| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Thursday, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Hammondy answers questions on the preliminary report into the deadly helicopter plane collision in January near Washington, D.C. You can watch this Senate Transportation Subcommittee hearing live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | |
| C-SPAN Student Cam competition challenged middle and high school students nationwide to create documentaries with messages to the new president. | ||
| Our panel of judges evaluated over 1,700 thought-provoking student films on their use of multiple perspectives. | ||
| C-SPAN awarded $100,000 in total cash prizes, and our grand prize of $5,000 goes to Dermot Foley, a 10th grader from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. | ||
| Congratulations to all our winners. | ||
| The top 21 winning entries will air on C-SPAN starting April 1st. | ||
| You can also watch all the award-winning documentaries anytime at studentcam.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| 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. | ||
| We have an amazing group. | ||
| Our national security now is stronger than it's ever been. | ||
| We have had a very, very successful, numerous attacks on that area. | ||
| 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, Barbara. | |
| 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. | ||
| So, 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 Hegset, 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
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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
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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 Gadward 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. | ||
| That'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
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So those same troops that, those same troops that you are proud of, do you regret adding 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. | ||
| It's 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 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
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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 admitted that they made a mistake on this year, 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 admitted 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
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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, Hegseph. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And the thing about this guy. | ||
| 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
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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 1144 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
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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 deferred to the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council on that question. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, you're the head of the intelligence community, and 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
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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. | ||
| Back 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 Miss 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
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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
|
Not focused 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
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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. | |
| But I find it odd that a telephone number was assigned to an individual who was able to get on the chat team, on the chat line. | ||
| This number winds up in 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 land. | ||
| 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
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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. | ||
| No, he didn't see an open side. | ||
| 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 Mohamed out of LA, 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 Mohamed 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 Hegset 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 Gafford 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's 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 political cartoon this morning. | ||
| This is David in North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everyone. | |
| The guy of 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. | ||
| Yeah, Pardon. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, Pardon. | ||
| I'll tell you what. | ||
| I agree with the caller from North Carolina just saying. | ||
| 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 whole 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, that, 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 they're still calling, so obviously they aren't that pissed off. | ||
| So what's your thoughts on this story? | ||
|
unidentified
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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 them 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. |