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Coming up on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | |
| Then Stephen Newcomb with Axios talks about the reaction in Congress to the reporting that U.S. military plans against Houthi rebels in Yemen were accidentally shared with a reporter on a group chat. | ||
| And we'll discuss President Trump's recent moves to dismantle the Department of Education with Moms for Liberty's Tina Descovich. | ||
| Also, Illinois Democratic Congressman Sean Kasten, a member of the New Democrat Coalition and the Financial Services Committee, talks about divisions in the party, how to counter Republicans and the Trump administration. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Tuesday, March 25th, 2025. | ||
| The House and Senate both return at 10 a.m. Eastern, and we're with you for the next three hours. | ||
| We begin with the story out of the Atlantic magazine that senior Trump administration national security officials detailed their plans to launch airstrikes against Yemen's Houthi militants using a non-government texting app while mistakenly adding a journalist to the conversation. | ||
| The incident has sparked a White House inquiry and is likely to be the topic of questions at a congressional hearing today. | ||
| This morning, we're getting your reaction on phone lines split as usual by political party. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000 to call. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| A special line for active and former military. | ||
| That number, 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can also catch up with us on social media. | ||
| On X, it's at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Tuesday morning to you. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| The story came out just after noon yesterday from The Atlantic. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief there with the byline on the story. | ||
| Here's the headline. | ||
| The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. | ||
| The subhead, U.S. National Security Leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. | ||
| I didn't think it could be real. | ||
| And then the bombs started falling. | ||
| This is the lead. | ||
| The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern time on March 15th that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. | ||
| I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. | ||
| The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, had texted me the war plan at 1144 a.m. | ||
| The plan included precise information about weapons, packages, targets, and timing. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg writing in The Atlantic, he goes on to say, I've never seen a breach quite like this. | ||
| It's not uncommon for national security officials to communicate on the signal texting app, but the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters, not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of pending military actions. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg was on MSNBC last night discussing getting these texts and writing the story. | ||
| You know, the national security world is a pretty serious world, and especially at the level below the principles, there are people who take their responsibilities extremely seriously and take security and safety and cybersecurity and digital security very, very seriously. | ||
| And there are people, we both know of people who've gone to prison for mishandling infrastructive information. | ||
| And so, you know, one of my problems, and I've been, you know, asked this question a few times today, it's why did you have such a hard time believing this? | ||
| And the answer is because it's unbelievable. | ||
| I mean, it's unbelievable. | ||
| I've never experienced this through the pre-9-11 period, 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. | ||
| You know, these are life and death issues, and you don't just put out specific targeting information, specific timings of attacks that have not yet taken place into a commercial messaging app. | ||
| And so I obviously convinced myself, as I state in the story, that this was a disinformation operation of some kind. | ||
| Somebody, a state actor, non-state actor, I don't know who. | ||
| We're trying to entrap you. | ||
| We're trying to entrap me or fool me or I couldn't figure out what the actual motive was. | ||
| That was one of the hard parts. | ||
| But, you know, I wanted to understand, you know, what was going on here. | ||
| The most, at the end of the day, the most obvious explanation that it's just real was for most of the time I was following this, the most improbable because I'd never seen senior government officials act this way. | ||
| The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg last night on MSNBC. | ||
| This morning, we're getting your reaction and talking about congressional reaction as well. | ||
| There seems to be plenty of it so far. | ||
| To help wrap that up, we're joined this morning via Zoom by Stephen Newcomb of Axios. | ||
| He is the co-author of the Hill Leaders newsletter. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb, what's the most interesting reaction you've seen so far to this story? | ||
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Well, I think that the reaction so far from Republicans on Capitol Hill has been pretty interesting. | |
| Roger Wicker, who is the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he wants to look into this. | ||
| This is a person who in the last week, two weeks, has been sort of softly critical of Mr. Hegseth and the Trump administration and the Defense Department. | ||
| But, you know, the events of the last 24 hours have really forced this to a head. | ||
| And for Senator Wicker, somebody with prominence, with power in the Senate, to say that this is something that he wants to look into, this is pretty surprising move on Capitol Hill for Republicans. | ||
| And Democrats, anything but softly critical about this story and this leak. | ||
| This is Senator Elizabeth Warren on X yesterday. | ||
| This is blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief. | ||
| Our national security is in the hands of complete amateurs. | ||
| What other highly sensitive national security conversations are happening over group chat? | ||
| Elizabeth Warren yesterday, what can Democrats do about this as they control neither the House nor the Senate? | ||
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Yeah, they actually, it's relatively decent timing for Democrats on two fronts. | |
| One, they have CIA Director John Ratcliffe and DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee today. | ||
| I'm told by Democratic sources that a lot of that questioning for both of those individuals is going to focus around the Atlantic article and the fallout from that. | ||
| And then also, secondly, this sort of comes at a time that Democrats have been trying to find a way to go on offense against Republicans. | ||
| If you remember, two weeks ago, lawmakers left Washington. | ||
| Democrats were in a pretty significant spot of disarray, a lot of questions about the leadership of Chuck Schumer, drama between Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| And in the last 24 hours, they've sort of been able to turn their ire toward the Trump administration, toward Pete Hegseth, and the national security apparatus. | ||
| So it comes at a pretty opportune time for Capitol Hill Democrats. | ||
| And we should note the national security apparatus confirming the authenticity of this chat in statements put out yesterday. | ||
| It's Brian Hughes of the National Security Council, the spokesman, saying, at this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to that chain. | ||
| And Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, seeming to be the one that originally added Mr. Goldberg to this chain. | ||
| When is the next time we're going to hear from him or see him on Capitol Hill? | ||
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I'm not sure. | |
| And I'm sure that there will be a push to get a lot of these folks in front of Capitol Hill, at least from the Democratic side. | ||
| I think that today the reaction from Mr. Ratcliffe and from Ms. Gabbard is going to be telling about how much they're willing to engage with these questions. | ||
| My understanding is that through our reporting and the conversations we've had in the hallways, like I said, there's questions on both sides of the aisle, not just from Democrats who want to sort of understand how this happened. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to explain just how sort of dumbfounded and caught off guard folks on Capitol Hill were by this story. | ||
| I mean, the way that Mr. Goldberg sort of explained it as being unbelievable, it's because it is unbelievable to a lot of people who have been in D.C. for a long time. | ||
| So truly a breathtaking story that is setting up for at least an interesting day on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. | ||
| And before you go, as a reporter, explain the Signal app and how reporters use that on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Why is that an app of choice? | ||
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Yeah, so the messages are encrypted. | |
| It gives you a level of security, some anonymity going back and forth between sources. | ||
| You may use the app if you're talking about more sensitive materials, some subjects that you wouldn't want a paper trail of. | ||
| But it's still a third-party vendor. | ||
| And when it comes to war plans and top-secret military operations, it's not advisable to do it on that platform. | ||
| So it may be useful for journalists, for officials, even national security officials, as Mr. Goldberg said, planning meetings and so on and so forth, but not military operations. | ||
| It's just unheard of. | ||
| And as we've said, this is likely to be the focus of most of the attention on Capitol Hill today. | ||
| But outside of this story, Stephen Newcomb, it is a busy week on Capitol Hill. | ||
| What else are you watching for today? | ||
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Yeah, well, the biggest thing on Capitol Hill this week for Republicans is they need to find, specifically Senate Republicans, is they need to find a way to have a compromise offered to the budget resolution that House Republicans sent over last month. | |
| This is the biggest thing in front of Republicans. | ||
| This is the path through which they will pass trillions in tax cuts and they will slash federal spending by trillions as well. | ||
| But the House and the Senate at this junction are on different pages about just how to accomplish that. | ||
| So Senate or Majority Leader John Thune and his Senate leadership have got to find a way this week to come up with some sort of counter proposal because the timeline that's been laid out in front of us is they want to have this on the president's desk by Memorial Day. | ||
| So they really need to get this process kicked into high gear. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb and his colleagues at Axios cover it all. | ||
| It's axius.com. | ||
| The Hill Leaders Newsletter is the one that Stephen Newcomb is a co-author of, and we always do appreciate your time on the Washington Journal. | ||
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Thanks, Sean. | |
| To your phone calls now on this story out of the Atlantic. | ||
| It came out just after noon yesterday. | ||
| And the shocking headline, the Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. | ||
| Getting your reaction on phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents and a special line for active and former members of the military. | ||
| That number 202-748-8003. | ||
| But we'll start on the independent line. | ||
| This is Tom in Fort Lauderdale. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
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Hey, hey, good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| This is worst than Hillary. | ||
| This is a betrayal of the president. | ||
| I put the blame on the Senate Republicans for confirming this guy. | ||
| He was known to be drunk and an adulterer. | ||
| And they've made him an employee of the people of America. | ||
| And he's putting out classified data information on an app that can be monitored by Russia and China. | ||
| And then you look at his response, his projectionism. | ||
| He says the journalist is a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist. | ||
| He just, again, these Republicans are just talking about themselves. | ||
| And Americans need to see through this. | ||
| That was Tom. | ||
| This is Daryl out of Columbus, Georgia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Line for Democrat. | ||
| I'm sorry, Lisa, line for Republicans. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
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Yes, I'm a former DLD employee. | |
| And I'm going to tell you right now, I am so sick of this. | ||
| Oh, this is news. | ||
| We got a little scandal going on. | ||
| There are people underneath all of these department heads, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and DNI. | ||
| All these people have people under them that are supposed to control what is going on and when it happens, who's invited, where things are going. | ||
| My thing is now it's time to find out who these employees are that are adding reporters to the text and then standing back like, oh, I just made them look bad. | ||
| It's time for folks to get prosecuted. | ||
| This is the Department of Defense. | ||
| And I don't think it's funny. | ||
| I don't think that Congress should take this as, oh, it's time for us to attack the Republicans. | ||
| We need to know what is going on with the employees in our federal government. | ||
| That's Lisa in Virginia. | ||
| Now, Daryl in Columbus, Georgia. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
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Yeah, good morning, John. | |
| Yes, it just amazed me at the ineptitude and the hypocrisy of this party, the Republican Party, and starting with their leader, Trump, and going on down. | ||
| You remember when the Department of Defense, Lord Austin, was sick in the hospital with prostate cancer? | ||
| They wanted him to resign. | ||
| They made him go before a hearing. | ||
| And this guy comes in. | ||
| They're going to try to do what they normally do. | ||
| Downplay it. | ||
| There's nothing to see here. | ||
| All that kind of thing. | ||
| If I had a son or daughter in the military now, I would tell them to get out immediately. | ||
| This guy is leading these troops, man. | ||
| And it's just amazing that something bad is going to happen. | ||
| This guy, instead of him being a DEI hire, he's probably under the influence of DUI. | ||
| He stays drunk all the time. | ||
| That's Daryl in Georgia. | ||
| Reaction from members of the Trump administration, including some included on that text chain. | ||
| Defense Secretary Pete Hegset yesterday addressing the situation after landing in Hawaii. | ||
| This was his comments to reporters. | ||
| One question. | ||
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Can you share how your information about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen was shared with the journalists in the Atlantic? | |
| And were those details classified? | ||
| So You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax, or suckers and losers hoax. | ||
| So this is a guy that peddles in garbage. | ||
| This is what he does. | ||
| I would love to comment on the Houthi campaign because of the skill and courage of our troops. | ||
| I've monitored it very closely from the beginning. | ||
| And you see, we've been managing four years of deferred maintenance under the Trump administration. | ||
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Our troops, our sailors were getting shot at as targets. | |
| Our ships couldn't sail through. | ||
| And when they did shoot back, it was purely defensively or at shacks in Yemen. | ||
| President Trump said, no more. | ||
| We will reestablish deterrence. | ||
| We will open freedom of navigation. | ||
| And we will ultimately decimate the Houthis, which is exactly what we're doing as we speak from the beginning, overwhelmingly. | ||
|
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Why were those details shared on Signal? | |
| And how did you learn that a journalist was privy to the targets, the types of weapons used? | ||
| I've heard I was characterized. | ||
| Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday from Hawaii back here on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Chuck Schumer was on the floor of the Senate. | ||
| This is what the Senate Minority Leader had to say. | ||
| Mr. President, this is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time. | ||
| What we have here are senior U.S. leaders, including the Vice President and Secretary of Defense, having classified discussions of military action over an unsecure app. | ||
| It's bad enough that a private citizen was added to this chain, but it's far worse that sensitive military information was exchanged on an unauthorized application, especially when that sensitive military information was so, so important. | ||
| If these detailed exchanges about coordinating military operations fell into the hands of America's enemies, it could get people killed. | ||
| It could severely harm our military. | ||
| It would put America's national security in danger. | ||
| This debacle requires a full investigation into how this happened, the damage it created, and how we can avoid it in the future. | ||
| If our nation's military secrets are being peddled around over unsecure text chains, we need to know that at once. | ||
| And we need to put a stop to it immediately. | ||
| Every single senator, Republican and Democrat and Independent, must demand accountability. | ||
| Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday getting your reaction to this story this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| And we have a special line for active and former military 202-748-8003 is that number on that line is Mike out of Ohio. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, John. | |
| This is ludicrous. | ||
| Mistakes happen in war. | ||
| And this luckily wasn't a war situation to where people were killed. | ||
| As far as being worse than Hillary Clinton, she had an unsecured server, unsecured phone. | ||
| She was hacked by Russia, hacked by China. | ||
| But you don't hear Chuck Schumer making a big deal about that. | ||
| No, because she's part of the Democratic Party, the corruption. | ||
| And as far as getting this straightened out, it will be straightened out. | ||
| They're just looking for heads as far as people that are working for Trump to hang his trophies. | ||
| Listen, Trump won. | ||
| He's going to follow through with his plans, and we are looking better. | ||
| I feel a lot safer since Trump's in office than Blinky Winky or whoever else was on that board with Biden. | ||
| Anybody have any comments? | ||
| Do you think anybody needs to be fired over this? | ||
| I ask, because this is the headline in Politico today. | ||
| Waltz's future is in doubt following the accidental war plan leak. | ||
| Mike Waltz, the U.S. National Security Advisor. | ||
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As far as being fired, no. | |
| As far as reprimanding, yes. | ||
| Did anybody reprimand Hillary? | ||
| She lost the election bid because everybody knew that she was crooked and corrupt. | ||
| I'm just astounded that people would say that this is worse than Hillary because they have no idea what Hillary was doing. | ||
| She was a Secretary of State. | ||
| They had information, secret, private information that was stolen off her server. | ||
| I just cannot believe that these Democrats, they'll stop at nothing to stop Trump. | ||
| Look what they're doing as far as lawfare. | ||
| That's Mike in Ohio. | ||
| You mentioned Hillary. | ||
| This is Philip Bump writing for the Washington Post. | ||
| His column that came out yesterday after this story came out. | ||
| It's the final nail in the butt her emails coffin saying the indifference here to security is more obvious and more immediate than anything Clinton was ever accused of doing. | ||
| Philip Bumps writes with a demonstrable failure to preserve the security of the operation, despite Pete Hegseth's insistence within the chat itself. | ||
| He says, what's more, there's every reason to think that no one in the administration will face any consequences for the inclusion of Mr. Goldberg or for sharing the war plans over Signal or for the possibility that Waltz established the chat, which included an auto-delete mechanism specifically to avoid preserving public records. | ||
| By now, what we should expect from the Trump administration is for nothing to happen to anyone involved. | ||
| The Clinton email story was useful in getting Trump the power of the presidency. | ||
| Now that he has it, Philip Bump writes he has no plans to relinquish any portion of it anymore, no matter how hypocritical his position from the Washington Post today. | ||
| This is Gary out of Corpus Christi, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Doing well, Gary. | ||
| What are your thoughts on the story? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, my thoughts are this here. | |
| President Trump sometimes elects people to his cabinet that really shouldn't be there. | ||
| Pete Hess Smith, I think, is one of those. | ||
| He needs a four-star general in there like Jack Keene or somebody who has the respect of other generals. | ||
| Hess Seth, I doubt, has any respect, is not respected by the four-star, three-star, and other generals either. | ||
| You know, as far as I'm concerned, Pete Hessmeth is Trump's just sessions as Attorney General. | ||
| He's nothing but a problem, and he doesn't have the experience or the knowledge to be a Secretary of Defense. | ||
| And that's my opinion. | ||
| Gary, as a Republican, is there any other people you view as a problem in his cabinet? | ||
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unidentified
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No, not really. | |
| Not that I can think of offhand. | ||
| There's some question marks, but I can't really put a name to him right now. | ||
| Who else has a question, Mark? | ||
| Oh, I don't know. | ||
| I can't think of any right offhand, but there's some there, believe me. | ||
| That's Gary in Texas back to line for Democrats, Brooklyn, New York. | ||
| Alex, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| This is a joke. | ||
| I mean, where we are now. | ||
| You have a drunken Hegseth who can't even, he's a weekend anchor. | ||
| You have Tulsi Gabbard and you have all of these idiots on an unsecure. | ||
| I mean, you can't make this stuff up. | ||
| And worse still, you have JD Vance saying that Europeans are pathetic and that they are going to have to pay, that they are going to have to pay for the United States being able to take out the Houthis. | ||
| This is where we're at. | ||
| Germany is investing a trillion dollars into the rearmament of Europe. | ||
| And these idiots, these Republicans that somehow think this isn't going to come back to us, you are literally arming Europe again. | ||
| Do you idiots even know the history of Europe and what has happened when Europe has rearmed? | ||
| And beyond that, lawfare, just look at what's happening with law firms that have gone against Trump. | ||
| This man is putting executive orders to silence anybody and everyone in order to there be no kind of retribution towards him. | ||
| We are literally sliding towards autocracy every single day. | ||
| And these idiots are going to make this happen, and we're going to end up in a war because they're going to inadvertently just pop up out of nowhere, say something, somebody's going to react, and here we are. | ||
| So please, please, please, people, this is not a simple incident. | ||
| It is endemic of what this administration is. | ||
| Alex in New York. | ||
| Joe is in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, that line for current and former military. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Morning. | |
| The Trump derangement syndrome is bad. | ||
| I mean, a lot of Democrats are sitting around the set deep tank finding what they can find to eat. | ||
| CNBC, Jin Saki, I mean, credible. | ||
| Why did I not hear all this when Millie called President Qi and said, hey, if the United States is going to plan anything, I will give you a call. | ||
| I mean, come on, people. | ||
| Let the man do his job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Joe in Tennessee. | ||
| This is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal writing about this story out of the Atlantic yesterday. | ||
| Here's what they have to say. | ||
| President Trump claims to run the most transparent administration in history, but maybe not like this. | ||
| His team somehow added the journalists to a high-level Yemen war planning chat conducted over Signal, the commercial messaging app, with operational details about targets, weapons, and attacks. | ||
| A National Council Security Council spokesman confirmed the accuracy of the story. | ||
| The news, they write, is that the characters played to their public type. | ||
| National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was a voice for U.S. leadership and for carrying out the president's policy. | ||
| Vice President JD Vance was a voice for U.S. retreat, and even when Mr. Trump directed otherwise, Mr. Vance, they write, conceded to reality at the end of the chat saying, I hate bailing Europe out once again. | ||
| And Mr. Hegseth agreed, saying, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. | ||
| It's pathetic, but Mike Waltz is correct. | ||
| The editorial board saying the president's policy carried the day here. | ||
| Mr. Trump now knows which of his deputies tried to block it and which tried to carry it out. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| This is Brad out of Boyd, Texas, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Hello, everybody. | ||
| I just can't sing the praises enough of the Trump administration. | ||
| They're doing God's work. | ||
| They're bringing in a golden age for America. | ||
| And the Democrats get all the things they do is pout and patty. | ||
| They've been lying to us about the immigrants. | ||
| They lied to us about Russian Gate. | ||
| What was it? | ||
| Biden's laptop. | ||
| They are pathetic. | ||
| We finally have a chance to be a country again. | ||
| Thank God for Trump. | ||
| Bob San Diego, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Yeah, my grandfather was a prisoner. | ||
| Bob, you with us? | ||
| Your grandfather was what? | ||
|
unidentified
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In Japan, you know, World War II. | |
| And I know he's rolling over his grave. | ||
| You know, in his career, he got demoted because he ate with the, he was a lieutenant and he was eating with the regular people, you know, the non-enlisted, the enlisted people. | ||
| They weren't officers, you know, and now it seems like you can put classified information over an app, you know, an unsecured app. | ||
| And we already know that just by the fallout, we've seen Elon Musk and Trump both get on their social medias and attack the paper or the magazine that just came out in rather than what really happened. | ||
|
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So you already know there's a twist that is never going to be litigated. | |
| You know, the AG is under his shoulder. | ||
| I just watched a cabinet meeting that I couldn't believe how they were falling all over themselves just to be able to say, oh, you're so, Your Majesty, you know, you're such a good person, you're such a good leader, and none of them are doing their jobs. | ||
| They're just sucking up to him, you know, firing veterans. | ||
| That's why there are so many protests. | ||
| If everybody would look around, you'd see the protests that are going on. | ||
| There's something's not right. | ||
| And, you know, I'm kind of ashamed that they're not being more careful with our, you know, our classified information. | ||
|
unidentified
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People can get killed. | |
| This is not funny. | ||
| And it's not political. | ||
| And it's not Democrats attacking Republicans. | ||
| This is national security. | ||
| And you guys better wake up. | ||
| This is real. | ||
| That's Bob in San Diego. | ||
| This is a few of your comments via social media on Facebook. | ||
| Frankie writing, it's a propaganda outlet with no credibility talking about the Atlantic magazine. | ||
| Troy saying, I can only imagine Trump's tantrum if this was done by the Democrats. | ||
| He would call for them all to be jailed. | ||
| And Faye saying, why isn't Goldberg provided copies of the alleged text? | ||
| If you read the Atlantic magazine, he does, in fact, include the texts, some of the texts, and he's clear that he was privy to texts about specific operations, and he did not include them or quote from them in his story. | ||
| But these are a series of the texts, a screenshot of the texts after the attack on the Houthis in Yemen. | ||
| The name of the chat is the Houthi Principals Committee small group. | ||
| John Ratcliffe, CIA director, calling it a good start after the attack occurred. | ||
| Michael Waltz, the National Security Advisor, with three emojis, a fist and American flag and fire. | ||
| And MAR, which Mr. Goldberg presumes was Marco Rubio, saying, good job, Pete, and your team talking to Pete Hegseth. | ||
| So some of the texts on that chain, screenshots of them included in the story. | ||
| It's all available at the Atlantic magazine's website, theatlantic.com. | ||
| Again, the story being released just after noon yesterday and the reaction continuing through today and is likely going to continue at that congressional hearing today with several intelligence community leaders testifying. | ||
| Your reaction, this is 7.30 Eastern Time. | ||
| We're about halfway through our first hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| This is Edwin in Maryland. | ||
| It's Columbia, Maryland, that line for current and former military. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm calling because this, just on a leadership perspective, this is just bad. | ||
| And honestly, nothing's going to be done about it. | ||
| None of these guys are going to, I mean, from the leadership down from the ODNI to the Secretary of Defense, none of these guys are going to resign or acknowledge fault for putting classified information, which is what it is, the war planning on a public app. | ||
| So, I mean, it's outrageous and it is dangerous. | ||
| What if this reporter from the Atlantic had been somebody different? | ||
| What if it would have been a mistake and they've added one of their foreign counterparts to this chat group? | ||
| Then it would have been worse. | ||
| But unfortunately, I mean, this is sad, right? | ||
| That, I mean, other I hear my fellow veterans calling in saying that, oh, this is, you know, this is nothing. | ||
| This is a nothing burger. | ||
| You know, Trump is doing a great job. | ||
| The leadership is reflective of who is at the top, unfortunately, and very lax. | ||
| People who have had clearances, especially in the DMV area, understand that if it had happened to one of them, their clearances would have been pulled. | ||
| They would have been investigated. | ||
| And more than likely, they would have been jailed for a period of time or paid a fine. | ||
| This is a sad state of affairs. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Edwin in Maryland. | ||
| This is Rick in Philly, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for accepting my call. | |
| You guys have had some very interesting responses yourself. | ||
| But realistically, we all know this was wrong and dangerous for our country. | ||
| It's not important who found out, who saw it, who looked at it. | ||
| It's not important their credentials and who they work for. | ||
| What is important is what happened. | ||
| How did it happen? | ||
| Can it happen again? | ||
| This is what happens when you hire people that are not prepared to accept the responsibilities of their position. | ||
| When we were kids, we played a game called three-card molly. | ||
| It wasn't what was going on with the left hand, it was the right hand. | ||
| And all these things to me are diversions of what their true intention is, which is two things: the big tax break for the billionaires, which will take us further into debt. | ||
| And the second thing is not to actually steal Social Security, but to vert it, to vert it to direct, change the direction of the and and the policies and the management of Social Security. | ||
| So Wall Street has a big infusion of money from the trust fund of Social Security. | ||
| Social Security has the same risk as everyone else's 401k. | ||
| I truly believe that's their directives. | ||
| That's their true thing that they want to do. | ||
| All this other stuff is only diversions, only smokescreens. | ||
| So you don't see what's going on with the right hand. | ||
| That's Rick in Philadelphia. | ||
| Gloria is in Derby, Kansas. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, can you hear me? | |
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| I wanted to say that you can't believe anything that the Atlantic says. | ||
| They're a propaganda paper. | ||
| And I think the Democrats are behind all of this. | ||
| They are so jealous that people are joining the military now that Biden's out of the way. | ||
| They are so jealous. | ||
| Does it matter to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're trying to tell everyone that the Republicans are trying to get rid of Medicare. | |
| So, Gloria, does it matter to you that the National Security Council spokesperson confirmed the authenticity? | ||
| He said their report appears to be authentic, and we're reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to this chain. | ||
| This is from the spokesman for the National Security Council in the Trump administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| Does that matter to you, Gloria, that they confirmed the authenticity of this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, because I think the Democrats are behind it. | |
| They pay papers for propaganda. | ||
| But they're trying to make everybody believe that the Republicans are against Medicare, Medicaid. | ||
| The Republicans are the ones that are trying to save it. | ||
| The Democrats are the ones that are trying to get rid of it by giving everything to the illegal aliens, by paying all their doctor bills and paying their doctors. | ||
| And also, well, got your point. | ||
| That's Gloria in Kansas. | ||
| Here's the final two paragraphs of the Atlantic story yesterday. | ||
| Here's how Jeffrey Goldberg ended his story. | ||
| Mike Waltz and other cabinet-level officials were already potentially violating government policy and the law simply by texting one another about this operation. | ||
| But when Waltz added a journalist, presumably by mistake, to the principals committee, he created new security and legal issues. | ||
| And now the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it. | ||
| That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Yemen came under American attack. | ||
| All along, members of the Signal Group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. | ||
| In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Pete Hegseth wrote to the group, which at the time included me, Jeffrey Goldberg, we are currently clean on OPSEC operations security. | ||
| That is the final graph of that story that came out yesterday. | ||
| More reaction from Capitol Hill yesterday, starting with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson in the Capitol hallways, was asked about this story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're concerned about Trump officials, Trump Trump officials transmitting classified war plans on unsecured channels. | |
| Listen, the administration, as I understand, I just was with the president in the Oval Office just now. | ||
| The administration is addressing what happened. | ||
| Apparently, an inadvertent phone number made it onto that thread. | ||
| They're going to track that down and make sure that it doesn't happen again. | ||
| What you did see, though, I think, was top-level officials doing their job, doing it well, and executing on a plan with precision. | ||
| That mission was a success. | ||
| No one was jeopardized because of it. | ||
| We're grateful for that, but they will certainly, I'm sure, make sure that that doesn't happen. | ||
| But it's unsecured on the signal. | ||
| Look, I'm not going to characterize what happened. | ||
| Clearly, I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake, and they'll tighten up and make sure it doesn't happen again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Should Mike Walton take something to support? | |
| No, no. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday on Capitol Hill, also on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, here was his reaction to that Atlantic story. | ||
| It should absolutely be a congressional investigation so that we can understand what happened, why did it happen, and how do we prevent this type of national security breach from ever happening again? | ||
| This is reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous. | ||
| Who are some of these people that Donald Trump has put into the most sensitive national security positions in America? | ||
| We were promised that Donald Trump was going to hire the very best. | ||
| It's all phony. | ||
| The attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, phony. | ||
| So it's never about hiring the best people. | ||
| As Democrats, we actually believe in merit. | ||
| Merit that should be based on what you know, not who you know. | ||
| And understand, this whole Trump administration is filled with lackeys and incompetent cronies. | ||
| I'm not talking about any particular individual, though I will note that the Secretary of Defense who was on that chain has got to be the most unqualified person ever to lead the Pentagon in American history. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| You've put these people in charge in a very dangerous world, and then you want to attack communities of color, attack women, and attack others who are actually very qualified. | ||
| CQ Brown, incredibly qualified, brilliant, serve this country. | ||
| Well, all of these attacks from the Trump administration on a diverse American, it's all phony. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries yesterday on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Back to your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| This is Ray in Pittsburgh. | ||
| Democrat, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| A couple of things I wanted to point out to the people that are listening. | ||
| First, I think we saw what the true Trump derangement system is, or whatever they call it, in Gloria, who was just on there. | ||
| Now, I could almost see her eyes glazing over when you told her the truth and her brain stopped working. | ||
| But that's not why I called. | ||
| The reason I called is this incident with the Yemeni war plans shows the utter stupidity, hilarity, and dangerousness of the hypocrisy that the Trump syncophants want to use. | ||
| They'll go to the highest heights, scream from the rooftops, and yell about how it's a state secret that we can't reveal the names of the migrants we shipped to El Salvador because that's such a national interest problem that we can't name them. | ||
| We can't tell you who they are. | ||
| But on the terms of the Yemeni war plans, they'll say, ah, no big deal. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| You know, it's nothing. | ||
| And that's basically what I had to say. | ||
| And then you can see the Trump cult calling in now, and everything they say now is either Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, or Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| Just like the drunk Secretary of Defense that we have. | ||
| You see him lunging at the camera saying, Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| It is so funny. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| Thanks for letting me call. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Ray in Pittsburgh. | ||
| This is John in Waynesville, Missouri, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I've got a couple of bullets, but first I want to address Gloria right quick. | ||
| If Donald Trump is not trying to get rid of Medicaid and Medicare and such, then Elon would not be out there calling a Ponzi scheme. | ||
| Okay, got that out of the way. | ||
| Here's my point. | ||
| I just want people to think about what's not being covered in mainstream media. | ||
| One, these transactions, were they done on personal phones or were they done on government phones? | ||
| If it was done on a government phone, they shouldn't have that app on there. | ||
| If they use their civilian phones, then they definitely were subjected to being hacked. | ||
| My next point is they said that they despise the freeloading Europeans. | ||
| What do you think that does for us to have our government out there saying that we despise the Europeans? | ||
| People aren't thinking about the backlash. | ||
| It's more than just the release of this information. | ||
| Another problem we're going to have is our allies won't be so quick to come to our aid because they know that we can't keep military secrets. | ||
| They're not going to be putting their service member. | ||
| I'm a 16-year retired veteran, lost my leg in Afghanistan. | ||
| Okay, these people are not going to be so quick to come to our aid, and we're going to need it. | ||
| The Secretary of Defense boldly lied, stating that all these conversations didn't happen. | ||
| All the while the White House is out there saying, yes, it did happen. | ||
| I mean, this is so dysfunctional. | ||
| We literally, as Americans, have our pants down right now. | ||
| If another country wanted to come attack us, they could because nobody's going to come to our aid now. | ||
| We have no allies. | ||
| And these are things that aren't being talked about. | ||
| Everybody wants to talk about the information. | ||
| What about the repercussions? | ||
| They're not going to help us. | ||
| They're not going to come to our aid. | ||
| I mean, this is just so insane. | ||
| We're literally on our own now. | ||
| And just to top off my comment, this is my last one. | ||
| The reason why this is going on is because they're all acting with impunity because they know whatever they do, Trump will pardon them. | ||
| They've got to get out of jail-free card, and they're going to do whatever they want with no fear. | ||
| That's John in Missouri. | ||
| This is Susie in Maine, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yes, nice weather in Maine. | ||
| Getting better. | ||
| Anyway, during the Second World War, there was an intentional lie created that the Americans would invade Europe at a certain point at a certain area. | ||
| And the whole world was preparing for it, especially in France and Germany. | ||
| Anyway, when in fact the real secret plans were to enter elsewhere, I think it was Normandy. | ||
| This could be the same case. | ||
| Susie, this was a discussion about an attack that then occurred, and the reporter didn't write about it until well after it occurred. | ||
| The attack occurred on March the 15th, and this report came out yesterday detailing this exchange. | ||
| But the attack actually happened at the time and place that the reporter apparently saw on these text messages on this signals app exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, what makes a difference? | |
| Is it just a time element? | ||
| Maybe it was successful, whatever the underlying plans were. | ||
| Or maybe it's just a distraction from some other things that are going on in planned. | ||
| There shouldn't be any war anyway. | ||
| I mean, war is a passe. | ||
| What happened to peace? | ||
| And, you know, loving each other and compassion for human race and for other species. | ||
| As long as a human being continues to eat blood foods and eat animals, they're going to be violent. | ||
| Susie in Maine. | ||
| This is Joel in New Jersey on that line for current and former military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to say it is classified information. | |
| And he should know better than to be, you know, doing this on an open line that's not government approved. | ||
| He's endangering the service people of the United States. | ||
| And they're flying planes in there. | ||
| If they caught wind of this, they would have been more on alert and could have shot that plane down. | ||
| And, you know, it seems like the president, Donald Trump, doesn't give a shit, excuse my language, about our service people because he's not saying anything against this guy. | ||
| Even call him into his office and say, hey, look, you really messed up. | ||
| You know, you're going to have to do something. | ||
| Not just lie about it's not happening when it did happen. | ||
| And the guy was, the reporter was good enough, had enough sense not to give classified information out. | ||
| Joel. | ||
| And waited days afterwards. | ||
| Joel, on those two points on Mike Waltz adding Jeffrey Goldberg to this text chain and how Mr. Goldberg handled this. | ||
| On the former, it's Politico that says that Waltz's future at the White House might be in doubt in the wake of this incident. | ||
| The story yesterday evening saying the stunning revelation the top administration officials accidentally included the reporter in the group chat discussing war plans triggered furious discussion inside the White House that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz may need to be forced out. | ||
| Nothing is decided yet. | ||
| And White House officials cautioned that the president would ultimately make the decision over the next day or two. | ||
| A senior administration official told Politico on Monday afternoon that they are involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with Waltz following that bombshell report. | ||
| Half of them are saying he's never going to survive or shouldn't survive this, said the official, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations in the story. | ||
| Two high-level White House aides have floated the idea that Waltz should resign in order to prevent the president from being put in a bad position. | ||
| That's the Politico story. | ||
| And then on how Mr. Goldberg handled this incident after the attack in Yemen on March 15th happened and Jeffrey Goldberg realized that this was in fact a real chain. | ||
| He said, the signal group chat, I concluded, was almost certainly real, having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before. | ||
| I then removed myself from the signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group's creator, Michael Waltz, that I had left. | ||
| No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there, and I received no subsequent questions about why I had left. | ||
| Or more to the point, who I was. | ||
| Earlier today, this is yesterday, Mr. Goldberg said, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on a signal account. | ||
| I also wrote Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. | ||
| In the email, I outlined some of my questions. | ||
| Is there a Houthi principals committee small group, a genuine signal thread? | ||
| Did they know that I was included? | ||
| Was I, on the off chance, included on purpose? | ||
| If not, who did they think I was? | ||
| Did anyone realize who I was when I was added and when I removed myself? | ||
| Do senior Trump administration officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? | ||
| Do the officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger American personnel? | ||
| And he goes on to quote Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responding, saying simply, this appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added. | ||
| The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. | ||
| The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security. | ||
| That was the official statement from the National Security Council. | ||
| About 10 minutes left in this segment, getting your reaction. | ||
| This is Joe in Illinois. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I have to laugh at some of these people calling, especially Gloria. | ||
| She can't, you know, she's got to quit watching Sean Hanna day on Fox. | ||
| That's all crap there. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| But at any rate, this just shows the incompetence of this administration. | ||
| This guy's president is asleep at the wheel. | ||
| He was notified by Goldberg at 9 o'clock in the morning what had happened. | ||
| He called the White House and he asked about it after lunch. | ||
| He knew nothing about it. | ||
| He said, Well, you're telling me about it. | ||
| Now, what does this tell you about the incompetence of this administration? | ||
| Plus, Pete Hagstaff and Wallace should be fired, yes, but they won't. | ||
| They'll back them up and they'll make it look like it. | ||
| Like Gloria said, it's the good Democrats are behind us. | ||
| Oh, my. | ||
| Yeah, we're behind it, all right. | ||
| We're behind pushing you out. | ||
| Now, if you're talking about impeaching judges, we should impeach Cannon for turning Trump loose with classified documents who he shared with adversaries. | ||
| But oh no, we can't do that. | ||
| Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| That's all Trump wants to holler about. | ||
| So, at any rate, folks, take it for what it is. | ||
| He's incompetent. | ||
| The whole administration is incompetent. | ||
| And in 2026, we need to clean up this mess. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That's Joe in the land of Lincoln to the Lone Star State. | ||
| This is Carlos, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This is all about a call that a known Democrat Shill said he heard. | ||
| So, Carlos, there's about a text chain that he received. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whatever it is, it all depends on what that man said that he heard. | |
| It has been denied by the administration, and this is all it is, again, all of the Democrat disinformation that started the day that Trump became president the first time. | ||
| This is all a lie. | ||
| It's a bunch of lies. | ||
| Carlos, how do you explain the National Security Council spokesman yesterday saying at this time the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The message thread is a very obtuse piece of information. | |
| What was in the actual message thread? | ||
| What was actually heard? | ||
| There was no information, non-classified information contained in what the Democrat Shill has said. | ||
| Carlos in Texas. | ||
| This is Renee in Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd like to say there's none so blind as those who will refuse to see. | ||
| This is a ship of fools. | ||
| The incompetence is incredible. | ||
| Trump has no respect for it, top secrets. | ||
| He'd keep them by the toilet. | ||
| No, you're not. | ||
| He wouldn't even give them back. | ||
| It's inconceivable that he has gotten away with all the things he has done. | ||
| But Pete Hexford, he was never what, Renee? | ||
| The head of the Pentagon, the Secretary of State. | ||
| He was never qualified. | ||
| It's a whole different mindset to be a fighter than to actually be an administrator. | ||
| And that's more of a ministrated logistic position. | ||
| You have to know a lot about a lot of different things. | ||
| And people should not step out of their role where they shouldn't be. | ||
| He was on Fox. | ||
| I've seen him on Fox. | ||
| He's that's Renee in Pennsylvania going a little in and out. | ||
| Renee, we'll go to Bradley in North Richland Hills, Texas, that lines for current and former military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Good morning, C-SPAN. | ||
| I'd like just to make the comment that the one woman from Kansas was right on about the Atlantic. | ||
| The Atlantic is a failed magazine. | ||
| They have attacked Catholics in the past, people of conservatism, a lot of the Trump haters out here this morning in full force. | ||
| Why people are so against peace is beyond me, but they can't get over the fact that Trump is winning. | ||
| He's going to win big. | ||
| Atlantic is a failed magazine, and that's the bottom line. | ||
| Maggie. | ||
| That's Bradley. | ||
| This is Christina back in Illinois, lying for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hello there. | ||
| Am I on? | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning to you. | ||
| You know, I sit here and I listen, and it's the same old rhetoric over and over and over. | ||
| I am so sick of the water boutisms. | ||
| If Hillary Clinton did something illegal, then she should have been punished. | ||
| I am so tired. | ||
| Two wrongs do not make a right. | ||
| I mean, if one person does something wrong, then don't repeat it. | ||
| Well, they did it wrong. | ||
| Oh, you know, he stabbed me in the chest. | ||
| Well, it's okay because the other guy, you know, stabbed someone in the ear. | ||
| I mean, it's just all nuts. | ||
| And that's all I had to say. | ||
| I'm going to try to not cry during the rest of this show. | ||
| It seems to upset me greatly about the stupidity of so many people. | ||
| And it's not just Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| I could care less about either one of that. | ||
| Ignorance is ignorance. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| You have a wonderful day. | ||
| That's Christina. | ||
| This is John San Diego, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Earlier in the show, you had commented on Goldberg's comments on how this could have had the classic look of a leak to the press on what was happening there. | ||
| And that could very well be. | ||
| But, you know, Goldberg, he'sn't just some reporter out there. | ||
| Goldberg is actually, he's a former IDF agent, soldier, Palestinian Guard. | ||
| He's an Israeli citizen. | ||
| He was at one point. | ||
| So, I mean, the question is, who was the first person Goldberg reached out to when he received these texts and heard these comments being made? | ||
| I would think that the FBI needs to go talk to Mr. Goldberg and look at his phone records and see who he communicated with as soon as he became aware of the information he received from this joint call. | ||
| That's John in San Diego. | ||
| This is Jay, Jacksonville, Florida Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's really just sad and pathetic to listen to how many cult members will call up and totally miss the point of what's involved here. | |
| I mean, you had a caller a few minutes ago not understanding that the NSC has, in fact, of course, basically confirmed the details of the call. | ||
| And he's still, I mean, they digress immediately to calling the reporter names and he's horrible. | ||
| His paper is failing. | ||
| He's terrible. | ||
| He's done this and done that. | ||
| That makes it all the more worse. | ||
| that they would give this information to a guy like that. | ||
| It doesn't matter if the guy, Jeffrey Goldberg, is a mass murdering psychopath child molester. | ||
| It makes it all the more worse that someone like that would get the information. | ||
| So that in no way, shape, or form makes it any better. | ||
| But they get that type of behavior from their leaders, Pete Heckseth and the like. | ||
| That's exactly what he did to once again, as always, deflect, deflect, and deflect. | ||
| This is how they get through these scandals. | ||
| And this scandal will probably only be a scandal for, what, another day or two? | ||
| And there will be no accountability in all likelihood. | ||
| No one fired, no heads rolling. | ||
| Let's not forget, what was it, just a few days ago, just last week, just a few days ago, they all denied the story about Elon Musk, of course, about to get briefed on sensitive Chinese potential attack plans for a war with China. | ||
| And we weren't supposed to believe that because, of course, the geniuses inside the Defense Department and so forth, they would never give that type of information and, you know, highly secured information to someone like Elon Musk. | ||
| That was a fake story and whatnot. | ||
| I totally believe that. | ||
| That was a real story. | ||
| The only reason this story gets out, this is important to know, the only reason this story has gotten out like it was because a non-validated cult member, meaning Goldberg, had the information. | ||
| He had the proof. | ||
| There's no way of denying the story. | ||
| That story last week, there was no outside non-cult member who had the unvarnished actual facts that they could prove the story with. | ||
| So that only lasted for a day or two. | ||
| That's Jay in Florida, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Stick around, plenty more to talk about today, including up next. | ||
| We will be joined by the co-founder of the group Moms for Liberty. | ||
| Tina Deskovich joins us to discuss the Department of Education and its future. | ||
| And later, Democrat Sean Kasten of Illinois will join us to discuss his work on Capitol Hill, Democrats in Congress, all of that coming up today on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| This Saturday, the first 100 days of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1981, the former California governor won the White House by defeating President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| A conversation now on the future of the Department of Education. | ||
| Back with us, our guest, Tina Discovich, co-founder and executive director of Moms for Liberty. | ||
| And Tina Discovich, before we dive into the DOE, remind viewers what Moms for Liberty is, how long you've been around, how you're funded. | ||
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| We launched in January of 2021, so we are a little over four years old. | ||
| We are funded by donors across the country, small and big. | ||
| And your group on this topic has very much been in support of closing the Department of Education. | ||
| Why? | ||
| So Moms for Liberty, when we launched in January of 2021 by myself and my co-founder, were former school board members, and we experienced all the things, all the things we saw behind the education curtain. | ||
| And then we saw that all of America was experiencing what was going on in education throughout 2020 and 2021. | ||
| And they were getting very upset by seeing what was being taught. | ||
| They were trying to approach their school boards. | ||
| Their mics were getting shut off. | ||
| They were getting closed out of meetings. | ||
| And they were understanding that public education in America was very broken. | ||
| Since then, we've had the national report card come out again this year to show that test scores in both math and reading are on a steady decline. | ||
| And so I think everything we can all point, everything points to the fact that the Department of Education has failed children in America, and it is time to stop the experiment that we started in 1980 with the U.S. Department of Public Education. | ||
| The language of the executive order on closing the DOE that came out last week talks about a two-step process here, closing the DOE and then returning authority to the states. | ||
| What does the latter part of that mean? | ||
| It's exactly what needs to happen in education. | ||
| Education in America was always meant to be at the most local level. | ||
| We have a very unique system of education compared to what goes on around the world, and it has worked historically well. | ||
| When parents are in the driver's seat, when parents and local community members are elected to local school boards and they are overseeing education, that is when it's the most successful. | ||
| States were always meant to be the overseers of education, not bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. They're just too disconnected, too out of touch, and it's costing the taxpayer, you know, I think almost $3 trillion is the latest number since 1979. | ||
| And so by returning it to the states, parents and local community members will be driving the educational practices that are happening in their community for their children. | ||
| So the day after this executive order, President Trump said that it would be the Small Business Administration that would take over the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio that DOE had overseen. | ||
| And then also the Department of Health and Human Services would take over the school nutrition programs, special education services. | ||
| What makes you confident that the Department of Health and Human Services and the small business administrations can make these programs run better than they're running right now in the Department of Education? | ||
| I think it clearly makes sense. | ||
| The Small Business Administration, those are qualified individuals that have handled financial, that are handled financial situations and financial management. | ||
| They are experienced in that area. | ||
| You know, we saw that locally even when I was on the school board. | ||
| A lot of times a former school teacher of an elementary school gets promoted to an administrative position and ultimately maybe a principal. | ||
| And sometimes they just, they didn't have the same skill set. | ||
| And so the Department of Education was created to do a lot of things. | ||
| It was supposed to close the achievement gap, which it has not done. | ||
| It's failed on that also. | ||
| And it was never intended to be able to manage the multi-millions of dollars in student loans. | ||
| That definitely belongs somewhere with people that understand that process better. | ||
| You know, and I'm glad that you brought up the fact that special education will be moved to HHS because there's a lot of misinformation out there right now that students that are struggling, special education students, exceptional students, ESE students, will lose their services. | ||
| And we firmly believe that that is not the case at all. | ||
| It is being moved to HHS. | ||
| The dollars should go directly to the state, directly to school districts. | ||
| All the teachers that I know, all of the school administrators I know will be thrilled that the red tape of the U.S. Department of Education will be cut out and the money will be coming directly to students. | ||
| I think we'll see a greater impact on their learning gains. | ||
| You were with Education Secretary Linda McMahon last week, I believe. | ||
| Did you talk to her about being in a position where her job is to end the department that she oversees? | ||
| It's really remarkable because if you've been around DC for a while, and I'm sure you have, everybody's vying for bigger positions. | ||
| They're planning out their career 20 years, how they can get more power. | ||
| Secretary McMahon is very clear on her mission and what she is to do, and she's to work herself out of a job, and she's wearing that banner proudly. | ||
| A statement from the National Education Association's Becky Pringle, the NEA, one of those teachers organizations, one of the labor unions, they write, she said, if successful, Donald Trump's continued actions will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, | ||
| taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting students' civil rights protections. | ||
| I wonder how you would respond to Becky Pringle. | ||
| The teachers' union is fear-mongering because they're losing power. | ||
| Just as we just said, Linda McMahon is willing to give up power for the betterment of students across America. | ||
| The teachers' unions have proven time and time again, including Ms. Pringle, all they want is power. | ||
| That is not for the benefit of children. | ||
| If you break down everything that she said, all of those special needs students, that will be covered in HHS. | ||
| Those dollars will go directly to students. | ||
| That is better for students. | ||
| And some of the other things that they keep saying are concerning they're just false and they're lies. | ||
| And so I hope people will go read the executive order. | ||
| They'll do their homework and they will understand that these decisions will benefit not just students, but honestly, teachers need to pay attention because every teacher I've known that's worked with special ed students has complained about the amount of paperwork. | ||
| I can't spend this much time, as much time as I need to with my student because of the excessive paperwork. | ||
| This will solve that problem. | ||
| And Discovich is our guest, Moms for Liberty, is her organization. | ||
| The phone lines are open for you to call in. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002, a special line for parents and educators and teachers. | ||
| 202-748-8003 is that number. | ||
| Tian Deskovic, as folks are calling in, there's a story in today's papers. | ||
| This happened yesterday, a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration order to close the Department of Education. | ||
| A number of groups, including the American Federations of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors, suing to stop the closure of the Department of Education. | ||
| I wonder your thoughts on how long these court cases could take, what they could mean for the executive order here. | ||
| They're all worried about their jobs, and I understand that, but it's not what's best for children. | ||
| And in America, we're concerned about what's best for children. | ||
| So, you know, court cases take a while, but if Congress does its job and puts together a bill and passes a bill to shut down the Department of Education, I don't think the courts are going to have much standing for very long. | ||
| Is that what it's going to take, Congress to actually pass legislation to close the DOE? | ||
| Do you not believe that this can be done through executive order? | ||
| I think a lot can be done through executive order and giving direction to Secretary McMahon. | ||
| As you know, half a billion dollars has already been cut with layoffs and other cuts. | ||
| Half a billion dollars annually has been cut. | ||
| And so there are things that can be done, but I think the final closure probably will take a little bit more of an act of Congress, as you say. | ||
| But everything I'm hearing out of there is that they are ready and willing to take the next step. | ||
| So, you know, everybody, buckle up. | ||
| Let's get ready for this new age of education in America. | ||
| And plenty of callers ready and willing to talk to you. | ||
| Chuck in West Virginia's first line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, John. | |
| It's been 41 days since my last call. | ||
| And to Tina Deskovich, there's been a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth over how black history ought to be taught in public schools in the United States. | ||
| I think personally, I do believe that things like slavery, segregation, and the civil rights movement are a part of American history. | ||
| I'm just wondering how you think it should be taught. | ||
| For example, if a student in a public school hears about any of these subjects and asks the teacher, why were the races segregated? | ||
| Why were the races forced to use different facilities back in the 1950s? | ||
| How should the teacher respond to that? | ||
| The teacher should teach accurate history, just as you mentioned. | ||
| We absolutely have to face the awful things that happened throughout American history with slavery, with segregation, Jim Crow laws. | ||
| Those should be taught. | ||
| I think you might be trying to address the different executive order than we were just discussing, the one that addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion. | ||
| And the problem there is not teaching that this stuff happened in our history. | ||
| It's dividing students today by race and categorizing them by race today that is the problem because we as Americans have moved past Jim Crow laws. | ||
| We have moved past slavery. | ||
| We fought a civil war to end slavery in this country. | ||
| And so that part of history needs to be taught also. | ||
| As it stands today, how much influence does the Department of Education have over what is actually taught in, say, an elementary school classroom? | ||
| Do they lay out that you have to teach this and this and you can't teach this and this? | ||
| The U.S. Department of Education has nothing to do with opening and closing of actual schools with curriculum or anything of that nature. | ||
| They have tried in recent years to send out dear colleague letters and things of that nature threatening to holding funds if you didn't do certain things or enact certain policies. | ||
| But in general, the U.S. Department of Education has just been a clearinghouse, a big building of paperwork and adding funding, adding an extra layer of incurred expenses on things. | ||
| So the money comes from Congress. | ||
| It had to go to the U.S. Department of Education, then to states, then to school districts. | ||
| What we're recommending is stop it. | ||
| Go to Congress straight to the states. | ||
| We do not need a clearinghouse. | ||
| We do not need 5,000 employees being paid to add more red tape and just add the cost of education going up. | ||
| Do the states right now have the capacity to take over that role? | ||
| Is there enough workers in state school boards to be able to do what this would mean they need to do? | ||
| As far as school districts go, that's what I'm most familiar with. | ||
| They absolutely do. | ||
| As a matter of fact, if you watch the numbers and you'll see complaints all the time about how the number of administrators is just growing over the last 10 years in school districts and the number of teachers in ratio is less and no one seems to understand why. | ||
| I can tell you why. | ||
| It's because of red tape. | ||
| It's because if you have special needs students, the amount of paperwork that has to be done by the teacher, by an administrator in the school that oversees special ed students, and then at the school district also, you know, and then it has to be done at the state level. | ||
| And then there's people at the U.S. Department of Education that are processing it too. | ||
| What we're saying is just let's clean this up so kids can get the money and get the services directly. | ||
| To Ashburn, Virginia, Amanda Lynn for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with Tina Discovich. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am grateful for you getting my call. | ||
| Tina, it's interesting to hear you talk about how there's so much red tape and how the money should just go straight from Congress to the schools. | ||
| But there has to be administration. | ||
| I live in Northern Virginia and a lot of people I know work for the federal government. | ||
| They're not frauds. | ||
| They're not fakes. | ||
| They have a job to do and the job needs to be done because the money, while allocated, has to be transferred to the schools. | ||
| I have three children who have autism who receive services. | ||
| Only one of them currently. | ||
| But it doesn't make any sense that you can just say, oh, the money's there, so they should have it and they can just use it. | ||
| They can move the departments. | ||
| They can move the employees from one department to another, sure. | ||
| But firing people doesn't help. | ||
| And decreasing the number of people until you know who's doing their work and who actually, if anyone that's not doing work, great, figure that out. | ||
| But if they're doing an important job, let them keep doing their job and let them fund the kids. | ||
| Most of the money, like you just pointed out, from the Department of Education, isn't for the curriculum that happens. | ||
| All of that control is already local. | ||
| It doesn't need to be changed. | ||
| The money that the federal department is using is for federal programs for loans and for students. | ||
| Amanda, got your point. | ||
| Tina Discovich, give you a chance to respond. | ||
| Well, ma'am, I hope that your children have been receiving the services that they need and deserve in your school district, but that often isn't happening around the country. | ||
| And I don't know of any body and job at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. that's helping any of my friends and family that have special needs children. | ||
| And so I will advocate and I will continue to advocate for those funds to be returned more closely so that parents can drive, those funds will be more accessible and parents can drive and make the decisions with their local school district and their teacher and their school to make sure their students, their children are getting the best services. | ||
| When you say the funds will be more accessible, what does that mean? | ||
| Right now, it's okay. | ||
| So the funds start, like I said, at Congress. | ||
| They then go through the Department of Education and then to states. | ||
| It's just, we need to eliminate the middleman so that stuff can go directly to the students. | ||
| I hope that one day, no one's discussing this quite yet, that parents will be able to drive more, to drive the decisions about who is servicing their children. | ||
| Often right now, if you're in your local public school that you've been assigned to and there is only one person providing services for your child, you have no options as a parent. | ||
| And so we're moving in America to a place where parents are going to have more options in schooling, in curriculum, and decisions. | ||
| And I think special needs children, you know, sometimes they are forgotten and left last. | ||
| And I think that parents need more control of those funds on how to help their children. | ||
| When you say more options, are you talking about private schooling and having the ability to use tax dollars to be able to fund your kids going to a private school? | ||
| It could include your children going to a private school. | ||
| It could also include experts in your community that are trained. | ||
| Often school districts have a contract with a specific individual to do some of these services. | ||
| And so, you know, maybe there is someone that is a better fit for your child. | ||
| And so I, you know, I am always going to advocate for what's best for the child, what's going to help the child learn quicker, learn better, and in the way that they are going to learn. | ||
| And sometimes that's different individuals, different organizations, different schools. | ||
| Victor is in the Wolverine State Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Second time, thanks for having me. | ||
| I had spoke, I ran a car wash, and most of the kids were very good, but they were not very equipped to handle the actual money. | ||
| And all it was was a $2 car wash. | ||
| If you gave them a 20, you get 18 back. | ||
| So, Victor, what's the question this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the teachers, why are they not qualified? | |
| In my eyes, some are not educating them through the ABCs up through the, you know, multiple times tables. | ||
| It's just sad. | ||
| Tina Discovich, on the quality of teachers. | ||
| Yeah, I'm going to push back a little and pull that blame off of teachers and put that blame more on school districts and administrators that, and even sometimes states that have selected curriculum and put standards in place that have shifted away from the basics of reading and writing and math and history and science and shifted more into learning about your emotions. | ||
| And, you know, they actually changed the way they taught reading in America. | ||
| They pulled out phonics for many years. | ||
| And so people with big PhDs have made big decisions that have really hurt and impacted children. | ||
| And that is why, sir, at your local car wash, somebody, a child with a high school diploma, can't often count back change, you know, from a 20. | ||
| And so we need to get back to the basics in America. | ||
| And, you know, in this discussion about the Department of Education, it's not their fault that that's happened across the country. | ||
| But if the decisions can be made locally, then organizations like ours and others can activate parents to go down and engage with your school district and make these changes locally. | ||
| You can just have a greater impact when things are happening locally. | ||
| When you were elected to the Breber County School Board 2017, I believe it was, how involved were parents and what were your priorities when you joined the school board? | ||
| Yeah, that's interesting. | ||
| So I ran in 2016 and first on my priority list was parental rights. | ||
| So, you know, it's been a mantra of mine that I have believed deeply in for a long time. | ||
| And I will tell you, no, parents were not active over the four years that I served. | ||
| And it was very frustrating. | ||
| In Florida, by statute, if you adopt curriculum and textbooks, you have to put it before the public. | ||
| You have to have two public meetings. | ||
| You have to put it in the newspaper and announce. | ||
| And I would go the extra mile and put it out on my social and send out newsletters. | ||
| We're about to adopt history textbooks. | ||
| Come in and review parents. | ||
| Come and take a look. | ||
| We would hold those meetings, and more often than not, no one would show up. | ||
| And I live in a very large school district, over 100 schools, 75,000 students, 9,000 employees. | ||
| No one would show up to speak or review these books. | ||
| And so, you know, when we launched Moms for Liberty, I had that in my mind. | ||
| Like, we need to engage parents so that they can be more involved, so that they understand that they need to do their civic responsibility and their responsibility as a parent and understanding what their children are learning. | ||
| Was there a time, you think, when parents were more involved, and how did it get to the point where you were saying that there weren't parents involved, that more often than not, people wouldn't show up to these meetings? | ||
| I think it's happened over time for sure, for various reasons. | ||
| Parents have just allowed schools to fill a lot of their roles over time. | ||
| You know, I founded and obviously executive director and working for and passionate about an organization that defends parental rights. | ||
| But I'll be the first to admit that parents have abdicated their responsibilities. | ||
| And I've been in schools enough to know that the good people in public schools often are doing the parents' jobs because parents haven't done their jobs. | ||
| And so, just as much as I'm advocating to defend parental rights, parents need to step up and get involved. | ||
| They need to participate. | ||
| They need to partner with teachers in their schools. | ||
| And they need to become watchdogs of the school district because that government entity sometimes gets a little wayward. | ||
| And so there's a lot of work to be done. | ||
| And I look forward to continuing to lead Moms for Liberty in this organization. | ||
| And I invite all parents around the country to get active and get involved in your local school districts. | ||
| And were your parents involved when you were a kid? | ||
| Do you remember them being involved in these issues? | ||
| And I guess I should ask: do you have children in public schools today? | ||
| Yeah, so that's a great question. | ||
| So my mom was a single mother of four, and I was the oldest. | ||
| So I often was left to my own accord when it came to public school. | ||
| And honestly, we didn't value education highly when I was growing up. | ||
| This was something that I learned later in life. | ||
| I ended up going to college, the first in my family, and learning what a college degree, what doors that can open, what opportunities that brings to you. | ||
| And so I put a huge value on education. | ||
| And so I've been heavily involved in my children's education, as you can imagine. | ||
| Yes, both of them went to public school. | ||
| Well, my husband and I have five between us, but the two that I've given birth to, the 23-year-old went and graduated from the same high school I went to here in Vivard County, Florida. | ||
| And then my now junior in high school, we did put him in a private school for two years during COVID for many reasons, which we won't get into here. | ||
| But he's back in the same high school that I graduated from, and I hope to see him graduate from there next year. | ||
| Just a few minutes left with Tina Discovich this morning. | ||
| Moms for Liberty is the group momsforliberty.org. | ||
| If you want to check them out online, this is Anthony in San Antonio, Independent. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| So getting right to it, my concern is that when I read history and I think of the Southern strategy and I think of Martin Luther King's words and where do we go from here when there's a backlash against equity Equity and diversity and inclusion. | ||
| My concern is sending this back to states, right? | ||
| To state, similar to how voting was sent back to states and how Republicans acted after that. | ||
| And the people that are going to be on the PTA, who back in the day, people say, Oh, I wish things were like they used to be. | ||
| Well, back in the day, you had white women, no offense, who are on these PTA boards and doing making these decisions that disproportionately affected people of color and poor people. | ||
| And so, by getting this money back to the states, and I watched CNN, Dana Bass was interviewing Secretary of Education, and she kind of skirted around the question of, hey, how are you going to confirm and how are you going to watch basically how this money now is being allocated? | ||
| And if these kids over here, these poor kids, these kids of color, how are you going to advocate for them and make sure that they're receiving equal opportunity for education? | ||
| So, my question to you is: I'm reserving judgment, and I hope someone's watching this over time to see how this money is going to be allocated to all communities equally and equitably. | ||
| How are you going to manage that? | ||
| How can you confirm that that is actually going to take place, or is it going to be filtered into mostly white communities where those kids are educated and receiving better education? | ||
| And then later on, say, well, you should accept these menial jobs, people of color. | ||
| You should be out there and I think we got your point. | ||
| Tina Discovich. | ||
| I think that's a fair concern and a fair question looking at our history in the United States, sir. | ||
| And I thank you for bringing it forward. | ||
| But I think there's a couple things there to unpack. | ||
| One, we are not the America that we were in the 1960s. | ||
| Two, I hope that every parent of every nationality, every race, every religion gets involved in their children's education. | ||
| I think that's first and foremost. | ||
| Run for school board, take part in the decisions that are being made. | ||
| Don't let one race or one religion or one belief system or one party for that matter control education in your community. | ||
| Every parent deserves a seat at that table. | ||
| As far as civil rights complaints and things of that nature, there is still going to be a mechanism for that. | ||
| I talked to Secretary McMahon about that when she was here last week specifically. | ||
| Our organization is going to be working to help gather some of those complaints and submit them in. | ||
| This is something we are passionate about. | ||
| I know that when you say we're trying to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion, those words sound very nice and it sounds like we are trying to diversify. | ||
| But those programs have been hijacked and they actually become more racist. | ||
| And, sir, ultimately, I think all we need to look at is the reading level and the reading scores and the percentage of black students in America right now that are not reading on grade level. | ||
| It is in the, it's, I think it's 13% of black students, black fourth grade students are reading on grade level in America. | ||
| The system that they have in place right now is broken. | ||
| And I know there's fear out there of changing the system because it's what we know, but it is time to change the system. | ||
| We cannot have a future in America. | ||
| And black children in America need to be able to read just like Hispanic children and white children. | ||
| And we have to make some changes and do some things differently. | ||
| And I know it's scary, but it's time to make those changes. | ||
| A Florida specific question for you from a viewer, Karen, in Florida, saying, as the feds oversee charter schools, isn't the dismantling of the federal department of education a way to deregulate charter schools? | ||
| She goes on to say, in Florida, our tax dollars are already being funneled to religious charter schools. | ||
| Our tax dollars should be going to our public schools. | ||
| What would you say to Karen? | ||
| So in Florida, our charter schools are public schools. | ||
| And because I served on a school board, I know very well how this works. | ||
| And local school districts approve charter schools. | ||
| So the U.S. Department of Education has absolutely nothing to do with charter schools in Florida. | ||
| They're approved locally. | ||
| You know, I approved some, and I think we ended up closing one or two. | ||
| I think even when I was chair of our school, and I support charter schools, but if they're not doing what they were supposed to be doing, if they were mismanaging funds, if they were not, and the one school that we did close was not providing service to special education students like they were supposed to and required to, we shut down the school. | ||
| Last call coming from Catherine out of Boston, Independent. | ||
| Catherine, about a minute left. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| I just have a couple of things to say. | ||
| As the mother of an author's child who was diagnosed 33 years ago, I worked very well with the Boston Public Schools. | ||
| My son got into a private placement. | ||
| I have another daughter, another child, a daughter who is actually a special needs teacher. | ||
| And these kids are like the first ones to get things cut off because people act as if they're defective and they don't count. | ||
| What does she have to say to that? | ||
| But more importantly, one thing I would like to know that I haven't heard anyone mention, what books are they banning this week? | ||
| That's Catherine in Boston. | ||
| Tina Discovich, go ahead. | ||
| I am so happy to hear that Boston schools served your son well because that's not happening all across the country right now. | ||
| And sometimes it is the fault of the local school district, but often it's because of the red tape that's in the way and the ability and they've taken the ability of parents to be able to make the best decisions for their children in these circumstances. | ||
| And so no one is asking for funds to be cut off from special needs students. | ||
| They're being moved from one department to another. | ||
| And so I think that for most parents, that will be a seamless process. | ||
| And for some parents, it will be a welcomed process because they will see the services happen quickly and better and managed more locally. | ||
| Well, they'll be able to have a representative to actually call and complain when there are problems. | ||
| Tina Discovich is the co-founder, executive director of Moms for Liberty. | ||
| Again, momsforliberty.org, if you want to find them online. | ||
| And we do always appreciate your time. | ||
| Thank you for having me on. | ||
| Coming up next this morning in our next half hour, it is Congressman Sean Kasten, Democrat from Illinois. | ||
| We'll talk about town halls. | ||
| We'll talk about the Democratic agenda on Capitol Hill this week. | ||
| Stick around for that discussion. | ||
| we'll be right back. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Back with us on the Washington Journal. | ||
| It's four-term Congressman and Illinois Democrat Sean Kasten. | ||
| Congressman Kasten want to start with that story that's getting a lot of attention today out of The Atlantic on the Trump administration accidentally texting a reporter its war plans for an attack in Yemen. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that story, sir? | ||
| Extremely concerned. | ||
| This is a massive security breach that really starts with the fact that you have people at the highest levels in the White House, all the way up to the vice president, who seem to be completely unaware of basic security protocols, that you do not have conversations about classified information outside of a SCIF. | ||
| You don't have those conversations on unsecured devices. | ||
| And you certainly don't have them with people who don't have a security clearance. | ||
| All of that is beyond the substance of the text, the texts, which from what's been released are juvenile, to put it mildly. | ||
| But I think all of us have to wonder how many other signal texts like this are there. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't seem that JD Vance is in this text raid. | ||
| Why does he never stand up and say, guys, this is completely inappropriate? | ||
| I'm in the White House. | ||
| We are responsible for national security. | ||
| Get your act together. | ||
| Why do we have people running the Defense Department who are not saying that? | ||
| And we've got a lot of questions to ask, but this is a massive breach of protocol. | ||
| And that breach of protocol raises the question of whether there's also been a massive breach of security. | ||
| Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, a former colleague of yours, sat on the other side of the aisle. | ||
| What should happen? | ||
| Should he keep his job? | ||
| Look, in normal times, every one of these people should resign. | ||
| If we had a Trump White House that gave a damn about national security, they would be firing them. | ||
| If we had a Republican House that thought that they had a responsibility to do any oversight, they would be screaming about this. | ||
| The fact that they are silent this morning speaks volumes about their character, but it says nothing about the stakes of this moment. | ||
| And we'll hear from more on this topic from some of those who are the leaders of the national security infrastructure in this country. | ||
| A Senate hearing on worldwide threats today. | ||
| That's happening at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Viewers can watch it right after this program on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| CIA Director John Ratcliffe will be there. | ||
| FBI Director Kash Patel will be there. | ||
| Sean Kasten, if you were there and able to ask a question, what would you ask? | ||
| You know, I think the tone that I think you want to look for in there is if there's a tone of defensiveness that this is normal, we have a huge problem. | ||
| The tone you'd like to see is that they come out there and say, this is a massive breach. | ||
| We are working to fix this. | ||
| We want to work closely with congressional oversight to make sure that this barn door is closed. | ||
| I think in between, it'll be interesting to see if they try to throw one person under the bus and make this go away. | ||
| You know, sometimes that happens in Washington of trying to take a political head. | ||
| That's halfway between, but that doesn't close the ultimate barn door. | ||
| You know, I think what I would hope that the senators, and of course there's House hearings on this later this week as well, I think you really want to find out we need total candor with the House. | ||
| Was this a one-time event or are there other signal threads that are going on? | ||
| How are they vetting these things? | ||
| Why is this information not contained to a skiff? | ||
| What are you doing to close that barn door and make sure this never happens again? | ||
| And is there any sense from the principals that they know that they massively messed up and have their tail between their legs and are ashamed of what they did and will make sure this never happened again? | ||
| Because if they don't have that, we've got ongoing problems. | ||
| Congressman Sean Casten with us until the top of the hour. | ||
| It's 9 a.m. Eastern this morning. | ||
| So go ahead and get your calls in. | ||
| Phone lines as usual. | ||
| Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, we'll put those numbers up on the screen for you. | ||
| Let me shift gears, Congressman. | ||
| Off Capitol Hill and in your district last week, you held a town hall. | ||
| It had to be shut down by police eventually. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| So I've done about a town hall a week since Donald Trump has been elected. | ||
| And there's just this tremendous hunger in society. | ||
| I represent a very purple district. | ||
| Kamala won my district by three points. | ||
| This is not a place that is, you know, it's right down the middle of the fairway. | ||
| But the overwhelming sentiment at these five town halls I've done is somewhere between fear and anger at what's happening in the Trump White House. | ||
| What are we doing to make sure that we defend our Constitution, defend our laws? | ||
| What can people do about it? | ||
| And we went into that town hall really expecting the same, and that was certainly where the room was wanting us to go. | ||
| There were a small number of people who were very concerned about the situation in Gaza, who essentially hijacked the town hall and started screaming and yelling and would not let any of their questions happen. | ||
| The police were working constructively to remove people as they became so that we could try to get back to normal. | ||
| And ultimately, we got to a point where most of the audience was sufficiently upset with the protesters that the police were concerned there would be larger violence on the police. | ||
| We started with one officer there. | ||
| We had four by the time that ultimately they shut down. | ||
| And the police said we just were taking people off other duty stations and this is now a public security risk. | ||
| And the whole thing just makes me sad. | ||
| I have never done a town hall where everybody agreed with me because I've never won 100% of the vote. | ||
| But there's sort of a sacredness to the town hall space where you expect that people will come, express their opinions in a place where they know that they will be heard, that they will be respected, and they will be engaged with constructively. | ||
| And if we can't have that, that doesn't make society better. | ||
| Just to show viewers what it was like last week for you, we've got about 40 seconds or so of a video from your town hall last week. | ||
| Let me show it to viewers now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Show some respect for the people in this district. | |
| What you're saying is I'm not going to get my way when my people are being spawned and I want you to stop funding them. | ||
| If you would like to run for office, run for office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. | |
| You are the most soulless piece of crap I've ever seen. | ||
| That's your opinion. | ||
| Soulless. | ||
| Sir, get up. | ||
| Get off, sir. | ||
| Get off the stage right now. | ||
| I guess for dealing with these kinds of situations at town halls. | ||
| And is this going to impact you doing more town halls in the future? | ||
| We're absolutely not going to stop doing town halls. | ||
| I think it's particularly important in this moment that we have those spaces to talk. | ||
| I do think, frankly, it creates a challenge where we're going to have to work more closely with law enforcement than we have before. | ||
| We've always notified them, but I think we want to make sure that local law enforcement is comfortable in any given situation, that the act of a town hall is not creating a situation where there might be some public safety concerns. | ||
| And I hate that we have to do that, but I also don't want to put my constituents in harm's way, and I certainly don't want to put the police in a situation where they're having to pull resources just to create an event that we're manufacturing. | ||
| So, what that means as far as the mix and the security we're working through, I wish we didn't have to do it. | ||
| And I hope that ultimately all of our constituents come back to where they have been for my first six terms of realizing that there is something sacred and necessary about having these town halls where people come together, especially in the world we live in that's increasingly fragmented. | ||
| We need those public spaces where there's public, respectful discourse. | ||
| And just to stay on this for a second, there's plenty of your colleagues who don't hold town halls or they'll hold the teletown halls where you can set up a line of people to make their comments and have somebody monitor that and put them in order on the telephone. | ||
| What's been the reaction from your colleagues? | ||
| What have they told you as they've seen what happened here at your town hall last week? | ||
| So to be clear, there's a place for telephone town halls and in-person. | ||
| We've always done a mix. | ||
| You get a much bigger number of constituents who are able to participate in a telephone town hall. | ||
| Obviously, not everybody has the ability to travel. | ||
| You can't always get a big enough room. | ||
| So I think it's appropriate to do a mix. | ||
| I think there is a handful of my colleagues who have had these kind of disruptions before and are also concerned. | ||
| For the most part, I think it's one thing to have people who disrupt and disagree with you. | ||
| And that's fine. | ||
| All of us expect that. | ||
| But you expect that person to sit down afterwards and allow the next person to ask their question. | ||
| So we'll see how it goes. | ||
| But my view is that all of us in public office, and I think this is shared with many of my colleagues, think it's important to continue having these events and to be in person to make sure that people know that we as the representative branch are there to represent and to understand their perspectives and to make sure that they understand how we're balancing all the equities because of course we're never going to make everybody happy, but we want to make sure that we hear from everybody as best we can. | ||
| Let me bring in some viewers who participate in this forum we create every day. | ||
| Marilyn is in Tennessee waiting on our line for Democrats. | ||
| You're up first with Congressman Castin. | ||
| Morning, Maryland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Good morning, Congressman. | ||
| I have a very valid question to ask you. | ||
| And I was a Republican most of my life, and I changed after January 2006 because my father fought in two wars. | ||
| It was ludicrous on what happened there. | ||
| And why isn't the Democratic Party taking PCF Walls and everybody else's Supreme Court on the security leak? | ||
| The local courts are not going to be the ones to stop. | ||
| It has to go to the Supreme Court. | ||
| Why is that not being done? | ||
| So thank you for your question. | ||
| To be clear, cases get to the Supreme Court. | ||
| They don't start in the Supreme Court. | ||
| There's only a finite number of issues where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction. | ||
| So where there's litigation, you have to start in lower courts to get to the Supreme Court. | ||
| We're obviously all shocked by the news that happened yesterday. | ||
| Congress's role ultimately is to do oversight, right? | ||
| We're the legislative branch that also does oversight to make sure the executive branch executes the laws properly. | ||
| The judicial branch is supposed to do the court. | ||
| So we are working from Congress with outside groups who are pursuing litigation strategies. | ||
| But the role of Congress here is really to hold these people to account, to compel them to come before us, to answer questions, to not duck questions, to provide full disclosure, to not hide behind, you know, I can't tell you this because it's secret. | ||
| For us to do that effectively in the legislative branch, we have to have the support of the majority because they control the gavels, they control the subpoenas. | ||
| We're going to learn today and tomorrow in the Senate and House hearings whether the Republican majority is willing to defend the Constitution, is willing to defend the prerogatives of the legislative branch. | ||
| And if they don't, we will, of course, have to consider how we escalate from there. | ||
| But I think 24 hours in, let's see if the legislative branch does its job today and does so on a bipartisan basis. | ||
| On not ducking questions, Senator Chuck Schumer canceled a book tour in the wake of his vote to keep the government open, one of nine Democrats in the Senate to support that legislation to keep the government open. | ||
| It's not a town hall, it's a book tour. | ||
| But what are your thoughts on him canceling that book tour? | ||
| His spokesperson, I should note, said it was canceled due to security concerns for the minority leader. | ||
| Well, look, at the risk of being a little bit too flippant here, under House ethics rules, we do not allow House members to get advances for books because we believe it would compromise the integrity of this institution. | ||
| Under Senate ethics rules, senators allow themselves to get advances to write books. | ||
| So senators do a lot of book tours. | ||
| I think there's a larger question of why they're out there doing book tours because I think it has some ethics issues that are going on. | ||
| I'm not saying that to criticize Mr. Schumer directly. | ||
| I'm just saying there's a reason you only hear about senators doing book tours. | ||
| I think to the question about, you know, what do you, how should you engage when the public is, who you represent is unhappy with your decisions, you got to be out there. | ||
| You've got to be public. | ||
| Now, a book tour is probably not the best way to do that, but do some town halls, be out there, explain your choices, make it clear. | ||
| And yes, there's some tension because obviously the Democratic leadership in the House, including yours truly, disagreed with the decision Mr. Schumer took. | ||
| And our belief is that they waived the ability to force a negotiation on the terms of that funding package, and it's going to be hard to get that back. | ||
| Mr. Schumer obviously has a difference of opinion, but he needs to be out there and explaining that to people and frankly explaining that to his colleagues in the House. | ||
| Madison, Wisconsin, this is Bob Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey there. | ||
| Good day from your neighbor to the north. | ||
| So I just wanted a couple few comments here. | ||
| I encourage the Democrats to just hold their water. | ||
| They're kind of acting like Schmeagel with the ring right now, so just pause. | ||
| There is some level of dereliction on this issue. | ||
| There was a mistake made. | ||
| The sooner people own the mistake, the better off. | ||
| We've all been told about, you know, loose lips, sink ships. | ||
| And Mr. Biden always warned us, hey, don't compare me to the Almighty. | ||
| Compare me to the alternatives. | ||
| Well, let's do that. | ||
| Mr. Austin was AWOL for two freaking weeks. | ||
| He was under anesthesia. | ||
| His second was on a beach. | ||
| So if there was operational security or security of the country, I think that's an issue. | ||
| We had an individual who was in charge of some level of nuclear waste who probably would have traded a nuclear fuel rod for a pretty pair of product panties. | ||
| So that's a concern. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Congressman Casten. | ||
| Look, comparing what the leadership in the Trump White House actually did to things that people in the Biden White House might have done is not an equal comparison. | ||
| You do not take classified information out of the skiff, period, full stop. | ||
| You don't do that not just because it's against the rules. | ||
| You don't do that because our adversaries are consistently trying to get at our information. | ||
| They would like to find information on networks they can hack into. | ||
| They would love nothing better than if the leadership of the government was having conversations on unsecure devices outside of a secure briefing where they could be hacked into and read. | ||
| You do not do that if you understand the job. | ||
| Is there a much lesser concern that Lloyd Austin had some medical procedures and didn't notice? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But these are orders of magnitude, different questions. | ||
| And again, we did not have these security breaches under Lloyd Austin. | ||
| We can speculate what might have happened. | ||
| In this case, we have absolutely had these breaches. | ||
| And by the way, let's not forget that this is the same White House that the last time they were in power took boxes and boxes of classified documents, was waving them at reporters in Mar-a-Lago, and Perjack Smith, had the case not been shut down, felt he had enough information to prosecute. | ||
| This is not the first time that people in the Trump orbit have actually violated security protocols around classified documents. | ||
| This is a systemic problem in the Trump White House. | ||
| It is not an imaginary problem, and it is a consistent problem, and we have to deal with it. | ||
| On keeping information secure, I know you're involved in an effort to protect taxpayer data during the Trump administration. | ||
| What is that effort? | ||
| So this is very, it's a very similar issue, candidly. | ||
| When Elon Musk and the Doge crew hacked into the Treasury payment system, we had more phone calls on that issue than I have ever received on any phone call in my three and a half terms in Congress. | ||
| The issue is that within the Treasury payment system, you have information on every payment over $5 trillion a year that's made by the Treasury. | ||
| That means that those individuals have access to your Social Security number, the charities you gave to, whether or not they align politically with the leadership of the country. | ||
| Payments made to contractors to the federal government. | ||
| And by the way, there's also some serious intelligence issues there because some of the payments that the Treasury Department makes are to people who are embedded in hostile foreign governments, foreign organizations that are hostile to the United States, who are risking their lives to provide their information to the United States so that we can protect the American people. | ||
| And in exchange, we're sending money to a bank account with their name and routing number in there. | ||
| You do not allow people into that with unsecured hardware. | ||
| And yet, what Musk and the Doge crew did was to bring in people, some as young as 19 years old, who were not vetted by the security agencies with unsecured devices. | ||
| They said they only had read access, and then it turns out they had write access. | ||
| Did they perhaps slip code in? | ||
| Did they take information out that now makes them security risks? | ||
| We don't have the answers to those questions. | ||
| What we introduced in response to that was a bill that says that you cannot, under any circumstances, provide any access to that system for someone who has not, A, been an employee of the government for at least a year, B, is not a special government employee, C, does not have a top-secret security clearance, and D, does not have conflicts of interest, like, for example, if Elon Musk, who has contracts with the Chinese government for various other facilities, | ||
| might be blocking information from some of his competitors that he'd only know through the Treasury system. | ||
| So this is a huge problem. | ||
| We shouldn't have to do this. | ||
| And I would note that the initial deputy administrator of the Treasury blocked that access. | ||
| And Scott Besent, the current Secretary of the Treasury, then fired that individual so that he could give Musk access. | ||
| We will be having conversations about that with Mr. Besant when he comes before the financial services I sit on because that is a breach of protocol on the part of the Secretary of the Treasury. | ||
| And we have to get to the bottom of why he did that. | ||
| To Orlando, Florida, this is Donna, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for C-SPAN. | |
| And I have so much to address, but I want to express my respect for those of you who are giving these town halls in the most difficult of circumstances. | ||
| But this lawless administration that we have now in all my 77 years on this earth, I've never seen anything to compare with this. | ||
| And nothing seems to stop them. | ||
| They just are going at breakneck speed to dismantle and destroy everything. | ||
| And now this latest with the group chat on a signal app is truly frightening. | ||
| But I don't know what can be done to stop these people. | ||
| The courts are doing all they can. | ||
| But this man, Trump, is an aberration. | ||
| So he cannot be treated with the respect that a president deserves. | ||
| The office, yes, but this man and Musk and all his minions are just destroying this country. | ||
| And that's why people are angry and upset. | ||
| That's Donna in Florida. | ||
| Congressman Kasten. | ||
| So Donna, thank you for calling in. | ||
| And only because you said your age, I'll repeat it. | ||
| You said you've been in this earth for 77 years, which means that you actually have direct experience with a time when the government of the United States was not enforcing the law, was disobeying the Constitution. | ||
| To the extent they were obeying the law, they were only selectively enforcing it against their adversaries and using it to protect their allies. | ||
| And that, of course, was the civil rights era, right? | ||
| We had the Reconstruction Amendments that were not being honored. | ||
| African Americans were not being allowed to vote, were not being given equal protection, including in places like Broward County, Florida. | ||
| And we got through that ultimately because of the mass of decent Americans who stood up to, you know, as John Lewis was fond of saying, to dramatize the situation and figuring out ways to sort of create a grassroots movement that reminded all Americans of how important our Constitution is, how important the rule of law is, and to create a movement that ultimately demanded leadership. | ||
| But as, you know, as some of the foot soldiers who marched with John, who I had the privilege to walk across the Selma Bridge with many years ago, several times, as they always point out, movements come before leaders. | ||
| And I think that's an opportunity for you, Donna. | ||
| It's an opportunity for all Americans to stand up and create some movements, create some good trouble, because that's how we've gotten through circumstances like this in the past. | ||
| And it's clearly what the Trump administration is most afraid of. | ||
| They are trying to scare us into thinking that if we act individually, we'll be taken down. | ||
| And the solution to that is to go out and act collectively. | ||
| Less than five minutes left with Congressman Sean Kasten, Democrat of Illinois. | ||
| This is Mike in Stockton, California, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good morning, Congressman. | ||
| Okay, my question, I have a couple, but DEI, what is the opposite of that? | ||
| And also, what, if the employers of all these people look like for the last 50 years, a lot of them said, I'm going to hire Hispanics. | ||
| I don't want any Afro-Americans. | ||
| That's what it literally looks like because I was told that to my face in several, in the union, construction, several different places. | ||
| Talked to my business agent, asked him, what can we do about it? | ||
| He gave me the Riot Act. | ||
| He told me how we can't hire you because of your race. | ||
| And I said, hey, man, I'm not asking you what you can't do. | ||
| I'm asking what can you do? | ||
| There's no black people on these jobs. | ||
| And it's blatant racism. | ||
| What can you do? | ||
| Oh, we can't do this. | ||
| We can't do that. | ||
| And it's the same thing with you as a congressman. | ||
| What can you do about these situations when you have all these different entities that don't, for some reason, don't like black people, just left alone? | ||
| I just don't understand it. | ||
| So what is the opposite of DEI? | ||
| So let me answer a little bit as a, I spent 20 years in the private sector before I came to Congress, 16 of them as a CEO, so I've got probably more experience on that end than this end. | ||
| There are very selfish reasons for businesses to want to engage in DEI. | ||
| And the selfish reason is you want to draw from the largest talent pool you can. | ||
| And there's also a recognition, and I certainly found it in my own private sector experience, that when you expand your search process to include people who have historically been discriminated against, you tend to be able to pick the highest caliber people out of that pool because they're available and your whole organization gets better. | ||
| That doesn't mean that you are selectively saying, I want this race, I want that race. | ||
| It means you're being intentional about going out there and saying, I want a fully diverse workforce. | ||
| And oh, by the way, that's diverse on every metric, right? | ||
| I mean, if I only hired on IQ, I would have gotten a lot of great engineers and some lousy salespeople because I need some emotional intelligence in the company as well, right? | ||
| You know, you want people who've got the whole diverse range of talents. | ||
| What the backlash is that's happening against DEI right now is people saying, well, you still have the ability to hire for all those other reasons. | ||
| I just don't want you to explicitly look for diversity on racial reasons. | ||
| And that's basically racist, right? | ||
| That's saying that we can't go out and do that. | ||
| I've long maintained that one of the biggest challenges of really transitioning to a race-blind society is that you're going to cherry-pick the most exceptional members of the suppressed races, the historically disadvantaged races. | ||
| And the people who are going to lose their jobs are the most mediocre people of the majority races. | ||
| I always use the example that when we all know who broke the color line in baseball, none of us know who got cut from the Dodgers. | ||
| But I'll bet you anything he was a pretty mediocre white dude. | ||
| And how do we make sure that we make this transition in ways that the people who lose out in a truly meritocratic society don't take that loss as being something that they choose to racialize. | ||
| And I think all of us have to just be honest about the fact that pushing for a truly meritocratic society is always frightening for the most mediocre people. | ||
| And we need to push for that regardless because it's the only way that we really move forward. | ||
| But I think we also have to understand the tension that that creates for people and keep pushing anyway. | ||
| And our companies are going to do that. | ||
| Our universities are going to do that. | ||
| We shouldn't have the government getting in the way of it. | ||
| And I hope we continue to do so. | ||
| You mentioned your work as a CEO. | ||
| It was in the climate, the clean energy sector. | ||
| I did want to ask you about Lee Zeldon as EPA administrator. | ||
| It was yesterday he was announcing something like 31, as he called it, historic actions to power the great American comeback in the greatest day of deregulation in American history. | ||
| That's how he described it. | ||
| Your thoughts on his work so far as EPA administrator? | ||
| You know, there's an irony in the fact that, you know, Lee's Eldon's from Long Island. | ||
| We've had wildfires in Long Island because of climate change since he's been the EPA administrator, and he seems to be going full-on to climate denial of trying to double down on fossil fuel use. | ||
| I think at core what you're seeing a lot of this, and it's actually quite similar to the DEI pieces, clean energy is cheap energy. | ||
| There's no one who has a solar panel on their roof who's worried about whether they are going to be affordable to afford to generate power tomorrow at a rate below the grid that's operating at. | ||
| On the other hand, anybody with a coal plant has to look and say, is there a bunch of wind and solar that's going to undercut me tomorrow? | ||
| And so what you're seeing from the Trump White House is this push to block competition from coming into power markets to further subsidize fossil fuels so that they don't have to compete against cheaper sources. | ||
| And Lise Eldon is carrying that water. | ||
| Much as with DEI, when I said, you know, a true meritocracy is a risk for mediocre people. | ||
| Truly competitive markets are risks to businesses that can't compete. | ||
| And if this was only about markets, then the consequence would just be that the price of energy is going to go up. | ||
| Unfortunately, there are also some serious environmental consequences to what Lee Selden is doing. | ||
| And he is condemning future generations and this generation to more wildfires, more floods, and more expensive energy. | ||
| All, I don't know, so that Doug Bergum and Chris Wright can make a few more dollars next quarter. | ||
| It's irresponsible would be the most polite way to put that. | ||
| Sean Kasten, we will end it there for now. | ||
| Democrat from Illinois, a member of the new Democrat Coalition, also the Financial Services Committee, and we always appreciate your time on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| Coming up, about an hour left this morning before the House comes in. | ||
| In that time, we turn this program over to you. | ||
| It's our open forum. | ||
| Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's the time to call in. | ||
| Phone lines are on your screen. | ||
| Go ahead and start dialing, and we'll get to your calls right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Just about 55 minutes left in our program this morning. | ||
| Here's what you'll see on the C-SPAN networks at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| If you tune in on C-SPAN, there'll be live coverage of the floor of the House for morning hour on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| The Senate is in at 10 a.m. and we'll take you over there. | ||
| On C-SPAN 3, it's a hearing on worldwide threats featuring CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel. | ||
| All eyes on that hearing this morning in the wake of the Atlantic piece on the text accidentally being sent to a reporter about war plans in Yemen. | ||
| Expectations for that story to be the focus of several questions at today's hearing. | ||
| That's happening again. | ||
| C-SPAN 3. | ||
| You can also watch on c-span.org and the free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Here on the Washington Journal, it's our open forum, though, for the next 55 minutes. | ||
| Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, the phone lines are yours to do so. | ||
| The numbers, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And we'll begin with Bob in Sterling, Virginia, an Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| It's interesting to me that there's a lot of talk about this text messaging that's going on. | ||
| And of course, that's totally inappropriate. | ||
| But what's not being discussed in the media is the fact that this thing with the Houthis and attacking the shipping could be completely avoided very easily and wouldn't cost us anything, not like the millions of dollars that are being spent on bombing Houthis constantly in Yemen. | ||
| The Houthis have said since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza that they will stop bombing shipping immediately when the fighting in Gaza stops. | ||
| Okay, so of course there's no pressure on the Israelis to stop the fighting. | ||
| In fact, they're being encouraged by both the Biden and the Trump administration. | ||
| But if the fighting would stop, the House would stop attacking shipping immediately, which is exactly what they did when the ceasefire went into effect recently. | ||
| The day that ceasefire went into effect, they kept their promise and they stopped attacking shipping. | ||
| So the simple solution to this is: let's just tell Israel we're not supporting them anymore. | ||
| And when we stop supporting them, they'll stop attacking innocent people in Gaza, and there'll be no more attacks on shipping. | ||
| And everyone can save a whole lot of money and tens of thousands and really hundreds of thousands of lives. | ||
| So let's get serious. | ||
| Let's get serious and stop the fighting. | ||
| Stop the killing. | ||
| That's Bob in Sterling, Virginia. | ||
| To Phoenix, this is Andy, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, John. | |
| I really wanted to get back with the Congressman Casten, and I had a couple comments for him. | ||
| But, you know, John, my opinion of Washington, and it's just not mine. | ||
| It's probably like 80% of the country, one way or the other, do that. | ||
| They have like a 20% approval rating, if that. | ||
| So it's really Washington, D.C., Congress is really incompetent, somewhat corrupt, and it's very broken. | ||
| But the Congressman was a little bit what, Andy? | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry, John. | ||
| Okay, so I thought the Congressman was a little bit disingenuous, and I really has a selective outrage or memory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He mentioned something about the SCIP early on when he was on, and he talked about how sensitive the SCIP is. | |
| And he was talking about Trump's classified documents. | ||
| My only question is: you're right, the SCIP is a sensitive place where they go in and get classified information. | ||
| Nothing goes in, nothing comes out. | ||
| So I would have asked the congressman, how did Joe Biden have documents from the SCIP? | ||
|
unidentified
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And why were they silent then? | |
| And it goes both ways, John. | ||
| I mean, Republicans do the same thing. | ||
| They have selective outrage also. | ||
| But, you know, you can't criticize Trump without criticizing Biden. | ||
| And you can criticize Trump. | ||
| He screws up. | ||
| What happened with this text messaging was a screw up. | ||
| You can't sugarcoat it. | ||
| But, you know, you got to give Trump credit where credit's due. | ||
| You can criticize him. | ||
| But I'll give you an example where he should be getting a lot of credit: the border. | ||
| We were told nothing could be done on the border. | ||
| It takes an act of Congress. | ||
| We knew that was baloney. | ||
| And we see what we could have done with the border. | ||
| So for me, it's always been about the border, John, not inflation, although that's bad, and prices is bad. | ||
| And I don't want that. | ||
| I don't want foreign wars. | ||
| I want better foreign policy. | ||
| But the border has been such a debacle, amongst other things. | ||
| But that's my biggest concern. | ||
| Andy, I got your point. | ||
| A couple points there. | ||
| Did want to note, you mentioned congressional job approval ratings. | ||
| It's currently at 29%, according to Gallup, which is up from the high teens at the turn of the year, although Congress has been dwelling in that somewhere between 10 and 30 percent area for a couple decades now. | ||
| The highest in recent decades, of course, coming right after September 11th. | ||
| Congressional approval ratings jumped to above 80% for a very brief period there. | ||
| You can see the historical chart from Gallup. | ||
| This is Joe Butler, North Carolina Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Yes, I have a concern about national security. | ||
| We replaced the head of the joint chief of staff of our military, who was a top cap fighter pilot who progressed to be a lieutenant general and head of the joint chiefs. | ||
| We replaced him with a guy who can't fly his own cell phone with national secrets. | ||
| We've got a problem because we decided that C.Q. Brown, Lieutenant General C.Q. Brown, was a DEI appointee simply because he and Lloyd Austin were both black. | ||
| We've got a problem with national security because DEI nonsense has gone absolutely crazy. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Joe in Butler, North Carolina, referring at the beginning there once again to that Atlantic story on the text chain that was accidentally set to a reporter from the Atlantic. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg is his name. | ||
| We're expecting to hear more on that at today's congressional hearings. | ||
| I want to hear more on it this morning right now from Tara Kopp, Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press, joining us via Zoom this morning. | ||
| Tara Kopp, what's been the reaction to that report? | ||
| I know the Secretary of Defense was in Hawaii yesterday, but what are you hearing here at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, I was at the Pentagon when the news broke, and I have never experienced a day like that in the 10 years that I've been covering the building. | ||
| Every hallway I went through, every person I talked to, defense civilians were saying, you know, if this were me, security would have come to my desk. | ||
| They would have taken away my access to my computer, potentially immediately taken away my security clearance, and probably escorted them out of the building. | ||
| For our military personnel, they could have been facing military justice, you know, actions under the military justice system. | ||
| You know, the fact that this has been kind of downplayed by both the Secretary of Defense and the president is pretty troubling. | ||
| You say downplayed. | ||
| He said nobody was texting war plans, was his quote when he was asked about it when he landed in Hawaii yesterday. | ||
| I wonder if what the response has been from the folks that you've talked to at the Pentagon. | ||
| It seems like from the Goldberg story, there were specific war plans and timing and weapons being discussed on this text chain ahead of this attack in Yemen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And when Secretary Hagseth was asked that and got so defensive, he didn't actually answer the question. | ||
| You know, according to the Atlantic article, he was giving a minute-by-minute description of the targets, of the sequencing of what people were going to be hit, and kind of relaying even the weather reports to everybody on this unsecured commercial app. | ||
| We've never heard of anything like it before. | ||
| It's clearly going to come up at the Worldwide Threats hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that's coming up in about half an hour. | ||
| And there's still a lot of questions to be answered. | ||
| You know, Secretary Hagseth will be talking to media again during his trip. | ||
| He's going on to Japan, Guam, the Philippines. | ||
| And at each stop, there's some media touches. | ||
| We'll see how long he addresses this and whether he actually starts to say whether he too will face accountability or responsibility for texting to a reporter the exact sequence of events that was going to happen that could potentially put service members at risk. | ||
| The White House has said that they're going to have an inquiry on how this happened. | ||
| Is there a separate inquiry that you know about happening at the Pentagon, DOD, internally? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not so far, but there was a similar incident in 2021 where DOD IG got involved, where there's some communications put on over Signal. | |
| We'll see if DODIG gets involved again this time, but you also have to think that the IGs, not only at DOD and other agencies, have been removed. | ||
| And so there's a question of whether or not they would proceed forward with an investigation. | ||
| As a reporter, what do you know about Signal, the use of Signal, how often it's used both in reporting and then on the other side of what you cover on the national intelligence side? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You know, I think that basically everybody is migrating to Signal. | ||
| It's considered a fairly secure encrypted app, but it's not classified and it's not intended to hold classified material in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| It can be hacked. | ||
| You know, as journalists, we are very careful. | ||
| We know how to monitor our signal devices to see if anyone has tried to link in there, which they can do. | ||
| There's all sorts of instructions on the web on how you can kind of piggyback your way onto someone's signal account. | ||
| Google's intelligence branch just put out a report about a month ago on how Russia was looking to get into Signal and be able to monitor basic intelligence conversations, VIPs, maybe not journalists, but maybe the decision makers for getting a sense of what the administration was thinking. | ||
| So that's why they have these super expensive, exquisite systems to allow secure communications, even when the secretary's on the road, so that he can get messaging and information in real time securely from the White House, from NSA, from the CIA. | ||
| And the fact that they just were kind of cavalierly exchanging this information on signal instead of insecure communications, and that nobody on that chat, which included all of the heads of all of the Intel branches, didn't stop and say, hey, maybe we should move this to a secure high-side channel, is a little bit mind-boggling. | ||
| Is it interesting to you that Jeffrey Goldberg was added by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz of why he would have the signal number of the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in his phone or whoever added him in? | ||
| I guess it hasn't been confirmed that it was definitely Mike Waltz, but he was the original number that started this text chain. | ||
| What's your read on Jeffrey Goldberg and these folks in this chain? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, Mr. Goldberg has been around for forever and has had relationships with some of the most senior members of not only this administration, but previous administrations. | |
| So it doesn't surprise me that someone like Mike Waltz would have Jeffrey Goldberg's number. | ||
| I'm sure he's not the only senior official that has Jeffrey Goldberg's number or other senior reporters at things like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press. | ||
| This is how we understand how policy is made. | ||
| We sometimes get to have off-record conversations with some of the senior most officials in either a Republican or a Democrat administration. | ||
| The question is, how did Mr. Goldberg's number get added to this chain? | ||
| Was it on purpose? | ||
| Was it an accident? | ||
| Did they think they were adding someone else? | ||
| But again, the real question is, why did they discuss this on signal, period? | ||
| It's unclassified, and these were clearly attack plans. | ||
| Secretary Hagseth has just said they're not war plans, but if you're saying when and where you're going to strike a target, who you're going to strike before you've actually sent the aircraft over the target, that puts service members' lives at risk. | ||
| And then finally, we have this Senate hearing today that we're covering on C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m. | ||
| Again, for viewers, there's the House hearing tomorrow where this topic is likely going to come up as well. | ||
| We'll be covering that on C-SPAN as well. | ||
| Who are you most interested in hearing from at these hearings? | ||
| What will you be watching for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I want to know what Tulsi Gabbard thinks. | |
| I want to know what Kash Patel thinks. | ||
| I want to know what our DIA head thinks. | ||
| Why were these conversations happening on Signal? | ||
| You know, administrations do use the device to communicate, but it's usually for logistics and planning. | ||
| And here's where you go. | ||
| It's not at all an appropriate place to put attack plans and may be a violation of the Espionage Act. | ||
| Tara Kopp covers the defense issues, the Pentagon for the Associated Press, AP.org, of course, is where you can find her work on X. | ||
| It's at Tara Cop, easy enough to find. | ||
| And we always appreciate you joining us on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Back to your phone calls about 40 minutes before the House and the Senate come in today. | ||
| Mark has been waiting in St. Paul, Minnesota. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I guess I'm having a difficult time envisioning that Mike Waltz set up this text chain himself. | ||
| I would think, typically speaking, it would be some minion doing that. | ||
| Further, I am also wondering why exactly Jeffrey Goldberg's number would have been in Mike Walls' telephone. | ||
| He's not exactly a friend of the Trump administration, I do not believe. | ||
| And then finally, it seems to me that the Democrats are supposed to be the party of empathy and compassion. | ||
| And at best, this whole snafu sounds like it was an accident or a mistake. | ||
| And I'm not seeing it. | ||
| So if someone makes a mistake like this, how about a little compassion in here? | ||
| And instead, we want heads to roll, apparently. | ||
| And let those who are without sin, I guess, cast the first stone. | ||
| That's Mark in Minnesota to New Jersey. | ||
| This is Mary Lou, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John, and thank you for C-SPAN. | |
| I want to talk about fraud, waste, and abuse. | ||
| And the reason I'm bringing this topic up, I think these people that are calling in so upset about Donald Trump and Elon Musk and what they're doing to root these issues out don't understand the gravity of this situation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Until you've been a victim of fraud, many people just don't get it. | |
| My Medicare card was being used for fraud for two years, John. | ||
| And several companies racked up at least $10,000 on the Medicare system. | ||
| Now, until you've experienced this, you don't get what is going on here. | ||
| $10,000 may not sound like a lot of money in the scheme of things, but I'm sure there are many other people who have been victimized in this way. | ||
| People need to wake up and understand what these two men are doing needs to be done. | ||
| Therefore, when they come out and say, oh, in five or ten years, the Medicare system is going to be bankrupt, and all the seniors get all upset. | ||
| You need to understand for decades, our government has been corrupt, and there are areas that need to be weeded out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Medicare is one of the biggest ones, Medicaid also. | |
| So please, people, don't be so quick to criticize Elon Musk and Donald Trump with what they are doing. | ||
| It's necessary and it's important. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Mary Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John, and good morning to C-SPAN. | |
| I just want to say that we are really in some serious trouble. | ||
| Our national security is at risk. | ||
| I mean, when they elected Donald Trump, they elected a fool. | ||
| I mean, a fool for a president. | ||
| He thinks that executive orders is everything. | ||
| I mean, people just don't understand. | ||
| If they get a hold of Social Security and they mean spirited, people don't realize if you got $100,000 in your Social Security, and when you retire and you say, oh, I want to get $2,000 a month, $2,000 a month divided into $100,000 mean that you only have it for 50 months. | ||
| 50 months is four years and two months, four years and two months. | ||
| Do you realize if you live past those four years, what kind of money will you have? | ||
| And also, during the campaign when Harris was running against Donald Trump, she stayed on reproductive freedom for too long. | ||
| She should have started talking about that Project 2025 book. | ||
| I read it. | ||
| Everything that Donald Trump is doing in the White House right now with those executive orders, it was in that Project 2025. | ||
| I would have had him on the ropes every day on the campaign trail. | ||
| He would have been talking about it because he would have to defend everything. | ||
| He said he didn't know anything about it. | ||
| He would have had to talk about that instead of his grievances for two and a half hours on the campaign trail. | ||
| So he got away with that, and now America is suffering. | ||
| Everybody is going to suffer because of what he's doing. | ||
| That's Deborah. | ||
| This is Sal in New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I would just like to say that woman from Moms from Liberty, she made a great, made great points, but she left out some good things. | ||
| We should bring Bibles back to our schools from K through 12, because if we read Bibles to our students, if a child gets a Bible in every school, they would learn how to read and write. | ||
| But when we took Bibles out of schools, they don't know how to read and write. | ||
| And when we teach kids the Bible, they learn how our loving Creator is, our place in the world, our purpose in life. | ||
| They learn how to behave with each other. | ||
| They learn how to respect authority, how to respect their parents. | ||
| And this whole thing about separation of church and state, it doesn't exist in the first place. | ||
| It says that Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the South. | ||
| I think I got your point. | ||
| You're clicking in and out there a little bit, so we'll go to Jim in Connecticut, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I'm calling regarding Afghanistan's former special operations units, interpreters, et cetera, who during the 20-year conflict aided our military in a big way, so much that our own veterans say we should, in return, help them now that they are refugees from the Taliban, which has lists of people they plan to hunt down and kill. | ||
| And because of this threat, there has long been a plan to resettle the Afghan allies in the U.S. | ||
| And flights for their resettlement were scheduled for January through April of this year, but President Trump suspended the refugee admissions program. | ||
| And as far as I know, there is no exception for those who served in those special ops units, and that's the problem. | ||
| Jim, are you involved in this effort at all, or did you serve in Afghanistan? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I didn't, but I am a veteran. | |
| Gotcha. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So just wanted to finish up by saying, meanwhile, as I understand it, if we are to resettle our Afghan allies here, we're working against the clock because Pakistan is repatriating Afghan refugees, and Pakistan has set two deadlines for completing the repatriations. | |
| One is March 31st, next Monday, and the other is June 30th, 2025. | ||
| I don't know which of these deadlines affects the troops I'm talking about. | ||
| But as I said, I'm concerned. | ||
| I'm a veteran myself. | ||
| This may affect military policy in the future when dealing with our allies. | ||
| That's Jim in Connecticut. | ||
| Robin in California, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm calling in reference to the Atlantic article. | ||
| And I spent four hours plugged into X spaces with retired intelligence and retired U.S. personnel. | ||
| And They felt that most likely the Jeffrey Goldberg, the initials JG, that probably they thought they were getting Jamison Greer, which is the U.S. trade representative. | ||
| So there may have been that mix up because they're both JG initials. | ||
| Also, to those calling and saying that, you know, wondering if it could have been a government app or a phone app, government apps are sorry, government devices will not allow that app. | ||
| But just listening to one quick comment also on Realize those that are picking up, collecting intelligence from us that may not be our friends realize that they've probably been communicating on this long before this happened. | ||
| And whatever they say, whatever they chat about, they have very well been picked up on and made us even more vulnerable. | ||
| And I just feel such a sense of concern over our service members that were out there putting their lives at risk. | ||
| And that's about all I have to add. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That's Robin in California. | ||
| It is 9:30 on the East Coast. | ||
| The House and the Senate comes in in just about a half an hour. | ||
| And speaking of the House, a loss of a former member of the House this week, Mia Love, who was the first and so far only black woman to be elected to Congress as a Republican, has died in Utah. | ||
| Her family announced yesterday she was 49 years old. | ||
| Love was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022 and had most recently been receiving treatment as part of a clinical trial. | ||
| The former two-term lawmakers family had said earlier this month that she was no longer responding to treatment. | ||
| The obituary in the Wall Street Journal notes that she first rose to national attention for a rousing speech she gave in 2012 at the Republican National Convention. | ||
| The speech drew heavily from her experience as the daughter of Haitian immigrants, who she said arrived in the U.S. with $10 in their pockets and invoked the legacy of civil rights and leaders such as Rosa Park and Martin Luther King Jr. months later. | ||
| She won an election to represent the Salt Lake City suburbs by three percentage points and served on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Her family making that announcement yesterday, the tweet or the ex-post from Mia Love's account from her family saying, With grateful hearts filled to overflowing for the profound influence of Mia on our lives, we want you to know that she passed away peacefully today. | ||
| That's coming late on Sunday night. | ||
| This is Chris in Great Neck, New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, John. | |
| My topic is Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic Peace. | ||
| Unless I'm just not up to speed and all the facts, I've heard no discussion about any kind of irrefutable documentary record of the Goldbergs' receipt of this conversation. | ||
| So what we got, Chris, is the National Security Council spokesman saying that the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and Mr. Goldberg in that story, including photos of some of the text messages saying he wasn't including all of them because he didn't want to reveal certain what would seem to be classified information, but he put out both images of that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the name attached to the national security source? | |
| National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the authenticity of the chat in a statement to the Wall Street Journal and a statement put out to other news organizations. | ||
| Okay, well, I'd like to hear more about him because Jeffrey Goldberg is pure uniparty, and I just don't buy until I can be convinced that what more would it take to convince you, Chris? | ||
|
unidentified
|
...achievable documentary record. | |
| What? | ||
| What does that mean, Chris? | ||
| You have a statement from the National Security Council spokesman, and you've got images of those texts included in the story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, I'll look into both of those. | |
| But I do. | ||
| The Atlantic magazine has always been an enemy of all things, Trump. | ||
| And so is Jeffrey Goldberg. | ||
| And we also have the fact that, you know, a lot of Chris in New York. | ||
| Chris, we're going to learn more at a Senate hearing today. | ||
| It's happening in 27 minutes is when it's scheduled to start. | ||
| It's a hearing on worldwide threats featuring CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other officials. | ||
| It's before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. | ||
| You can watch live on C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| This is Stan Hackensack, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes, I'm just, you know, concerned about the train of thought, but I'm going to go to Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been paying in since 1975. | |
| They didn't ask to verify when they needed the money. | ||
| So I don't believe there's one check going to someone that's dead already. | ||
| They have to show proof. | ||
| And another thing is also, I'm just blabbing on, when the security for what happened in Yemen, you can't make mistakes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One mistake, you know, it could be death to people that's not, you know, military. | |
| And also, how can we take from Social Security and for the people? | ||
| A lot of Republicans are saying being Christian, you can't take from people that's hurting. | ||
| That's not Christian-like. | ||
| That's Stan. | ||
| This is Kathy in the Sunflower State Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Boy, I just have a lot to say. | ||
| I don't even know where to start. | ||
| The Trump administration is just unbelievable. | ||
| I feel like every morning I wake up and I'm in some kind of nightmare, you know, that I just can't wake up from. | ||
| Everything they're doing, and I need my Medicare. | ||
| I need my Social Security. | ||
| I worked hard for it. | ||
| I'm 71 years old, and I look forward to retiring and enjoying my golden years. | ||
| And now every morning I wake up, listen to the news, and I'm in a panic. | ||
| They want to make, and regardless of what they say about not doing anything with our Social Security and Medicare, I don't believe them for one bit. | ||
| They lie. | ||
| Trump lies every time he turns around. | ||
| That's all he does. | ||
| You watch him. | ||
| Inflation. | ||
| Look how many times he said on the campaign trail, on day one, I will lower it. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| No, it's not happening. | ||
| It's getting worse. | ||
| And now the Department of Education and doing away with programs for poor people, he just wants, if you can't see it, I'm sorry, but I believe this with all my heart. | ||
| He wants to be another Putin. | ||
| He wants his government to be full of oligarchs and the rich are way up here and the poor just get poorer and poorer. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Kathy in Kansas. | ||
| This is Nakia in Las Vegas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Okay, so I just, you know, I find it interesting that people are going crazy about these leaked messages because when CNN was given documents from someone on the inside and when, you know, documents were released from ICE that were confidential, you didn't see people up in arms about that. | ||
| And those could have had officers killed and other people put their lives in danger. | ||
| Second point is, I don't understand why these people, like the previous caller, have such doom and gloom about Trump. | ||
| They say that he wants to take away Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| No, he doesn't. | ||
| For one, why would he cut taxes on Social Security if he's trying to take people's Social Security? | ||
| People need to understand that the government took that money. | ||
| They used it for other agencies and other programs. | ||
| And that's why the fund is low. | ||
| They never replaced that money back. | ||
| And Trump is doing the right thing. | ||
| I don't know how people are against waste, fraud, and abuse when it's literally our tax dollars. | ||
| That should be accounted for. | ||
| So when you have all this wasteful spending, and I'm just, it drives me crazy because it's like people cut off your nose to spite your face for no reason. | ||
| It's just ridiculous. | ||
| So people really need to get a clue and research on their own, not watch media, and figure out what's really going on by looking at documents from the White House, so on and so forth. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| Have a good morning, John. | ||
| That's Nikki in Las Vegas to Bob in Everett, Washington, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I just had one comment today. | ||
| I think Pete Hedigseth has started drinking again. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Steve in Painesville, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me make a comment about our national security and just the breach that took place last couple of days. | |
| Well, we go back to 2021, and Donald Trump had his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago full of our national security secrets. | ||
| They weren't in a skiff. | ||
| And I believe he was reading war plans to a couple of women in Bedminster at his golf club. | ||
| So I guess we asked for this. | ||
| We have the best people in charge now that America has to offer. | ||
| Apparently, you know, the national security is being run by a bunch of clowns. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's hard to believe. | |
| But in 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists created the doomsday clock. | ||
| And the original setting was seven minutes to midnight. | ||
| And obviously, the threat at the time was nuclear war. | ||
| Well, Up to 2024, the threats are nuclear war, climate change, and AI. | ||
| The clock is now set at 89 seconds to midnight. | ||
| The good news is the clock can be moved back, which it was in 1991. | ||
| It was moved back to 17 minutes to midnight, which is when Ukraine disarmed and turned over their strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. | ||
| And that was the collapse of the Soviet Union. | ||
| You Republicans remember Reagan when we were the city on the hill. | ||
| We were the light shining in the world. | ||
| You Republicans remember when Reagan said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall in 1987, in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the people in East Germany were rejoicing because they had freedom. | ||
| I think a lot of Americans are taking our freedom for granted. | ||
| I'll just wrap it up with that. | ||
| Steven, you may be interested, and C-SPAN viewers interested in the doomsday clock. | ||
| It was January 28th of this year that C-SPAN covered the latest announcement about the risks threatening humanity, the movement of the 89 seconds to midnight of the doomsday clock, the bulletin of atomic scientists. | ||
| You can watch that event on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Just type in doomsday clock in the search bar at the top of the page. | ||
| This is another Steve Steven in Florida, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, sir. | |
| A couple points to inject this morning. | ||
| You know, remember the BlackBerries and the cell phones and the private servers. | ||
| Maybe a better question to ask is why are government employees choosing to use other lines of communication? | ||
| So maybe one possibility is you want to know. | ||
| You want your adversary to know. | ||
| You know, maybe it was a purposeful leak. | ||
| So that's a couple of points that I wanted to make this morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, Stephen, it was a leak that happened before the attack. | ||
| The attack happens on March 15th, and then the reporter doesn't write about this and disclose it as a leak until yesterday. | ||
| So how does that square with the scenario you're imagining? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, Goldberg was an unlikely recipient, and I just think that it's so unlikely that that's a mistake. | |
| I think it was done on purpose. | ||
| That's Stephen in Florida. | ||
| This is George in Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| This is George the John McCain, Republican, now Independent. | ||
| I called in on the Independent line. | ||
| I want to commend Sean Caston, and I thank you for having him as a guest. | ||
| He's sort of renewed my faith in some of our representatives. | ||
| But, John, what I feel Now is maybe it's time that we go with a third party. | ||
| I think Republicans such as myself are afraid of some of the extreme Democrats, and I think a lot of Democrats are afraid of some of the extreme Republicans. | ||
| So I'm going to send out a plea to the people that I think love America and would truly vote and pass legislation with their hearts. | ||
| I think of Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney. | ||
| Now, I know some of these people have been voted out of office, but Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinziger, Larry Hogan, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, people such as they, I think, need to get together and come up with candidates that people who aren't extreme in the Democratic Party and people who aren't extreme in the Republican Party have someone that they can vote for president. | ||
| I couldn't vote for president because I certainly couldn't vote for Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm a retired Vietnam veteran, and what he has done to the military and dishonored some of the generals. | ||
| I don't want to go into that because I went into that previously on your show. | ||
| Well, George, you're in Maryland. | ||
| You mentioned Larry Hogan. | ||
| Why do you think Larry Hogan was able to win in a traditionally blue state in Maryland as a Republican, as governor, but was not able to win that Senate seat that he ran for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he won as governor because he's a moderate. | |
| He's a mediator. | ||
| He addressed Democrats and Republicans both. | ||
| So why wasn't he able to win his Senate race? | ||
|
unidentified
|
John, Maryland is, you know, a very blue state. | |
| And I don't know that people did their homework when they followed the campaign and just voted for their party down the line. | ||
| I voted for him. | ||
| Why were they able to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a Republican, and it's hard to be. | |
| I'm in Charles County. | ||
| Why were they able to not vote down the line in a governor's race? | ||
| And then you say they voted down the line in a Senate race. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't have an answer for that, John. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I think it's people like Larry Hogan and some of the ones I mentioned, and there's a lot more out there, who I think could bring this country together. | ||
| We are so divided now, party line. | ||
| And I think a lot of it is because, as I said, the extremes on both sides. | ||
| I think it's really time for us to get down the middle and be a little conservative and progressive both. | ||
| And I think it's possible. | ||
| But I plea, I'm sending out a plea to the good former representatives and the present representatives such as Sean Caston and others, guests that you've had here on the show that have been down the middle and love their country more than they love the power of the office. | ||
| That's George in Maryland. | ||
| This is Stephanie. | ||
| Back in the Garden State, it's my Claire Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I just want people to know the way that Trump and Elon Musk are going when about the so-called audit is not the way you do an audit. | ||
| You meet with managers of the different departments and then you make suggestions. | ||
| And I mean, to go in and just fire everybody and shut everything down doesn't make any sense. | ||
| It just boggles the mind. | ||
| And Donald Trump is about money and power. | ||
| And that's all he cares about. | ||
| And those people who were talking about getting money out of government, look what you got. | ||
| You got billionaires in his cabinet. | ||
| How come nobody's complaining about that? | ||
| Michael's next out of Highland, New York. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Doing well. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just want to make a couple comments about the so-called leak story there. | |
| Nobody buys it or believes it. | ||
| And if this reporter was known lied, the one that hates Trump, why didn't he take a screenshot or a recording on his phone? | ||
| He could have just presented it to the FBI. | ||
| All it boils down to is he's trying to cover up for all the freaking messes that Biden got us into that Trump is taking care of, as always. | ||
| Michael, he did include screenshots in his story. | ||
| Still with us? | ||
| Jessica's next then, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jessica, you with us? | |
| Got to stick by your phone. | ||
| Then we go to Terry in Indiana, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, they're talking about bringing the Bible back in to the school system. | |
| I think that's a good idea. | ||
| But what a lot of the Christians don't know, Bill Carson has studied the Bible, Bibles, all the Bibles, and ancient text, the texts that were wrote on clay tablets about the Anunnakis, and all the Bibles have copied from those Anunnaki writings and clay tablets. | ||
| 46,000 years ago they were wrote. | ||
| Bring me up to 2025. | ||
| Where are we going with this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the Christians don't realize it. | |
| All those Bibles were copied from clay tablets of the Anunnakis that I don't know if you know about them, but they were here, I think it's 450,000 years ago, and they came here to get gold. | ||
| And they had a people that were mining this gold for 200,000 years until they got tired of their conditions and rose up to fight about it. | ||
| And that's when they took us, the caveman type people. | ||
| They updated their brain to make them smarter. | ||
| And I guess they shortened our lives even at the time when they made our brains and had us start doing the mining for the gold. | ||
| All right, that's Terry in Indiana. | ||
| This is David in New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, I want to thank C-SPAN for its unbiased reporting on things that are going on in this country. | ||
| With this whole thing with this leak, I want to know if they're going to hold people responsible. | ||
| We heard about Hillary Clinton, okay, in her emails. | ||
| It's just so funny, or it's not amusing. | ||
| It's interesting that the Republicans don't hold water. | ||
| They don't hold things to what they want to hold the Democrats to. | ||
| But I also, changing the subjects, I blame the Congress. | ||
| They all need to step up and do what is right by the people instead of worrying about trying to make money so they can get reelected. | ||
| It's just frustrating. | ||
| This is my first time pulling in. | ||
| I have so many things on my mind, but I will continue to call in on certain subjects. | ||
| But once again, I want to thank C-SPANS for its unbiased opinion. | ||
| You guys listen to everyone. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Wave, if you see me, I'll watch you right now. | ||
| David, you can call in once every 30 days here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll look for your calls down the line. | ||
| This is Debbie in Columbia, Missouri, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I would just like to say that the amount of money that the U.S. spends on education for each child would pay for a highly paid classroom teacher and a private tutor for every student after school if they would cut out the layers of BOF bureaucrats and administrators that do nothing but drag down the learning process. | ||
| They need to give the money directly to parents, teachers, and tutors and get rid of the bureaucrats and administrators. | ||
| There's more of them than there are teachers. | ||
| They outnumber them by 10 to 1. | ||
| And this thing about the signal slip-up, it was a minor incursion. | ||
| We're probably going to find out. | ||
| It wasn't war plans. | ||
| And this reporter was a Democrat operative spying and hacking and putting his phone number on their list. | ||
| And it was a conversation about nothing. | ||
| Why do you say he put his phone number on the list? | ||
| He literally got an invite to join a group chat, and he didn't believe it when it first came in. | ||
| Well, he was searching for stuff because he's been known to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to turn out just as a minor incursion. | |
| It's not going to, they're blowing it way out of proportion. | ||
| But the thing about education is our government spends more on education than anywhere in the world. | ||
| And they could hire a really highly paid qualified teacher for each classroom of about 20 students, cut down class size, hire more teachers, and provide an after-school tutor for special education, any kind of upper sciences. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Debbie. | ||
| This is Ernestina out of the Tarheel State. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| What I was talking for in 1994, Ukraine weapons was dismembered by Russia, which they was getting, they was the third country to have the most weapons. | ||
| And they was dismembered by Russia. | ||
| Russia know they don't have no weapons to fight with because they dismantled them. | ||
| Are you talking about Ukraine's nuclear arsenal when it was part of the Soviet Union? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay, they did mount. | ||
| Okay, they know they don't have no weapons to fight with. | ||
| They were the United States, Russia, all it was supposed to help them once they disarmed their weapons. | ||
| Russia know they don't have no weapons to work with. | ||
| And then they go Trump stopping the weapons that our president supposed to be sending over that to do as he was told. | ||
| Russia, again, failed to follow rules that was supposed to be a rule that was in 1994. | ||
| They don't follow rules. | ||
| And another thing, on readout, WSON, MSNBC, they took her off. | ||
| He told her boss to fire her because she was prejudiced. | ||
| Who is more prejudiced than him? | ||
| We need to be on there with us, blacks, and other people. | ||
| We need to listen to what she has to say just like Weiss. | ||
| No one lands on MSNBC but Weiss. | ||
| That's Ernestina. | ||
| This is Marshall in Florida, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| You know, my question then is, and maybe you can answer this. | ||
| Why is it that President Biden was allowed to bring all these illegal immigrants in and President Trump is not allowed to deport them? | ||
| It was against the law when Biden was bringing these people in, but for President Trump to deport them, now they're saying that's against the law and they want to prosecute him. | ||
| Marshall, when you say bringing them in, what do you mean by that? | ||
| Well, you know, he was bringing plane loads of these people in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We know that. | |
| Coming across the border, opening the border. | ||
| He opened the border up. | ||
| And, you know, it was illegal. | ||
| Everybody knows the ones that were coming in was illegal. | ||
| Maybe not 100%, probably 99%. | ||
| But why was it legal for him to do that? | ||
| And President Trump is not legal to deport them, the murderers and stuff. | ||
| I don't understand the people not understanding that. | ||
| That's Marshall. | ||
| This is Janet in Washington Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just, you know, people are talking about Musk and what's going on. | ||
| I've been, I'm curious about computers, but I've been watching about the build of Colossus going on in Tennessee and Memphis, Tennessee. | ||
| What is Colossus, Janet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gork is running Gorka three. | |
| Anyway, it's an AI. | ||
| Musk has programmed it to be a rogue AI to challenge authority. | ||
| It gets its information off of X and is accepting any lies or anything as the truth. | ||
| And he's building it to challenge authority. | ||
| I heard him talking on there's an interview on Incident Tech and one on the Tesla space. | ||
| The real reason Elon Musk is developing Gork AI and he's going to put it in the cars and then Charlin and anything that he can add it to when he has it fully operational. | ||
| And I'm just afraid of a rogue AI that's programmed to challenge authority being on the internet and able to get into anything it wants to once he lets it lose just like the ones that are working now. | ||
| It has no filters, no controls. | ||
| Janet, is there any AI system that you use that you trust right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the others come with filters. | |
| They have purposely taken the filters off and it is being programmed off of the conspiracy theories on X. | ||
| It's real time where none of the other AIs are running real time. | ||
| This is constantly updating. | ||
| It's going to have multi-personnels. | ||
| What do Ilon has 42,000 satellites could do to the earth if he launches all those and puts a rogue AI that is updating constantly off of X onto all the internet systems? | ||
| You know, it's made to have his philosophy, and they purposely have taken all the filters and controls off of it. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Janet. | ||
| If you want to learn about XAI, that project in Memphis, the local newspaper down there is keeping tabs on the project, the commercial appeal out of Memphis, where Elon Musk's XAI Memphis supercomputer project stands and what's next. | ||
| A story from just this past January on that, and not the first story on that. | ||
| That's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal, though, but we'll of course be back here tomorrow morning. | ||
| It's 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| It's 4 a.m. Pacific. |