| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Pauling cases is astounding and I find it humbling. | ||
| I'm pleased the Minister for Victims will be meeting the group, I think, today, and I look forward to meeting them in the future because we must prioritize victims and make sure sentences punish offenders and protect the public. | ||
| So thank him for raising this really important set of cases. | ||
| That completes Prime Minister's questions with that front bench changeover. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN. | |
| Democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Charter Communications. | ||
| Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. | ||
| And we're just getting started. | ||
| Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. | ||
| Charter Communications supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Our first guest of the morning is Representative Egg Case, a Democrat who serves the state of Hawaii, also a member of the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Joining us from Capitol Hill, Representative, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Analoha. | |
| One of the things that you do on that appropriations committee on the subcommittee side of at least the Defense Subcommittee, with that in mind, how does that shade what you've heard over the last couple of days concerning the Signal app? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Clearly, it's of great concern. | |
| Let's just start with some really basic stuff. | ||
| This was clearly classified information. | ||
| You don't put war plans, detailed war plans up anywhere other than in a very protected environment before, during, or after an actual exercise. | ||
| The timing was terrible because it was before, and the enemy could certainly take advantage of that, but you don't even do it afterwards. | ||
| It's classified. | ||
| It's supposed to be in a SCIF. | ||
| It's not supposed to be in an open chat room, even a signal chat room that does not protect that information from very, very accomplished adversaries who know how to get after that information. | ||
| And that's why we compartmentalize that. | ||
| That's why it's this way. | ||
| So the basics of what happened were this was classified information and it was inappropriately handled. | ||
| And the response from the Trump administration and other Republicans who have looked at this matter and made comments over the last couple of days, how would you gauge that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they're just trying to gloss it over. | |
| I think they know it was a colossal mistake. | ||
| I think they know that it reflects on one of the fundamental criticisms of this administration's defense and intelligence appointments, which are a lack of knowledge of the subject matter, lack of credibility, the lack of competence. | ||
| So I think they understand that this is more than just an isolated instance. | ||
| It's an actual questioning of the credibility and the competence up to and including the president and his judgments on his appointments. | ||
| And so their response, and I think it's the wrong response under the situation, is to kind of gloss it over and deny it and pretend that there's every reason why this is not a problem. | ||
| And really what they should really do, and I think they've started to do this a little bit, is to say, look, this is just an outright mistake and we need to review it and there needs to be accountability for it. | ||
| That would be the best way to handle a situation like this. | ||
| Would you go as far as suggest firings of certain personnel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think that's a little premature for my taste. | |
| You know, my instincts in this kind of a situation are to be very careful. | ||
| I think, obviously, the information that I know of today is compelling for some consequence on the job side up to and including resignation, but we don't know yet what we don't know. | ||
| This is an area where there certainly should be a full investigation, full oversight by Congress. | ||
| This is Congress's job to oversee a president, a Defense Department, an intelligence community that has made a mistake or apparently to understand the extent of the problem. | ||
| Why did this happen? | ||
| How much more was going on on Signal over the last couple of months? | ||
| What other classified information is out there and is at risk, and who was responsible for that? | ||
| I mean, the military culture is about accountability, and that's what it should be about. | ||
| But what I would want to do is to get all of those facts in place and then make a very informed decision. | ||
| And I think that's important for two reasons. | ||
| First of all, I think it's the right way to handle accountability up to and including resignation and firing, which is a pretty extreme remedy. | ||
| Number two, I think it gives everybody far more credibility in calling for it at the end of the day if you've got a really solid factual base that nobody can really deny. | ||
| You can't get around it. | ||
| You can't deny it. | ||
| The facts are those. | ||
| What is the accountability going to be? | ||
| Numbers on the screen, if you want to call and ask our guest questions, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Text us too at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Representative, this morning, several stories taking a look at the effort to pass some type of reconciliation bill by April the 7th. | ||
| As an appropriator, what does that mean to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, I think appropriations are about values at the end of the day. | |
| I mean, we can talk arcane budgets and deficits and debt, all of which are really critical. | ||
| But at the end of the day, what you do with your taxes, what you do with your spending is about your basic value structure. | ||
| And from my perspective, the value structure that is inherent in the reconciliation bills that are moving thus far in Congress don't reflect my values, nor I think my constituents for sure, nor most of the country, which I think wants to relatively have an equal distribution of both the obligations and benefits of democracy. | ||
| And so if you have a reconciliation bill that is really only designed to sustain and extend tax cuts for those in our society who have benefited the most from society on the tax side, at the expense of those who have benefited the least from our society over on the spending societies, then I think that's a fundamentally flawed process to start with. | ||
| And so if you want to take it from an appropriations perspective, certainly I would want at the end of the day for the appropriations to be a much fairer distribution of the spending capacity of the Appropriations Committee and of Congress throughout our society. | ||
| Politico has this to say about the process, saying that the way forward will involve the House and the Senate approving a budget resolution that defers to each chamber's respective committees on how much money the panels will need to trim from programs under their purviews. | ||
| This adding that the Senate budget chair Lindsey Graham said there hoped the chambers could vote on a new blueprint as soon as next week reflecting the emerging strategy. | ||
| How does that fit a strategy compared to regular processes including the appropriations process? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well clearly reconciliation when you want to talk about spending reconciliation bills is about usurping the appropriations, the regular appropriations process. | |
| And so clearly as an appropriator I don't believe that that's the right way to go because I think the Appropriations Committee is the proper place to try to allocate the spending of our country across a number of different factors in a fair way. | ||
| And the reason that we have the Appropriations Committee is to do that in an organized central way where we're balancing a lot of interests. | ||
| When you send it out to multiple committees with multiple jurisdictions, you lose control over that central process and it ends up as a pretty chaotic mess. | ||
| And I think that's where we're heading on this particular reconciliation. | ||
| And that's before we get to the actual instructions that have been put out there to date. | ||
| Many of them very, very concerning to me, especially the ones that would trim Medicaid for this country. | ||
| And one quarter of my constituents rely on Medicaid for their basic health care, and that's similar to the rest of the country. | ||
| So I've got a problem with this entire process on the politics of it, on the regular order side of it from an appropriations perspective and then from a substance situation. | ||
| I just don't think that this is a fair and values-based approach to our budgeting in this country. | ||
| As a Democrat, as an appropriator, how do you flex your muscle, so to speak, at this point and make your thoughts known on this process? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the Appropriations Committee has always been rightly very jealous of its jurisdiction because I think that this is how we should handle appropriations and federal spending in our country. | |
| But let's face a real reality here, and that is that in the big picture, in the really big picture of this presidency and this administration, the biggest piece that is lacking right now is an effective check-in balance from Congress, an effective check-in balance. | ||
| Congress's job is to act as an oversight agency over the president, over the federal administration, and to act where necessary as a check-in balance. | ||
| And if Congress fails in that job, then things break loose like what we're seeing right now with overreach, with massive court lawsuits where courts are saying that the administration cannot do what the administration wants to do. | ||
| And so I say that because at the end of the day, although I understand that many of my Republican colleagues who are in the majority on both the Appropriations Committee and throughout Congress, of course, are concerned about this process, are concerned about the usurpation, especially on the Appropriations Committee, Republicans of our jurisdiction. | ||
| Thus far they have chosen not to say no to this president. | ||
| And what I'm waiting for at the end of the day is for some of my Republican colleagues, if not all of them in Congress, to act as an effective check-in balance on this administration. | ||
| That doesn't mean that they don't have to try to advance the policy of the collective Republican Party, but it does mean that they have to fulfill their constitutional duty. | ||
| And until they do that, we're going to continue along the lines that we have right now. | ||
| This is Representative Ed Cates joining us, Democrat from Hawaii. | ||
| He serves on the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Pamela is up first from Maryland. | ||
| Independent Line, you're on with our guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Quick question. | ||
| I understand that this was an egregious error, and it's absolutely horrible that classified information was shared inadvertently to Jeffrey Goldberg. | ||
| And I very much admire his work and The Atlantic. | ||
| But what do you think of the fact? | ||
| Like, is it an ethical matter by virtue of the fact that they put out to the public the exact wording of the classified text messages? | ||
| You know, I can't get into the mindset of the editor of The Atlantic in terms of why he did do that. | ||
| I would note that he was very cautious in the beginning, and he obviously knew that he was in possession of information that was very, very sensitive. | ||
| And so his disclosure at the beginning was that there was a signal group chat going on among the highest levels of our defense and intelligence community that was inappropriate to conduct there. | ||
| But as you recall, he redacted the sensitive information from that so that he took this in stages. | ||
| The next stage he took was after the president and the secretary and the intelligence community said that this information was not classified and there was no risk to national security. | ||
| And I think he rightly at that point concluded that it was important then to disclose that information to basically prove the incredible credulity of the statements by the administration. | ||
| And I think that was also appropriate because then that put an end to that argument. | ||
| And we can eventually get to the real nub of the question, which is why was sensitive classified information put on a signal group chat outside of all existing protocols for the handling of our national intelligence information by the most senior members of our government. | ||
| So this is not just about Secretary Hagseth. | ||
| This is also about why did you have two of the top officials of our intelligence community on that group chat, and they didn't call that this was a problem either. | ||
| So this accountability is, I think, should be a little bit more widespread than just focusing on a couple of people. | ||
| Roy joins us from Georgia, Republican Line. | ||
| You're on with our guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I just have three questions. | ||
| My question is this. | ||
| One is who ran the government for the last three years when Biden was incoherent? | ||
| Who ran the government? | ||
| And then another thing I want to know, where was the outcry when we discovered that Biden was hiding classified information in his garage? | ||
| And as far as appropriation, why is it that the federal government is paying Medicare Advantage premium? | ||
| They're paying at least $1,200 for Medicare premium. | ||
| We should really look at that and look at something like Medicare supplement, not Medicare Advantage, because every month the federal government is paying a premium on Medicare Advantage. | ||
| That really needs to be looked at. | ||
| Well, first of all, Roy, thank you for the I would just simply outright agree with you on the latter one. | ||
| I think anybody that understands Medicare today and understands where Medicare is going and understands that Medicare is heading down a very insolvent path, like Social Security, like our federal budget overall, can appreciate what you just said and appreciate that although these are some of the most difficult questions we have in government today, we have to actually get over denial and anger about where they are heading and get to some acceptance and some resolution in a bipartisan fashion. | ||
| So I agree with your general direction on Medicare. | ||
| In terms of President Biden, you know, look, I have listened to the responses to the criticism of the Trump administration. | ||
| I have constituents myself who are very strong Trump supporters. | ||
| I listen to what they say to me. | ||
| And their responses fall into a couple of categories. | ||
| One is a substantive disagreement, which I welcome. | ||
| We should have debates about these very difficult policy questions. | ||
| But another one is simply to say, well, Biden did it or Obama did it or some other Democratic or sometimes Republican president did it to explain away the consequences of what are going on today. | ||
| And I think that's inappropriate. | ||
| We have to deal with what we have in front of us today in this particular administration, in this particular Congress. | ||
| So I don't think it's an acceptable response to the, in this case, what I think are a violation of clear protocols on intelligence information to claim that somebody else did it and therefore it's okay. | ||
| But if you want to get into the substance, clearly President Biden was thoroughly investigated for the documents that were in his house. | ||
| Clearly he faced some consequences for that. | ||
| And so I think that was the proper way to do it. | ||
| Okay, this is a problem. | ||
| We have to investigate it independently and we have to have some accountability for it. | ||
| I don't think President Biden was incoherent, by the way, for the last three years of his time in office. | ||
| I think I was one of the earliest Democrats to call for him not running for re-election. | ||
| So I felt that he should not have run for another term. | ||
| So I agree with that. | ||
| But I don't agree with your premise there. | ||
| Peter is in Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I am tired of all this spin from both Democrats and Republicans where neither side can do anything wrong and that all they do is condemn the other side when they mess up. | ||
| I would love to see Musk get Democrats to look at actual inefficiency. | ||
| I don't think there's a single Democrat out there who supports government inefficiency. | ||
| I don't think there's a single Republican who supports violations of our national security. | ||
| But rather than try to hide behind it, let's just admit we both make mistakes and let's work together to solve our problems. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| First of all, I will admit that we both make mistakes and I will completely endorse your view that we should work together to solve our problems. | ||
| I am a member, in fact, the vice chair of a very unique group within the U.S. House of Representatives called the Problem Solvers Caucus, which we started some years ago because we shared the frustrations that you just gave a very good voice to. | ||
| And our caucus is designed to, and does, in fact, work on getting out of the spin zone and getting into a room together to try to solve problems. | ||
| It's a problem solvers caucus. | ||
| Check us out. | ||
| We have worked very successfully on some very, very knotty issues, such as the debt ceiling, such as the federal budget, such as immigration. | ||
| We are currently working on the same issues to include national defense. | ||
| This is a caucus that is, by rule, has to have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, and we function under rules that require us to maintain confidentiality, to have those honest discussions. | ||
| And so we are trying to keep the light open, so to speak, while all around us is swirling in the spin zone. | ||
| And so I agree with you on that. | ||
| And so I don't want you to leave you with the impression that your sentiment, which I think is shared by most Americans. | ||
| Most Americans are disgusted with the political debate. | ||
| Most Americans do not believe either party has all the answers or is moving towards reasonable common sense solutions. | ||
| And I share that. | ||
| I share that view. | ||
| And so I want to leave you with the impression that what you say is a sentiment that is shared widely. | ||
| But we're trapped in a zone here that is very difficult to escape in a highly toxic environment. | ||
| And it takes some courage, in all honesty, for people to break out of that zone to start talking in the way that you and most Americans want us to talk. | ||
| Congressman Politico just reported on a recent Quinnipiac poll, taking a look at a lot of things. | ||
| But one of the things they did highlight is that from the poll, 40% of Democrats approving the job performance of the congressional Democrats compared to 49% who disapproved. | ||
| That's a dramatic change from this time last year when 75% of Democrats approved compared to just 21% of who disapproved. | ||
| What do those numbers mean to you as a Democrat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think both parties have very deep divisions right now. | |
| The Republican Party's divisions are obscured by a desire to walk in lockstep with the president for now, but that doesn't reflect what's actually going on inside the Republican Party, which is really kind of a mirror image of what's going on inside the Democratic Party, which are competing visions for how to proceed, how to articulate what the American people want. | ||
| And so I think both parties are not held in good favor. | ||
| And I think you'll see those poll numbers just kind of flip back and forth depending on what's going on in the world and the country at any one time. | ||
| But if you dig underneath those polls, it's fundamental dissatisfaction with the performance of both parties. | ||
| And Congress, of course, as an institution is held in pretty low esteem, which I feel very personally about since I'm a member of Congress. | ||
| And so I think we all have to get back to talking about the issues that the American people are concerned about, which frankly we haven't been doing. | ||
| We haven't been talking about what's actually happening in the family budget. | ||
| We haven't been talking about what's actually been happening at the kitchen table, in school, with our health care. | ||
| These are concerns that everyday Americans care about. | ||
| I think for the Democrats, we certainly have not been talking about some of the things that Americans care about, such as immigration. | ||
| And to the earlier caller, I would say that I'm not one of those that says everything that my Republican colleagues or that my president do is wrong. | ||
| I think he's made good solid moves on immigration. | ||
| I think that the discussion of, the legitimate discussion of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government is a legitimate discussion. | ||
| If it's though used to mask a fundamental destruction of the federal government, that's a different story. | ||
| But I welcome that discussion. | ||
| And so, you know, fundamentally, we all have a problem of credibility with the American people today. | ||
| If Doge cuts are incorporated or codified into legislative text, is that something you can support? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it depends on what it is. | |
| I would love to have a reasoned, inclusive, deliberate discussion of the size and cost and core functions of the federal government. | ||
| I think that debate is overdue. | ||
| In fact, I think that debate is absolutely necessary, especially when you consider the crisis that nobody wants to talk about, which is the crisis of our federal debt and our federal deficit, which is just tanking. | ||
| And so, obviously, if you're going to have an honest discussion of that issue, you have to talk about both revenues and expenses. | ||
| This is no different than a family budget. | ||
| If you've got a family budget that's tanking, you've got to go on the income side and the expense side. | ||
| How do you deal with your income? | ||
| Where is it coming from? | ||
| How do you deal with your expenses? | ||
| What do you have to do? | ||
| What is just like to do versus have to do? | ||
| These are discussions that we have to have now. | ||
| And so if this administration, if my Republican or Democratic colleagues want to have an honest discussion about this, and by the way, I and other members of Congress, including Republicans, have legislation proposed to get us into this honest discussion, then I welcome that. | ||
| I just, I don't trust the Doge process because I don't think that its real motivation is waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| I think its real motivation is to destroy large parts of the federal government. | ||
| It's one thing to improve the federal government. | ||
| It's another thing to destroy it. | ||
| So that's perhaps the cause for the reaction of some people who would take a more reasonable and practical and problem-solving approach, such as me, because we doubt the basic motives of the exercise. | ||
| Representative Ed Case joining us for this conversation, Democrats Line. | ||
| This is from North Carolina. | ||
| James, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I got a question for the congressman. | ||
| You know, every year you put $20 billion into the budget for the oil companies, which they don't need. | ||
| You give $50 billion to Elon Musk for his SpaceX and all this other stuff, right? | ||
| So I don't know whether by the time you add up all this stuff, you probably put a couple hundred billion dollars around these special people. | ||
| How come no Democrat has ever insisted that we match that with money for the Social Security Trust Fund? | ||
| Instead, we get vague promises about, oh, no, we got a commission looking into that. | ||
| We're going to look into that. | ||
| We're going to shore up the Social Security Trust Fund. | ||
| We're going to do all this stuff. | ||
| But it never happens. | ||
| So why don't you just insist that for the Democratic side you match all this and put that same amount of money into the Social Security Trust Fund that we can somehow afford to give to Elon Musk and the oil companies? | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| Well, thank you very much. | ||
| Well, first of all, I acknowledge that both sides of your equation are legitimate issues. | ||
| I don't agree as a matter of policy with incentivizing the fossil fuel industry. | ||
| I don't think that that's proper public policy given the direction that we should go and I think must go in this country towards alternative energy as opposed to incentivizing fossil fuel. | ||
| We want to be incentivizing a transfer from fossil fuel. | ||
| And I also do not agree with special tax credits and other use of your tax dollars to help those in our country who, like Mr. Musk, who least need it. | ||
| Now, I don't have at all any kind of a problem with the judicious use of federal tax dollars to incentivize industries to develop. | ||
| So that's not the issue. | ||
| The issue is the capture of our federal government by interests for their benefit, for their own benefit, that don't have really the needs that are required for our country. | ||
| Now, in the Social Security Trust Fund, and I don't think that just because we're doing it over here on this side, we should also have a corresponding result over here to Social Security. | ||
| But I agree with you very, very much that, and I've already said it, that our Social Security system is in trouble. | ||
| It is on a path to insolvency. | ||
| It is on a path to an automatic reduction of benefits if corrective action is not taken by early in the 2030s. | ||
| And that's not me talking. | ||
| That's the Social Security trustees themselves. | ||
| And so like others in Congress, I would like to have an honest discussion about how we improve, sustain, and save Social Security, not just for this generation, which is not really the problem, but for the next generations. | ||
| And that conversation is very difficult because anytime anybody like me says, let's talk Turkey about Social Security and how to fix it, which requires some very tough problems, then everybody comes down on you like a pile of everything saying, well, there's not really a problem. | ||
| It's a denial response as opposed to let's get to resolution as fast as possible. | ||
| So you're right on both counts, but I don't conflate them. | ||
| Let's hear from Glenn. | ||
| He's in Pennsylvania, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| I like the means this representative that's in an old Democrat Hawaii, he's so used to just getting re-elected because it's an old demon. | ||
| I don't think he would get re-elected in a swing state, but my question is, means you're so fast to say all these, that the cabinet should be fired. | ||
| How many generals did he say should be fired two days after the Afghan withdrawal? | ||
| And when Joe Biden, when Her said Joe Biden was crazy and couldn't go to trial, did this representative say then we got to get this nutcase out of here? | ||
| And he's saying all Democrat talking points. | ||
| He already said tax cuts for rich. | ||
| You know what you got to bring up? | ||
| You forgot the Republicans want to slag Social Security. | ||
| Remember that talking point? | ||
| You got to get that in there. | ||
| Okay, Glenn. | ||
| Think you got your point across? | ||
| We'll let our guests respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, you got a lot of issues there. | |
| And first of all, I guess I'm happy with the district that I have for being elected and re-elected. | ||
| And obviously, My allegiance and obligations flow to my constituents, and I will rest by their judgments. | ||
| I try to say what I believe, and I try to solve problems, and thus far that's been okay with them. | ||
| I didn't call, by the way, for the firing of any cabinet members in my comments earlier. | ||
| It may be appropriate at some point, but I'm trying to take a little bit more of a cautious and deliberate approach to that, which I think you would probably agree with. | ||
| I'm going to cut to the Social Security side of it because to me, again, I would say that if anybody wants to work on saving Social Security over time, which is one of the key social programs of our federal government on which literally hundreds of millions depend for their basic livelihood, then we ought to have that honest conversation now. | ||
| And the way to do that is not, in my mind, to slash the Social Security workforce by thousands and thousands of workers. | ||
| This has a real result out there. | ||
| If we're so keen on saving Social Security, then why do we have a quasi-federal government effort that is reducing the Social Security workforce? | ||
| I have constituents now who are having trouble getting answers on their basic benefits that they've worked all their life for. | ||
| So I'm not going to apologize for questioning and criticizing the reduction in the Social Security Administration, which critically needs people to deliver Social Security benefits to their country. | ||
| And that is, in fact, part of making Social Security better. | ||
| So don't talk to me about making Social Security better if you're actually crippling its ability to deliver the benefits to Americans. | ||
| Representative Case, before we let you go, two quick questions. | ||
| If I'm correct, you were one of 10 Democrats who voted for the censure resolution against Dow Green. | ||
| There's a current effort on Capitol Hill now from some Republicans to enforce a censure resolution against Jasmine Crockett for a comment she made about the Texas governor. | ||
| Do you think there are parallels there? | ||
| Do you think that's going to go forward? | ||
| And if it does, where's your mind at as far as that's concerned? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my vote on my colleague Representative Greene, of course, was a very difficult vote, but I felt that what was at stake there was the actual functioning of Congress. | |
| It is not just a matter of decorum and a matter of proper etiquette and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| No, this is about whether Congress can function. | ||
| And in a time like this in our country, where the stresses and strains on our basic foundations of government are very, very severe, we have to have a functioning democracy, and that has to equate to a functioning Congress. | ||
| And that's why I voted to censure Rep Green. | ||
| Now, Rep Crockett or anybody else, I mean, frankly, there's all kinds of censure stuff floating around nowadays. | ||
| And I try to take a deliberate approach. | ||
| Let's stop, let's look, let's listen, let's analyze what happened, why it's important. | ||
| Is it an appropriate view avenue for censure or some other action? | ||
| I think the distinction, though, with Rep Crockett and Rep Green is that in Rep Crockett's case, first of all, she's not on the floor of the U.S. House. | ||
| So it's not as if the U.S. House is not functioning because she's there or not there. | ||
| She's obviously not on the floor of the U.S. House. | ||
| It's not an official congressional debate, number one. | ||
| And number two, it gets to free speech as opposed to actual actions that disrupt the functioning of Congress. | ||
| And I've been very, very reluctant to have a congressional reprimands or censure in a situation where a member is exercising free speech, especially outside of the Capitol. | ||
| I think that's a dangerous precedent for us to set. | ||
| And real quick, before I let you go, recent legislation from you concerning the coral reef in Hawaii, what's it about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, our world's oceans are in deep trouble across the globe. | |
| This is not a national issue. | ||
| This is an international issue. | ||
| This is a consequence of many things. | ||
| But the functional reality is that if you take a look at our environment and natural resources concerns, the oceans are often overlooked. | ||
| And one of the key problems there is the degradation of our coral reefs. | ||
| And so this bill gets at trying to preserve our coral reefs. | ||
| Representative Ed Case, Democrat from Hawaii, a member of the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Thanks for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much, Mahalo. | |
| This is the Hill this morning, talking about the responses yesterday from Trump administration officials and others due to the Signal App incident, saying that the White House Wednesday scrambled to contain the controversy of a signal chat among national security officials that became public, opting for a signature-defiant approach, but one that even left some Republicans scratching their heads. | ||
| Goes on to say that officials seized on a headline description of quote attack plans rather than quote war plans, suggesting that slight difference in wording showed the controversy was overblown. | ||
| They also argued no specific names, locations, or sources of intelligence were revealed, although specific military aircraft, weapons, and timings of the strike were laid out. | ||
| It says the publication of the messages and the subsequent response raised difficult questions for the administration and its handling of the entire episode. | ||
| One of the people speaking out directly on this was President Trump in the Oval Office after signing executive orders, was asked about the incident concerning the Signal app. | ||
| Here's his response from yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what's your response to Republican lawmakers who have said today that your administration should take more accountability and not downplay what's happened with the signal that we've seen in these messages today? | |
| Well, I don't know about downplaying. | ||
| The press upplays it. | ||
| I think it's all a witch hunt. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| I think it's a witch hunt. | ||
| I wasn't involved with it. | ||
| I wasn't there. | ||
| But I can tell you the result is unbelievable because the Houthis are looking to do something. | ||
| They want to know how do we stop, how do we stop, can we have peace? | ||
| The Houthis want peace because they're getting the hell knocked out of them. | ||
| It's been very, very strong. | ||
| The Houthis are dying for peace. | ||
| They don't want this. | ||
| And they're bad. | ||
| Look, they were knocking ships out of the ocean. | ||
| You know, we had in the Suez Canal, they only have about 20% of the ships going through. | ||
| They have to go through a different way, which takes weeks of travel. | ||
| And that really affects commerce. | ||
| But the Houthis have been hit hard and they want to negotiate peace. | ||
| But I don't think they're quite new. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe it was nothing classified that was shared. | |
| Say it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you still believe nothing classified was shared? | |
| Well, that's what I've heard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I'm not sure. | ||
| You'll have to ask the various people involved. | ||
| I really don't know. | ||
| That's the president from yesterday. | ||
| We'll show you more responses from the Defense Secretary and others during this first half hour. | ||
| But if you want to comment on the Trump administration's response to the signal app incident, again, the numbers 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and 202-748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| If you want to text us your thoughts, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal takes a look at some of the text string that was sent out and adding some context, an annotated analysis is what they're calling it. | ||
| One of the contexts they give is the one that says 1215 ET, F-18's launch, first strike package, 1345 trigger-based F-18 first strike window starts. | ||
| Goes on to say that means what the U.S. military wants to hit is where it is supposed to be and the strikes meet civilian casualties mitigation measures. | ||
| The U.S. military likely determined that with drones, this could mean that the U.S. plan is in waves or that the fighter jets are in place to immediately respond should the Houthis try to launch missiles or some counter response. | ||
| This also goes on to say 1410, more F-18s launched. | ||
| That's the second strike package. | ||
| And then at 4.15, strike drones on target. | ||
| And I'll cap saying this is when the first bombs will definitely drop pending earlier, quote, trigger-based targets. | ||
| The annotated version saying this indicates the drones, which are armed, could be participating in that strike. | ||
| And then 1536, F-18 second strike starts. | ||
| Also, first sea-based Tomahawks launch, more to follow per timeline. | ||
| We are currently clean on OPSEC is the text. | ||
| The context and annotation saying that this is supposed to indicate that neither the Houthis nor the media learned about this attack beforehand, except for the Atlantic, as it turns out. | ||
| More there from that context given the annotated analysis of those text messages that were sent yesterday. | ||
| You can give your thoughts on the response from the administration from what you're hearing from yesterday. | ||
| Nicole in Florida, Republican line, you're up first. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So basically, what I got to say about all this that's going on is welcome to America. | ||
| Welcome to America. | ||
| You know, for the last 10 years, and I think every American can relate to receiving something in the mail about a security breach. | ||
| Signing up for free Equifax, credit monitoring. | ||
| Look at ATT with the 103 million people security breach where all their information was given on the dark web, how they had to pay the FCC $13 million. | ||
| So as a Republican, for what you said, what did you think about the administration's response to this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bottom line, bottom line, pay your fines, pay your fines, and move on. | |
| Okay, Roy, Roy in Florida, Democrats line, you're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's obviously my thing is this. | |
| This has been going on for too long. | ||
| This is like Iraq. | ||
| We're becoming Iraq, the country we invaded, because they lie all the time through their teeth. | ||
| And I'm getting darn sick of it. | ||
| I'm getting sick of walking into Washington restaurants, and everybody hates Trump. | ||
| I'm sick of looking at him sitting on that chair signing away our country every day with that nerd smiling and that Caroline Levitt lying. | ||
| And it just goes on and on and on. | ||
| Well, specifically, what does it mean to the response to the Signal app incident? | ||
| Specifically to that? | ||
| What's that, sir? | ||
| What does it mean specifically to the response the administration's giving on from what went out on Signal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, what went on on Signal should have never been on an open chat line. | |
| How can they not say that there's nothing wrong with that? | ||
| How? | ||
| How in the world? | ||
| There's lives. | ||
| There's American lives that are over there that are going to get injured or killed because of their asinine response to it. | ||
| Okay, Roy there in Florida, Harry Johnson from Facebook this morning saying great response. | ||
| The reporter held on to what he perceived to be top secret stuff for days so he can plan the release of the info with the national security hearings. | ||
| Clearly he had ulterior motives and so he feigned quote shock to sensationalize the story. | ||
| The guy will milk it all week and the Atlantic will go back to reporting on Tesla meltdowns by Monday. | ||
| Belinda Spite from Facebook also saying never in my 63 years have I heard a U.S. president say I have no idea you have to ask someone else about a misstep large or small in his administration. | ||
| Again, this all tying back to the release of that information on that Cigna app. | ||
| The Defense Secretary in Hawaii being asked about it again while his trip across the seas. | ||
| Here's his response from yesterday. | ||
| Now, as I said to this group a couple of times on this trip, now as we move to the Indo-Pacific to do our job, which is what we're here to do, nobody's texting war plans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I noticed this morning, out came something that doesn't look like war plans. | |
| And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans because they know it's not war plans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information. | |
| You know who sees war plans? | ||
| I see them every single day. | ||
| I looked at them this morning. | ||
| I looked at attack plans this morning. | ||
| You know who does attack plans and war plans? | ||
| Men like that admiral right there, Poparo for the Indo-Pacific, or Eric Carrilla, our general in CENTCOM. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They do attack plans and war plans. | |
| And thank God we have those leaders who do it and do it well, and our enemies know it. | ||
| My job, as it's said atop of that, everybody's seen it now, team update is to provide updates in real time. | ||
| General updates in real time, keep everybody informed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what I did. | |
| That's my job. | ||
| The warfighters will take the fight to the enemy, and I love what they do. | ||
| And with President Trump's leadership, our enemies are on notice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We will have peace through strength, and we'll keep putting our troops first. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| strike plans before they launched. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Secretary, how do you swear what you said with what your messages show? | |
| The Wall Street Journal's defense national security reporter Alex Ward adds this on his X feed when it comes to the idea of semantics on what was released saying, quote, speaking to military folks all morning, here's the difference per them on, quote, war plan versus, quote, attack plan. | ||
| A war plan is the full scope of operation, i.e. the invasion of Iraq or campaign versus ISIS. | ||
| A quote, attack plan is the acute outline of what will be used to attack targets. | ||
| Some former military officials said attack plans are more sensitive than war plans because they involve tons of specifics and classified details. | ||
| War plans, while important and certainly sensitive, tend to be higher level and far less operational. | ||
| Hope that helps. | ||
| Again, Alex Ward, the National Security Reporter for the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| You can give your response to the administration's response to this incident. | ||
| Don, Independent Line in Minnesota, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is what happens when you have somebody as defense secretary whose incompetence is only exceeded by his arrogance. | |
| Just imagine if there had been the Biden administration as it happened with Tom Cotton and Jim Jordan, they'd be screaming bloody murder. | ||
| This had to be classified at the time, not classified afterwards. | ||
| But I mean, before it was launched and that memo went out, it had to be classified. | ||
| And I don't understand this. | ||
| We got people like Kelseth that has weighed in over his head. | ||
| He shouldn't. | ||
| There's no qualification for him to be Defense Secretary and some of these other people. | ||
| And I think we're in for trouble if we're going to have people like this. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| From Maryland Democrats Line, this is Shay. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| You can watch this program in its entirety if you go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Live now to the White House as President Trump delivers remarks at an Iftar celebration marking the end of the Islamic Ramadan Fast. | ||
| Live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| Hello, Lindsay. | ||
| Nice to see you. | ||
| Here, sir. | ||
| And you'll like it. | ||
| Good evening, and welcome to this magnificent Iftar dinner, very special. |