| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling. | |
| And every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to pre-order your copy today. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Charter Communications. | ||
| Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. | ||
| And we're just getting started. | ||
| Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. | ||
| Charter Communications supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then, the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Hughes previews the coming week in Congress, including the latest on Republicans' budget reconciliation efforts. | ||
| And Schuyler Woodhouse of Bloomberg News previews the week ahead at the White House and News of the Day. | ||
| Also, the Cato Institute's Eric Smith discusses his views on DEI programs and efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle them. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| And good morning and thanks for joining us on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| For the next three hours, we'll talk about what's going on in Washington. | ||
| And most importantly, we'll be hearing your voices. | ||
| Now, we're going to start off this morning a little philosophically. | ||
| That's a tough assignment, I know, for 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, but I think you're up to it. | ||
| There's been a lot of social and economic and political changes going on all over the world right now. | ||
| A lot of uncertainty for some people. | ||
| And are you feeling unsettled? | ||
| Is what we want to ask you this morning. | ||
| Are you feeling unsettled? | ||
| And if so, why? | ||
| Do you consider these changes to be course corrections? | ||
| Is it chaotic? | ||
| What's your view? | ||
| Call in and let us know. | ||
| 202 is the area code for all of our numbers. | ||
| 737-0001 for Republicans. | ||
| Democrats, call in at 202-737-0002. | ||
| Independents, your number is 628-0205. | ||
| And once again, thanks for being with us. | ||
| You can also contact us via social media. | ||
| You can send a text message to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Please include your first name and your city if you would. | ||
| And we are on Facebook and on X. Just remember, at C-SPAN or at C-SPAN, WJ are our handles. | ||
| And again, thanks for being with us this morning. | ||
| We're asking the question, are you feeling unsettled because of some of the political, economic, and social changes going on in the world today? | ||
| There's tariff policy, there's a reordering of the federal government, there's personal finance and retirement issues, China tensions, political protests, all that stuff is going on. | ||
| We just want to get your view on it, whether it's making you unsettled or if you're feeling, you know, that these are necessary changes, course corrections, that type of thing. | ||
| We'll be getting to your calls in just a minute. | ||
| We want to start off this morning, though, with the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Stock market today is already down about a thousand points in the futures. | ||
| Asian stocks plunged as Trump tariff turmoil deepens is their headline. | ||
| Well, here was President Trump yesterday on Air Force One. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion. | |
| In addition to the $1 trillion, thousands of companies are going to relocate back into the United States. | ||
| In North Carolina, already furniture people are starting to move back in. | ||
| In Detroit and Michigan, which I won, because of what I said, what I'm telling you, car companies are starting to open up. | ||
| In Indiana, a big one is under construction, as an example. | ||
| Honda. | ||
| But they're moving in like nobody has ever seen this before. | ||
| So it's unsustainable for us to allow China to have surpluses of a trillion dollars. | ||
| We will be taking in over a trillion dollars over the next short period of time with the tariffs that I've already instituted. | ||
| They're already in place. | ||
| Now, what's going to happen with the market, I can't tell you, but I can tell you, our country has gotten a lot stronger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And eventually, it'll be a country like no other. | |
| It'll be the most dominant country economically in the world, which is what it should be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is there a Trump put now? | |
| Is there pain in the market? | ||
| At some point, you're unwilling to tolerate this idea of a Trump put? | ||
| Is there a threshold? | ||
| I think your question is so stupid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I admit it. | |
| I think it's a I don't want anything to go down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. | |
| And that was President Trump flying back to Washington on Air Force One yesterday. | ||
| Arlene has texted in to us. | ||
| I am retiring at the end of the month. | ||
| Unsettled. | ||
| Doesn't fully describe the intensity of my feelings. | ||
| Let's hear from Andrew calling in from Virginia, a Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Andrew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Speak with you this morning. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| I've never been so upset, so distraught over the direction of this country onto this lunatic that we have as our president. | ||
| The world, especially this country, seems to be diving into an abyss. | ||
| This man has single-handedly destroyed every democratic principle, every constitutional law that we have forged in the past couple hundred years. | ||
| He has destroyed so much, regardless of what Republicans say, along with the Republican enablers, have enabled the Russians, the Chinese, to basically we are at the most vulnerable point in our history, and the Russians and the Chinese are ecstatic. | ||
| I don't see Andrew, can you give an example of what the president has done that is undemocratic in your view? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, he seems to be ignoring every judicial decision that goes against them. | |
| He led basically the insurrection against our constitutional presidential election. | ||
| He's unbridled in what he's doing right now. | ||
| And no Republican, no elected Republican seems to be doing anything. | ||
| And along with Elon Musk, they are the greatest dangers to this country that I've ever seen. | ||
| Andrew, what do you think about the 79 million Americans who voted for President Trump in 2024? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, to be honest, they were suckered. | |
| They fell for the lives of a con man. | ||
| These people who voted because over the price of eggs, bacon, or whatever, they'll be lucky if they're not living out of their car in another four years. | ||
| That's Andrew in Virginia. | ||
| Where in Virginia do you live, Andrew? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Sterling, Virginia. | ||
| In the suburbs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Thanks for calling in. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Here's Eddie. | ||
| Text. | ||
| Unsettled? | ||
| No. | ||
| I think things in my life are going great. | ||
| Got a wonderful family, a great president, and an administration that is keeping their promises that got them elected. | ||
| Working hard to save wasteful spending in order to help bring our enormous national debt down. | ||
| Unsettled? | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| Our next call comes from a Republican in North Carolina, Steve. | ||
| Steve, where in North Carolina are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fairville, North Carolina. | |
| Please go ahead. | ||
| How are you feeling these days? | ||
| I feel absolutely settled because I put all my refuge in Jesus Christ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And a lot of people think that that's just religious nuts talking like that. | |
| But let me tell you something, folks. | ||
| All this stuff has got to come and pass and happen, but everything's going to be okay. | ||
| It's going to be some hard times coming ahead, though. | ||
| Get ready for them. | ||
| There's a bad storm coming, and you need to get along and stop all this hate and put your faith in God and start doing some serious praying. | ||
| Hey, Steve, what is on a secular level? | ||
| What are some of those issues that could add up to a bad storm? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The economy is going to crash because of greed. | |
| Everybody's greedy. | ||
| Money is the root of all evil. | ||
| The economy is going to crash. | ||
| The global warming is going to continue. | ||
| You're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's in the Bible. | ||
| If you're not sure about the future, just pick up the book, wipe off the dust, and read, and it'll tell you everything you need to know about what's coming. | ||
| Thank you for calling in, Steve. | ||
| Let's hear from Ed, another Republican in Connecticut. | ||
| Hi, Ed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I think President Trump is doing the right thing on a tariff. | ||
| Last year, we ran like a half a trillion-dollar current account deficit. | ||
| That is, we're importing more goods than we're exporting. | ||
| And the world does this not out of the goodness of their heart, but because they need the dollar. | ||
| The dollar is our number one export. | ||
| It's become the international currency of the world. | ||
| But as a result, we've denuded our industrial base. | ||
| That's lowered wages. | ||
| So we've replaced good-paying manufacturing jobs with ultra-high-paying financial jobs. | ||
| The productivity of the country has declined. | ||
| The McKinsey Consultant Group identified a $10 trillion gap in our GDP as a result of the declining productivity trends. | ||
| And it's also encouraged divergence in social issues in our country because of the widening gap between the really high-paid financial people. | ||
| So I think we need to get back to manufacturing, and I think the tariffs will enable that. | ||
| Hey, Ed, do you consider yourself to be a populist? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wouldn't think so. | |
| I think what we should do is for the benefit of the country. | ||
| And I think he is doing it. | ||
| Longer term, the eradication of our industrial base. | ||
| Look at what has happened in the military sphere. | ||
| China now has the largest Navy. | ||
| I don't think they have the most capable Navy, but they have the largest Navy in the world, so that's manufacturing. | ||
| Now, it's done good things. | ||
| The economists would call convergence a good thing, which is where the developed countries grow at a slower rate than the undeveloped countries so that the wage gap, I mean, across the world, poor people are getting out of poverty. | ||
| I think like 5 billion people over the last 20 years have gotten from very poor countries to good. | ||
| The United States has grown at 2% versus the world growing at 4% and the aggressive countries, dynamic countries, growing at 7%. | ||
| So it doesn't take long before many countries pass us. | ||
| We think of ourselves as the richest country in the world, but this is not the case. | ||
| On a per-person basis, many countries have passed us. | ||
| And if we continue to grow at 2 percent and the rest of the world grows at 4 percent or 7 percent, many more countries will pass us. | ||
| Hey, Ed, what kind of work do you do in Connecticut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm retired. | |
| From? | ||
| Business. | ||
| Thank you for calling in. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| On RealClearPolitics.com, you can get all the latest political polls. | ||
| And the two that came out on Sunday, a little bit divergent, the Wall Street Journal, President Trump job approval rating, 46, disapproved 51. | ||
| That's opposed to the Daily Mail, which has a poll. | ||
| President Trump approval, 53, disapprove at 47. | ||
| Let's talk to Doris in New York, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Doris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Are you feeling unsettled these days because of some of the political social and economic issues going on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm very unsettled. | |
| I don't know what's going to happen to my Social Security. | ||
| The tariff has brought groceries and essentials up to the point where you can't afford them anymore. | ||
| It's just gotten ridiculous. | ||
| He's tearing the country apart from the inside out. | ||
| And I don't know how anybody can't see that. | ||
| I don't know how they can stand behind him. | ||
| Do you, would you say, what, 90%, 100% of your unsettledness is due to President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I didn't vote for him the first time. | ||
| I literally cried. | ||
| I have never been afraid of an election before in my life, but that one scared me. | ||
| And this one's even worse. | ||
| Just to give you a little sense here, in his first term, President Trump signed 220 executive orders. | ||
| So far, he has signed 111 in the first 80-plus days of his administration. | ||
| President Obama in eight years signed 276 executive orders, and Joe Biden in four years signed 162. | ||
| Next call is Antone in Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Antone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Very, very unsettled. | ||
| There are 73 million baby boomers who currently live on Social Security. | ||
| And now their retirement via IRAs, the stock investments, are being lost due to the Trump administration. | ||
| The stress on seniors are killing them. | ||
| And I personally lost a loved one due to that fact. | ||
| Seniors 80 years old, 1946, the baby boom generation, do not have time on their side to recover. | ||
| And honestly, I feel seniors that are dying from the stress of what has been created for them should be considered, like anything else, a wrongful death. | ||
| And they should be suing the Trump administration and make them accountable. | ||
| I just heard earlier, $23 million to bail out farmers in his previous administration. | ||
| What about $23 million to bail out seniors to save their lives? | ||
| Seniors have been hit by the 208 housing collapse. | ||
| Seniors have been hit by COVID. | ||
| Seniors have been hit by hurricanes. | ||
| And now seniors are being hit by the Trump administration with tariffs now costing them their retirement again, threatening their Social Security and Medicare on top of that. | ||
| There is something really, really wrong with this picture, and seniors need to band together and fight this administration before it ends up killing them. | ||
| That is Antonio. | ||
| Am I saying your first name correctly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's correct. | |
| That's Antone in Florida. | ||
| Where in Florida are you, Antone? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sarasota. | |
| And now you're calling on the independent line. | ||
| Have you voted for Ds and for Rs in the past? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and that's why being an independent is important to me, because this thing, I'm a Republican, this thing, I'm a Democrat, and it doesn't matter whether what I'm doing is right or wrong, has got to go. | |
| What has to matter is the issue at hand. | ||
| And the issue at hand here is we're killing senior citizens in this country based on what is going on up in Washington. | ||
| And they need to be accountable for that. | ||
| Thank you, ma'am, for calling in. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Joel Pollack in Breitbart writes about political realignment a little bit. | ||
| And here's his most recent article, Blue State Blues. | ||
| Trump is the greatest Democrat president since FDR. | ||
| President Donald Trump is the best Democrat to have held the office since FDR introduced the New Deal and fought the Second World War. | ||
| Obviously, Trump is a Republican and not a Democrat, at least not officially and not anymore. | ||
| But his policies are those that many Democrats used to champion and that many would still embrace, were it not for the fact that Trump and the Republicans are the ones backing these policies today. | ||
| Take, for example, Trump's reciprocal tariffs, announced on April 2nd, Liberation Day in the Rose Garden. | ||
| Until the Clinton era, union-friendly Democrats like Dick Gebhardt would regularly argue for tariffs and against deals like NAFTA. | ||
| Both of the major parties, in fact, were split on trade issues, but Democrats tended to lean toward protectionism. | ||
| Now they denounce Trump's tariffs predicting doom. | ||
| Or take peace with Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| Democrats, who long had a soft spot for communism, were easy to parody as pro-Russia during the Cold War. | ||
| When President Barack Obama came into office, he adopted an appeasement strategy toward Russia that predictably failed. | ||
| But after Russia made a fool of Obama by invading Crimea and after Democrats convinced themselves that Russia had stolen the 26 election for Trump, they turned into Russia hawks. | ||
| Trump, who was far tougher on Russia in his first term than either his predecessor or successor, campaigned in 2024 on ending the war with Ukraine after several years of stalemate. | ||
| Democrats have strenuously opposed his efforts to drag the two sides to the negotiating table, preferring instead to see the war continue apparently without end. | ||
| It is Trump, Joel Pollock in Breitbart writes, who has lifted the banner of peace once carried by Eugene McCarthy and RFK Sr. | ||
| That is in Breitbart. | ||
| We are asking you this morning if you are feeling unsettled with all of the political, economic, and social changes going on in the world. | ||
| We're going to put the numbers up on the screen. | ||
| 202 is the area code, 737-0001 for Republicans, 737-0002 for Democrats, and 628-0205 for independents. | ||
| Pardon me. | ||
| If you can't get through on the phone lines, still like to make a comment, try social media. | ||
| A, text us. | ||
| 202-748-8003 is the text number. | ||
| Please include your first name and your city if you would. | ||
| And you can make comments and continue the conversation on Facebook and X as well. | ||
| Bill is a Republican in Texas. | ||
| Bill, good morning. | ||
| Are you feeling unsettled? | ||
| And if so, why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm feeling very settled. | |
| I'm a 76-year-old former Marine, and I just can't be any more settled than I am. | ||
| It takes a tough man to get a tough job done. | ||
| The problem we have is cleaning up the Democrat years. | ||
| Once we get them cleaned up, get them smooth back out, the tariff will kind of work themselves out. | ||
| And next thing you know, everybody says that, oh, you know, just like Reagan, that Trump knew what he was doing. | ||
| So I'm very, Bill, beyond the tariffs, when you look at the reordering of international relations, you know, U.S. and Europe, perhaps, the reordering of the federal government, China tensions, do you find those things unsettling? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| I don't. | ||
| Not a bit. | ||
| Not a bit. | ||
| It takes a tough nation and a tough man to run it to get things done. | ||
| You know, we've got so much fat. | ||
| I mean, on everything that's got to do with the government. | ||
| I worked a contract store dealing with the government. | ||
| And there's so much waste. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If they order something, it didn't matter what the cost was. | |
| Just get it. | ||
| If it was wrong, it'd get thrown over in the corner. | ||
| It's a crying shame. | ||
| But, hey, once they get through trimming the fat, people will be very satisfied. | ||
| That's Bill in Texas on the Republican line. | ||
| Betsy is in North Carolina on the Democrats line. | ||
| Good morning, Betsy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to thank you for what you do before I retired from teaching. | |
| My first class, we would always listen to a certain amount of C-SPAN in my AP government class. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| I always love it when government students call in. | ||
| We get that quite often. | ||
| And they always call out their teachers. | ||
| So I think that's kind of neat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am very unsettled and I'm very hurt. | |
| I consider myself an extreme patriot, and I have never seen anybody hatch it up the U.S. government like this. | ||
| It is mournful. | ||
| And people who don't think so have their head in the sand and are misinterpreting things. | ||
| Social Security is in danger because the organization has been reduced to a point where it will not be able to function. | ||
| That is a corporate raider technique. | ||
| If they can't out and out take over something, they will carve it out so it can't function and then go in and jump on it. | ||
| Also, tariffs have never worked on this scale. | ||
| In the 1890s, it caused a major depression. | ||
| In the 1930s, the Smooth Hawley tariff contributed to the Great Depression. | ||
| Also, all of our greatest allies are looking at how they can do without us as an ally because of what Trump is doing. | ||
| We cannot exist without allies. | ||
| He is hateful. | ||
| He does not care about the American people. | ||
| He is fixing it so he will turn it over in sections to these billionaires who will run a sector the way Russia is being run. | ||
| And we will no longer be the United States of America. | ||
| It is very, very sad. | ||
| Horrible. | ||
| All right, Betsy. | ||
| Thank you for calling in, and thank you for telling us about your teaching career as well. | ||
| We started off this morning about 20 minutes ago with this headline, the stock market today. | ||
| This is the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Dow Futures, Asian stocks plunge as Trump tariff turmoil deepens. | ||
| Before coming on the air, I think the stock futures were down another thousand points at this point. | ||
| The European markets were down. | ||
| The Asian markets were down as well. | ||
| And that's part of what's going on with the tariffs. | ||
| Also, this weekend, don't know if you saw the UN Trump rallies that were live on C-SPAN, but they were all over the world. | ||
| This is one from Washington that we're showing you on the air there. | ||
| Next call is William in North Carolina, an independent. | ||
| William, where in North Carolina are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shelby, North Carolina. | |
| Thank you for an acting. | ||
| And so how are you feeling these days? | ||
| Are you feeling unsettled? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am very settled, as a matter of fact. | |
| My question and the things I wish to expound upon, the nation, in God we trust. | ||
| So that means y'all trust God, right? | ||
| Well, William, go ahead and finish your thought, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| In God, we trust. | ||
| That is y'all's motto, right? | ||
| I'm going to let you ask that rhetorically and to go on and finish your thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, if y'all trust in God, what God do y'all serve? | ||
| The world serves. | ||
| Because it sure is not Christ, and it sure is not his way, his will, nor his law. | ||
| And y'all have perverted God's words for man's gainsay, for man's rules, for man's laws, and you have neglected father. | ||
| All right. | ||
| William, we're going to leave it there. | ||
| We appreciate your time. | ||
| A couple of texts. | ||
| This is Kim. | ||
| Are you feeling unsettled is the question. | ||
| No, Kim says. | ||
| Our country has been on life support. | ||
| As President Donald J. Trump said, the operation is over, and now it's recovery time. | ||
| We have to go through this in order for our country to survive. | ||
| Our previous financial situation was not sustainable. | ||
| One more text. | ||
| This is Larry in New Jersey. | ||
| I feel extremely unsettled about the evisceration of the Internal Revenue Service and other important government agencies, including the military, and of the ability in the future to hold a fair election of any kind. | ||
| Next call is Joseph, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Joseph, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much for taking my call. | |
| I've been a Republican my entire life, except for two times. | ||
| Both times, I did not vote for Donald Trump. | ||
| I had business dealings with him. | ||
| It is the most ridiculous, corrupt situation. | ||
| This person shouldn't be doing what he's doing. | ||
| But let me give you two real-time situations here, and I hope Republicans listen up because it's coming to your front doorstep. | ||
| One is personal. | ||
| My daughter has a very acute Lyme disease. | ||
| She was buying a, beside the prescription drugs, she was taking a supplement which was very effective. | ||
| It's called Bullock. | ||
| You can look it up. | ||
| She was able to buy it in the United States 60 pills for around $44. | ||
| Mr. Trump's tariffs, it's a Canadian pharmaceutical company. | ||
| She can no longer buy it in the United States. | ||
| It has to be bought in Canada. | ||
| And now the 60 pills is $184, a bottle. | ||
| So, Republicans, it's coming to your doorstep. | ||
| The second thing is, I play golf in Florida in a very Republican area. | ||
| There's about 40 of us. | ||
| Let me tell you something. | ||
| This 47% approval rating, watch what's going to happen next. | ||
| A couple of situations. | ||
| We never talk politics in this golf group. | ||
| It is all about politics, and it's all, I'm done with Trump. | ||
| The meal in the coffin was when this guy was out playing golf, and we have veterans in that group, and those soldiers were buried the other day. | ||
| The second thing is they have had it. | ||
| They are saying to us in conversations now, we have one golfer who said that he was going to, he's helped pay his two grandchildren for college, and now his money has been decimated, and he's now going to tell those children that they're going to have to take out loans. | ||
| This is the reality, Republicans. | ||
| And I beg you, Republicans, it's coming to your doorstep. | ||
| And please, if you think you're independent, and I find interesting is the people who say I'm comfortable. | ||
| Those people are probably independently, they don't have a lot of debt and things like this. | ||
| That's not the majority. | ||
| The average person in this country, retiree, has around $200,000 in savings. | ||
| That was two weeks ago. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That ain't happening now. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So I really, really beg the Republicans, before it affects your children and your grandchildren, to wake up. | ||
| That's Joseph in Florida on the Republican line. | ||
| Williams, calling in from Ohio, Democratic line. | ||
| William, are you feeling unsettled by world events? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Bill, I am very unsettled. | |
| With that psycho in Washington, Lord only knows what's going to happen. | ||
| I used to live in West Palm Beach. | ||
| Used to see him every day. | ||
| I'm thankful that I am out of there. | ||
| And then him and his MAGA, that's Make America Go Away in his Doge. | ||
| That's the Department of Givement Elimination. | ||
| He is just an idiot. | ||
| I'm so thankful I don't have much longer to go. | ||
| And I am really thankful that my baby granddaughter, who was a nuclear engineer in the Navy and her husband, they both got out of the Navy. | ||
| At least they can maybe halfway survive. | ||
| It's just a shame what this country is going to. | ||
| Hey, William, when did you live in Palm Beach, and what did you do down there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I lived in West Palm Beach from 66 to 77. | |
| I worked in the beer industry, but I can count on my 10 fingers the number of beers that I've had in my life. | ||
| That's William in Ohio. | ||
| Tony's in Connecticut, Independent Line. | ||
| Tony, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| You're asking about feeling settled, unsettled. | ||
| I'm an independent. | ||
| I live in a Republican area, and it's right next door is a Democrat area. | ||
| So I have Republican and Democratic friends, and I'm feeling settled and unsettled. | ||
| First, I'm feeling unsettled because we're not getting the truth out for what Doge is saying. | ||
| I said, you don't see on these, I converse to different stations. | ||
| They don't bring up, you never see the Doge database. | ||
| You never see the Doge database with the savings coming out and what's happening. | ||
| Everybody knows, both sides of the fence know there's waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| But if it comes knocking on their door, they seem to have a problem with it. | ||
| Another thing that bothers me is we're, you know, I'm an independent. | ||
| Sometimes I vote Democrat. | ||
| Sometimes I vote Republican. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| I'm an American. | ||
| We're all Americans. | ||
| This president, whether you voted for him or not, is our president. | ||
| He had the majority votes. | ||
| He took all the other votes. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm forgetting the name. | ||
| The electoral votes. | ||
| We stand behind them. | ||
| We're Americans. | ||
| Do you hear other countries objecting about what's going on? | ||
| You know, Americans, we're the stupid Americans that pay for everything. | ||
| I hate tariffs. | ||
| I hate tariffs. | ||
| Why doesn't everybody get off the tariffs? | ||
| Why don't we say to the Europeans, to the Asians, to the people across the world that have been ripping us off for 50 years, all of us drop the tariffs. | ||
| If Trump, for these people calling in saying Trump is wrong about tariffs, then you must hate the tariffs and the value-added taxes that the Europeans in other countries go. | ||
| Let's go zero tariffs. | ||
| And we're Americans. | ||
| You stand by your president. | ||
| We have our differences at the House, inside the House. | ||
| We have our differences, and we can argue. | ||
| But when you go outside our house, we're together. | ||
| We're Americans and we stick together and we stand by our president. | ||
| And that's the way it should be. | ||
| None of this stuff here. | ||
| We're cutting ourselves off at the feet. | ||
| Our president, we're making our president's job harder than it has to be. | ||
| He's fighting for us, and he's going to win. | ||
| Tony, what do you do up in, first of all, where in Connecticut are you, and what do you do up there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in Wolcott. | |
| I'm retired. | ||
| I used to be up in the insurance companies in Hartford Travelers, United Healthcare, and stuff. | ||
| And you get a full array of people's opinions. | ||
| And I'm an economics major from college. | ||
| I have a master's in it. | ||
| I see what these things do. | ||
| I've seen over and over how the Americans just spend the money, $300-something billion dollars for an endless war. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's really crazy. | ||
| Thank you, sir, for calling in. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| On Meet the Press this weekend, Senator Adam Schiff of California talked about tariffs. | ||
| Unfortunately, he's wrecking our economy. | ||
| I think people have seen their retirement savings on fire, and there he is out on the golf course. | ||
| That may end up being the most enduring image of the Trump presidency: that is the president out on a golf cart while people's retirement is in flames. | ||
| The Treasury Secretary is saying that people aren't looking at where the retirement savings are. | ||
| Maybe he doesn't have to. | ||
| He's got the wealth he doesn't have to. | ||
| Maybe the president with his wealth doesn't have to. | ||
| But what I'm hearing from Californians is those that have just retired, those are on the eve of retiring, they're terrified of this. | ||
| And I hope and pray we stay out of recession. | ||
| But if we head into a recession, it will be the Trump recession. | ||
| He will completely own it. | ||
| This is a completely self-destructive economic act that he's engaged in. | ||
| And it's not just the tariffs. | ||
| It's also the freezing of funds, the firing of people, the alienation of our allies. | ||
| In California, I'm hearing from farmers who still haven't recovered market share from the tariffs during the first Trump administration. | ||
| I'm hearing from people in the tourist industry. | ||
| You have people from other countries now who don't want to come here, most particularly Canadians. | ||
| I'm hearing from others, small business people, who are telling me that Canadians are saying, don't send us any more your products. | ||
| In fact, we're going to send you back what you've already sent us. | ||
| It's the whole range of Trump economic policies that are really hurting people. | ||
| And that was Democratic Senator Adam Schiff on Meet the Press. | ||
| Our next call comes from John in California, Republican line. | ||
| John, good morning to you. | ||
| You feeling unsettled? | ||
| And what do you think about what your senator had to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for taking my call. | |
| And I'm about 10% unsettled and about 90% settled. | ||
| And I'll tell you why, because in 2021, the stock market hit, I think, $18,000. | ||
| Right now it's at 36,000. | ||
| So it's got a long way to go. | ||
| Also, under Joe Biden, we had 11% inflation, and we're at 4% right now. | ||
| The tariffs will not get inflation back to 11%. | ||
| So overall, I think that reducing the overall debt of $36 trillion is the only way out. | ||
| And we have to take two measures. | ||
| One is decreased spending, which is caused by Doge. | ||
| And you'll understand that it's only government spending that we're decreasing. | ||
| It's not the private sector. | ||
| The private sector is adding jobs. | ||
| The jobs report last week was strong, and wages went up last week. | ||
| So the private sector is fine. | ||
| It's the government sector that's getting cut. | ||
| So I'm okay with that. | ||
| As far as revenues, I think the tariffs will generate revenues. | ||
| And so this $2 or $3 trillion deficit will be a combination of cutting spending and raising revenues. | ||
| So right now we've got people, one caller said they want no tariffs. | ||
| Well, that's what we're working towards. | ||
| You add a tariff, you meet the tariffs, and then you negotiate them down. | ||
| I think Trump would not like to have tariffs either. | ||
| And so overall, I think Trump has got us on the right course. | ||
| It's like taking chemotherapy for cancer. | ||
| It's a tough thing, tough pill, but we got to go through it in order to get well. | ||
| John, where in California are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in Ventura, California. | |
| I'm a surfer, and I'm a beach guy. | ||
| 38% of California voted for President Trump in the last election. | ||
| That's kind of the top line for Republicans in that state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, Biden only had about a 27% rating at the time, too. | ||
| So my 10% that I'm unsettled about, and I watched that thing on Saturday, and I was unsettled that all these people were ranting and raving against Trump personally, but none of them had a solution to the $36 trillion deficit. | ||
| And that's really unsettling. | ||
| You can go and you can tear down Trump all you want, but you better come up with a better idea to reduce this deficit and to pay down the national debt. | ||
| If you can't do that, you're just spouting hot air. | ||
| You can say everything in the world bad about Trump, but if you don't have a better plan, nobody's going to listen. | ||
| Trump is nobody's going to win. | ||
| Like I said, it's like chemotherapy for cancer. | ||
| We're on a slow death. | ||
| All right, to make this a little lighter, John, you said you're a surfer. | ||
| How long have you been surfing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
60 years. | |
| I started surfing in 1960. | ||
| So I surfed all my life. | ||
| How old? | ||
| May we ask how old you are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've sailed to Hawaii twice. | |
| I've sailed to Cabo once, a surfer and a sailor. | ||
| What do you do for a living? | ||
| What did you do for a living? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm retired now. | |
| I'm 77 years old, and I started in the lumber business. | ||
| I started as a yard worker stacking lumber, and I ended up working into management. | ||
| I ended up going to a huge company, Warehauser Company, which is a brilliant company. | ||
| I ended up managing as a general manager of a wholesale lumber outlet, and then I was hired in L.A., and I managed one of the top five lumber yards in L.A. | ||
| I was shipping a million and a half feet a week. | ||
| I had 60 employees, and I ended up from being a poor boy through corporate, climbing the corporate ladder. | ||
| I ended up, I got a million-dollar house, and I got a million dollars in the bank. | ||
| And so I surfed, and I worked hard all my life, and I surfed hard all my life, and that's what I do. | ||
| Are you going surfing today? | ||
| I'm going sailing today. | ||
| I'm too old to surf. | ||
| I gave up surfing when I was 72, but I didn't want to drown. | ||
| But I'm a sailor now. | ||
| I got a 31-foot boat down in the marina, and I've been very successful in life because I'm really good at economics. | ||
| I'm really good at the commodity markets. | ||
| And I'll tell you right now: if you have any money, start buying in the stock market because earnings season is coming around, and you're going to see a lot of these companies posting really strong earnings. | ||
| So the private sector is not affected by it's the government jobs that are being cut, not the private sector jobs. | ||
| And this tariffs will be. | ||
| Yeah, but a lot of people are invested in the stock market, John. | ||
| And what do they say? | ||
| A couple of trillion dollars in wealth has disappeared with the stock market going down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to say that Joe Biden in 2021, the stock market was at $18,000, and it rebounded up to $44,000 or $45,000. | |
| So this stock market will rebound. | ||
| There's going to be strong earnings. | ||
| That's John of California in Ventura, California. | ||
| Have a nice sale today. | ||
| We appreciate your time. | ||
| Renee is a Democrat in Florida. | ||
| Hi, Renee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm very unsettled. | ||
| I'm very unsettled that you were reading from Breitbart this morning. | ||
| Why does that make you unsettled? | ||
| Why does that make you unsettled? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Breitbart? | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was started by Corporate Mercers that put Bannon in charge of it. | |
| So, does that make it illegitimate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it does, because they spread false information just like Fox News. | |
| Fox News can't call itself a news corporation. | ||
| Their LLC is entertainment. | ||
| And how they get away with spreading false information, and I think they're just an arm of Russia. | ||
| So, beyond my reading Breitbart this morning, Renee, what else are you unsettled about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
About where our country's going, how Russia, everything came to true, came true about them turning our people against each other. | |
| And it's so sad. | ||
| I mean, they've used the religion and the news, politics, you know. | ||
| Usually, our mainstream media, even though Fox News is seen by more people than anybody, even though they aren't a news, how they don't have to, you know, have facts. | ||
| And it's just sad. | ||
| And I feel sorry for people that have been led down that path and don't know what's coming because I unfortunately probably watch too much news around the world. | ||
| And I feel like I see what's coming, and it's really sad. | ||
| And I don't know how we get out of it unless we get a Congress that works. | ||
| But they're all part of it, they all came from Fox News. | ||
| 21 people in our administration came from Fox News. | ||
| Renee in Florida, Democrat, thanks for calling in. | ||
| Next call is from New Jersey, Independent Line Jelsine. | ||
| Did I get that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my name is Josephine. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Josephine, thank you so much. | ||
| You would not believe what is typed up on my screen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not even going to spell my name out, but that's because my concerns are due process. | |
| When we no longer have due process, we've lost our democracy. | ||
| We become a fascist country. | ||
| Now, I hear a lot of military men come on and say, oh, I fought for this country, and it's wonderful and all that. | ||
| It was. | ||
| No doubt about it. | ||
| But not now. | ||
| When we cannot look at the court system and we're telling them that they no longer can do their job, that they have to fear for their life. | ||
| We had a judge here in New Jersey whose son was murdered on her doorstep because she was making a ruling in a court. | ||
| I don't think people understand due process because if I don't have the right to appeal, I've lost my rights. | ||
| The other thing which concerns me is you're all talking about inflation. | ||
| Forget about inflation. | ||
| I worked for the Department of Labor for 42 years. | ||
| You have not seen unemployment come barreling along. | ||
| It's at 4.2%. | ||
| I guarantee you, by September, our unemployment rate is going to be at 7%. | ||
| That's going to be like throwing a stone in the water, and it has a ripple effect. | ||
| So the civil servants are gone. | ||
| They're not needed. | ||
| It's like oil in the car. | ||
| You never see them, but it makes everything run smoothly. | ||
| That's going to come home to ring badly. | ||
| People being unemployed is going to be the cherry on the cake. | ||
| And number three, I didn't mean to go on this far, is my concern about those who aren't Medicaid. | ||
| Now, I'm 81 years old. | ||
| Thank God I worked all of my life. | ||
| But the problem is there are a lot of women who supported their family and stayed home. | ||
| And now we're these women in nursing homes on Medicaid. | ||
| 60% of Medicaid recipients are women in nursing homes. | ||
| What's going to happen? | ||
| They're going to be thrown out to the street, and then I guess the men will be happy. | ||
| They'll be dead. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Josephine in New Jersey. | ||
| From the Washington Post this morning, Trump, Team Trump, defends tariffs as bipartisan opposition grows, markets slide. | ||
| Trump administration officials blitz television networks on Sunday to defend the president's massive tariffs that have caused a sell-off in the stock market and triggered recession fears, arguing that the import taxes are already forcing dozens of countries to come to the bargaining table. | ||
| Well, Kevin Hassett, who served in the first Trump administration, is now the National Economic Council director, was on this week on ABC. | ||
| Here's a little bit of him. | ||
| On the one hand, you're saying that the countries are really angry and they're going to have to retaliate. | ||
| On the other hand, you're saying that consumers are going to bear the costs that it's going to drive inflation up. | ||
| But if U.S. consumers are bearing the costs, there's no reason for the countries to be angry. | ||
| So the fact is the countries are angry and retaliating. | ||
| And by the way, coming to the table, I got a report from the USTR last night that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation. | ||
| But they're doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff. | ||
| And so I don't think that you're going to see a big effect on the consumer in the U.S. because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent long-run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply. | ||
| They've been dumping goods into the country in order to create jobs, say, in China. | ||
| And George, also, I promise you, I'll answer your questions directly about filibusters. | ||
| So I'll stop with that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, where do you base your conclusion that you're not going to see an increase in prices? | |
| Just about every economist who's looked at this said you are going to see an increase in prices, including Goldman Sachs, including J.P. Morgan, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| Well, there might be some increase in prices, but the fact is that if there were going to be a heavy burden on the U.S. consumer, then this trade deficit that for 30 years we've seen really since China entered the WTO would be something that would have gone down. | ||
| It would have gone down over time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It would have responded to the prices. | |
| And our next call comes from Dan in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so let's talk about jobs. | |
| People are, many people are working two jobs, low-paying jobs, to make ends meet. | ||
| When Trump is bringing jobs into the country, people are going to be able to move up to a higher-paying job. | ||
| The economy will be booming. | ||
| What the Democrats want to do is just keep spending money, spending money. | ||
| The government spends more money every year. | ||
| The fact of the matter is we had more people in government than we ever had. | ||
| The bureaucracy was huge and bloated. | ||
| There was fraud, waste, and abuse throughout our government. | ||
| What he's doing is reining government in. | ||
| Social Security was on a path of bankruptcy. | ||
| Every Democrat will stand there and say, oh, by the year 2030, then Social Security is going to be bankrupt. | ||
| But they never did anything about it. | ||
| You've heard it yourself. | ||
| Them decrying that Social Security is going to be bankrupt. | ||
| Finally, somebody is doing something about it. | ||
| Dan, all that said, are you feeling settled about world events these days or unsettled? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm completely settled about what our government is doing today compared to what Biden was doing. | |
| The Democrats brought us wars. | ||
| They bought us high inflation. | ||
| What we were paying for goods and services was absolutely ridiculous when Biden was president. | ||
| People were working well-paying jobs and paying record amounts for food, housing. | ||
| You know, people couldn't afford to buy a house. | ||
| People couldn't afford to buy a car. | ||
| Hey, Dan. | ||
| What part of Ohio do you live in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I live in Youngstown. | |
| And what kind of work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we were going to continue on. | |
| What kind of work do you do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I work in a hospital. | |
| I'm not a doctor, but I'm a health care worker. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm sure for calling in, and we appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Now, if you can't get through on the phone lines and you want to talk about whether or not you're feeling unsettled by some of the political and economic and social changes going on in the world, you can also send a text message, 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you send that text message, please include your first name and your city if you would. | ||
| Here's a text message. | ||
| This is an X. | ||
| This is a tweet. | ||
| Are you feeling unsettled? | ||
| And this person, Cloud Spitter, it looks like, or Splitter, says no, just trying to figure out which stock I'm going to buy at these prices. | ||
| Beverly is a Democrat in Illinois. | ||
| Where in Illinois do you live, Beverly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I live in a suburb of Illinois, Delwood. | |
| Of Chicago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Thank you, ma'am. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
| How are you feeling these days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My bad. | |
| I'm retired. | ||
| I do have concerns about the next generation and all these new implementations he's putting in. | ||
| He's making us vulnerable in so many ways. | ||
| I hear now that he's gotten rid of the cybersecurity people, which means they can, you know, invade our internet, invade our hospitals. | ||
| And, you know, this is why is he firing so many needed people and replacing them with so many incompetent people, or maybe not even replace them at all? | ||
| I don't understand this. | ||
| I mean, we have so many open ways that things can be done to this country. | ||
| You know, they put, you know, military secrets out there on the internet or accessible to social media. | ||
| And how do normal people see this man as working for our government? | ||
| People are using his words as need and as God. | ||
| They don't want to pursue anything other than what he says. | ||
| This man is not reliable. | ||
| He's not a reliable resource for truth. | ||
| You saw it in the debates when he lied about people eating cats and dogs. | ||
| He does not tell the truth. | ||
| So what makes you think he's going to tell the truth about the status of our country? | ||
| Hey, Beverly, Beverly, a question about the future. | ||
| Your governor, J.D. Pritzker, has made some noise about possibly running for president. | ||
| What do you think about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think J.D. Pritzker is a very good man. | |
| I'm not saying it because he's a Democrat, because I vote Republican. | ||
| I know plenty of decent Republicans, but I think he ran the state of Illinois pretty well. | ||
| Another thing about government versus business. | ||
| A government is supposed to be we the people for the people. | ||
| We have poor people. | ||
| We have middle-class people. | ||
| We have very, very rich people. | ||
| To me, if we're going to be concerned about deficits and all that, tax the rich heavily right now because they love this country, right? | ||
| So, they should be willing to give more. | ||
| Why are you hurting the most vulnerable people, the most lower-class people? | ||
| Why are you taking away social programs that can help the lower-class people, and yet you're not touching the very rich? | ||
| You're looking to give them a bigger cut in their taxes. | ||
| Why? | ||
| If they're so devoted to this country, give them a big tax, give them a don't cut their taxes, let them pay heavily for their taxes. | ||
| They should not be paying the same rate of taxes that I all right. | ||
| We're going to leave it there. | ||
| Beverly in Illinois up next is Guy in Oklahoma Independent Line. | ||
| Guy, are you feeling settled with political and economic and social events going on around the world these days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Peter. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Yes, I'm absolutely settled. | ||
| And first of all, Peter, I'm the principal founder of Geico Financial Services. | ||
| Yeah, I'm one of those hated billionaires that don't pay any taxes. | ||
| Let me tell you something, Peter. | ||
| Last year, Elon paid $30 billion in taxes, the highest tax bill ever paid. | ||
| This year, he's going to pay about $43 to $44 billion, it looks like. | ||
| I pay a massive amount of taxes, and I have been ever since I, even since I retired back in the mid-90s, I still pay massive amounts of taxes. | ||
| And I also give away massive amounts of money to charity. | ||
| And here I am, you know, I'm watching the news. | ||
| It's nothing but fear-mongering that has brought down the markets. | ||
| And the markets will recover. | ||
| All you people out there that are scared to death, they're paper losses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't sell if you're scared. | |
| And like many people say, now's a good time to buy. | ||
| The market's going to continue to drop for a little while longer. | ||
| There's going to be great buying opportunities for people that have brains. | ||
| And as far as on the world stage goes, these tariffs, they've already brought 25 countries to the bargaining table to zero their tariffs against America. | ||
| It's working. | ||
| It's going to be painful for a while. | ||
| And I've called in before, and I mentioned this several months ago that it's going to be painful. | ||
| But it's the only way to save our country from bankruptcy. | ||
| And, Peter, all right. | ||
| Hey, Guy, I want to ask you a question. | ||
| You identified yourself as a billionaire. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How did you make your money? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the financial services, mortgages, stocks, bonds. | |
| I started off as a penny stockbroker back in the 80s. | ||
| And you're living in Oklahoma. | ||
| Where in Oklahoma? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a little place out here in the green country, in God's country. | |
| I have a 15,000-acre ranch in Costa Rica. | ||
| I also have a house in Hawaii, Lake Tahoe, and I have a house out in Palm Springs, Palm Desert. | ||
| May I ask how old you are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in my 70s, and I worked hard. | |
| And I originally grew up in California, like the surfer called in from Ventura. | ||
| I grew up in Seal Beach. | ||
| I was on the high school surf team, the college surf team. | ||
| I've lived all over the world. | ||
| One of my favorite places to live is in Indonesia. | ||
| Everybody's heard of Bali, of course. | ||
| There's a little island down there that I also building another retirement home down there at a little place called Roti, which is off the Timor coast. | ||
| But anyway, get out of here. | ||
| So, how long is this pain going to last, in your words, guy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In my opinion, we're going to see this dip probably for the next several months, maybe six months. | |
| I think it'll take about a year until we get on the road of recovery. | ||
| And just the fear-mongering, the Democrats, and remember, they own the media. | ||
| The legacy media is all anti-Trump, anti-everything Trump touches, does. | ||
| The Republicans are vicious, evil people. | ||
| The Democrats are so lucky to have that propaganda arm behind them. | ||
| What's your message to people who aren't billionaires and perhaps are living on their social security and living with Medicaid, et cetera? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they've repeated over and over and over. | |
| They're not going to touch Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. | ||
| And we have to make these dramatic course change. | ||
| We have to make a dramatic course change. | ||
| Otherwise, we are heading for the dollar is going to collapse. | ||
| The country's going to go all these programs, these 1,100 agencies in D.C., in five or six years, if we don't make major changes, they'll cease to exist. | ||
| Thanks for watching. | ||
| Thank you for sharing your point of view with us. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| John is in Pennsylvania, Republican line. | ||
| John, good morning to you. | ||
| Where in PA are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm the Montgomery County Peter. | |
| Hey, outside of Philadelphia. | ||
| What's that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I said, I was wondering where you've been. | |
| I haven't seen you on TV. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Then you're not watching QA on Sunday nights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Or you're not watching book TV or American History TV on C-SPAN 2 on the weekends. | ||
| Or you're not watching Election Night. | ||
| Now, I'm on quite a bit. | ||
| I just don't do the Washington Journal as regularly as I used to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, at my age, it's hard to get up at that time of the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hear you, buddy. | |
| Hey, I just want to know, like, with a lot of your callers, especially your Democrats independent. | ||
| I mean, we're $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| And I think you know as well as everybody knows that that stock market was well over where it should. | ||
| It should have never been at $40,000. | ||
| It needs a correction. | ||
| And what really kills me is that for four years, for four years, I mean, stuff doubled under Joe Biden. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Housing. | ||
| A townhome here in Montgomery County used to be about $200,000,000. | ||
| It is now $500,000 for a townhome. | ||
| Go to Home Depot, which is nothing but foreign-made stuff. | ||
| A sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood, okay, $50. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| A quart of oil-based paint, $20. | ||
| I mean, why wasn't this outrage happening in the four years that this inflation that the Democrats and Joe Biden's administration called transitory? | ||
| Remember, if anybody knows what the definition of transitory means, that means it wasn't supposed to stay. | ||
| And this inflation is here and it's here and it's going to stay here a while. | ||
| And that's what Trump is trying to do. | ||
| He's trying to help with this inflation that the Democrats and Joe Biden destroyed our economy. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And I just don't understand. | ||
| He ain't even in there three months, and everybody's losing their mind. | ||
| You know, for four years when Joe Biden is there, all we talked about was Trump. | ||
| So until we get off the Trump derangement syndrome and realize that we're $37 trillion in debt, okay, that we got to do something. | ||
| I mean, Canada, they're charging us a 250% tariff on our dairy from our dairy farmers to bring our products into Canada. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's ridiculous. | |
| Do they call ourselves our ally? | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's John in Pennsylvania on the Republican line. | ||
| We started off this morning telling you that we were going to be a little philosophical about our question. | ||
| Ask if you're feeling unsettled by political, economic, and social issues going on. | ||
| And y'all responded beautifully on all sides of all the issues. | ||
| We appreciate that. | ||
| We'll return to this question a little later in the program. | ||
| So if you still have comments you want to make about being feeling unsettled by world events, get ready for that. | ||
| That's a little bit later. | ||
| But coming up next is Siobhan Hughes. | ||
| She's with the Wall Street Journal a little bit later then. | ||
| Eric Thomas is going to join us and he is with the Cato and he's going to be Eric Smith, I apologize. | ||
| And he's going to be talking about DEI. | ||
| So that's what's coming up this morning on The Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senator in session. | |
| The House plans to take up the revised Republicans 2025 budget resolution following its passage by the Senate. | ||
| Also, Jamison Greer, the United States Trade Representative, testifies on the president's agenda after he imposed tariffs on several U.S. partners. | ||
| First, on Tuesday, before the Senate Finance Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Ways and Means Committee. | ||
| Watch live this week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app. | ||
| Also, head over to c-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN: Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| C-SPAN's Student Cam competition challenged middle and high school students nationwide to create documentaries with messages to the new president. | ||
| Our panel of judges evaluated over 1,700 thought-provoking student films on their use of multiple perspectives. | ||
| C-SPAN awarded $100,000 in total cash prizes, and our grand prize of $5,000 goes to Dermot Foley, a 10th grader from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. | ||
| Congratulations to all our winners. | ||
| The top 21 winning entries will air on C-SPAN this month. | ||
| You can also watch all the award-winning documentaries anytime at studentcam.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And we are now joined by Siobhan Hughes, who is a congressional reporter for the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| How long have you been covering the Hill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My current bout, almost 15 years. | |
| I came after the Tea Party wave. | ||
| And current bout, what do you mean? | ||
| Have you done this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I did it before. | |
| I did a stint for Congressional Quarterly back in the 2000s. | ||
| I was more of a beat reporter, and it's very, very different going from that to being kind of more leadership and broadbush. | ||
| So remind us what the Senate did Friday night, Saturday morning. | ||
| What did they pass? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is going to sound incredibly technical. | |
| They passed a budget resolution. | ||
| Which is not a budget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, which is not a budget. | |
| This is a mechanism for unlocking the passage of Trump's tax cuts, the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, the expansion of the 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| It sounds incredibly technical, but it's what's going to allow the Senate to pass that bill on a simple majority. | ||
| So, budget resolution. | ||
| Was there a top-line figure for the U.S. federal budget in this budget resolution? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is really, really tricky because there's a certain sleight of hand going on here. | |
| What the Senate did was to say, listen, we don't actually want to say that the Trump tax cuts have a cost. | ||
| And so we are just going to assume this is a cost-free endeavor. | ||
| And then on top of that, we're going to make room to do another $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, increase the deficit by that much. | ||
| And so that's going to set up a very, very interesting conflict with the House and unspool a whole range of conflicts. | ||
| So it's called a budget resolution, but it truly is not a budget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, this is not a blueprint. | |
| This is not us saying, here's how much we want to spend on ads. | ||
| This doesn't unlock the appropriations bills or the appropriations committees and subcommittees in any way, shape, or form. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| What this does is it gives instructions to different committees as to how much in spending cuts they are supposed to achieve. | ||
| It's going to tuck something else in there, instructions for a debt ceiling increase, and then some special instructions to tax writing committees for how much they can cut in taxes. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes, you called it instructions, but there's no penalty if you go beyond the instructions, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
To a degree, it depends on what you mean by the word beyond. | |
| So, for example, the House will let you do up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. | ||
| The Senate sort of says up to $1.5 trillion. | ||
| There is a little bit of a penalty that is going to come up in the Senate. | ||
| I'm sorry, $4.5. | ||
| And what did the Senate say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Senate said overall it's basically more than $5 trillion. | |
| But what they want to focus on is just this $1.5 trillion number. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So beginning today, the House is going to take up what the Senate passed, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week, the House is going to take this up. | |
| Yeah, this week. | ||
| And what is the outlook for this budget resolution, which is not a budget? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is as bumpy and rocky as it gets in the House. | |
| And you already started to see that yesterday at a conference call that House Speaker Mike Johnson put together. | ||
| My Wall Street Journal colleague Olivia Beavers got inside of that, and there were a lot of concerns being expressed about the structure of this bill. | ||
| And there are two different wings. | ||
| Well, the loudest voices on that call were really the fiscal conservatives who looked at what the Senate passed and said, wait a minute, we noticed that you are instructing the Senate committees to cut spending by $4 billion. | ||
| That's a drop in the bucket. | ||
| A B. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, a B, not T, B. | |
| And we're not convinced that we can actually support this. | ||
| There is another coalition of Republicans, and they've been a bit silent, but I would expect to hear from them by midweek who are terribly concerned about what this means for the Medicaid program and cuts to the Medicaid program. | ||
| Because buried inside this budget resolution is a number, $880 billion. | ||
| That is how much the House Energy Committee is supposed to come up with in cuts. | ||
| And guess what that committee oversees? | ||
| Medicaid. | ||
| And as Senator Susan Collins put it to us, the only way you can get to that level of cuts is if you go after Medicaid. | ||
| And that was why she voted against the budget resolution over the weekend. | ||
| So that's where we stand going into this week when it comes to this bill. | ||
| And again, it unlocks a bill for cutting taxes, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this unlocks the bill for cutting taxes, for extending tax cuts and adding to them. | |
| Well, that's one issue that the Congress is bringing up this week. | ||
| We're going to be talking about some other issues as well. | ||
| With Siobhan Hughes of the Wall Street Journal, numbers are up on the screen. | ||
| If you want to dial in and talk about what's coming up in Congress or how Congress is doing, 202-737-0001 for Republicans, 202-737-0002. | ||
| For Democrats and Independents, you can call in at 202-628-0205. | ||
| We'll also put up our text number and our social media accounts. | ||
| So, in case you want to participate that way, you're more than welcome to. | ||
| Well, so much of the talk this morning and the past couple of days, since April 2nd, has been about tariffs. | ||
| Has there been reaction from the Republicans? | ||
| Have you seen splintering from the Trump side with the Republicans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, we absolutely have seen splintering from the Republicans. | |
| And it's not overt. | ||
| Nobody is poking a direct finger in Donald Trump's eye, but it's unmistakably there. | ||
| And we see it in a couple of different ways. | ||
| Number one, we saw Chuck Grassley from Deep Red Iowa come out and unveil a bill that would basically say within 60 days, Congress has to approve any tariffs. | ||
| And then you saw Don Bacon on the House side say he was going to introduce a companion measure. | ||
| And so, what that tells us is that some Republicans already want to put Trump on a leash and give him a timeframe, give him 60 days. | ||
| Beyond that, you are hearing some voices now step out and express concerns. | ||
| We saw Ron Johnson in an interview with, I believe, a CBS reporter, express some concerns. | ||
| Ted Cruz from Texas, who has a very big voice because of a podcast he has, sort of said 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. | ||
| But if this goes on for too long and there's a recession, that is a problem. | ||
| And boy, is there going to be a backlash in the 2026 elections. | ||
| And to put a fine point on this, you don't hear Republicans challenge the president that openly. | ||
| And so when Republicans are out there making these arguments, that is a big deal. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes, I'm old enough, unfortunately, to remember the 90s and Dick Gebhardt, the Democratic leader, protectionist when it comes to trade and tariffs and anti-NAFTA. | ||
| It's really kind of flipped, hasn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes and no. | |
| So rhetorically, at this leadership level, it has flipped. | ||
| And you are hearing Democrats talk about inflation, about the damage to Americans' pocketbooks. | ||
| And all of that is real and true. | ||
| But I will also say I was on a call last week with Debbie Dingell from Michigan, who did talk about how she supported tariffs generally, that it's a way to bring manufacturing back to the United States. | ||
| But, but, but there's a big caveat here. | ||
| What Democrats, the ones who are still embracing tariffs, say is this does not seem to be thought through because if you want to bring manufacturing back to the United States, that is not a short process. | ||
| There is permitting, there is locating. | ||
| And they say this is a process that at its very, very best and quickest would take about three years. | ||
| Are you hearing from, and again, we're hearing from the Democrats, but are we hearing from Republicans about Doge and the cutting of the federal government? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're hearing from Republicans in very, very quiet ways about this. | |
| And part of it is they don't want to challenge their president. | ||
| Another part of it, and it's amazing that this is true for some Republicans as well as some Democrats, there is a terror about damaging one's own constituents by being too overtly opposed to the Doge cuts. | ||
| There are a lot of programs that Republicans are trying to save, and they're concerned that if they're not a little bit politic, they take away their ability to help their constituents by rolling back some of these cuts. | ||
| You know, this is a really, really interesting week because we are already seeing the early damage from the tariffs take hold. | ||
| And depending on what public sentiment does, are people going to be a little bit more open? | ||
| That's a question mark out there. | ||
| Politico, there's a poll out. | ||
| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leads Chuck Schumer in head-to-head New York primary matchup by double digits in the Senate. | ||
| Is Chuck Schumer in real trouble with the Democrats? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, a couple of things. | |
| That election is not going to happen next year, 2026. | ||
| And so this is a long ways off. | ||
| But clearly, that poll tells you something. | ||
| It tells you something about this shift that we are seeing in the Democratic Party. | ||
| A little bit of it is a generational shift, and so that's very much watched this space. | ||
| Mike Johnson, how's he doing with his 220 members? | ||
| Which is not a lot of members. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not a lot, but what they would tell you is after those Florida elections, their margin has now grown by one. | |
| They can now lose three votes. | ||
| And Democrats still have two open seats because of Raul Grijalva's death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And the death of a Texas congressman as well. | ||
| That's right, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But this is probably Mike Johnson's biggest test yet. | ||
| He has, a lot of people would say, been really masterful in how he's managed the relationship with Donald Trump. | ||
| He has had really one big insight, which is that to get all of this across the finish line, the person he needs to persuade is Donald Trump, who then calls into the House. | ||
| He's been very supportive of Mike Johnson so far, hasn't he? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Trump has been very supportive of Mike Johnson. | |
| And Mike Johnson has argued so far successfully, at least in this budget reconciliation process, that we're just unlocking a process. | ||
| Keep it going, keep it going. | ||
| Our momentum is only going to last for so long. | ||
| We'll sort out all of the kinks later. | ||
| But, you know, at some point there's going to be a reckoning, and I think we're starting to see that right now. | ||
| And that reckoning being? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are two reckonings. | |
| Number one, the conservatives who are terribly concerned that the spending cuts they want to keep the deficit low are not going to happen. | ||
| And number two, the more moderate Republicans who are terribly concerned that the reckoning is going to mean pain for their Medicaid recipients. | ||
| What do you think about Mitch McConnell essentially voting down every big initiative that the president has had in the past since he retired from leadership? | ||
| Is this an image thing or is this sincere? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My reporting indicates that this is really sincere: that this is Mitch McConnell unchained. | |
| He no longer has to, as the face of the party, go along with the president, and he can be a little bit more himself. | ||
| Let's take some calls. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes with Wall Street Journal is our guest. | ||
| We're talking about Congress. | ||
| Matt is a Democrat in Virginia. | ||
| Please go ahead, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, first, I'd just like to comment quickly since I heard the polling, please Chuck Schumer retire, let someone else take over. | |
| But my question for the guest is: you know, looking at what's happened to the stock market, looking at how disorganized this rollout of tariffs is, and how extraordinary in terms of the history of tariffs in terms of blanket tariffs on everyone based on strange numbers, how long do you think the Republicans give this president before they go, | ||
| this emperor has no clothes, he's crazy, this is destroying our economy? | ||
| Thank you, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, what they've stated, at least, is it's maybe something like 60 days. | |
| If you look at the number that's in the Chuck Grassley bill, Ted Cruz on his podcast gave it even less time, about 30 days. | ||
| The one opportunity they're holding out to Republicans is that maybe some other countries will start negotiating and the tariffs can come down quickly. | ||
| But boy, I've got to tell you, it's hard to see this lasting very long. | ||
| Well, Matt brought up the Chuck Schumer AOC issue. | ||
| Washington Post this morning, younger Democrats push for a changing of the guard. | ||
| They go through and list several examples across the country where younger Democrats are essentially challenging longtime members of Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and you're seeing it a lot on the Democratic side. | |
| And a piece of it, nobody has ever stated that, but don't forget, Joe Biden was essentially pushed out of the presidential election last year because of his age. | ||
| And very quietly, you are starting to see a lot of the older senators step down or announce they're not going to run again. | ||
| Ben Cardin did that already. | ||
| Gene Shaheen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gene Shaheen, exactly. | |
| And so there is, whether it's stated or not, you are seeing Democrats sort of retreat from the scene, the long-serving ones, and in a way making space for the others to rise up. | ||
| We are still not there yet. | ||
| Don't forget that AOC had wanted that committee chairmanship and Jerry Conner. | ||
| He got it instead. | ||
| So they weren't quite ready to go there. | ||
| But the direction of this is pretty unmistakable. | ||
| You've been observing now Mike Johnson for a couple of years as accidental speaker of the House. | ||
| How has he changed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think what the people, Republicans around him would say is that they thought they were putting a hardcore conservative into place. | |
| And maybe they're not sure how totally committed he is to that. | ||
| He's also somebody who's grown in the job, who's maybe a more flexible politician than people thought he was capable of being. | ||
| And in connection with that, you know, maybe somebody who's more able to wait for his moment, kind of strike when everything lines up for him. | ||
| Don't forget, this is the same person who last year basically paved the way for more funding for Ukraine. | ||
| But the days of people being angry about that do seem to be over, and now we're in a more conservative Mike Johnson world. | ||
| Very interesting politician to watch. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes, is it easy to be, you know, to have strident positions on either side of the aisle when you're a backbencher or not in leadership? | ||
| And then you kind of alter your behavior once you get into leadership. | ||
| Is that a trend? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it probably is, because, you know, when you're in leadership, you have an obligation to the full spectrum of the conference or the caucus. | |
| And you can't get too far out on any one side or you miss your opportunity to bowl down the middle. | ||
| And that's especially true when the margins are as narrow as they are now. | ||
| I mean, don't forget Paul Ryan, when he did those tax cuts, had a super big margin. | ||
| It was dozens and dozens, so he could afford to lose votes. | ||
| But Mike Johnson is much more constrained. | ||
| Is Mike Johnson and is Hakeem Jeffries, are they accessible to the media? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say Mike Johnson probably a little bit more accessible to the media. | |
| We can get him walking in the hallways to votes and from votes. | ||
| He's very controlled in the outlets to which he is willing to grant interviews, I will say. | ||
| And Hakeem Jeffries sort of has always come across as a much more controlled politician, somebody who will talk at press conferences, but really has a message that he wants to stick to. | ||
| And so it's very, very hard to get him in a free or revealing moment. | ||
| Steve, Kansas, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
| Where in Kansas are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Kansas City. | |
| Thank you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Siobhan was talking about a reckoning. | ||
| The reckoning is going to be for all the deep state ghouls and goblins that have hollowed out the center of our country for the last 30 years. | ||
| And now you're going to, now the Wall Street Editorial Board is going to have to tighten its belt a little bit when the trade starts to go south. | ||
| It's really let them eat cake. | ||
| The 50 countries have already come back on their knees from this president and are begging to have their tariffs flattened or reduced to zero. | ||
| And the Wall Street Journal is just going to have to tighten their belts like the rest of this country. | ||
| This is a long, drawn-out process. | ||
| Thank you, Stephen. | ||
| We're going to leave it there. | ||
| I'm going to take this opportunity to just say that Siobhan Hughes is on the news side of the Wall Street Journal, the editorial page side, which is separate from the news side, usually conservative and pretty consistent about that. | ||
| But they have been, and they have been negative on President Trump, especially with the tariffs issue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The editorial pay, yes, has really been critical of Trump's moves on tariffs. | |
| And, you know, one could also think about the history of the paper being a business paper and maybe them channeling some of that thinking. | ||
| Next is John in New York Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Peter. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I got a couple of quick points to make regarding Trump's policies on a tariff. | ||
| I'm going to address them to Siobhan. | ||
| Trump's policies are normally business friendly. | ||
| I mean, he lowers the regulations and he, I'm sure, provides tax incentives. | ||
| One question I have: wouldn't this be advantageous to us? | ||
| I mean, instead of having these companies, if they're overtaxed and over-regulated, move out of the country and go to places like China, Mexico, Ireland, South America, and like that, and thus keeping jobs in the country. | ||
| One of the things I noticed that with this huge influx of immigrants, this is going to weigh heavily on our financial situation. | ||
| We're going to have to provide all kinds of services for this. | ||
| And it's just going to add to the process of being unsettled or the feeling of being unsettled that, Peter, you had on earlier. | ||
| But another thing I'd like to talk about, I'll do this as quickly as I can, regarding tariffs. | ||
| You know, I see tariffs as being protective, reciprocal, and punitive. | ||
| I mean, Trump has mentioned using the tariff to keep Mexico and Canada from allowing fentanyl in the country. | ||
| So in a punitive sense, I think maybe another course of action could be taken other than using a tariff. | ||
| But one of the things that concerns me and why I think Trump is on the right track, these tariffs could be protective and reciprocal. | ||
| I just don't understand how countries like Canada, the European Union, who are our friends and profess to be our friends, can have tariffs and non-tariff restrictions like VATs and things of that nature and keep American products out. | ||
| It's just counterintuitive. | ||
| I just don't understand that, and people get upset. | ||
| All right, John, we're going to let Siobhan Hughes have a moment to respond to what you were saying. | ||
| But where in New York are you and what do you do up there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I'm in upstate New York. | |
| I'm in the town of Malta. | ||
| I'm halfway between Albany and Saratoga. | ||
| And I'm a retired teacher. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| What did you teach? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I taught social studies in middle school for 40 years. | |
| God bless you. | ||
| Thank you very much, Siobhan Hughes of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, you're speaking my language. | |
| I am from Western New York, and actually, when I followed the rise of Trump back in 2016, I remembered that the sentiment in favor of tariffs was really pretty pronounced up there. | ||
| Manufacturing got hit hard. | ||
| So, what you're saying is essentially the Trump argument, the Republican argument, the Peter Navarro argument that this country has got to do something to bring down tariff and non-tariff barriers around the world because, as Trump says, the U.S. has been essentially ripped off. | ||
| You know, but it's also true that the supply of low-cost goods into this country has been something that a lot of Americans have really, really liked. | ||
| And the Democratic argument, and some of the Republicans say this too, that bringing manufacturing back to this country is a long process that, you know, maybe has not been thought out with this quick imposition of tariffs. | ||
| That's a real point, too. | ||
| And so there are a lot of different things to weigh here. | ||
| Paulina Luna, proxy voting. | ||
| What happened last week in the House? | ||
| They literally shut the House down because of this issue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The House was shut down because of this issue, because Anna Paulina Luna essentially had enough votes to pass this discharge petition to allow for proxy voting for parents. | |
| I think it was up to 12 weeks. | ||
| Mike Johnson essentially closed down the House. | ||
| No legislation could pass, and it was really unclear what was going to happen with that. | ||
| And yesterday, we saw the congresswoman post a tweet that they have reached an accord on this and the house is going to be able to open up back up. | ||
| And, you know, getting back to the point of Mike Johnson, he seems to have found a way through this. | ||
| Now, you pronounced her first name Paulina? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Paulina Luna, yes. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I just wanted to make sure I wasn't mispronouncing it there. | ||
| So, Carl's in Maine, Democrat. | ||
| Carl, please go ahead with your question for the Wall Street Journal, Siobhan Hughes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, first, I'd like to make a point. | |
| I'm a 72-year-old disabled veteran. | ||
| I live about halfway up the coast of Maine. | ||
| And what's happened in my life in the last two days is my little, I live on Social Security, $12.37 a month, and I get a $300-a month pension, $15,995 a year. | ||
| And it's hard to get by on that. | ||
| And since Donald Trump took office, here's what happened to me in one day: my IRA account, I've lost over $1,000 in it. | ||
| I went to buy food, prices never went down, like he promised. | ||
| I went to pay my oil bill. | ||
| Oil in Maine is up to $380 a gallon. | ||
| I keep it on $67,500 a month out of my little income. | ||
| Then I see all my bills going up. | ||
| I go to a free meal at the church, which Rockland has been provided to us for poor people and the disabled. | ||
| We are told that Donald Trump has canceled the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Then I turn on the TV and I paid in Social Security 57 years, and I feel that I can't sleep some nights. | |
| And then I turn, see on the TV that watched these Democrats and Republicans the other day. | ||
| They vote and vote and vote and vote. | ||
| And here's what I hear them say to end my story: I watch Republicans all day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what the Democrats are reading because there's nothing on there to cut a Medicaid. | |
| The Democrats say back to the Republicans, oh, yes, it is on there. | ||
| Now, why on these news channels when we're watching that, instead of paying these politicians on both sides all day to say it's on there and it's not on there, why don't we put a simple movie screen up and have them actually turn to the page so they can be transparent and show the American people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Carl's story. | |
| Carl, we're going to leave it there. | ||
| Thank you for calling in and sharing your story with us. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes, what's your response to him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Two things. | |
| First, thank you for sharing your story. | ||
| In a nutshell, that is what Democrats see as the problem. | ||
| Number two, I am going to tweet out the budget resolution that passed. | ||
| It is true that the word Medicaid is not in that resolution, but it's also true that there is that number $880 billion for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to come up with cuts. | ||
| And all of their reporting suggests that the only way to get to that number is to cut into Medicaid. | ||
| And so that's why the word isn't in the bill, but why there's so much consternation about it on the Hill. | ||
| And I will tweet that out so you can look that up for yourself. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes, we're going to end where we began. | ||
| What did the Senate pass Friday night, Saturday morning, and what is the House taking up this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Senate passed a budget resolution that aims to unlock the process of extending the 2017 tax cuts and expanding them and raising the debt ceiling. | |
| And that's what the House is taking up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what the House is due to take up midweek. | |
| It is not a budget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is not a budget. | |
| If you could rename budget resolution so it made more sense, what would you call it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say tool for extending tax cuts. | |
| I would say this is a technique. | ||
| Siobhan Hughes is with the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| She has been our guest for the past half hour. | ||
| We appreciate your time. | ||
| Please come back. | ||
| Well, coming up, we're going to have Eric Smith. | ||
| He is with the Cato Institute, and he writes about DEI. | ||
| And he will be on at about 9.15 this morning. | ||
| But we are going back to the calls that we started the morning with. | ||
| Are you feeling unsettled by the political and economic and social changes going on in the world today or not? | ||
| Do you think it's chaos? | ||
| Do you think it's course correction? | ||
| You can see the numbers there on the screen, 202-737-0001 for Republicans, 737-0002 for Democrats, and 202-628-0205 for Independents. | ||
| We'll be back in just a minute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Looking to contact your members of Congress? | |
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's nonprofit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to pre-order your copy today. | ||
| As a follow-on to Stuart Banner's History of the Supreme Court, this week's Book Notes Plus podcast features a 2002 interview with Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor emeritus. | ||
| The subject matter, forgotten memoir of John Knox, a law clerk to former Justice James McReynolds, a native of Kentucky. | ||
| Knox's year was the term beginning October 1936. | ||
| In history, it is very rare that a law clerk at the Supreme Court has published an insider's view of the court or of a justice. | ||
| Professor Hutchinson gives the background on where he found the memoir, which hadn't been published before. | ||
| Justice McReynolds, as you will hear, was, according to historians, arguably one of the most disagreeable justices ever to sit on the bench. | ||
|
unidentified
|
An interview with University of Chicago law professor Dennis Hutchinson on the forgotten memoir of John Knox on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| Book Notes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| The cherry blossoms are in season and we're marking the occasion with our cherry blossom sale. | ||
| Going on right now at cspanshop.org, our online store. | ||
| Save up to 25% on our entire cherry blossom collection of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and drinkwear. | ||
| Scan the code or visit c-spanshop.org during our cherry blossom sale. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| You know, there's a lot going on in the world politically, economically, socially. | ||
| There's tariff policy, there's a reordering of the federal government, there's personal finance issues, there's tensions with China. | ||
| You know, a lot going on. | ||
| And I don't know whether you see this as a chaotic trend or you see it as course correction, some needed changes, etc. | ||
| That's why we're asking this morning whether or not you're feeling unsettled. | ||
| So you can go ahead and dial in and let us know if world events, political events, et cetera, are making you unsettled. | ||
| We want to hear your voices. | ||
| You can see the numbers there on the screen. | ||
| You can also participate via social media. | ||
| Our text number is 202-748-8003. | ||
| And you can continue this conversation on Facebook or send us a tweet on X. Just remember, at C-SPAN, WJ is our handle. | ||
| But let's go and hear your voices again. | ||
| Shirley in South Carolina, Republican line. | ||
| Hey, Shirley, are you feeling settled and unsettled? | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am feeling a little unsettled, but I approve of what Trump is doing because real change is always thankful. | |
| And that's all I wanted to say. | ||
| Thank you, ma'am, for calling in. | ||
| Art is a Democrat in Illinois. | ||
| Art, where in Illinois are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Northern Illinois. | |
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you? | |
| I'm good. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| There is a lot of chaos and concern in the country right now. | ||
| There's a lot of divisiveness, and a lot of it goes back to Trump. | ||
| I believe if Trump could just answer three questions, it would vilify the country and get rid of a lot of the divisiveness if they understood where he was coming from. | ||
| My first question to him would have been, do you believe in the Constitution? | ||
| My second question would be. | ||
| Oh my gosh, one second, please. | ||
| I lost my clear thought. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| Okay, do you believe in the Constitution is question one. | ||
| Question two and three are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The question three would be, oh, darn it. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Well, tell you what, that's a pretty big first question that you asked there. | ||
| So we will leave it there. | ||
| Art, maybe next time we talk to you, you can give us questions two and three. | ||
| Let's talk to Dee in Wisconsin, Independent line. | ||
| Hi, Dee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes, I'm very unsettled with all these tariffs and Social Security. | ||
| I'm worried about Canada. | ||
| They're our closest ally. | ||
| And I've heard on the news that they, you know, that people are selling their real estate from, you know, trying to get rid of, I mean, they're boycotting us completely. | ||
| And that's very, very unsettling because, you know, they're our closest ally. | ||
| And then the Social Security is terrible. | ||
| You know, with the Medicare, and we don't know for sure what he's doing. | ||
| I don't think he knows what he's doing. | ||
| He keeps saying that both of those are not going to be cut, but he's cutting everything around them. | ||
| So that's, you know, pretty much what I'm unsettled about. | ||
| Thank you, Dee, for calling in. | ||
| Harold in Kansas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Harold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wouldn't really say I'm unsettled. | ||
| If I was unsettled, it would be for different reasons. | ||
| I'm not at all concerned about the Trump administration's doing. | ||
| Tariffs might be tough on some people. | ||
| They might be less tough on other people. | ||
| What I'm unsettled about is the fact that I attended a hands-off rally on Saturday in my state capitol here in Topeka. | ||
| I was the one lone Trump supporter opposing maybe 2,000 Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They put out more vitriol. | |
| They were threatening. | ||
| They came over and got in my face. | ||
| If the police had not been there, I might have been assaulted. | ||
| But anyway, Democrats, they had the F-word. | ||
| They had signs with fingers on them. | ||
| They chanted terrible things at me. | ||
| So that's what I'm unsettled about. | ||
| Democrats are unhinged. | ||
| You all have a nice day. | ||
| Hey, Harold, what made you attend the anti-Trump rally? | ||
| Why did you, did you stand there wearing a MAGA hat or holding a Trump flag? | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir, I did. | |
| I had a flagpole with two Trump flags on it. | ||
| I had a sign, just like they had signs. | ||
| I stayed on the opposite side of the street, did not holler anything, did not give them the bird. | ||
| I minded my own business. | ||
| They, all 2,000 of them, hollered and screamed every bad word they could think of at me, men, women. | ||
| And this was going on while children were at this event. | ||
| So they just have no, they don't have any control of their emotions or their feelings. | ||
| They cannot, they couldn't sit there and just protest without screaming bad words for everybody to hear. | ||
| But I will say the police kept them in check very well from bothering me. | ||
| In Topeka. | ||
| Were you disappointed that there weren't other Trump supporters there? | ||
| Were you surprised? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was kind of a little bit disappointed. | |
| I was the only guy. | ||
| But I think that some Trump supporters, unlike me, feel like we're in power. | ||
| There's nothing the Democrats can basically do for three years and nine more months. | ||
| They can put roadblocks in there. | ||
| They can do things like that. | ||
| But he's going to be in there for three more years and eight months. | ||
| And so I just wish people would kind of give him a chance. | ||
| It was terrible before him. | ||
| It's not real great right now, but he's trying to make it better, people. | ||
| Give him a chance. | ||
| That's Harold in Topeka. | ||
| Next call is Steve in New Jersey, Independent Lines. | ||
| Steve, with the political, economic, and social events going on around the world today, are you feeling unsettled at all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as an independent, I really feel unsettled because I feel like there are two mobs, if you will, fighting with each other, going at war with each other, and they're destroying my country. | |
| I mean, I'm looking right now. | ||
| I have the sound off from your on the TV. | ||
| I have the sound off, and I'm looking at all these signs, ridiculous, horrible signs. | ||
| I mean, it's amazing. | ||
| You have a governor of Minnesota clapping because an American company might go bankruptcy. | ||
| I mean, there are literally politicians right now in glee, in glee, because the market's going down. | ||
| So now they have a new Pearl Cup clutching moment about Trump. | ||
| It is absurd what's going on. | ||
| And I have to say, the media is not helping. | ||
| It's not helping. | ||
| So, like, as an independent, am I unsettled? | ||
| Yeah, I'm unsettled because we have two factions going to war and they're destroying our country. | ||
| And no one is sane enough to say, we're destroying our country. | ||
| What is anyone doing about it? | ||
| Thank you, sir, for calling in. | ||
| Jasmine, Pennsylvania, Democrats line. | ||
| Jasmine, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I am certainly unsettled, and for many reasons. | ||
| I'm unsettled because I do not believe that our president is mentally stable. | ||
| Of course, his family, who knows him better than anyone else, has already validated that. | ||
| But just what I have noticed is, and what I'm also concerned about is this idolatry. | ||
| I feel like I'm witnessing idolatry in real time. | ||
| People seem to be abdicating their social and moral responsibilities to what they are making into a false profit. | ||
| I mean, people do not seem to be open-minded. | ||
| They're not listening to the other side. | ||
| They're not socially engaged. | ||
| They're not educating themselves about the facts. | ||
| And they certainly are not acting spiritually. | ||
| I don't see or feel any kind of spiritual elements. | ||
| Now, I don't really listen basically to what people say. | ||
| I really watch what they do and how they do it. | ||
| Whom are you helping? | ||
| How are you empowering? | ||
| How are you inspiring people? | ||
| And what virtues do you possess? | ||
| And of course, this man has been convicted on many counts. | ||
| He's been accused of scamming the lenders and his contracted. | ||
| So, Jasmine, would you say that you are unsettled because of Donald Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, not him so much. | |
| There are many people who are mentally unstable. | ||
| I'm unsettled that the people are turning him into some kind of prophet. | ||
| Many people have challenges. | ||
| We don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. | ||
| What we do is look for people who have more virtues, values, who are at least trying to bring us together to have a higher calling other than their ego. | ||
| But when people are mentally unstable, you can't blame them. | ||
| But I'm wondering what's going on with the people who are voting for people who are worshiping this person. | ||
| I don't think they worship God. | ||
| Pennsylvania, Democrat, thank you. | ||
| And during Jasmine's phone call, we were showing some video of President Trump signing executive orders. | ||
| Just for context, in his first term, his first four years, he signed 220 executive orders. | ||
| So far, in the first 80 days or so of his administration in his second term, he signed 111 executive orders. | ||
| In eight years, Barack Obama signed 276. | ||
| Joe Biden signed 162. | ||
| From the Washington Times this morning, Kennedy reveals HHS will rehire some fired workers. | ||
| HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said some of the department's 10,000 workers who were fired last week will be rehired and certain programs will be reinstated. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy told reporters his overhaul of HHS, which entails streamlining agencies and reducing the workforce, resulted in some mistakes. | ||
| Quote, there were a number of instances where studies that should not have been cut were cut and we've reinstated them. | ||
| Personnel that should not have been cut were cut and we are reinstating them and that has always been the plan. | ||
| The layoffs began on Tuesday and will ultimately shrink the health and human services workforce by 25%, including another 10,000 workers taking buyouts. | ||
| The cuts are part of President Trump's pledge to reduce the size and cost of government. | ||
| Next call is Martha in Indiana, Republican. | ||
| Martha, where in Indiana are you calling from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morocco. | |
| From where? | ||
| Morocco. | ||
| It's the only city in the world named Morocco. | ||
| Is it really? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I've got a passing familiarity with Indiana and being from Fort Wayne, but where is Morocco? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, Kentland, Rensselaer. | |
| We're in Newton County. | ||
| So you're north? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm north. | |
| Okay. | ||
| About 60 miles from Chicago. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| And I'm just a little bit unsettled because of the way people talk and when they don't agree with the other side. | ||
| But I remember NAFTA. | ||
| I'm old enough that I remember when Clinton signed NAFTA. | ||
| And we had one factory in our town that supported the whole town. | ||
| Almost everybody worked there. | ||
| And immediately it moved to another country. | ||
| And now our town's like a ghost town. | ||
| And I think what President Trump is doing is the best thing in the world because somebody's got to reverse that. | ||
| We've got to get these factories back in. | ||
| You know, Canada's crying about the steel. | ||
| Well, how many steel mills closed up? | ||
| You know, in northern Indiana, we have a lot of steel mills, and a lot of people work there. | ||
| And they closed up Pennsylvania. | ||
| And they didn't care about that. | ||
| So we need to get all that stuff back into the United States. | ||
| And I think Trump's the only person that can do it. | ||
| And he works harder than any president I've ever seen in my whole life. | ||
| That's Martha in Indiana in Morocco, Indiana. | ||
| Joan's in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Joan, political, economic, socially, all those issues going on. | ||
| How are you feeling? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am feeling stressed out, and I have high anxiety. | |
| And I think that we're not even thinking about the amount of anxiety that this is causing people. | ||
| The thing I'm most stressed out about is the Constitution. | ||
| The Constitution has always made me feel very secure being an American. | ||
| And everything that I see happening and the Constitution is not being adhered to. | ||
| And then we have to run to the courts to dispute the Constitution. | ||
| That just doesn't make any sense to me. | ||
| If something is illegal, it's illegal. | ||
| Why can't we stop it there? | ||
| Why do we have to then keep going to the courts to make a decision on something that's already protected by the Constitution? | ||
| So that's one thing I'm really stressed out about. | ||
| The second thing I'm having anxiety about is I've been listening this morning. | ||
| I heard the couple of people who call the billionaire who has 50 different homes and the millionaires and whatever. | ||
| I make a good living. | ||
| I work on Wall Street. | ||
| I pay an average of $50K in taxes. | ||
| And my husband and I still have to pay taxes after that. | ||
| And I'm not complaining about that because this is a country where we help each other up. | ||
| And if I pay an extra $10,000 or $12,000 more to the $50K that we've already paid, and it goes to feed someone and it helps a hungry child in Africa and it helps feed someone somewhere else and put clothing, because I'm doing better. | ||
| So Elon Musk, someone said he paid $30 billion in taxes. | ||
| You're worth $450-something billion dollars. | ||
| What is $30 billion in taxes? | ||
| That's a drop in a bucket. | ||
| Shame on you. | ||
| But, Joan, wouldn't that be in reality? | ||
| Wouldn't that be shame on the tax code that allows him to only pay that much, in your view? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| So can't we go after the tax code that allows him to do that instead of going after the government? | ||
| We tax it. | ||
| No taxation without representation. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| So we're taxed. | ||
| This is a government. | ||
| It's not a business. | ||
| And you have people that have been instituted into the government to run the government as a business. | ||
| The government is not here for profit. | ||
| The government is not here to make a profit. | ||
| The government is here to serve the people. | ||
| And so Trump has, how many bankruptcies has Trump has gone through? | ||
| He's ruined every single business that he's ever had, handed to him. | ||
| Not that he's built from the ground up, that's been handed to him. | ||
| So we're going to now allow this person to ruin and bankrupt our country. | ||
| That's who we're looking to save America? | ||
| Because I'm all with bringing jobs back. | ||
| I'm all with being American. | ||
| I'm all with all of that. | ||
| But right now, I feel we're being very distracted. | ||
| They're flooding the news waves with so many distractions, and we're not paying attention to the things that are most important. | ||
| Pay attention to the Constitution. | ||
| All right, Joan in New Jersey. | ||
| Appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Art is a Democrat in Illinois. | ||
| Art, where in Illinois are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm up in Northern Illinois near Chicago. | |
| Yeah, are you in the Chicago suburbs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a far suburb of Chicago. | |
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Art, are you feeling unsettled by what's going on in the world today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but I think that to be sure if the president just defined what he's about. | |
| The thing is, even Republicans are concerned about the way things are going on right now. | ||
| I think if he was to just answer three questions. | ||
| One, does he believe in the Constitution? | ||
| Two, does he think we're a republic? | ||
| And three, does he think the government has three equal branches? | ||
| If he was to answer these questions, yes or no, I think it would bring the country back together again, and there would be less divisions. | ||
| Art, I'm glad you remembered your questions two and three and called back in. | ||
| Kingsley, Republican, New York. | ||
| Hi, Kingsley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I'm very unsettled, much for the reasons that the previous caller, the female from Wall Street, many other things she says. | ||
| I've lost $15,000 in my 401k from January 1st to the beginning of this month. | ||
| $15,000 off my 401k. | ||
| I don't, you know, fine. | ||
| You know, I didn't vote for Trump as a Republican. | ||
| I didn't vote for him. | ||
| But I'm very concerned about what's happening to the Constitution, how court orders are being flouted. | ||
| I'm very concerned about the taxes that we pay in order to help people who are poor and who don't have. | ||
| I'm just trying to figure out what kind of America am I living in. | ||
| I'm used to America that's the shining light on a hill. | ||
| I don't understand what's going on in our country right now. | ||
| Kingsley in New York, thank you for calling in. | ||
| Well, Skylar Woodhouse is with Bloomberg News. | ||
| She's a White House correspondent for that organization. | ||
| Ms. Woodhouse, thanks for standing out in the rain there in the White House for us. | ||
| Is today a busy day for you ahead? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a very busy day here at the White House. | |
| It's a pretty rainy day here in Washington. | ||
| So we'll see what the day brings. | ||
| But it's a busy day, everything that's going on in the financial markets right now. | ||
| So we're waiting to see how that all comes together with the opening bell just minutes away. | ||
| And then also here visiting the White House today is Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. | ||
| So, you know, we're all paying attention to what's going to come from that. | ||
| The last time the Prime Minister was here, President Trump announced that he was looking to take over the Gaza Strip. | ||
| So it will be very interesting to see what comes today. | ||
| And then this meeting comes after last week's tariff announcement where the U.S. plans to implement tariffs on Israel. | ||
| So it's a big day and we're all patiently waiting to see what comes from today. | ||
| Yeah, the White House sent out quite a few people yesterday to the morning shows, didn't they, to talk about tariffs? | ||
| Did they get their message out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, I mean, they have to get their message out. | |
| I mean, if you just look at, if you pull up the financial index, the markets are all over the place right now. | ||
| So, you know, the administration, they have to sort of get in front of the markets right now. | ||
| Things are not looking great for the administration. | ||
| Just the S ⁇ P, everything is plummeting right now. | ||
| So, you know, they're trying to get out there to sort of calm, you know, to ease everyone's concern, let people know that, hey, things might be a little, you know, not great right now, but it's only a short-term problem. | ||
| I mean, President Trump did say this, he's been saying this for a while, that there could be some short-term pressure. | ||
| But now the moment is here. | ||
| So it's really going to be interesting to see how the administration navigates this. | ||
| Because when you think about it and when you start looking at the markets, you know, I'm at Bloomberg, so we cover this up all the time. | ||
| But, you know, when you start playing with people's money, it raises the question of, okay, what is the administration going to do to sort of help ease the pressure? | ||
| Hey, Skylar Woodhouse, when I came on the air at 7 this morning, the futures market for the U.S. was down about 1,000 points on the Dow. | ||
| Is it still about there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the last time I checked, the markets were not doing well. | |
| All I saw this morning was a bunch of red, barely any green. | ||
| And this is not just the U.S., this is across the world. | ||
| You saw, you know, markets who have already opened in Asia, just all across the world, markets sort of reacting to what is happening here in the U.S. | ||
| So this might be a U.S. issue that we're seeing right now, but it's definitely having some global impact. | ||
| Hey, what's going on with the trade advisor Peter Navarro and Elon Musk? | ||
| Is there tension there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the White House is they've been riding the honeymoon phase since taking office in January, and now they're being presented with real challenges that they have to address, everything from the Doge cuts to the tariffs to the financial markets. | |
| So you could say things are maybe a little high stress right now here at the White House. | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
| Obviously, this is a place where big decisions are made. | ||
| And so when you're making these big decisions at such a rapid pace, you know, it's only a matter of time before there maybe starts to be some tension, you know, between, you know, colleagues, as you might say. | ||
| But, you know, it's interesting to see sort of how the two are working together. | ||
| I mean, the question that's been on everyone's minds since Elon Musk sort of entered Trump's orbit is, you know, how long will he be around? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How long can we expect him to sort of keep going with Doge? | |
| And it seems like maybe we are sort of reaching that moment where his role could be taking a step back. | ||
| But again, it's only a matter of time. | ||
| And if anything, we know with this administration is President Trump is the decider, and he will be the one to sort of make any sort of personnel decision. | ||
| Hey, Skylar Woodhouse, can you give us some insight on the briefing room, the seating there, the relationship between the media and Caroline Levitt, and the accessibility of the president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, look, the president's been very accessible to the press. | |
| I've been down to Palm Beach a few times with the president, and we've had access to him. | ||
| He's come back to us on Air Force Swan. | ||
| He's spoken with us. | ||
| I do think to be the president of the United States, he's pretty generous with his time in terms of, you know, taking questions from the press, whether that's in the Oval Office, on Air Force Swan, doing a press conference. | ||
| You know, when you sort of just compare the administration to the Biden administration, you can very, you know, the differences are almost night and day. | ||
| We're expecting a press conference today with Prime Minister Benjamin Yetanyahu, and President Trump is expected to, you know, they have the Oval Office bylaw. | ||
| So maybe that could be two opportunities today for press to be in front of the leaders. | ||
| So, you know, the administration, you know, it's definitely an interesting time. | ||
| Obviously, you know, we have all seen the reports and sort of the changes that are happening among the White House press pool. | ||
| But, you know, still within that, we're still, you know, having opportunities to talk with the president. | ||
| Skylar Woodhouse is the White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. | ||
| We really appreciate your giving us a week ahead and a day ahead look. | ||
| And we appreciate your coming out in the rain there at the White House. | ||
| Please come back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And we are back to our question that we have been asking all morning, which is, are you feeling unsettled with the political, economic, and social changes going on in the world? | ||
| Got about 15 more minutes to take your calls, and then we're going to switch topics. | ||
| We're going to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion with Eric Smith of the Cato Institute. | ||
| That's coming up in about 15 minutes or so. | ||
| But in the meantime, how are you feeling with all the things going on in the world today? | ||
| Do you consider them to be course corrections? | ||
| Do you consider them to be chaos? | ||
| 202 is the area code for all of our numbers, 737-0001 if you are a Republican and want to dial in. | ||
| 737-002 if you're a Democrat and want to dial in. | ||
| And 628-0205 for Independence. | ||
| Now, if you can't get through on the phone lines, you want to send a text, 202-748-8003 is the text number. | ||
| Please include your first name and your city if you would. | ||
| Dave in Nevada, Independent Line. | ||
| Dave, are you feeling settled or unsettled? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm feeling unsettled. | |
| Trump's breaking every law in the book, and nobody does anything. | ||
| You've got to get this guy out of the office. | ||
| He's out of his mind. | ||
| He's crazy. | ||
| He's hurt millions of people. | ||
| Even if he brought back every job that he says he wants to break back, it'll take two to three years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he's laid off, caused this thing with the stock market, $6 trillion in one day. | |
| All these people are going to be laid off. | ||
| You'll never bring back enough jobs that he's lost in this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This guy's out of his mind. | |
| They passed a thing in the Senate saying that they're going to try to stop it, but it has to go to the House now. | ||
| And if they don't stop him, we're going to crash. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This guy is totally out of his mind, and the media doesn't do anything about it. | |
| I've only heard four reporters on the news saying, oh, President-elect felon Trump. | ||
| That's what he is. | ||
| He's a criminal. | ||
| You can't have a guy that's a criminal in the White House. | ||
| All right, we got the point. | ||
| Dave in Nevada, Marie in Michigan, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Marie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I just wanted to mention, yeah, I am pretty confused and unsettled. | ||
| I'm trying to figure out, Trump keeps letting all these people go, and then now he's hiring them back. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense, that to me does not make any sense. | ||
| Why go through all that letting and hurting people and disrupting their lives if you're just going to hire them back? | ||
| I know he's trying to make a difference, but the difference, for some reason, does not seem to be helping. | ||
| And so I'm just wondering if maybe you have an idea about that. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm not going to respond to that, but I am going to ask you a follow-up question. | ||
| You're calling on the Republican line. | ||
| Did you vote for President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I did. | |
| And now I'm really confused. | ||
| Where in Michigan are you, Marie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm by the Ironwood area. | |
| Up north. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Thanks for calling in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, bye. | |
| And from the other end of the country, Israel is in Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how's it going? | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for letting me in. | ||
| I have some things I have to mention, and I think they're very important, and I think it's going to shed light to a lot of things that are going on. | ||
| All of this stuff is being orchestrated beyond the White House and the presidency. | ||
| There's elites that are controlling and orchestrating everything. | ||
| A lot of the stuff that they present in movies like iRobot are the stuff that Elon Musk has been doing in this present day. | ||
| And so it doesn't surprise us. | ||
| And that's an antichrist approach. | ||
| So Trump, while he's releasing all the good people, he's keeping all the antichrist personnel around his circle instead of inviting godly principles into the nation and united the nation. | ||
| Because there's a new world order that they're trying to do. | ||
| Because if they can keep everybody combating, fighting against each other on a racial war and an economic war, then they're sidetracking from who the real victims are. | ||
| And if everybody unites as a nation, black, white, or whatever you are in this nation, and rise up against them, then that releases them of the power that they have over us because what they're doing is witchcraft over this nation. | ||
| And a lot of people don't understand that the godly principles. | ||
| That's Israel in Florida on the independent line. | ||
| This is an op-ed by Steve Ratner. | ||
| He was a counselor to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration. | ||
| He's done well in business as well. | ||
| And here is his op-ed. | ||
| Few of us ever imagined he would go this far. | ||
| Mr. Ratner writes, in the 50 years I have been immersed in markets and economic policy, I've never before witnessed a signature economic policy initiative that was met with such unalloyed criticism. | ||
| What's worse, the damage was entirely self-inflicted. | ||
| He goes on to say that privately, several chief executives told him that they recognized that imposing the tariffs, as well as Mr. Trump's intractable support of them, was a potentially cataclysmic mistake. | ||
| Quote, few of us ever imagined he would go this far, one told me. | ||
| He could well bring down the economy and himself. | ||
| The Trump-supporting business leaders I've spoken to, Mr. Ratner writes in the last few days, don't yet regret their votes, mostly because of their intense distaste, if not hatred, for the Biden-Harris administration. | ||
| And they remain broadly supportive of the efforts of the tech billionaire Elon Musk to reform the federal government, even if they acknowledge that his Doge team may be going too far in its slashing of spending and personnel. | ||
| But I wonder how some other major Trump-supporting leaders whose stock prices have been particularly hard-hit feel right now, like Steven Schwartzman, CEO of Blackstone, down 15% in two days, and Safra Katz, CEO of Oracle, the database company, down 12%. | ||
| Mr. Trump's actions aren't the only problem. | ||
| Almost as important is the lack of clarity as to what policies he is pursuing and why. | ||
| That's a little bit from Steve Ratner's op-ed this morning in the New York Times. | ||
| Donna, North Carolina Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Donna. | ||
| You feeling unsettled these days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You know, I am not unsettled. | ||
| The reason why I'm not unsettled is because Kamala Harris and Tim Walz explained to us throughout the campaign what would happen if this man was to return to office. | ||
| There were so many callers that I wanted to respond to, but after listening to Mr. Ratner's op-ed in the paper, I mean, he is, of course, on point. | ||
| So I can say even, I don't even know why the gentleman in Kansas spoke of the Democrats being unhinged. | ||
| America should be unhinged due to the fact that our Constitution is being attacked, like the lady was speaking of in New Jersey. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| I hate what's going on. | ||
| I knew what was going on. | ||
| People didn't read Project 2025, and now we're having to deal with this crap. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for taking my call. | |
| Have a blessed day, all. | ||
| That's Donna in North Carolina. | ||
| Frank is a Republican in Georgia. | ||
| Hi, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The sky's falling. | ||
| The sky's falling. | ||
| I mean, people just need to take a chill pill. | ||
| We didn't get here overnight. | ||
| This is a culmination of 40, 50 years of bad leadership. | ||
| You know, it's just when I see these people out here protesting, and, you know, the future doesn't look bright. | ||
| You know, it really doesn't. | ||
| Social Security is going to go bankrupt. | ||
| And why? | ||
| Why is it going to go bankrupt? | ||
| Everybody just keeps ignoring Roe versus Wade. | ||
| You took out one abortion in 1972. | ||
| That took out seven people. | ||
| Seven people. | ||
| There should be about 600 million people in this country right now. | ||
| And we would have the people to fill these jobs. | ||
| Who's going to do these factory jobs if we get them all back? | ||
| Well, I hope robotics and AI saves the day. | ||
| But you guys, it's just laughable. | ||
| And the five-year plan. | ||
| Everybody's got to do it in five years. | ||
| No, you got to have a hundred-year plan, people. | ||
| You got to think ahead. | ||
| All right, Frank in Georgia, thank you very much for calling in. | ||
| Here is a text. | ||
| This is from David in Brooklyn. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I am 82 years old, retired professional woodworker. | ||
| I receive my Social Security payments on time every month, deposited directly into my bank account. | ||
| I am unsettled about widespread anti-Semitism and destruction of Tesla dealerships and their cars. | ||
| I would like to suggest C-SPAN have Mark Levin on as a guest speaker. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Again, that's David in Brooklyn. | ||
| And this is from the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| Columbia's former president undergoes heated government questioning in closed-door session. | ||
| Closed-door government questioning of Columbia University's recently departed interim president indicates the Trump administration's relationship with the school remains strained as they negotiate over federal funding. | ||
| Katrina Armstrong, who stepped down as Columbia's interim president March 28th, was questioned by a government attorney in D.C. this past Tuesday for about three hours as part of the Trump administration's investigation of anti-Semitism on campus. | ||
| The deposition offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the relationship between elite universities and an administration taking extraordinary measures to reset their campus cultures. | ||
| Armstrong told officials during questioning that she wasn't aware of allegations that classmates had spit on Jewish students, nor did she know the names of faculty alleged to have distributed materials justifying the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. | ||
| She said she didn't recall learning that students were calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. | ||
| Quote, I'm just trying to understand how you have such a terrible memory of specific incidences of anti-Semitism when you're clearly an intelligent doctor, Sean Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, said about halfway through the deposition. | ||
| If you want to read more, it's in the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| Kathy, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Kathy, are you feeling unsettled by world events? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes, very much so, ever since Trump was elected. | |
| And I'm in Trump territory. | ||
| He's a criminal. | ||
| He bankrupt most of his company. | ||
| And now he's bankrupting our country. | ||
| The price of groceries are astronomical. | ||
| Drugs are high. | ||
| And I'm worried about Social Security and Medicare. | ||
| And I really feel terrible about Musk closing the USAID overseas, helping hungry people. | ||
| I mean, all of it is really, really terrible. | ||
| He's a terrible man, an evil man. | ||
| And yes, I'm very, very upset. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's Kathy calling in from Florida. | ||
| Next is Paula in Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Paula. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm very unsettled. | ||
| Everything is about money. | ||
| But here, he claims, the president claims he care about this country. | ||
| But since he's been in office, I haven't heard him say anything or address anybody about the floods in this country, about the hurricanes in this country, about the fires in this country. | ||
| But he cares. | ||
| I don't see it. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| I think he is a glorified, rich thug going in our country. | ||
| Have a blessed day. | ||
| Nancy, a Republican in Georgia? | ||
| Nancy, where in Georgia are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Myrna? | |
| Myrna? | ||
| Where is Myrna Georgia? | ||
| Did you say Myrna is in Myrna? | ||
| Smyrna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Surb of Atlanta. | |
| Yeah, in the Atlanta area. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Nancy, are you feeling unsettled, unfazed by world events? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, the world events are foremost in my mind because Trump has been running around poking everybody. | |
| He could have simply made an announcement and said, Canada, you're charging us, or you're charging 25% tariffs. | ||
| You have until April 2nd to either get rid of the tariffs or we will match them. | ||
| You can say that in diplomatic language. | ||
| You can say that respectfully. | ||
| He did not. | ||
| He has disrespected the people who work in this country, pretty much all of us, by saying, oh, I don't think people would mind missing a payment of Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I know a lot of people who depend very heavily on that just for basic survival. | ||
| So one month without it. | ||
| And they are looking at evictions. | ||
| They are looking at where do they get their food. | ||
| A lot of them, very few of them drive anymore, the older ones, because their eyesight or infirmities don't allow them to drive. | ||
| So, Nancy, you're calling on the Republican line. | ||
| Are you a Republican? | ||
| Did you support President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I voted for Trump. | |
| I supported what he said his policies were. | ||
| And then he did a 180. | ||
| He's acting like a schoolyard bully. | ||
| And he is acting as if the entire government and everyone who doesn't agree with him is corrupt or fraudulent. | ||
| And that is just not the case. | ||
| There is a lot of corruption and fraud. | ||
| The reason I did not vote for Kamala Harris is because she was an appointed candidate. | ||
| She was not elected by the people to run for office. | ||
| She got shoe-worn in there. | ||
| And the Democrats knew that Biden was not capable of a second term. | ||
| He wasn't even capable of finishing out his first term. | ||
| They had to prop him up. | ||
| And I just, you talk about the Constitution. | ||
| There's the violation. | ||
| And I'm wondering if it may be the Democrats and Republicans aren't in cahoots to disrupt and enslave, not the Democrats and Republicans, excuse me, the oligarchs, the American oligarchs are not in cahoots to enslave the American people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trump is acting like a tyrant. | |
| He should be acting like a statesman. | ||
| He should be speaking softly if he's carrying that big stick. | ||
| I was really happy that he was going to carry that big stick. | ||
| I didn't think he'd go bashing our friends and our allies in the face with insults and yelling at them and treating them like second-class citizens. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Or second-class human beings. | ||
| He has no respect for others. | ||
| Nancy, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you for sharing your point of view. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Washington Times this morning, deportations could cost health care industry more than 1 million workers. | ||
| The Trump administration's aggressive deportation strategy could cost understaffed U.S. health medical providers. | ||
| providers more than 1 million non-citizen workers, including a third who are undocumented. | ||
| The analysis of Census Bureau data in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 3.4 million out of over 20 million U.S. healthcare workers in 2024, roughly 17% were foreign-born. | ||
| That included 2.3 million naturalized citizens, 697,000 documented non-citizens, 366,000 illegal aliens. | ||
| If you want to read more of this study, it's in the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Well, we're going to turn our attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion. | ||
| Our guest is Eric Smith. | ||
| He is with the Cato Institute and he has founded a group called Free Black Thought. | ||
| We will be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 democracy is always an unfinished creation Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN shop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | |
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at c-span shop.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And now on the Washington Journal, we want to introduce you to Eric Smith. | ||
| He's a research fellow with the Cato Institute. | ||
| He's on the board of advisors for the Pro-Human Foundation. | ||
| And he's a founder of a group called Free Black Thought. | ||
| What is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Free Black Thought is an organization, a nonprofit organization that tries to platform black voices you wouldn't hear normally in the media. | |
| A lot of times you get the impression that black people are a monolith, right? | ||
| Well, that is not true. | ||
| And anybody who's left their house for more than five minutes would know that. | ||
| But we seem to need this organization to platform those unorthodox, quote-unquote, voices. | ||
| What is an unorthodox point of view? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One that doesn't align with what is currently called progressive politics. | |
| Some people say woke, right? | ||
| I say politics-oriented and critical social justice. | ||
| The idea that America is a place that is inherently anti-black, right? | ||
| And the odds are against us from the jump. | ||
| That's not the case as far as we're concerned. | ||
| And we want to put things out there that show and prove the reasonable argument that that's not the case. | ||
| So we have a journal, we have a podcast, we have a compendium, and we have a Twitter presence. | ||
| And you've written about being politically black. | ||
| What does that phrase mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what I just said, basically, politically black means that you are abiding by what's called critical social justice. | |
| There is an oppressor and oppressed narrative that is running through America. | ||
| And, you know, the idea that lived experience trumps reason and rationality. | ||
| Those are just two of the tenets. | ||
| The primary tenant is this. | ||
| The question isn't, did racism happen, but how did it manifest in this situation? | ||
| Which is to say racism is always already happening. | ||
| You just have to find it. | ||
| And if you can't find it, it's because you're not educated enough. | ||
| And you disagree with that premise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wholeheartedly. | |
| When you were testifying in Congress recently, you said, quote, contemporary DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, is not an extension of the civil rights movement. | ||
| It is undergirded by a quasi-Marxist ideology called critical social justice. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Critical social justice is an umbrella term for a lot of things we've heard in the past few years. | ||
| Critical race theory is under the umbrella of critical social justice, as is critical queer studies ability, things like that. | ||
| The issue with this ideology is that it is inherently illiberal. | ||
| Illiberal meaning against free speech, against the primacy of reason, against the sovereignty of the individual. | ||
| It's all about the group, one group pitted against the other. | ||
| And this takes our eyes off of our own agency, right? | ||
| Of the opportunities we have right now, of the fact that it's 2025 and not 1965, right? | ||
| That's kind of a primary idea of this. | ||
| Well, the Congressional Black Caucus, which has been around for 50 or so years in Congress, is currently chaired by Yvette Clark of New York, Democrat from New York. | ||
| And recently she spoke about DEI and the Trump administration's efforts in that regard. | ||
| Here's what she had to say. | ||
| We cannot overstate the gravity of the moment that we're in. | ||
| We cannot overstate the impact that Donald Trump's executive actions and policies will have on black communities. | ||
| In particular, the mass firings and attacks on diversity in the federal government and assaults on black workers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One in five civil servants are black. | |
| For decades, federal jobs have provided a pathway to the middle class for many black Americans in the face of discrimination in the private sector. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Y'all know your parents told you. | |
| Get educated, get a good government job. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| The purge of the federal workforce is an attack on black jobs and an attempt to kick us out of the middle class. | ||
| Cutting billions of dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and snap is truly just, it's a matter of life and death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These cuts will leave millions of black children, black families, black seniors and people with disabilities vulnerable and without a lifeline. | |
| And the attacks on the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship, shows all the direction Republicans would like to take our country. | ||
| We are at the bullseye, the bullseye of what's taking place. | ||
| Eric Smith of Free Black Thought, what's your reaction to what Congresswoman Clark had to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the first question I posed to her is a question that Trump often got several months ago. | |
| What's a black job? | ||
| Apparently, she's saying it's a federal job. | ||
| I think a black job is any job that a black person does. | ||
| I have a black job, quote unquote, right? | ||
| The idea that there is only one or two paths to success for black Americans is defeated thinking. | ||
| We're going to put the numbers up on the screen. | ||
| You can tell we're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, and DEI initiatives and the Trump administration's plans to get rid of DEI initiatives, not only in the federal government, but across the country. | ||
| Numbers are up on the screen. | ||
| Go ahead and dial in, divided by Republican, Democrat, and Independent. | ||
| Mr. Smith, you identify DEI as an industry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| What do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, as a matter of fact. | |
| There's a lot of money to be made in diversity trainings, implicit bio trainings, and things like that. | ||
| The issue with something like this being an industry is that you need a reason for the industry, right? | ||
| As bad as it sounds, doctors need illness, you know what I mean, or else they would not be necessary. | ||
| A similar idea comes up with the diversity, equity, and inclusion. | ||
| You need racism in order to justify this industry. | ||
| So when racism isn't apparent, you have to say, well, you just don't see it, right? | ||
| And I'm here to save the day. | ||
| Also wanted to ask you, how did you come to this point of view that you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What aspect of the point of view? | |
| What's your background? | ||
| Just as a founder of Free Black Thought and talking about being politically black and DEI is an industry? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, that's a very long story. | ||
| I'll try to truncate into a few seconds. | ||
| I realized in my field of rhetoric and composition, I'm a former professor, that there was a lot of illiberal sentiment going on, a lot of brazen statements about how the point of education is to take down civil society, not to perpetuate it. | ||
| I had an issue with this, and because I had that issue, I was attacked. | ||
| And that opened my eyes to exactly how ingrained critical social justice is in academia. | ||
| And then eventually I found out how much it was ingrained in other institutions. | ||
| And I and several others decided to do something. | ||
| So we started Free Black Thought. | ||
| Yeah, you write that on the Cato Institute's website that you emailed a client, why is this, basically, when you were told when you were working in academe that you needed to stand up to X for racism reasons, and you said why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And yes, well, I mean, one of the things that was talked about is the idea that teaching standard English to black students was a form of racism, right? | |
| We're denying their African-American vernacular or something like that. | ||
| When in reality, students are not paying tuition to not learn. | ||
| They're there to learn the standard English, so they have that tool. | ||
| However, learning that standard English would help them be successful and fulfilled in contemporary society. | ||
| But these professors, many of them, not all of them, think that contemporary society is the problem. | ||
| So there's a conflict of interest there that I think is not talked about enough. | ||
| Where'd you grow up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mount Holly, New Jersey. | |
| Yes, about a half hour east of Philadelphia. | ||
| So I'm a Philadelphia sports fan. | ||
| Every sport, I bleed green, Go Eagles. | ||
| And I was raised in a predominantly white neighborhood. | ||
| And that did a lot of things. | ||
| You write that it was so white that you could be used as a landmark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes. | ||
| If you're lost, take two blocks that way. | ||
| You're going to see a black kid. | ||
| Turn left. | ||
| Yeah, that's how rare black guys are. | ||
| And how did that impact who you are today? | ||
| It made me a staunch individual because when I went to high school in that same region, the high school was much more diverse than my elementary school and middle school. | ||
| And I thought I'd be finding my people and I wouldn't be such an outcast, right? | ||
| No, I was also an outcast to them because I was too white, having grown up in a predominantly white neighborhood. | ||
| So I had no click. | ||
| And having no click, I was forced to embrace individuality, and I'm glad I did. | ||
| Individuality and not group consciousness is the major unit in the society, and it should be. | ||
| Did you face racism being one of the few black kids in your youth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes, definitely. | |
| And it was kind of a pastime to an extent. | ||
| You know, some kids got together and played wiffle ball. | ||
| They played soccer. | ||
| These kids got together and messed with me. | ||
| So that was not good, and I'm not happy about it. | ||
| But again, I thought I'd find my place among other African Americans, and I did not. | ||
| So right now, I am a staunch individualist, and I think I'll remain that way. | ||
| What do you think about what the Trump administration has proposed via executive orders mostly when it comes to DEI initiatives? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm somewhat confused because in the first administration, Trump's first administration, he had a similar EO prohibiting discrimination in any way, race, sex. | |
| And he had a section that said, here's what I'm saying. | ||
| We're not saying you can't talk about race. | ||
| We're not saying you can't teach these ideas. | ||
| We're saying you can't coerce people and you can't put people in boxes that they don't want to be in. | ||
| That caveat doesn't seem to be present in the current EOs, which is why diversity, equity, inclusion is being attacked from many different directions. | ||
| It's not just attacking critical social justice, right? | ||
| Also, people who are not doing critical social justice but are trying to do DEI the right way, the civil rights way, right? | ||
| They're also being attacked too. | ||
| And I think that's somewhat unfair, but it might be the cost of doing business here. | ||
| What's the civil rights way? | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The civil rights way is DEI that's focused on classical liberal values. | |
| And what I mean by that is it focuses on individuality, the primacy of reason. | ||
| It focuses on free speech, free association, all these different things. | ||
| And it also focuses on colorblindness, right? | ||
| Now, in contemporary DEI, the kind undergirded by critical social justice, colorblindness is a bad thing because it's seen as not seeing somebody's race and therefore not seeing that person's struggles. | ||
| As if you know a person's struggles just by looking at them. | ||
| The civil rights movement of the 60s did not do that. | ||
| It did the total opposite. | ||
| Judge me by my character, my merits, and not by my skin color. | ||
| That's been flipped right now. | ||
| And I think that's the problem. | ||
| And I'm glad the Trump administration is doing something about it. | ||
| But I want to acknowledge that there are people out there who do not abide by critical social justice and are trying to do things the king way. | ||
| Well, you know, throughout the government, DEI has become something that the Trump administration wants to remove. | ||
| Here's what Pete Hegseth, the DOD secretary, had to say about it. | ||
| On the counter diversity, equity, inclusions, what's your assessment now three months in and trying to undo a lot of those programs? | ||
| My assessment is the DOD will be merit-based and colorblind. | ||
| You will be judged based on how good you are at your job. | ||
| Full stop. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And so getting rid of diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, getting rid of different standards was fundamental to getting back to basics. | ||
| And that's what I, when I get a chance to talk to commanders here, that's what I emphasize. | ||
| We're getting back to basics. | ||
| Standards at every level need to be adhered to. | ||
| And that's at a baseline. | ||
| And when you talk to soldiers, you talk to Marines, they get it. | ||
| They get it. | ||
| They've seen the standards slide under the previous administration. | ||
| They watched, you know, in many different ways how it eroded or quotas were being met or different aspects had to be, boxes had to be checked. | ||
| Not anymore. | ||
| The only box that gets checked in this Defense Department is lethality and your ability to do your job. | ||
| Back to Eric Smith of the Cato Institute. | ||
| What did you think of what he had to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree with it to a large extent. | |
| Obviously, you have to take into consideration the struggles people might have had because of their race or their sex or something like that. | ||
| But ultimately, we should hire people. | ||
| We should promote people based on their merits and what they can do, how they can do the job and things like that. | ||
| I'm not saying that there aren't issues. | ||
| I'm saying that the issues should be taken care of long before somebody gets into a job interview or something like that. | ||
| Outreach programs to middle schools and high schools, for example, they're working very well. | ||
| The Hidden Genius program, which is focused on STEM, goes into black communities and shows students what it means to be a chemistry major, what it means to be an engineer or something like that. | ||
| It gets them started early so that by the time they're in college, it's not a kosher shock or something like that. | ||
| The Take Charge program in Minnesota, started by Kendall Qualls, something similar. | ||
| These things are happening. | ||
| And nobody is saying racism doesn't exist. | ||
| They are saying that the current ways of dealing with it are flawed. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| I don't know if you've seen this or not, but the National Park Service has removed Harriet Tubman from the website. | ||
| It edits the history exhibits. | ||
| She has been removed, as you can see here. | ||
| We'll show you the original up here in the red. | ||
| Move up a little further. | ||
| Great. | ||
| That was the original from the website. | ||
| I am the conductor of the Underground Railroad, and it has her name, of course. | ||
| And then now you come down. | ||
| Here's what the green is, and this is the new website. | ||
| What do you think about removing Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service on the Underground Railroad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't understand why it was necessary to do that. | |
| And this is, again, the downside of getting rid of DEI. | ||
| Some things that shouldn't be attacked are being attacked. | ||
| And things like this, to be frank, are happening all over the country. | ||
| In South York County right now, there was a black chemist who was going to visit the school district and talk to the students about chemistry, all students. | ||
| It would have been wonderful. | ||
| That visit was canceled because of fear that she might talk about political issues. | ||
| So there is such a thing as this going too far. | ||
| The Harriet Tubman thing is one. | ||
| That example from York County is another. | ||
| And I think at DOD, they had taken down the Tuskegee Airmen at one point. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Have been reinstituted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Perhaps that will happen with Harriet Tubman, too. | ||
| Well, let's take some calls. | ||
| Eric Smith is our guest. | ||
| Free Black Thought is his organization, as is the Cato Institute, plus a group called Pro-Human Foundation. | ||
| Foundation, what is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm on the board of that foundation. | |
| And what it does is, well, it's pro-human. | ||
| It embraces merit and colorblindness as opposed to lived experience and centering color as the primary marker of identity. | ||
| Let's talk to Tim in New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Tim, go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, gentlemen. | |
| Chief, I don't know where to begin. | ||
| I've been following politics for quite a long time. | ||
| I guess the days of Watergate got me interested in it. | ||
| But I got to tell you, if I was a black man, I would be insulted. | ||
| I mean, there are so many black people in history, you just named a couple, who made it possible for you to be where you are, to get an education, to vote. | ||
| And then you join the Cato Institute, which basically wants to have a plan to rewrite the Constitution, which is in line with what Project 2025 wants to do. | ||
| Hey, Tim, are you white? | ||
| You black? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm white. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you're maybe I'm not allowed to confront this situation, but I'm just asking Mr. Smith. | |
| Well, you are here on C-SPAN. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| We'll get an answer from our guest here in just a second, but Tim is rather appalled for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So many things to say in response to Tim. | |
| First of all, I have written about a concept called prescriptive racism, which is basically telling black people how to be black, right? | ||
| And that has risen in recent years to the point where white people are telling me how to be black, right? | ||
| As we just heard. | ||
| And I forget the name of the caller already. | ||
| Tim Tim. | ||
| Tim brings up how historical figures have made it possible for me to be here. | ||
| I'm doing this because of historical figures. | ||
| They went through things I can't possibly imagine. | ||
| Not just slavery, but also Jim Crow. | ||
| My parents went through things I can't possibly imagine to give me the life that I have right now. | ||
| For me to sit here and pretend that it's as bad as it was for them is an insult to them. | ||
| Because of them, I'm here and I have the agency to succeed on my own merits because of them. | ||
| So when somebody says, oh, well, black people, you need our help. | ||
| The world's against you. | ||
| And I say, I can do it myself. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| In fact, you might need my help in some ways. | ||
| So I really resent what Tim said. | ||
| That's another form of prescriptive racism. | ||
| And I think I am making my ancestors proud. | ||
| Tell us about your parents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My parents met in high school in Milwaukee. | |
| Most of my family is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | ||
| And my dad entered the Army and traveled all over the place. | ||
| I was born after two Vietnam tours. | ||
| I was conceived between them. | ||
| So if one of those bullets would have hit, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. | ||
| And they struggled a lot to give us the lives we had and the opportunities we had. | ||
| For me to say, oh, forget about those opportunities. | ||
| I'm going to pretend that things are so awful that I can't possibly succeed. | ||
| That is an insult to my parents. | ||
| I will never do that. | ||
| You know what I'm going to do to honor my parents? | ||
| I'm going to succeed. | ||
| I'm going to succeed mightily. | ||
| And I'm not going to be stopped. | ||
| Tim? | ||
| Where did you go to school? | ||
|
unidentified
|
College or Earth Science College, Small Liberal Arts School in the Philadelphia area. | |
| I went to graduate school at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where I got a master's and PhD in rhetorical theory. | ||
| What exactly is rhetorical theory? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the study of effective communication. | |
| Aristotle's definition is kind of the standard, although that's being attacked right now because he's a dead white male. | ||
| But his definition is rhetoric is the ability in any given situation to discern the available means of persuasion. | ||
| So if I'm talking to you, I would do well to know who you are, what your interests are, things like that, so I can make references that you would understand, as opposed to references that you might not understand because of who you are, right? | ||
| So that's a very simple explanation of it. | ||
| Of course, you can scale it to societies, nations, ethnicities, and how they understand and talk about the world and things like that. | ||
| Did you enjoy teaching at York? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And York PA or York NJ? | ||
|
unidentified
|
York PA. | |
| Yes, York College of Pennsylvania. | ||
| I did enjoy it very much. | ||
| And when I complain about academia, I'm not complaining about my immediate experiences there. | ||
| I'm complaining about my field at large. | ||
| I'm complaining about the humanities at large who seem to have lost their way and have become less educational units than activist units. | ||
| Next call for Eric Smith comes from Nicole in Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Where in Maryland are you, Nicole? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brooklyn Park. | |
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so it might be a question leading into a statement or a statement leading to a question, but here it goes. | |
| Education has always been based on zip code. | ||
| You had a better result when school choice was allowing you to live in one area and go to school in another, which allowed you to separate from your environment you lived in and study in one you could equip yourself to be at least a blue collar in any industry. | ||
| Lastly, I think with the new restructure of the human services, which usually handle disability cases, it seems like that should be a better result and equip states and schools with straight communication from the science world of that diagnosis of that development and how you can equip that and incorporate that in schools in any environment so that all can thrive. | ||
| And then lastly, with everything that's going on, I'm glad that the gentleman, Mr. Smith, was saying it's not a black and white issue. | ||
| I think that's what got our country here after the new deal of Roosevelt with using immigrants to get that change, that money up into Social Security, and they wasn't going to get, but it was helpful to our common den exporting them back out. | ||
| It's the same thing that's different day. | ||
| I just hope that moving forward, and I'll end it here. | ||
| I hope that moving forward, we do, we just allow a matrix to be examined from a smaller scale to make a big impact, especially in the court systems. | ||
| We have so many people that are being tried with not the facts just to get grants to say war on drugs or war on. | ||
| All right, Nicole, we're going to leave it there. | ||
| Thank you for sharing your point of view, Eric Smith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there was a lot said there. | |
| I will hone in on school choice. | ||
| I'm a big fan of that and charter schools as well. | ||
| And a great example of how that can benefit minority students is Ian Rowe, who's running charter schools in Brooklyn. | ||
| I'm sorry, the Bronx in New York, Vertex charter schools. | ||
| And it serves predominantly black and Latino students, and they are thriving. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because he explicitly states that he's not doing the current DEI thing. | ||
| He's not doing the victimhood thing. | ||
| He's not doing the us versus them thing. | ||
| He's doing the personal agency thing. | ||
| And he's doing the citizenship and the civil society thing. | ||
| And these students are thriving. | ||
| So it is possible. | ||
| Charter schools are wonderful. | ||
| I think we need more of them. | ||
| I think it's the way forward. | ||
| Donald Trump, during February, Black History Month, had a large group of conservative black leaders and citizens at the White House. | ||
| Were you part of that group? | ||
| No. | ||
| Are you a supporter of Donald Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I support actions and not necessarily people or administrations. | |
| So whether I voted for an administration or not, I will judge them on their actions. | ||
| And there are many times where a president I voted for did not do things quite well, and I was very vocal about it to my friends and family, of course. | ||
| But I was very vocal about it. | ||
| I like the idea of revamping the Department of Education. | ||
| Some of those things can go other places. | ||
| And I think the state should have more say in what's going on. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like the prohibition of DEI to an extent. | ||
| It may go a little too far, as we talked about a little bit earlier, but we need to get the critical social justice out of higher ed pedagogy and secondary pedagogy, really. | ||
| So these things I like. | ||
| Fortunately for me, the things that I'm not super keen about are things that are not in my wheelhouse. | ||
| So, you know, it doesn't matter anyway. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not a professional. | ||
| I'll leave that to the professionals. | ||
| But what I do know about education, civil discourse, DEI, it's mostly good, a little bad. | ||
| You could do some revision on those EOs. | ||
| Sean in Texas texts into you. | ||
| He's an independent. | ||
| I just learned about free black thought, but isn't providing a platform for black viewpoints not in and of itself a form of equity? | ||
| Question mark. | ||
| Is your point of view against DEI being a government mandate versus DEI in general? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm against government mandating many things, and DEI is one of them. | |
| The point of free black thought is not so much equity, right, as it is getting people to know that there's more than just one voice coming from black Americans. | ||
| That's really the gist of it. | ||
| And we are founded in classical liberal values, as I talked about before. | ||
| And we want to put the individuality and colorblindness back into DEI. | ||
| So DEI in that sense is not something I'm against. | ||
| DEI in the critical social justice sense, I am against. | ||
| And that doesn't belong anywhere, whether it's the federal government, education, churches, whatever. | ||
| Rhonda, New Jersey, Democrat, good morning to you. | ||
| Rhonda, you with us? | ||
| All right, let's move on. | ||
| Believe it or not, another Rhonda in Pennsylvania, a Republican. | ||
| Rhonda in Pennsylvania, Republican, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Just two thoughts here. | ||
| Well, actually, one's a statement. | ||
| I agree with your guess that, like, the school system definitely needs redone. | ||
| The more money they spend, kids still can't read. | ||
| The reason I called in is the previous caller talking to the guests down like he should be ashamed of himself because he thinks for himself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought it was disgusting before he even said anything. | |
| I'm glad he said something, your guest. | ||
| I'm a white woman, and I just think everybody should think for theirself. | ||
| And I just want to call May Lien because it really upset me, like, that you would put someone in a category like that and just treat them like that. | ||
| I think she's referencing the. | ||
| Thank you, Rhonda. | ||
| I think she's referencing back to Tim, our earlier caller from New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The infamous Tim. | |
| Yes, he's really making a name for himself these days. | ||
| Aaron is calling from New York, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Aaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, guys. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Thanks for my call. | ||
| I've been around for a long while. | ||
| I'm retired. | ||
| I have kids. | ||
| And I've been on this planet for a good while. | ||
| And my point is to everyone in this country, there is no such thing as a race. | ||
| The only race of people that I'm familiar with since I've been on this planet has been humans. | ||
| No one else. | ||
| When you categorize yourself and have you thinking that somehow there's something wrong with you, then that's a problem. | ||
| We all came from each other. | ||
| Anything white are considered white. | ||
| Always have to go through a process to become that way. | ||
| We are family on this planet as human beings. | ||
| And first there was affirmative action. | ||
| That didn't work. | ||
| Now there's DEI. | ||
| And I want to remind everyone who's listening, who's commenting, DEI is the entire planet. | ||
| We can't get away from DEI. | ||
| It's diversity, equity, and inclusion. | ||
| So if you're not going to include everybody, you should put up a sign like they have in South Africa back in the days or in this country, as a matter of fact, that says white only. | ||
| And then you can take the list of these so-called people that you put on your job application. | ||
| You can remove the list and base that an only qualification. | ||
| I'm more than qualified for a lot of things that I've done a job in my life, but no one sees my resume until they sit down and talk to me. | ||
| So I would love to have this conversation. | ||
| I can casually walk down the street with no care in the world and have a cup of coffee and don't have people bump me and do this and call me the N-word, but they have no idea my education level and how impactful I have. | ||
| I am if they can just sit down and talk to me as a human being. | ||
| And that's our problem. | ||
| Until we solve that problem, we're always going to keep digging ourselves in our hole and keep moving back and back, which does not make any sense. | ||
| All right, Aaron, we got your point. | ||
| Just for edification, do you experience incidences of racism on a regular basis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my goodness. | |
| Where do I start? | ||
| I went to Massachusetts in a pretty good school. | ||
| I worked my ass off. | ||
| Excuse my language. | ||
| I can have conversation with everyone, my professor, all of this. | ||
| But when it comes down to me having a conversation with some of the people who somehow think that I wasn't that insightful until they start talking to me, then they realize that I'm not a dumbass. | ||
| They resort to that, you know, that whole, oh, you're a black guy, you're this, you're that. | ||
| That's the out. | ||
| That's their out for people who can't deal with people like me and who are challenged for people like me. | ||
| Because if you level the playing field, trust me, we can go and get ours. | ||
| And I want to remind everyone, Jackie Robinson, that did a lot for who we are in this country, and I'm proud of that. | ||
| And let's also talk about Jesse Owens. | ||
| Let's bring that man up for change and just him alone. | ||
| So imagine if we had this level playing field that we're fighting so much to get. | ||
| Imagine if all of the stuff was equal for everybody in this country. | ||
| Where would we be? | ||
| And where would it be as black people, as colored people, as native? | ||
| Where would we be at this point as a country if we have leveled the playing field? | ||
| All right, Aaron, before we let you go, I want to show you this one article. | ||
| This is on Breitbart this morning. | ||
| New York State Education Department refuses to eliminate its DEI practices. | ||
| What do you think about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's excellent, but we should stop using the word DEI because diversity, equity, and inclusion should not be, that's exactly what it is. | |
| It's the exact of that for all the masses of people in different countries and different culture that comes into all of our education system, every one of us. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| We're going to leave it there. | ||
| Aaron, Eric Smith, should Aaron be a member of Free Black Thought, listening to him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anybody can be a member of Free Black Thought. | |
| Right, but when you hear him, what do you hear? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hear somebody with a viewpoint that is nuanced to a large degree, and that can be part of the marketplace of ideas. | |
| What we embrace at Free Black Thought is a variety of viewpoints. | ||
| We never say, oh, you're wrong or you're right or you shouldn't be saying that thing. | ||
| We want everybody to have a voice so that we can scrutinize ideas and find the best ones. | ||
| This is what the marketplace of ideas is all about. | ||
| It's not a perfect metaphor, but it's pretty good for explaining what civil discourse and civil society are. | ||
| So I feel that way about his membership in Free Black Thought. | ||
| James is calling in from Ohio, a Democrat. | ||
| James, where in Ohio are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in Akron, Ohio. | |
| All right, please go ahead, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm just wondering, I know the young man's educated institute. | |
| I'm much older than him, and I understand that. | ||
| I have concerns with people that I know he's trying to right a wrong or make a situation work out, but Cato Institutions and the institutions like that that are primarily right-leaning, they are doing underhanded things to disallow everybody from voting. | ||
| I mean, black people and poor white people as well, but mainly black people. | ||
| And I'm just wondering. | ||
| James, you're saying that the Cato Institute is actively preventing people of color from voting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the thing, if you read the things that they put out from their individual writers or whomever, they are doing things like, well, for instance, okay, trying to get voting rights for people to have IDs, certain IDs. | |
| Well, ID. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll get a response from Mr. Smith, but I would also note to you that in Wisconsin, they elected the liberal Supreme Court justice, but they also voted overwhelmingly for voter ID laws as well in that state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's a mistake to think that somebody is purely in this box or this box. | ||
| You can have some conservative views, some liberal views. | ||
| And I think one of the biggest falsehoods in the current culture war is the idea that anti-DEI sentiment is only coming from the right. | ||
| It's coming from the left as well. | ||
| Traditional liberals do not like this stuff. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because it demonizes critical inquiry. | ||
| It demonizes critiquing anybody who is black or minority or something like that, which is the opposite of critical thinking. | ||
| So there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who don't like this stuff. | ||
| And as you just said, I mean, there are whole states who can say, we want this, but we also want this. | ||
| You know, that's a human experience. | ||
| Steve, New York City, or New York, I should say, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a black man, and I'm listening to this brother here speak. | ||
| And the other day, C-SPAN had the man on from the Heritage Foundation, a Cuban, speaking against DEI. | ||
| His job, him having his job, is DEI. | ||
| You're speaking for the Cato Institute, a white institution. | ||
| You having your job is DEI. | ||
| The opposition to MLK, the people who were busting heads on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they weren't liberals who wanted to get along. | ||
| They were the same white conservative movement that you speak of and speak for. | ||
| So I don't think black people should be given anything, but you're a black man sitting here speaking against the people who gave their lives for you to be in the position that you're in currently. | ||
| Now, the Heritage Foundation, they'll tried out a Cuban to speak against black and white issues in America when that Cuban and his family had no dog in the fight between black people and white people. | ||
| And I don't think black people and white people should be segregated or enemies just because of their skin color, but black people have been given unfair treatment simply because of their skin color. | ||
| And you sit here and you speak for the same people that you said made a sport out of being racist to you. | ||
| We're going to leave it there. | ||
| We're going to get a response from our guest, Eric Smith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's amazing what people think about the Cato Institute and what we are. | |
| His description couldn't be further from my experience in that institution. | ||
| Regarding being a black person who is speaking out against DEI, again, I'm not speaking out against diversity, equity, and inclusion in the original meanings of those words. | ||
| And how do you define it again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Diversity, equity, inclusion. | |
| Yes. | ||
| The problematic version is critical social justice. | ||
| It's undergirded by a critical social justice ideology that necessarily puts minorities as victims and white people as oppressors, period, right? | ||
| And that racism is never going away. | ||
| It's here to stay. | ||
| We just have to accept that. | ||
| I'm not down with that at all. | ||
| And when he calls me a DEI hire, I'm wondering why he thinks that. | ||
| You know, it seems to be also racist to think that the only reason I got my job is because of DEI. | ||
| That's also racist. | ||
| I got my job because I'm good. | ||
| I got my job because I'm smart and I know what I'm talking about. | ||
| Period. | ||
| So that right there was a racist statement from somebody accusing me of not respecting my ancestors and things like that. | ||
| And he went back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama talking about the civil rights movement in the 60s. | ||
| So saying that you're standing on their shoulders. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And I acknowledge that because I'm standing on my shoulders, I'm saying, standing on their shoulders, I'm saying what I'm saying. | ||
| That's precisely why I'm saying what I'm saying. | ||
| They went through things that we can't imagine. | ||
| So somebody who is black today, who has all these advantages and opportunities, to sit there and think and talk like they have as bad as those people did on that bridge, right? | ||
| I think that's the insult, right? | ||
| Because of what they did for me, I'm going to make them proud. | ||
| And I'm going to do whatever it takes to succeed. | ||
| And if you're in my way, that's a problem. | ||
| But if you're not in my way, it's not a problem. | ||
| Eric Smith is a research fellow with the Cato Institute. | ||
| He's on the board of advisors for the Pro-Human Foundation. | ||
| He is the founder of Free Black Thought, co-founder and co-editor. | ||
| And that is an active website that people can go to. | ||
| He's testified in front of Congress. | ||
| And if you want to read more of what he's written, go to the Cato Institute and type in Eric Smith. | ||
| We appreciate your time here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you all for being with us this morning. | ||
| Happy Monday to everybody. | ||
| We'll see you tomorrow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senator in session. | |
| The House plans to take up the revised Republicans 2025 budget resolution following its passage by the Senate. | ||
| Also, Jamison Greer, the United States trade representative, testifies on the president's agenda after he imposed tariffs on several U.S. partners. | ||
| First, on Tuesday, before the Senate Finance Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Ways and Means Committee. | ||
| Watch live this week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| As a follow-on to Stuart Banner's History of the Supreme Court, this week's Book Notes Plus podcast features a 2002 interview with Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor emeritus. | ||
| The subject matter, the forgotten memoir of John Knox, a law clerk to former Justice James McReynolds, a native of Kentucky. | ||
| Knox's year was the term beginning October 1936. | ||
| In history, it is very rare that a law clerk at the Supreme Court has published an insider's view of the court or of a justice. | ||
| Professor Hutchinson gives the background on where he found the memoir, which hadn't been published before. | ||
| Justice McReynolds, as you will hear, was according to historians, arguably one of the most disagreeable justices ever to sit on the bench. |