| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Giving you a front row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then, Washington Times reporter Jeff Mondock talks about White House news of the day. | ||
| And Shaya Kabas from the Bipartisan Policy Center will discuss the debt limit X date and fiscal issues as congressional Republicans begin their budget reconciliation process. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Wednesday, March 26, 2025. | ||
| The House and Senate are both set to reconvene at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| It was yesterday that Trump administration officials said that the leak of a signal text chain about attacks on militants in Yemen was a mistake, but also insisted that no classified material was shared on the group chat. | ||
| The breach was the key topic of one congressional hearing yesterday. | ||
| It's likely to dominate another hearing today. | ||
| So this morning, we begin by asking our viewers about your level of confidence in the Trump administration national security team. | ||
| Phone line split as usual by political party. | ||
| Democrats, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text. | ||
| That number, 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you do, please include your name and where you're from. | ||
| Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook at spacebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Wednesday morning. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling. | ||
| And now, this is the headline from the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| Donald Trump defends his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, after the messaging blunder. | ||
| And this was the scene from the White House yesterday. | ||
| These are people that shoot down ships, not only our ships, ships all over the world. | ||
| They're shooting down right out of the water and damaging them badly, or they're going down. | ||
| They're also shooting anything that happens to be flying in the area. | ||
| We hit them very, very hard. | ||
| There was no classified information, as I understand it. | ||
| They used an app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use, a lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use. | ||
| And I think I'll ask Mike. | ||
| Mike is here. | ||
| Do you want to respond to that, please? | ||
| Yes, Mr. President. | ||
| You asked about lessons. | ||
| I think there's a lot of lessons. | ||
| There's a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves making up lies about this president, whether it's the Russia hoax or making up lies about Gold Star families. | ||
| And this one in particular, I've never met, don't know, never communicated with. | ||
| And we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room. | ||
| But I'll tell you what, the world owes President Trump a favor. | ||
| Under Biden, global shipping was shut down. | ||
| Pinprick attacks, months between them, our destroyers being fired upon dozens of times. | ||
| President Trump took decisive action with his national security team, took out the head missileer, knocked out missiles, knocked out headquarters, knocked out communication sites. | ||
| And for once, as we hear, as you all hear from every one of our allies, thank God for American leadership again. | ||
| Thank God for American strength. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're welcome, Warren. | |
| And look, we had a national security team that was coordinating these efforts as Director Radcliffe testified today. | ||
| His first day on the job, he was introduced to this app on his government systems at the CIA and at the State Department and otherwise. | ||
| Look, this journalist, Mr. President, wants the world talking about more hoaxes and this kind of nonsense rather than the freedom that you're enabling. | ||
| And a key part of our sovereignty is open sea lanes and knocking the crap out of terrorists, which is exactly what your team and Pete Hegseff, a good friend and fellow veteran, is leading the charge on. | ||
| That was the scene from the White House yesterday. | ||
| The journalist that Mike Walt's referring to, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, that story coming out around noon on Monday, and it was the focus of one congressional hearing yesterday and is set to be the focus, likely, of another congressional hearing today, a hearing originally scheduled on global threats before the House Intelligence Committee. | ||
| That hearing taking place at 10 a.m. Eastern this morning, we're going to be showing to you on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| That's where you can go if you want to watch it after this program ends. | ||
| But this morning, in this first hour of the Washington Journal, we're simply asking you about your level of confidence when it comes to the Trump administration's national security team. | ||
| Phone lines as usual, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. | ||
| Todd is up first out of California, up early this morning. | ||
| Independent, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| What are your thoughts on this story and the national security team at the White House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This story is a national embarrassment. | |
| I don't really have any confidence in the security team. | ||
| Tulsi Gadbird, the national director of intelligence. | ||
| She didn't have any experience prior in this field, so I don't know why she's there. | ||
| Pete Hegseth, you know, while I like his service in the military, was basically a Fox TV news host, yet now he's the defense secretary. | ||
| Kash Patel said a bunch of, you know, weird, crazy stuff before, like wanting, you know, to shut down an FBI building and turn it into a museum. | ||
| And then Mike Waltz, or whatever his name is, the NSA director, basically saying this leak is no big deal. | ||
| And while I overall like Trump, you know, him saying things like, oh, it's not a big deal. | ||
| And no, there's no excuse for this. | ||
| Trump needs to fire Tulsi Gabbard and the NSA director immediately because there's no excuse for leaking war plans. | ||
| You know. | ||
| That's Todd in California. | ||
| This is Billy in Alexandria, Indiana, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I just got a lot of confidence in this setup and this team that Trump has put together. | ||
| It was just a matter of time that the Democrats had put in somebody to interrupt everything. | ||
| It's all they're doing. | ||
| That's all the Democrats want to do is just interrupt anything, stop Trump in any way they can. | ||
| And I think that it's just they'll just have to learn who the people they can trust in the media. | ||
| And it'll come out okay. | ||
| I still got a lot of confidence in the Trump administration and their security system. | ||
| I think they'll get it straightened out. | ||
| And of course, one of the key members of the Trump National Security Team, his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was asked amid a trip to Hawaii about this story and the fallout. | ||
| This was Pete Hegseth yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. Secretary, the messages the White House called authentic did, at the very least, include sensitive details about targets and timing. | |
| Did you declassify that information before you put it in the chat? | ||
| And are you using Signal to discuss operations as sensitive as the strikes against the Houthis on a government or a personal phone? | ||
| First, all I would say is the strikes against the Houthis that night were devastatingly effective. | ||
| And I'm incredibly proud of the courage and skill of the troops. | ||
| And they are ongoing and continue to be devastatingly effective. | ||
| The last place I would want to be right now is a Houthi in Yemen who wants to disrupt freedom of navigation. | ||
| So the skill and courage of our troops is on full display. | ||
| It's a complete opposite approach from the fecklessness of the Biden administration. | ||
| President Trump said peace through strength will be brought back. | ||
| Freedom of navigation will return. | ||
| And that's exactly what we're doing. | ||
| As I also stated yesterday, nobody's texting war plans. | ||
| And that's all I have to say about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So those same troops that, those same troops that you are proud of, do you regret putting information like the ones you did in the signal chat that could endanger those same American service members? | |
| Nobody's texting war plans, Kazu. | ||
| I know exactly what I'm doing, exactly what we're directing, and I'm really proud of what we accomplished, the successful missions that night and going forward. | ||
| Pete Hegseth yesterday saying nobody's texting war plans. | ||
| The headline of that Atlantic story, the Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. | ||
| That's the story that has sparked all of this discussion and was the key topic at yesterday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. | ||
| It was Tulsi Gavard that testified at that hearing. | ||
| John Ratcliffe, CIA director, was at that hearing. | ||
| Kash Patel as well. | ||
| They'll all three be on back on Capitol Hill today, but on the House side testifying originally a hearing about global threats, but this topic likely to come up again. | ||
| This is Joe, New Providence, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I'm for President Trump. | ||
| I think he's doing a great job. | ||
| And as far as at least they admit it that they made a mistake on this here one part, Biden didn't make no apologize or say that he made a mistake when 12 soldiers got killed. | ||
| And when the head of the army, they couldn't even find him. | ||
| It was in the hospital. | ||
| He didn't say anything. | ||
| And according to that guy that you had on, I think the first time saying all these guys should get fired, how come those guys didn't get fired? | ||
| Okay, I think he's doing a good job. | ||
| And there's one thing I like to say: instead of having all this here stuff, you mentioned something about the Democrats. | ||
| Why don't you have a talk about these people with the cars burning up the cars? | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That's Joe in New Jersey. | ||
| This is Janice in Connecticut, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, this is Janice, not Janet. | |
| No, I do not about the common sense and wisdom at a top-level national security team using Signal. | ||
| Kind of reminds me of Carl Rose during the W administration when they were using their cell phones and texting on information. | ||
| But the most important thing that people are missing on this is this is when Jeffrey Goldberg was on the chat. | ||
| How many times have they been using Signal and loosely like this in other conversations that nobody or other chats, that other people have not zeroed in on? | ||
| If there's any way of securing those chat messages, that's what I would suggest that the Intel committees do. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| This is Nathaniel in Franklin, Indiana. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| You know, we have in this chat room, we have the Vice President of the United States. | ||
| We have the Secretary of State, who's third in line to be president. | ||
| We have the head of the largest military in the world, Hegsep. | ||
| We have the head of the FBI. | ||
| We have the head of the CIA. | ||
| We have the head of our national security. | ||
| In this chat room, I'm not sure Kash Patel was on that text chain. | ||
| I don't think he was recognized as being on that text chain, but go ahead. | ||
| What's your point you're making? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, they're talking in detail plans of a future attack, and no one in this group does a roll call. | |
| No one in this group, these are the top people in our government. | ||
| They're running our government, and no one thinks to do a roll call to look at the list of who's in this chat room and what do we get in response: lies, excuses. | ||
| And this shows a lack. | ||
| This is why I voted for every Republican except for Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm a lifelong Republican. | ||
| I did not vote for Donald Trump for this reason. | ||
| He lacked character. | ||
| He will not take a leadership position on this. | ||
| And, you know, Donald Trump complained during his campaign that Biden never fires anybody. | ||
| What about him? | ||
| Is he going to fire somebody over this? | ||
| That's Nathaniel in Indiana. | ||
| This was one of the scenes yesterday from that Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Senator Angus King of Maine, his exchange with Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| According to open source reporting at 11:44 on the morning of March 15th, Secretary Hedsef put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were going to be using, attack sequences, and timing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And yet you've testified that nothing in that chain was classified. | |
| Wouldn't that be classified? | ||
| What if that had been made public that morning before the attack took place? | ||
| Senator, I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time. | ||
| So the attack sequencing and timing and weapons and targets you don't consider should have been classified. | ||
| I defer to the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council on that question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you're the head of the intelligence community. | |
| You're supposed to know about classifications. | ||
| So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll follow up on Senator Wyden's question. | |
| If that's the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. | ||
| It's hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified. | ||
| That from the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday. | ||
| This is this morning's Wall Street Journal, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, with some lessons from this signal affair. | ||
| They write, the White House is insisting that no classified information appeared on the now infamous group chat about the Houthis. | ||
| It was nonetheless notable to watch Ms. Gabbard, they say, the supposed enemy of the intelligence deep state before she became director of national intelligence, obfuscate about the thread's contents. | ||
| What you admit, apparently, depends on where you sit. | ||
| They say the real security scandal is that the signal chat apparently included Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump's envoy to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. | ||
| Press reports say Mr. Witkoff was receiving these messages on the commercial app while he was in Moscow. | ||
| This is a security malpractice, they write. | ||
| Russian intelligence services must be listening to Mr. Witkoff's every eyebrow flutter. | ||
| That from the Wall Street Journal editorial board this morning. | ||
| This is John in New York, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I've watched the Washington Journal for many years, and I always had a ton of confidence in you guys and how you handled yourself. | ||
| But I think right now you have to be very careful because once you lose your confidence and the trust, you probably have the confidence trust of part of the country, but you're going to lose a ton of trust in Congress. | ||
| It's hard to build that back up. | ||
| Now, do you remember there was a Chinese spy balloon that flew over the country? | ||
| Do you remember that story, John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And do you think that posed a security threat? | |
| But there's no mention of that. | ||
| Do you remember Hillary Clinton had numerous unsecure cell phones she traveled around the country, the world with, and there was no security, and she was texting, and then she had a server in her basement up here in Westchester, and the FBI had to go in there and confiscate it. | ||
| And her chief of staff, her husband, was a felon, and she had access to the same computers. | ||
| So, John, we talked about all those stories when they took place. | ||
| What are your thoughts on this story today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Focus on it the way you were focusing on this. | |
| You guys have been attacking Donald Trump since the first day he was in office. | ||
| This is how you guys bring, I guess, you raise your viewership by this, but it's not to what this program is supposed to be about. | ||
| I think you guys are going to, once you lose your trust, once you lose your reputation, it's going to be extremely hard. | ||
| When you have a business, I don't care if you mow lawn for a living. | ||
| Once you lose, if you have good trust, people have, they say he's a great guy, he's doing a great job. | ||
| John, got your point. | ||
| Do you want to comment on this story or no? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have two guests at once. | |
| Why do you have one guest that constantly says Trump is this, his administration's doing this, and nobody defends Trump, Donald Trump, and his administration? | ||
| That is not fair. | ||
| That's like a kangaroo court you guys have. | ||
| Got your point, John. | ||
| This is Jim in Florida, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I have all the confidence in our defense team. | |
| I find it odd that a telephone number was assigned to an individual who was able to get on the chat team on a chat line. | ||
| This number winds up at Mr. Goldberg. | ||
| Mr. Goldberg uses that number to get in the chat line. | ||
| He hates Trump. | ||
| How in the world of all the people did he come up with a number to get onto this chat line? | ||
| This is what they will find out today. | ||
| They'll find out what that number was given to, why that number was given to Goldberg. | ||
| That is unbelievable that a guy that hates Trump so bad is in this chat line listening to everything that goes on. | ||
| They ought to arrest him for wiretapping because he has no business on that line. | ||
| He was added to the chain, and Michael Walsh acknowledged that it was a mistake to put his number on that chain that Mike Waltz created. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he had somebody's number that was supposed to be on the chain. | |
| How in the world would anyone give him a telephone number to get on the chat line? | ||
| He's one of the worst haters of Trump that there could be. | ||
| That don't make sense. | ||
| It has to be investigated. | ||
| And he probably didn't say anything. | ||
| He just listened. | ||
| Now, he didn't see nobody. | ||
| Oh, by the way, this is Goldberg. | ||
| You know, I hate Trump. | ||
| Give me some more information. | ||
| Come on, John. | ||
| Think about what I just said. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Jim in Florida. | ||
| This is Mohammed out of L.A., Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I have no confidence in the Trump administration's handling of intelligence material. | ||
| On the day that the news broke, I had already received many alerts, especially from Axios, the first alert I received regarding this matter. | ||
| And then on Instagram, I saw a clip posted by C-SPAN where Donald Trump was sitting in the Oval Office. | ||
| A reporter asked the president about this story. | ||
| He denied having any knowledge of it. | ||
| And he said that this is the first I hear about it. | ||
| By then, the whole world knew about this, but the president sitting in the Oval Office said this is the first he heard about it. | ||
| I saw the clip on C-SPAN. | ||
| If you can please show that. | ||
| And the other thing is that people keep calling, well, what about Hillary Clinton? | ||
| What about this? | ||
| What about that? | ||
| We're not there. | ||
| We're talking about today. | ||
| Forget about what about, what about, what about. | ||
| This is today. | ||
| And the president and this, he removed highly classified, top secret classified from the White House and took them to Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| He had them stored in his bathrooms at the hotel. | ||
| And now this issue here, he also revealed secret information about United States intelligence to then Russian foreign minister in the Oval Office in his previous term. | ||
| So this is not the first time. | ||
| Just in February, the CIA released the names of all the CIA operatives that have been hired over the last two years in an unclassified email. | ||
| And the United States has a $4 trillion budget. | ||
| The government has a confidential email service, and they're using Signal to advertise the war plans. | ||
| It doesn't make sense to me at all. | ||
| That's Mohammed in California. | ||
| Back to Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on this story. | ||
| Even after the administration confirmed the authenticity of the texts, Senator Secretary Hegseff continued to deflect and blame the reporter. | ||
| He does something really damaging to national security, and he blames the reporter who his people sent the information to. | ||
| What Gaul? | ||
| This is the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| This is the man leading our troops into battle and is meant to protect Americans and our national security at all costs. | ||
| The Senate, as well as all relevant authorities within the executive branch, must investigate this incident fully. | ||
| Fully. | ||
| We need the Senate to do it. | ||
| I hope Senator Thune will join me in that. | ||
| We also need the IG of the DOD to do it as well. | ||
| Chuck Schumer on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| Again, it's likely to be the topic for another day on Capitol Hill, a House hearing today featuring Tulsi Gappard and John Bradcliffe, two members of that text chain. | ||
| Also, Kash Patel, the FBI director, set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| We're going to be showing it on C-SPAN 3 if you want to watch it this morning. | ||
| We're asking about your level of confidence in the Trump administration's national security team. | ||
| Here are some of the headlines on this topic from the pages of today's newspapers. | ||
| This is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Officials minimize war plans breached. | ||
| That was the scene from yesterday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing the picture there. | ||
| The same shot from a different angle on the front page of the Washington Times. | ||
| Trump officials insist no intelligence secrets were shared in the leak signal chat. | ||
| And this story becoming the topic of political cartoons as well. | ||
| This is the Washington Post today, their drawing board political cartoon showing the Trojan horse outside of Troy. | ||
| One of the Trojan soldiers saying, Then, after we unwittingly roll it in, they leap out and attack us, according to this group chat that I'm on with Pete Hegseth. | ||
| That's the political cartoon this morning. | ||
| This is David in North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everyone. | |
| The guy earlier caller from New York was absolutely correct. | ||
| The credibility of C-SPAN is gone. | ||
| You guys are no different than MSNBC and CNN. | ||
| Okay, majority of the Americans don't even know who the Houthis are. | ||
| They don't even know where the Yemen is. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And now they're worried about, oh, we leaked this, they leaked that. | ||
| Most of the people don't even care. | ||
| And I'm not even a Trump supporter. | ||
| I don't care if this thing got leaked. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And when was the last time you guys talked about Stacey Abraham got $1.9 billion of the astronauts and astronauts that Trump and Elon Musk brought back after 10 months left in the state? | ||
| He has secured the border. | ||
| He's deporting the illegals. | ||
| All the good work he does. | ||
| You guys don't talk about it. | ||
| That's David in North Carolina. | ||
| This is Bill in Texas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Bill. | |
| Go ahead, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Pardon. | |
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, partner. | ||
| I tell you what, I agree with the caller from North Carolina just seeing. | ||
| I agree with the guy from New York. | ||
| I have 1,000% confidence in this team. | ||
| Now, did they make a mistake? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And also the man from Florida that called in a while ago about supporting them. | ||
| The man from New York, the man from North Carolina, because they see what everybody else is seeing that, you know, like, now I'll tell you somebody, you know, they made a mistake and they're willing to correct it and move on. | ||
| What they're doing is they're killing the enemy and they're doing an excellent job of it. | ||
| They're opening up that Suez Canal right now and other things that Biden messed up. | ||
| They're correcting Biden's mistakes. | ||
| You know, Biden allowed the 13 Marines to get killed along with 170 Afghanistan people. | ||
| He also allowed the spy balloons. | ||
| Just a lot worse stuff, just a little lot worse stuff. | ||
| But yet, y'all don't hardly talk about it. | ||
| And just like the guy from North Carolina, New York, Florida, everybody's seeing what y'all doing. | ||
| I mean, the low approval ratings of the Democrats, that's all they want to talk about now, because they got nothing else. | ||
| Their approval ratings are in the 20s, in the 20s. | ||
| And this is all they got to do is squeeze on to some little Mickey Mouse thing like this. | ||
| You know, the killings, you know, just like the border, just a horrible thing on the border. | ||
| But the Afghan thing was a lot, lot worse than this. | ||
| You had people getting murdered. | ||
| That's Bill in Texas. | ||
| This is Jane Kenner, Louisiana, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I appreciate you answering my call. | |
| And I have been just about to bust out laughing at some of these individuals who have called and said, y'all have just destroyed your entire reputation. | ||
| No, way. | ||
| Y'all do just fine. | ||
| And people, they're still calling, so obviously they aren't that pissed off. | ||
| So what's your thoughts on this story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I have no confidence in any of those people. | |
| I watched this, the Senate three or four times overnight, just watching it and watching it and watching it. | ||
| And the individuals, they take the clue from their boss that if you say a lie enough time, people will believe it. | ||
| And they're saying there was no security things in there. | ||
| And Mr. Goldberg is a journalist. | ||
| He is a journalist, and he would not disclose this information before he told the United States security people. | ||
| Then he put it in the paper. | ||
| Then he put it in the magazine. | ||
| It's just, I cannot believe that they're just letting these people just run goofy on the next time they do the same thing. | ||
| People are going to get killed, and they're going to be our soldiers and our airmen and our Navy people. | ||
| They shouldn't have been approved by the Senate. | ||
| Most of us should have never been appointed or even nominated as a candidate. | ||
| It's just awful. | ||
| That's Jane in Louisiana. | ||
| You said you watched that hearing several times overnight. | ||
| It's available on our website at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| If you missed the hearing yesterday, here's another scene from that hearing, the exchange with Democratic Senator John Osoff, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe. | ||
| This is what they had to say. | ||
| Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge mistake. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| No. | ||
| A national political question. | ||
| I said a yes or no question, and now you'll hold on. | ||
| A national political reporter was made privy to sensitive information about imminent military operations against a foreign terrorist mistake of adding a reporter. | ||
| And that wasn't a huge mistake. | ||
| That wasn't a huge mistake. | ||
| I think they characterized it as embarrassment. | ||
| This is utterly unprofessional. | ||
| There's been no apology. | ||
| There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error. | ||
| And by the way, we will get the full transcript of this chain, and your testimony will be measured carefully against its content. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| That was from the hearing yesterday. | ||
| The hearing moves to the House side today, and we're airing it at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3 if you want to watch. | ||
| It's just after 7:30 here on the Washington Journal, getting your thoughts, your level of confidence in the Trump administration national security team in this first hour today. | ||
| This is Roland in Detroit, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Glan Rising, can you hear me? | |
| I can hear you, Roland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I think it's all a rouge. | ||
| It's like a reality show. | ||
| These individuals, clearly, can they be experienced to deal with global military operations? | ||
| Come on, are they serious? | ||
| I mean, is somebody hiding something? | ||
| Are these just mouthpieces for entities and programs beyond our control? | ||
| And they're just hiding something. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Is the United States still sovereign? | ||
| I mean, you got these individuals doing all of this international deep military operations. | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| I just hope that we here in the United States and other places around the world are safe because the people aren't being given the real deal. | ||
| I guess they never have over the years. | ||
| But what we see now is in-your-face idolatry, narcissists, program filled with individuals who run around and like, oh, I'm all this and all that. | ||
| And they don't have any power to do anything. | ||
| I hope we still have some experienced professional generals and military experts running the show because these people aren't running anything. | ||
| They can't be. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Roland in Michigan to Ottumwa, Iowa. | ||
| Tony, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I wish everybody would just quit. | ||
| The Democrats complaining. | ||
| Republicans complaining. | ||
| Give them time to get something done. | ||
| They just got in office. | ||
| I have total confidence in Donald Trump. | ||
| I voted for him this year. | ||
| I was a Democrat for 60 years. | ||
| I lived paycheck to paycheck. | ||
| When he took over four years ago, I had some money in my pocket and I want it back. | ||
| Total confidence in Donald Trump. | ||
| That's Tony in Iowa. | ||
| This is White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt putting out a three-point response to this story, focusing first on Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, the author of that story, the one who was included on the text chain, saying he's well known for his sensationalist spin. | ||
| Here are the facts. | ||
| No war plans were discussed. | ||
| No classified material was sent to the thread. | ||
| The White House Council's office has provided guidance on the number of different platforms for President Trump's top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible. | ||
| As the National Security Council stated, she said the White House is looking into how Goldberg's number was inadvertently added to the thread, thanking the strong and decisive leadership of the president and everyone in the group. | ||
| The Houthi strikes were successful and effective. | ||
| Terrorists were killed. | ||
| And that's what matters the most to President Trump. | ||
| That from the press secretary yesterday morning. | ||
| This is Jerry in Livingston, Tennessee. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Very little confidence of Phoenix. | ||
| And I thought it just goes to show what all people were saying to start with. | ||
| Hitchcliffe and Galbert are not qualified to do this job. | ||
| Can you imagine Pete Hitchcliffe trying to handle an operation big as Iraq that we had over there? | ||
| They just don't have the qualifications, and they're making Donald Trump look like an idiot. | ||
| It's what they're doing, and I'm sure it's not their intention. | ||
| But people stop and think, whether you're Republican, Democrat, or independent, or whatever. | ||
| Can you imagine that you people's got kids in the military? | ||
| If that was your kid over there in this year coming out, but can you imagine this year trying to handle something biggest to Iraq operation was? | ||
|
unidentified
|
At first, you people C-SPAN, I think it's giving everybody a fair change. | |
| I don't know why people call and complain and just trying to divert the issue, but Telsey Galbert, Pete Hitchcliffe, they don't have the experience. | ||
| Look at their background. | ||
| He had, what, six, eight years in the National Guard? | ||
| They don't have the experience to do that. | ||
| And another thing I'd like to know was he's drinking that night, you know, that this was on there. | ||
| This is dangerous stuff. | ||
| And how much more information have they got? | ||
| You know, they were lucky that this reporter found it instead of, and who knows if some other foreign leaders has got a hold of some other securities companies, there's people from foreign leaders. | ||
| That's Jerry in Tennessee. | ||
| This is James, Hyattsville, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| I don't think there's anything wrong with C-SPAN. | ||
| Sometimes you guys talk about topics I want to talk about, and sometimes you don't. | ||
| Can't win them all. | ||
| But let's talk about how incompetent this really is. | ||
| First of all, let me say y'all that I'm a veteran. | ||
| I am a Democrat, but I stopped voting Democrat because I could not stand behind everything they do. | ||
| But Republicans seem to be standing behind everything the Republicans do without thinking about it. | ||
| But let me explain how dumb this is. | ||
| In 2010, when I was deployed, we had enough common sense to know not to talk about certain things on the phone, not take pictures, not to talk about the mission, not to talk about the mission the next day to anyone until it was all said and done. | ||
| Because you never know who might pick up the other person's phone. | ||
| So let's say this guy was in Russia, like they say, and someone else had picked up his phone, the cleaner or anybody else had picked up their phone and saw what he was talking about or what they were talking about. | ||
| And then they would respond and told someone else that, then that would have put people's lives in danger. | ||
| But I see also people want to talk about and compare Clinton, Obama, and everyone else that was president. | ||
| Well, let's look at that. | ||
| We're talking about the four years total that they were in office and what they might have done in the four years total, which there's a lot more for them to say about. | ||
| But this is the first 60 days of the presidency, and they're already screwing up. | ||
| This is like a police officer grabbing his weapon and putting his finger on the trigger before it's on target. | ||
| This is like a construction worker without safety glasses. | ||
| I am an electrician without gloves working with power line. | ||
| That's how incompetent this is. | ||
| That's James in Hyattsville, Maryland. | ||
| Back to Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| John Thune, Senate Majority Leader, his reaction to this story. | ||
| But I think that the United States right now is the recognized world leader. | ||
| And I think the president's moves on the world stage, including the initiative against the Houthis in Yemen, demonstrates that this is a new administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a new sheriff in town. | |
| And at some point, I think the Europeans and all the other countries around the world, whether they like it or not, realize that. | ||
| And I think they have to understand that if they want to have the U.S.'s support, they've got to do their fair share as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think that's the message the president has delivered to our European allies. | |
| And some of them don't like it. | ||
| They've been riding on the U.S. for way too long. | ||
| And it's time for them to step up and do more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Doesn't that publicly, though, harm our relationship with them? | |
| Well, any text change that are exchanged privately, I think you have to put that into context for what it is. | ||
| I think you have to look at what the president says and what the people around him are saying on these issues of foreign policy and national security and not text messages that were obviously probably inappropriate. | ||
| John Thune, yesterday, this morning in the Washington Post, a story on how this text chain story is being seen in Europe, saying the messages give an unfiltered view of the Trump team's disdain is the word they use in the headline. | ||
| This from the story, public reaction from top echelons of European capitals followed. | ||
| Quote, in the amazing story of the signal group coordinating Yemen airstrikes, Vice President JD Vance once again comes out as driven by deep anti-European resentment, wrote former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bilt in the wake of this story. | ||
| General Nicholas Richo, a former commander of France's 7th Armored Brigade, said the exchange revealed a, quote, real hatred, while Mike Martin, a member of the British Parliament who sits on the Defense Select Committee, said it shows that the U.S. Vice President and Secretary of Defense loathe Europe as they try to extort money out of it. | ||
| You want to read more on that story? | ||
| It's in today's Washington Post. | ||
| This is Ed in Boston Lake, New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I've been a Republican since Reagan was in the White House. | ||
| And I have to say I have not voted Republican since 2016 after the fiasco in the Oval Office with revealing secrets to the Russians. | ||
| I have absolutely no confidence in this administration. | ||
| I'm deeply disappointed that they could have done something this ridiculously idiotic. | ||
| I guess I'm using too many adjectives, but it's hard to not be emotional. | ||
| I have a lot of people I know in the service. | ||
| I think their lives are at risk right now. | ||
| How would they have reacted if two or three of our jets were shot down because they had service-dairy missiles waiting for them and we would have had pilots parachuting out in hostile territory taken prisoner? | ||
| How can you feel good about this? | ||
| How can you feel confident? | ||
| I think Mr. Goldberg took a huge risk to go public with this because we all know anybody who speaks against this administration is in trouble and they usually have to get protection for their personal and their family, which is really sad, a sad commentary of the way our government's working. | ||
| The silver lining, if there is one, is the Europeans now know how these people really feel about them and their contribution. | ||
| And so I think they really got the message now. | ||
| You know, everything else has been said, but not as clearly as during this call. | ||
| And again, hopefully the silver lining will be this administration admits that they've screwed up big time. | ||
| And I don't care about people being fired, but they've got to learn from this huge mistake they made before we really do lose people unnecessarily. | ||
| Can I ask you before you go? | ||
| You said you haven't voted Republican since 2016. | ||
| What makes you still identify as a Republican today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I didn't change my registration. | |
| I really believe in the Republican Party. | ||
| This is not the Republican Party that I used to vote for. | ||
| What are the tenets of the Republican Party that you believe in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I believe in national defense. | |
| I believe in fighting dictatorships, like supporting Ukraine. | ||
| I'm big on defense. | ||
| I also believe in fiscal conservatism that Democrats generally tend to spend more than we get. | ||
| So those are the reasons why I haven't changed. | ||
| I was considering registering as Dember. | ||
| I can't do it because I really believe in the Republican Party and what it stood for. | ||
| It doesn't stand for that anymore. | ||
| I don't know what the heck it stands for, but it's heartbreaking to see this every freaking day, excuse me, every day. | ||
| And it's just very, it's right. | ||
| You can try not to get emotional. | ||
| I try not to even watch the news anymore. | ||
| It's so scary. | ||
| But again, I love our country. | ||
| I hope the heck they can get their act together. | ||
| I think firing, you know, there's so many things I can go on, but I don't want to hog the time. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| That's Ed in New York. | ||
| This is Donald Independent in Alexandria, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First, thanks for seats, man. | ||
| You guys are doing an excellent job. | ||
| And Jim from Hyattsville stole some of my thunder, which was basically on that call, you had the Vice President of the United States, you had the Secretary of Defense, you had Secretary of State, et cetera, et cetera, the highest level of our government now. | ||
| And yet, absolutely no one said, hey, guys, this is not a secure alliance. | ||
| Should we be discussing this on this line? | ||
| Absolutely nobody said that. | ||
| That's just phenomenal, in my opinion. | ||
| That's all I have. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's Donald in Virginia, Judy in Phoenix. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi, John. | ||
| Two items I want to cover. | ||
| You, John, and Kimberly, I give you both A as being commentators and doing this hard job that you do when you're on. | ||
| I appreciate it, Judy. | ||
| What are your thoughts on this story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's so many things I could talk about, and I can't get them all out. | |
| But the main things I want to say is I have never hated in my 73 years any person on this earth more than I have Donald Trump and all his minions that are satellites revolving around him. | ||
| Our government is being destroyed. | ||
| I hope it gets better before I die. | ||
| But our country is being destroyed, and I hate them for it. | ||
| But you're doing a good job, and don't let anybody, anybody tell you any different. | ||
| You and Kimberly. | ||
| Thank you for listening. | ||
| In Arizona, the caller before Judy, wondering why nobody on the signal group didn't say why this wasn't permissible. | ||
| It was John Ratcliffe at yesterday's hearing that said the use of signal messaging app to coordinate is permissible. | ||
| It was during an exchange yesterday during that Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. | ||
| Here's that exchange. | ||
| Director Radcliffe, were you on the group chat? | ||
| Senator, I was on a signal messaging group. | ||
| So you were the John Ratcliffe on that chat. | ||
| I was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, sir. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Can I provide some context, Senator, to that? | ||
| Yes, but I've got a series of questions. | ||
| But I think it's important because at the outset, you made a couple of comments about signal messaging using encrypted apps so that we're clear. | ||
| One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers. | ||
| One of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of signal as a permissible work use. | ||
| It is. | ||
| That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration. | ||
| Dr. Ratcliffe, I've got a series of questions. | ||
| If you're making it. | ||
| If you're making the statement, the signal is a secure channel. | ||
| No, can I answer that? | ||
| It is in decryption. | ||
| So it is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate for work purposes Provided, Senator, that any decisions that are made are also recorded through formal channels. | ||
| So, those were procedures that were implemented. | ||
| My staff implemented those processes, followed those processes, complied with those processes, and finally, just please. | ||
| So, my communications, to be clear, in a signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information. | ||
| But we won't be clear determination because if it's not classified, share the text with the committee. | ||
| That was the scene yesterday from the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. | ||
| This is David Ignatius in the Washington Post this morning, longtime national security columnist. | ||
| Move fast and trip over things is the headline of his piece. | ||
| Move fast and break things. | ||
| That's the Silicon Valley ethos of Elon Musk and many of the Trump operatives who have been driving the Pellmell attempt to remake U.S. foreign and domestic policy. | ||
| He writes, But you can't move so fast without cutting corners. | ||
| So, senior officials take shortcuts, they ignore cumbersome procedures, they bypass Congress and the courts. | ||
| And when judges raise objections, they threaten the judges. | ||
| They cut agency budgets with a chainsaw, metaphorically speaking, rather than a scalpel. | ||
| And they use the signal encryption messaging app rather than trudging into a sensitive compartmental information facility, a skiff. | ||
| Trump and his team want fast results. | ||
| In many instances, since the inauguration, they've treated rules for handling sensitive information as a time-consuming obstacle. | ||
| Something for the foot soldiers, but not the change agents. | ||
| This disdain, he writes, culminated in this week's astonishing Signal Gate story. | ||
| David Ignatius, today. | ||
| This is John in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, John. | |
| It's nice to talk to you. | ||
| I haven't talked to you in a while. | ||
| I have total confidence in the president and his staff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When this all comes out, we're going to find out that they were catfished or somebody hacked into that text. | |
| I think you need to point out to the Democrats that are calling in that it was a text. | ||
| The last gentleman that talked said that anybody could have got into that phone call and listened. | ||
| They weren't on a phone call, it was a text. | ||
| The other thing is that when you say that they hacked in, the reporter was added to this chain by Michael Walsh, though. | ||
| So, how does hacking in work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they hacked him into it. | |
| With technology and the way that hackers work, John, it's very easy to, you know, they could do that. | ||
| It's a shame that the government's using that and allows them to use that. | ||
| I'm not saying that it might not have been a better idea to do it a different way because of that, but they learned that, and I'm sure it won't be used in the future. | ||
| But the other point I wanted to make was that C-SPAN talked about this yesterday morning, all morning, and here we are again today. | ||
| And there's another issue that needs to be talked about. | ||
| There's a congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett, that made derogatory comments about one of our governors who's disabled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I thought the Democrats were all about not doing stuff like that and protecting the disabled. | |
| But that might be another subject to talk about today. | ||
| But thank you. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| That's John in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Mark is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Jonathan, how you doing? | |
| It's always good to speak with you. | ||
| I'll try to make three quick points real concisely. | ||
| The first one is, I don't think our government, our Pentagon, should be killing 56 Houthis from what I've been told on the news channels without congressional consent and make it live. | ||
| I want to hear my congressperson that represents my area speak for me and say why we're whacking 56 civilians. | ||
| And then they say, oh, it might be two leaders or whatnot. | ||
| That is a complete joke. | ||
| Our Pentagon needs to quit killing people just because they feel like using their military muscle. | ||
| That's first and foremost. | ||
| So if the Congress really works, let's start voting that in before we start whacking people all over the world. | ||
| Okay, now let me get to this theatrics, and then I'll get to this Trump administration. | ||
| Okay, so this is so theatrical, American people. | ||
| Is it not clearly fake to you? | ||
| These guys, the Pentagon passes this stuff. | ||
| That Heg Seth guy is just a mouthpiece. | ||
| He's just a figurehead. | ||
| He has no power. | ||
| He's got all this inner circle of Trump's in her circle, yakking, and Heg Seth's all giddy about it. | ||
| He loves this stuff. | ||
| And they're exposing him. | ||
| Do you think this reporter that got this information got it before the Pentagon reviewed it? | ||
| This guy's not going to publish anything until he goes to the Pentagon and says, hey, you guys kill if I publish this. | ||
| This is so fake. | ||
| It's theatrics. | ||
| It's a game of division. | ||
| Oh, be on one team or be on the other. | ||
| Let's get off of this whole experiment of nonsense. | ||
| Now let me talk about the Trump administration. | ||
| And Mark, I got some other folks waiting. | ||
| So can you wrap it up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I'll be quick. | |
| We bided our time with Biden, and it was a joke. | ||
| No one believed Biden was running the thing. | ||
| Why do you believe Trump's running it, folks? | ||
| Trump ain't running this. | ||
| This is the purse running it, and they're doing it behind the tower. | ||
| The same thing in the Roman Empire that killed Jesus Christ. | ||
| Remember that. | ||
| He went after the money, and then the muscle whacked him. | ||
| All right, that's Mark in Oklahoma. | ||
| To the caller before, Mark, the Jasmine Crockett story that he referred to, this is the Associated Press story about that incident. | ||
| Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett mocked her state's governor during a weekend appearance referring to Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair as Governor Hot Wheels while speaking at a banquet in Los Angeles. | ||
| You all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down here. | ||
| Come on now, Crockett, a Dallas Democrat said about Abbott, a Republican, while she was addressing the human rights campaign event. | ||
| And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot-ass mess, honey, is what Crockett said. | ||
| Abbott, paralyzed in 1984 after a tree fell on him while he was running. | ||
| The accident severely damaged his spinal cord. | ||
| He's now 67, was elected in 2014. | ||
| Crockett was elected to the House in 2022, roundly criticized by Republicans for those comments and a side she made during her speech to the human rights campaign. | ||
| That's the story from the Associated Press. | ||
| You can read more on it there. | ||
| It's also in most of the major newspapers today. | ||
| This is John in Illinois. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| First of all, I'd like to say I love listening and calling to your show, and it's an honor to share my name with you, John. | ||
| I would like to talk about President Trump. | ||
| Well, this is the thing about Trump. | ||
| No one doubts that he's not competent or powerful or capable. | ||
| That's not the issue. | ||
| You know, we all know he's a man who can, you know, get things done. | ||
| He could kill a dog or whatever. | ||
| But the problem is, from a morality standpoint, that's the problem. | ||
| You know, I mean, the guy lies. | ||
| Why do we have a president who goes on the nation? | ||
| Just the other day, I was watching a video where President Trump claimed that the African nations, we had to halt immigration from African nations or else we would risk the AIDS epidemic coming back to America. | ||
| And of course, I fact-checked that, and it was just blatantly lying. | ||
| And now, if it was true, I suppose we would try to welcome the AIDS or whatever. | ||
| But it's not true. | ||
| And I think the problem is I've been a Republican voter for most of my life, but at this point, it seems the Republicans are more concerned with owning the libs or winning, you know, or proving the other side worse than them than upholding the values of the Constitution and conserving, you know, the nation's state like they should be. | ||
| That's John in Illinois. | ||
| Eric is in Indiana. | ||
| Indianapolis, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have no confidence in the administration at all. | ||
| And what I'm saying is that these officials, I watched the show last night myself, and at one point they kept passing the book to the next person. | ||
| I don't want to answer that question. | ||
| I'll just refer that to the next person. | ||
| And it's the same thing this administration has been doing all along. | ||
| Now we see that we have terrorist things going on in our country because the people are just fighting inside ourselves now. | ||
| Still we don't have to worry about other countries coming up against us because now we're fighting against ourselves. | ||
| Indeed, this administration is putting the U.S. in the wrong place. | ||
| That's Eric in Indiana. | ||
| Back to Capitol Hill. | ||
| This was Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| His thoughts on this Atlantic story and what it's meant over the past 48 hours. | ||
| Well, look, the White House came out with this statement. | ||
| I think within the last hour, somebody handed me what they said. | ||
| They clarified there were no war plans discussed. | ||
| There was no classified material sent on that thread. | ||
| The White House Council is looking into the matter, looking into how this other number was inadvertently added. | ||
| Obviously, that was a mistake and a serious one. | ||
| But I just want to say, I mean, thanks to President Trump and his strong leadership and all the everybody on that group chat, the leaders on that group chat are extraordinary people. | ||
| I know them all personally. | ||
| They're patriots. | ||
| They're doing a great job for the country. | ||
| And that was a successful mission. | ||
| I mean, we're taking out Houthi terrorists. | ||
| That's what the American people expect the administration to do to restore peace through strength and to act decisively. | ||
| So, look, they've acknowledged that there was an error and they're correcting it. | ||
| And I would have asked the same thing of the Biden administration. | ||
| I don't think anyone should have lost their job over that because an errant number found its way onto a dialogue between leaders. | ||
| It's a mistake, but we've got to correct it going forward, and they will. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was the mistake adding the reporter, or was the mistake having a statement chat about these matters at all? | |
| I don't, look, I don't use signal. | ||
| I don't know all the parameters of it, so it's not my, I'm not in a position to determine whether that's appropriate or not. | ||
| You have to leave that to others. | ||
| But I would just say, obviously, we've got to be careful with these things, and I know that they will. | ||
| I mean, Mike Waltz is a colleague of mine, former colleague, and he was born for the job. | ||
| He is highly qualified. | ||
| President said he has total confidence in him, and we do as well. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson, yesterday, this story will shift to the House today. | ||
| That's because the House Intelligence Committee is set to hold a hearing on global threats. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard of the Director of National Intelligence and CIA Director John Ratcliffe set to testify at that hearing and likely to get more questions about it today. | ||
| That's at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| We're airing it on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| That is because the House is in at 10 a.m. on C-SPAN and the Senate is in at 10 a.m. on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| You can pick what you want to watch today. | ||
| I hope you stick with us. | ||
| And we have time in this first segment of the Washington Journal for one or two more phone calls. | ||
| This is Don in New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for the opportunity. | ||
| I'd like to focus on the involvement of Mr. Goldberg and the criticism that's been directed toward him. | ||
| I would submit that Mr. Goldberg has done the nation a service by alerting the public to the use of what apparently is a less than secure mode of communication between the participants and giving those participants as well as the administration an opportunity to become aware of that that occurred and giving them an opportunity to correct to take corrective action. | ||
| Furthermore, I would submit that Mr. Goldberg has actually treated whatever information was exchanged during that chat on Signal with greater sensitivity than the original participants because he has yet to disclose it. | ||
| So he has, in fact, operated and comported himself as a patriot by treating that information with the delicacy that it should be treated. | ||
| And apparently those participants have failed to do so. | ||
| In the very least, it was sensitive information, depending on whether it's sensitive or classified information. | ||
| And Mr. Goldberg should actually be congratulated rather than attacked personally and somewhat viciously. | ||
| Don, do you think. | ||
| Do you think if what administration officials are saying was in that text chain is different than what Mr. Goldberg has but has not released, would you be in support of him releasing what he has not released? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would suggest to Mr. Goldberg that he be very careful with that information as he has thus far to date because of the administration perhaps doing a flip-flop and then claiming that he's disclosing information that he should not disclose. | |
| I don't accept the classification of the information given what appears to be the general description that certain military information was exchanged during that chat. | ||
| So I would suggest, and I think someone said this last night on one of the networks, that Mr. Goldberg might want to consider releasing the entirety of the exchange to the members of the committee who apparently have the classification to look at that information so they can see it for themselves. | ||
| Because based on what we heard yesterday during the hearing, they had yet to be given access to that information. | ||
| And by doing that, perhaps Mr. Goldberg then has the legal protection and would be insulated from any later attempt to hold him liable for releasing the information. | ||
| Based on what we've heard today, I think Mr. Goldberg should be saluted and not attacked the way he's been. | ||
| I think it's terribly unfair. | ||
| Don, thanks for the call from New Jersey. | ||
| Don, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| A lot more to talk about today, including up next. | ||
| It's a good day to bring in Jeff Murdoch, the White House reporter for the Washington Times. | ||
| And later today, we'll talk about upcoming financial deadlines. | ||
| We'll be joined by the Bipartisan Policy Center's Shia Kabus. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
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American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, at 6 p.m. Eastern, Calvin University art history professor Henry Ludekaisen talks about political cartoonists with a particular focus on Pat Oliphant and his depiction of presidents. | ||
| Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, watch American History TV series First 100 Days as we look at the start of presidential terms. | ||
| This week, we focus on the early months of President Ronald Reagan's first term in 1981, including the release of American hostages in Iran and the assassination attempt on the president by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30th. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, Santa Clara University art history professor Andrea Pappas on the mid-19th century American landscape painting movement known as the Hudson River School. | ||
| And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, Port of Oakland retired CEO Walter Abernathy recounted the storied history of the USS Potomac. | ||
| Franklin Roosevelt used the yacht throughout his presidency, including to arrange a clandestine meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. | ||
| After FDR's death, the Potomac had a colorful history and is now a National Historic Landmark docked in Oakland, California. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| Back at our desk now, it's Jeff Murdoch. | ||
| His beat at the Washington Times is the White House and the Trump administration. | ||
| That meant yesterday following the fallout from this Atlantic story and the Signals app. | ||
| So what's your read on President Trump's reaction yesterday that we showed viewers in the first segment of our show today? | ||
| And is Michael Waltz' job officially safe at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
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As of right now, Michael Waltz's job is officially safe. | |
| Now, what I've been told is the president's going to take a day or two, think about it, see what the political fallout is, and make a decision from there. | ||
| It'll be really interesting to see what the president does, because as you recall, the very first firing in his first administration was also a national security advisor. | ||
| It was Michael Flynn. | ||
| And it took the president a while to cut his created a political firestorm because he had misled investigators about his ties to his contacts with Russia. | ||
| And the president waited a little too long to cut him loose. | ||
| And the president's always regretted that. | ||
| So I wonder, because that sparked, waiting too long to let him go, that he hold on to him a little long, has the firestorm started to erupt. | ||
| So it'll be interesting to see what the president does, because the last thing he wants to do is he's aware enough that his first administration was marked by chaos because it was constant firings. | ||
| He doesn't want that narrative to come back in this administration. | ||
| He's working very hard to not have that narrative surround him in the second administration, especially because he's coming into this with more momentum than he did in his first administration. | ||
| And he's run on the belief that he knows how to govern now compared to, he wasn't his words, he wasn't the novice he was in 2016. | ||
| And he's had four years while he was out of office to sort of plan and prepare for this. | ||
| So he doesn't want that chaos narrative surrounding him. | ||
| At the same time, it's going to have to keep up. | ||
| Probably the most likely scenario is going to be as a compromise in which Waltz resigns on his own to try to set him president. | ||
| I think that's the most likely. | ||
| If Waltz is cut loose, that's the most likely scenario I would see, is that he resigns to avoid this narrative of chaos. | ||
| You're over there at the White House. | ||
| We see you in the White House press briefings. | ||
| Do you get a sense that there are people in the White House that want Michael Waltz gone today? | ||
|
unidentified
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I believe there are some in the White House. | |
| I believe right now it is split at the White House. | ||
| I believe there are some people who think he can save his job. | ||
| But I think there are a lot of people who think he should be out the door. | ||
| Keep in mind, Michael Waltz has sort of came in as a traditional Republican. | ||
| He was Dick Cheney. | ||
| He was a bit top advisor to Dick Cheney when Dick Cheney was vice president. | ||
| He was not considered. | ||
| He's sort of in the cut of Marco Rubio, where it's a more traditional Republican, then he's really coming in with the America First MAGA agenda. | ||
| So a lot of high-level Trump officials, a lot of people in the Trump administration in Trump supporters have always been a little weary of Michael Waltz to begin with. | ||
| And now the fact that the biggest blunder that this administration has had in the first two months is tied to him certainly does not help that. | ||
| What is your read on who was included in what I guess was labeled as the Houthi principal committee small group, the members of this text chain? | ||
| Anything interesting to you about the membership? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I thought it was interesting, not so much about the membership, but what is said among the high-level officials, because the signal chat by this being sent by Jeffrey Goldberg being included and reporting on its contents, it created three political targets for Democrats within the Trump administration. | |
| You have Michael Waltz, who's now on, who's under fire for recklessly handling what essentially will be, I believe, will turn out to be classified information. | ||
| The Trump administration denies that. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg says he purposely withheld things because it put troops, it may have put troops in harm's way. | ||
| If it's something that's going to put troops in harm's way, by definition, that's classified information. | ||
| There's just no way around that. | ||
| But you've got JD Vance on there expressing concern and disagreement about this strike. | ||
| And that's interesting because he's somebody who came in here originally was a fierce critic of the president and really was very critical of him during his first term. | ||
| He's kind of changed his mind, sort of become a MAGA ardent, and now obviously he's vice president. | ||
| You've got, of all the people on this chat, you have Pete Hegseth, who has no experience running a government office. | ||
| He came directly from Fox News talking about he's the one revealing what would be the classified information or the information that would potentially put troops in harm's way. | ||
| That creates a target because now you've got Democrats claiming, well, he's recklessly handling, he's recklessly talking about classified information on this group chat. | ||
| So now there's three political targets here. | ||
| You've got Waltz for the bungling of this. | ||
| You've got Vance because it helps Democrats paint him as somebody who's not on board with the Trump administration. | ||
| That'll help them in 2028 when Trump is, or excuse me, when Vance is likely going to run for president. | ||
| And then you've got Pete Hegseth, who narrowly was confirmed, has never been, you know, has always struggled. | ||
| Even some Republicans on the Hill were weary of him. | ||
| And now you've got him being the one who mostly disclosed classified information. | ||
| The only one other than him that you could really look at as disclosing sensitive information is there's some debate over John Ratcliffe. | ||
| John Ratcliffe identifies a CIA operative. | ||
| Goldberg implies, Jeffrey Goldberg implies that this person was undercover and their identity should be shielded. | ||
| John Ratcliffe has described this person as an aide that their identity is not classified. | ||
| Their position is not classified. | ||
| So it's sort of a he said he said in that. | ||
| Classification is a whole other legal universe, but did you find it interesting that Mr. Ratcliffe focused a lot on the issue of classification at that hearing yesterday and pointing out that Pete Hegseth is responsible for classifying or potentially declassifying topics within his purview at the Department of Defense? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's an interesting, but we don't know whether or not Pete Hegseth classified this. | |
| And it kind of goes back to when President Trump was facing criminal charges for how he handled classified documents. | ||
| And he raised the issue, well, as president, if I think about something, it's declassified. | ||
| It doesn't seem like anybody in this administration seems to understand what the process is for classifying documents or how to go about that. | ||
| And just simply declaring something declassified, and we don't know what Hegseth did or did not do, is simply not enough to declassify sensitive information that's going out there. | ||
| Let me invite viewers to join the conversation. | ||
| Jeff Murdoch, always happy to talk to viewers. | ||
| White House correspondent, Washington Times, phone lines as usual. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| This story has sucked up a lot of the oxygen at the White House over the past 36, 48 hours or so. | ||
| What are the other key stories you had intended to follow this week and what should we be looking for? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, one of the things, well, this, I think, this isn't going to go away anytime soon. | |
| And there's a lot, and I will answer your question, but just to focus on the signal bungling for a little bit, there's a lot to explore here because in addition to Wallace's future, there's the potential legal ramifications of this and where this is going to go. | ||
| For example, you know, is this a violation of the Espionage Act, for the Espionage Act, which is the reckless or careless handling of classified information? | ||
| And it does not have to be intentional. | ||
| It could just be a slip-up somewhere, you know. | ||
| And I think that's one of the more interesting aspects of this is what happens. | ||
| I've seen some Democrats demanding Pam Bondi, Attorney General, appoint a special counsel to look into this, which is the last thing. | ||
| His first administration was hobbled by a special counsel. | ||
| The last thing President Trump wants is another special counsel in his second term. | ||
| And honestly, I mean, at one point under the Biden administration, we had four separate special counsels running around. | ||
| I think America might be a little weary of special counsels at this point. | ||
| So we've got, so that's an angle. | ||
| The other angle here is, is this a violation of the Presidential Records Act? | ||
| Because under Signal, the messages disappear over a certain period of time, which sort of runs afoul, but that's something that's rarely ever prosecuted. | ||
| So what the legal fallout could be from this is interesting. | ||
| This is the first test of Pam Bondi's independence. | ||
| You know, at her confirmation hearing, the Democrats tried to paint her as, you know, to use Eric Holder's phrase, Trump's wing person. | ||
| What I could see here is this, but she insisted she was going to be independent. | ||
| So this is going to be the first test of that. | ||
| I think that's really interesting. | ||
| The other interesting thing that I think we're all dying to know is how did Jeffrey Goldberg get added to this? | ||
| And I want to go back to something that you had brought up about Michael Waltz's future. | ||
| You know, Jeffrey Goldberg is one of the most strident anti-Trump journalists out there. | ||
| He has never, he has been incredibly critical of the president. | ||
| He has not lit, you know, his personal feeling. | ||
| He has certainly used his personal feelings against Trump in a lot of what he has said publicly, what he has talked about. | ||
| He very much makes it clear That he's out there. | ||
| So if this is somebody who's in Michael Waltz's contacts, that's not going to make President Trump happy. | ||
| That's not going to make a lot of President Trump's supporters happy. | ||
| And it raises the question of why is this guy who has such a high level in the Trump administration communicating enough with an anti-Trump journalist at such a level that he's got him in his contact? | ||
| And when you say that you think eventually Michael Waltz will probably be gone from this administration, do you think that's going to be the key factor on why? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think so. | |
| Now, one thing I thought was interesting is on Laura Ingram's show last night, Michael Wallace kept saying, well, I don't have him in my contacts. | ||
| I've never spoken to Jeffrey Goldberg. | ||
| I don't know how this happened. | ||
| If I ran into him in a store, I wouldn't know who he was. | ||
| And then he started talking about, you know, I'm going to contact Elon Musk's team to look into this and see how this happened, sort of suggesting, but not saying that there was something nefarious or that somehow Goldberg found his way into it. | ||
| I would find that highly unlikely. | ||
| I mean, I think the most obvious way this happened is he was added. | ||
| The quote to the Laura Ingram, he said, so of course I didn't see this loser in the group. | ||
| It looked like someone else. | ||
| Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out. | ||
| Axius quoting from the show last night. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I think that's really interesting because then he talks about getting Elon Musk to figure out. | |
| But I think, and it's one of the things that I've heard from talking to people, talking to people in the White House, the most likely explanation is that he had people in his contacts by initials, JG, and he mixed Goldberg up with another JG that he wanted in the meeting who did not attend the meeting. | ||
| But it's interesting that Michael Waltz is taking responsibility because he said on Laura Ingram's show, I take full responsibility, but also hinting at some kind of technical nefariousness that led to this. | ||
| So quickly, and we do have calls for you, what else should we be watching at the White House this week in the next year? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, you're going to ask me that. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| One of the things I think we should really watch is Doge. | ||
| And there's been a lot of polling that I find really interesting out there, both at the national level, and you see this in the states. | ||
| North Carolina had a poll, Elon University out in, ironically enough, Elon University in North Carolina did a poll on the Tar Heel State. | ||
| And what we're finding from these polls is that Americans overwhelmingly support cutting government spending, rooting out waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| At the same time, they don't support Elon Musk and they don't support Doge. | ||
| It's interesting, the concept of Doge is polling really well for this administration. | ||
| But Doge itself is polling very poorly, and Elon Musk is polling very poorly. | ||
| And I find that really interesting. | ||
| And we've seen the White House on the defensive this week with Doge and trying to explain. | ||
| President Trump on Monday had a cabinet meeting. | ||
| And in the cabinet meeting, basically what it was, was all of the cabinet officials going around and talking about whatever waste fraud and abuse they've uncovered. | ||
| And everyone I thought was interesting is they all went for the most outrageous examples they could find and highlight that to sort of try to explain to the American people what they're doing. | ||
| How many of them mentioned Elon Musk when they did that? | ||
|
unidentified
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None. | |
| None, which I thought was interesting. | ||
| They all. | ||
| And I think President Trump himself, you know, he put out a message on True Social imploring his cabinet aides or his cabinet officials to use a scalpel, not a hatchet when making cuts. | ||
| So I think. | ||
| Or chainsaw, as it were. | ||
|
unidentified
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Exactly. | |
| Exactly, yes. | ||
| So I think they're getting, I think they're starting to get very sensitive to some of the polling that's out there. | ||
| And I think they have that, you know, as I said, what the poll is, Americans want, I mean, nobody's going to argue that the federal government is not bloated, that it's not a tremendous bureaucracy in the federal government. | ||
| But it doesn't seem like they're, and this is what the American people are picking up on, that there is a pattern or sort of a plan to these cuts. | ||
| And also, they're starting to see cuts to programs that they like or, you know, more wait times at the social, when they call the Social Security Office. | ||
| Obviously, in this town, and we're not, you know, this isn't the only place that employs a lot of federal employees. | ||
| We've got federal workers, you know, worried about losing their job, federal workers going on the unemployment line. | ||
| So I think this, we're going to, we might see this administration with, and I, again, going back to what President Trump put on True Social, I think they're going to try to rein Elon Musk and Doge back a little bit while also trying to make the case that there needs to be cuts in the federal government. | ||
| And I think that was the message this administration was going to be focused on this week until the signal mess blew up and put them on the defensive. | ||
| Because if you see, I mean, that's what President Trump dedicated all day yesterday to brought in Mike Waltz to tell everybody what a good guy he is and how he's been treated unfairly. | ||
| And yet Caroline Levitt out there sending all kinds of tweets insisting that no military plans were discussed. | ||
| So it really threw them off their game this week. | ||
| Plenty of colors for you. | ||
| Let me start in Williamsburg, Ohio. | ||
| Debbie, Independent, you're on with Jeff Murdock. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| From what I can see, this has been Trump's whole agenda before he was even elected was to weaken our government systems by putting people in there that weren't qualified. | ||
| And I don't understand why the Republican Party, unless they are trying to establish a new Republican Party, would let this go on because all it is doing is every area that we have believed in is being assaulted by what these people are doing. | ||
| And it is destroying our government and our country and our position in the world. | ||
| Debbie in Ohio. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'd like to address her point about qualifications. | |
| One of the things I find so interesting about this administration is how many people the president plucked from TV. | ||
| And what he's looking for is he's looking for people who look good on TV, are good on TV, will amplify his message on TV and loyalty. | ||
| The experience of a lot of these people that he's put in different positions, and Pete Hegseth is a perfect example. | ||
| I mean, Pete Hegseth was in the National Guard. | ||
| He did do two tours. | ||
| He did several tours overseas, but he has no experience running anything. | ||
| He's never run a government agency. | ||
| I mean, he's got a $900 billion budget, which is the largest budget of any agency. | ||
| And I think that's a concern. | ||
| Michael Waltz, Michael Waltz was a frequent Trump supporter on Fox News. | ||
| And he was frequently making the case for the president and the president's net before Trump was elected and the president's agenda on Fox News. | ||
| That appealed to the president. | ||
| It's almost like, I mean, like the pipeline from Fox News to this administration is something that I find absolutely fascinating. | ||
| It's like a TV cabinet. | ||
| You know, was it Hoover had his kitchen cabinet? | ||
| It's like Trump has his Fox News cabinet. | ||
| Winston, New Jersey, Democrat, good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| Winston, you got to stick by your phone. | ||
| You there? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Go ahead, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| What's your question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
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Mark, a comment is that the Trump administration and with all these guys he put to defend the country, they're all boys. | |
| You cannot put boys to do a man's job. | ||
| What do you mean by that, Winston? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, boys who he put in charge of the military. | |
| Yeah, boys that don't know they don't know. | ||
| They never have no experience of running government. | ||
| Jeff Murdoch, back to the experience issue. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, it just goes back to what I said earlier about the experience issue. | |
| If you haven't run big, complicated things, it's hard to run big, complicated things. | ||
| In terms of the response to the Signal story, what was the most interesting reaction you heard yesterday on Capitol Hill from the Republican side of the aisle? | ||
| We heard plenty of criticism from Democrats at that hearing. | ||
| We're likely going to hear it again at that House hearing today. | ||
| What were your thoughts on yesterday's hearing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the things I thought was really interesting. | |
| Well, Republicans, by and large, downplayed it, but there were a few who really kind of made some interesting comments. | ||
| Don Bacon of Nebraska, Republican congressman from Nebraska, reporters asked him about class of, you know, were military plans discussed, and they pointed out that the White House insists no military plans were discussed, and his response was simply baloney. | ||
| And then said that, you know, this administration needs to own it. | ||
| I think that's kind of interesting response because he's one of the few out there who said that. | ||
| Roger Wicker, senator from Kansas, is another one who's come out and talked about how this is concerning. | ||
| So there are Republicans out there who have raised red flags about this. | ||
| And there were Republicans who seemed to indicate that they would have questions, but not in the public hearing format, but in the closed portion of that intelligence committee. | ||
| I think it was Todd Young yesterday. | ||
| He said that he had some questions, but he'd save them for the closed portion of the hearing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, and that does two things. | |
| It keeps any embarrassing information that the Trump administration would possibly share out of the public limelight, but also it allows lawmakers to find out, you know, how classified this information was, how sensitive was this that was not shared. | ||
| Brooksville, Florida, Charles Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What's your question or comment for Jeff Murdoch? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My comment is I cannot believe how blatantly we violated the Securities Act when we have an open line like we did that two hours before a man risks his life to attack a spot on the earth, we've notified the people that can listen in that we're coming. | |
| Brooksville, Florida call Republicans. | ||
| Charles concerned a concern that was raised by many Democratic members yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
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That we included, that we let people, that the journalist was included in the conversation. | |
| I had a hard time hearing him, so I wasn't sure what he was asking. | ||
| And I think that a conversation was maybe happening about it on this topic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, understood. | |
| Well, Signal is an app. | ||
| It is used by the federal government. | ||
| As a matter of fact, the Biden administration is the one that authorized Signal for use for government work to discuss controversial information or classified information because it is secure, because it doesn't have corporate ownership. | ||
| It was founded as a nonprofit by the same gentleman who created WhatsApp. | ||
| And then when Facebook bought WhatsApp, he moved it to its own. | ||
| He created this as a way to keep it out of ownership. | ||
| But, you know, the messages do disappear after a while. | ||
| Do you use Signal? | ||
|
unidentified
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I do. | |
| I have used it. | ||
| Why do you pick Signal as a place to communicate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because it keeps sources, it protects sources. | |
| And that's the, honestly, that's the main reason it protects sources. | ||
| This is Bruce in California. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| Hey, I want to know, what do you guys think about the president being disqualified to be president after, you know, he's an insurrectionist after all, you know? | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| And I think Pete Heshop, the Defense Secretary, I think he was drunk on the tarmac, or at least maybe halfway there. | ||
| That's Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one thing I will say is I find Pete Hexet's response, I thought, was very interesting because on the tarmac, he is going after the Atlantic for basically implying that they make this up. | |
| It's sensationalist. | ||
| And he's doing that hours after the National Security, the White House's National Security Council, confirmed that, yes, Jeffrey Goldberg was on this call. | ||
| What he reported was authentic. | ||
| And then he's going out there sort of implying that this is made up. | ||
| It seemed like he was not on the same message. | ||
| He was not on the same talk that everybody else was when they were planning their defense because everybody else is going out with the defense of, okay, this happened, but it's not a big deal because the strike was successful. | ||
| We didn't endanger anything. | ||
| There was nothing classified. | ||
| There were no military plans. | ||
| And then he's out there basically accusing Goldberg of making things up. | ||
| So, you know, maybe Jeff Goldberg was on that. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg was on that meeting instead of Pete Hegseth when they were talking about it. | ||
| You said this story is likely to dominate maybe the week at the White House? | ||
| At least. | ||
| But President Trump still issuing executive orders. | ||
| There was one yesterday, an executive order requiring people to provide documentation when they are registering to vote. | ||
| What sort of reaction did you see to that? | ||
| How much traction is that getting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's interesting because that would probably be all we would talk about today if not for the signal bungling. | |
| So I find that, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. | ||
| It's a really interesting executive order because it's something Republicans, especially at the state level, have been talking about for a long time, which is providing ID and more stringent ID requirements. | ||
| ID. | ||
| Voter ID, yes. | ||
| And one of the things that I think that one of the reasons why the president is doing this is because there's been several documented cases of illegal immigrants voting. | ||
| And this is to prevent that and voter fraud. | ||
| But it's going to face legal challenges because under the Constitution, Congress, you know, the states are the ones who set the date. | ||
| They're the ones who set the rules with the assistance of Congress. | ||
| There's nothing in the Constitution that grants the president the executive authority to make changes nationwide to the election system and how people vote. | ||
| So it's going to face legal challenges. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| And it's one of several legal challenges that we're seeing. | ||
| I mean, every executive order is met with legal challenges. | ||
| I was going to say the effort to shut down the Department of Education was met with a legal challenge by several teachers groups. | ||
| Is the executive order sort of a signal to a Republican-controlled House and Senate that, hey, this is what I want to do. | ||
| Now let's codify it by law. | ||
| Is that sort of the process here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And I think a lot of, I mean, we've seen some of these executive orders where there's been no practical application other than to send a signal to his base that he's working and he's doing. | ||
| Now, some of these, like the Department of Education, is obviously not one of those. | ||
| It's a way to send a message to Congress, and it's a way to start the process so that by the time it gets to Congress, there's very little left. | ||
| I mean, so far, I mean, Linda McMahon, we've already has already, the Education Secretary Lyndon McMahon has already fired people. | ||
| We've shut down, you know, he's going to transfer school lunch programs to HHS. | ||
| The Small Business Administration is going to take over the student loan portfolio. | ||
| All of that is going to be, I think all of that is going to, by the time this is done, it's going to be a question of what is the Department of Education doing, which makes it easier to eliminate it. | ||
| But, you know, he needs 60 votes in the Senate, and I don't see with an evenly divided how he's going to get that. | ||
| One more from the White House this week that's not on the signal story. | ||
| I know there's supposed to be a delegation from Israel coming to the White House this week. | ||
| Is that still happening? | ||
| When and why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
As far as I know, that is still happening. | |
| It is coming at the end of this week. | ||
| And I think what we will see is it's more to talk about what's going on. | ||
| You know, as you know, Israel's resumed bombing in Gaza. | ||
| The ceasefire was fragile enough to begin with. | ||
| Now it's broken. | ||
| And we'll see, you know, we'll see what the president has to say and how that conversation goes. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| We have not heard much from the White House on Israel. | ||
| It seems like most of their focus has been on Ukraine. | ||
| Obviously, we had those meetings in Saudi Arabia yesterday between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. | ||
| Walked away with a temporary ceasefire in the Black Sea. | ||
| And in exchange for that, the United States is going to help Russia access the worldwide agricultural markets, which has been which has been, which they've been banned from since the war began three years ago. | ||
| It's not what the White House wanted. | ||
| The White House wanted a 30-day permanent ceasefire. | ||
| They did not get that. | ||
| They're still trying to couch this as a win, the fact that they got even just the Black Sea and talks on limiting the attacks on infrastructure from both sides. | ||
| As usual, we're over time with you. | ||
| Let me try to get these last two calls here before you go. | ||
| Sandra's waiting. | ||
| Virginia Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'm just really upset that there's this kind of discussion anyway now about talking about secure information that should be secured on a non-secure channel. | ||
| We go through all kinds of training when you get a clearance that tells you that you have to be careful and that you cannot discuss classified or sensitive information in any forum except a secure facility or method. | ||
| And these people should know better. | ||
| Sandra, did you go through training or clearance to handle classified material yourself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Everyone that works in any kind of sensitive position does. | ||
| Can you say kind of in what capacity or agency? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| What I can say is that there's general training. | ||
| It's available to direct federal employees as well as contract employees. | ||
| There's different levels of clearance, but the very first thing you're told is you do not discuss any content outside of official forums. | ||
| So these people know. | ||
| Some of these people had clearances before they took these positions, but they certainly have been briefed and read in at this point. | ||
| So it's a fundamental rule, and everyone has to observe it. | ||
| Even people in the military that first enlist when they get cleared, that's what they're told. | ||
| And so there are different levels. | ||
| You can have a national agency check all the way up to SCI, which is secured special information with a top secret clearance. | ||
| So you have different levels, but the first thing you're told is you do not discuss it outside of official forums. | ||
| Sandra, let me take the point and let me get Bill in as well before we lose Jeff Murdoch. | ||
| Bill in Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd like to say to Mr. Murdoch, I can tell that he is a Democrat, and his eyes shift so much, I can't tell if he's telling the truth or not. | |
| Bill, Jeff Murdoch has been a reporter covering Congress in the White House for a long time. | ||
| He's come on the show a lot, and we always appreciate his good reporting. | ||
| Do you want to talk about how many years you've been doing this? | ||
| I actually don't know how many years. | ||
| It's decades at this point, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, decades at this point. | |
| Eight years at the Times, five years at the White House. | ||
| My reporting speaks for itself. | ||
| It's fair. | ||
| One of the things I'm proud of is how many emails I get telling me how I am a terrible liberal or I'm a terrible conservative. | ||
| If the same number of emails are equal, I'm doing a good job. | ||
| What is your job going to consist of today? | ||
| Are you headed back to the White House today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Headed back to the White House. | |
| There is a briefing today, actually. | ||
| A colleague of mine will be sitting in the seat. | ||
| I'll be helping taking answers, writing up the answers that we get. | ||
| And then also working on the story I had mentioned before about Doge and the polling and all of that. | ||
| And for folks who want to find the Washington Times seat in the White House briefing room, where is it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fifth row back, third over from the left. | |
| And that's where you can look for Jeff Murdoch and his colleagues. | ||
| We always appreciate your time on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll let you get to the day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Always love coming on here. | |
| Thank you, John. | ||
| Coming up in about 45 minutes, it'll be our open forum. | ||
| But up next, it's Shia Kabas of the Bipartisan Policy Center. | ||
| We're going to focus on some of the upcoming fiscal deadlines and take your questions. | ||
| Join us for that conversation right after the break. | ||
| UCLA law professor Stuart Banner's book, The Most Powerful Court in the World, is a history of the United States Supreme Court from the founding era to the present. | ||
| In his introduction, Stuart Banner writes that today critics on the left accuse the justices of deciding cases on political rather than legal grounds. | ||
| This book shows, he continues, that the Supreme Court critics have always leveled criticism at decisions they did not like. | ||
| These attacks have usually come from the left because the court has usually been a conservative institution. | ||
| Unquote. | ||
| Author Banner has a law degree from Stanford and clerk for Sandra Dale Connor in 1991. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Stuart Banner with his book, The Most Powerful Court in the World: A History of the Supreme Court of the United States, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the free C-SPAN Now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
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| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to pre-order your copy today. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| When fiscal deadlines approach, there's few better people to help explain things than Shayakabas. | ||
| He's the vice president of the Economic Policy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center. | ||
| And Mr. Kabas, there's a few fiscal issues to discuss, but I want to start on debt limit. | ||
| We're approaching a debt limit deadline. | ||
| Explain what the term the X date refers to when we're talking about the debt limit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, thanks very much for having me. | ||
| We're back here again. | ||
| This is going to be the 13th debt limit episode of the last 14 years, and 13 may be an ominous one to be going into. | ||
| We at the Bipartisan Policy Center have long studied this issue and helped educate the public about and policymakers about the implications of not acting on the debt limit. | ||
| The debt limit restricts the amount that the United States government can borrow. | ||
| That's important because we are running annual deficits and at some point we will need to continue borrowing more than the debt limit in order to continue funding all of our government operations. | ||
| We have already actually reached the debt limit at $36.1 trillion. | ||
| That happened back in January. | ||
| And right now, the Treasury Secretary is using what are called extraordinary measures. | ||
| These are basically accounting maneuvers to help the federal government buy itself some additional time before Congress needs to act on the debt limit. | ||
| If those run out and the cash that they have in reserve run out, paying all the nation's bills, then we will reach what the Bipartisan Policy Center calls the X state. | ||
| That's when the government does not have the resources to meet all of its obligations in full and on time. | ||
| That's never happened before. | ||
| And if that happens, it could be a severe event for our economy. | ||
| It would be unprecedented. | ||
| Why is it severe? | ||
| Why is it unprecedented? | ||
| What happens if we breach the debt limit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The bottom line is we don't know, and that's probably for the best because the results are unlikely to be pretty. | |
| This is very different from a government shutdown, which we've experienced many times before. | ||
| We know what that looks like. | ||
| That's when the Congress has not appropriated funding for the following year, and the agencies are not able to operate until Congress puts that funding into effect, and we have what's called sort of a partial shutdown of services or non-essential services shutdown. | ||
| That is disruptive. | ||
| It's not good for the economy, but it's not an event with global implications in the same way that a breach of the debt limit could be. | ||
| If we breach the debt limit, that calls into question our debt. | ||
| That calls into question people who are, our ability to pay back people who are lending us money. | ||
| We don't want to be known as a borrower who is not making good on our obligations. | ||
| If that happens, it would likely mean that financial markets would tank. | ||
| It would mean that people are less inclined to lend us money. | ||
| Right now, we are the gold standard. | ||
| We get the best borrowing rates in the world because we are that reliable borrower. | ||
| If we are no longer seen as that, it's going to have effects throughout the economy that we can't necessarily foresee, but could be catastrophic. | ||
| Why are we approaching an X date when there are Doge cuts going on, which is said to be reducing government and government spending, tariffs collecting money right now, and we're in tax season? | ||
| Isn't this the time when the U.S. government collects all the money for the year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's important to take a step back and understand that we have a huge fiscal problem as a country. | |
| That $36 trillion number is far too big for most Americans to comprehend, but it's a lot of money. | ||
| We are paying just an interest on the debt, about $100 million every hour. | ||
| So that's $100 million that are not going to fund all the things that the government does that we want it to be doing, Social Security benefits, Medicare, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| That is just going to pay the interest on the money that we have borrowed. | ||
| And at some point, it will become a larger and larger drag on the economy. | ||
| It will mean that interest rates are going up because of the amount of debt that we have to borrow. | ||
| That will be felt by consumers across the economy. | ||
| It's already being felt in ways that are more difficult to see, but eventually that will become a challenge that is felt by all and that people can clearly see as a result of the growing debt if we don't get this under control and make the necessary changes to spending and taxes to contain it. | ||
| Now, the way that this affects the debt limit is we are running a roughly $2 trillion annual deficit, meaning the gap between what we're taking in and what we're sending out. | ||
| We're taking in about $5 trillion a year and we're sending out about $7 trillion a year, roughly a $2 trillion difference. | ||
| That means that we are accumulating debt each and every month, pretty much. | ||
| The exception is in April, when we do tend to run cash surplus as a result of the tax season. | ||
| So we don't expect the debt limit X date to arrive in April because we'll be taking in more than we're sending out. | ||
| But pretty much every other month, we're sending out more than we're taking in. | ||
| And that eventually means that we will reach a point where we run up against this borrowing limit and Congress needs to act to allow the Treasury to continue borrowing to meet all of our obligations. | ||
| Debt limit and fiscal deadlines is our topic. | ||
| Shai Kabas of the Bipartisan Policy Center back with us. | ||
| C-SPAN viewers know he's happy to take your calls on these topics. | ||
| Phone lines, as usual, Democrats 202-748-8,000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in, another word that gets tossed around when we're talking about debt limit is the U.S. credit rating. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Why is it important? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So all countries around the world that issue debt have credit ratings, which evaluates how reliable they are in terms of paying it back. | |
| For the longest time, we had a uniform AAA rating, which is the highest you can be. | ||
| There are three main credit rating agencies. | ||
| They all had us at that level. | ||
| As a result of some of the debt limit impasses in recent years, and as a result of the growing debt and our apparent inability to do anything about it, regardless of whether Democrats are in control or Republicans are in control, we have seen downgrades. | ||
| So two of those credit rating agencies have now downgraded us. | ||
| And the third has said that we are sort of on watch at times for a downgrade. | ||
| That matters because it means that those who are lending us money are going to be less inclined to do so. | ||
| It means we will have to pay higher interest rates. | ||
| It also matters because there are certain funds, certain pension funds, for example, that can only hold the highest rating security. | ||
| And if we are no longer in that company, we can't be considered for those funds. | ||
| So the way that this will come back around and people across the country will feel it is if the federal government is paying higher interest on its bonds and bills that are issued, that means that all other consumer products, which are based off of those rates, will also be higher. | ||
| So mortgage rates and credit card rates and other rates that consumers pay throughout their daily lives, that will further pinch household budgets that are already feeling the pain from inflation that we've seen in recent years and just from the fact that wages are often difficult to make ends meet in this country and in many others. | ||
| So there's a lot of bad things that could happen if we breach the debt limit and we run out of extraordinary measures. | ||
| There's bad things that could happen even if we approach that time. | ||
| Why do we have a debt limit? | ||
| Why is it a good thing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The debt limit's been around for actually more than 100 years. | |
| So this is a long-standing provision that Congress originally put into place to limit the ability put in place to give the executive more authority to borrow because it used to be that Congress had to approve every single issuance that the Treasury made. | ||
| So anytime the Treasury wanted to issue debt, the Congress would have to pass legislation to approve that. | ||
| That became very cumbersome as we have trillions of dollars going around in the economy. | ||
| And so they gave more flexibility by putting a total debt limit on and saying the Treasury Secretary could borrow up until that. | ||
| In recent years, the debt limit has served more of a limitation on the Treasury's ability to borrow. | ||
| And we keep running up against it because we are running these continuous deficits. | ||
| What I think it should remind us of, though, is that broader fiscal challenge. | ||
| It's not the right tool to go about addressing it. | ||
| We shouldn't be having crisis negotiations over how do we prevent ourselves from defaulting on our obligations. | ||
| But unfortunately, the budget process that we have in Congress is broken. | ||
| And Congress has been extremely unwilling to make those difficult choices on spending or taxes to get our fiscal house in order. | ||
| Do you think the reminder now 13 times is worth the potential pain that could happen here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't. | |
| And that's why we at BPC have actually proposed a reform to the debt limit that would effectively de-risk it, take away this market risk, this catastrophic Damocles hanging over the economy. | ||
| We would do it by changing the process by which the debt limit is approved. | ||
| So basically, giving the president authority to request a debt limit extension. | ||
| So when we need to borrow more, the president would be granted that authority to request that of Congress. | ||
| And it would go through unless Congress overrode that request, meaning it would change the default position, not to be confused with defaulting on obligations, but the default position to a debt limit extension going through unless Congress proactively said, no, we don't think that there should be more borrowing because Congress is ultimately in charge of spending and taxes and borrowing. | ||
| So it's important to keep their prerogative. | ||
| But along with this, the president would be required to submit a debt reduction plan. | ||
| And that's really important because what it would do is on a regular basis, require Congress to at least have deliberations, have debates over actual policies to reduce the debt that we have accumulated. | ||
| So is Doge a debt reduction plan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Doge is a very novel from what we have seen in prior administrations where they are going in and making significant changes to government agencies that may ultimately reduce the amount that is spent on them. | |
| I say may for a variety of reasons. | ||
| So one is ultimately the spending is Congress's decision. | ||
| So if Congress has approved money and there are changes being made at the agency level, unless Congress says we are now going to spend less and allocate you less money, that money is required to be spent. | ||
| So we're not necessarily saving money just because changes are being made at the agency level. | ||
| Those dollars are already obligated or already appropriated. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| I expect that there will be some savings that come out of the effort to make the government more efficient and lean. | ||
| But the thing to focus on is that the discretionary portion, the portion that goes to those agencies that Congress annually allocates, is a very small proportion of the overall budget. | ||
| Most of it is taken up by the entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt. | ||
| Those programs are either automatically paid, like interest on the debt, or on autopilot, meaning they don't change unless Congress proactively changes them. | ||
| They're not something that Congress addresses every year. | ||
| So we'll have to see what Doge comes up with, but it's not where most of the money that the government spends is. | ||
| Got plenty of calls for you already, and we haven't even gotten to budget reconciliation or renewing tax cuts, so we'll get to those as well. | ||
| But let me get to the calls. | ||
| Raul in Miami, Republican, good morning. | ||
| You're on with Shay Akabas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Yes, I just wanted to comment. | ||
| Mr. Akaba suggests that the debt limit should be raised or we're going to have a catastrophe. | ||
| His solution, which is to raise the debt limit, is what's leading us to a total catastrophe. | ||
| He admits we owe almost $40 trillion. | ||
| He admits that it's impossible to pay, but he suggests we should continue this total fraud, which is leading us to national bankruptcy because there is no way it can be paid back. | ||
| And his only solution, and I'm not picking him personally because it's the Washington mindset, is that we should continue to pay this absurd interest that we're paying, which has now become the largest item in our budget. | ||
| I would suggest that we have to realize and we have to renegotiate all these debts we have, even if we get classified as a bad debt credit risk, which we are. | ||
| I think we need to face the truth or we're heading for the end. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Raul in Florida. | ||
| I would just note, I believe interest on the debt is the third largest budget item behind Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but more than defense spending. | ||
| But to his point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, and I think it is, we need to be gravely concerned about the debt that we have as a country. | |
| And the issue is not the debt limit, but it's the underlying debt that we are accumulating. | ||
| So the debt limit is not an effective mechanism to stop us from accumulating debt because the spending has already been done by allocated by Congress. | ||
| What we need Congress to do is make different spending decisions or different taxing decisions to close the gap between spending and revenues. | ||
| The renegotiating outstanding debt is something that could be discussed, but what that would likely do is mean that when we need to issue more debt, which we will inevitably need to do because we're running $2 trillion annual deficits, they're going to charge us even more, even higher interest rates because they think there's a chance that there's going to need to be a renegotiation. | ||
| So in terms of saving us money in the long term, I question whether that would be the right solution. | ||
| But the caller is absolutely right that we need to get this under control, and that's going to require tough decisions on the spending side and the tax side. | ||
| Is renewing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act the right taxing decision for Congress in the situation that we are in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 is going to expire at the end of this year. | |
| And that would mean that tax rates would go up on consumers and businesses all across the country, pretty much across the income distribution, different size businesses. | ||
| That would be a disturbing hit to our economy. | ||
| And I think it is not the right approach because it would be counter to our desire to have strong economic growth, strong business investment. | ||
| But what we do need to do is make sure that we are paying for tax cut extensions that we think need to go into effect. | ||
| So we at PPC think that we can do pro-growth, pro-family, pro-business tax reform while also making it fiscally responsible. | ||
| That's going to mean considering offsets for those policies that are tough. | ||
| They're difficult trade-offs. | ||
| All budgeting, all tax policy is an exercise in trade-offs. | ||
| We have put out about a dozen or more tax offset options that could help pay for some of the tax cuts that we think are good ideas that Congress wants. | ||
| What are some of those tough trade-offs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so for example, on the business side, we think that there are some really important provisions that were part of TCGA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that should be extended. | |
| So incentives for businesses to enhance their research or their investment, their deductions and accelerated schedules that they can write off that allow them to do that. | ||
| Those cost a lot of money. | ||
| We think that one option that Congress could consider to help pay for that would be by limiting corporations' ability to deduct their state and local taxes. | ||
| There are trade-offs there. | ||
| We're not saying it's the perfect option, and Congress should consider those carefully, but that's one that could help pay for some of the pro-growth policies we think are good ideas on the business side. | ||
| There are lots of others on the individual side, so charitable deductions. | ||
| I think we all believe charitable contributions are important for our economy and important for various social needs. | ||
| But the way that we incentivize them is something that we should look carefully at because that deduction costs us a lot of money. | ||
| People who contribute at the lower end of the economic of the income distribution don't get any incentive to do that because it's only if you itemize your deductions. | ||
| People who contribute at the higher level get a very, very large incentive to do that. | ||
| So could we reallocate some of those incentives in a way that still provides a benefit to everybody who is making those contributions, but redistributes it to some extent and costs less to the federal government? | ||
| I think we can. | ||
| Those are just a couple of the ways that we've put out there that are options for Congress to consider to help pay for some of the ideas that they want to advance and that we think are also worthwhile. | ||
| Upper Marlboro, Maryland, this is Jack Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, gentlemen. | |
| I noticed your guest didn't mention Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security when you guys discussed trade-offs, which I think is interesting. | ||
| He also didn't mention that prior to the 2017 tax cuts, the SALT tax was available. | ||
| So we'd just be reinstating what was already there prior to the 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| But I have a couple of questions. | ||
| What does your guest think will happen to the deficit if this reconciliation package is passed? | ||
| Does it get bigger? | ||
| What happens to revenue? | ||
| And also, since we are approaching April 2nd, I'm wondering what your guest feels about tariffs and what that will do to our economy. | ||
| And if he can just clear up for the listeners, who pays tariffs? | ||
| Does the country in which we are levying these tariffs against pay the tariff, or does the American importers who are importing products from these different countries pay those tariffs? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Just a couple topics from Jack there. | ||
| Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SALT, budget reconciliation, and tariffs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for those questions, Jack. | |
| And I think there are some interesting topics you raised. | ||
| So let me first start on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. | ||
| So I did not mention them in my last answer, but I did highlight them earlier in the program. | ||
| And I do think that you're absolutely right to put a finger on those as absolutely essential to getting our fiscal house in order. | ||
| If we don't make changes to those programs, there is no way that we can close the gap between the spending that we're sending out and the revenues that we're taking in. | ||
| We at PPC have a lot of proposals that we have put out there that you can find on our website for those programs. | ||
| And those are ones that Congress should be considering right now. | ||
| When it comes to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the extension of those tax cuts, estimates from a variety of sources, including the Congressional Budget Office, say that it would cost between $4 and $5 trillion over the next decade to extend those tax cuts if they are unpaid for. | ||
| That's a lot of money, adding to the significant deficits that we will already be accumulating. | ||
| And I don't think that that is a, we at BPC do not think that that is a good fiscal decision for the country to make. | ||
| We do think that many of those tax cuts, as I mentioned, should be extended, but we can do it in a fiscally responsible way that makes the difficult decisions, that shows that we can exercise the difficult trade-offs that are necessary to tackle our growing debt. | ||
| Finally, on tariffs, this is a really important and relevant issue, not only from a fiscal standpoint, I think maybe even a little bit secondarily from a fiscal standpoint, but from an economic standpoint. | ||
| And we're already seeing effects of the tariff policy across the economy. | ||
| Consumers are feeling this. | ||
| Businesses are feeling this, particularly the uncertainty associated with them and not knowing which tariffs are going to go on or come off. | ||
| And in terms of who pays them, the importer ends up paying those. | ||
| They do make it somewhat less likely that we will be getting goods from outside the country versus inside the country because it creates a disparity in there. | ||
| And I think tariff policy is reasonable for us to be talking about and it is a tool that can be used for various goals. | ||
| But I think it's pretty clear that the uncertainty that this is causing across the economy right now is preventing businesses from making some of the investments that they would otherwise like to make and major spending decisions that consumers might want to make. | ||
| When you say we at the BPC don't think this is a good idea, who is the bipartisan policy center? | ||
| What's the mission? | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| So we at BPC have been around for almost 20 years now, and we were founded with the mission to help bring the two parties together around good policy that benefits the American people. | ||
| There are so many forces in politics today working against that cause, pulling the two parties apart, creating divisions in our country. | ||
| We are trying to, not alone, because we can't do it alone, but help fight that battle to bring the parties together around good policies. | ||
| That doesn't mean that everything we say the two parties like. | ||
| That doesn't mean that everything that is bipartisan is good policy. | ||
| We're here to try to advise and educate policymakers and the public around what could be good bipartisan policy because we think that is durable policy. | ||
| Policy that gets made by one party or the other party is often not the best policy because it doesn't take into account various perspectives. | ||
| And it's not durable as we've seen just in the last couple months. | ||
| A lot of the policies that were unilaterally put in place by the prior administration have already been overturned and rolled back. | ||
| And we think that a strong economy is better supported by policies that are consistent, stay in place over time, create certainty for businesses and households across the country. | ||
| BPC, bipartisanpolicy.org is where you can find them online. | ||
| Pretty easy to get to. | ||
| And Shia Kabas and his team is in the economic portion of that website. | ||
| You can see all of his latest writings and work on this. | ||
| And this is Sean in Duluth, Georgia, Independent. | ||
| Sean, thanks for waiting. | ||
| Arkansas then. | ||
| Let's go to the Democratic line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I had a question about the interest on the national debt. | |
| Every couple of months, the Federal Reserve meets and sets a new interest rate. | ||
| And a lot of people don't realize it, but that interest rate, the interest on the national debt, is dependent on that interest rate. | ||
| So my question would be: if they decided to drop the interest rate from where it is now, which is something like about 4%, down to 1%, wouldn't that automatically cut the interest on the national debt to a lot lesser figure? | ||
| That's a really interesting question, and it's a complicated one. | ||
| The Federal Reserve makes their interest rate decisions based on a variety of factors, but most of them have to do with the economic conditions of the moment. | ||
| So their goal is to create low employment and stable prices, so preventing the type of high inflation that we have seen over recent years. | ||
| Anything outside of that is not really within their mandate. | ||
| So it is not their job to help the U.S. control the federal debt. | ||
| That is Congress and the executives' job. | ||
| So creating interest rate policy at the Fed based on our national debt would likely result in economic outcomes that are suboptimal. | ||
| So what I mean by suboptimal, that would lead to higher unemployment or more higher inflation like we have seen in recent years. | ||
| And we know the effects that that has had on consumers and businesses across the country. | ||
| Again, there are trade-offs there, but what we have decided as a country is that the Federal Reserve should be making its decisions based on our economic, major economic indicators and not based on our federal debt. | ||
| We could change that, but I think it would have significant ramifications. | ||
| The easier way to control our debt is to make the difficult spending and tax decisions that Congress has prerogative over. | ||
| Do you think Congress is ever going to make those difficult decisions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The past 15 years have not been an exercise in confidence on that point. | |
| In the past, we have been able to, as a country, make those on a bipartisan basis. | ||
| We had many budget deals in the 80s under President Reagan, in the 90s under Presidents Bush and Clinton, that really did successfully help control the federal budget. | ||
| And we actually had balanced budgets. | ||
| We had surpluses in the late 1990s. | ||
| So we've shown that we can do this as a country. | ||
| But we have grown ever more partisan in our politics and particularly in our budgeting. | ||
| And topics like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, even taxes have really been off limits in terms of closing that gap. | ||
| It's hard to make the tough choices about raising people's taxes or cutting people's benefits. | ||
| Ultimately, that will lead to better economic outcomes for everyone. | ||
| And if we can make those decisions ourselves, instead of ultimately being forced to make them by the markets when they come and tell us that our debt is growing too fast and is unsustainable, is a much better scenario for everyone across the state. | ||
| There were tough political divisions in the 80s and 90s too, though. | ||
| Was it the people or was it the politics? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You could say it's a little bit of both, but I think the politics have grown ever more divisive. | |
| And we have so many factors from the money in politics to the media ecosystem to other elements. | ||
| I'm not an expert in our political divide, but it's pretty clear that members are talking to each other less. | ||
| They're working together less than they used to. | ||
| I think that's why BPC as an entity, as an institution, is so important. | ||
| We run, for example, a program called the American Congressional Exchange that has members of one party fly to the district of a member from the other party to see what the challenges are in their district and then have reciprocal trips back and forth. | ||
| We've done, I think, more than 50 of those trips with members of Congress. | ||
| That really does help build those relationships and help the members work together. | ||
| It's not going to solve this challenge by itself, but it's things like that that can help us try to bridge those difficult divides. | ||
| I guess you're never going to have 535 people plus the president decide on a tough fiscal decision. | ||
| So when it happened in the 80s and 90s, was it leadership meeting and bringing this to the two bodies and to the White House and coming up with the plan? | ||
| How did it work and how many people were involved to make it work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the people part of this, and it's equally important, I think. | |
| Presidential leadership is essential to get our fiscal house in order. | ||
| There is no way that Congress is going to make the difficult decisions over the objections of the president. | ||
| We just know that based on our political system, that is not going to happen. | ||
| And if we don't have that presidential leadership, we're not going to be able to tackle the problem. | ||
| We've seen that in the past several administrations. | ||
| Yes, there have been proposals by the presidents to reduce spending or raise taxes on perhaps some very wealthy people, but they're not the kind of proposals that are likely to garner bipartisan support. | ||
| In order to get to a deal, we need a president that is really intent on doing that and making concessions from their own party and reaching across the table to the other. | ||
| Something like Social Security, we're going to need that. | ||
| We've actually been involved behind the scenes with a lot of members in Congress who want to solve Social Security and make that program solvent and are having active discussions to do so. | ||
| But until they see that nod of presidential leadership and a willingness to lead the way, they're not going to stick their necks out and be the ones who are the sacrificial lambs when something's not going to get done anyway. | ||
| George in Louisville, Kentucky, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I appreciate you taking my call and appreciate having your guest on. | ||
| The thing is, this is something I've always believed for a long time. | ||
| Number one, we've been cutting corporate taxes for 40 years now. | ||
| And we have no means of recompensating that revenue. | ||
| And we used to have, if you go back in time, we had better roads, better schools, better, so many other things. | ||
| But this is something, one thing I believe is that the ratio of highest paid employee to lowest paid employee, if you have a low ratio, they should pay a lower tax. | ||
| If they have a higher ratio, that means it's profiting by greater worker productivity and the workers are getting less and they should tax companies like that more. | ||
| But setting that aside, this is something I've always believed for a long time. | ||
| The GLP since FDR on, they really do not believe in an administrative state that actually serves a public sector Commonwealth functions. | ||
| They believe everything should be done by the market. | ||
| And they don't believe that if it's not listed in enumerated powers, that it's unconstitutional and they shouldn't have it. | ||
| They've done everything they could to understaff, underfund, politically obstruct, legally obstruct whatever to prevent any public sector function from being able to function effectively. | ||
| And they want to produce doubt and distrust of any public good or service. | ||
| And one last thing, I think it's like they've got a Pentagon's got trillions they cannot account for. | ||
| But the GLP is much more fiscally irresponsible. | ||
| They've always ran depths and death, etc. | ||
| I think their cries about debts and debts are actually kind of phony. | ||
| It's George in Kentucky. | ||
| Shaykatis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I think the point about efficiency and waste in government is really important. | |
| This comes back a little bit to the Doge question from earlier, Department of Government Efficiency that the President has set up. | ||
| And there are, it is, our government is overdue for a careful inspection at what we are spending our money on and how we can do that more efficiently to achieve the same goals. | ||
| We at PPC have put out some proposals that look at things like improper tax payments. | ||
| So payments on the, for example, earned income tax credit, a very high proportion of those are not made consistent with the law. | ||
| Those are mostly not fraud. | ||
| They're errors. | ||
| But we should have systems that make the payments that are legally obligated under law and not have about 25% of the payments that go under that program be improper. | ||
| Unemployment insurance is another one. | ||
| That provided extremely necessary support, especially during the pandemic, to people who had lost their jobs and needed cash assistance. | ||
| But we saw lots of fraud associated with that program during the pandemic. | ||
| There are investments that we can make that are relatively small that would make those systems more secure, more accurate, and create broader efficiency and savings for the taxpayer on the back end. | ||
| That's not going to be the bulk of how we fix our deficit problems because as we've been talking about, most of the money is elsewhere. | ||
| But there's no reason that the government shouldn't be working in an efficient manner. | ||
| And I think that, frankly, impacts how Americans perceive our government, because if it's perceived to be wasteful and inefficient, then people just don't think that it should be performing any services. | ||
| And really, we need the government to be doing a lot of what it does. | ||
| Any recommendations for the Pentagon and how to pass an audit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| The Pentagon budget is very large. | ||
| It is one of the largest, it is the largest agency, and it's one of the largest programs when looking at the federal government overall. | ||
| Much of that money goes towards the national security of our country. | ||
| And I think it is not realistic to believe that we're going to get enough savings from there to make a huge impact on our overall fiscal picture. | ||
| But there is a lot of waste and inefficiency in the Pentagon. | ||
| I've heard that from many direct sources who are familiar with this. | ||
| And part of that is in procurement, that we pay more for all the equipment and machinery and weapons systems that we use than we should because of the way that that system works. | ||
| And there's lots of other programs that we maybe shouldn't be spending money on. | ||
| So I'm not an expert in the DOD's budget, but I do think that a careful look there, particularly consistent with the mindset of government efficiency that has been brought in by this administration, would be appropriate. | ||
| And we might find more savings there than any other agency, particularly because it is the largest one. | ||
| Norman in Union Bridge, Maryland, Republican, you're on with Shayakavas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, so would I make a comment? | |
| The Federal Reserve should have never been. | ||
| Congress was to coin money. | ||
| Therefore, there would be no interest. | ||
| We've been scammed big time. | ||
| And thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Thoughts on the abolishing the Federal Reserve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Federal Reserve serves a very important purpose in our country. | |
| It is an independent central bank, meaning that the decisions we make about interest rate, interest rates, and about sort of financial supervision, supervision of our banking system, those are not made on a partisan basis. | ||
| They are made independently of the executive and Congress. | ||
| And what that has done is it has instilled a level of confidence in the dollar and in our country that we would not otherwise have if those decisions were subject to the whims of the political system. | ||
| Do other countries have a Federal Reserve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Most other countries, sort of industrialized countries, do have central banks and act in a fairly similar manner to the Fed that we have in the U.S. David in Fort Myers, Florida, Independent. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I had a couple comments to make. | ||
| First, I've been a contractor, and most of the people, I believe, from the sound of their voice are generally middle-aged people that probably aren't going to be around in 30 or 40 years when this train wreck, which I believe is going to happen financially, because we have not balanced the budget for a better term. | ||
| It's just simply that. | ||
| If we were, say, in school and taking an economics class, our country would fail. | ||
| The amount now that's paid towards, sorry for a better term, nothing. | ||
| They call it interest on the debt. | ||
| But if you were a family, you think priorities, okay, we have to pay the rent or the mortgage, might have vehicle payments or insurance. | ||
| And that credit card that you're not even coming close to paying the actual principal on would be the next thing in line. | ||
| Families would fail. | ||
| And part of it is because, again, going back that I'm a contractor, working for people, you have a set price. | ||
| Doing government work, they have like a tentative budget. | ||
| And then there's additions and additions and additions because the people that are actually signing and approving, I get it that they're in a position of authority to do it, but it's not their money. | ||
| And so it's a small version of how the government works, which is put a number in place, and we know the procedure in order to get more money. | ||
| And these are the things we have to do in order to actually get it. | ||
| So I guess my point is, jumping around, that I think what they're doing, whether it's completely correct or not, needs to be done. | ||
| And it's not even for our generation right now, because if you look at the actual debt clock, which you could say has to be bipartisan, I don't know. | ||
| You could fact check or do whatever. | ||
| The number that there that's now surpassed defense, which is a huge number. | ||
| Think of all of defense. | ||
| I've got it right here. | ||
| It's $1,014 billion in interest on the debt and defense spending just under $900 billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So what I'm saying is, but if you look at it and the speed that it scrolls, it is moving basically the fastest of the growing debt. | ||
| And what I'm saying is it's almost, if you see the commercials now that are for vehicles or anything, no money down. | ||
| We'll take your trade in no matter what you owe. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| They're backloading. | ||
| It's not economics 101. | ||
| We're not saving like our parents or grandparents did. | ||
| If they spend money, if they didn't have all of it, they had most of it. | ||
| Now it's no money down. | ||
| They're not even looking at what the payments are. | ||
| And you've included a hand down the road. | ||
| David, let me take your point and let Shayakavas jump in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and I think it's a terrific point. | |
| The interest that we are paying on the debt went up just in the past four or five years, excuse me, from about 10% of the total revenues that we bring in as a country each year to about 18%. | ||
| So that jump is what you're talking about, the growth in the interest costs that we're paying. | ||
| So 18% of all the taxes that we pay across the country are going just to service the debt, not for any other purpose. | ||
| And that number will continue to grow, particularly if interest rates end up going back up at some point. | ||
| The solution to that is to take the opportunities that we have this year in the legislating process, the debt limit, the expiration of the tax cuts at the end of this year, the annual funding, government funding appropriations process that will the deadline for which is October 1 when the new fiscal year starts. | ||
| All of those are opportunities. | ||
| And this year is an inflection point for us to get our fiscal trajectory on a better path. | ||
| We have not been taking those opportunities in recent years, but we need our policymakers to lead and help the American public understand why these tough decisions are necessary. | ||
| Time for just a couple more calls. | ||
| This is Danny in South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It's a shame I did doing Social Security. | ||
| Make it older people. | ||
| Go to the office and date some of them sick. | ||
| They don't have their eyes. | ||
| It's a shame by Trump doing dinner on people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Not quite sure I caught what Danny was saying there. | ||
| Did you catch any of that? | ||
| Let's go to Jim in Butler, Wisconsin. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Where are you today? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| What's your question or comment for Shaykavas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, here's what we got. | |
| Since Reagan, all Republicans have built up the deficit. | ||
| Bill Clinton, I think, was the only one that balanced the budget. | ||
| Donald Trump, $8.9 trillion in debt his first term. | ||
| Now he wants to raise it and raise it. | ||
| What you're going to have to do to save this country is like in World War II. | ||
| 60% of all the money they have in banks for rich people to pay a tax. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If they do that, in a 10-year period, you'll wipe out that debt. | |
| Shaykabas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
To fix our fiscal challenges, I think it's appropriate to look towards those who can most afford to contribute. | |
| And that goes both on the spending and the tax side of the equation. | ||
| When we think about policies that can make progress at BPC, we think: are there tax policies that ask more of those who take in the most, who earn the most, and on the spending side who least need the support of government programs to have financial stability in their household? | ||
| To fix our rising debt problems, it's going to take contributions from across American society because of how large they are. | ||
| But we should be looking at tax policies that are progressive, that ask more of those who can afford them. | ||
| And the offset options that we have on our website and that we are continuing to develop at BPC are many of them are those that, again, try to redistribute to make sure that we are providing the support to people who need it the most and asking a little bit more of those who can afford to pay. | ||
| So just a quick example on Social Security, if you look at the recommendations that we have there, you'll actually see us recommending that there should be larger Social Security benefits for those at the very bottom of the income distribution, many of whom live in poverty in retirement, and somewhat lower or slower growth in Social Security benefits for people who are very well off, who have many other sources of income to support them in retirement. | ||
| We can make those difficult, not difficult, we can make those trade-offs and also improve the budget picture at the same time. | ||
| One last call, James in Akron, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| There's a couple things, and we're on the same page with these things. | ||
| I'll go to Social Security first. | ||
| The Social Security situation is destined to keep people poor. | ||
| And what I'm saying is this, it's based on the amount of money that you pay in as to the money that you get. | ||
| We look at other countries like Australia and some of the other countries around. | ||
| There are people that's getting their form of Social Security are getting a type of a living type of wage in Social Security. | ||
| And our people, we get a lower amount because you didn't pay as much in. | ||
| So it don't make a difference with that. | ||
| And then the other thing, as far as balancing the budget and that in our country, the reason we can't balance the budget is because we operate as a business. | ||
| And when it comes to budgeting, and they contribute, they excuse me, they set up a budget that they think they're going to spend this year. | ||
| And if they don't spend it, when it gets close to the end of the year, they spend all the money. | ||
| Whereas a small business, they wouldn't spend that additional money. | ||
| It would go back into the coffers for the next year so that they could make money. | ||
| And so, what happens every year, our budget goes up because we continue to spend whatever we projected to do instead of spending what we need. | ||
| And then, if you need some additional money, go back to the Congress and say, Look, we're running short because we had 1,200 more people died or whatever, and so we need the additional funds. | ||
| These are the simple problems. | ||
| And one other thing, and let me get this out of the way, is that it's not about the rich paying more in their taxes, it's about them paying a fair amount, the same amount that the poor people paid for taxes. | ||
| If they did that, we would be out of trouble in less than 10 years, as the guy that we were talking about just a few minutes ago. | ||
| And the Republicans always say that, whoa, whoa, whoa, if you if you taxed, if you took all the money from the wealthy people, we wouldn't have a problem. | ||
| Well, it's like anything you have, you don't pay it off in one week, you pay it off in a period of time, a car loan or whatever. | ||
| And that's how we would pay our taxes now. | ||
| Shai Kavas, give you the final minute and a half or so here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, some of the points that the caller made are actually back to the efficiency theme and making sure that our government is operating in a way that people across the country would want it to operate. | |
| So, if there's excess funds at the end of the year, what we should ideally do, if they don't need to be spent, is not spend them. | ||
| That seems pretty common sense, and there are reforms that we can make, both at the executive level and in terms of the congressional budgeting process, probably that would help get at some of that waste and inefficiency. | ||
| That's working around the edges, as we've talked about, because the other categories of spending are the ones that are driving the budgetary challenges that we have. | ||
| The wealthy in our country actually do pay a significantly higher share of their income in taxes than lower-income Americans do. | ||
| They also make a much higher, they make most of the earnings in our country. | ||
| That's by definition, since they're higher-income. | ||
| So, there is a reasonable debate over how much more they should be paying in taxes, but there is certainly more room to collect additional revenue from those who have done the best through our economic success and system that we have as a country. | ||
| And the policies that we propose to fix the problem we have should be focused most on those who can most afford it. | ||
| The Bipartisan Policy Center, you can find online at bipartisanpolicy.org. | ||
| That is where Shaikavis serves as the Vice President for Economic Policy and their program over there. | ||
| And we always appreciate your time on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Appreciate having me. | |
| About 40 minutes before the House comes in, in that time, it'll be our open forum. | ||
| Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, including a new story out of the Atlantic on the attack plans from the text chain that has gotten so much attention in the past 48 hours, those shared by Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris over at The Atlantic. | ||
| We'll talk about that story and take your calls right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days. | |
| We explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians and authors and through the C-SPAN archives. | ||
| We learn about accomplishments and setbacks and how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to present day. | ||
| 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. | ||
| He came to Washington with an agenda of cutting taxes and reducing the size and role of the federal government. | ||
| In March of 1981, President Reagan survived an assassination attempt in Washington, D.C. Watch our American History TV series First 100 Days, Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, on this historic day, the House of Representatives opens its proceedings for the first time to televised coverage. | ||
| Since March of 1979, C-SPAN has been your unfiltered window into American democracy, bringing you direct, no-spin coverage of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House. | ||
| Is this Mr. Brian Lamb? | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
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| It exists because of C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb's vision and the cable industry's support, not government funding. | ||
| But this public service isn't guaranteed. | ||
| All this month, in honor of Founders Day, your support is more important than ever. | ||
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| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your gift today preserves open access to government and ensures the public stays informed. | |
| Donate now at c-span.org/slash donate or scan the code on your screen. | ||
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| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| The House coming in in about 35 minutes and the Senate coming in as well will take you to them respectively here on C-SPAN and on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| On C-SPAN 3, it's a hearing on global threats. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, Kash Patel, FBI Director, all set to testify and likely going to be asked again about that Signal text chain that inadvertently included a reporter from The Atlantic. | ||
| It's been the topic of conversation over the past 48 hours and The Atlantic out today and just within the past hour with a new story following up on the revelation from Monday. | ||
| The headline, here are the attack plans that Trump advisors shared on Signal. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris writing that on Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump administration security breach, a reporter asked the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. | ||
| He answered, nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that. | ||
| At the Senate hearing yesterday, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Director of CIA John Ratcliffe were both asked about the signaled chat to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief, The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by Michael Walsh to join. | ||
| There was no classified material that was shared, Gabbard told members of the intelligence committee. | ||
| President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said it wasn't classified information. | ||
| They write these statements presented us, the Atlantic, with a dilemma. | ||
| In the Atlantic's initial story about the signal chat, the Houthi PC small group, as it was named, we withheld specific information related to weapons and to the timing of attacks that we found in certain texts. | ||
| As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if the information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. | ||
| That's why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared. | ||
| The statements by Hegseth and Gabbard and Ratcliffe and Trump, combined with the assertion made by numerous administration officials that we were lying about the contents of the signal text, have led us to believe that people should see the text in order to reach their own conclusions. | ||
| There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisors included in non-secure communication channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared. | ||
| That from the Atlantic story that just published about 8:15 a.m. this morning, they also published the full text chain that Jeffrey Goldberg was included on the Houthi PC small group on March 15th. | ||
| A team update from Pete Hegseth reads that the weather is favorable. | ||
| We've just confirmed with Central Command that we are go for a mission launch. | ||
| This was the attack on the Houthi rebels at 12:15 Eastern Time that day. | ||
| F-18s launched at 1:45 p.m. | ||
| F-18 first strike window starts. | ||
| Also, strike drones launch at 2:10. | ||
| More F-18s launch at 2:15. | ||
| Strike drones are on target. | ||
| This is when the first bombs will definitely drop at 3:36. | ||
| F-18 second strike starts and so on with what was happening amid this strike. | ||
| Again, that was back on March the 15th. | ||
| These were the texts that were not included in the original Atlantic story. | ||
| That story just coming out, assume it might be a topic of conversation in this open forum. | ||
| There's a little over a half hour before the House comes in, so we'll just take your calls. | ||
| This is Douglas in Herndon, Virginia. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So I'm one of those guys that's going to be coming up on Social Security. | ||
| Is that going to be going very well? | ||
| I'm assuming that's a question for Shia Cabus, is what you're thinking, Douglas, who is just with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| Do you think it's going to go very well for you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I don't trust Trump. | ||
| He's the worst president we've ever had. | ||
| That's Douglas in Virginia. | ||
| We'll stay in Virginia with Tracy in Fredericksburg, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| I missed calling in with the last guest, and I wanted to know if C-SPAN would have a program about how the debt works. | ||
| And my understanding is since we issue the currency for the United States, that until the money is actually spent, that's when it's actually, you know, actually added to the debt. | ||
| And so all of this talk about people getting $5,000 dividends from the savings for Doge is just simply not accurate because there isn't like a savings account that comes out of Doge. | ||
| So I think it's really important that we understand how our money works and our taxes work. | ||
| And clearly, we need to raise revenue, not just cut spending. | ||
| And I suggest that we look at our inheritance taxes, that we look at our required minimum distributions because there's a lot of money in the baby boomers, the well-off ones. | ||
| But importantly, we actually need to have the IRS rehire people that actually look for the lost taxes. | ||
| I mean, it's billions of dollars every year that's lost because we just don't have anyone who can track that money down. | ||
| And so that's what I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Tracy in Fredericksburg and will stay in the Commonwealth in Richmond. | ||
| It's Kendra. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, John. | |
| I have a couple of things I want to say during open forum, and I won't be long, so please don't cut me off. | ||
| I voted for Trump for the first time in 2024, and I have no regrets about that. | ||
| I appreciate that he wants to get rid of the wasteful spending. | ||
| I do question some of the people Trump selected for his administration, though, but hopefully he will fire some of the incompetent ones. | ||
| To Republican and independent viewers that have been calling in complaining about the C-SPAN channel, C-SPAN is an unbiased station that covers Congress, and C-SPAN truly is an unbiased channel. | ||
| I think your gripe is with Washington Journal, the segment you view or listen to between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., which for the last couple of years seems to be leaning more towards the left. | ||
| I'd like to wish Byron Donald good luck for running for the governor of Florida. | ||
| I would also like to wish Winsom Sears good luck, who she's running for the governor of Virginia. | ||
| And lastly, I'd like to say someone mentioned Jasmine Crockett earlier this morning. | ||
| Well, most people realize that Jasmine Crockett is a disgrace to the black race. | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| That's Kendra in Virginia. | ||
| This is Greg in Ohio. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Deny, deflect, and keep it moving. | |
| This is the Republican Party and Trump strategy on everything that happens, whether it be policy, budget, whatever. | ||
| And this is a classic case of DUI versus DEI. | ||
| PSF was replaced by a four-star general Lloyd, who was in charge of an army. | ||
| And when Lloyd had prostate cancer, they absolutely tried to destroy him by not reporting to his superiors in a chain of command that he was in hospital for prostate cancer. | ||
| They wanted him to resign just because he was sick. | ||
| So take what happened the other day. | ||
| Here it is, his replacement. | ||
| He is a company commander in the National Guard who was in charge of nothing. | ||
| And he made an absolute judgment in his error. | ||
| The honorable thing to do is to resign, but he won't because it's the glory and the honor. | ||
| He will not do it. | ||
| And Congress, they're spyless. | ||
| They had a House and the Senate. | ||
| Nothing's going to happen to him. | ||
| Absolutely nothing. | ||
| And you Republicans keep on calling in and giving Donald Trump a free pass. | ||
| They just showed you a primary source of everything that was mentioned short of giving coordinates for the attacks. | ||
| And yet you still call in and just dismiss it like it's nothing. | ||
| Just imagine if it was Obama or Biden who did this. | ||
| You will call for his impeachment. | ||
| It's just calling the kettle black. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Greg more from The Atlantic, the story that was just published within the past hour and 10 minutes or so, publishing the full text chain, including information about the launching of fighters, the launching of drones, when bombs would be dropping the full text chain published. | ||
| Yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg writes in this latest piece: We asked officials across the Trump administration if they objected to us publishing the full text in emails to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and so on. | ||
| Later yesterday, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt emailed a response: As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. | ||
| However, as the CIA director and the National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean that we encourage the release of the conversation. | ||
| This was intended to be an internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff, and sensitive information was discussed. | ||
| So, for those reasons, yes, we object to the release. | ||
| The Levitt statement did not address which elements of the text the White House considered sensitive or how, more than a week after the initial airstrikes, their publication could have had some bearing on national security. | ||
| The story goes on from there. | ||
| That's the newest story. | ||
| The headline again: here are the attack plans that the Trump advisors shared on Signal. | ||
| The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to the Atlantic's editor-in-chief. | ||
| That would be Jeffrey Goldberg. | ||
| This is Douglas in Laramie, Wyoming, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| On Sunday, March 23rd, one of your listeners asked about the origin of the American two-party political system. | ||
| Her curiosity is likely to be well satisfied by the article at archives.gov/slash files/slash legislative slash resources slash e-books/slash two-party system, the two-party system, the revolution in American politics, 1824 to 1840. | ||
| The article gives plenty of historical information about the formation and establishment of political parties in America. | ||
| In reference to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I say the Biden administration was weak, dilatory, and pusillanimous. | ||
| To say that there is no military way to end Russia's war on Ukraine will embolden Vladimir Putin, who is not to be trusted. | ||
| That's Douglas in Wyoming. | ||
| This is John in Louisiana. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, deja vu, 60 years ago, I was a second lieutenant sitting on nuclear alert, and that is obviously very, very, very secret-type stuff, the targeting and all of that stuff. | |
| But the and what I'm seeing on the screen here now, it's already happened, and I don't think the Hookies had anything in the mouth of a way to stop it that the Soviet Union would have had in an all-out nuclear war. | ||
| So it's kind of one of these things about, yeah, apparently this information went out there, but what was the harm? | ||
| And I just don't, I don't see it about that everybody's got their hair on fire and running in circles. | ||
| It's much to do about nothing, especially in that war. | ||
| And they've been doing this, I don't know for what, several years now, the carrier strike forces have been striking these same targets. | ||
| So it isn't like they don't know they're coming. | ||
| They do know they're coming. | ||
| And so I mean, it is. | ||
| In my experience of what I saw, you know, here 60 years ago of war plans, because I was going to be in the airplane that was going to be dropping the bombs at the end of that secret mission. | ||
| And it's just my two cents of this of an old warrior that I'm 82 years old. | ||
| I had a 35-year stimp in the Air Force and then flew other airplanes. | ||
| And I just can't get really excited about it. | ||
| But what was that plane that you were sitting in? | ||
| Do you remember what kind of plane it was? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, many things. | |
| One was a B-52, and then I flew KC-135s, and then I flew KC-10s, and then I flew for Delta Airlines. | ||
| So I've flown a lot of stuff. | ||
| John, thanks for telling us about it out of Louisiana. | ||
| Members of Congress, weighing in on this latest Atlantic story on the Full Text Exchange. | ||
| Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat of Pennsylvania, saying, do discuss on signaled your March Madness bracket. | ||
| Do not disclose on signal the timing when American fighters will strike terrorist targets. | ||
| Lethality is incompatible with this sloppiness, is the senator's remarks from just a couple minutes ago. | ||
| This is Faye in Ithaca, New York. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| I haven't been able to get through until before the elections. | ||
| And forgive me if my phone cuts me off because it tends to do that. | ||
| I want to first say I'm glad that Leonard Poltaire was let out of jail and he's in house arrest, which I wish wasn't the case, but I'm glad that he's out of jail and he's free. | ||
| I want to tell you that, first of all, I'm worried about censoring of the press. | ||
| Very, very worried about that. | ||
| Starting with C-SPAN, I don't want to see you guys going to the right. | ||
| I don't feel that you're going to the left. | ||
| You try to be in the middle, which is very fair for all your callers. | ||
| But, John, listen, I'm very distraught. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm very nervous right now because I can't, I'm terrified of what's happening in our country. | ||
| This is a coup, what's happened now. | ||
| And I don't say that lightly. | ||
| I'm a very informed individual. | ||
| I watched the BBC, which I love. | ||
| I watch your show. | ||
| I watch PBS News Hour. | ||
| And then I also watch the other major networks as well. | ||
| But honestly, what Fox has done really bringing out misinformation. | ||
| I feel as a Democrat, yes, the Democrats have made a lot of mistakes in this election run, and they need to pull their act together because we can't have this authoritarian government taking over. | ||
| The other thing I wanted to ask you. | ||
| Faye, I got your point. | ||
| Let me get to Christopher in Highland, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Yeah, I just kind of want to say, as far as trying to become more bipartisan and everything, kind of on what we were talking about earlier with the previous guests and relating it to the current signal situation, we have to be able to call a spade a spade. | ||
| Yesterday, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, they're all claiming that this didn't exist, and then they claimed that it did exist, then they claimed that there was nothing classified, then they claimed that there was nothing about targeting. | ||
| They just kept pushing it further and further back. | ||
| And while I think there is certainly lots of times that the Democrats are a little dramatic about some of the things that happen in the Trump White House, we have to be able to admit when something actually royally does happen that screws up and puts people at risk. | ||
| Well, Christopher, we're set to hear from DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard and John Bradcliffe, the CIA director, again in about 19 minutes. | ||
| They're set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. | ||
| We're airing it over on C-SPAN 3 when that happens. | ||
| What are you expecting from them in the wake of this news story that just came out about an hour and a half ago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wanted some sort of accountability and apology. | |
| Like one, for just blatantly lying in the hearing yesterday, which I mean, that's not my opinion. | ||
| That's just if you wish it, that's what happened. | ||
| And again, like, we can disagree as Americans on a lot of things, but if we start claiming that the sky isn't blue, then we have serious, serious, serious problems. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And God bless to everybody, both sides of the aisle. | |
| I want everyone to get along and be happy, but we got to do better. | ||
| The sky is blue. | ||
| That's Christopher in Illinois. | ||
| Back to the Buckeye State. | ||
| Kendall, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And first of all, let's focus on the facts: that number one, this was a military success. | ||
| And if you can compare this to the failure of Afghanistan, I heard someone mention about the previous general compared to our current leadership. | ||
| I would say that this was much more successful, and we need to just get, you know, just stick with the facts. | ||
| And Republicans should quit answering hypothetical questions. | ||
| Yeah, this is something that already happened after it was published. | ||
| And I mean, it happened before it was published. | ||
| And no Americans died. | ||
| Thank God. | ||
| And we should just keep moving forward as a nation. | ||
| That's Kendall. | ||
| This is LeFay in Jacksonville, Florida. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My question is: what is going to really be made to happen to those who were responsible for that chat? | ||
| I understand that the chat was used when Trump was in office before because they didn't want certain conversations to go into archives. | ||
| Well, now this is going to go into archives. | ||
| And I think that if this was a Democrat that was in leadership, we would have been held responsible. | ||
| And I think that responsibility needs to be held across the board. | ||
| And to the woman who said that Crockett is a disgrace, no, no. | ||
| We as a people, African Americans, we need to start standing up and saying what we need to say. | ||
| We're through being in our place. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's LaFay. | ||
| This is Ed, Columbia Station, Ohio. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a 30 years. | |
| This is a big button burger. | ||
| The media's melted as much as it can, obviously. | ||
| And then you're deadly rat collars. | ||
| You're like, oh, this is a cover of nothing's being done. | ||
| How about, let's go back to Fast and Fierce. | ||
| What are your other callers? | ||
| You're Democrats. | ||
| They all are the same. | ||
| They weren't held responsible. | ||
| It cost loans and deaths. | ||
| Ben Guy's, I mean, Fast and Fierce, Obama did. | ||
| The guns given to the cartel, and they lost them all. | ||
| There's guns still out there. | ||
| Nothing was ever done on them. | ||
| Ben Guy, nothing was done. | ||
| Class with the Secretary of State Clinton and all her emails. | ||
| She did the crawling beach and everything. | ||
| That's Ed. | ||
| This is Kathleen in Dayton, Ohio. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Hey, I've been watching Washington Journal and using C-SPAN for 35 years, so appreciate you guys. | ||
| But last month, you guys had David Dioud on on February 15th, a guest from, let's see, what's it called, Defense of Democracies. | ||
| And, you know, I've gone through your archives. | ||
| You guys have really dropped the ball on Gaza and what's going on. | ||
| We know that over 700 Palestinians have been massacred over the last week and a half. | ||
| And I haven't heard anything. | ||
| I looked through your archives. | ||
| Last time you guys have covered the hostage issues like four times over the last six months. | ||
| But you really haven't had any really important, well-informed guests on like Diana Buto, a Palestinian attorney, or say the UN special rapporteur to Gaza, Francesca Albanese, who's made declarations that Israel is indeed committing genocide. | ||
| You have her on as a guest, or Mustafa Barghuti. | ||
| You just haven't had any Palestinian guests, or you haven't really even reported. | ||
| Our tax dollars are going to those, to the Palestinians being killed by Israel. | ||
| And I just wish you guys would cover that more. | ||
| And I'm encouraging your public to, since you guys haven't been covering it and MSNBC, not, I'm in Moyha Dean has, but people should be watching Ammanpour and company, go into Democracy Now, PBS, BBC, Al Jazeera, because many U.S. media outlets are not covering this issue. | ||
| And no one covered the Arab plan for Gaza, not Washington Journal either. | ||
| No one even touched the issue for their reconstruction plan for Gaza. | ||
| You guys should do a whole program on that, on the Arab plan for Gaza, as well as the three reports on the international reports on determining that Israel is an apartheid state. | ||
| So I think you guys are really dropping the ball on Gaza and what's happening for the Palestinians. | ||
| And I think you should really have guests on that can really share a well-informed and accurate perspective on that issue. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Kathleen in Ohio, this is Dev Rick in Waldorf, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, sir. | |
| Give me a quick few seconds because I heard a lot. | ||
| I've been a hold for a while. | ||
| Let me try to address a few things from your previous callers as they're saying. | ||
| For the gentleman that said this was an absolute success, he's out of his rabbit mind. | ||
| The bottom line is inside of those text messages, inside of that chat, clearly, clearly said that our allies will be responsible for the pay. | ||
| However, if you're talking about economic, that part is called the dimes or anybody else knows Jamipse that have been inside any kind of military strategic school. | ||
| So yes, that is classified, and it's not a success. | ||
| And it's not wolf and Harrod out of fire. | ||
| But once again, this is how the Republicans operate. | ||
| Secondly, the Democrats, you don't have to worry about them. | ||
| That leadership is too weak for them to ever come back into power. | ||
| So that's why they're always bouncing around. | ||
| But for the ladies that had something to say about Jazz Crockett, let me get something straight. | ||
| For 46 years, I've done what I raised as right hand. | ||
| I went out and I executed. | ||
| I closed with engagement, destroyed the enemies of the United States in close combat. | ||
| So the bottom line of it is, though, I can't be buried. | ||
| I had to change my will. | ||
| I can't be buried in Arlington Cemetery anymore because I'm black and my family wouldn't know where to find me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So yeah, that's a lot of fed-up African Americans that are around right now. | |
| But the bottom line is, stop with the nonsense, all these Fox watches, newsmax, and all this I'll make America right again. | ||
| Nah, we made it weaker. | ||
| You got a drunk DOD major National Guard running in the Pentagon who have not even commanded a battalion. | ||
| So that's all I got to say. | ||
| Actually, by the military, this guy's a joke. | ||
| That's Waldorf, Maryland. | ||
| This is Shermansdale, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Michael, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Michael, you with us? | ||
| Then we go to Sophia in New York City, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| The last time I called was February 7th. | ||
| I tried to call since March 7. | ||
| Sophia, you're in now. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In my mind is President Trump. | |
| I voted for him in 2016. | ||
| The night, the day that inauguration, I was sad, angry. | ||
| I changed to independent. | ||
| I used to be Republican. | ||
| John, I dreamt three times about President Trump. | ||
| Like I say, that night I dreamt about that. | ||
| Everything broke down. | ||
| The second time was about the Bible. | ||
| When he inaugurated the Bible, I dreamt he said he would not put his hand down on the Bible. | ||
| He sure did. | ||
| This time, the 7th of March, John, this is honest to God. | ||
| I dreamt about it. | ||
| He was in my house. | ||
| He asked me for a pillow that he's tied to. | ||
| So, Sophia, I get that you have dreams. | ||
| Is there a public policy issue you want to talk about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, public policy. | |
| Okay. | ||
| President Trump, he's not going to make it. | ||
| He's tired. | ||
| Something good or something bad is going to happen. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Sophia. | ||
| This is Bonita in Fort Worth, Texas. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I have a few things to say from the gentleman from Louisiana and Ohio and others. | ||
| First of all, you did not have a son sitting out in the sea ready to make an attack in the next two and a half to three hours. | ||
| And Signal was never put on phones to talk about military operations and targets imminent in the Biden administration. | ||
| Second, or third, I just spoke to a friend of mine. | ||
| I guess you would call him a DEI high now. | ||
| He's in his late 70s. | ||
| He did work in tech through different military factions from the Air Force to the Army. | ||
| They sent him around the world. | ||
| This is dumb stuff. | ||
| This is dangerous stuff. | ||
| We spoke a couple of hours last night. | ||
| Fourth, I had a son in logistics. | ||
| My son was about, as you go down the chain, what, the third group to know what they were going to do when the bombs hit, well, excuse me, when the planes hit. | ||
| My son went on maneuvers that night. | ||
| Bush stopped in Afat, Nebraska, where my son was located. | ||
| That night he called and told us he would be incommunicado, okay? | ||
| We didn't get to hear from him personally for the next six to eight weeks as he set out on a ship in the sea, ready to do what? | ||
| Give aid to whomever was fighting on the ground. | ||
| To put military people at risk is incomprehensible. | ||
| My thing is, Republicans call for Hillary Clinton to be locked up. | ||
| I don't hear the Democrats calling for people to be locked up. | ||
| This goes against the Espionage Act, point blank. | ||
| Another thing is, we're not surprised now, are we? | ||
| When Trump put this cabinet together, he put it together on loyalty. | ||
| He didn't put it together on experience, not at all. | ||
| I happen to know the Joint Chiefs of Staff that was fired personally. | ||
| And it was with high disregard that he let a general with more stars get fired and put in a retired general with less stars because he was white. | ||
| America, wake up. | ||
| It's Bonita in Texas. | ||
| The story, again, that's getting a lot of attention this morning. | ||
| Here are the attack plans that the Trump's advisors shared on Signal, Jeffrey Goldberg releasing those plans in the wake of the assertions that no classified plans were shared over Signal. | ||
| There was timing of specific strikes. | ||
| After those strikes happen, it was National Security Advisor Michael Walls who said that the top missile guy, we have positive idea of him walking into his girlfriend's building, and now that building is collapsed in Yemen. | ||
| The text chain goes on to have Pete Hegseth respond that Central Command was on point here. | ||
| Great job, all. | ||
| More strikes are ongoing for hours tonight, and I'll provide a full initial report tomorrow. | ||
| But on time, on target, good readouts so far. | ||
| This happening on March 15th, the day of those strikes, and the full text chain now available for people to read at theatlantic.com. | ||
| This is Fred and Jessup, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I had so much to say, but the last caller, I mean, DEI and affirmative action is unconstitutional. | ||
| Using your race to put you ahead of the rest of the Americans is ridiculous. | ||
| And this is what's been going on for, what, the last 20 years? | ||
| Lord Austin, he was a DEI hire, put in there by the woke Democrats. | ||
| That man was absent AWOL. | ||
| The Biden administration covered up and said, we don't know what happened, where he was. | ||
| He was AWOL, whether he was sick or not. | ||
| He's the same general that called China and warned them that President Trump will not use tactical measures against them. | ||
| He had no business doing that. | ||
| That's one reason he should have been hired. | ||
| I live in the state of Maryland where it's so idiotic. | ||
| They raised three, last year, July, 350 new laws, half of them new taxes. | ||
| They can't keep people pouring from the state. | ||
| They keep using his affirmative action rulings. | ||
| Everybody's leaving. | ||
| There's nothing we can do about it. | ||
| We've seen the most transparent administration in history, the Joe Biden administration, cover up that he, you know, that he was sharp as ever, covering up all the mistakes on the Hunter Biden laptop. | ||
| Nobody was fired at discipline from that. | ||
| And I got to hear these callers sitting here and whine about Trump on a setup from Axios. | ||
| What was it? | ||
| The Atlantic, Axios. | ||
| John, why don't you tell us who funded Atlantic and Axios? | ||
| They were getting money from USAID. | ||
| I mean, this is all blowback from this. | ||
| Anybody? | ||
| All right, that's Fred in Maryland. | ||
| Just a couple minutes before the House comes in. | ||
| This is Merle in North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I want the people to really think about this, just listen to C-Sman. | ||
| Suppose we was at war with China now, and this happened, and China knew all of our plans on what we was going to do. | ||
| This is what wins and lose wars when you get this kind of information. | ||
| This is a tragedy that has happened to the United States. | ||
| You know, now they're talking about DEI like this other guy. | ||
| These people that he's replacing because he said the so-called DEI people are not up to the job. | ||
| Look at what he's got now. | ||
| Something really needs to be done, and I don't know what kind of what point we are now. | ||
| And I don't know if it could be fixed. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| Am I still there? | ||
| You are, Merle. | ||
| Are you finished? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, the last thing I want to say is hopefully the people will rise up or something. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Merle. | ||
| This is Russell out of Burr Oak, Kansas. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I got just a few questions for you. | ||
| First, why doesn't everybody get behind the president? | ||
| They all got behind Biden and all the rest of them with all the autopen and the crap that's going on. | ||
| They need to take in consideration that he's at least trying. | ||
| Biden got up there and just played at it. | ||
| It's time that people quit complaining, be an American, stand up and put both feet on the ground and do what is right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nothing more, nothing less. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Russell in Kansas. | ||
| That hearing officially titled a Global Threats Hearing featuring the same trio that was before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday. | ||
| It's getting set to start in the House Intelligence Committee. | ||
| In just a couple of minutes, here you'll see the photographers and members of Congress and their staff gathering in the room. | ||
| We're going to be showing it on C-SPAN 3 when it begins. | ||
| You can pop over there if you want to watch the House gabble to gavel. | ||
| That's here on C-SPAN at 10 o'clock. | ||
| And the Senate is also in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| That's over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| So pick what you want to watch. | ||
| Hope you stick with us. | ||
| Time for just one or two more calls before the House gavels in for the day. | ||
| Tim, Wisconsin, Democrat, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| All I got to say is with what the Republicans figure everyone should get back in their workplace, and why didn't they get back in their workplace before this happened? | ||
| Another thing I got to say is I'm woke. | ||
| I woke up to see how messed up these Republicans are. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Tim in Wisconsin. | ||
| And that's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll, of course, be back tomorrow morning. | ||
| It's 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| It's 4 a.m. Pacific. | ||
| We now take you over to the House of Representatives. |