ||
| That's the American public who's giving Donald Trump his lowest ratings on the economy ever, including in his first time, lower than ever in his first term as well. | ||
| So I think that's the American people who are balking at what Donald Trump is doing, not just in Doge, although there are deep concerns about slashing government programs that really help people and services for the public when it comes to health and safety. | ||
| But it's also concerned about his tariffs and his overall strategy with our alliances. | ||
| You know, I believe in change, but a wrecking ball that basically makes people start talking about a recession for the first time in years strikes me as deeply concerning, not just to Democrats, but to the whole country. | ||
| Democrats Lynn, this is Felix in North Carolina. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mira Pedro in America, good morning. | |
| How are y'all on this beautiful day? | ||
| I'm great. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, if it was any better, I'd have to call myself greedy, I believe. | |
| I've got a couple of suggestions for you. | ||
| The Democrats' problems, I believe, is they need better marketing. | ||
| They have a good product, but the Republicans are more business-minded and they know how to market stuff. | ||
| Second of all, to my minority brothers and sisters who say that the Democrats aren't trying to do anything. | ||
| You need to market up better that we're trying, but who's blocking us? | ||
| And third thing is, I haven't seen any of this waste-drawn abuse shit. | ||
| I've heard them say it, but it's fluctuating. | ||
| It's moving around. | ||
| And last of all, maybe oversight's going to begin in 2023 because personally, I think government is working perfectly because the people who wanted to vote got it. | ||
| Those 40% who said out who did not vote. | ||
| So, see, that's the problem. | ||
| And I look forward to a little more political movement here. | ||
| Y'all have a great day and keep it up, America. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| Felix, thanks. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, I would agree that it's helpful for people to be focused on how we sell our ideas. | ||
| But I also think we have to work on our ideas themselves and how responsive we're being to the public on a number of issues. | ||
| You know, I guess my view of that is that it is important to confront what Trump is doing. | ||
| He is doing a lot of damaging things to a lot of people. | ||
| But as I said, the best way to do that is to offer an alternative. | ||
| And I think when we talk about marketing and how we're trying and they're blocking progress, I think people do want to see us fighting a little harder for what we believe in. | ||
| And that's also a message of how much you care. | ||
| Was that a move that was demonstrated in the CR vote and the Senator Schumer allowing it to go forward? | ||
| Do you think that was a bad look? | ||
| Well, I mean, I don't think these things really should be judged by looks, but I think it is, you know, my concern about the CR is that we have been arguing that What Elon Musk and what Trump himself are doing is really hurting people in these sort of mass-scale cuts. | ||
| Just today, there's articles about how nurses are being fired, doctors are being fired, health experts are being fired, people in social security offices are being fired, and it's harder to get services. | ||
| So I think when we talk about those issues and why that's important, I do think it's also important that we like really, if we think that those are existential issues, that our job is to protect people from Trump's attacks, then, you know, I do think it's incumbent to figure out strategies to stop what they're doing. | ||
| And the CR was leveraged for that. | ||
| Whether that means, you know, saying we're not going to vote for it unless you protect Social Security benefits or we're not going to vote for it unless you stop Doge. | ||
| You know, these are things that are important. | ||
| When you hear Democrats like Alexandria Ocorcio-Cortes feeling a sense of betrayal from the Senate moving forward with it, particularly Senate Democrats, what's your reaction as far as what it says about the party itself? | ||
| Well, I mean, obviously, this was a deeply, this was a, you know, this was a deeply felt vote. | ||
| The House had all voted one way. | ||
| I think it is, you know, I've known Chuck Schumer a long time. | ||
| I've seen him in a lot of fights. | ||
| I've seen him really pull people together for a fight. | ||
| And I think it is important for him to describe in detail how he plans to fight the Trump administration going forward. | ||
| I think that would be helpful for Americans to hear, for others in the Democratic Party to hear. | ||
| South Carolina is where Danny is. | ||
| Danny is in our Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Danny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Good morning, Pedro. | ||
| Good morning, Ms. Candon. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| You seem to not like Trump's agenda or Musk and Doge and all the waste, fraud, and abuse being cut. | ||
| I ain't heard what you said you'd done in the last three or four years when you worked for Mr. Biden. | ||
| You definitely didn't help the school the rate of the school being good or bad. | ||
| So I don't know how you can't give Mr. Trump a chance to get his thing going and all this waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| It seems like a bunch of people in the Democrat Party are scared of the waste abuse, or maybe it's just the fraud side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe we'll get to see some people finally go to jail and be punished for fraud, unlike Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and his whole family. | |
| But we American working people are sitting out here watching this every day, every day, and listening to every Democrat and every Republican talk on TV. | ||
| And I'm shocked that Democrats just feel like they were headed down the right road. | ||
| But in my mind, no, it was the wrong road. | ||
| Boys can't compete against girls. | ||
| You're a lady, ma'am. | ||
| You're a female. | ||
| And I would not want a man to go on a court and whip you up. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm going to leave it there. | ||
| I'm actually really proud to tell you what I worked on to save the government money. | ||
| So for the first time ever past because of Democrats in Congress, Democrats, the HHS, Department of Health and Human Services, had the power to lower drug prices through drug negotiation. | ||
| We've been asked, people have advocated for that for 25 years. | ||
| Pharmaceutical companies have just the ability to charge almost any price to HHS and really to seniors. | ||
| And so for the first time, and I was proud to work on this, the HHS was able to negotiate drug prices and bring those drug prices down for seniors between 50 and 80 percent for the top 10 drugs. | ||
| This will be a big question of whether the Trump administration and Kennedy as HHS secretary will actually follow suit and try to drive those drug prices down. | ||
| So I absolutely believe we can make the government work more effectively. | ||
| And I think we just have a disagreement. | ||
| If you think that cutting Social Security services is fraud or waste, I just think you're wrong because I actually think people are entitled to those services. | ||
| They're entitled to Social Security. | ||
| And let's have that debate. | ||
| When you look at what Doge is cutting, right, it's not cutting the $1.9 trillion in tax expenditures. | ||
| So just to say the place that the government spends the most money is in tax cuts, tax particular sweetheart deals in the tax code for special interests, often for special interests. | ||
| And Trump is not looking at any of that. | ||
| Musk is not looking at any of that. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because Musk himself has benefited from sweetheart deals from the federal government for year after year after year. | ||
| It has actually helped him build his wealth. | ||
| So I just think it's ironic that Elon Musk has benefited from the federal government and tax expenditures and ways we've invested in his companies is now turning around and slashing benefits and services really for the most vulnerable. | ||
| Again, at the end of the day, when you're cutting Head Start, you're cutting programs for children. | ||
| When you're cutting Social Security services and benefits, you're hurting seniors. | ||
| Those are the facts. | ||
| If you want to find government waste, I'm all there with you. | ||
| But what Doge is doing right now is essentially cutting services to people that are the most vulnerable at the hands of one of the richest people in the world. | ||
| Some Republicans are saying in the case of Medicaid and the debate over that, maybe it's better to use block grants to deliver those services on the statewide. | ||
| Are there a better way to deliver those services like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid without this idea of if you change the delivery, you can get some more efficiency from them? | ||
| So I think this is a great example because during the ACA repeal debate in 2017, Republicans had offered a block grant and cut. | ||
| And the fact of the matter is that just means cutting the number of people who will have Medicaid. | ||
| And when you take a trillion, almost a trillion dollars out of Medicaid, what you are saying, there's no way to just deliver those services magically with so much less money. | ||
| You will be closing rural hospitals, lots of rural hospitals that overwhelmingly rely on Medicaid dollars, and you will be cutting services to working class people. | ||
| Just as a reminder, the people on Medicaid are the majority of people on Medicaid are working, and those people don't get health care through their employer, and they will no longer have health care if you cut a trillion dollars out of the program. | ||
| There are people who will not be able to get their cancer screenings. | ||
| People will not be able to see a doctor for asthma, children who will lose coverage. | ||
| The largest group of people on Medicaid are children. | ||
| And so I just think it's like absurd that in order to pay for tax cuts for Elon Musk and people at that income level in America, Republicans are offering tax, slashing a Medicaid program that is working to provide basic services, health services, to millions of people. | ||
| You say organizations like yours want to offer better ideas, then what are the better ideas when it comes to those three programs to make them more fiscally stable? | ||
| Okay, so this is really important. | ||
| So Medicare itself has actually, under the Biden administration, we extended the solvency of Medicare, partially from lowering drug prices. | ||
| So we could, President Biden proposed expanding the number of drugs that you would have negotiations over, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| So that is a great example of how you actually lower prices for seniors and make the program more solvent for the long term. | ||
| Those are ideas I think we could all come around. | ||
| Instead, what we're seeing is ideas, people who have always opposed Medicaid, always opposed Medicare, and have kind of also opposed SoSecurity, are basically putting, slashing those services so that we can pay for tax cuts for the super rich. | ||
| This is Nira Tanda joining us, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, formerly served in the Domestic Policy Council Director in the Biden administration. | ||
| Bonnie joins us from Arkansas, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Bonnie. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I've been sitting there watching for the last ever since 1980. | ||
| And I was a Democrat at that time because of President Jimmy Carter. | ||
| But in 84, I changed to Republican. | ||
| And the reason why I did that at that particular time, because of the policies that the country had on. | ||
| But I watched the education system ever since 85 because my first child went to school back then. | ||
| And as they entered the school system, the school system was on a pretty good role as far as educating kids because when you talk about reading, we were on the phonetic system. | ||
| Now, my third question, like I told them, is if you had children. | ||
| Do I have children? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| And my children went to public schools in D.C. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And where? | |
| In Washington, D.C. Both of my children went to public schools all the way from pre-K through high school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, okay. | |
| Now, the second thing is this: the policy that the Department of Education has backed over the last 40 years. | ||
| And if anyone has been watching and you look at the test scores all across the nation, and it's in particular math and reading, our children have declined. | ||
| Okay, call her, I'm going to leave it there. | ||
| And she goes back to test scores when it comes to the Department of Education, which seems to be a standard. | ||
| And I think this is a really important issue, which is it should be our focus to improve the school performance, improve performance of schools. | ||
| Test scores did rise, and then we had big challenges during COVID. | ||
| And it's really important to remember during COVID, both schools that closed, states that had school closures, and states that had schools stay open, they have seen declining performance. | ||
| So I do think it's incumbent upon us to improve that. | ||
| But actually, just sending it back to the states will not answer the mail since the states have been mostly responsible. | ||
| Hattie is in Texas. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have some ideas on how the Democrats can deal with the Trump administration agenda. | |
| Great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| It's kind of a list, but I'll try to make it short. | ||
| I heard a lot of people earlier this morning saying that they were going to sit this one out. | ||
| Well, there might not be another one to fight. | ||
| The fight continues and will always be there. | ||
| My suggestion is to organize like we did for the last campaign, both for anyone who is not afraid to stand up to Trump, stop smiling, put on your game face, educate the public about the Constitution. | ||
| We need an attack dog for each issue that Trump is trying to negate. | ||
| That's my suggestion for the Democrats. | ||
| Hattie, thank you. | ||
| Well, I think she, yeah, the color is really speaking to, you know, there's a broad consensus in the Democratic Party, I think, that we need more fighters in this moment. | ||
| I think there's a lot of concern that, you know, Trump is a steamroller on a lot of issues. | ||
| The Constitution, as the caller spoke to our transatlantic allies that have been the source of American strength for 50, 60, 70 years. | ||
| He's really taking a wrecking ball across the federal government and that it takes tough leaders to stand up to that. | ||
| Now, I do think people kind of confuse this issue of ideology and approach. | ||
| There's wide consensus on the Democratic Party, I think, to have a stronger stance against Trump. | ||
| But actually, a plurality of people in the Democratic Party and aligned with the Democratic Party actually want more moderate policies. | ||
| So it's not just like the left that's calling for a tougher stance against Donald Trump. | ||
| It's really a broad spectrum of the party. | ||
| Even many moderates are concerned that there's not enough effort to confront Trump. | ||
| And I think this is a really important thing for our leadership. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries kept his entire caucus together on the Sierra vote. | ||
| And I do think that Leader Schumer will, I hope, speak to this this week of how he has an agenda going forward to take on Trump. | ||
| You talk about moderates. | ||
| How much do you think they're embraced by the party these days? | ||
| I think they are really embraced by the party. | ||
| I mean, we're in opposition. | ||
| The party is in opposition. | ||
| We need voters across the spectrum. | ||
| I think we should have some real reflection of why sometimes voters see the parties, both parties as extreme. | ||
| That should be shocking to really anyone on the Democratic Party. | ||
| So, you know, I think actually the party is embracing this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now to the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C., where President Trump is taking a tour. | |
| He's also attending a board meeting in his new role as chair. | ||
| We talked about in the first hour, by the way, we don't want graffitis on the beautiful white statuary marble. | ||
| And we want to have our roads good and everything else. | ||
| We'll be able to do that easily. | ||
| And this is a part of it. | ||
| I mean, Kennedy Center is a very big part of it. | ||
| And you can't have this looking like it does. | ||
| I'm so surprised because, you know, I know the person who was in charge of it, and he's a good man. | ||
| I never realized this was in such bad shape. | ||
| I've been so busy, I haven't been able to be here in a long time. | ||
| And I shouldn't be with what I'm doing. | ||
| But I thought it was important because I've been hearing reports, and I thought it was very important to make this good. | ||
| It's a very big part of the fabric of Washington, D.C. | ||
| And we're going to make our capital great again, just like we're going to make our country great again. | ||
| April 2nd is Liberation Day for our country because we're going to finally be taking in money. | ||
| We're already doing it, a lot of money. | ||
| As you know, we put down some early tariffs on people and countries that were not treating us well. | ||
| I think that there was a lot of concern about status quo in the country. | ||
| And the Democrats did not offer enough of a vision of change. | ||
| And I think obviously there were some concerns about President Biden. | ||
| Now, I was honored to work for him. | ||
| And there was a little bit of an overhang with that with Vice President Harris. | ||
| But I think fundamentally we did not offer a sufficient vision of change. | ||
| So people were choosing between Trump's change. | ||
| And he put together a coalition of people who took him literally and people who took him figuratively. | ||
| And so I do think there's a lot of surprise that, and while he talked a lot about tariffs, that it would actually raise prices and that eggs would shoot up and a whole range of prices would go up. | ||
| I don't think people really reflected on the impact on inflation from his policies. | ||
| But I think for the Democrats, again, as I said, you have to offer a different vision of change. | ||
| Otherwise, it becomes a choice between the status quo and change. | ||
| And we've had change elections for the last almost 20 years. | ||
| Here's Molly in Wisconsin, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is Molly calling. | |
| I'm calling because I've noticed that Trump has been cutting federal employees radically. | ||
| And the school systems, Medicare, and Social Security and Medicaid will be mixed. | ||
| And it's the other departments, too. | ||
| These cuts can only hurt the Americans who want to have some cutbacks, but this is ridiculous. | ||
| He has never cut back in the federal prisons. | ||
| Every prison has a staff of psychologists that start pay is $100,000, and they're in every federal prison across the United States. | ||
| And these prisons have three to six or more psychologists. | ||
| And this adds up to a great deal of cost, but nobody ever mentions this. | ||
| Having these psychologists in prisons has not decreased the violence in the prisons, nor has it caused any prisoners to stop coming back and repeat over and over their crimes. | ||
| I'm just wondering why if these doctors are not being helping anyone there, why are we spending money this way? | ||
| And why doesn't Trump ever look at things like this? | ||
| Got the point, Molly. | ||
| I think the caller raises a great point that one can support efforts to look at waste or other things in the federal government. | ||
| And as a reminder to the previous caller, the inspector generals actually do have found waste in the federal government, and it's odd to fire those people who are actually finding waste. | ||
| But there is a lot of areas any one of us could look at. | ||
| But what's happening right now is that services for people, you know, working class Americans, people who rely on government, are being drastically cut. | ||
| And it's really just the beginning. | ||
| But, you know, it's not just the National Park Service. | ||
| But again, if you want Social Security, if you want to get your benefits now, you can't get them over the phone. | ||
| It's really hard. | ||
| They're going to ensure that you can't get them over the phone going forward. | ||
| Or maybe they'll change that policy. | ||
| You never know because basically they announce things and then sometimes they pull them back. | ||
| And I think that does not strike me as excellent management of the federal government resources when you make an announcement and pull it back. | ||
| So I think it's important to look at other areas and the caller raises an interesting one. | ||
| But I think most fundamentally, what you're hearing, and this is also in the public, is concern that they might have signed up for greater efficiency, but they did not sign up for cuts to programs that are directly affecting people. | ||
| And when veterans are basically being fired, and we're seeing homeless vets and veterans who are needing services, healthcare services, can't get them anymore because of the cuts to veterans. | ||
| You know, that's just a good example of how this is really a betrayal, essentially, of our solemn promise to many parts of our country. | ||
| Independent Lyon from Washington, D.C. Ralph, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I just love the politician and their spin, spin, spin. | |
| I mean, we had Obama and we had Sanders saying waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| We've got to stop it. | ||
| Oh, my God, we've got to jump in there and get it. | ||
| Then we got, we just had recently a GAO report that came out after two years. | ||
| This is actually before Trump that identified $650 billion in waste. | ||
| $650 billion. | ||
| This was in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. | ||
| So now we have this, quote, unelected guy. | ||
| You know, well, I got news for you. | ||
| All the bureaucrats are not elected. | ||
| So we got this unelected guy. | ||
| So you put him in this category. | ||
| They say he's rich. | ||
| And then you imply that he's going to steal grandma's Social Security. | ||
| I'm sure a guy who's worth about a trillion dollars wants to go in and steal grandma's Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, if you really think people are that ignorant in this country, then we got USAID. | |
| Well, apparently these NGOs were getting money and they were spending 75 to 80 percent of the money managing these NGOs when they were giving money to another NGO. | ||
| And then it turns out that that NGO money was being turned back and giving it funded politicians. | ||
| So NGOs are not prohibited from funding politicians. | ||
| And that's why the Democrats are running like hell and they're scared because a lot of these people got their hand in a cookie jar. | ||
| They don't talk about that. | ||
| I think it's really important to just really address these issues. | ||
| It is just false. | ||
| These NGOs that are paid by USAID were funding services to children in Africa to stay alive, pregnant women who are going to hospitals. | ||
| There's stories of people dying, kids dying because they can't get their health services because hospitals are shutting down because all these funds have been cut. | ||
| And I appreciate that there is a fascinating meme machine that just creates alternative facts that are not true. | ||
| The NGOs are not funding Democrats. | ||
| That is just a thing people say in order to move away from the fact that these services were actually helping people. | ||
| They are being pulled back. | ||
| And as a result, the health and welfare of people in other countries, I appreciate they're not Americans, but in other countries, are in desperate, desperate straits. | ||
| And I think the GAO reports are a good example of how you can effectively look at waste in government. | ||
| And what the GAO reports talk about is, I'll give you a great example of what's in the GAO report, Medicare Advantage. | ||
| Medicare Advantage is a program in Medicare which allows private insurance to offer Medicare services. | ||
| People choose them. | ||
| The big problem is that Medicare itself, the traditional fee-for-service program, is much cheaper. | ||
| So the federal government spends a lot more money for the private version of this. | ||
| And actually, good competition would have you pay them the same for both. | ||
| But that's not what happens. | ||
| We spend a lot of money on the Medicare Advantage program. | ||
| There are benefits to Medicare Advantage for consumers, but it's very, very expensive to the federal government. | ||
| That's an area where we could save money. | ||
| But the big question is whether Robert Kennedy will look at that. | ||
| That is a benefit to insurance companies, not necessarily a benefit to consumers. | ||
| Happy to look at that. | ||
| It's hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years. | ||
| By the way, callers and viewers, if you want to see that GAO report, we featured it on this program a couple of weeks ago with Gene Dodero, the head of GAO. | ||
| And if you go to our website at cspan.org, you can still find that interview and talk about see some of the findings that the government accountability office has made when it comes to waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| Derek in Michigan, Democrats line. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for letting me speak. | |
| I'd like to, first of all, thank the Biden administration and the young lady, how you pronounce your name? | ||
| Neera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd like to thank you for your service in the Biden administration. | |
| I think the Biden administration did a wonderful job. | ||
| I think that the only reason Trump won, and I want to ask you, I got two questions I want to ask. | ||
| We'll step away from this and take you live to the White House driveway where Stephen Miller is speaking live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| Equivalent of directing troop movements overseas or moving around an aircraft carrier on matters of essential national security. | ||
| It is certainly, I would think without question, the most unlawful order that any district court judge has issued in our lifetimes without even a close second. | ||
| And it put the lives in danger of the homeland security personnel on those aircraft. | ||
| And it jeopardized enormous, massive diplomatic and security issues across the entirety of the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| At a fundamental level, a district court judge has no authority to direct the national security operations of the executive branch. | ||
| The president is operating at the apex of his authority when you are dealing with questions of invasion and questions of alien enemy infiltration, as well as the expulsion of terrorist, illegal aliens from the country. | ||
| That's the president operating at the absolute apex of his constitutional authority. | ||
| And the founding generation that wrote this law very clearly, these are the same people who wrote the Constitution very clearly wanted to ensure the president had the broadest range of authority to remove from the nation non-citizens who are part of an alien enemy force. | ||
| And that's the authority the president has. | ||
| And in the coming days, you will see the full suite of presidential authorities used to extirpate this gang, this terrorist organization, from our soil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So is another American would be concerned they'll be deported without due process? | |
| We use the word Americans. | ||
| We're talking about illegal alien foreign terrorists. | ||
| So illegal alien foreign terrorists should be concerned that they will be deported from the country because they will be deported from the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes? | |
| The president set on the 21% tariffs on George Wants experience and what we do to make his dealings. | ||
| I won't be making any further announcement on tariffs today. | ||
| The president has made his statements on tariffs and the whole world is on notice that we are going to be treated fairly in this country economically. | ||
| We're going to bring back our manufacturing base. | ||
| We're going to bring back our jobs. | ||
| President Trump's not going to let anyone take advantage of us anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You said the judge's order was illegal. | |
| Is it because the TRO was illegal that the planes didn't turn around for the oral order for the judge? | ||
| The actions of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense were not in conflict with the judge's order. | ||
| But at the same time, it is also true that the judge's order was patently unlawful. | ||
| Beyond unlawful, it was an outrageous assault on the Constitution, an outrageous assault on the sovereignty of the nation, and on democracy itself. | ||
| The American people elected a president on an explicit promise. | ||
| By the way, for those of you who followed the campaign, how many times were the Alien Enemies Act discussed in the campaign? | ||
| Right? | ||
| Is one of you unaware of this? | ||
| Not one of you is, right? | ||
| This is discussed extensively in the campaign. | ||
| Going back even to the, even to the primary, right? | ||
| On Agenda 47, walking through the use of the Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| The American people voted for this specific action to occur, and it has occurred, and it is occurring, and it will continue to occur. | ||
| And the idea that a single district court judge has the authority to direct Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller with remarks from the White House Driveway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are going to step away from this and go live now, too. | |
| Actually, this is a recording from earlier. | ||
| President Trump this afternoon is taking a tour of the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| So, thank you very much. | ||
| We're here to have our first board meeting at the Kennedy Center, and it's in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country, most of it, because of bad management. | ||
| This is a shame what I've watched and witnessed. | ||
| They spent a fortune, $250 million, and they built these rooms that nobody's going to use, rooms underground. | ||
| And I've often wondered what are the big cubes that they have outside that block the view. | ||
| They're cubes with a door in them, so that people can get down to rooms that nobody's going to use. | ||
| And it's a shame. | ||
| It's a shame. | ||
| The other thing is I'm going to have a little problem with some people that work here. | ||
| We had Lee Greenwood wanted to sing a little song today. | ||
| And because of the cost in the union structure, for him to sing a song just for the board, just a board meeting, it was going to cost $30,000. | ||
| That doesn't sound too good. | ||
| They wanted $30,000 to move a piano. | ||
| So you can't have that. | ||
| So we're going to fix it up. | ||
| But it's really emblematic of our country. | ||
| But the Kennedy Center, if you look at the columns outside, you look at, I mean, they're supposed to be covered by something, whether it's marble or whatever, granite, they were never covered. | ||
| They were painted. | ||
| But bringing it to more modern times, a lot of money's been given to it, and the money has not been properly spent. | ||
| They built rooms underground with no windows, no nothing, that will not be used ever. | ||
| You're not going to have people use them. | ||
| Such a waste of money, such a terrible waste, but we'll make it, we'll bring it back, we'll make it great again. | ||
| But it is so much like what I'm witnessing in other places. | ||
| We have open borders. | ||
| We have men playing in women's sports. | ||
| It's all the same thing. | ||
| It's all the same mentality and thinking. | ||
| So I'm very disappointed when I look around. | ||
| The bottom line, it has tremendous potential. | ||
| And we'll work with Congress. | ||
| As you know, it's very public, a very public facility. | ||
| And we'll do what has to be done. | ||
| We'll be having a meeting with the Speaker in the not too distant future. | ||
| I think it's important to save this structure in this building. | ||
| I think maybe we close up some of the work that's been done and built because it was done terribly. | ||
| It was done terribly. | ||
| The concept was very bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why is it so important to come here today to the Kennedy Center? | |
| You have so much on your plate. | ||
| Why come today here? | ||
| This represents a very important part of D.C. and actually our country. | ||
| And I think it's important to make sure that our country is in good shape and is represented well. | ||
| When people look at this, I've been hearing for a long time that they come here and they're very disappointed. | ||
| When they come here, I want them to be excited. | ||
| We're bringing a big move on to Washington, D.C. We're going to stop the crime. | ||
| We actually worked with the mayor. | ||
| We took down a lot of tents. | ||
| They were all over the place in front of the State Department. | ||
| And they did a good job of that. | ||
| I was very happy with what the mayor did. | ||
| She was able to get him out quickly at my direction and at the direction of the administration. | ||
| But we're cleaning up Washington, D.C. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a big part of Washington, D.C. Mr. President, for Americans visiting Washington, perhaps they're thinking about seeing a show at the Kennedy Center. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| What would you tell them? | ||
| They've never been here before and they want to come check it out. | ||
| Yeah, I'd say come here and see a show. | ||
| I was never a big fan of, I never liked Hamilton very much, and I never liked it. | ||
| But we are going to have some really good shows. | ||
| I would say this. | ||
| Come here and watch it, and you'll see over a period of time it'll improve very greatly physically. | ||
| And we're going to get some very good shows. | ||
| The thing that does well are Broadway hits. | ||
| And we have some beauty. | ||
| I guess we have Les Miz coming and we have some others, but the Broadway hits have done very well. | ||
| So I'm going to spend some time. | ||
| We have a good board. | ||
| In the meantime, we're running the country and we're running it well. | ||
| We have tremendous things to report. | ||
| Tomorrow I'm speaking with President Putin of Russia to save some soldiers who are in deep trouble. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're captured. | |
| Essentially, they're surrounded by Russian soldiers. | ||
| So I give it to you a lot of different, I give you a lot of different things in one news conference, but it's a big deal. | ||
| They're surrounded by Russian soldiers. | ||
| And I believe if it wasn't for me, they wouldn't be here any longer. | ||
| I was able to get them not to do anything at this moment. | ||
| But it's a bad situation in Russia, and it's a bad situation in Ukraine. | ||
| What's happening in Ukraine is not good. | ||
| But we're going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire, and peace, and I think we'll be able to do it. | ||
| I'm speaking to President Putin tomorrow morning, yes. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| No, really the opposite. | ||
| I think it was appreciated. | ||
| And we have to understand, and you have to understand, that if I see somebody doing something bad that's going to cause a lot of death, the only reason I'm involved, and this is Russia and Ukraine, but a lot of people, it's humanity. | ||
| I'm involved for humanity. | ||
| A lot of people are being killed over there. | ||
| And we had to get Ukraine to do the right thing. | ||
| It was not an easy situation. | ||
| You got to see a little glimpse at the Oval Office. | ||
| But I think they're doing the right thing right now, and we're trying to get a peace agreement done. | ||
| We want to get a ceasefire and then a peace agreement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who are you with? | |
| So we're gonna see how it all works out This was Joe Biden's deal. | ||
| This isn't Trump's deal. | ||
| This is Joe Biden's deal. | ||
| He gave $350 billion to Ukraine, and he shouldn't have done it. | ||
| It wasn't secured. | ||
| Europe gave $100 billion, and it was in the form of a loan. | ||
| They get their money back. | ||
| And they should actually have much more in it than us. | ||
| But Joe Biden was grossly incompetent, and it's a shame what they did. | ||
| $350 billion. | ||
| We could have rebuilt our entire Navy for that kind of money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, there were 18 Secret Service agents protecting House of Biden in South Africa this weekend. | |
| Who's paying for that? | ||
| And do you plan to revoke the Secret Service protection? | ||
| Well, we have done that with many. | ||
| I would say if there are 18 with Hunter Biden, that will be something I'll look at this afternoon. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Sir. | ||
| I just heard about it for the first time. | ||
| So you have 18 Secret Service going. | ||
| Where is he? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In South Africa. | |
| In South Africa. | ||
| And South Africa, you know, is on a watch list. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| Because what they're doing to people is brutal. | ||
| And I've stopped having money go to South Africa. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| Billions of dollars. | ||
| So he's in South Africa. | ||
| That's very interesting. | ||
| All right, I'm going to take a look at that. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Catholic Church, which caught Kansas over, was vandalized, statues destroyed, glass smashed, graffiti all over the place. | |
| Church officials in Kansas call it a hate crime. | ||
| I know you signed an ego, eradicated anti-Christian bias. | ||
| And sir, what more did the White House do to protect places of worship like St. Patrick's Church and New Zealand? | ||
| Well, we're going to take a look. | ||
| I love Wichita. | ||
| You know, I got big votes there. | ||
| We won that state by a lot. | ||
| We'll take a look at that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When did this happen? | |
| Statues destroyed. | ||
| I think it's a terrible thing. | ||
| And this was a Catholic church. | ||
| I'm going to take a look at it. | ||
| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week, C-SPAN continues our new Members of Congress series, where we speak with Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they ran for office. | |
| Tonight, at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Arizona Democrat Yasemin Ansari, the Democratic freshman-class president. | ||
| I am the proud daughter of two Iranian immigrants. | ||
| So my parents came here in the 70s. | ||
| My dad came to go study civil engineering at the University of Oregon, always with the intention of going back home. | ||
| My mom has a little bit different of a story. | ||
| When the revolution hit Iran in 1979, they had grown up in a monarchy in Iran, but with more freedoms. | ||
| A theocratic regime, the Islamic Republic, took over, and my mom's family was at risk. | ||
| Her father was imprisoned for supporting the prior government and being anti-the new regime. | ||
| And so she fled Iran by herself and was able to come to the United States. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all this week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| And on Friday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern, join us on C-SPAN 2 for a special 24-hour marathon, featuring more than 60 of our exclusive interviews with the newest members of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Tonight, we'll bring you NASA TV's live coverage as the SpaceX Crew 9 departs the International Space Station with astronauts Barry Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, who've been aboard the space station since June after their Boeing Starliner spacecraft was determined unable to fly them back to Earth. | ||
| You can see the crew enter their return vessel, followed by the undocking, all beginning tonight at 10.45 Eastern. | ||
| We'll also cover the landing on Tuesday evening at about 6 p.m. | ||
| Live coverage on C-SPAN, streaming live on the free C-SPAN Now video app, and online at cspan.org. | ||
| As a follow-up to our recent podcast regarding the life and times of Anne Frank, we asked author Alexandra Ritchie to tell us more about the horrors of World War II and Poland. | ||
| Ritchie, a citizen of Canada, now lives in the city which is the title of her book, Warsaw. | ||
| Her focus is on 1944 and what was called the Warsaw Uprising. | ||
| In her introduction, she writes, Himmler and Hitler had decided that the entire population remaining in one of Europe's great capital cities was to be murdered in cold blood. | ||
| Himmler referred to Warsaw as the Great Abscess, which was to be completely destroyed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Alexandra Ritchie with her book Warsaw 1944, Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, on this historic day, the House of Representatives opens its proceedings for the first time to televised coverage. | ||
| Since March of 1979, C-SPAN has been your unfiltered window into American democracy, bringing you direct, no-spin coverage of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House. | ||
| Is this Mr. Brian Lamb? | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
| Would you hold one moment, please, for the president? | ||
| It exists because of C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb's vision and the cable industry's support, not government funding. | ||
| But this public service isn't guaranteed. | ||
| All this month, in honor of Founders Day, your support is more important than ever. | ||
| You can keep democracy unfiltered today and for future generations. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your gift today preserves open access to government and ensures the public stays informed. | |
| Donate now at c-span.org/slash donate or scan the code on your screen. | ||
| Every contribution matters. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| Well, next, former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimmel and Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford take part in a debate for Wisconsin's open Supreme Court seat. | ||
| The race has captured national attention after garnering nearly $60 million in outside spending, including $6.2 million of it from a political action committee controlled by Elon Musk. |