| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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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 Shayakavis 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 you having me. | |
| Back to our desk now. | ||
| It's Jeff Murdoch. | ||
| His beat at the Washington Times is the White House in 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 Walt's job officially safe at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 him. | ||
| He 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 the 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 what the most likely scenario is going to be is a compromise in which Waltz resigns on his own to try to set up a newspaper. | ||
| He's going to have a 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
|
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, that 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 and 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
|
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 said, by Jeffrey Goldberg being included and reporting on its contents, they 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 Heckseth, 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. | ||
| You know, 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
|
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
|
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, 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. | ||
| And I think that's one of the more interesting aspects of this is what happens. | ||
| I've seen some Democrats demanding Pam Bond, the 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 contacts? | ||
| And when you say that you think eventually Michael Wallace will probably be gone from this administration, do you think that's going to be the key factor on why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
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, the most obvious way this happened is he was added. | ||
| To 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
|
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? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you didn't 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 Tarheel 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
|
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. | ||
| Or chainsaw, as it were. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 there, 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 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, again, going back to what President Trump put on TrueSocial, 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 you got 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 callers for you. | ||
| Let me start in Williamsburg, Ohio. | ||
| Debbie, Independent, you're home with Jeff Murdock. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| 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 20 years. | ||
| You can continue watching this at c-span.org. | ||
| We leave it for the White House briefing with Press Secretary Caroline Levin. | ||
| Today, President Trump has secured trillions of dollars in private and foreign investments. | ||
| Every single day, more money is pouring into our country, which will create more jobs for hardworking Americans. |