| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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From low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. | |
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then a look at the legal cases against the Trump administration and potential congressional action with the President of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton. | ||
| And we'll preview the special elections in Florida's first and sixth congressional districts with Politico's Kimberly Leonard. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Tuesday, April 1st, 2025. | ||
| The House returns at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Over in the Senate, New Jersey Democrat Corey Booker is beginning his 12th hour of holding the Senate floor. | ||
| He's been giving a marathon speech through the night to highlight various Trump administration policies and what he calls the crisis of the moment. | ||
| This morning, we want to start by focusing on Donald Trump's economic policies in particular. | ||
| More than two months into the second Trump administration, we want to know how those policies are impacting you financially. | ||
| If you think they're making you better off financially, the number 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you think they're making you worse off financially, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you don't think there's been much impact, the number 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text, that number 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you do, please include your name and where you're from. | ||
| Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook. | ||
| It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Tuesday morning too. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now as you're calling in. | ||
| We want to show you the scene at this hour on the Senate floor. | ||
| Corey Booker took the Senate floor last night just after 7 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| He says he intends to talk as long as he's able. | ||
| Let's listen in for a moment. | ||
| Using language like presidential primacy, he's defending his corrupt practices in immigration by saying things like presidential primacy. | ||
| He's invoking the Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| He's evoking the Alien Enemies Act, an act from the 1700s to deny due process, which Anton Scalia, a textualist, says that whether you're born in this country or not, you have due process here. | ||
| The Constitution states only one thing twice. | ||
| Both the Fifth and the 14th Amendments say that no one, not Noah citizen, no one shall be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law. | ||
| And yet this president is disappearing people. | ||
| And as we document it here, disappearing the wrong people. | ||
| As we document it here, detaining unjustly Americans. | ||
| That's the scene over in the Senate. | ||
| Corey Booker speaking on the Senate floor. | ||
| If you want to watch, it's over on C-SPAN 2 Live right now this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're focusing in a week in which tariffs are set to be front and center on your financial situation and the Donald Trump economic policies, asking you if you're better off, worse off, or the same financially under the Trump administration and its economic policies. | ||
| Yesterday from the White House, President Trump spoke about some of his economic policies. | ||
| This is a bit of what he had to say. | ||
| We have things happening in terms of jobs and investment, the likes of which I don't think we've ever seen. | ||
| If you look at, let's say, four to five trillion dollars in a period of a month and a half, that's even more than you do with your contracts, which are always sold out, right? | ||
| Nobody's ever seen numbers. | ||
| And think of it, where Apple's at $500 billion, as I said, but they always used to spend that money in China. | ||
| Now they're spending it here. | ||
| That means they're going to build they don't have any tariffs. | ||
| Remember, there are no tariffs if you do your product here, if you build whatever it is in the USA. | ||
| One of the things we're also trying to get is if you build, if you buy a car that was built in the USA, you get a deduction on interest. | ||
| So if you go out and borrow money to buy a car, if it's built in the USA, never been done before. | ||
| It's a big deduction for people that really aren't used to deductions, frankly. | ||
| Because people that buy cars like that are not big into the world of deductions. | ||
| And now they're going to learn about deductions. | ||
| So I think it's going to be good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Are you going to move ahead with a universal tariff for different individual tariff rates on a whole variety of different countries? | |
| Well, you're going to see in two days, which is maybe tomorrow night or probably Wednesday, you're going to see. | ||
| And they're reciprocal. | ||
| So whatever they charge us, we charge them, but we're being nicer than they were. | ||
| We have a lot of countries, friend and foe. | ||
| I always say friend and foe, but the friend in many cases is worse than the foe. | ||
| They took advantage of us, and we are going to be very nice by comparison to what they were. | ||
| That was President Trump yesterday from the Oval Office. | ||
| He's dubbed tomorrow Liberation Day. | ||
| And I was talking there about potential new tariff announcements, a lot of discussion about the state of the economy and how those tariffs will impact the economy in today's papers and expect more of that this week as those tariffs get rolled out. | ||
| This is the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. | ||
| SP and NASDAQ logged their worst quarter since 2022. | ||
| Trade fight flagging tech appeal push investors overseas and a Monday rebound, though. | ||
| The stock market gaining some ground back yesterday. | ||
| Consumers are waiting to see the potential fallout from the tariffs is the headline from the Washington Post and this from the editorial board of the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| A trade war, what is it good for? | ||
| Getting your sense this morning about the economic situation, how it's impacting you personally. | ||
| We want to know if you're better off, worse, or the same financially today. | ||
| Phone lines, if you say you're better off, 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're worse, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you say it's about the same, 202-748-8002. | ||
| This is Todd in Massachusetts. | ||
| Up first. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Where would you say you are today, economically, Todd? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're definitely worse off. | |
| I am retired. | ||
| My wife has not yet retired. | ||
| But the upset in the stock market alone from all these reciprocal tariffs and threats has upset the market. | ||
| And that affects retirees because we're looking at savings and living off that savings for the next decades. | ||
| And everyone in the market says this is not driven by anything except tariff threats. | ||
| Do you have a sense of how much your portfolio is down right now, Todd? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I would say it's down about 5%. | |
| We try to invest broadly, but the SP 500 is down 5%. | ||
| And I think that's about where we are. | ||
| And of course, in the short term, that's notable. | ||
| But in the long term, they're now saying the economic indicators are bad, consumer sentiment, inflation ticking up, and that's all bad news. | ||
| And Todd, down 5% compared to just two months ago is what you're saying? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| So, what moves can you make right now? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, we can try to adjust our spending, you know, play things conservatively, cut back on things like travel, discretionary spending. | |
| But, of course, that is also bad for the economy. | ||
| You know, this economy runs on consumer spending. | ||
| And, Todd, how long were you in the workforce for? | ||
| What'd you do? | ||
|
unidentified
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35 years, and I was an engineer and a manager. | |
| Todd, thanks for the call from Massachusetts this morning. | ||
| John is next in Temple Hills, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Where would you say you are, John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| As a foundational black American, it's about the same because under Trump, he seeks to institutionalize the Republicans' racism by dismantling DEI. | ||
| If we didn't really get any help with that anyway, like affirmative action, and the Democrats, it wouldn't be any good either because what they want to do is bring all these illegals over and then float them in the black community and offer no, absolutely no help or listen to a black agenda. | ||
| So it's about the same with either one. | ||
| Neither one of them serve the black communities. | ||
| And John, what line of work are you in? | ||
| How long have you been in the workforce? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it's a white-collar position, and I've been in there for like 20 years. | |
| And when do you expect to retire? | ||
|
unidentified
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In about 10. | |
| That's John in Temple Hills, Maryland. | ||
| Peter, West Palm Beach, Florida. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How would you say you're doing financially? | |
| I'm doing terrible because I have retired with a 401 plan, which was helping me survive these high prices. | ||
| And all of a sudden, he comes in and changing this tariff war and what problems he's pushing through. | ||
| The market took a beating, and I'm taking a beating. | ||
| And I guarantee most of the retired people with 401 plans are having a terrible time. | ||
| I lost over $150,000 on my plan. | ||
| That's a big hit from a man that retired with just a fixed income of Social Security and our 401 plan. | ||
| That is not what he's doing right. | ||
| And he's the only man that had a casino that went bankrupt. | ||
| So I can't believe this man knows what he's doing because I probably, I never voted for him because I knew his policies were terrible. | ||
| I'm sorry, America, but we're in trouble for the next four years. | ||
| Did you move to Florida as a retiree? | ||
| And what line of work were you in? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I was a Procter and Gamble employee. | |
| And I moved to Florida in 1991. | ||
| I retired. | ||
| I was getting along pretty well. | ||
| I've been retired 33 years, but this is the first year I'm really worried that I won't be able to survive financially if this man keeps doing what he's doing. | ||
| If the tariffs go into effect, that market and my 401 plan may disappear, and I'll have to depend on Social Security if he doesn't destroy that, too. | ||
| I'm in deep, deep worry. | ||
| And I hope the American people realize we did the bad thing by making this man president again. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I hope the people wake up and realize who you vote for is how you live. | ||
| And this is a very bad situation. | ||
| And I don't think we deserve this as Americans. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Peter in Florida, Columbus, Georgia. | ||
| Steve, that line for those who say they are better off financially. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, your last caller, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the president. | |
| I think he's doing a great job. | ||
| I'm enjoying what he did the first four. | ||
| I'm enjoying what he's done so far. | ||
| But The biggest problem we have right now is the people believing everything the media tells us. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| So, Steve, bring that to your financial situation and how you're doing better right now over the past two months. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, gas is low. | |
| I don't see where everyone's paying so much for egg prices because that's what the Democrats are always complaining about. | ||
| Or the left. | ||
| Let me say that the left. | ||
| But they had four years to complain, and they didn't because the Orange Man is so bad. | ||
| Are you worried about the tariffs issue that the caller brought up before, Steve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm not because I like what the man said. | |
| The man being Trump or Orange Man, however, some people like to call him. | ||
| He's bringing businesses and corporations to America. | ||
| If you do your business with Inside America, we will not add a tariff to you. | ||
| So, yes, I love that idea. | ||
| I mean, who wouldn't as an American, unless you vote blue all the time? | ||
| What line of work are you in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in the it's kind of like locating utility industry. | |
| What does that mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I locate Underground Lines. | |
| How long have you been doing that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This going on seven worked with a water company for 21. | |
| You retired there? | ||
| Do you think you're going to retire from this job as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I've got about four and a half, five more years as a joke with my boss because my daughter graduates. | |
| And my last day will be the day before she graduates. | ||
| That's Steve in Columbus, Georgia, this morning. | ||
| It was yesterday on the Senate floor before Corey Booker took to the Senate floor and has been giving this marathon address. | ||
| It was Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, talking about those tariffs that are certainly going to be one of the major news stories of the week. | ||
| Donald Trump expecting to announce more perhaps later today, as soon as tomorrow. | ||
| This is Chuck Schumer talking about what those tariffs could mean. | ||
| Well, Mr. President, this week, Donald Trump is preparing to take a sledgehammer to the American economy by preparing a tsunami of tariffs on all sorts of goods Americans purchase every day. | ||
| A tsunami of tariffs. | ||
| Let's be clear. | ||
| Donald Trump's tariffs are a tax hike on American families. | ||
| The average costs families will have to pay for groceries, gas, everyday goods, et cetera, will go up by thousands, thousands of dollars a year out of hardworking people's pockets to pay for these tariffs. | ||
| And Donald Trump has the gall to call his trade war liberate, to call his trade war Liberation Day. | ||
| That makes as much sense as calling a layoff notice a promotion letter. | ||
| The Trump administration clearly has no strategy or goal behind their tariffs. | ||
| One minute they say the tariffs will lead to more people buying American-made goods. | ||
| But Peter Navarro said yesterday tariffs will also raise trillions in revenue. | ||
| This is a total contradiction. | ||
| You can't use tariffs to both raise revenue and bring jobs back. | ||
| The only way you raise that much in revenue is if Americans pay that much for goods made abroad. | ||
| And that means consumers will hurt most. | ||
| Donald Trump knows his plan will send costs surging. | ||
| He said he hopes automakers raise their price, spoken like a true billionaire. | ||
| Donald Trump saying, I hope automakers will raise their prices. | ||
| Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Consumer, Mr. and Mrs. Average American family. | ||
| Donald Trump wants you to pay more while he's giving tax cuts to billionaires. | ||
| Senate Republicans, where are they? | ||
| Always they just go along with whatever Trump wants, no matter how idiotic. | ||
| Senate Republicans should be shouting from the rooftops to get the president to reverse course on tariffs. | ||
| People in red states will be especially impacted, from farmers to small businesses. | ||
| Republicans should be swarming the Senate floor with statements calling on the president to change his mind. | ||
| But their response has been so feeble, so weak, almost non-existent, that Americans are right to question whose side they are really on. | ||
| That was Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor. | ||
| That was yesterday morning. | ||
| This morning, it's Corey Booker on the Senate floor giving a marathon speech. | ||
| It's not technically a filibuster because he's not trying to block any specific piece of legislation or vote, but he's about 12 hours and 15 minutes into his marathon speech, though well short, of course, of the record of set for a filibuster. | ||
| That, of course, by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina back in 1957. | ||
| But Corey Booker continuing his speech and various Democratic senators joining him on the floor to give him a break during that speech. | ||
| Senator Durbin on the floor of Illinois right now speaking to Corey Booker there. | ||
| That's all happening on C-SPAN too. | ||
| If you want to watch that marathon address, again, we're 12 hours and 15 minutes into that address. | ||
| Back to your phone calls asking you, are the Trump administration's economic policies making you better, worse, the same financially? | ||
| John in Florida, good morning. | ||
| How would you answer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, John. | |
| What a lovely name you have. | ||
| Yeah, about the same for me so far. | ||
| I mean, it's way too early to tell. | ||
| I mean, the man's only been in office for, what, 57, 58 days? | ||
| 71 days, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How many? | |
| 51 or 61? | ||
| 71, John. | ||
| It'll be 100 days at the end of the month. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Roger that. | |
| 71 days. | ||
| Yeah, way too early to tell. | ||
| The plan he's going to be attempting, I mean, I think it's going to be at least a year before we see any kind of tangible results. | ||
| So there'll be some up and downs. | ||
| The stock market flows up and down. | ||
| I've got a 401k. | ||
| I've lost a little bit of money on it, but nothing to be crying about. | ||
| I mean, there's always ebbs and flows and everything. | ||
| I think this is just jinged up. | ||
| Let's see what happens with the tariffs. | ||
| I'm interested to see. | ||
| We've been getting ripped off by these countries for a really long time. | ||
| So I'd like to see how we do with an even playing field. | ||
| It's going to be interesting, and I think down the road, it'll be better for us. | ||
| So, I mean, there's going to be some short-term pain, but hopefully for some long-term gain. | ||
| I mean, you have almost, what'd they say? | ||
| He's got almost a trillion dollars in business coming back to the country already through these big companies. | ||
| So, I mean, it's interesting. | ||
| It's an interesting concept, and I'm interested to see how it plays out. | ||
| I am happy gas prices are falling a little bit, and eight prices have certainly come down quite a bit. | ||
| So, I'm willing to give him some time to implement this plan and see how it comes to fruition. | ||
| And, John, two questions for you. | ||
| What line of work are you in? | ||
| And you're interested in giving him some time. | ||
| How much time are you willing to give him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, you know, number one, I was a heavy diesel mechanic, and I was also a retired military. | |
| Yeah, I'm willing to give him a year. | ||
| It's hard to turn a battleship around or an aircraft carrier around in four months. | ||
| I mean, this is a bold and innovative plan, and I mean, it's going to take time. | ||
| I mean, it did take Biden a couple of years to destroy the economy. | ||
| So, I mean, I'm willing to give this guy a year to see if he can swing it around and see how we do there. | ||
| That's John in Florida. | ||
| Christine, Newmarket, Maryland, good morning. | ||
| How would you describe your economic status, your financial status today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I would say it's worse and probably going to continue to get worse. | ||
| My husband is a retired carpenter after a bad accident. | ||
| He's on disability, Social Security disability. | ||
| And I myself have a number of health conditions that I'm dealing with. | ||
| So he's on Social Security. | ||
| I'm on ACA insurance. | ||
| So we're obviously very concerned that we're going to lose both of those. | ||
| And that will severely impact us. | ||
| But we're also, because of our health issues, trying to sell our home and move closer to our son. | ||
| And the market is so bad because so many people here are or were government workers that are now losing their jobs. | ||
| So there's a glut of homes on the market and no buyers because there's not many people coming here for work now. | ||
| And the ones that would be potential buyers are so concerned about the financial situation of the U.S. and what's going to happen. | ||
| So they're not buying. | ||
| And our realtor is very concerned that the entire housing market in this area is just going to collapse. | ||
| How far is Newmarket, Maryland, from D.C.? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're about a little less than an hour. | |
| And where are you trying to move to? | ||
| Are you saying trying to move closer to your son? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In New Jersey. | |
| And in terms of saying you're worse off now, would you say you were better off by the end of the Trump administration or the end of the Biden administration? | ||
| And I asked because the caller before you said it took four years for Biden to destroy the economy. | ||
| He's willing to give Donald Trump a year to see if his policies will work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it's definitely better under Biden. | |
| I mean, we have a little bit of money invested, some money that my husband had received as, you know, from his mother. | ||
| And that money was growing. | ||
| It is going down pretty significantly. | ||
| And I don't know what's going to happen with these new tariffs, how that will affect the stock market. | ||
| Every day I'm watching it biting my nails because that's it. | ||
| That's our retirement. | ||
| That's all that there is. | ||
| There's nothing more that's going to be coming our way because of our medical situations. | ||
| And under Biden, it was growing significantly. | ||
| So at least it was some breathing room for us. | ||
| And I feel like that breathing room is being taken away. | ||
| And like I said, my ACA tax credit was extremely helpful under Biden because he had helped to raise that a little bit. | ||
| So it made it more affordable for me. | ||
| And now there's a good chance that that's going to be taken away altogether. | ||
| That's Christine in Newmarket, Maryland. | ||
| John is in Chicago this morning. | ||
| John, how would you describe your financial situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So my situation is about the same. | ||
| I'm working. | ||
| I have another 10 years I'm going to retire. | ||
| I'm looking at the long-term game on this. | ||
| So I'm preparing for fluctuations in the stock market with retirement type planning. | ||
| And I'm happy that there's a businessman that is willing to take some some long-term, you know goals here, and I view this as an investment of what we need to do to try to get ourselves better positioned in the world marketplace for Americans. | ||
| And so my situation has not changed. | ||
| I'm in the medical um. | ||
| In the medical field john, you described Donald Trump as a as a businessman. | ||
| Uh, he's in year five, starting year five in the presidency. | ||
| Is he also a politician at this point, or do you still see him as as purely a businessman? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well now, he's sort of a hybrid of the two, isn't he? | |
| Yeah, he can't. | ||
| He can't claim that he's no longer a politician because he's, but he's both really and um, that's refreshing to see, I I think we need we need to get a little bit more respective. | ||
| We've had enough of quote-unquote experts that are theoreticians um, that haven't necessarily steered us in the right direction with everything you know, not to say that they haven't done some good things, but there are a lot of you know things that I think we can uh push with the American agenda, and i'm i'm happy to see that as a country, we can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can change course on things and change the formula and I see this all as part of that. | |
| So how long does it take? | ||
| How long are you willing to give him to change course? | ||
| Previous caller said he should get at least a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah yes I, I mean this is going to be. | |
| I i'm i'm going to say two years, i'm going to say two years and I mean these are very big tectonic shifts here and you know it's going to take time to build factories. | ||
| It's going to take time for people to get employed in those factories and to start to, you know, pay taxes and things like that. | ||
| So this is a this is a long-term gain and there is some short-term pain, but my hope is that the people that have those retirement accounts have put themselves in a position where, where they've shifted those things out of risky stocks into more, you know, more safe holdings, as one would normally do under the advice of a retirement fund planner. | ||
| Um John, we'll take a call from Chicago. | ||
| You mentioned the experts of previous administrations. | ||
| Here's one of them. | ||
| It's Jason Furman. | ||
| He was the chairman of the White House Council OF Economic Advisors during the Obama administration, from 2013 until the start of the first Trump administration. | ||
| The headline of his piece in the WALL Street Journal a way to make bad tariffs even worse. | ||
| The president is betting the economy on a theory that makes no sense. | ||
| He writes that lower income families will be paying a higher fraction of their income in tariffs, but the revenue will very likely go to tax cuts skewed to high income households. | ||
| The stock market has already lost more than three trillion dollars since mr Trump first dialed up his tariffs threats back in february. | ||
| The losses could grow over time As the United States increasingly distances itself from the benefits of imports, exports, and the global supply chain. | ||
| Jason Fuhrman writing in today's Wall Street Journal, an expert from today's administration, Peter Navarro, White House trade senior counselor to the president, was on Fox News Sunday, and he was talking about how these tariffs fit into the president's larger economic plans. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
| When you say a tax cut, how exactly is that going to work? | ||
| If you're talking about credits for people who are buying new cars, those kinds of things, millions of Americans are not looking to buy new cars, but they are worried about the thousands that are estimated to turn up in their everyday costs for things because the tariff cost has to be passed on by these importers somewhere. | ||
| Well, all right, let's work through the economics of this. | ||
| First of all, we're going to raise about $100 billion with the auto tariffs alone. | ||
| What we're going to do is in the new tax bill that has to pass, it absolutely has to pass, we're going to provide tax benefits, tax credits to the people who buy American cars. | ||
| This is a genius thing that President Trump promised on the campaign trail. | ||
| So that's going to happen. | ||
| In addition, the other tariffs are going to raise about $600 billion a year, about $6 trillion over a 10-year period. | ||
| And we're going to have tax cuts. | ||
| It's the biggest tax cut in American history for the middle class, for the blue-collar deplorables. | ||
| And that is going to, if you look at this, basically holistically, as they say, consumers and Americans are going to be better off, including all the jobs they get. | ||
| Peter Navarro, they are saying that Americans are going to be better off. | ||
| We're asking you if you're better off the same or worse financially under the Trump economic policies. | ||
| We're over two months in. | ||
| It's 71 days into the second Trump administration, and we're hearing from you. | ||
| Jeanette is in Vermont. | ||
| Next, how would you describe your economic situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I retired, and I retired about five years ago, and I have 401k, which is, you know, it seems like a lot of money, six figures. | ||
| But if that's all you're living on for hopefully the next 15 years, that's not a lot of money. | ||
| And Social Security is going, that's going to go bust, okay? | ||
| And Trump, he's really only interested in himself. | ||
| He's spent $60 million so far on golfing every weekend. | ||
| And I want to go back to someone that was talking about the chips that are made. | ||
| Most of them are now in Taiwan. | ||
| So if China goes into Taiwan, we're going to be losing all of those that are made there. | ||
| And the prices are skyrocketing as it is. | ||
| Biden was the one that started making the chips, and he was bringing that back. | ||
| But still, the majority of them are made in Taiwan. | ||
| And I have a disabled friend. | ||
| I volunteer at my church. | ||
| She comes into the church because we have a jump program that offers food and like if you need band-aids or shampoo and things like that. | ||
| And she uses these, but she's petrified that she's going to lose Social Security. | ||
| And all the seniors that come into this jump, they're all petrified. | ||
| We're all living in fear. | ||
| Russia years ago, they made their middle class and lower middle class into peasants. | ||
| That's what you would actually call them. | ||
| He's trying to make our middle class peasants. | ||
| And one last thing. | ||
| Have you watched The Wizard of Oz when the house fell on the wicked witch? | ||
| The Munchkins all rejoiced. | ||
| Well, we're all going to rejoice when this wicked Trump is gone and his cohort, Musk, he's an evil man. | ||
| He's controlling all of these. | ||
| We're not going to have, I'm going to Canada to get my vaccines because we haven't even put that in place yet. | ||
| The vaccines in the fall. | ||
| That's Jeanette. | ||
| This is Mike in Saratoga Springs, New York. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| What I got to say is I think Trump is doing a better job. | ||
| The previous caller, I think she needs to wake up. | ||
| I told you you needed to wake up about five years ago. | ||
| As far as the economy, heck, my eggs prices are lower. | ||
| My gas is stable. | ||
| And the next three years, okay, are going to be, I believe America is going to head into an industrial revolution. | ||
| We're going to be number one. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In what industry, Mike, are we going to be number one in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
As far as production, manufacturing, okay? | |
| Auto supplies, a lot of different variety of things, chips, whatever. | ||
| Things are going to be expanding. | ||
| This is not like Biden, okay? | ||
| You know, Trump is completely different. | ||
| He's a businessman. | ||
| He knows what's going on. | ||
| And as far as C-SPAN, I am so disappointed in you guys. | ||
| And the reason why, okay, I get so upset, okay? | ||
| Because you're more towards the left. | ||
| You leave these people. | ||
| You're not positive. | ||
| You're always negative. | ||
| I don't like it, John. | ||
| I think I should do something about it. | ||
| What line of work are you in, Mike? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I own my own advertising company, and I'll tell you what, their revenue's gone up, okay? | |
| People are spending money. | ||
| They see the change in this company. | ||
| I've been in business for 25 years, okay? | ||
| And the advertising business fluctuates up and down. | ||
| And since Biden was in, okay, or no, since Obama was in, okay, the advertising business wasn't that great, okay? | ||
| When Biden came in, it was a disaster. | ||
| AC people now, business people, okay, they like Trump, okay? | ||
| They see what America's heading into, an industrial revolution, okay? | ||
| And people don't see it. | ||
| They don't have no clue. | ||
| They're all so into their money, okay, greed, okay? | ||
| Hey, hey, I remember back in the 60s and 70s, okay, we were the number one manufacturing company in the world, okay? | ||
| Then, what, Carter sold us out, okay? | ||
| All right, that's Mike this morning. | ||
| It's just after 7:30 on the East Coast. | ||
| We've been telling you that Senator Corey Booker has been holding the Senate floor throughout the night, some of his colleagues coming in to spell him over the course of a now 12 and a half hour marathon address, not technically a filibuster, but one of the topics that's been discussed throughout the night is the idea of social security. | ||
| Corey Booker having a conversation about that right now on the Senate floor with Kristen Gillibrand of New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've been reading about stories across the country about flight safety and the fact that there are near collisions all the time. | |
| We had a horrible crash in New York, in Buffalo, the Colganair crash. | ||
| I've gotten to know the families over the last several years because they've worked together for legislation to make sure we have pilot safety. | ||
| But what I've been watching in terms of this administration is they don't seem to care. | ||
| They just have made up this idea that cuts across the board are necessary to get rid of fraud and waste in the budget. | ||
| And I agree we can make government more efficient, but the way you do that is at least learn what each of these agencies do. | ||
| Study what's happening in them and how to make them more efficient. | ||
| Make sure the right number of personnel are hired. | ||
| Make sure the right training is offered. | ||
| Make sure there's no wasteful programs. | ||
| That's good government. | ||
| That is not what Elon Musk and his Doge boys are doing. | ||
| That is nothing like what they are doing. | ||
| They're just cutting everything because they want to make space for these tax cuts for their billionaire buddies. | ||
| It's really disgraceful. | ||
| It's something that I don't quite understand. | ||
| So over the past two months, just the past two months, we've seen horrifying accidents and near misses at airports all across the country. | ||
| And there was another close call just this past Friday, again at DCA. | ||
| Many of these accidents have been a result of chronic understaffing and antiquated technology. | ||
| Jill Ren there on the Senate floor speaking with Corey Booker. | ||
| Again, it's a marathon speech, and you can watch it on C-SPAN 2 Live talking about cuts across agencies, Social Security. | ||
| They've touched on immigration throughout the night. | ||
| And it's Corey Booker saying that he's going to go until he can't stand anymore and will go as long as he's physically able to hold the Senate floor and maintain his technique. | ||
| It's not technically a filibuster, but holding the Senate floor to talk about the Trump administration's policies. | ||
| We're talking about economic policies this morning on the Washington Journal, asking you if you are better off, worse, or the same financially. | ||
| Catherine's waiting in Norton, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How would you describe your situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would like to say one thing first. | |
| In his last election, about three days after he was elected, he walked out in front of the White House and he said, this is nice. | ||
| Too bad it can't last forever. | ||
| And that set it off in my mind. | ||
| What he's got on his mind. | ||
| I mean, he doesn't know what he's doing. | ||
| He's letting that Elon Musk do and say what he wants to and run all over the United States buying votes. | ||
| So, Catherine, bring me to your economic situation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I make $1,800. | |
| I make $1,800. | ||
| I make $1,800 a month. | ||
| That's what I have. | ||
| I'm a widow, but I don't give up. | ||
| In my neighborhood, we have widows, we have elderly, and we have children that are hungry. | ||
| I take, and I've been able to do it so far. | ||
| I feed the elderly and the children that are doing without food, I manage to get them food. | ||
| And I hope that Mr. Trump, I heard this on CNN just a few minutes ago. | ||
| He's going after Harvard. | ||
| He's going to look through their books and everything. | ||
| Now, that's not right. | ||
| That is just, and these people are walking around like little dummies or something. | ||
| They're so, oh, he's going to do this and he's going to do that. | ||
| Well, we know the last four years he did nothing. | ||
| That's Catherine in Virginia. | ||
| This is Keith, Albany, Oregon. | ||
| Keith, how would you describe your financial situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll tell you, mine is pretty good and about the same. | |
| I'm newly retired, and right now I'm fully living off my Social Security. | ||
| Retired from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have an IRA. | |
| I'm just letting that grow. | ||
| Retired from what industry, Keith? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, in-home health care. | |
| Gotcha. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so I'm planning a big trip, so I'm not taking on any new clients. | |
| My former one died, and so I'll be taking somebody on part-time, but I can do that anytime. | ||
| So that's good. | ||
| I want to be able to give back. | ||
| My health is excellent, and so I have no complaints that way. | ||
| And I just want to add that you guys are doing a great job, fair and balanced. | ||
| And I really appreciate you. | ||
| And your self-control from not rolling your eyes or breaking out laughing at some of these callers is really amazing. | ||
| You say you're planning a big trip. | ||
| We've had callers call in as we've talked about the economic situation or economic uncertainty or what tariffs could mean, saying that they're not planning a trip. | ||
| They're being more conservative in their spending right now just because they don't know how this is all going to shake out. | ||
| You don't feel that or what gives you the confidence to do what you're doing right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just stay focused on what I can do in my life. | |
| And I'm really conservative financially. | ||
| And so I'm planning a trip actually with a friend in a couple of weeks to Vegas. | ||
| And then after that, I get back and then I'll be taking a trip back to my home state of Wisconsin to visit my brother. | ||
| And yeah, I'll just maybe sometimes I'll sleep in the car. | ||
| I'll eat at a cheap restaurant. | ||
| I can do things really on a miserly budget. | ||
| So it's just the way I live my life. | ||
| That's Keith in Oregon. | ||
| This is Allie, Bristow, Virginia, down in Southwest Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I just want to say I'm better off only because I'm getting Social Security and I went back to work. | ||
| Other than that, I'm diabetic. | ||
| My truly city alone cost me like about $250 a month. | ||
| And besides that, my daughter was working for the State Department and she got cut off. | ||
| So I'm thinking, I had two callers previously said they can wait a year or two years for Trump's policies to start working. | ||
| And I keep thinking, how many people have enough money in their bank account to wait for a year or two? | ||
| And finally, a businessman to run a country, it's laughable because business is only for profit. | ||
| And government should take care of people that are incapable of working or doing other things. | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Ali in Virginia. | ||
| This is Doug in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| How would you describe your financial situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, no. | ||
| I find my financial situation to be very interesting these days. | ||
| I'm a millennial, 41 years old. | ||
| Was a bit surprised with the Department of Education changes. | ||
| And obviously, I have student loans, but I've kind of seen how this economic policy, these economic policies play out for at least folks in my generation. | ||
| You know, getting through the 90s and into the 2000s, you know, watching kind of the per reform effect on my community and then seeing how student loans kind of put my generation in a very different way financially. | ||
| And now we're in this period where renting and homeownership are really kind of down. | ||
| It's a little unnerving now that we've seen the student loans move over from the Department of Education to, I believe, the I apologize. | ||
| I forget the government agency they've since moved them to. | ||
| But yeah, I'm just very much small business. | ||
| Small business. | ||
| I'm just worried. | ||
| Doug, how many? | ||
| Do you mind saying how much you have left in student loans to pay off at a 40-year-old, 41? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I should also preface this by saying I graduated with my undergraduate degree in 2008 and walked across the stage with a psychology degree that I knew was going to be incredibly valuable. | |
| Where I was basically being told by employers, hey, you know, you can't get a job unless you've got a PhD. | ||
| And so I had to go back to grad school. | ||
| Otherwise, there was really no direction for my education at that point. | ||
| But I went back, found the things I love, and I'm doing very well now. | ||
| But I find myself, like many other people, relying more on credit cards and, you know, trying to make up the gap sometimes. | ||
| And I'm not an, let me put it this way: I'm not a financially struggling person by any means. | ||
| But I look at other folks in my generation and I'm like, I do not know how you can stay and maintain a quality of life or living sometimes the way that some people are doing. | ||
| And they're struggling. | ||
| I mean, people are living paycheck to paycheck and they're taking jobs sometimes. | ||
| They're wearing their livelihoods down and their lives down and their families as well. | ||
| I mean, I don't know how you can survive on a single income. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Are you a five-figure student loan debt? | ||
| Are you six-figures? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a five-figure student loan debt person. | |
| I have paid my student loans down. | ||
| I pay my $560 or whatever it is every month and have been doing it for a while. | ||
| But, you know, that's maybe a third of my rent, right? | ||
| So it's kind of crazy. | ||
| And you say you're renting right now. | ||
| Do you want to own a home? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would love to be able to own a home, but you know what? | |
| The funny thing is, I moved to North Carolina and I was outbid on home, on three homes actually, that sold for almost $50,000 over their asking price. | ||
| So I went to the, I put in my earnest money. | ||
| I've lost about $3,000 in earnest deposits just trying to secure a house. | ||
| Doug, thanks for the call from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. | ||
| Nathan, next out of Clarksburg, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How would you describe your economic situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I'm very lucky in that currently my situation hasn't changed months, changed much. | ||
| I'm in private industry. | ||
| I do computer security. | ||
| But my wife is a federal worker at NIH. | ||
| And, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to call in this morning is that they have laid off hundreds of people at NAH this morning. | ||
| There's the Twinbrook Metro station that's flooded with people crying. | ||
| There's hundreds of people waiting outside offices in Roxville and Bethesda because they can't get past security. | ||
| That happened just this morning, Nathan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, that's correct. | |
| And I've already contacted both Senator Booker's office and Senator Van Holland's office trying to get somebody to say it on the Senate floor and really just wanted to get that out there. | ||
| And one of the departments that they're letting go happens to be infectious diseases, which RFK Jr. has come out against because he wants to focus on chronic health. | ||
| But if there's another pandemic or something, we're not looking too good, John. | ||
| What line of work within NIH was your wife? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Research without going into specifics because I fear retaliation. | |
| And how are you guys doing right now, Nathan? | ||
| We're doing okay. | ||
| We're surviving. | ||
| You know, we're very lucky. | ||
| I was able to, I'm ahead of most of my peers. | ||
| I'm only 40. | ||
| You know, I did three years active duty in the Army. | ||
| I was able to get a VA loan for my house. | ||
| I have student loans in the five-digit figures. | ||
| But, you know, we take in enough to pay the bills and do okay. | ||
| But, you know, it does come at the cost. | ||
| I've noticed the returns since January on my 401k have gone down significantly from what they were under the previous administration. | ||
| Nathan, this is an article from just a couple days ago, Stat News. | ||
| RFK plans to slash HHS workforce by 25% in a massive reorganization. | ||
| What else did you hear from your wife this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just said there's hundreds of people waiting outside the offices because they can't get through security because they've been riffed. | |
| And, you know, one of those departments was infectious diseases. | ||
| I know originally understanding is that it was supposed to happen Friday night over the weekend and there was possible revolt was inside HHS where leadership said the way they're going about the riff was illegal and they weren't going to support it. | ||
| But these people have already said under oath, as Senator Booker brought up this morning, that they're willing to go against the ruling of judges in the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what can you do, really? | |
| Nathan, thanks for the call. | ||
| Thanks for give us a call back down the road. | ||
| Let us know what happens specifically with her job and your plan. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| From Clarksburg, Maryland, this is Carol and Tyler, Texas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How would you describe your financial situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My financial situation has gotten substantially better, but it has nothing to do with President Donald Trump. | ||
| Maybe some of your viewers are aware of one of the last things that President Joe Biden did before he left office was to sign into law the Social Security Fairness Act. | ||
| And what that is, those of us like myself who worked in the private sector and paid into Social Security, which I did for 12 years, when it came time for us to become eligible to draw Social Security, which I started early at the age of 62, I'm now almost 72 years old. | ||
| We were not able to draw all of our Social Security because I also am a retired teacher here in Texas and we did not pay into Social Security. | ||
| So when President Biden in January, before he left office, signed into law the Social Security Fairness Act, we were able for the first time to draw all of our Social Security. | ||
| I had been drawing for the last almost 10 years just about $500 a month. | ||
| And because President Biden signed that into law, my Social Security monthly amount went up substantially. | ||
| So I thank God, I thank President Biden for signing that into law. | ||
| And there are about 3,000 of us across this country, is my understanding from what I read, that became eligible for that. | ||
| And Carol, you said you weren't eligible because you were working as a teacher in Texas. | ||
| Was there a pension that you were paying into that you still get from that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I still draw my Texas retirement teacher retirement. | |
| That did not negatively impact that at all. | ||
| I retired from teaching about 25 years in 2011. | ||
| I went back in 2017 and retired again. | ||
| So I still guess that, in addition to more Social Security. | ||
| And I want people to know that because as we're talking about the difference in two presidents, I just don't think President Trump would have signed that into law, but President Biden did. | ||
| And as a result, there's many of us across this country that were blessed by that. | ||
| Why don't you think Donald Trump would have signed that into law? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look what they're doing. | |
| They're dismantling. | ||
| They're trying to cut Social Security. | ||
| They're not trying to give people like myself more Social Security. | ||
| It just would not even go along with what they're doing right now. | ||
| That's Carol in Texas, less than 10 minutes left in this first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're simply asking you about your personal financial situation. | ||
| How is that situation under the second Trump administration? | ||
| We're 71 days in. | ||
| This is Mike in Webster Mass. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| My financial situation has gotten much worse. | ||
| But I'm much different than the previous callers. | ||
| I'm on disability. | ||
| I live in a high-tax state. | ||
| Not that that would matter because I've lived in low-tax states too. | ||
| I just find under Republican administrations, I do worse. | ||
| And under Democratic administrations, I generally do better. | ||
| And what changes for you, Mike, in the change of an administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Costs. | |
| Costs for what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Goods, medicines, treatments. | |
| I'm type 1 diabetic. | ||
| I've been on disability since I was 22. | ||
| So things like that for me, being a low-income person, I generally do better, much better under Democratic administrations. | ||
| Do you work, Mike? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Part-time. | |
| I'm trying to retire as a musician. | ||
| I played music as a youth, as a younger guy. | ||
| I got quite popular in it, and then I pulled away from it due to my health. | ||
| How long do you think it'll be before you retire, Mike? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm pretty much retired now, John. | |
| I do gig on the side from time to time, but I try to stay, try to keep a low-key nowadays. | ||
| That's Mike in Webster Mass. | ||
| This is Linda in Massachusetts as well. | ||
| It is Amesbury. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just wanted to let you know that everything's the same for me. | ||
| And, you know, and I have disabilities too, and I'm 69 years old. | ||
| But the other thing I wanted to bring up, I left yesterday when I was watching the news. | ||
| This lady said, I'm going to buy a car in June, but now I have to buy it today because I'm afraid of the terrorists. | ||
| But I'm thinking, February was President Day. | ||
| That's when all the cars are on sale. | ||
| So why are you not buying the people buying the car in February? | ||
| We started buying it in a month or two or three months from now if they were so worried about it. | ||
| That's what I watch. | ||
| I watch all the news and I watch you all the time every day. | ||
| I drive myself crazy. | ||
| And I'm the first-time watcher, you know, and I've never voted until when Trump came in, just to be curious to see what was going on. | ||
| But it's amazing. | ||
| That's all I wanted to say. | ||
| That's Linda in Massachusetts. | ||
| We'll head way out to Hawaii. | ||
| Armando, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Well, for me, in my situation, I'm retired and I'm living off of Social Security, and I have a 401k, and I'm doing fine. | ||
| It's been about the same ever since Trump took office. | ||
| And I'd like to say this: it's going to take about probably two years before we'll notice any changes that come into play because of the terrorists. | ||
| These companies are coming to the United States to do manufacturing, and it's going to take a while before you're going to see a lot of the effects come into play. | ||
| Now, I'd like to address that previous caller you had from Texas talking about the Social Security Fairness Act. | ||
| That was by, man, my brother, I called him, he's in Oregon, and he told me that he got $15,000 and he's getting $1,500 a month because of that. | ||
| First time he applied for that, they denied him. | ||
| He was trying for survivors' benefits for his wife. | ||
| And he is working with the government, the Department of the Interior. | ||
| He was a GS-12. | ||
| But anyway, long sorry short, the Social Security Fairness Act was a bipartisan legislation. | ||
| And I like to point that out because everybody is saying, yeah, well, Biden signed it, yeah, but it went through with bipartisan support in Congress. | ||
| And so I'm glad it did. | ||
| And because my brother is benefiting from it. | ||
| Armando, the caller who talked about that said she didn't think that Donald Trump would have signed that act. | ||
| What's your feeling on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's hard to say. | |
| No, because I disagree because the Congress and its Republican control in the House, they passed it. | ||
| And they were probably, he probably, I'm not sure if he would have or would not have. | ||
| But nevertheless, it was a bipartisan legislation. | ||
| I'd like to point that out. | ||
| But anyway, getting back to Trump and the... | ||
| Well, Armando, I got your point. | ||
| And I'm running short on time. | ||
| Let me get in a few more calls. | ||
| This is Frank in the Steel City. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| My situation is better, but it's not because of Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm so concerned about his policies and his bringing Elon Musk into the government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This guy's unelected, unvetted. | |
| There's nothing that this fella has that indicates that he would be a good representative for the people of our country. | ||
| And he's not even a citizen. | ||
| Well, he may be a citizen now, but he's not originally from the United States. | ||
| Frank, what do you attribute your better-off financial situation to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm 67 years old. | |
| I'm on Social Security, but I also work full-time. | ||
| I have a small painting company, and business right now is very good for me. | ||
| But I don't know if that's going to last because people are concerned. | ||
| And the reason my situation is good is just from hard work, bro. | ||
| And I'm very fortunate. | ||
| Do tariffs impact you and your business, Frank? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they're going to if they're instituted. | |
| You know, he keeps on saying he's going to put these tariffs in, and I think that they're going to come in today or tomorrow. | ||
| How do tariffs impact the painting business, Frank? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How? | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, because the products needed to make paint, for instance, are going to be more expensive. | |
| And everybody's going to have to pay more. | ||
| Say I have a paying contract lined up for a guy who's a mechanic. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, car parts are going to be going to increase in price. | ||
| So if somebody has to pay another 20-30% for their parts to do automotive work, they're not going to have that money to pay me a painter or pay my buddy a carpenter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| These things are going to affect everyone in every way. | ||
| That's Frank in Pittsburgh. | ||
| We'll stay in the Keystone State. | ||
| This is Deb in Hanover. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How would you describe your economic situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the same right now, but I don't know what it's going to be like here in the future. | |
| And my call is concerning. | ||
| This is a wake-up call for the okay man from New York earlier. | ||
| Apparently, he forgot that this so-called businessman has filed bankruptcy umpteen times. | ||
| He stipped his employees and his contractors out of their money that was owed to them every time. | ||
| People remember that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And everybody have try and have a good day. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Deb in Pennsylvania. | ||
| One more call. | ||
| Jay, Florida. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How would you describe your financial situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very cautious. | |
| It's worse than before. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| I just wish that you could put more information up about the Social Security Fairness Act because it has affected a lot of people and it was signed into law bipartisan. | ||
| And it's a big deal. | ||
| And more information needs to get out because I haven't heard much. | ||
| I've done my homework. | ||
| I know what it's about, but I'm afraid a lot of people aren't aware of what's going on with that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Jay, sounds like a good topic for a segment down the road. | ||
| Thanks for the suggestion. | ||
| That's going to do it in this first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| Plenty more to talk about today, including up next, we'll be joined by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. | ||
| We'll talk about efforts to rein in federal judges and efforts to block President Trump's agenda in the judiciary. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back. | |
| The cherry blossoms are in season, and we're marking the occasion with our cherry blossom sale. | ||
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
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Washington Journal continues. | |
| Back with us at our desk, it's Tom Fitton. | ||
| He's president of the group Judicial Watch. | ||
| It's been about a year since we've had you on, so for viewers who may not be familiar, what is Judicial Watch? | ||
| What's your mission? | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
| We're a nonprofit educational foundation funded by the public, no USAID funding, and we sue the government for documents. | ||
| We sue the government when they engage in wrongdoing. | ||
| For instance, we've been doing work on election integrity, cleaning up voter rolls. | ||
| We've been challenging reparations programs and woke racism, as I call it. | ||
| So we're kind of a conservative version of the ACLU. | ||
| And we are, when it comes at least to open records laws, the number one litigator in the country on terms of government transparency. | ||
| Conservative version of the ACLU, does your mission or your tactics change when there's a Republican in the White House versus a Democrat in the White House? | ||
| You know, if you'd asked me 20 years ago, I probably would say, oh, yeah, things change, but things don't change that much. | ||
| We have to sue the government to get access to information, no matter who's in office. | ||
| You may have support from the president individually on transparency issues, but the agencies are really slow to follow any direction in that regard. | ||
| I joke, the resting state of the deep state is secrecy. | ||
| And all things being equal, they're not going to give you the material. | ||
| How do you get the material? | ||
| You say you sue the government. | ||
| Where do you go to sue the government? | ||
| Well, there's a federal Freedom of Information Act. | ||
| And what happens is you ask for the records, and more or less, you give them some time to respond or not respond. | ||
| And depending on the nature of the response, you can actually go into federal court. | ||
| And then the agency has to come in and defend its withholdings or explain to the court why it is they need more time to respond. | ||
| And so you've got the federal version of that. | ||
| Also, you have the state version of those laws. | ||
| And sometimes the state laws are better than the federal law in terms of ensuring transparency and ensuring a quick government reaction. | ||
| So we sue at the federal level, obviously, mostly, but we have several FOIA or open records lawsuits at the state level as well on election integrity and other issues of public interest. | ||
| What's your opinion of federal judges? | ||
| My opinion of federal judges, the judiciary is a branch of the federal government established by our Constitution. | ||
| It's a separate but equal branch, and it's incumbent, in my view, kind of to get to the point, I think, of the topic here today, potentially, for judges to apply the law fairly and neutrally without letting their political animus get in the way of it. | ||
| What is judicial activism? | ||
| Judicial activism is substituting your own personal views for the fair and neutral application of the law. | ||
| And it's a temptation for judges of both the left and the right. | ||
| It's like, oh, well, I know what the outcome of this particular case should be, and I'm going to figure out a way how to get there using the judicial process. | ||
| And that's not the way it's supposed to work. | ||
| You can have a philosophy as you approach issues, but you're really supposed to fairly apply the law without regard to party or partisanship. | ||
| The Washington Post has a story about cases pending in federal courts having to do with Trump executive orders. | ||
| This is the lead graph. | ||
| Unions, civil rights groups, and others are squaring off in court with the Trump administration filing roughly 140 lawsuits over the dismantling of cuts in agencies by Doge, the firings of federal employees, immigration restrictions. | ||
| The challenges have blocked many of President Trump's initiatives for now, while the administration has won a few significant early victories. | ||
| Does that concern you, the number of lawsuits and the number of executive actions that have been blocked via federal courts? | ||
| The number of lawsuits doesn't concern me because I recognize President Trump has engaged in an unprecedented strategy of reform that's really broad and hard to keep up with. | ||
| So it's no surprise that his political opponents or people who think they're being harmed are suing. | ||
| What's concerning is how many judges are kind of what I would, I'm not a lawyer, but I've enough unfortunate experience in litigation with the government, is how quickly these courts are interfering with the presidential powers, duties, and responsibilities and granting emergency relief to these individuals in ways I don't think the law allows for. | ||
| So there's this almost panic judicial decision-making that's more political than constitutional in my view. | ||
| And that's what's concerning. | ||
| Everyone has a right to sue within the law. | ||
| But courts are supposed to police requests for relief that aren't really appropriate under the law. | ||
| I want to sue on all sorts of things. | ||
| And the lawyers will say, Tom, well, you can sue, but the question is whether you'll be successful. | ||
| And the problem is the perception is that if you're a conservative pursuing this type of claim against a Democratic administration, you would not get this reaction from the judiciary that is so helpful to the left. | ||
| Now, in the end, Trump may win more than he loses, but the process is the punishment. | ||
| And in my view, you have judges usurping the executive and legislative powers and pausing self-government for months based on a legal pretext to cover a political animus. | ||
| When should a federal judge be impeached and removed? | ||
| When? | ||
| Well, the Constitutional envisions, obviously, impeachment for the traditional corruption, bribery, crimes, either ethics crimes, obvious ethics crimes, someone taking money for a judicial decision or obstructing justice, the way some judges actually were accused of doing and impeached for and removed. | ||
| And the interesting thing about the impeachment power is that the founders were concerned, not the founders, but Americans were concerned about the Constitution and whether it gave the judiciary too much power. | ||
| And in the Federalist papers, they said, don't worry. | ||
| If you have a judicial usurpation of the powers of the other departments or the other branches of government, the legislative or the executive, there are a few things. | ||
| They said the judiciary is weak. | ||
| It really can't enforce its powers without the support of the other branches. | ||
| And also, you have this complete security of impeachment. | ||
| So impeachment was put in there not just to check corrupt judges in the criminal sense of the word, but judges who act outside their power. | ||
| And there's been really no impeachment of that nature, the kind of impeachment of activist judges, as I would call it, since 1804. | ||
| And there was one judge who was justice who was impeached. | ||
| He wasn't removed. | ||
| But there's only been impeachments for corruption since then, not on activist judges. | ||
| And I think it should be discussed. | ||
| If I were Jim Jordan or the House leadership, I'd be holding hearings on the impeachment power. | ||
| Is it likely to result in anyone being removed? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| Even impeached? | ||
| Maybe not. | ||
| But I think some of the judges who have been involved here, I think you'll find, if they wanted to do a serious impeachment inquiry, a series of rulings, not just one ruling, showing that the judge is activists and doesn't respect his oath to stay within his lane, which is to make judgments based on a neutral application of the law as opposed to basically being a politician in rogues. | ||
| On hearings, I should note the House Judiciary Committee today holding hearing the title, Judicial Overreach and the Constitutional Limits of the Federal Court, examining the judicial powers of the federal court. | ||
| You can look for coverage on the C-SPAN networks for that for this next 30 minutes or so. | ||
| Tom Finton is with us, a man who knows the federal courts very well, president of JudicialWatch, JudicialWatch.org. | ||
| If you want to call in, phone lines, as usual, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in along with that hearing, the House is also going to vote on the No Rogue Rulings Act this week, which would strip individual federal judges of the power that they have been using to have injunctions that would affect the entire country. | ||
| The legislation would allow their injunctions to affect the individuals that come before their court. | ||
| Do you know about this legislation? | ||
| What do you think about it? | ||
| I do know about it. | ||
| The concern is we can always, there's always a way you can construct an argument where or a case where a universal injunction is appropriate, where someone comes in and sues over a federal government program or decision, and the judge says, I need to shut this whole thing down across the board. | ||
| But the problem is there's been what many people, both the left and the right, see to be abuses. | ||
| You know, Biden's people complained about universal injunctions. | ||
| Trump's been subject to more universal injunctions than any other president in history. | ||
| And the thinking is that if someone goes and sues, that the person who's suing should be given the relief. | ||
| Like, for instance, in this Venezuelan deportation problem over the Alien Enemies Act, you had five people going and sue. | ||
| And the judge immediately granted a class action and essentially said no one can be removed throughout the entire country under this proclamation. | ||
| And in theory, everyone who's subject to be removal has to come before my court. | ||
| You know, that's not the way it's supposed to work. | ||
| So there are a few ways this can be checked. | ||
| You can pass legislation to limit the scope of the injunction power. | ||
| I think the Supreme Court, and I didn't get a chance to go back and look at the, there was a few media analyses of this. | ||
| The Supreme Court can change the federal court rules in a way that would restrict the use of the injunction power. | ||
| And of course, another thing that Congress could do is support the president by making, by kind of not ratifying what he's done, but by furthering what he's already talked about. | ||
| If he wants to shut down USAID, well, defund it. | ||
| If he wants to shut down the Department of Education and there's a fight about that scope of his power in terms of restricting it to its bare statutory minimum, Congress should defund it. | ||
| And my frustration is Congress has kind of been slow on the ball in defending and protecting the taxpayer interest in President Trump's efforts to curtail waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| Why would a Republican House and Senate be slow on the ball in that for a Republican in the White House? | ||
| What's the reason you think of it? | ||
| The Republican leadership will tell you all sorts of reasons why they can't get things done. | ||
| I think it's close. | ||
| I think in the House, it's very close. | ||
| And there might be more support for this wasteful spending among Republicans than some Republicans would care to admit to. | ||
| Tom Finton with us. | ||
| Always happy to take your phone calls. | ||
| And we will start in Florida. | ||
| Brian, Republican line. | ||
| Brian, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Very close. | |
| There might be a more story. | ||
| Brian, you with us? | ||
| Yeah, just turn down your television so we can hear you clearly. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm looking for shared with you. | |
| Turn down the television. | ||
| And go ahead with your question or comment there, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, my question is overreach by local judges is, I think, unconstitutional because they're district judges. | |
| They're not the judges for the whole country. | ||
| And that should be contained to just one specific incident, but they can't make a ruling for the whole country as far as deporting illegal criminals that are obviously don't belong in this country. | ||
| Tom Fenton? | ||
| I mean, that's the heart of the debate, right? | ||
| And there was a decision last yesterday, I believe it was, by a Obama appointee in California that reversed the president's efforts to reverse President Biden's outrageous decision, in my view, to grant temporary protective status to over 600,000 Venezuelans. | ||
| So now the President can't deport any Venezuelans if this TPS, this temporary protective status, applies to them. | ||
| One judge is taking over our immigration policy, substituting his views on national security and what many people consider to be the unreviewable discretion of the president to remove illegal aliens in most circumstances. | ||
| And only because I have a headline on the topic, 350,000 is the number, at least according to the Washington Times story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah, the immediate issue is 350. | ||
| The long-term issue is, I think, makes it up to 600. | ||
| To Mark here in D.C., Line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you all doing? | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I think that Congress really has a role in all of this and just doesn't seem to be stepping into what they need to be doing. | ||
| But maybe more importantly, when this process creates a mistake, as it has with Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia, a gentleman who is, it appears, incorrectly deported to El Salvador. | ||
| I believe the administration needs to take immediate steps today. | ||
| This should be their one mission this morning to getting this man back, or at least, if not getting him back immediately, understanding what the process is for getting him back. | ||
| And I think the judges have a role in this because there needs to be some sort of gatekeeping device so things like this don't occur. | ||
| Illegal are immigrants who should not be here, people who are violating our laws should be lawfully deported, correct? | ||
| But when there's a mistake made, how do we fix that and fix it today to get this man back where he belongs with his family? | ||
| I don't know the person he's referencing, so I don't have any way to comment on it. | ||
| This is Martha in Rankin, Texas Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I followed Mr. Fenton for a few years along with Mike Davis. | ||
| And it's funny because I always thought Mr. Fenton was an attorney. | ||
| And I want to ask about his previous appointment in Trump's first term where he was appointed to actually judge the judges. | ||
| Wouldn't he have to be a lawyer in order to be qualified to judge judges? | ||
| I'm just kind of curious how that position worked for him and what he found in that position. | ||
| Any judges were picked off the bench or anything like that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Talk about your career. | ||
| So I was appointed by President Trump to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure in 2020. | ||
| And you don't have to be a lawyer to be a member of the commission. | ||
| There are several non-lawyers on the commission. | ||
| And it essentially provides oversight over judges here in the District of Columbia who, for want of a better way of putting it, are municipal or state court judges who are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate. | ||
| And so, in theory, the power allows us to remove judges on the account of ethical misconduct or disability. | ||
| Did anybody get removed? | ||
| It happens from time to time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What is the ethical misconduct that most often comes up in these sort of cases? | ||
| It's usually a failure to do their job. | ||
| My impression is. | ||
| You break ethics rules if you're not being a good judge, if you're not adjudicating cases in a timely way, if you're not doing your job. | ||
| And that's, you know, people rely on judges to do their job in order to get timely justice. | ||
| And in some cases, not getting timely justice can be dangerous. | ||
| Timely justice. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Explain more. | ||
| If I have a brief on a matter of importance or a matter of importance generally, and I just don't want to adjudicate it, they keep on delaying and delaying and delaying. | ||
| And it's not only that case, but many other cases. | ||
| What's an egregious example that you've seen of that happening? | ||
| Well, I don't want to go on memory because, you know, I'm in a sensitive position, but it's happened where judges just haven't done their job and we've had to step in. | ||
| Marcia is in Georgia Republican. | ||
| You're on with Tom Fenton. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You break ethics rules. | ||
| Marsha, you're with us? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on with Tom Fenton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| Mr. Fenton, I'm not understanding because actually we do have three executive branches, and Trump is overreaching. | ||
| Actually, I don't understand why he's in the office anyway. | ||
| He's a felon. | ||
| And we don't vote felons. | ||
| They can't even vote. | ||
| And you sound like you're a sick of fan of Trump. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Marsha. | ||
| You know, if the president overreaches, you can be sued, right? | ||
| And that's the, you know, there's not a dispute about him being sued or his administration being sued. | ||
| And, you know, on the felon thing, that's just a political smear. | ||
| Most Americans, I think, have rejected the lawfare against Trump and think any convictions are garbage. | ||
| On the legal side of this, there have been concerns raised as these cases have made their way through the federal courts that President Trump and his administration would not abide by a legal judicial ruling and are concerned that even if it got up to the Supreme Court, that he might not abide by that, calling it that would be a constitutional crisis. | ||
| Do you see that happening? | ||
| Are those concerns overblown? | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
| I don't see one instance of it happening. | ||
| And I think there might be an argument to push back on some of these rulings more aggressively than they have, but we've been very careful to follow the judicial rulings to the letter. | ||
| And some judges have been unhappy because there were workarounds or passed to get where they wanted to go that wasn't impeded by the judicial ruling. | ||
| And the judges were frustrated. | ||
| Well, they didn't make it more expansive or more broad in terms of trying to stop the policy they were trying to stop. | ||
| But I mean, the most apparent, the case that's often pointed to is the issue of removing those terrorists or designated terrorists by Trump. | ||
| And, you know, the headlines initially don't really haven't been borne out by the facts that the planes were on the move in a way that didn't violate the judge's ruling. | ||
| And there's going to be a hearing on it, but I don't see much there there. | ||
| And no one can point to any other case where he's not abiding by the rulings. | ||
| Have Trump administration officials been too quick to call for the impeachment of federal judges? | ||
| We both know that it was Supreme Court Justice John Roberts who put out that statement. | ||
| Here's the wording of it. | ||
| For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. | ||
| The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. | ||
| An unusual statement out of the Supreme Court just Chief Justice. | ||
| It was unusual. | ||
| I think it was unfortunate, and I think it was political. | ||
| And to a degree it could be read to... | ||
| The Chief Justice was being political? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, to the degree it can be read to suggest that impeachment's not constitutional, which I think is fairly implied there. | ||
| It's wrong. | ||
| Simply wrong. | ||
| And the unprecedented interference with the president's powers under the executive branch, that should be troubling to the chief. | ||
| He's responsible for the judiciary. | ||
| Imagine if he said a statement, said, you know, we've got an unprecedented move by the president to assert his authorities. | ||
| And we have to be careful just because he's doing things we're not used to to give him the deference under the Constitution. | ||
| Why didn't he say that? | ||
| Do you think Chief Justice John Roberts did he put out statements like this, and you know the courts better than I do, during the Biden administration when they had disagreements with the courts? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't think when the left was calling for the impeachment of his colleagues, he even put out a statement like that. | ||
| Chris, Tallahassee, Florida, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, guys. | |
| Hope all is well. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Hey, Tom, it's Chris from Tallahassee, Florida. | ||
| Thanks for everything you do with Judicial Watch. | ||
| We really appreciate it. | ||
| Been a long time order. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I would just like to share with you a, and don't worry, I just retweeted your tweet, Washington Journal from C-SPAN just a second ago. | ||
| Appreciate that, Chris. | ||
| What's the question you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's the quick question. | |
| And I just went back and retweeted one of the tweets that I tweeted, which is it's not a question, it's just a statement, and I would like to stay, and that's this. | ||
| I tweeted this just a couple of days ago, a couple weeks ago. | ||
| The President of the United States, and here's how I feel about it. | ||
| The President of the United States should be able to fire any federal employee if they are not up to standards or have found to be corrupt or treasonous as the commander-in-chief of this great country. | ||
| So that's just a quick thought. | ||
| And I think, yes, we might have an issue that might go to the Supreme Court here real soon. | ||
| And that might help Trump with his authority to be able to fire and hire federal employees. | ||
| C-SPAN, thanks for everything you do. | ||
| I have not called you in years. | ||
| I've got to get back to what I'm doing, but blessings and peace be with you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Any thoughts? | ||
| Yeah, that's going to be a big, you know, of all the issues that's going to come before the Supreme Court because there's been this long-standing court precedent at the Supreme Court level that gave Congress the authority to set up so-called independent agencies. | ||
| And the president's like, hold on a second. | ||
| They're exercising executive authority. | ||
| They have to be answerable to me. | ||
| So he's taking steps to make that happen by firing employees of those agencies or appointees. | ||
| And that's going to go up to the Supreme Court in some fashion, for sure. | ||
| And I'm sure the White House team would acknowledge this is something they're challenging specifically to reassert presidential authority that they think the Constitution supports. | ||
| The callers seem familiar with Judicial Watch and your work. | ||
| For viewers, again, who might not know Judicial Watch, you were talking about filing FOIA Freedom of Information Act requests. | ||
| What is a FOIA discovery that you're probably best known for that viewers may remember? | ||
| Well, we uncovered the Clinton emails. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Explain. | |
| We're investigating the Benghazi law, the Benghazi attack. | ||
| Remember the attack that happened just before the election on September 11th, 2012? | ||
| They said it was a protest. | ||
| So we said, well, that's obviously not true. | ||
| Let's investigate it. | ||
| And we started getting documents, and we noticed there were no Hillary Clinton emails. | ||
| So we started pushing and pushing and pushing, and they finally admitted, well, there's this other universe of documents. | ||
| Guess what the other universal documents was? | ||
| Hillary's emails. | ||
| What is the story about the Biden dogs that is the subject of this headline in the Washington Times today? | ||
| We'll show it to viewers as you explain. | ||
| So Joe Biden had several German shepherds when he was president, and we had information that they were attacking agents. | ||
| And it turned out the two dogs had attacked 25 agents and White House staff. | ||
| And not just a nip, not just a bark or a growl, an attack to the forearm or someone had their back bitten, which is just outrageous and incredible to me. | ||
| I can't believe that these agents were attacked. | ||
| The president didn't care. | ||
| The First Lady didn't care. | ||
| Secret Service leadership didn't care. | ||
| And we're all supposed to pretend it's a joke of a story. | ||
| And they tried to cover it up. | ||
| And then we just uncovered records that it was happening when he was in the Obama White House as vice president. | ||
| And so he was notorious for allowing his dogs to attack. | ||
| I mean, can you imagine having a dog and attacking two people? | ||
| It was attacking, happening all over the White House, all over the White House. | ||
| And the documents are pretty darn shocking. | ||
| What were the documents? | ||
| Medical reports, emails about it? | ||
| A few people were like trying to get their suits paid for because there were holes in them. | ||
| References to the incidents happening in Secret Service documents. | ||
| And it's pretty serious. | ||
| Imagine being on the wrong end of a German shepherd biting you. | ||
| And I was concerned about the safety of the protectee, the safety of the president. | ||
| Do you want your Secret Service agents to be worried about the protectee's dog attacking them? | ||
| I mean, they're lucky that the agents didn't have to kill the dogs. | ||
| It's a crazy town over there. | ||
| It was a crazy town in the Biden White House. | ||
| And this is a good indication of it. | ||
| What is a Freedom of Information Act suit that you're pursuing right now that you're pretty sure will bear fruit? | ||
| Well, it's an interesting one because it's a test for the Trump administration. | ||
| We've asked for records of Biden's interview with Special Counsel Her. | ||
| So we did get the transcript. | ||
| We forced them to admit they edited the transcript of that interview. | ||
| But there's an audio tape or audio tapes of the interview, and they've refused to release them, citing President Biden's privacy interest in his own voice. | ||
| And so the court asked the Trump Justice Department: hey, you're a new, you know, things are new. | ||
| You know, we've got a new team. | ||
| Do you have a different position? | ||
| And incredibly, they came back and said, well, we need three months to figure it out. | ||
| So I think in the end, we'll get the tapes. | ||
| I can't imagine they'll be withheld. | ||
| It's frustrating. | ||
| It's going to take three months for them to figure it out. | ||
| So we could get some more information there quickly. | ||
| Have you found over the years that a new administration, even of a different party, is inclined to be more protective, not inclined to release information via FOIA requests? | ||
| You know, there's a kind of a government interest in secrecy that continues throughout administration after administration. | ||
| I mean, Trump has a personal interest in transparency. | ||
| I think personally, he's been the most transparent president in history. | ||
| But when it comes to his agencies, it's always been kind of a bear to get some of this information out. | ||
| And he's taken some major moves in terms of executive orders in pursuing transparency in some of these big issues like the JFK records and Epstein files. | ||
| And he authorized the release of certain Russia gate documents. | ||
| So I think it will be better than his first term, but it's still going to be a challenge. | ||
| And that's why we have to go to court time after time to get basic information. | ||
| When people talk about the swamp, how do you define the swamp? | ||
| It's an approach, right? | ||
| It's an approach. | ||
| It's not so much people, it's the approach that Washington knows best, that outsiders or just new people who come in into office should be treated as temporary occupants and to be waited out. | ||
| And I remember telling folks in the Trump administration, the swamp has a lot of park rangers in this town, and there are people who are both Republican and Democrats who want to protect the swamp ways here. | ||
| And draining the swamp is something I think the president is more committed to than ever, based at least on his executive orders. | ||
| For the first time in 40, I would say since the Reagan administration, and Reagan, I'm sure, would be excited about what Trump's doing, we're talking about waste, fraud, and abuse in government in kind of a broad way. | ||
| And what frustrates me about Doge is there's not one thing they're either uncovering generally or specifically that people knew or should have known was going on in terms of waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| And supposedly no one would really support, yet it's been going on and no one's been doing anything about it. | ||
| So it's a real remarkable effort to drain the swamp in terms of the Doge effort. | ||
| I know we're short on time. | ||
| Time for a couple more questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, sure. | |
| ART has been waiting, Colorado Springs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democrat line, go ahead. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I'd like to ask you specifically if Trump deserves to be impeached. | ||
| And if not, why not? | ||
| Because there's no impeachable offense that I'm aware of that would require his impeachment or justify his impeachment. | ||
| I know the left wanted to impeach him as soon as he got into office in 2017, and I guess they want to impeach him now for reasons I'm not familiar with. | ||
| Michael, Del Ray Beach, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on, but Tom Fitton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My understanding is that the designers of the Constitution had three sections of government, the judicial, the legislatives, and the executives. | |
| And the judicial branch is supposed to be the oversight check about the legislative and the executives. | ||
| And it seems like we're assuming that judges are people with black robes that are political. | ||
| That's my concern. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So it's a concern that he's concerned that people think that's the case. | ||
| Well, you know, the judges, to the degree judges act political, they're going to be treated like politicians. | ||
| And I think that's what Judge Chief, to be fair to Chief Justice Roberts, he's trying to avoid getting judges seen as political figures, but I think. | ||
| Is he succeeding? | ||
| No. | ||
| Because there are just too many judges who, to me, are kind of completely out of control. | ||
| And this anti-Trump animus is ruining the judiciary. | ||
| Is it worse today in terms of judges acting political than 20 years ago, 30 years ago? | ||
| And if so, what changed? | ||
| Is it just Donald Trump? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I do think the anti-Trump animus has kind of made judges who might have otherwise made more sensible rulings engage in political decision-making. | ||
| Do you generally get along with judges? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, you've got to be professional. | ||
| So I get to go into court as client, right? | ||
| I'm not the lawyer, obviously. | ||
| And so I have to sit there quietly and be polite, as I sometimes hear judges do things I don't like. | ||
| But judges respect Judicial Watch because we bring cases that are in good faith and are important. | ||
| And certainly on FOIA, there's really no one else who does FOIA better than Judicial Watch in terms of litigating it and understanding these issues about government records and what should be kept and what should be released under law. | ||
| Why do FOIA cases take so long to get the documents back? | ||
| I mean, there are FOIA requests that come out that are the original request was years or a decade ago that we've seen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, we just had a document request that was, I think, answered after 18 years. | ||
| What was it about? | ||
| It was about the national security investigation into terrorist threats called Able Danger. | ||
| There's a big controversy around 9-11 because some folks thought that Abel Danger had provided some warning lights about an impending terrorist attack that was ignored, and it took forever and a day to get the records out. | ||
| But for all the time it takes to get material out through FOIA, it's a better technique than getting material out through congressional, through congressional subpoenas, because that's a political process and it's rarely enforced at the judicial level. | ||
| And with FOIA, we're in federal court. | ||
| And, you know, in my view, it takes too long, but better late than never. | ||
| This comes back to your frustration about timeliness of cases. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, yeah, I think that's fair. | ||
| I think the court has to, well, to be fair, I don't think the judges are doing anything unethical, but there's too much deference to the federal agencies in letting them string out cases. | ||
| We have a case, for example, on the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, remember the FBI agents. | ||
| That text message case began in 2000, the end of the Trump administration. | ||
| Only now are they finally turning over all the remaining text messages to be reviewed. | ||
| And we haven't even gotten to the part of the fight where we say, okay, what are you withholding and why? | ||
| So it shouldn't take three presidential administrations to get a simple FOIA request answered. | ||
| And if I were Doge, I'd be moving some of those employees over to what I would call the public interest section of the agency to answer FOIA requests. | ||
| Look at Judicial Watch's FOIA's. | ||
| We have about 190 cases pending, most of which are FOIAs. | ||
| One last call. | ||
| David's been waiting in Swensboro, Georgia, Independent. | ||
| David, go ahead. | ||
| You're on with Tom Fitton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Tom, how are you doing? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I just want to make a quick comment and a question. | |
| Depot, he's having about the same batting average as he had when he left office the last time. | ||
| And I appreciate that the man tries. | ||
| I mean, nobody else is pushing the ball as hard as he is. | ||
| But my question is more back to own your FOIA. | ||
| And I learned a lot about FOIA from you today what I didn't already know. | ||
| But the question is, who does the pro bono work for the folks who ain't got the money to go into federal court and afford an attorney? | ||
| I mean, it's just that simple. | ||
| That we the people, we're not with the we people who have got the money. | ||
| And so that's my question. | ||
| Thank you so much for coming on, and you make a lot of sense. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, that's a good point. | ||
| If you don't get a record, you can sue, but it takes money to sue, and Judicial Watch sues in the public interest. | ||
| We often help journalists and just regular citizens. | ||
| We educate them about what they can do, informally help them, sometimes formally represent them, and go to court for others. | ||
| But it's a big challenge. | ||
| You know, citizens should be able to find out what their government's up to without having to file a federal lawsuit. | ||
| And I tell you, these days we have to file a federal lawsuit to find out the time of day, and it's really not acceptable. | ||
| Was there one case that was the reason you started Judicial Watch in the first place? | ||
| Well, I didn't start Judicial Watch. | ||
| It started a little bit before I came on. | ||
| But it was started during the Clinton administration. | ||
| And there was gamesmanship initially in the Clinton administration. | ||
| So this kind of war on transparency or corrupt politicians trying to cover their tracks is nothing new. | ||
| It's been Clinton, Bush, Obama, you know, and then the frustration with Trump is some of his people didn't want to deal with the prior corruption. | ||
| So I hope things change quickly here. | ||
| Tom Fitton, we hope you come back and update us on some of your cases you're working on. | ||
| Judicialwatch.org is where you can go. | ||
| And Tom Fitton's a good follow on X at Tom Fitton. | ||
| Always appreciate the time. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Coming up, it's our open forum. | ||
| It'll be any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about. | ||
| And in that time, we'll also update you on the status of a couple special elections that are taking place today. | ||
| So go ahead and start calling in. | ||
| You'll see the numbers on your screen, and we will get to your calls right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days. | |
| We explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians and authors and through the C-SPAN archives. | ||
| We learn about accomplishments and setbacks and how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to present day. | ||
| This Saturday, the first 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency. | ||
| In 2009, he became the first African-American president and set a record inaugural crowd of close to 2 million people. | ||
| After near collapse of the American economy, President Obama signed a nearly $800 billion economic stimulus plan and a bill on fair pay. | ||
| He also began to lay the groundwork for landmark health care legislation, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. | ||
| Watch our American History TV series, First 100 Days, Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, on this historic day, the House of Representatives opens its proceedings for the first time to televised coverage. | ||
| Since March of 1979, C-SPAN has been your unfiltered window into American democracy, bringing you direct, no-spin coverage of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House. | ||
| Is this Mr. Brian Lamb? | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
| Would you hold one moment, please, for the president? | ||
| It exists because of C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb's vision and the cable industry's support, not government funding. | ||
| But this public service isn't guaranteed. | ||
| All this month, in honor of Founders Day, your support is more important than ever. | ||
| You can keep democracy unfiltered today and for future generations. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
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Your gift today preserves open access to government and ensures the public stays informed. | |
| Donate now at c-SPAN.org/slash donate or scan the code on your screen. | ||
| Every contribution matters. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-SPAN.org slash radio on SiriusXM Radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN Radio. | ||
| Hear our live call-in program, Washington Journal, daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to House and Senate proceedings, committee hearings, news conferences, and other public affairs events live throughout the day. | ||
| And for the best way to hear what's happening in Washington with fast-paced reports, live interviews, and analysis of the day, catch Washington today, weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Here's where we are on Capitol Hill today. | ||
| The House comes in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| The Senate was expected to come in at 10 a.m. Eastern, but Senator Corey Booker holding the floor through the night in a not exactly a filibuster, but a marathon speech going on close to 14 hours at this point and talking about what he calls the crisis of the Trump administration. | ||
| He's been joined by a series of fellow Democratic senators on the floor spelling him for various moments as he continues this marathon effort. | ||
| It's continuing now on the Senate floor. | ||
| That's on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Here's some of the other issues we're covering today on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| In about 45 minutes, it is a confirmation hearing for retired Lieutenant General John Kaine to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | ||
| That is before the Senate Armed Services Committee. | ||
| Again, 9:30 a.m. Eastern, C-SPAN3, also on c-SPAN.org and the free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| So plenty to watch throughout the morning and throughout the day here on the C-SPAN networks from now until the House comes in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| We'll be taking your phone calls. | ||
| It's our open forum. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, the phone lines are yours to do so. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000 is the number. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll also look for your texts and for your social media messages. | ||
| But we will begin on the phones. | ||
| Charlie in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I was just curious that nobody has implied that China didn't release a COVID virus in their own country on purpose. | ||
| That was done to China by intelligence agencies. | ||
| The French built that facility there in Wuhan. | ||
| And Charlie, where are you coming up with this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is my own observations. | |
| I've got to tell you, I'm surprised nobody else has come up with it. | ||
| China didn't release a virus to hurt other people in the heart of their country. | ||
| That was done to China. | ||
| We'll hold off on conspiracy theories. | ||
| Politics, public policy is what we're going for. | ||
| This is Barb in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling about your previous guest. | ||
| I found it interesting and disturbing that he talked about corruption in all the previous administrations all the way back to Clinton, but somehow seems to leave out the extreme corruption of this current administration. | ||
| And the transparency is ridiculous. | ||
| They like the Trump administration likes to talk about how transparent they are, but what an absolute lie and joke that is. | ||
| They gaslight, period. | ||
| One thing Republicans are good at is getting a unified message. | ||
| They have some sort of a daily email, and this is our message today, and everybody's going to be on board with it. | ||
| I follow several Republicans on social media, and it's always the same message all day long. | ||
| Do you follow Tom Fitten? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I do not. | |
| No. | ||
| Are you going to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not likely. | |
| He doesn't, he's not in my. | ||
| I try to follow my local politicians and then also a few that are the wackos out there, the Marjorie Taylor Greens and those people. | ||
| But anyways, the other thing is this attack on our judges has got to stop. | ||
| It's, you know, he also twisted that, making it sound like John Roberts was, you know, saying that, you know, it's just, it's mind-boggling. | ||
| They just have to stop attacking everybody who goes against Donald Trump. | ||
| It's, it's, we are so, we are in authoritarianism. | ||
| And when people, if people don't wake up and realize it's going to affect them, even if you are a Trump supporter, it will affect you. | ||
| So anyway, I'm sorry. | ||
| That's barbarians. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| In Iowa this morning, talking about our previous guest, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. | ||
| Should note that we were expecting another guest in this segment, David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation. | ||
| Due to travel issues, we are going to have to reschedule him this morning, but it allows us in a busy week here in Washington, D.C., to give you more time to talk about the topics that you care about. | ||
| It's our open forum. | ||
| We're also going to talk about some of today's special elections taking place, two key ones in Florida for House seats in Florida to fill vacant seats. | ||
| We'll talk more about that and also a special election as well in Wisconsin. | ||
| So plenty to talk about. | ||
| This is Claude in Seattle, Independent. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yo, good morning. | |
| Your previous guest, Tom Fitton, if he criticized both sides of the political realm, I would have more trust and faith in him because both sides, I think, I think they play the judicial system. | ||
| But you can tell about him that he's only one way, and that's the Donald Trump way. | ||
| So all of his credibility, it just went down the hill. | ||
| But let me say this: to the Donald Trump protege, he's going to mess up his legacy because some things that Donald Trump is doing, his administration, is absolutely, absolutely correct. | ||
| I'm a Democrat. | ||
| There's a lot of things that I believe that the Democrats haven't done. | ||
| And Donald Trump is doing it. | ||
| But not to show any compassionate with the immigration thing is really going to kill his legacy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are people that have been in the United States for years and years and years that have no criminal record, but they haven't become citizens. | |
| He's rounding these people up. | ||
| He's rounding these people up off the street, and they're leaving their homes and their children and their possessions and things. | ||
| And that's just not right. | ||
| And that's going to kill it. | ||
| That's Claude in Seattle. | ||
| This is Raymond in New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My take on this whole thing taking place now is the Biden administration, when he came in, practically dismantled every policy that Trump has instituted, whether it was working or not. | ||
| And before he actually, before he left, he makes some decisions to protect Venezuelans. | ||
| But why can one president use executive power to set some policies and then the other one comes and can get rid of it? | ||
| Raymond, on the floor overnight, your senator from New Jersey, Corey Booker, has been talking about immigration policies along with a lot of other issues. | ||
| He's going on 14 hours of holding the Senate floor. | ||
| Have you watched any of that? | ||
| What do you think of his effort overnight and into today? | ||
| I think we lost Raymond from New Jersey, but this is the senator from New Jersey. | ||
| This was 7 p.m. last night in the Senate, just a few seconds after 7 p.m. Corey Booker beginning his marathon speech on the Senate floor. | ||
| Here's how he started it. | ||
| What's happened in the last 71 days is a patent demonstration of a time where John Lewis's call to everyone has, I think, become more urgent and more pressing. | ||
| And if I think it's a call for our country, I have to ask myself how I'm living these words. | ||
| So tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble. | ||
| I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able. | ||
| I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis. | ||
| And I believe that, not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my off office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended, so many of them identify themselves as Republicans. | ||
| I was saying, Senator Corey Booker, last night, Democrat from New Jersey, he began his marathon speech on the Senate floor. | ||
| It continues at this hour. | ||
| You can watch it over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| Corey Booker did announce just a few moments ago, though, that he plans to pause that speech at about noon Eastern today for the prayer and the pledge for the opening of the Senate day. | ||
| So going at least until noon today, and he's 14 hours in already. | ||
| Looks like he'll wind up being about 17 hours when all is said and done. | ||
| The record, of course, 24 hours. | ||
| Strom Thurmond in the mid-1950s holding the Senate floor for a formal filibuster for more than 24 hours. | ||
| We're taking your calls this morning. | ||
| You can talk about that. | ||
| You can talk about any public policy or political issue that's on your mind. | ||
| It's open forum. | ||
| This is Keith in Indiana, Sellersburg, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Concerning Mr. Fenton, I wanted to ask your question. | ||
| It seems like all these progressive liberal judges are trying to usurp the presidential powers of Article II. | ||
| And is there not some way to go directly to the Supreme Court and let them define what Article II is and so the president can run this country? | ||
| Thanks and have a great day. | ||
| And Keith, we know that the Supreme Court weighed in in a big way on presidential powers, on executive privilege last year. | ||
| You think they need to come back and revisit that issue again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they need to redefine the whole thing, just like these deportations that the president's trying to do from these criminals and murders and stuff. | |
| And these federal judges are trying to stop him from doing that and even trying to stop the Secretary of State, who there's a law in the books that he can pull anybody's visa pretty much for any reason that he wants to. | ||
| And they're trying to stop that, too. | ||
| That's Keith in Indiana. | ||
| We head to Colorado. | ||
| Lewis, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| A couple of quick points. | ||
| 300,000 missing children. | ||
| Thank you, Joe Biden. | ||
| With regard to my financial situation, I've been on Social Security now for six years. | ||
| Inflation in the last four years went up over 20%. | ||
| Social Security went up 5%. | ||
| At that rate, you know, I'm going to be living out of a grocery cart in not too long. | ||
| It's just, could Trump possibly be worse than Biden? | ||
| I think not. | ||
| I don't think the situation could possibly be worse than the one we're in now. | ||
| Remember, they were talking about eggs? | ||
| Nobody's talking about eggs. | ||
| What about the Statue of Liberty? | ||
| John, what happened to that? | ||
| Is France going to come and take it? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| We have the largest economy in the world. | ||
| Everyone wants a piece of it. | ||
| The tariff thing, people don't understand. | ||
| And my last comment, John, with regard to the faux Republicans that call in and complain about Trump, you got to really, you got to just challenge him. | ||
| Did they vote for Biden instead of Trump back in 2020? | ||
| That's Lewis in the Centennial State to the Lone Star State. | ||
| This is Carrie Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| And it's Terry. | ||
| They always say Carrie for some reason. | ||
| Go ahead, Terry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| You know, it shows up on the phone lines as Carrie, not Terry. | ||
| But we'll fix that for you, Terry. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Okay, so three really short things. | ||
| One is on SignalGate. | ||
| So I am a military mom. | ||
| And when things like this that were shared, as a military family, we can't even post anything even remotely like that on Facebook. | ||
| We can't talk about where our kids are, you know, out in public, where they are based or anything like that. | ||
| For me, my child is in the Navy. | ||
| And so when they're out to sea, some of the information that was shared in that chat, were that to get out, comms for my child, for me to be able to speak to my child, they are cut off for note with no explanation. | ||
| So I really think people need to care more about that because it's vital to our national security and to military families that they keep things like that close to the vest. | ||
| Terry, what do you think will come of this? | ||
| Do you think anybody will lose their job? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't. | |
| And that's the really terrible thing about this. | ||
| It is such an insult to military families for the president to say he doesn't care. | ||
| He doesn't know anything about Signal. | ||
| He doesn't know anything about it, which that's a whole other issue. | ||
| When people talk about Joe Biden not being mentally there, this president never knows anything that's going on. | ||
| But he said he doesn't care. | ||
| They are saying that the issue is closed for them. | ||
| Well, it's not closed for military families and people in the military. | ||
| It's disgusting and abhorrent how they're handling this whole situation. | ||
| And no, no one will be accountable. | ||
| And that's the biggest problem. | ||
| And can I just say one more thing? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I've got some other folks waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I understand. | |
| What I would like to ask you guys is if you could have the authors of How Democracies Die, I would encourage everyone that watches C-SPAN that's concerned about where our democracy is to read that book. | ||
| It's by Daniel Zilblatt and Stephen Levinsky. | ||
| And if you guys can maybe have them on one morning, that will be really great and educational. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call, John. | ||
| Happy April Fools and have a good day. | ||
| When did that book come out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe it came out about three or four years ago. | |
| It is an excellent, excellent book. | ||
| What do you like about it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It goes into the history of Germany and some of the other democracies that have fallen and how they ended up doing that and where America is on that spectrum. | |
| And we are, we're there. | ||
| We're past that point. | ||
| And people think democracies died because of a coup. | ||
| It does not. | ||
| It's a slow erosion of your rights. | ||
| And that book is very relatable and allows you to track where we are in terms of where those countries were and how their democracies died. | ||
| So please put authors on one morning. | ||
| Just so you can see it, and for viewers who might be interested in how you describe it, we had them on for a book talk on C-SPAN's book TV on C-SPAN 2 back in 2018, in January of 2018, when that book came out covering a panel that they were on in Cambridge, Massachusetts. | ||
| Easy to find. | ||
| You can just type in how democracies die in quotes, put it all between quotes at the search bar at the top of our page, and that listing will come up and viewers can watch it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Awesome. | |
| Thank you so much, John. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| To Wisconsin, this is Steve Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, John. | |
| A couple things are kind of widespread. | ||
| First off, on this signal gate, I would think that any first-year junior ROTC cadet would have more sense than to put that information out on basically an open channel. | ||
| It's absolutely disgusting that these clowns are not being held to account and being cashiered left and right. | ||
| Number two, Mr. Trump was elected to govern this country, not rule it. | ||
| Someone needs to take him in line and explain to him that all of these decrees and presidential things that he's signing with his magic sharpie is not governing its leading like some sort of monarch, and he's not. | ||
| Anything else you want to add, Steve? | ||
| Personally, I think that Heg Seth and the ones that were in the military on that chat room should be not only cashiered, but should be tried for treason because it's going to impact our ability to gather intelligence from our allies at this point because they won't trust us with their information. | ||
| It will lead to their human intelligence gatherers on the ground in the countries that we're getting intelligence out of. | ||
| That's Steve in Wisconsin on the Signal chat group. | ||
| That was so much of the story of last week and continues to be the story this week, including at the White House yesterday. | ||
| White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt was asked about the status of National Security Advisor Michael Waltz in the wake of that chat leak. | ||
| This is what she had to say. | ||
| As the President has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team. | ||
| And this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned. | ||
| There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again. | ||
| And we're moving forward. | ||
| And the president and Mike Waltz and his entire national security team have been working together very well. | ||
| If you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team. | ||
| Caroline Levitt, yesterday at the White House. | ||
| Back to your phone calls. | ||
| It's open forum. | ||
| About another hour of it this morning. | ||
| The House is coming in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| And again, over on the Senate, it's Corey Booker, his marathon speech, not technically a filibuster because there's not a specific voter piece of legislation that he's trying to block, but speaking about the Trump administration overnight and expected to go at least until noon, perhaps after noon, we'll see what happens. | ||
| But that's happening live on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| This is Carol in Washington Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm in Washington State. | |
| We've been ruled for 40 years by Democrats. | ||
| Our state is a mess. | ||
| We have a sanctuary city which really releases illegals into all parts of our state. | ||
| I was also wanting to respond to the lady whose child's in the Navy. | ||
| My son is also in the Navy. | ||
| He laughs at a lot of this outrage that the Democrats have. | ||
| Nobody's held accountable. | ||
| Nobody. | ||
| Nobody has been held accountable for the Obama or Clinton now for Biden. | ||
| And the outrage for Trump is hilarious. | ||
| None of this would have been known if the reporter hadn't put it out there. | ||
| Where did he, why did he not come out and say, I'm getting this message? | ||
| No, he literally, they held up what was said in Congress so us all could see. | ||
| So, Carol, what did you think about the original story that did not include the timing of the strikes, the fact that the reporter held back what he thought was the most sensitive parts of that conversation, and he didn't release them until the next day after it was just. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why did he even, why didn't he say, I'm on this, I shouldn't be? | |
| You know, he waited so he could censure, you know, it's now been a big story when it didn't need to be. | ||
| I mean, none of you talked about any of the stuff of Biden's. | ||
| Biden's never been held accountable. | ||
| So it's funny to me, the outrage is so biased, even from all of you reporters. | ||
| I've watched it on C-SPAN now for months, the bias that comes across, even watching your faces as you talk to Republicans or Independents that don't agree with you. | ||
| I'm just a normal citizen. | ||
| I am 57 years old. | ||
| I've lived in the state my whole life. | ||
| I've watched what California's done to our state, what California has done to a lot of states. | ||
| And I think people are just tired of it. | ||
| I know that I am. | ||
| As far as this being a huge thing, to me, it's just ridiculous. | ||
| You know, the Democrats are doing nothing but holding back Trump from doing what the people voted for. | ||
| We voted for this. | ||
| This is what we wanted. | ||
| And it takes time to make corrections. | ||
| But, you know, to see so many people outraged that millions of people have been allowed into our country. | ||
| And they're outraged that 100,000 have been taken out, yet there's millions more that need to go. | ||
| You know, I'm watching my parents in their 80s struggle to survive after working into their 70s. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| And it's just really hard to watch. | ||
| That's Carol in Washington. | ||
| More of your phone calls in just a minute, but we want to take viewers now to the Badger State to talk about a key state Supreme Court election. | ||
| Jason Fechner joins us. | ||
| He's an anchor reporter with Spectrum News One out of Wisconsin. | ||
| Jason Fechner, first, why is a Wisconsin state Supreme Court race getting a lot of attention today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
John, wonderful to spend some time with you and your callers here this morning. | |
| A lot of attention, obviously, on Wisconsin over the last few months. | ||
| And I think a lot of people are asking that same question. | ||
| Why does this race for the Wisconsin state Supreme Court keep getting so much attention and so many millions of dollars? | ||
| You know, I think it really comes down to the last few days. | ||
| And I think what we heard from Elon Musk, who was in the Green Bay area on Sunday, giving out millions of dollars to voters who signed his petition ahead of the election here today. | ||
| You heard it from him then. | ||
| He said that obviously the congressional maps are a huge issue in Wisconsin. | ||
| Wisconsin clearly a 50-50 state over the last few election cycles, the last couple decades, some might argue. | ||
| And we have six members of the House right now who are Republicans and just two Democratic members in that delegation as well. | ||
| There's nothing before the state Supreme Court currently, but you also heard it from minority leader Hakeem Jeffries last week on a podcast saying that, you know, there's an opportunity to revisit this as quickly as possible in Wisconsin. | ||
| And when you've got 218 Republicans currently serving in the House to 213 Democrats, and Speaker Mike Johnson can basically afford two defections at this point, two seats in the House potentially mean a lot. | ||
| So that's one of the big national issues that has so many eyes focused on the Badger State until the polls close here at 8 o'clock our time this evening. | ||
| So who's running today in this race and what should viewers be looking for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, ahead of 2023, Republicans, or rather conservatives, it's a nonpartisan race here, had had a majority on the state Supreme Court. | |
| Sometimes a 5-2 majority, sometimes a 4-3 majority. | ||
| And that all shifted in 2023 with the election of Liberal Justice Janet Protosowitz. | ||
| So Liberals all of a sudden control the ideology of the state Supreme Court. | ||
| They are looking to hold that 4-3 majority throughout the course of the day today. | ||
| Dane County Judge Susan Crawford running against conservative leaning judge Brad Schimmel out of Waukesha County here. | ||
| He's a former attorney general as well. | ||
| So a lot of push behind Schimmel to try to shift this ideological balance back in favor of conservatives. | ||
| Elon Musk said basically the future of humankind essentially hinges on the balance of this race in Wisconsin. | ||
| So a fascinating few hours ahead here. | ||
| And when will we know tonight? | ||
| Are we expecting results this evening? | ||
| When do polls close? | ||
| And what has the polling told us going into this election? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the polling so far is neck and neck, everything more or less within the margin of error right now. | |
| There are five or six polls cited at RealClearPolitics.com. | ||
| And in all but one of those, Crawford has a very narrow lead over the conservative candidate, but all of those, again, within the margin of error here. | ||
| The Marquette Law School poll, an institution in Wisconsin out of Milwaukee, going into this about a month ago had so many voters undecided about who they were going to vote for or saying that they simply didn't know a lot about either of those candidates. | ||
| And I think as time has gone on, that's why it has really become kind of a referendum on Trump and Elon Musk here as well. | ||
| So polls close at 8 o'clock. | ||
| As of yesterday, there were more than 660,000 absentee votes that were already in across the state. | ||
| That's about 12% of the 3.8 million registered voters here in Wisconsin. | ||
| The big issue, of course, that comes up, it came up in 2020, it came up in 2024 in the Senate race here, and it might surely come up again this evening. | ||
| There is a law on the books in Wisconsin. | ||
| Wisconsin, just one of a handful of states out there, that doesn't allow the processing of these absentee ballots until the polls open on Election Day. | ||
| So polls open here at 7 o'clock our time this morning, and clerks across the state throughout these 72 counties here are able to start processing those ballots. | ||
| In certain communities that use a central count location like Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, their tallies don't come out until everything is in. | ||
| So depending on how many votes come in throughout the course of the day, how many hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots are tracked across the state, we might not get firm results on this race until the overnight hours. | ||
| Of course, that played out in a very big way in 2020 when it appeared that President Donald Trump was set to win re-election in Wisconsin. | ||
| And the big ballot dump, as he called it, came in kind of overnight in Milwaukee County. | ||
| And Trump went on to lose Wisconsin then. | ||
| In 2024, in November, not as big a deal. | ||
| Trump won Wisconsin again, but now the failed Republican Senate candidate, Eric Hovedy, has kind of brought that up. | ||
| And the conservative leaning judge in today's race has also started to talk about it. | ||
| He's pushed for a big early vote get out across Wisconsin saying make it too big to rig. | ||
| So we'll kind of see the talking points as they play out. | ||
| But once again, polls close here at 8 o'clock our time this evening. | ||
| And I believe that a lot of us are in for a very long night yet again across the Badger State. | ||
| Jason Fechner is joining us from Spectrum News One, Wisconsin, to talk about this race. | ||
| I want to give viewers a flavor of what voters in the Badger state are seeing in this all-important state Supreme Court race. | ||
| So we're going to show two ads, one from Brad Schimmel, the conservative in this race, and then we're going to follow it by Susan Crawford, the liberal leaning judge in this race. | ||
| Back-to-back ads for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Liberal Susan Crawford is a buzzkill. | |
| She's not right for Wisconsin. | ||
| She's the last thing that we need. | ||
| Because we just voted for Trump. | ||
| To get men out of women's sports. | ||
| Criminals and illegal immigrants off our streets. | ||
| We voted for common sense. | ||
| And liberal Susan Crawford, she could roll it all back. | ||
| She's against everything we just voted for. | ||
| We don't want Susan Crawford. | ||
| Not in Wisconsin. | ||
| Susan Crawford is wrong for Wisconsin. | ||
| Elon Musk is trying to buy this election with ads that lie about Judge Susan Crawford because he knows Sprad Schimmel always helps his campaign donors. | ||
| We don't need Schimmel's corruption on the Supreme Court. | ||
| We need Judge Susan Crawford. | ||
| Jason Fecter, those are two of the ads of many ads. | ||
| Do we know how much money has been spent on this race? | ||
| There's been a lot of attention this week, of course, when it comes to Elon Musk and the money that he's putting into this race. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right, John. | |
| And the latest estimates from WISC Politics, our partners over there as of Monday, had roughly $57 million in so far for Schimmel and his campaign going forward to about $47 million for Crawford and her campaign. | ||
| And you are right. | ||
| A lot of attention, of course, especially by those backing Crawford in this race, has been focused on the donations from Elon Musk, these million-dollar giveaways that have taken place over the last couple of weeks, including the big rally on Sunday in the Green Bay area. | ||
| And we can touch on more of why Green Bay is so critical here in a minute. | ||
| Or rather, Republicans have kind of tried to flip the script on that and say, well, wait, hold on. | ||
| Susan Crawford has gotten money from George Soros. | ||
| $2 million have come into the state Democratic Party and was funneled to her campaign. | ||
| A million and a half from Illinois Democratic Governor J.Britzker as well. | ||
| So they're saying she's getting a lot of outside funding as well. | ||
| She has defended that though, saying that her average donation is $107 across the board. | ||
| And more than two-thirds of the donations that have come in are basically two to one against Schimmel's donations have come from people here in Wisconsin. | ||
| On the flip side of things, Schimmel has defended the donations from Musk, saying he doesn't really know why he's given him all that money, but he's clearly happy to have it right now and he's working to get his message out across 72 counties. | ||
| And again, as a former statewide candidate, he says he knows how difficult that can be. | ||
| So yes, a lot of money for the regular Wisconsinite who's sitting at home. | ||
| Nothing but campaign commercials over the last few weeks, a lot of mailers in the ads as well, and a lot of people knocking on doors all across the Badger State. | ||
| And I guess finally, do want you to touch on the geography issue, Green Bay, but also for voters who aren't familiar to watching an election result night in Wisconsin, where will the votes come in first and how should they be sort of knowledgeable viewers of watching the results come in tonight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, John, and forgive my rudimentary map of Wisconsin here, but this is basically the area here on Green Bay and the three big counties, right? | |
| It's the old hand map, Brown, Otto Game, and Winnebago Counties. | ||
| And the reason that those three are really so important is that they had supported the conservative-leaning Supreme Court candidate back in 2019, and they have since supported the liberal-leaning candidate, the last two election cycles now. | ||
| So a lot of eyes there. | ||
| But really, what we saw in 2024 back in November with the reelection of Donald Trump here, the redder parts of Wisconsin got a little bit redder. | ||
| The bluer parts of Wisconsin, especially the Madison metropolitan area, the Milwaukee metropolitan area, the two biggest metropolitan areas in the state, got bluer. | ||
| So we'll see how turnout is throughout the course of the day and into the evening from both Madison and Milwaukee. | ||
| And we'll see about the turnout in the redder, the more rural parts of Wisconsin, especially those bow counties there, because really there's a lot of uncertainty among farmers in Wisconsin right now about how these tariffs that are set to be announced throughout the course of the day, Wednesday and this week as well, what that will mean for these farmers across Wisconsin. | ||
| We all know that farmers across the country don't really like uncertainty. | ||
| They were hurt by $27 billion in the trade war back in 2018 in Trump's first administration against China, $23 billion back in subsidies as well. | ||
| The current Secretary of Agriculture out there, Brooke Rollins, saying in Iowa yesterday that they're going to take care of their farmers. | ||
| So we'll really see just how much farmers take that to heart going into Election Day or whether that uncertainty potentially keeps them from the polls or potentially has them supporting Crawford in this high-profile high-stakes race. | ||
| We'll find out tonight a good place to go to watch the results. | ||
| Spectrumnews1.com. | ||
| Jason Fechner is anchor and reporter with Spectrum News One out in Wisconsin. | ||
| We do appreciate your time at the start of what's probably going to be a long day for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pleasure to spend some time with you here. | |
| And back to your calls now. | ||
| It's open forum. | ||
| Again, the House coming in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| And if you flip over onto C-SPAN 2, the Senate is in right now because Corey Booker continues his marathon speech on the Senate floor. | ||
| He is on our 14 hours and 20 minutes into that speech. | ||
| We'll give you a sense of what he's saying. | ||
| We'll dip into that now. | ||
| Eerie, because he was describing what went wrong then, which is the same thing here: that we do need to make our country better. | ||
| We do need to have a bolder vision for health care, a bolder vision for Social Security. | ||
| We need to make them work for the people, but we're not doing it here in this body. | ||
| And this man who's not acting like a president, but is trashing our constitutional traditions, is violating our laws as he's getting tied up in court but ignoring court orders. | ||
| And when he gets a decision he doesn't like, he trashes, he trashes the judges so badly that the Supreme Court itself finds that it has to go out and tell him to stop it. | ||
| What stopped health care from being taken away in the last time wasn't the persuasive powers of anybody in this side of the political aisle in the Senate convincing anybody over there. | ||
| I would like to think it was my eloquence with Lisa Murkowski. | ||
| I would like to think it was my high-minded intellect that somehow it was damaged playing too much football, but that somehow I got a right argument to Susan Collins. | ||
| That wasn't it. | ||
| I'd like to think it was my ability to. | ||
| New Jersey Democrat Corey Booker on the Senate floor. | ||
| If you want to keep watching, again, head over to C-SPAN 2 and you can watch his full remarks. | ||
| It's expected to go at least until noon. | ||
| He said he would pause for the Pledge of Allegiance and for the gathering in of the day in the Senate, and he may pick it up on the other side of that as well. | ||
| Back to your phone calls in open forum. | ||
| This is Kinte Waiting in Sacramento, California. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| I think it's a time of serendipity. | ||
| And, you know, like history kind of repeats itself and karma kind of manifests. | ||
| And that Trump is exactly the hate that hate produced. | ||
| Just like America said that's what Malcolm X was, that's what Trump is. | ||
| And it's the zeitgeist of the times. | ||
| That's Kintang, California. | ||
| This is Al in the Garden State in Heights Town, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I want to know why President Trump isn't furious. | ||
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I've been in Vietnam nine months. | ||
| Why is he not, he's the commander-in-chief, jumping up and down why we are telegraphing all these bombings of another country and almost coming to war. | ||
| And he doesn't know nothing about it. | ||
| He said it on TV. | ||
| He knew nothing about it. | ||
| You know, this president has got to he won't listen to the experts, the economists, that these tariffs are detrimental to our country. | ||
| Why doesn't he change it? | ||
| There's ways to go about it. | ||
| And he is not taking the leadership to accomplish this. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| It's Alan, New Jersey. | ||
| Mike is in the Keystone State, Mechanicsburg, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just, you know, everybody is quite concerned about Social Security and Medicaid, and understandably so. | ||
| But I really want everybody to understand what happened during the Biden administration. | ||
| 5.5 million illegal immigrants were given Social Security numbers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
1.3 million were given Medicaid benefits, maximum pay, maximum inclusion. | |
| If you're worried about Medicaid and Social Security, you ought to be concerned about that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Mike. | ||
| This is Michelle, LA, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm extremely concerned about the funding cuts to the National Institute of Health. | |
| It is the leading clinical trials researcher, and the universities are going to be losing a lot of their funding for that research, especially for cancer, infectious diseases. | ||
| And if Trump were really concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse, it wouldn't be by cutting the National Institute of Health. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Michelle. | ||
| This is Gary in Maine, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, John. | ||
| You still don't have any control of your cameras in the congressional houses. | ||
| I'd like to see the empty chambers every day. | ||
| Now, let some dumb hick from Maine explain to you how our Republican government works. | ||
| We are made up of 400 kings, some good, some bad, some right, some left, and they pay for our week, they pay for the people to write the bills for our congressmen and senators. | ||
| And if you want to know where you stand on the Golden Pole, anyone making $0,000 to $50,000 a year is a slave to our consumer economy. | ||
| Anyone making $50,000 to $400,000 a year are basically peasants. | ||
| Anyone making over $400,000 a year are just subjects of the kingdom. | ||
| So until we get the money out of politics, you're just going to have kings and queens and princes and princesses having the generational wealth for years to come. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| That's Gary up in Maine. | ||
| It's almost 9:30 on the East Coast at 9:30 before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. | ||
| A key hearing that you can watch on C-SPAN 3 for the president's pick for the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | ||
| Here's a story. | ||
| That's the promotion for it, 9:30. | ||
| You can watch on C-SPAN.org, C-SPAN3, and the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Here's the story from the Washington Post. | ||
| President Donald Trump announced Lieutenant John Daniel Kaine as his choice to be the country's next top general in February. | ||
| He's 56 years old, and as the Post describes him, he is a relative mystery man in Washington. | ||
| He'll be less mysterious today, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. | ||
| Kane, who is likely to be confirmed by the Republican majority in the Senate, as the Post says, joined the Air National Guard after graduating the Virginia Military Institute in 1990, like his father, retired Colonel Steve Kaine. | ||
| He wanted to be a fighter pilot. | ||
| On September 11, 2001, he was a major in the D.C. National Guard at Andrews Air Force Base. | ||
| He deployed overseas in the aftermath of 9-11, flying to support the war in Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. launched military action there in 2001. | ||
| He deployed again in 2003. | ||
| From 2005 to 2008, he served as a White House fellow and then a policy director in the President George W. Bush administration in his role on counterterrorism, deploying to Iraq again in 2008 to serve as a commander of a joint special operations task force. | ||
| We'll be learning more about him at his confirmation hearing today. | ||
| Again, it's getting ready to get underway, and you can watch live on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| C-SPAN 2, Corey Booker, still holding the Senate floor and is expected to do so at least until noon Eastern today. | ||
| And here on C-SPAN, it's open forum in the Washington Journal, about another half hour until the House comes in and we bring you gavel to gavel coverage. | ||
| This is Tanya in Capitol Heights, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just want to say that, you know, you can't go to other countries and, you know, and just illegally assimilate. | ||
| Now, Donald Trump is on the mark, and, you know, I just want to say, keep doing what he's doing. | ||
| It's funny that initially when they march to this country with their country flags, you know, coming over as caravans, actually, that's an international, you know, declaration of war when you march to another country with another country flag. | ||
| Now, things didn't work out for them, and now they have started saying they just come to this country to work and make a better life for them. | ||
| So our president, Donald Trump, he's on it. | ||
| I just love that man, and I would vote for him. | ||
| I, you know, since Susan Roosevelt, you know, has not, we haven't had a third term, fourth term president, third term president. | ||
| But I would vote for Donald Trump again. | ||
| I love that guy. | ||
| Tanya, what's your feelings about the 22nd Amendment barring President Trump from running for a third term? | ||
| I don't think we lost. | ||
| Tanya, this is Elizabeth in California, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Suzanne, and thank you for the fabulous job you do. | |
| I don't know how you maintain your cool, but someday I hope you give us all the behind the scenes of how you be so fair for everyone calling in. | ||
| I just wanted to comment on the concept of the swamp, your earlier presenter. | ||
| I believe that that used to be defined by money in politics. | ||
| And I think Trump is a personification of money in politics. | ||
| And I mean, you just can see it left and right. | ||
| It doesn't even get any coverage because of the horrible policies he's trying to enact now. | ||
| But you've got Musk, you know, he's trying to buy an election up there in Wisconsin today. | ||
| But I also wanted to talk about Trump. | ||
| And he's really killing America's brand. | ||
| You know, what happened in Greenland, you had people holding up signs, Yankee go home and make America go away is the new term for MAGA. | ||
| And I just wanted to say, I had the opportunity to visit Greenland a couple of years ago, and it's such a magnificent place. | ||
| When you're flying over, you look down and you see just rivers of ice. | ||
| There are no homes in the middle. | ||
| It's just rivers of ice, massive movement toward the sea. | ||
| What were you doing in Greenland, Elizabeth? | ||
| What were you there to visit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just on a cruise that came from Iceland, and then we flew over to Greenland, and then you end up on a ship on the far side and we went into little inlets. | |
| And one of the points I wanted to make is people are so concerned about their environment that before you can even step off the ship and get on a little zodiac to take you to the faraway spot and a nature spot, | ||
| you have to put on special boots and then you have to step in vats of specially prepared solution so that they're afraid of even seeds getting, you know, people have hiking boots, the seeds get embedded in the cleats, and they want to make sure that their environment is preserved from intrusion. | ||
| And it's a magnificent place. | ||
| And the one thing that people don't ever mention is that because they're affiliated with Denmark, everybody gets a free college education. | ||
| And the native people that we spoke to were extremely well educated and erudite. | ||
| And they get free education to any university if they can get in. | ||
| And they also get child care and those kinds of services. | ||
| So I don't think that they're going to want to become Americans because we do not offer those things. | ||
| Elizabeth, thanks for the call from California. | ||
| Bill's waiting next in Milwaukee Independent. | ||
| Bill, good morning. | ||
| Are you paying attention to this state Supreme Court race today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sort of, but what I wanted to get into is to correct some of these people's idea about immigrants collective Social Security. | |
| They don't collect it. | ||
| They pay into it when they work, but they don't collect it. | ||
| Even American citizens can collect Social Security until they're 72. | ||
| You know, I didn't start collecting until I was 75. | ||
| So this idea that the immigrants are collecting Social Security is wrong. | ||
| And if anybody out there knows different, they can correct me. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Great show. | ||
| Keep going, C-SPAN. | ||
| That's Bill in Milwaukee. | ||
| This is Denise Akron, Ohio, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| One reason why the Mexicans don't try to stop the illegals coming in here, like back when Joe Biden was president, is because they make $28 billion a year off of our economy. | ||
| They send their people up here to work. | ||
| They don't spend it in our economy. | ||
| They send it back down there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So why would they try to stop that? | |
| And, you know, that's why Trump had to do something about the border. | ||
| But I want to reiterate what that guy said earlier about all these recipients, all these illegal aliens. | ||
| There was, it went from like 270,000 people getting social security numbers to 2024. | ||
| There was 2 million and something people getting social security numbers. | ||
| This was found by Doge. | ||
| They said that these people were illegal aliens, most of them. | ||
| I'm sure they were the dead people. | ||
| So they're recycling these Social Security numbers. | ||
| These people that are coming out. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| To what end? | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| Because they're coming into our country. | ||
| They're making all kinds of money. | ||
| They're building 10,000 square foot homes down in Nicaraguagua. | ||
| They look like mansions that are on the Pacific coast. | ||
| These people have been doing this for a long time, and Trump is just trying to stop this. | ||
| Thanks, Denise. | ||
| This is Amy in Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I'm calling about the tariff. | ||
| There are several things I don't understand. | ||
| Trump is putting 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars. | ||
| And one question I have is: does he expect every car in the world to be made in America and all of the parts for the cars to be made in America? | ||
| Toyota, especially, is said to be hit hard by the tariffs since their share of sales in the United States is so large. | ||
| And I guess one reason I'm upset is I've driven a Prius for seven years, and I like getting 500 miles to a tank of gas. | ||
| But anyway, another question I have. | ||
| So, Amy, this is what President Trump had to say on foreign cars in an interview with NBC News. | ||
| I couldn't care less about the cost going up because if the prices on foreign cars go up, they're going to buy American cars. | ||
| I hope they raise their prices because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars, and we have plenty. | ||
| How do you take that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I take that as, well, a lot of people buy foreign cars because they don't want American cars. | |
| And like I say, the Prius, I've driven it for seven years since 2007. | ||
| I like getting over 50 miles a gallon with my gas. | ||
| And so I read, I mean, people can read it online about what Japan is saying about these tariffs and how it will affect Toyota and the other, like Subaru and other cars that come from Japan. | ||
| But another thing is, why isn't he putting tariffs on other products that come over here, such as clothing, shoes, because a lot of those products are made overseas. | ||
| And my answer for China is that his paraphernalia of Trump stuff is made in China. | ||
| So why would he put tariffs on clothing and other things that are made in China? | ||
| It just doesn't make any sense to me. | ||
| That's Amy in Virginia. | ||
| This is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Their lead editorial today, a $6 trillion Trump tax increase question mark. | ||
| The president says he couldn't care less about pricier cars. | ||
| They write as a political matter, Mr. Trump's I couldn't care less quote about price increases is likely going to show up in Democratic campaigns in their ads next year. | ||
| Polling shows most voters don't think Mr. Trump is focusing enough on reducing prices. | ||
| 64% say not enough in the CBS news survey that was released over the weekend. | ||
| Mr. Trump won't be on the ballot in 2026, they write, but you can bet TV ads will link Republicans in Congress to Mr. Trump and to those comments. | ||
| This is Scott in Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I wish I would have been prepared for this, but I don't, I try not to watch this show too much anymore because it's kind of turned into Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, land of make-believe. | ||
| It's really difficult to see this country go down the way it's going. | ||
| I've been watching this show for probably 10 years, a little less now that Trump's been elected again. | ||
| I just'm totally baffled and don't understand how people can give Republicans credibility anymore when they constantly fight for their right to lie and brainwash. | ||
| Now, a lot of them that go on your show, you guys said, come out and said they have to be allowed to, they can't be fact-checked because they've and people that come. | ||
| Remember, people can't be fact-checked. | ||
| They hound you and they hound your other announcers saying, you have to listen to me. | ||
| You have to listen to me. | ||
| That's my right. | ||
| But it's not your job to agree with them. | ||
| It's your job to give the facts. | ||
| And the fact is, my Republican brother, who I relate with totally, I used to be a Republican, is all in for lying and brainwashing the American people. | ||
| And that's the only thing I'm against with the Republicans: they fight like hell and they have since the very beginning to be able to lie and brainwash. | ||
| And I'm against that because eventually your whole country is going to love Russia. | ||
| Eventually your whole country said it's all right to lie. | ||
| And I just ain't prepared for this call, but it's very difficult to hear all these brainwashed people say, oh, I love Trump. | ||
| Oh, it's okay to lie. | ||
| Don't you lie. | ||
| You have customers that are people that call in that say that all the time. | ||
| And when people harass you and threaten you, saying they know where you live, they're going to get you. | ||
| You don't have to put up with that. | ||
| And I won't, no matter after 20 years. | ||
| So I'm sorry I'm so negative. | ||
| I hate being negative, but I'm against brainwashing the American people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That's Scott in Pennsylvania. | ||
| This is Brad in International Falls, Minnesota, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I haven't talked to you for quite a while, and I haven't been on for a while, but a few points I want to make. | ||
| First of all, you know, you've been talking about this Wisconsin Supreme Court deal. | ||
| And people forget that, you know, there's articles out there that you can read that there's $80 million going into it. | ||
| But what people don't realize is that $20 million went to the conservative and $60 million went to, you know, that Crawford. | ||
| And I mean, so, I mean, they're always saying that Musk is trying to buy, Musk is trying, Trump is trying to buy. | ||
| Well, that's crazy talk. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But the one thing that you always have is that you have all these newspaper articles on your thing. | ||
| And I was just wondering if you happen to get a chance to see The Hill where they're saying Trump was right about the Ukraine. | ||
| And he was. | ||
| And now we know, I mean, the gentleman wrote from the Hill, and I hope that you show that to your people, you know, the audience, that he really was right on that. | ||
| And so you're talking about an op-ed in the Hill newspaper, Brad? | ||
| Who's the author? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| I'd have to see it on my phone. | ||
| I'm on my phone. | ||
| I can't tell you, but you can look it up. | ||
| It was just put out. | ||
| I mean, I put it on Colbachar's thing, but it's about the Hill and how he regrets having to write this op-ed for Trump was being right. | ||
| And it's spot on, okay? | ||
| And he goes right through how it works, how it happened, and where we got to be, where we got to be. | ||
| So it was really, really, really good. | ||
| So Brad in Minnesota, the Hill newspaper, thehill.com, easy enough to find if you want to check out their opinion section. | ||
| Go ahead and keep calling in. | ||
| As Brad pointed out, we were talking about the state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. | ||
| And we should note, there's also a couple of very important special elections taking place in the Sunshine State of Florida. | ||
| To talk about those races, we're joined now by Kimberly Leonard, Politico Florida's playbook author Kimberly Leonard. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Explain to viewers what's on the ballot today in Sunshine State. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have two special elections in Florida for the U.S. House. | |
| And this is happening at a time where Republicans are really hoping to grow their margins. | ||
| And Democrats are hoping that they have something to show that they are making inroads, that in either their messaging or that their candidates are somehow figuring out how to gain their footing after big losses in November against Trump. | ||
| So the first is in Florida's first congressional district, and that is the seat that Matt Gates used to hold. | ||
| And then the other race is in the sixth congressional district, which is the seat that Michael Waltz used to hold. | ||
| So names that are very familiar nationally, especially with the news developments in the last week. | ||
| And these are both Republican seats that the Republican Party candidate won by 30 points or so back in November. | ||
| Why are they getting so much attention today? | ||
| And which one is the one we should be paying more attention to if we're looking for a party flip? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the one getting a lot of attention is the 6th congressional district. | |
| The candidate who's running there is Randy Fine, and he's a state senator. | ||
| And for those who might not know, Randy Fine is someone who made a lot of news a little over a year ago because he flipped his endorsement from Governor Ron DeSantis to Trump during the primary. | ||
| He basically put out an op-ed saying that DeSantis had not done enough to fight anti-Semitism in Florida. | ||
| It got a lot of attention at the time. | ||
| And it was something that really, you know, brought him then close, of course, to Trump World. | ||
| And that's why Trump endorsed him for the congressional seat. | ||
| And he is up against a progressive candidate whose name is Josh Wheel. | ||
| And the reason it's really tight, or at least seem that way, because I do think at the end of the day that it'll end up going Republican just because of the dynamics in the district, is because the Democratic candidate raised a ton of money. | ||
| And it was mostly small dollar donors. | ||
| It was $10 million. | ||
| And a lot of it was out of state, largely through those social media ads that you see. | ||
| And he ran on a message of, look, we need to get these House seats in order so that we can have folks in Congress who can help to raid in Trump's agenda. | ||
| So it was a message that really worked for small dollar donors across the U.S. If you look at donors from mostly blue states. | ||
| And so he's gotten a lot of attention for that. | ||
| And polling by Tony Fabricio, who was Trump's pollster, also showed that the race was super close. | ||
| So it made Republicans very nervous. | ||
| Trump did a teletown hall to help out. | ||
| Don Jr. got involved. | ||
| You saw interviews with Steve Bannon. | ||
| They really sent out the Calvary because they were so nervous. | ||
| And I could talk about the other race, too. | ||
| It's not considered as close, but it's still, again, getting a lot of attention because of the closed margins. | ||
| And on the Republican side is Jimmy Petronas, who's the state chief financial officer. | ||
| And then Gay Valamont is the Democratic candidate. | ||
| She ran against Matt Gates before, and she is a gun safety advocate. | ||
| So the reason there's a lot of attention is just to kind of see what messaging sticks for Democrats because they're nervous about how to reclaim their leadership and their positions heading into the midterms. | ||
| And so this will be the earliest test of that. | ||
| And that's the question on the coming back to the sixth district race, the Mike Waltz seat, the one that's viewed to be closer here. | ||
| You talked about sort of the parade of big name Republicans who have gone down after this polling scare. | ||
| What is the Democratic strategy? | ||
| Do they send in, have they sent in big name Democrats to try to turn this race? | ||
| How do they try to appeal to a district that was a 30% Republican margin not four months ago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, the first thing I need to say is that Florida has really slipped out of Democrats' grasp. | |
| I mean, very significantly, really in 2022 with Ron DeSantis' re-election, but even more so in 2024 when Trump won by 13 points there. | ||
| Now, as a reminder, he won by only three points there in 2020. | ||
| So huge inroads for Republicans. | ||
| Democrats have really been trying to seize on very specific messaging, blaming Elon Musk for federal workforce cuts. | ||
| They say that Trump is going to cut Social Security, even though he says that he's not. | ||
| And they also say that voters are telling them that they're frustrated, that things are still really expensive. | ||
| And so they're leaning into that. | ||
| You know, Trump said he would fix all this and he hasn't is the messaging that they're using. | ||
| So will it be effective? | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| If it really isn't, it could be difficult for Democrats to make the case in Florida again. | ||
| You know, here they think they're super close. | ||
| They don't need to win today. | ||
| They just need to get close, basically, to have some sort of an argument to say invest in Florida. | ||
| So that's what we're closely watching is not just the results, but the margins. | ||
| And then help viewers understand how the results are going to come in, timing here. | ||
| Traditionally for a special election in Florida, do we find out that night? | ||
| Is this the sort of thing that we wait weeks for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no, no. | |
| That's the nice thing about being a Florida politics reporter. | ||
| I can go to bed at a normal time usually unless there's a lot of analysis to be reporting right afterwards. | ||
| No, Florida counts the votes as they come in and early voting and mail and voting. | ||
| So we should know very soon after the polls close. | ||
| The one thing I will note is that the one in District 1 is actually technically Central time. | ||
| So that'll come about an hour later. | ||
| So probably around 7, 8 o'clock. | ||
| I think by 9, we'll have a good sense of where everything lies, if not even sooner than that. | ||
| And as Politico's Florida Playbook author, where are you going to be tonight? | ||
| And are you going to be giving analysis at Politico as the results come in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll be writing. | |
| That's my main job. | ||
| I sometimes get to go on television, but I am in Miami. | ||
| That's where I'm based. | ||
| I do travel around the state quite a bit, but I am just working out of my hometown tonight just because there are a lot of stories that we're following all over Florida. | ||
| There's a lot happening even in Tallahassee that we're watching. | ||
| So trying to get my pulse on everything. | ||
| There's a lot in Florida to be able to keep track of. | ||
| And all those stories available at Politico.com and the Florida Playbook. | ||
| Kimberly Leonard is a politics reporter and the author of the Florida Playbook. | ||
| Appreciate your time at the start of a busy day down in the Sunshine State. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| About 10 minutes before the House comes in, we will continue with your phone calls, open forum until we take you to gavel gavel coverage of the House. | ||
| Carolyn has been waiting in Arizona line for Democrats. | ||
| Carolyn, thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The sun's coming out here now. | ||
| Speaking of sunshine, I think that our last summer kind of outbaked Florida. | ||
| But anyway, we have elections that are going to be to replace Raul Grijalva. | ||
| And I certainly hope that the Tucson area people will go Democratic and give us, you know, some strength in the House. | ||
| As far as the economy, when they talk about tariffs, they have insulted our neighbors, Mexico and Canada. | ||
| The repairs that are going to cost are going to go up on these overly expensive cars that are going to be put out there. | ||
| And then, of course, your insurance costs are going to be screaming at you, too. | ||
| The other thing is descendants of many veterans, one gold star. | ||
| And Arizona is insulted when you take away things about code talkers and buffalo soldiers and the Native American people. | ||
| So I wanted to say that Trump is nothing but chaos as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| And Wallace Fegner had a statement that I always keep, and it talks about how you can plan your life. | ||
| And hours and minutes, all of a sudden, you find yourself undone like you're a slug when salt is poured all over you, right up until the moment you find yourself dissolving into foam. | ||
| You can still believe you are doing fine. | ||
| And we need Americans to quit being slugs to stand up because we're not doing fine. | ||
| So thank you so much for C-SPAN. | ||
| I really do appreciate the efforts that you put out to hear all different kinds of opinions. | ||
| And have a good day. | ||
| That's Carolyn in Arizona talking about that special election to replace the late Rahul Grijalva out in Arizona September. | ||
| September 23rd is the date of that special general election. | ||
| There'll be a special primary in July to fill that seat. | ||
| The announcement coming back at the end of last month, it may have even just come out yesterday, but those dates now on the board. | ||
| This is Catherine in Alabama Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am so delighted with the lady from Arizona. | ||
| I think that the only way that we're ever going to turn this mess, this NESS, around is by voting Donald Trump out of office if we ever have another election. | ||
| I wanted to mention something else other than that, though. | ||
| I read in the paper yesterday that, and I want everybody to take this list of countries down, that South Korea, Japan, and China, that South Korea, Japan, and China had entered into a trade agreement. | ||
| And I wondered if anybody else had found that notable or to say the least interesting. | ||
| I think it's most interesting. | ||
| Thank you for your show, and thank you for your time. | ||
| Catherine, why do you find it so interesting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think we've already shot ourselves in the foot with NATO, our friends, and on the European front. | |
| And it appears we're destroying the Asian front, too. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| I mean, it seems that if you want to be an isolationist, there's a line in a movie, and I want to share this with everyone. | ||
| The worst poverty in the world is to have no friends at all. | ||
| And I think when the United States isolates itself from all its friends, and look what we're doing to Canada and Mexico, when we isolate ourselves from all our friends, then we suffer the worst poverty. | ||
| That's Catherine in the Yellowhammer State. | ||
| This is Tonda in the Buckeye State. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| I just wanted to call in and finish a response that you didn't get from Denise in Ohio earlier. | ||
| She had talked about Mexicans coming up here working and using Social Security numbers. | ||
| And you had asked to what end. | ||
| My husband used to work for a company out of Jersey that actually would hire illegals frequently. | ||
| And the reason for the Social Security numbers being used, there would be 20, 30 different people who used the exact same Social Security number. | ||
| And they had to use it to, of course, apply for a job. | ||
| But that was never caught by anyone anywhere. | ||
| Tonda, thanks for telling your story. | ||
| This is Bob in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I'd like to comment on the bill that's supposed to be coming up for the House on this voting by phone for the people that have a newly birth in their family. | ||
| I find it kind of hypocritical if a lot of these representatives won't hold open town meetings, but have teleconferences with the phone. | ||
| So that's just one of my many complaints. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| Bob, this is Samuel in Wisconsin. | ||
| Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| What's on your mind, Samuel? | ||
| Are you paying attention to that state Supreme Court race? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, absolutely. | |
| We can't miss it here with all the ads. | ||
| They've been running for the last month. | ||
| I'd just like to make a comment, observation. | ||
| To me, it seems like it's to a point where we're going to see a federal judge declare the Constitution unconstitutional. | ||
| You're talking about judicial activism, Samuel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Do you trust the Supreme Court, Samuel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I trust the Supreme Court. | |
| Yes, sir, I do. | ||
| Okay, that's Samuel in Wisconsin. | ||
| About five minutes left in today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Again, the House coming in at 10 a.m. Eastern over in the Senate, it's Corey Booker still holding the Senate floor, expected to do so at least until noon and possibly afterwards. | ||
| We told you about that hearing in the Armed Services Committee that's happening right now on the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one other hearing to tell you about today, a House hearing on the JFK files on the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. | ||
| The House Oversight Subcommittee is holding a hearing on the release of files from that investigation. | ||
| That's happening at 2 p.m. Eastern, and we're going to show that on C-SPAN3, also C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPANNOW app. | ||
| And as well, later this evening, we've been talking about this Wisconsin state Supreme Court election. | ||
| The spending on that election reaching record levels, as we've told you, Wisconsin voters headed to the poll. | ||
| We'll have simulcasted coverage from the results from voters headed to the polls from Spectrum News, Wisconsin. | ||
| That's live tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPANC-SPAN.org and the free C-SPAN now app. | ||
| So this race we've been talking about in this hour. | ||
| You can watch the results as they come in here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Thanks to our friends over there at Spectrum. | ||
| This is Alberto in Miami, just about four minutes left here. | ||
| Republican Alberto, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, my mind is Donald Trump is doing a great job with his country. | |
| He's doing an excellent job. | ||
| I'm very proud. | ||
| I am Donald Trump's supporter, and I'm so glad he's doing a good job with this country. | ||
| And another thing I'd like to call you is the Democrats. | ||
| They like too much about Donald Trump. | ||
| They talk big lies about him. | ||
| I don't like that. | ||
| So I always want to keep a support Donald Trump. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| That's Alberto. | ||
| This is Sheila, North Carolina Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, John. | |
| I just wanted to say I am a Democrat, but I voted for Trump. | ||
| And I just think that a lot of people in this world need change, and a lot of people are scared of it. | ||
| And so that's all I just want to say. | ||
| Like I voted for Biden and I didn't see a change at all. | ||
| And they said Donald Trump isn't changed anything and he's been in office for three months. | ||
| But Trump hasn't, Biden didn't change anything. | ||
| And I waited four years for something to happen and nothing happened. | ||
| It just got worse. | ||
| And with the pandemic and everything, he just wasn't the president that I thought he was. | ||
| So I think that everybody should give Trump a chance. | ||
| And at the end of the day, we already know that he had four years and he did make a little change. | ||
| But, you know, change does take time. | ||
| And I think everybody should just be aware, be ready, and accept change. | ||
| Sheila, what are your top? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all I want to say. | |
| What are your top issues as a Democrat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everything from like my mom with Medicare, Medicaid, especially expenses. | |
| I mean, from top to bottom, you know, I am, you know, middle class, but I am 38. | ||
| And I've been seeing the changes over the last eight years from Obama about it. | ||
| And with Trump in the middle, I just feel like it was just stacking. | ||
| And I think that everybody should just give him a chance. | ||
| Sheila, Democratic leaders have said that Donald Trump will endanger Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| Do you believe the leaders of your party? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, not at all. | |
| I mean, because he's been in office before. | ||
| And when I was working during the time he was in office before, during those four years, I mean, everything as far as the economy, everything was good. | ||
| And once Biden got in, everything just fell. | ||
| So no, I don't believe that at all. | ||
| I think we should just wait and see. | ||
| That's Sheila in North Carolina. | ||
| We'll head to our neighbors to the north to Ontario. | ||
| Gabriel calling in this morning. | ||
| Gabriel, two minutes before the House comes in, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm just thinking that a lot of people don't know that Americans abroad are taxed. | |
| It sounds like an April Fool's Day joke, but it actually is true. | ||
| And I'm trying to figure out how to get media to cover some of the issues I have around that. | ||
| On what exactly, Gabriel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Americans abroad being taxed by the IRS. | |
| Americans abroad being taxed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, they're taxed by the IRS. | |
| Didn't you know that? | ||
| And you think they should not be? |