CSPAN - Washington Journal 04/22/2025

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April 22, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:57

Washington Journal 04/22/2025

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Main

chris whipple

37:33

john mcardle

cspan 36:31

Appearances

alex padilla

sen/d 01:26

donald j trump

admin 02:12

lee zeldin

admin 01:00

pope francis

01:33

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barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

r 00:04

jimmy carter

d 00:03

ronald reagan

r 00:25

Callers

antonio in georgia

callers 00:07

badass uncle sam in new orleans

callers 00:14

carl in florida

callers 00:15

dennis in north carolina

callers 00:22

donnie in oklahoma

callers 00:11

tony in texas

callers 00:06

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Wow.
		WOW supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
		Coming up on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		Then, author and filmmaker Chris Whipple on his book, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
		And we'll speak with Bill Dougherty, co-founder of the nonprofit group Braver Angels, about efforts to reduce political polarization in America.
		Washington Journal is next.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		It's Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025, Earth Day around the globe.
		The first Earth Day was celebrated 55 years ago in 1970.
		This year's international theme emphasizes renewable energy and efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change.
		And this morning, we're beginning our program by asking our viewers, how important are climate and environmental issues to you in 2025?
		Phone lines are open and split as usual by political party.
		Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can also send us a text.
		That number, 202-748-8003.
		If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
		Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
		It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
		And a very good Tuesday morning to you.
		You can go ahead and start calling in now.
		As you're calling in, we dip into the C-SPAN archives, taking you back to 1990, an interview with Senator Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, about his efforts to found Earth Day in the year 1970.
		This is what he had to say to C-SPAN at the time.
unidentified		Various articles on the environmental movement say that you're the father of Earth Day.
		How's your offspring doing at age 20?
		Well, we've come quite a distance since 1970.
		That is to say, there's a great deal more awareness, concern, understanding about the issue now than there was then.
		There is finally a recognition, an important recognition on the part in general, that the activities of man on the planet are actually dangerously degrading the ecosystem that sustains all of us-the oceans, lakes, air, forests, soil.
		So, we've come quite some distance.
		We have a long, long way to go, but at least there's a much better public understanding and much better understanding by the legislators, governors, and members of the legislature, Congress, that this is a vital issue.
		In fact, my own view is that the status of our resources are air, water, soil, rivers, oceans, so forth, minerals.
		That is the most important issue facing mankind on the planet because it determines quite precisely our standard of living and the quality of our lives.
		And we have been dangerously degrading all of these resources for many, many years.
		And it's time we undertake a very major, serious effort to stop the degradation and help give nature a chance to do some restoration, at least restoration where the damage hasn't been irreparable.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Senator Gaylord Nelson, again, an interview with C-SPAN back in 1990.
		We are at it this weekend on C-SPAN's American History TV.
		It's about a half an hour long.
		If you want to watch it in its entirety, you can do so at c-span.org.
		But asking you this morning on the Washington Journal, how important are climate and environmental issues to you?
		Again, Republicans, 202-748-8001 to call in in this first hour today.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		And we'll begin on that line for independence.
		Sue is in Traverse City, Michigan.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		The most critical issue we face is holding our governments accountable, both parties.
		And so I look at chemtrails as a distinct injury to our environment, and it's an ongoing problem.
		And it is releasing things up there in our skies that are, I believe, poisoning the earth.
		And I encourage everybody to keep an eye on the skies.
		You can see them form the blankets in the sky.
		Do you travel much by air, Sue?
		No, I don't have to.
		I can take photographs of the skies being gritted by jet in an open, an open sky area of maybe 180, almost 360 views in some areas here.
		So thank you.
		It's a huge concern and poisoning us all, I believe.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Sue in Michigan.
		This is William in Ohio Independent.
		William, good morning.
		How important are climate and environmental issues to you?
unidentified		Good morning.
tony in texas ▲ ● ▼		I think right now it's pretty, you know, it's pretty terrible with the big orange monster out there.
unidentified		He's making his own hurricanes and thunderstorms.
		I mean, weather is really going screwy over the last few years.
		And now he's getting rid of all the stuff that takes care of it.
		I mean, Donald Shores Johnson Trump is really messing this country up bad.
		Everything that he does is just, it's against the poor people, and he doesn't want to spend no money to help the country out.
		All he wants to do is pay his rich friends off.
		And the way he's treating the environment is just, it's crazy.
		We're going to die if you don't take care of it.
		Thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's William in Ohio.
		Aaron is in Alexandria, Virginia.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, and happy Earth Day to you.
		I would like to say that the environment and the climate issues are very important.
		And I also tie that into how we create our infrastructure.
		Of course, we know things are getting hotter, which the trees are then creating more pollen because they get confused as far as which season it is, which affects the bees, which affects our food supply as well.
		So all these things are related.
		I saw a horrible scene yesterday where mother ducks were trying to cross 495 with their ducklings.
		The mother to her parents ducks flew off because they were almost hit, but we know the ducklings did not make it.
		So if we can build our infrastructure and things like that to sort of incorporate the natural paths of nature and create areas to beautify, but also create homes for all the other earthlings, like the animals that live here, it would be great.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Aaron, how long have you lived in?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How long have you lived in Alexandria, Virginia?
unidentified		I've lived in Alexandria, Virginia for 20 years.
		I got here and started working at the Washington Post, and then 9-11 happened.
		So more than 20 years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		But a lot of buildup across the river in 20 years in Alexandria.
		Do you see the city doing that?
		Is it something that's happening on the city level?
		Is it something that's happening on the state level in Virginia?
unidentified		Well, I wouldn't say on the state level because, as we know, there's a difference between Northern Virginia and Southern Virginia.
		But what I do see on the city level, and I live in the Fairfax County part of Alexandria, but I do frequent Alexandria City.
		I see that there are efforts to ensure that there are ways to beautify and create green spaces in Alexandria.
		If we look at Old Town and how the erosion that's happening at the waterfront is affecting the roads that lead up further into Alexandria, it's become a major issue.
		And I think that there's awareness of that.
		But if we look at, you know, think locally and act globally, the things that we can do locally, if we have more people that care or don't see it as an inconvenience, like this heat going back and forth, don't you see it as an inconvenience, but see it as a pattern or a sign of things to come, then perhaps we can invest more into that and, like I said, create spaces where we can maintain our staying power on this planet and not suffer it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talk about awareness.
		This was a recent Gallup poll that came out and it polled Americans on a variety of topics on the environment.
		But your thoughts on this finding?
		This poll found that the highest percentage of Americans in decades say that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated in the news.
		41% now take that position, up from 37% last March, and it's the highest number since 2015.
		Nearly as many, though, 38%, believe that the news underestimates the gravity of the environmental issues and global warming in this world, while 20% say that news coverage is generally correct.
		But a full nearly 80% either say the coverage of this is either overly exaggerated or under-exaggerated.
unidentified		Well, my thoughts on that is simply this.
		You have those who are fighting to protect and those who don't believe it's an issue.
		If those who stopped fighting to protect it, then everyone would see it as an issue eventually, because we do have people who are actively trying to stop these things.
		And those who don't believe it aren't seeing the work that's being done.
antonio in georgia ▲ ● ▼		If the levee is broken, you have people holding the water back, and some people say, well, my streets aren't that wet, it's because you have people who are holding the water back.
unidentified		They could use your help, but if you're not going to give it, and if they decide to stop it, which hurts everyone, and why do that?
		Then everyone would suffer.
		So it's a very tricky situation.
		I believe that it is not overly exaggerated.
		If we look at the state of our bees here, not everyone's checking out to see if the bees are good, but we've lost a lot of the population of the bees.
		If people don't believe it, Google it and figure out how your food, you know, your food is going to get pollinated.
		You know, that's a true fact.
		But it's good hearing from you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Aaron, thanks for the call from Alexandria across the river.
		This is Russ in the Keystone State Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, we both agree that plants take in carbon monoxide to create oxygen.
unidentified		Would you agree with that?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sure, Russ.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So what's your feeling about the issue of climate change in today's world?
unidentified		Well, the issue is if plants don't take in carbon monoxide to create oxygen, we all die.
unidentified		Isn't that the truth?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So where are you going with this, Russ?
unidentified		Climate change, in my opinion, is nothing but a big hoax because the earth has been around for billions of years, and plants need carbon monoxide to create oxygen for us to live.
unidentified		That's all I need to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's Russ.
		This is Chris, Lexington, Kentucky, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Thank you for your time.
		The environment is a very, very, very important topic.
		We have to protect our globe to be able to continue our future.
		And essentially, the source of all of this threat is corporations and greed allowing, getting the ability to do what they want with our environment, essentially.
		From 1860, when antiquity and Civil War was going on, to 1960, about 100 years, we have developed so much as a humanity.
		And I would say companies have suppressed the ability to create free energy.
		There have been patents out there for zero-point energy, for self-sustaining energy, cold fusion, and companies that depend on fossil fuels to make their money have either killed individuals, bought out patents, have not allowed science to thrive.
		And we are at a stagnant point right now.
		It's odd that it's 2025 and we're still burning fuel.
		So I'm telling you, there is a root cause that every year temperatures get hotter.
		That's not a lie.
		Look up the numbers.
		We have, as a humanity, we have tracked that.
		We have tracked those figures so we can actually see that it is getting hotter throughout the years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Chris in Kentucky.
		Go ahead and keep calling in.
		The question on this Earth Day is how important are climate and environmental issues to you today in 2025.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		Many of the news stories in the front pages today are about the death of Pope Francis and what comes next for the Vatican.
		This is one of the stories in Washington Post today.
		The next pope likely to come from a historically diverse pool, the conclave to select the successor to Francis is said to be the largest in the history of the Roman Catholic Church and may also be one of the most unpredictable is the headline.
		Pope Francis spoke before the United States Congress back in 2015, the only pope to speak before the United States Congress.
		And one of the main issues that he talked about that day in September of 2015 is the issue of the environment and the climate.
		This is what he had to say.
pope francis ▲ ● ▼		I call for a courageous and responsible effort to redirect our steps and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity.
		I'm convinced that we can make a difference, I'm sure.
		And I have no doubt that the United States
		and this Congress have an important role to play.
		Now is the time for courageous action and strategies.
		I'm at implementing a culture of care and an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time, protecting nature.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Pope Francis, just about 10 years ago, taking your phone calls this morning about the environment, how important are climate and environmental issues to you.
		This is Damien waiting in Laurel, Maryland.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, sir.
		Hello.
		Okay, good morning, everybody.
		You know, I live in Maryland.
		Maryland has a great Chesapeake Bay.
		And I always sailed on it.
		And it's so great when it's nice because you can get crabs and oysters, all kinds of stuff like that.
		And I love it clean.
		And we had to work on it.
		And I'm a Republican.
		I like a clean environment.
		But guess what?
		You know, liberals' emergency becomes a working man's burden because the liberals' emergency, all the climate change, and you got to buy an electric car, then we got to spend a lot of money.
		So they don't roll it out nicely, you know.
		And if they roll.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Damien.
unidentified		Am I still on?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Still listening to you, Damien.
		So what is the right way to roll out a program nicely?
		You say that the Chesapeake Bay, cleaning the Chesapeake Bay, is a success story of the environment?
unidentified		Yeah, it's like if you're a Marylander, if you live here in Maryland, I'm sorry, no matter what party you are, you love the bay because everybody goes down there and fishes and eats crabs and oysters.
		So, you know, I buy the license plate.
		Hey, you buy this extra 50 bucks and we're going to donate to the bay.
		Everybody's like that, you know, because we like clean.
		We like it clean because we like to use it.
		But the problem is when I say roll it out nicely, I mean, you know, they have the liberals have their policy like, oh, we're going to die if we don't change this.
		And they just, and then it becomes our burden.
		You know what I mean?
		Like the working man has to pay for it.
		Like we got to go.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Before you go, can I ask you, have you heard of the Paris Climate Agreement?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It was something that Donald Trump has talked a lot about.
unidentified		Yeah, I heard about that.
		And people don't like it.
		I'll tell you why.
		Because it's freaking foreign, heiress.
		You know, they're weird over there sometimes with their climate stuff.
		And it's hard for us to swallow because we're so individualistic.
		Hey, I got to go.
		But thank you, everybody.
		Bye.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Damien in Laurel, Maryland.
		It was President Trump in one of his first actions in returning to the White House to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement a second time, withdrew from it in his first administration, Biden administration returning to the Paris Climate Agreement, and then Donald Trump withdrawing again back in January.
		He talked about it recently in an event when he was talking about energy production and coal mining in this country.
		This is what he had to say.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		The Biden energy policy was to put America last.
		We want to be last.
		We got to be last.
		Not a good policy.
		Under my administration, we're putting America first.
		It's very simple.
		America is always going to be first.
		On my first day in office, I terminated the Green News scam.
		I declared the national energy emergency and withdrew from the unfair, one-sided, and extremely costly to the United States-only Paris Climate Accord.
		You know, under the Paris Climate Accord, we had a terrible situation.
		We would have paid over a trillion dollars, think of it, over a trillion dollars, and Russia was paying almost nothing.
		Russia had a 1992 standard.
		China was paying nothing.
		China didn't kick in until 2035.
		This was five years ago, so they didn't kick in for many years.
		India had no standard whatsoever, but we had the highest standard you could imagine.
		We had to start paying from day one, and we had to pay lots of money.
		We paid for everything.
		So I was not a big fan of the Paris Accord, and I let it be known, and I got out of it early.
		Then they went back into it, and now we get back out of it.
		And hopefully, we can be there for a long time, okay?
		A long time, because it was a scam to take money away from the United States and hurt and actually hurt us very badly with coal and with other things.
		Now, under the executive order that I will sign in a few moments, we're slashing unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful clean coal.
		We will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands, and these two gentlemen are going to do a real job of it.
		You've already started.
		And we'll streamline permitting.
		We will end the government bias against coal, and we're going to unlock the sweeping authorities of Defense Production Act, the Defense Production Act, to turbocharge coal mining in America.
		They made it impossible to impossible.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		President Trump, earlier this month, taking your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal, this is Steve in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Democrats, Steve, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		You're going to have to forgive me a little bit here.
		I've only been awake about 15 minutes.
		But I will tell you this.
		I have studied science and particularly science change for climate change for years.
		And it is real, and you can deny it.
		You can live in willful ignorance of the fact.
		But to the man that first called, trees do not use carbon monoxide.
		There's a point right there.
		Trees use H2O plus O2 and sunlight to produce H6H1206, which is a sugar, which is a basic molecule from all life.
		Now, the fact is that when you burn a gallon of gasoline that weighs seven and a half pounds, you create two and a half pounds of carbon dioxide and five pounds of water.
		And if you burn a billion gallons a day, which is happening worldwide, you are creating 250 million pounds of carbon dioxide and 500 million pounds of water.
		And it's going into the air, and it is changing the atmosphere.
		All you got to do is look at the storms, look at the weather, look at the global temperatures.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Steve, let me ask you, there is a Facebook post from a viewer as we asked this question at the start of the show, who writes that I care about pollution, but not climate change.
		That pollution is an environmental issue I care about, but not this issue of climate change.
		And I want your thoughts on that, especially in relation to that Gallup poll.
		I don't know if you saw that we brought it up earlier about a series of environmental issues, but other environmental issues poll as more important to Americans than climate change.
		Particularly, 54% of Americans say pollution of drinking water they care about a great deal.
		They're concerned about that as an environmental issue.
		51% are talking about pollution of rivers and lakes and reservoirs.
		41% talk about the management of waste produced in the United States, including trash, as caring about it a great deal as an environmental issue.
		And that all polls better than global warming or climate change.
		40% of Americans say that they care about that a great deal as an environmental concern.
		What do you think about that, Steve?
unidentified		Well, I'll tell you this.
		The next wars, I watched NOVA several years ago.
		They had five scientists from around the world.
		And the question was, what do you think is going to be the biggest threat that humanity faces?
		And every one of them said, water.
		And the fact is that with pushing 9 billion people, there's not enough resources on this planet.
		The planet was not designed to have that many humans.
		And everything was in pretty good balance until two big major scientific discoveries.
		One was antibiotics, and the other was vaccines.
		This allowed the human population to expand tremendously.
		But I remember when I was a kid, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire and burned for three days.
		And one last thing, and then I'm off of here.
		TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, I live two miles from the Bull Run steam plant, and they have closed it down because coal is no longer an efficient way to do electricity.
		So ignorance and denial are rampant in this country.
		Thank you so much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Steve in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
		You talk about water issues and the importance of water.
		A new book out on that called American Oasis, specifically looking at water usage in the southwest.
		Kyle Pauletta is the author of that book.
		He spoke to C-SPAN's Book TV recently at the Tucson Festival of Books.
		If you want to watch that, that interview available at c-span.org.
		This is Joe out of Baltimore Independent.
		Joe, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just wanted to say that global warming, as the idea of it being a hoax, is itself a hoax perpetuated by northern nations such as the United States and Russia.
		If you look at what nations have to stand to gain or lose, northern nations with Arctic access stand to gain a full year long sea shipping route through the Arctic Passage, which is usually only open a couple months a year, but has been increasingly open for longer periods of time.
		The Trump administration constant harangue over acquiring Greenland and acquiring Canada is explicitly valuable because of global warming.
		The ice sheets on Greenland are melting, exposing not only a whole bunch of fresh water, but ample mineral resources.
		It is a much more strategic location due to what it was being situated on, what would be a global trading route.
		And the same goes for Canada with all of their permafrost covering up lots of wood and mineral resources.
		Russia stated for years that it's wanted a year-long Arctic passage.
		And Russia is a large state sponsor of propaganda against global warming.
		And one more comment to something the previous caller said.
		He was talking about the amount of carbon dioxide that gets released into the atmosphere.
		I don't have it on hand, but if you have something that shows like on a per acre basis what's being released, I've seen, I forget what it is, but that seemed to be a much more like human comprehendible scale where it's like if we just lived on one acre and all of the global warming, all the pollution was distributed evenly, like what how much added carbon is in that one acre?
		How much carbon can the plants take up within that one acre?
		I think that's the scale to really have that conversation about.
		That's my two cents.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Joe in Baltimore.
		John is in Virginia.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I'm a farmer from the northern neck of Virginia.
		And the northern neck is a peninsula on the eastern end of Virginia that's made up of five counties.
		Farmers typically pay like $120 per acre per year for land to rent from other people that own land.
		And well, solar panels companies pay $1,000 to $1,500 per acre per year to rent the same land.
		Now we've lost, and just in the northern neck, we've lost thousands of acres in the last five years to farmland that has been lost to solar panels.
		What do you guys think that this is doing to us farmers?
		We can't compete with that.
		And it's government.
		It's all government funding.
		This is a lot of textal money is funding this solar panel stuff.
		And no one seems to know, or no one can tell us, tell me, how much energy this stuff is producing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And John, I think we got what you're talking about.
		You're talking about renewable energy and the impact of that on you and your lifestyle down in Virginia.
		A focus not on solar panels, but on wind energy in an old coal town in Massachusetts.
		That's the story that's in today's Wall Street Journal.
		Somerset, Massachusetts is the name of the town.
		State representatives and others bet big, they write, on the offshore wind industry.
		A planned factory on the site of an old power plant would build underwater cables funneling energy offshore, from offshore, onshore with skyscraper-sized wind turbines off the coast.
		President Joe Biden even visited the site in 2022, casting the $200 million project as a symbol of America's clean energy revolution.
		But these days, they write, the property stands empty, patrolled by deer and wild turkey, a sign of a dream deferred.
		The election of President Trump, who has rallied against wind power and promised to kill new projects, hammered what many in Somerset believe was the final nail in the coffin for the proposal the Italian company behind the project pulled out days before his inauguration.
		If you want to read more on Somerset, Massachusetts, and that story, it's in today's Wall Street Journal.
		To Baltimore again, this is Judy, a Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just am remembering back to when Reagan was president and he was faced with the existential threat of our ozone layer degrading.
		And he rallied.
		He didn't believe it at first or he didn't want to believe it.
		It was very bad for business.
		But somebody convinced him that it was so serious he needed to act.
		And he rallied and he led the world to address the problem.
		Climate change was my biggest issue in the election because it seems to me losing our world as we know it is more important than transgender kids and all the other things that people seem to set their hair on fire over.
		But anyways, this is just a question to solar people out there.
		Why do they put these solar farms and fields?
		Why don't they put them on top of all the big box buildings that you drive by?
		And it seems like in cities and places like that, it would be more economical because they use the greatest amount of electricity and they wouldn't have to store it and do whatever else they need to do.
		But anyways, thank you for listening to me.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Out to Colorado, this is Buena Vista Ted Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I graduated from Pioneer High School in San Jose, California at the first Earth Day in 1970.
		We had about 1,200 students, and on that particular day on that particular day, what happened, Ted?
		We had like about 300 bicycles, and normally we only had like about 20 or 30.
		And then of our own motor department, we had a V8 motor, and one of our farmer boys brought his backhoe, and we buried that V8 motor behind the backstop.
		But now I left the Bay Area in 1996 and in Colorado because of Silicon Valley and just bumper-to-bumper cars and stuff.
		But I became conscious of my carbon footprint many years ago because living in the Bay Area, I would spend like 10 hours round trip going up to Lake Tahoe and going skiing and the car and the energy and all the casinos and stuff.
		But how could I practice my carbon footprint every day instead of just one day a year?
		And now I have a little farm that's produced over 100,000 pounds of produce that goes to food banks.
		And as I come here at the upper Arkansas River, I think of myself as a caretaker of the Arkansas River.
		And now when I see the water from the river come and water our vegetables and our plants, I am more conscious of the water in the river.
		And I don't participate in boating in the rivers.
		And I limit my skiing the last five years.
		In the last five years, I haven't bought gas.
		I've been doing everything on a bike.
		And I'm creating more public transportation and the bus and um.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask you, you you talk about that first Earth Day in in 1970?
		If you can remember back to then versus today, were you more hopeful?
		Are you more hopeful about the environment and the future today or were you more hopeful about it back in 1970, do you do?
		You know how you felt about it then and compared to how you feel about it today.
unidentified		I wasn't hopeful about it then because I worked for a swimming pool company and we built a couple thousand swimming pools a year and we built custom homes and track homes and I really didn't think about overbuilding.
		And you know, now I think more of public swimming pools instead of a little pool.
		But you know, it's just.
		The mindset back then was to have a muscle car, have a big house, have a swimming pool, have horses for your kids and yada yada, yada.
		But now, today it's just, you know, more conservative.
		I'm 73 years old now and I just feel it's my responsibility now to leave the future generations as healthy, clean of water.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you remember just also thinking back to 1970, the beginning of the Environmental Protection Agency under Richard Nixon and and having a new federal agency, an expansion of the federal government specifically focused on the environment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you remember that, Ted?
unidentified		Well, I think what it was, we were part of the salmon fishing industry.
		And, you know, when they had the no more drilling on the Pacific coast and then potters and start of the oil.
		beaches.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ted, thanks for telling us about your experiences.
		And back to 1970.
		That's Ted in Buena Vista Colorado, this morning, speaking of the EPA.
		The current administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, a former member of Congress, was on Face The Nation this past Sunday.
		He was talking about his efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency.
		This is what he had to say.
unidentified		I want to start with what your office called the most momentous day in the history of the EPA, and that is when the EPA announced 31 deregulatory actions just last month.
		That's a long list, but some of the things that stood out are, you're reconsidering regulations on power plants, on mercury and air toxic standards that target coal-fired power plants, and on wastewater regulations for the development of oil and gas.
		The mission statement of the EPA is to protect human health and the environment.
		Can you assure the American public that all this deregulation is not going to have an adverse impact on people and the environment?
lee zeldin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, we have to both protect the environment and grow the economy.
		It's what the American people demanding.
		They're demanding Of us.
		They want us to make sure that we are applying common sense.
		Over the course of the last couple years of the Biden administration, there were a lot of regulations that were brought over the finish line that were targeting entire industries.
		And when the American public went to vote last November, they were talking about economic concerns about struggling to make ends meet.
		That includes the cost of being able to heat their home, the choice of whether or not to be able to heat their home or fill up their fridge with groceries or afford prescription medication, the ability to get jobs.
		What we've also heard are the costs of compliance, which amount into the trillions and what that does to the American economy as well.
		So, going into this process, I don't prejudge outcomes.
		I'm not allowed to under the Administrative Procedures Act.
		We will have a process that includes public comment, and we would encourage the public to weigh in when they have that opportunity.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, that's from CBS's Face the Nation, on Sunday.
		Back to your phone calls.
		About 20 minutes left here in this first segment of the Washington Journal on this Earth Day to ask you how important are climate and environmental issues to you.
		We've also been looking for your Facebook posts and text messages.
		Seam writes in that I'll care when all those pro-Earth millionaires and billionaires give up their private jets and start walking or biking to their speeches about climate change.
		This is Steve saying the environment is extremely important.
		The bigger issue that needs to be addressed, though, is the politicization of the environment from moving the goalpost to flat-out scorched policy of some.
		There is value in the truth in the middle.
		And this is Gene saying it's very important.
		We have finite resources in the world, and there's no Planet B.
		We need to protect it, not exploit it.
		Humans are not a keystone species.
		My late father was involved with all of this decades before Earth Day was even a thing.
		A few of your comments in the Facebook chats.
		This is Bob in Minneapolis, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I've got an idea I'd like to introduce to address climate change, and that is there's a place between the Earth and the Sun called LaGrange Point 1.
		If you put something there, then it orbits the Sun and it stays between the Sun and the Earth.
		It doesn't fall toward either one.
		Now, if we put pairs of mirrors that face each other at LaGrange Point 1, we can achieve a unique solution.
		The way it works is that the first mirror reflects sunlight from the sun to the second mirror, and the second mirror can target that sunlight to solar panels.
		That's how you pay for the system.
		But the further advantage of this system is that that second mirror has a backside that blocks sunlight.
		So you have the area of two mirrors, but only one of those mirrors is transmitting sunlight to the Earth.
		So, Bob, you have both a net reduction in the sunlight reaching the Earth from each pair of mirrors, and you have solar energy being generated.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Bob, this issue of climate change, the concern over the environment, you're confident that technology is going to give us a way out of this problem before it becomes a problem that we can't solve.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is that what you're saying?
unidentified		That is exactly what I'm saying.
		And there's a Dr. Roger Angel, who is a MacArthur Genius Grant winner, working on something similar to this in 2006.
		I think he's demonstrated that this is a very workable technology.
		The point is to both generate solar electricity from these pairs of mirrors, but also to reduce the net sunlight that is reaching the Earth.
		That causes global cooling.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bob in Minneapolis.
		Back to that Gallup poll that we told you about that's polled Americans on a variety of environmental issues.
		Here's just one more finding from that poll, the question that was asked: Do you think that global warming will pose a serious threat to you and your way of life in your lifetime?
		And it's almost evenly split, the answers to that question.
		51% of Americans saying no, it will not, though that number down significantly from the late 1990s, as you can see from the chart.
		48% of Americans today saying yes, global warming will pose a serious threat to me and my way of life in my lifetime, and that number up significantly from the late 1990s.
		Again, this Callup poll available to see at gallup.com if you want to check it out.
		This is Earl Brookfield, Illinois.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I thought I called on the Independent, but that's okay.
		It doesn't matter.
		What I wanted to mention is that a lot of the climate issues occur because of our atmosphere changing, not the sun changing.
		So if you keep on changing the atmosphere with whatever we do, it'll change the climate.
		The other thing is that as the climate warms, warms rather, one of the big problems would be that the permafrost melting would release a lot of toxins and diseases that have been held in check for you know for since the permafrost was there.
		So it may open, you know, the melting of the ice caps may help with commerce in terms of ships going up there, but also the release of the diseases and stuff would be a big problem.
		That's all, it's already been, and there's an example of that of reindeer dying from permafrost melting in Russia.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Earl read that.
		Where do you fall on that question that Gallup posed that just spoke about?
		Do you think that global warming will pose a serious threat to you and your way of life in your lifetime?
		Where do you fall on that, Earl?
		And do you mind saying how old you are?
unidentified		I'm 69.
		So I think I'm running out of time for the climate change issue to impact me greatly, but I do think that I will see things happening where people have to change their lifestyles.
		I believe I will see the beginnings of big problems.
		I don't know if I'll live to be 100, but if I live to be 100, I probably will see big problems.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Earl, thanks for the call from the land of Lincoln.
		This is the Tar Hill State Mike Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
unidentified		How are you doing?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well, sir.
unidentified		John, there's been two thousand and fifty-something nuclear test above ground.
		I mean, it seemed like that would affect the atmosphere more than a cheeseburger or a car.
		You know what I'm saying?
		I mean, the Russians invented one bomb that they thought would destroy the whole world.
		So they cut it in half, and they still wasn't convinced that that thing wouldn't destroy the world.
		You can look it up on your computer, John.
		I'm not lying just because I'm a Republican.
		I'm not stating that you're not going to be able to do that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Mike, that question: Do you think that global warming will pose a serious threat to you and your way of life in your lifetime?
		How would you answer?
		And how old are you?
unidentified		I'm 65, John.
		I've done died one time.
		So I'm not quite sure that.
		Well, I feel the effects of global warming now.
		I can't argue there's, you know, some kind of effect that's happening to the environment.
		Whether, you know, I do believe man has caused it, you know, but I don't think it was from a cow roaming out in the pasture or a used car.
		I mean, you have to admit that the emissions out of the cars have greatly improved since the 60s and 70s.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, thanks for the call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got to ask, you said you've died one time?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you want to talk about it?
unidentified		Actually, I was, yeah, I was in the hospital.
		I died.
		I went in for an operation.
		I had poor circulation in my legs.
		And they took an artery out of my stomach and put it in my legs.
		And well, after I come out of surgery, I must have had too much nitrogen in my blood system, and I died.
		And the thing about it is, I come, you know, when I woke back up, it was three hours before, you know, Washington Journal, and you actually were the person on Washington Journal.
		And I was more worried about Washington Journal than I was anything else.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is a real story, Mike.
unidentified		That's a real story, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, thanks for telling me about it.
		Appreciate it.
		That's Mike in North Carolina, about 15 minutes left this morning in this hour of the Washington Journal.
		This is Dennis in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		How are you doing today, this earth day?
		I'm just calling out a few little observations that we've been 74 years old, and over the years of the climate and temperatures and everything.
		First of all, I want to see CNCSTAN have a segment on cloud seeding and the rumors of chemtrails, which I believe is ruining our environment.
		And that's definitely man-made.
		You can go outside on a beautiful sunny day, crystal blue sky, and all of a sudden, within an hour, jets go by and we have clouds.
		And then maybe some rain.
		So I think that's true.
		Also, I would like to see.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Dennis, how much research have you put into that besides going outside and looking at the skies and the planes going overhead?
unidentified		Well, all I can do is just go on YouTube and all the other myths and all that stuff about chemtrails and books you read and stuff.
unidentified		But I'm not a senator, so I really don't know.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You call it myths?
unidentified		Yeah, they could.
		I mean, some people say it's myths and it doesn't happen, but you can see it when you look up in the air.
		And I don't know where the clouds go or what they form or if they form rain or whatever.
		But I think that's something the show should have something, maybe a segment on one time to see have somebody on there about that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Have you tried going to the various scientific journals or to the library to read up on this issue?
unidentified		Well, I've read some things on different books, whether they're conspiracy theories or not.
		But they're there if you want to look at them.
		Also, I would like to see a segment on, which I think is kind of a big deal of the clock change and that stuff, too, that's been voted on and whether it was daylight savings time or not.
		But I think that has something to do with the environment, I believe.
		And also, going back, sometimes during the morning, I'll watch TV and the weather and everything, and they'll give like the high and the low of the day in history, okay?
		And all of a sudden, it could be like today, 1842, or whenever they started recording temperature.
		Well, it happened to be 90 degrees.
		Well, I don't think there was climate change or whatever.
		Back then, it was lower now than then.
		So I think that has something to do with the argument of environmental.
		And also, well, Dennis, we'll take your points.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Holt in Cincinnati.
		Democrat, good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
		Good morning.
		I was thinking more along the line of the green energy.
		When the farmer had called in, he said he was worried about the use of the farmland being used for solar panels.
		I think the most natural place for a solar panel to be would be on the roof of a residence.
		Your own house will become its own power source.
		You'll be able to charge your EV car, and that will cut down on the need of big drill-baby drill.
dennis in north carolina ▲ ● ▼		Instead of having to go back to bring coal back to try to find more energy, the energy would be produced right there in your own home.
dennis in north carolina ▲ ● ▼		And you could end up feeding power back to the power plant so that at night, if you happen to need to draw more power, the power plant will then be a place to store the excess energy coming from all the homes.
unidentified		That would be much cheaper than going back and destroying your environment and getting rid of the EPA.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Holt in Ohio.
		You mentioned the term drill-baby drill in today's Boston Herald, Ed Gaskin with this column on Earth Day, Earth Day in a Drill, Baby Drill World.
		He writes, Earth Day, first observed in 1970, was established as a global call to action for environmental protection.
		It symbolizes humanity's collective responsibility towards the planet, emphasizing sustainable practices and stewardship.
		And yet today, Earth Day exists in tension with a drill-baby drill mindset, a phrase epitomizing an aggressive push for fossil fuel exploration and extraction, championed by influential figures like President Donald Trump, former Governor Sarah Palin, former Governor Rick Perry, former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and James Inhoff, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and Franklin Graham, proponents of the drill-baby drill philosophy,
		argued that the aggressive fossil fuel exploitation and exploration enhances national security by reducing dependence on foreign energy sources.
		Ed Gaskin in his Boston Herald column today, if you want to read it, you can find it at bostonherald.com more on the Trump administration's policies on energy and the environment.
		Recently from the Senate floor, Alex Padilla, the Democrat from California, this is what he had to say.
alex padilla ▲ ● ▼		This is exactly why California for decades has worked so hard against pollution and against the impacts of climate change.
		Everything from being aggressive on tailpipe emission standards to our ambitious conservation goals.
		The 30 and 30 goals set out by the Biden administration were modeled after the 30 by 30 goals set out by the state of California.
		California is also home to the very first Earth Day, which is now celebrated nationally each and every year.
unidentified		But today, much of our progress is now at risk.
unidentified		Because just in the first two months of the second Trump administration, we've seen nothing but attacks on this progress of environmental protection.
alex padilla ▲ ● ▼		The Trump administration has sought to reverse the endangerment finding, which is the most basic finding of climate science.
unidentified		That yes, greenhouse gases harm public health.
		They've taken the steps of illegally freezing funding that this Congress, this Congress, had previously appropriated.
		I'm talking about the types of investments that keep our kids in our communities healthy.
alex padilla ▲ ● ▼		Now, earlier this month, the EPA, Trump's EPA, announced that they would be rolling back more than 30 environmental rules.
		By doing so, they're not just going to make Americans less healthy, they're also going to hurt our economy.
		And it's going to clear the way for China to become the world leader in green technology.
		So much for America first, if they continue down that road.
		But even while the Trump administration has refused to fight climate change, it's one thing to not be helpful.
unidentified		They've actually taken a number of steps that are actually harmful.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		California Democrat Alex Padilla on the Senate floor back at the beginning of the month.
		This is Rocco in Georgia, line for Republicans.
		Thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		How are you?
		Doing well.
		Hey, I view Earth Day as a tribute to the Earth because the Earth is so resilient to that as we speak.
		There are volcanoes that are going off that are spewing more toxins into the air than any car that any state country will drive today.
		So the Earth is so resilient that it recovers from that by no man's hand.
		There's nothing that we do that can mitigate all the toxins that are spewed up into the air by a natural volcano.
		And yet, the Earth still survives because we're just far enough away from the sun that we don't freeze and not close enough that we burn up.
		The Earth recovers all the time, but yet man tries to step in and say, oh, we're more powerful than a natural occurrence, and then we can all of a sudden get rid of plastic bags and make paper bags.
		It turns out a couple of months ago, they figured and determined that plastic bags are better for the environment than paper bags.
		So for all these years, we've been told and lied to that these things like plastic bags are horrible for the environment.
		But it turns out it's paper bags that are worse.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So Rocco, where are you on this Gallup question?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think global warming will pose a serious threat to you and your way of life in your lifetime?
unidentified		I do not because we are humans and we are adaptive and the earth, my point, is adaptive.
		We recover from volcanoes in South America, in up northern Canada.
		They're going off all the time.
		Earthquakes go all the time.
		I live near a science museum and I got a season pass.
		I go there all the time and there's a map showing the active volcanoes and earthquakes that are going on right as you walk by that map.
		They track that with a I forgot the technology, but they tracked that, and you can see all the things that are going on in the earth all the time that we don't even know about, but yet the earth recovers without congressional action, without banning this or banning that.
		The earth, you know, survives.
		But I don't agree with, I clean up, and I'm a conservationist, but I'm not for, you know, I mean, look at all these people who are blowing up a Tesla dealerships and the lithium smoke that's going up into the air as you burn up a Tesla for people who supposedly love the environment and love the earth, you're burning up the toxins that are going in the air from that Tesla, you've burned up.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's Rocco in Georgia.
		This is Ralph in Washington, D.C., Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
		I've been listening to some of this, and some of the misinformation is amazing.
		First of all, there's been major studies on volcanoes that show it's an insignificant amount compared to the billions of cars that are spewing hundreds of billions of dollars of gallons of gasoline into the atmosphere.
		Also, yes, I'm 71.
		I do not believe it'll impact me much, but my children and grandchildren are really going to face the blunt of this, especially since my daughter lives in Brooklyn.
		I think a large portion of it is going to be underwater at some point.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, Ralph, where does your daughter live?
unidentified		Brooklyn.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Brooklyn.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
unidentified		Brooklyn.
		Yeah.
		So many people are not aware of this.
		In the 70s, we had Oak Ridge National Laboratories had something called molten salt reactors.
		And basically, it solves all the problems that you have with nuclear reactors, including explosions and waste storage and proliferation.
		All that stuff is solved.
		But we walked away from it during the Nixon era because we wanted to do breeder reactors and we walked away from that technology.
		If we just took the money that we spend on one aircraft carrier and had four different developments going on simultaneously, we could have this clean energy at much cheaper than the price of coal.
		China is going down that path at a breakneck speed.
		We've got some development going on in Norway.
		We've got some development going on in Canada.
		And nobody's talking about the United States.
		And somebody once said that the oil companies will put their bodies in front of a bulldozer before they let that happen.
		It's just amazing that we're not going down that path.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Ralph here in D.C., Ithaca, New York.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Michelle, Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		So, yeah, I definitely feel like climate change has impacted me today.
		Not even today.
		I feel like in general, the weather is not normal as it used to be.
		We get more tornadoes here, which never happened.
		We don't even get as much snow as we used to.
		And it's not really about me.
		It's about everyone as a whole.
		The fires that they had in Canada, the fires that they had in California, they're going to affect us.
		And then, if they happen again, how are we going to get help?
		Where are we going to get help from people when our allies let them go?
		We don't even have friends anymore to help us have helped us through wars and everything like that as much as we've used to because we've turned our back on them because of the tariffs.
		There's a lot of health issues that happen right now when kids get born that come from cancer.
		A lot of man-made things that people have done to just drill or to just let waste go in certain areas, like in Flint, Michigan.
		Like all these things have affected people.
		And you keep poisoning the land.
		We're not going to have an earth to live on.
		The air will not be clean.
		Look at all the other countries that are suffering from our disgusting waste because us, we want more, more, more.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Michelle in Ithaca, New York, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around, though, plenty more to talk about this morning, including up next.
		We will be joined by author and documentary filmmaker Chris Whipple to talk about his latest book, Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
		And later, we'll be joined by Bill Doherty, co-founder of the group Braver Angels, a discussion about efforts to bridge the political divide in America.
		Stick around.
		We'll be right back.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now is author Chris Whipple.
		His new book is Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
		And Mr. Whipple, you call it the wildest campaign in history.
		What was the wildest moment that you were able to uncover as you tried to pull the curtain back on that campaign?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess I would have to say that, I mean, look, it was the political story of the century.
		I was writing another book when Joe Biden suddenly dropped out of the race, and I called my publisher and said, we've got to do this.
		And we had to do it fast.
		I would say, look, it had to be that fateful weekend of July 2021 when the walls were closing in on Joe Biden and he made that decision to drop out.
		I tell that story in Uncharted, day by day, hour by hour, just what went into that decision.
		You know, when his two closest aides, Steve Roschetti and Mike Donnellon, came to the Rehoboth Beach House and hammered out that abdication agreement.
		You know, ironically, that morning, he was on the phone parsing the details of a multi-nation prisoner swap that required real savvy and mental acuity.
		And yet, on that Sunday, for a lot of reasons we can talk about, he realized that it was over.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		From the opening chapter of your book, the truth was that Joe Biden was too old to run for reelection, much less govern effectively in a second term.
		His advisors knew this or should have known it, but refused to face that fact.
		No one ever discussed with the president whether he was too old to serve a second term.
		Instead, they walled Biden off from the outside world, limiting the number of people who interacted with him.
		Why?
		Why did Democrats, who, if they knew it or should have known it, let him keep running?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		That's the mystery at the heart of the book.
		It really is extraordinary.
		I mean, 77% of Americans felt that Joe Biden was too old to run for reelection, much less capable of governing at the age of 86, which he would have been at the end of a second term.
		And so what I do is lay out the story of how this came about.
		And the extraordinary thing to me was the extent to which Joe Biden's closest advisors were in what I call a kind of fog of delusion and denial.
		They believed what they wanted to believe instead of their lying eyes, in effect.
		You know, you didn't have to be a doctor or working in the West Wing to know from afar that it was time for Joe Biden to step aside.
		And yet nobody, not a single advisor to Joe Biden ever sat him down, looked him in the eye and said, hey, boss, are you sure about this?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who should have done it?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, close advisors, that's what they're paid.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		You know, they're paid to do this kind of job.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		To be clear.
		So, you know, his inner circle consisted of people who had been with him for decades.
		Mike Donalon was his alter ego, closest advisor.
		Steve Roschetti was another one.
		Bruce Reed, deputy White House chief of staff.
		And obviously Jeff Seinz was his White House chief of staff.
		You know, back in the day, way back in 1988, when Joe Biden was running for president and had to bow out after a plagiarism scandal, when he lifted portions of a Neil Kinnick speech and used it as his own, his best friend, Ted Kaufman, who went, again, went to the Senate, took Joe's Senate seat when he became vice president, took him aside and said, Joe, it's time.
		This was back in 1988.
		Nobody did it this time around.
		And to me, that's the fascination at the heart of this book.
		Why didn't that happen?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's your second book about Joe Biden that involves Joe Biden in his White House.
		The first book, fully focused on inside Joe Biden's White House, was called The Fight of His Life.
		Came out in 2023.
		covered it on C-SPAN's book TV.
		Why did Joe Biden think that he was the one person who could beat Donald Trump?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, because he'd done it.
		Because in 2020, he beat Donald Trump.
		He had 81 million votes to Trump's 77 roughly.
		Nobody else had done it.
		Biden thought he was the only guy who could do it.
		And I think right down to the closing days, the final days at Rehoboth Beach, I think one huge factor in Biden's resistance to stepping away from the top of the ticket was I don't think he thought Kamala Harris could win.
		There had been, the campaign had done polling, testing that proposition.
		They denied having done the polling, but they did.
		And as one person in Harris's camp put it to me, why would you do that unless it was to inform Joe Biden's decision?
		So we don't know what the result of that polling was.
		But there's a larger reason, which goes back to just the kind of article of faith within the Biden inner circle and Joe Biden himself, that everybody else was wrong in 2020 when he lost the Iowa primary and finished in fourth place.
		He finished fifth place in New Hampshire.
		Every political pundit wrote his obituary.
		It said he's dead.
		And he rose from the dead politically, won in South Carolina, as we all know, and went on.
		So their attitude, there was a kind of hubris here.
		There was a belief that Joe and his inner circle knew better than all the experts.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The book is Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden Harris and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
		Chris Whipple, the author, with us until the top of the hour at 9 a.m. Eastern and taking your phone calls.
		Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		As folks are calling in, how much access did you have not just to the Biden camp, but also the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign in a book about these three campaigns and not just about the Biden White House?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's important to note that this book is not just all about Biden's final days.
		It's about the whole campaign.
		I thought I was uniquely qualified to write the book, not because I'm smarter than anybody else, but because I had sources at the highest levels of the Biden camp and the Trump world.
		And I figured I liked my chances of getting into the Harris world as well, and I did.
		I was able to talk to her key advisors.
		So I think what I bring to the table here is real insider access.
		And that's the reason I felt I had to do the book.
		I had to put the other book aside and jump onto this one because it's the political story of the century.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was the wildest story that you found out from your sources in the Trump world?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, hard to choose, right?
		Maybe the wildest story is the one that everybody saw unfold on television, and that was the attempted assassination in Pennsylvania when he rose from that stage and Butler having been nicked by that bullet.
		Absolutely extraordinary tour de force by Trump politically.
		And he had the instinct to pull himself up, rise, raise his fist, mouth the words fight, fight, fight.
		It became the rallying cry of the campaign.
		And think of that really startling juxtaposition, the split screen here of Trump in that iconic pose with his fist in the air.
		And Joe Biden, who almost simultaneously is arriving on Air Force One to go to his beach house in Rehoboth and make his decision.
		He's got COVID.
		He comes out onto the steps of Air Force One.
		He looks utterly lost.
		He looks left.
		He looks right.
		He stops.
		He's grasping the handrail.
		I mean, you couldn't devise, you couldn't make up a more startling split screen that really played to Donald Trump's strength.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where were you on election night?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What did you want to witness personally on election night?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Look, I was like everybody else.
		I was on the edge of my seat wondering how this thing was going to end.
		And one of the stories I tell in the book is how the Kamala Harris camp really thought they were going to win.
		You know, I spoke to her top advisors, Lorraine Voles, her White House Chief of Staff, Sheila Nix.
		They were not based on data specifically, but based on sort of the atmospherics, based on what they thought was the energy and excitement and the crowds that were turning out for her in the last 48 hours, that kind of heady excitement can play tricks on people.
		And they really thought I think they were going to win this thing.
		And of course, it was a crushing blow to them when they lost.
		And of course, I was in the Trump campaign.
		I was in touch with the highest ranking people as well.
		And Susie Wiles, the campaign chair, co-chair with Chris LaSavita.
		She's a fascinating story.
		She never doubted.
		She told me that she never doubted for a moment that Trump would win.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Taking your phone calls with Chris Whipple.
		This is Gavin Up First in Maryland, Independent Line.
		Gavin, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question to our guest is that the book that he's writing, you know, Biden's advisors knew two years into the presidency that he was showing signs of dementia and that, you know, he was not really fit to continue on.
		Why didn't the Democratic Party negotiate with the president to step down and to slide Kamala Harris into that role?
		And that way she would have had the full two years to campaign and gain support.
		Because I spoke to a lot of people in our constituent, including military, and they felt that in the little amount of time that Kamala Harris had, that they felt like she was really not fit to lead the military or do foreign affairs, international affairs, or really, and a lot of black men, 25% of black men that voted for Trump, did not really, they were not really confident about her.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a great question.
		And the answer is a lot of people felt, as I think you do, that 107 days might have been mission impossible for Kamala Harris.
		Maybe you feel it was mission impossible even if she'd had two years.
		But again, a question at the heart of the book is why didn't Democrats step up and challenge her?
		Bill Daly, who was Obama's, Barack Obama's second White House chief of staff, a real Democratic insider, spoke to me and he's incredibly candid.
		Daly has no filter.
		He's a truth teller.
		And he said, you know, none of them had any freaking begins with a B.
		He was talking not just about Joe Biden's inner circle.
		He was talking about the Democratic Party as a whole and how nobody had the guts to step up and challenge Joe Biden for the nomination, even when they should have known that he was too old to run for reelection.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		From the book, again, the vice president was navigating a political minefield.
		The slightest misstep, any hint that she was plotting to replace the president could have been politically fatal.
		But while Harris was lying low, her political operation was working behind the scenes.
		What was going on in those final days in the Harris camp?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is a story, again, you can only read in Uncharted.
		I was lucky to have access to some Democratic operatives who were getting phone calls from the Harris camp.
		They were extremely careful about this.
		They wanted to make sure that none of these operatives could be traced back to the Harris campaign, the Harris camp.
		At that point, there was no Harris campaign.
		This was a week before that fateful weekend of July 2021 when Joe Biden handed the baton to her.
		They were out, these Democratic operatives, studying the rules, trying to make sure that Harris could grab the nomination and nail it down if and when that day came when Joe Biden stepped away.
		And they were also reaching out to Democratic senators and suggesting that they should be pressuring Joe Biden to step aside.
		And so it was all done very quietly.
		But the result was that when Kamala Harris got that phone call on Sunday, July 21, 2024, she sprang into action.
		She and her political team around a dining room table at the Naval Observatory working the phones, laptops open, cell phones buzzing.
		And within 48 hours, she was able to effectively nail the nomination down.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To Ralph here in Washington, D.C., Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		You know, I just love the book about the fantasy, about the things, how they worked.
		But I've been listening to some new authors coming out showing that there was a council within the White House who was running everything because Biden was unable to.
		Four years ago, or about four years ago, I called in and I said, Biden's CNIL.
		My mom's CNIL.
		I've seen it.
		They had these auto-signatures going on documents.
		He didn't even know that he'd stopped gas supplies to Western Europe, our allies, when he was confronted by the House Majority Leader.
		So this man wasn't running anything, and the cabal that was running it did not want him to stop running because they were in charge.
		They were the kings.
		Who would want to replace him?
		When you got this dawdling old man going over to the beach with an auto signature machine, you could rule the United States.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ralph, got your point.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chris Williams.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		So respectfully, Joe Biden was not Woodrow Wilson.
		Now, famously, Woodrow Wilson, way back in the day, was incapacitated by a massive stroke.
		His wife, Edith Wilson, was essentially making decisions for him.
		And this was not a situation like that.
		There really is, you know, and you have to understand that there are some inconvenient facts for people who want to paint this as a gigantic conspiracy and a cabal that knew that Joe Biden couldn't govern, couldn't make decisions.
		Behind closed doors, he was making decisions.
		On the morning of his abdication, quote unquote, he was negotiating that multi-nation prisoner swap.
		People who came to see him about the Middle East would find that he was on top of every detail and nuance.
		There was a difference between, as somebody put it very close to Biden, there's a difference between his performative condition And his cognitive decision.
		He was, there's no question about it.
		He was unable to campaign the way he once could.
		They'd really hidden him in the basement in 2020 famously.
		They had the excuse of COVID to do that because they knew that he couldn't really campaign effectively.
		But the truth is that behind closed doors, Joe Biden was making decisions.
		In my view, he really could have performed effectively to the end of his term and did, but was unable to do so for a second term.
		I don't think any clear-eyed observer thought that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What he did not perform well in was that debate, and you talk about that in the book.
		Back to Uncharted, here's the story.
		When he awoke up at Camp David on Tuesday morning, June 25th, two days before the debate, the president's voice was shot.
		He took two COVID tests, which came back negative.
		Klain and his team decided to attempt a mock debate.
		Bob Bauer, the president's personal lawyer and husband of Biden Ada Nita Dunn, played the role of Trump.
		Dunn played a CNN moderator.
		It didn't go well for Biden.
		He didn't really understand what his argument was on inflation, said Klain.
		He didn't really understand what his proposals had been, and he had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job.
		Was there any way to cancel the CNN debate?
		The answer was no.
		Why was the answer no?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		This was, again, just an unbelievable story, but true story that Ron Klain, Biden's ex-White House chief of staff, told me about the debate prep.
		He was in charge of it, Klain was, at Camp David for five days prior to that disastrous debate.
		And he was, as you read, Biden was out of it.
		He couldn't really follow the back and forth with the campaign between his campaign and Trump's.
		At one point, he wanders out of Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin, goes to the pool, collapses into a chair, and falls sound asleep.
		I asked Klain, why would you send this guy out on a stage with Donald Trump when you saw how out of it he was during the debate prep?
		And his answer was: it just wasn't politically feasible to cancel that debate.
		The issue in the campaign at that point was Joe Biden's cognitive condition, and to cancel the debate at that point would have been an admission, a disaster, an admission that he wasn't ready.
		This was a kind of Hail Mary pass.
		Remember, going to the debate, remember that this was the Biden camp's idea, not the Trump campaigns.
		They were the ones, they could have run out the clock and kept Biden off that stage until the fall when the debate, you know, debates normally happen.
		They were the ones who pressed for a June debate.
		They got it.
		And boy, did they regret it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me take you up to Maine.
		This is Cheryl Waiting, Line for Democrats.
		Cheryl, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, I just wanted to share that I thought Joe Biden was the best president of my lifetime.
		He did the hard work of getting us out of COVID in the best way possible.
		And he worked collaboratively with other nations.
		He chose excellent cabinet members that made us feel safer.
		In contrast, Donald Trump has decompensated mentally, and his narcissism is out of control.
		He's surrounded by people who don't tell him the truth.
		He doubles down on destructive policies.
		I could sleep at night when Joe Biden was president, and now I can't.
		And he's made my life and everyone around me's life impossible.
		So that's my comment.
		Thank you.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Whipple.
		I wrote another book prior to this called The Fight of His Life inside Joe Biden's White House, documenting the first two years.
		And I think I was pretty hard on him when appropriate about Afghanistan, for example, that shambolic withdrawal and other mistakes that he made.
		And I gave him credit for having pulled the economy out of a free fall, dealt with COVID.
		Obviously, there were mistakes made, but really dealt with the pandemic, rallied NATO to face down Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, passed more bipartisan legislation than anybody since Lyndon Johnson.
		He had achievements, for sure.
		But I feel, and again, I would urge people to pick up Uncharted and read the story of the campaign and how his advisors, again, failed to recognize what everyone else knew from afar.
		Because I think ultimately the Biden story ends in tragedy for him, anyway.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me come back to what Joe Biden may have failed to recognize.
		This is Jersey Girl in PA writing in on our XFeed saying, I agree that Biden should not have run for reelection.
		And many Democrats felt that we had an implicit bargain with him that he wouldn't run for re-election.
		However, he's been held to a far more stringent standard than Trump.
		Does anyone believe Trump would be capable of delving into complex policy?
		That's her comment.
		What were Joe Biden's thoughts on that implicit bargain?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Here's the key thing.
		There never was an implicit bargain.
		Now, unless you define the comment he made publicly in 2020 on a stage when he said, I want to be a bridge.
		I'm just going to be a bridge to another generation.
		That was never the plan.
		I spoke to almost all of his inner circle, including his best friend, Ted Kaufman, whom I referred to before.
		And Kaufman told me there was never any discussion about Biden serving one term.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Was he okay with people thinking that?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
		Obviously, no president wants to be considered a lame duck.
		But I don't think so.
		I can't explain that comment about the bridge, except it was one of those Biden things, an off-the-cuff remark that wasn't true, wasn't serious, because by all accounts, the plan all along was to run for reelection come hell or high water.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To Roy in Wake Forest, North Carolina, about halfway through our sit-down this morning with Chris Whipple, the book Uncharted.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Roy, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, we got two things going on here.
		The poor Democrat Party, and hey, they're my neighbors too.
		I love them, but they're so jaded by the left-wing press.
		I mean, they're still confused that when they saw Joe Biden so sick and could hardly even talk on stage when everybody else knew it, but the media was covering up for you guys cover up for him.
		I mean, and the party is still dazed and confused and can't figure out why he was all of a sudden he's so sick.
		And the other thing is, did you go into your book about how corrupt Joe Biden and his whole family is and all the money that they have received through the washing machine called where is it that we're fighting Russia and I can't believe Ukraine.
		That is the third most corrupt country in the world, and Joe Biden's been swimming in that money for years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess to the last point, I would simply say, you know, there really wasn't any hard evidence of the so-called Biden crime family or any real proof whatsoever that Biden had cashed in on Hunter's activities with Burisma and all the rest.
		But, you know, listen, if you want to write a book about it, be my guest.
		I would simply say I would agree with him, however, totally, that it was a real failure of Biden's inner circle to recognize what everybody else knew from afar, which is that Biden was too old to run for reelection.
		None of them wanted to face that fact.
		And it's absolutely fascinating to me that they were in this kind of, I asked Bill Daly about this.
		How could they not recognize what you saw so clearly?
		He said, look, in the West Wing, you're in the bubble.
		You've crossed the Rubicon.
		Jack Watson, who was Jimmy Carter's White House Chief of Staff, said, you know, it's almost like there's a gravitational magnetic force field.
		You know, the gravitational pull to the compulsion to protect the president at any cost is just so strong.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Come back to inside the Trump campaign during campaign 2024 and that moment where the handoff is made to Kamala Harris, how that was viewed inside the Trump campaign, what the reaction was that you were able to find out.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, really fascinating because this was the last thing Donald Trump wanted.
		You know, as they were watching the debate, that disastrous debate for Joe Biden, Chris LaSavita turned to the co-chair of the campaign, turned to Susie Wiles and Tony Fabrizio, their poller, and said, he's gone.
		He's out of here.
		They knew immediately that Biden was gone.
		And yet, in the days that followed Kamala's ascension to the top of the ticket, Trump was furious.
		He wanted to run against Joe Biden.
		He complained to his pal, Paul Manafort.
		Some people may remember the name.
		Manafort was actually working under the radar for the Trump campaign.
		He complained, what, now I got to beat him three times?
		In his mind, Trump had beaten Biden, the courts, and now he was running against Harris.
		So he was furious at first.
		But as I say, and readers can pick up Uncharted and read all about it, Susie Wiles, his campaign chair, never doubted, never doubted for a second that they would win.
		And she was brutally candid with me about their view of Kamala Harris.
		She said, we couldn't believe how bad she was.
		And part of that was the feeling that coming out of the convention, Harris sort of went radio silent.
		She didn't do interviews that she could have done during that period.
		She famously missed the Joe Rogan podcast.
		And she just felt that, in effect, she felt that the Harris campaign was hiding her in the same way that the Biden campaign had hidden Joe Biden back in 2020 in the basement.
		Anyway, that was her view.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We know where Susie Wiles is now, White House Chief of Staff.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where's Chris LaSavita?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Lasavita is off doing his thing.
		I mean, I think he's, I think I don't know for sure.
		The impression I got was that he was going to be doing consulting for other campaigns and perhaps including international campaigns.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Did he ever want to join a White House if his candidate won?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		I don't think he did.
		I don't think he did.
		And look, it's often high-ranking campaign officials know what they're good at and what they're not all that good at.
		James Carville famously never wanted to go into the Clinton White House, even though he was a brilliant campaign manager and strategist.
		That wasn't for him.
		Stu Spencer, who was Reagan's campaign manager back in 1980, never wanted to go into the Reagan White House.
		And that was true of La Savita.
		But Susie Wiles is another story and a really fascinating story.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Did she want to go to the White House?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah.
		And I think she was thrilled to be chosen as White House Chief of Staff.
		And I think that she stands a chance of lasting a lot longer than any of her predecessors.
		People may recall Trump's first term with Reince Priebus and the others, and he went through them like a revolving door.
		I think Susie Wow's is going to be around because she has a real magic with Trump.
		Trump trusts her.
		This goes back, her story's fascinating because this goes back to her childhood.
		Her father, Pat Sommerall, who was a famous sportscaster, who was also an alcoholic, self-admitted.
		She helped organize interventions.
		She'd be the first to tell you that she learned something about dealing with difficult men.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is David in Flemington, New Jersey, Independent.
		Good morning.
		Thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Good morning, and thank you.
		My opinion is that Biden is more of a symptom of the poor choices and impulsiveness of the Democratic Party than a root cause.
		And my understanding is that Tom Harkin, who along with Elizabeth Warren, are really the most authentic versions in their life stories of Democrats, not the creatively embellished narratives of Biden and even Hillary Clinton.
		My understanding is that Tom Harkin, Senator of Iowa, told him not to run.
		But deeper than that, what we're really seeing now is the result of President Obama being kind of jumped out of line.
		It was Hillary's time when Obama ran.
		The Democrats could not control their irrational exuberance over Obama.
		And when Hillary finally ran, it really wasn't the proper time.
		It wasn't the season for Hillary as it would have been.
		Obama would have won after, and they've never stopped paying the price.
		But Elizabeth Warren and Tom Harkin, their life stories were authentic.
		Everything about Hillary and about Biden has been highly embellished and edited as Men and Women of the People.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point, David.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me just tee off on that to talk a little bit about that relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden, because it's fascinating and it's multi-layered, and I write all about it.
		In 2016, it is true that famously that Barack Obama put his thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton to become the nominee for the Democrats.
		Joe Biden never forgave him for that.
		That was a deep wound.
		Joe Biden and Obama had a close, they had a bond.
		They had a real friendship.
		It was formed when Barack Obama offered to help pay Joe's medical bills for Bo, his son, who was dying of cancer.
		That was a real, he took him under his wing.
		So there was a closeness there, too.
		But real competition between the two camps, the Biden camp and the Obama camp.
		And then ultimately, I write about how during the final days, as the walls were closing in on Joe Biden that weekend of July 2021, one of his best friends told me that the thing that really bothered Joe Biden more than anything else, the reason he felt betrayed by Barack Obama, was that the former president never picked up the phone, called Biden, and said, hey, you sure you're up to this?
		Hear my reservations.
		He never had that conversation with Joe Biden.
		Instead, he was working behind the scenes to engineer Joe's removal.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Did you bring that up with anybody in the Obama camp?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, yes.
		I spoke to a lot of close people who were close to Obama about this.
		And yeah, they confirmed it.
		It's interesting because Obama had reservations about Kamala Harris, too.
		I mean, he felt, as we all know, that there should be maybe a mini primary so that others would have a shot at it.
		He reportedly liked Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan, and was skeptical about Kamala.
		The irony of this is that I spoke to people high up in the Democratic National Committee who said there was no way, no chance that there would be a mini primary or any other kind of primary that late in the day in July of 2024.
		The money was clearly not going to go to any other candidate.
		The rules were such that you couldn't do it.
		The only real chance for a primary would have been a year or two earlier.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talk about the relationship between Obama and Biden.
		So let's do one more.
		Let's do Harris and Biden, especially as Kamala Harris is now the nominee and trying to figure out how much she needs to separate herself from Joe Biden and how much she's getting questions about whether she would just continue the policies of a Biden administration.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		This was a pivotal, a real turning point in the Harris campaign was when she appeared on ABC's The View.
		And she infamously was asked the question, not that there was anything wrong with the question, but she was asked the question she knew was coming and everyone knew was coming, which was, would you govern any differently from Joe Biden, in effect?
		And she whiffed on that softball over the plate, which she'd been prepared for.
		She had answers for, but she couldn't go there.
		And her answer was, I can't think of a single thing.
		And the irony here, I think I know why she did that, but the irony here is that she had been, contrary to some other reporting out there that you may have read, the truth is that Joe Biden had given her a green light to separate herself from him.
		He said in effect to her, don't worry about my feelings.
		You've got to do what you got to do.
		And yet, she still couldn't do it.
		And I'm told that the reason she couldn't was it was a feeling of loyalty to Joe Biden.
		Personal loyalty.
		He was the guy who brought her to the dance.
		She wasn't going to throw him under the bus, to mix my metaphors.
		And that that's the reason why she couldn't go there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You said she had been prepared for that question, that softball question.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was the prepared answer?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a great question.
		And I don't know exactly what the answer might have been.
		There are a number of possibilities.
		I mean, personally, who knows whether she could have succeeded in separating herself from Joe Biden?
		Hubert Humphrey, famously back in 1968, broke with Lyndon Johnson, the president, over his conduct of the Vietnam War very late in his campaign.
		It caused a real surge, and he almost, Humphrey, almost caught Nixon and lost in a photo finish.
		So there's a precedent for this.
		Sometimes you can do that effectively.
		In Harris's case, look, I mean, my two cents would be maybe she could have said, look, we've done A, B, C, and D, and we're proud of it.
		But you know what?
		We blew it on inflation.
		And here's what I, here's how I'm going to change that.
		And if she'd hammered that home, who knows?
		We'll never know.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The book is Uncharted.
		The author is Chris Whipple, and he's taking her questions this morning.
		This is Zemay in Bowie, Maryland, line for Democrats.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I agree with Jersey girl that Biden was held to a higher standard.
		But I'll tell you what, that so-called dementia-adult President Biden, he had more bipartisan legislation, the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, the PACT Act.
		I'd take him over a Trump any day who has destroyed this country, the world, and is demonstratively, mentally diminished.
		He didn't even know what the condo is.
		The topic of the day should be what this traitor, I'm going to call him a traitor, has done to this country, along with that Elon Musk and his $38 billion subsidies and whatever else he's getting from this country.
		That's what the topic of the day should be.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So May, got your points.
		May brings up Elon Musk.
		How much did you learn about Elon Musk as you were writing this book?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		A lot.
		Musk, look, presidents in history have had multi-millionaire plutocrat friends.
		Nixon had Bebe Robozo, some people may recall.
		But Musk is unique, not only as the richest man in the world, but in the kind of just kind of wide open, unabashed influence of the role that he's playing in this White House.
		And I'll tell you that I've spoken to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, a few times, a number of times since she's taken the job.
		And she was the first to admit that that was a real challenge for her.
		Nobody said the White House chief's job was going to be easy dealing with people like Elon Musk.
		She had to try to rein him in early on over USAID.
		She called him in and said, hey, what are you doing?
		You know, vaccines for kids in Africa, really?
		They had that kind of conversation.
		So she's having a lot of conversations like that because he's a big, big part of this White House.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are these conversations that you're continuing to have with the Trump White House for another book down the road?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		We'll see.
		You know, I never tip my hand too early about that.
		But, you know, anybody with a political bone in his body would be crazy not to have these phone calls, have these conversations if you can, if you have that kind of access, which I've had.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Richmond, Maine, Robert, Republican.
		Good morning.
		You're on with Chris Whipple.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question is about the statement Joe Biden said about why he was running, I believe 2020 we were talking about, was that because of Charlotteville, and he had to protect us from Hitler.
		And I was wondering what your thoughts about if you write about it in the book about the fine people hoax and how the media and everyone, including Joe Biden for four years, perpetuated that.
		Do you have any thoughts on that?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		What is it about this that you think was a hoax?
		We all saw him say that there were very fine people on both sides.
		And there's no question that there's no question that Biden felt genuinely that that was a trigger for him to run for president in 2020.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much have you talked to Joe Biden since the election?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		I haven't.
		I haven't had a word with Joe Biden, and he's been really isolated, I think.
		I'll tell you a story.
		I mean, I tried to talk to Joe Biden early on for my first book about the Biden White House.
		I was told, and it should have been kind of a flashing yellow light in retrospect, but I was told that, yeah, he'll do an interview, you email the questions, and he'll send back written answers.
		What I now know in retrospect is that, you know, they obviously felt Biden's staff, that they didn't trust the president to be doing an interview in real time with a reporter in the same room.
		Readers can draw their own conclusions from that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Did you trust that those were his answers?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'll tell you why.
		I mean, sure, I'm sure they were cleaned up by probably by the chief White House chief, Ron Clain, at the time.
		But I had had enough conversations with Klain to know that, I mean, he would tell me about how he was just in the Oval and he'd said, come on, boss, it's time to do these answers.
		And, you know, he'd get an Oscar if someone else wrote those questions.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Ed in Byron Center, Michigan, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		My question for the guest is, was he aware of Senator Tim Ryan in the Democratic Party going to Joe Biden in 2022 and asking him to step down?
		And my belief is if he was able to step down at that time, I think we would have had different candidates.
		And I think that Kamala Harris would not have been the candidate.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		So my answer to that would be absolutely.
		There's no doubt about it that had Joe Biden stepped aside a year or two earlier, there could have been a real competitive primary and a chance for a Democratic nominee to emerge stronger than Kamala Harris was able to in the little time she had.
		Maybe it would have been someone else.
		Maybe it would have been Harris strengthened by the process of a real primary with more time.
		We'll never know because that's also more time to make mistakes.
		And Democratic nominees often tack to the left to get the nomination.
		So we don't know.
		But I think I'm with Leon Panetta, the former White House chief, congressman, CIA director, a guy I talk to a lot for advice for his expertise.
		And his feeling was, look, you know, the fact that a weaker nominee might have emerged is no reason not to do it.
		You got to do it.
		You have to have a real primary.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A date we haven't brought up yet today is Nancy Pelosi.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talk about her role and what you found out about her role in the changeover from Biden to Harris.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think she was absolutely the key figure in Joe Biden's decision to step aside.
		And I report in Uncharted how it was not a phone call that she had, as was reported at the time, but there was actually a clandestine meeting, secret meeting between Pelosi and Joe Biden at the White House.
		This was on July 11 in 2024.
		And they met in the residence, not in the Oval Office, so that nobody would see this.
		And Pelosi described the conversation to a couple of friends afterwards.
		And she said, you know, we had a long talk about America.
		And they went off to the races talking about their shared history, their shared Roman Catholic faith.
		She said, not in a boastful way, but just in a matter-of-fact way, that I'm the only person who could have delivered that message to him, that message being, it's time for you to step aside.
		You know, the numbers are worse than you think.
		And she came away feeling that she hadn't convinced him, but that he'd heard her.
		And so, and the pressure would become irresistible.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Interesting to you that it was Nancy Pelosi and not a United States Senator like Chuck Schumer.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joe Biden for so long seemed being seen as such a creature of the United States Senate.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, not a surprise to me because of their relationship going way back because Pelosi was such a powerful figure, even though she was now Speaker Emerita and not the current one.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		No surprise to me.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was Joe Biden's relationship with Chuck Schumer?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		I think they had a perfectly good working relationship, but not a closeness, not the same kind of friendship that he had with Pelosi.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Spring Valley, Wisconsin, this is Rick, Democrat.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, I kind of blame the DNC for the whole debacle we're in.
		I had tried to contact them different times telling them that I didn't think Joe Biden was fit to rerun.
		I could see it in his speech in Taiwan.
		He'd taken like five questions and said, oh, I'm tired.
		I'm going to bed.
		When he'd deliver a message, he's a whispering president is what I call them.
		He didn't speak like a true leader.
		He whispered.
		I don't know if he thought he was being humble or what, but I think Dean Phillips, I had was trying to get them to get him in the race.
		And they just kind of, anytime I'd make a comment, all they did was ask for $20.
		So I think the DNC played a big part in this loss.
		And I knew Kamala Harris wasn't the answer to Joe Biden.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Rick, we'll take a point, Chris Whipple.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, I'm with Leon Panetta on this one.
		When I spoke to him about this shortly after this had all gone down, Panetta said, you know, this was just a failure across the board.
		Not in exactly those words I'm paraphrasing.
		But it was an abdication of leadership beginning in the inner circle of Joe Biden, but extending throughout the Democratic Party.
		As Bill Daly put it, nobody had the freaking you-know-what to step up and challenge him.
		And so I think there's plenty of blame to go around.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can you talk about January 6th and that issue on the campaign trail, especially from the perspective of the Trump camp?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, first of all, it's extraordinary the way President Trump was able to talk about the January 6th insurrectionists as heroes, I'm paraphrasing now, and how he was able to sell that, or at least not be harmed by it politically.
		And I think that Kamala Harris tried to, I mean, a lot of people think that she made a mistake during the fall in the campaign when she pivoted to democracy as the issue.
		And again, remember she gave that sort of closing speech out at the ellipse to remind everybody of January 6th and what had happened.
		I think it was triggered by the midterms of 2022 when the Democrats were so successful, at least in avoiding any losses.
		I mean, they really defied expectations and it was considered a real victory.
		The issues then were democracy and women's reproductive rights.
		And I think the Harris campaign took a page from that and thought it would work.
		But general elections are very different from midterms.
		And I think that there are a lot of people who would say, well, should have stayed on the economy, should have stayed on other issues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Frasier, Michigan, Chris Independent.
		Good morning.
		You're on with Chris Whipple.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		You know, we only know what we're told by the media and our government.
		And just to let you know, the fine people hoax that one car was talking about was because they were talking about the tearing down of the statues and not of the radical racist people that were carrying the torches.
carl in florida ▲ ● ▼		The election funds, you know, that they spent, the Democrats, and gave all that money to like Oprah Winfrey, the musicians, the actors for backing their campaign.
unidentified		I mean, do you think that that's an actually credible thing for our society to go through as far as the media and how slanted they were throughout the whole campaign?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you, I mean, your comment about the, you know, the rallies, the musicians, all of that toward the very end of the campaign.
		Yeah, Susie Wiles told me that they just laughed at that.
		They just thought that that was just such a waste of time and money droughting out Beyoncé and all the others to try to win the campaign while Trump was more on message.
		So look, I mean, I'd probably agree that that wasn't the best use of their time.
		Again, as far as I'm concerned, Charlottesville was no hoax.
		He said what he said.
		Everybody saw it.
		But yeah, look, the campaign, the Harris campaign had plenty of flaws.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When you talk to Susie Wiles, can you talk more about the strategy of a Trump campaign rally?
		Often very unscripted, Donald Trump being able to go off on whatever tangent he wants to or read from the script.
		Was that a specific strategy in light of what you describe of the efforts to keep Joe Biden from public scrutiny to manage his time, manage what he said, manage when he appeared?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Look, I think Susie Wiles, part of Susie Wiles' philosophy, particularly during the campaign, was let Trump be Trump.
		She would rein him in only when, and I described one rally where she appeared at the edge of the stage, scowling at Trump and trying to send him a message.
		That didn't happen very often.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was the message she was trying to send that day?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Was rein it in, stay on message.
		He was off on a riff, you know, a crazy tangent, which he often did.
		But I think Susie Wiles, she ran a really competent campaign.
		And Trump used to go through campaign managers the way he went through White House chiefs of staff, one after the other, after the other.
		We've all seen that and remembered that.
		Not this time.
		He really paid attention to her because she had, you know, it's a fascinating story.
		Again, she had been, she had helped to elect Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida.
		Afterward, DeSantis turned on her for reasons they're still not clear and tried to destroy her reputation.
		And Trump came along and really rescued her.
		It's a fascinating story.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was her role versus La Savita?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		She was, look, they were co-chairs, technically, but she was first among equals.
		There's no doubt about it.
		I mean, she ran the campaign, and La Savita ran the ad campaign.
		I mean, La Savita is also a really interesting character.
		I mean, he's a guy who was responsible for the infamous or famous, depending on your point of view, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertising campaign against John Kerry in 2004.
		A lot of people thought that John Kerry's failure to answer that tough, negative ad campaign sank his campaign.
		And so it's interesting because Kerry was out of money, didn't respond.
		This time, now fast forward, if history doesn't repeat itself, maybe it rhymes, because under La Cevita, the Trump campaign created that devastating anti-trans surgery ad that ran on every football game and millions of dollars invested in that.
		And it was devastating.
		And a lot of people feel, including some former, including one former winning Democratic presidential campaign manager, who shall remain nameless, felt that her failure, Harris's failure to answer that ad effectively, was a real turning point too, and not a good one.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just a couple minutes left with Chris Whipple, the book again, Uncharted.
		I want to show viewers the cover of that book because Gus in Brooklyn has a question for you about it.
		What was the motivation behind that cover art?
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it's a great story because we had a fantastic designer.
		We had to create two covers.
		One cover had Kamala Harris in the far right in the prominent position as the winner.
		And the other cover is the one you see with Trump predominant as the victor.
		And look, I think readers can look at it and judge for themselves.
		I think it's a pretty terrific cover.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me do one more from the book.
		And it was one more moment from the campaign that you chart, and it's the end of the campaign.
		Harris respectfully addressed the man that she called a fascist and an existential threat to the democracy.
		After 170 days of adrenaline-fueled campaigning, she felt the weight of the crushing defeat.
		But unlike Trump four years earlier, she was respecting the election results.
		She called to concede.
		She said it was a fair election.
		The peaceful transfer of power is important.
		It's important to the country.
		And then she added pointedly, I hope you're a president for all Americans.
		If Trump detected any edge to that remark, you're right.
		He didn't show it.
		In fact, the president-elect was weirdly cordial and complimentary, bantering as though he were on a golf course.
		You're great, he said.
		You're a tough cookie.
		You're really great.
		And that Doug, what a character.
		I love that guy.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so look, readers can judge for themselves about this call.
		It was Harris's aide who felt, who heard the call, who felt that Trump's response was weird, as she put it.
		But look, you could also read that as Trump being gracious, depending on where you're coming from politically.
		But it's again an example of the kind of fly-on-the-wall moment that every author tries to achieve in a book like this.
		And I was lucky to be able to get a lot of these untold stories.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And you can read about it in Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden-Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The author is Chris Whipple, and we always appreciate your time.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Great to be here.
chris whipple ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up next, a conversation with Bill Doherty, a discussion about his nonprofit, nonpartisan group, Braver Angels.
		We'll talk about efforts to bridge the partisan divide in this country.
		Stick around.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		This week, watch a primetime encore presentation of our 10-part series, First 100 Days.
		We explore the early months of U.S. presidencies from George Washington in 1789 to Donald Trump in 2017.
		We'll learn about the decisions made and how they shaped the White House, the nation, and history.
		Tonight, we'll feature the first 100 days of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
		In 1981, the former California governor won the White House by defeating President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election.
		He came to Washington with an agenda of cutting taxes and reducing the size and role of the federal government.
		In March of 1981, President Reagan survived an assassination attempt in Washington, D.C. Let me briefly review for the American people what we've already done.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Within moments of taking the oath of office, I placed a freeze on the hiring of civilian employees in the federal government.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Two days later, I issued an order to cut down on government travel, reduced the number of consultants to the government, stopped the procurement of certain items, and called on my appointees to exercise restraint in their own offices.
unidentified		Yesterday, I announced the elimination of remaining federal controls on U.S. oil production and marketing.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Today, I'm announcing two more actions to reduce the size of the federal government.
unidentified		Watch First 100 Days tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2 or online at c-span.org.
		Saturday, watch the White House Correspondents Association Dinner live on C-SPAN from the Washington Hilton Hotel.
		First, join us online for exclusive red carpet arrivals at 6 p.m. Eastern, online on the C-SPAN Now app or at c-SPAN.org.
		And then our live coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.
		Watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
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		In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM.
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		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.
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		Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio, anytime, anywhere.
		C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A focus now on efforts to reduce political polarization.
		Bill Doherty is our guest.
		He's the co-founder of the nonprofit group Braver Angels.
		And Mr. Doherty, when and why did you start Braver Angels?
unidentified		Well, we started it right after the 2016 presidential election when one of our co-founders, David Blankenhorn, New York City, was talking to another co-founder, David Lapp, who were in Southwest, he was in Southwest Ohio about how people were feeling about the election.
		The world was ending in New York City.
		It was hope for America in Southwest Ohio.
		They decided on the spur of the moment to get to get 10 Hillary Clinton voters, 10 Donald Trump voters together for 13 hours over a weekend in Southwest Ohio to see if they could talk with each other, not just about each other.
		Asked me to facilitate it.
		It was a beautiful, great, it was a great experience, and we decided to keep going.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Asked you to facilitate it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why, what's your background?
unidentified		Well, I'm a family therapist, marriage or family therapist, and have done a lot of community engagement work, so I know how to work with people who are at odds with each other.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So how many of those sit-downs have you facilitated?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How many people have gone through the Braver Angels program in the time since?
unidentified		Well, 3,500 workshops of various kinds since then, 50,000, 60,000 people.
		And so we spread around the country.
		And our mission is to have reds and blues in leadership.
		So our leadership is what we call half red, half conservative, Republican, half liberal Democrat, as well as some independents.
		But people from across the spectrum taking leadership to lower the temperature, reduce the rancor, try to bridge the partisan divide.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And so how did they do it?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How does the program work?
unidentified		Well, we have a variety of offerings.
		We do what we call red-blue workshops, where we bring small groups of reds and blues together for conversation, structured conversation to find common ground.
		We have policy workshops where we call common ground, where we bring people together around an issue that they disagree on.
		Abortion was the first one we did.
		Where you have people actually listen to each other well enough, tell their stories about how they got interested in this, and then see what areas of common ground they have.
		We have skills workshops, like we have a workshop called Skills for Disagreeing Better.
		And we have debates, particularly popular on college campuses, where we will debate any issue of the day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Nine years since this group was founded, are we any better at finding common ground?
unidentified		I'm afraid not.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why?
unidentified		Well, the polarization, which has been rising for 40 years, has been getting worse.
		And this is happening around the world, not just in this country.
		And so the good news is that we now, most people believe we're too divided.
		The one thing that 90% of Americans agree on in the polls is that we're too divided.
		And so we've named the problem, but we're still in the middle of it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So where do you start?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How do you find the common ground?
unidentified		Well, you find common ground by actually listening to each other.
		What your actual view is, we use a term called achieving accurate disagreement.
		And that is that I understand your position.
		You'll understand mine.
		So that when we disagree, we're disagreeing with what each of us are actually believing as opposed to I'm disagreeing with my version of what you believe.
		So when you actually listen to each other's points of view, you can find what's in common.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I want to show viewers just an example of one of the Zoom groups that you put together as part of Braver Angels to talk about some of these issues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is about two minutes, just so they can get a sense of how this works.
unidentified		What did you learn and notice while listening to the other side?
		And what are you taking away from this event today?
		So hopefully this is different from what we've had before.
		And again, only the A group B's should not be visible and should not be heard at this point in time.
		So Beth, please turn off your video.
		Okay, who'd like to go first?
		So again, you know, what did you notice?
		What did you learn?
		And what are you taking away today?
		And Wilk, you are right out of the gate there.
		Yeah, I would not call it so much learned, Paul, as confirmed.
		And that's that, you know, even though we see things differently, I saw a lot of love for our country, and I saw a lot of concern for, you know, the man.
		You know, what's happening with Trump, the overarching power.
		I think I heard, you know, words like oligarchy and monarchy and, you know, a lot of the same concerns that I personally have, but It was more of a confirmation of love of country, concern for things, but probably just to a different degree.
		So it was good.
		It was good to hear.
		All right, Joe, it looks like you have.
		Then you'll be first.
		What did you learn?
		Thank you.
		What I learned is that the group A, who were the Trump supporters, acknowledge that his personality and communication style is a problem.
		I heard one of them mention the term vulgarity.
		That's something that I wholly concur with.
		I think it's been a problem since he's ascended into politics from the get-go years.
		And unfortunately, it's part of the man's personality.
		There's no such thing as a personality transplant.
		He is what he is.
		Unfortunately, that's very alienating to people like myself who agree with him on some of his positions.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		From Braver Angels, what's called a fishbowl conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Explain what we saw there.
unidentified		Yeah, so we have conversations right now where people are evaluating the first hundred days of the Trump administration.
		And so you get those who are more pro-Trump in one group and more anti-Trump in the other group.
		And fishbowl means that on the screen at any one time, it's just one group.
		They're talking, answering questions, and the other group is observing.
		And then they switch.
		And we always ask two kinds of questions.
		What do you like?
		And what are your concerns?
		So the Trump supporters got to say what their hopes are, what they think is going well, and then what are your concerns?
		The other group was asked, what are your hopes?
		What do you think?
		What do you hope might be good here?
		And then what are your concerns?
		So they both are exercising their willingness to say what's good and also what's negative.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Braver Angels is the group, braverangels.org, if you want to check them out.
		And you can call in this morning, Bill Doherty, with us for about the next 15, 20 minutes this morning to take your phone calls.
		It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans to call.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		As we're talking about the political divide, how do you feel about us setting up the phone lines that way, splitting it by Republican, Democrats, and independent?
unidentified		That's great.
		That's what we do in Braver Angels.
		We invite people who are what we call red or blue or independent, and we make a place for all of them.
		It's a great process.
		I love it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think it's important for people to identify their party going in?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you worry that that will shade people's opinion of the call that they're going to get knowing that bit of information about the person?
unidentified		People are going to be listening for it anyway.
		So I think it's a brilliant idea to have people call in on that line.
		And then you can make sure, by the way, that you're getting the voices.
		So did you hear on that screen?
		It's like this is the time for the pro-Trump people.
		So Betsy, get off camera, okay?
		And so you know what you're getting.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		One thing I did want to note before we take a couple calls is that what you do is not just red, blue, not just politics.
		You talk about urban issues versus rural issues.
		Israel, Palestine, young people, old people, ethnicity differences.
		So which do you think you have the biggest success on when you're trying to crack some of these different issues?
unidentified		Well, they all relate to politics in some way.
		So rural, urban is now kind of almost a standard for that.
		So everything has to relate.
		Same thing with the Israel-Palestine.
		It has to relate to public issues.
		I will say, though, you're referring to our one-to-one conversations, which I didn't mention.
		I talked about our workshops.
		So we have people do structured one-to-ones, and those are our most powerfully evaluated things we do, where people have a structured one-to-one conversation with each other across a difference.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When you say structured, explain.
unidentified		Well, you take turns, okay?
		Like one of the first questions is, what life experiences have influenced your views on this?
		And you get four uninterrupted minutes to talk about how your life story, how you bring that to this issue.
		And then the other portion goes, four minutes uninterrupted.
		And then the question is, what did you learn about each other?
		And did you see anything in common?
		And the ground rules are you're going by that process.
		Can you see how effective that would be as opposed to you talk, I talk, and then we disagree.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned your background in family therapy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your life story?
unidentified		Ah, well, I grew up in Philadelphia in a family that was working class labor union, a Democratic family.
		And I wonder now with what's happened since then, if my father, the Democratic, the FDR guy, I don't know, maybe he'd be for Trump now, given the changes in the world.
		So that's a little piece of his story.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And then where do you live now?
unidentified		I live in St. Paul, Minnesota.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And this group is mostly online-based.
unidentified		No, no, no.
		We started in person.
		We do a lot in person.
		But then after the pandemic, we also began to offer online things.
		So we do a whole range.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And we mentioned it's a nonprofit group, but how do you fund the work that you do?
unidentified		Membership is $12 a year.
		So we have 15,000 members.
		We get a little money there.
		We have donors, individual donors and foundations.
		And we try with our donors, our foundations, to get half red, half blue.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And it's Braver Angels.
		I assume it's a take on Abraham Lincoln's Better Angels.
		That's right.
unidentified		I started off with Better Angels.
		Somebody else owned the trademark for that.
		And then we switched to Braver Angels.
		But let me give you an example of face-to-face.
		Next week, we're doing a bus tour, Minnesota, through rural Minnesota, six towns in rural Minnesota, where we're going to be doing workshops with elected officials, with community leaders and others.
		So we do a lot of face-to-face stuff.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Some calls for you, Anthony, in Pennsylvania, a first line for Republicans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, John.
		Two morning, C-SPAN.
		John, first of all, you look like Jason Stagham.
		I don't know if anybody ever told you that.
		But anyway, back to my question.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So what's the question for Bill Doherty?
unidentified		It seems like the Democrats have normalized violence against anybody and anything they don't agree with.
		And I was wondering if you asked those questions about violence during your meetings because it seems like it's open season on Elon Musk and it's been open season on Trump forever.
		I mean, they almost tried to assassinate him twice.
		They meaning I don't know who, but a couple of rappers.
		And also, do you talk about Trump derangement syndrome?
		Because I listen to C-SPAN every day and watch the Journal every day.
		And not for nothing.
		It's definitely something that seems like a disease to me because the hatred for this man is just uncontrolled.
		And the rhetoric, you know, all the things that they call him Nazi fascist, all the stanzas, which, you know, those of us that voted for him do not agree with, obviously.
		And also, somebody mentioned this statement last talk about Joe Biden about the, you know, him calling the neo-Nazis, you know, fine people.
		He never did that.
		He disavowed that.
		And if he played the whole tape, it's right after what he said about the fine people of both sides.
		Anyway, I'll take your answer off.
		Seth Bill.
		Cole, thank you.
		So what I'd like to say is I don't think there was a question in there.
		Okay.
		So what I'll do is to acknowledge The speaker's deep distress about what he perceives as unfairness to Trump, that Trump can do no good, that he's evil incarnate, and that some people are even justifying violence.
		And so I hear that.
		It's deeply felt.
		And so that's what I'll do for now.
		But we do not ask that kind of partisan question of either side, of justify your person.
		We invite, if this gentleman were involved, he would have a chance to talk.
		I would summarize back what he said, and I would invite him, I would invite him to listen to somebody on the other side who might acknowledge that some of what he's saying is accurate, and then also speak about that person's deep concerns about Trump.
		That's what I would try to do.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And at the end of that, how do you know if you've accomplished something?
unidentified		Well, there's two ways.
		We ask people for what they've learned.
		You saw that on the screen.
		And we have an evaluation we do.
		We've also had academics study our workshops and follow with randomized control groups, follow people for six months afterwards.
		And we have good reason to believe that it softens their attitudes towards the political other.
		Because what's happening now is what's called affective polarization.
		And that is not just about issues or about Trump, but how we view people who disagree with us.
		So we view them as strangers, as alien.
		We don't get them.
		We don't like them.
		And people nowadays think people on the other side are morally bankrupt.
		That's what we're trying to do.
		Not trying to change their minds about Trump or about issues or about Harris or anybody, but about each other.
		Can we disagree?
		Could this gentleman, with a red, a blue, sit down, have a conversation that's structured, and see each other as human beings who want the best for the country?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me go to the line for Democrats to the Grand Canyon State.
		This is another Anthony.
		Go ahead.
		You're on with Bill Doherty.
unidentified		Good morning, Team C-Span.
		Mr. Doherty, I'd like you to address how politicians have gotten their followers to do this.
		And here's the statement: I believe everything you tell me, and I don't believe anything that you don't tell me.
		Please answer that.
		Well, thank you.
		Yes, you're making a profound point that we tend to follow our political leaders sometimes blindly.
		And there's one of the reasons for that is that policy-relevant issues are very complicated.
		Most of us don't have direct access to the science on climate change or how many immigrants have committed crimes.
		We don't have direct access to that.
		So we have leaders who we've come to trust, and then through the media, they speak to us either directly or through the media, and we tend to look at different media.
		So then we collect our information through those leaders filtered in various ways, and that's what we believe is true.
		It's very hard, unless you deliberately access multiple sources of information, it's very hard to not just follow your leader.
		It's a huge problem that this gentleman has identified.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people blame the media for a lot of different things.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much do you blame the media for the problem that you're trying to address in this country?
unidentified		Oh, it's all of us.
		And the media are a piece of it.
		Some of it is that we've gone to a media landscape where revenue comes from outrage, from the more people will watch or click who get upset.
		And so I don't blame the individuals involved.
		I think it's how we've evolved, but media and social media in particular have become accelerants of polarization.
		That's the term the political science issue is accelerant, not the cause, not the root cause, but accelerating this polarization.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you recommend people get off of X or Facebook?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you use much X or Facebook or whatever social media?
unidentified		Personally, no.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		TikTok?
unidentified		Personally, no.
unidentified		Personally, no.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think people should get off it?
unidentified		Well, I don't say people what people should do, but I think it's become a real problem.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Would it make your job easier if people are- Oh, absolutely.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		We've been learning incivility through social media.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mary, in Warwick, New York, Republican line, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on with Bill Doherty.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Can you hear me?
		Yes, ma'am.
		I don't really have a question, but I am reiterating that I think that this is a very necessary conversation that individuals start to have.
		I came here from another country.
		My parents had to go to Canada first, had to come here through the natural process.
		But I now voted Republican because I got so caught up in all this, and I've never been caught up in politics, but it was impossible not to.
		But what he's saying is it starts with the individual.
		I said to a friend of mine, when do we stop sitting down and talking to each other?
		Beautiful.
		That's what Brave Rangels is about.
		Talking to each other, which means listening to each other.
		So I love what she said.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much is it that people don't have enough time to listen?
unidentified		No, it's not time.
		We have enough time for what we prioritize.
		People have enough time to be on social media.
		It's just that we have either not had or lost the ability to engage around political differences.
		You know, in 1960, only 5% of Americans said they would be unhappy with their son or daughter marrying somebody of the other political party.
		5%.
		Now it's up to 40 to 45%.
		So partisan politics has gotten in, it's gotten in our families.
		So it makes it very hard to argue, not about, you know, in the 50s, Stevenson or Eisenhower, right?
		But our political leaders, our issues, everything is existential.
		Every election is going to end America.
		And then it makes it very hard to have the conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned your background in family therapy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is this country on track for a divorce of some kind?
unidentified		Well, interesting, my specialty is couples on the brink of divorce.
		And we are in bad shape, but we cannot divorce.
		It can't have half of the country move to Canada, for example, of course.
		And, you know, who knows what their future is with Canada.
		So we have to figure out how to get along.
		In a democracy, the only alternative to keeping the conversation going is violence.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Greg, Florida, Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		This question is for Mr. Dougherty.
		I like the idea of what you're doing, bringing Democrats and Republicans together to have discussions about it.
		One suggestion I was wondering what you would think about.
		I'm an independent.
		I've always been an independent.
		I have voted Democrat and Republican over many years.
		And having an independent view, I think, might be a nice bridge between Democrats and Republicans, because I like to believe that the independents see both sides.
		They see the good and the bad.
		And would that be something that would be a benefit to the groups that you create?
		Yes, thank you for that.
		Yes, we do have independence and leadership, and a majority of our workshops you do not have to identify as red or blue.
		You can identify as independent.
		There are a couple of workshops where we want that kind of sharp divide.
		But independents are welcome.
		I will say the political science research in this shows that the number of true independents, like this gentleman, is very small, probably 5% of the population.
		A lot of people say they're independent, it's because they don't like either party, but they basically vote one way or the other.
		So we need folks like this gentleman, and we have them as leaders in Braver Angels.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What makes a good facilitator of one of these discussions, whether it's in person or on Zoom?
		What are you looking for?
		What are you trying to train them to do?
unidentified		Well, a lot of people know how to do this, actually.
		They're teachers and sometimes people who have been in business and how to run meetings.
		And so basically, be able to hold the structure, to be willing to do what I see you do here sometimes, sort of gently cut somebody off or redirect, but to maintain the ground rules, hold the structure.
		If you can do that, you can lead one of these groups.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are the ground rules?
unidentified		Well, ground rules are that we take turns.
		We speak for ourselves, not for any political party.
		We don't interrupt.
		We don't tell somebody what they think, but we let them say what they think.
		And we follow the structure so that if we're having a conversation where we listen to each other, then the question is: did you see anything in common?
		It's all we talk about at that moment, not, okay, I didn't like what you said there.
		I'm going to make my other point.
		So you follow the process as it's given.
		You create a container.
		It's much like couples therapy, okay?
		It's your turn.
		I don't let your spouse interrupt you at that point.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To James in Waynesboro, Georgia, Democrat, good morning.
		Thanks for waiting.
		Just a couple minutes left here with Bill Doherty.
unidentified		Yeah, I was wanted to ask him somewhere in there maybe a question.
		I've been listening to C-SPAN for a while now, and every time somebody gets on, they talk about the way they treated President Trump at the time he came down to escalator.
		But I wanted to ask him his opinion.
		Is there any difference in the way they treated President Obama when he came and the things they said about him, his wife, his children?
		That was a man, a congressman from my area there that called him a lie on national TV.
		I'll never forget that.
		But what I'm saying is, is there any kind of what are these people thinking about?
		Mitch McConnell and a few of the other ones promised to make him a one-term president, not to work with him at all, even if he came up with ideas that they once supported.
		Now that he supports them, they don't anymore.
		I was just wondering his response to that, to that.
		Did he see any sense?
		What's the difference?
		Well, when somebody gets in political power on the other side, nowadays we savage them every opportunity, how they look, their family, not just their viewpoints.
		And that's a real problem.
		That is a real problem.
		And it's keeping people out of public life because we do workshops all over Minnesota and around the country for elected officials, managing difficult conversations with constituents is what we're doing with them.
		And the nastiness is so high and attacks on them, their character, and their families, that good people are not going into politics.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever had to kick somebody out of one of these group meetings, these Zooms, these?
unidentified		No, no.
unidentified		People come Willing to, almost always willing to follow the ground rules.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		They're showing up.
unidentified		And then you head it off early.
		Okay.
		Somebody doesn't get escalated unless you let that happen early.
		So you don't let them hijack it at the beginning and people more or less settle down.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A question from Paul, Cleveland, Ohio.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Want to get your thoughts on town hall meetings, members of Congress Town Hall meetings, and specifically members not doing in-person events.
unidentified		Oh, glad for that question.
		Town hall meetings are like a 19th century design for a public event.
		Open mics, nowadays in this era of polarization, people grandstand.
		We need new designs.
		And we've done some meetings with members of Congress and their constituents that are designed in a Braver Angels way, where you just don't have the open mic for people to pontificate.
		So it's a bad design.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's a better design?
unidentified		Better designs is you have people with, you have a particular issue in question.
		You have people in small groups.
		You have filtering through the small groups of what people think is most important to say.
		You have somebody, that's just an example, not the only way.
		And then you have some people from the small groups who have some balance, who can articulate those things.
		You just don't do a stand-up mic.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When some people hear the word some filtering there, they might get a little bit nervous about whether their words or actually their opinions are going to be transmitted.
unidentified		Well, what I'm actually thinking is you have a member of the small group.
		You have a regular citizen.
		So who wants to represent this group?
		Joe, why don't you do it?
		I'm not talking about some staff member doing it.
		And that's just an example.
		But we need 21st century designs for group dynamics in order to have responsible and good town halls.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		One more call in the time we have left.
		This is Bill in Billings, Montana, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, guys, and thank you for the program.
		I'm just wondering how much our national media is to blame for the divide.
		I'll tell you why.
		In 2019, I bought a Trump 2020 hat.
		The day I bought it, I wore it into a fellow's house, and he looked at it and said, my God, we got to make sure he doesn't get re-elected.
		And I was taken aback, so I said, well, what Trump policy do you disagree with?
		His eyes got wide, his mouth dropped open.
		After about three seconds of silence, he said, he's too arrogant.
		Over the next about three years that I wore that hat, 63 people disagreed with it.
		I asked all 63 the same question, and I never got one policy.
		I heard Trump called every name that a drunken sailor could come up with, but not one policy decision.
		Has the national media poisoned our country?
		Thank you very much.
		It's a lot bigger than the national media.
		National media plays its role.
		I think what this gentleman is talking about is how we personalize so much.
		And it would be interesting if somebody was wearing another hat and what their story would be when people would say, well, what are you doing?
		He's making a very interesting point that we decide on the person often at that level and not the issues.
		And whatever that person tells us, then we tend to go along with.
		So it's a very interesting thing.
		But here's a final thought.
		A braver angel's perspective is to acknowledge and honor what he experienced.
		There's learning in there.
		He counted the number.
		It would be interesting to hear somebody on the other side, the blue side, and to hear what they experienced.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		One more question, because it was written in during our conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Kathy in California saying, what do you have to say about the old idea that there are certain subjects that you just don't talk openly about at work, religion and politics and others?
unidentified		And that's an option.
		That's an option.
		However, politics has become so important in our lives now, for good or bad, that to have a ban on it, I don't think is doable.
		So we've been doing more workshops with companies because the workforce now, you know, the day after elections and debates, people are going to talk about it.
		And so how do we do it?
		How do we upgrade our skills and our attitudes for having the conversations we need to have?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You say you like to end the workshops by asking, did you see anything in common in what we heard today?
		It's been about a little over half an hour.
		Did you see anything in common from the people you heard from today?
unidentified		Yeah, I heard them all worried about the country and worried about the divide.
		And so that's the big takeaway.
		I also heard people feeling, a number of people feeling, particularly on the defense for their own people, their own elected officials, their own side, which is again very understandable.
		That's what I heard in common.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me make one note for viewers who are interested in this topic, C-SPAN's coverage today.
		We are going to be covering an event later this afternoon.
		It's at 3.30 p.m.
		It's on the treatment of civil servants.
		It's a town hall meeting, a discussion about incivility and mental health and the treatment of civil servants and elected officials.
		It is being conducted by the National Association of Counties here in Washington, D.C. You can watch that on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN Now video app.
unidentified		We'll be on that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Mr. Doherty will be there, so you'll hear more from him.
		What are you going to be talking about on this panel?
		What's going to be your recognition?
unidentified		Well, I'm going to be talking about the audience is going to be elected officials.
		And so I'm going to be talking about what they're going through because we've been doing a lot of workshops with those folks.
		I'll be telling some of their stories and telling the public we have to treat these people better or talking about their city council people and the county commission school board members.
		They're not getting much money on this and they're getting a lot of grief and we're not going to have good people in those jobs if we don't treat them better.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You can watch that event at 3.30 Eastern Time today on the C-SPAN networks.
		And also you can go to braverangels.org and learn more about Mr. Doherty's group, the co-founder of that group.
		Thank you for your time this morning.
unidentified		My pleasure.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up for about the next 25 minutes, it's our open forum.
		We turn the conversation over to you.
		Let you lead the discussion.
		Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, the numbers are on your screen.
		Go ahead and start calling in now, and we will get to those calls right after the break.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
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		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Here's where we are this morning on Capitol Hill.
		About 25 minutes left in our program to let you lead the discussion in our open forum.
		Phone lines are open lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as usual.
		In about 25 minutes, we are going to be taking you here on C-SPAN over to the Supreme Court.
		A case today, Mahmoud v. Taylor, about a group of Maryland parents suing a public school district over the right to opt their children out of LGBTQ-themed storybooks in the classroom.
		Live coverage of oral arguments at 10 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN, also on c-span.org and the free C-SPAN Now video app if you want to watch and listen to that.
		Until then, though, we're taking your phone calls, and there are plenty already.
		This is Deborah in Westchester, Ohio, Republican.
		You're up first in open forum.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
		Because this is Earth Day, I am hoping that we can all put aside our feelings about whether this is climate change or basically adopt the policy of your previous guest and think about what we can do in order to change our daily habits to promote good and be good stewards of our planet.
		Now, as a scientist, and we actually have a NASA scientist in our family, a NASA engineer, we know that plastics, through the process of polymerization, come from fossil fuels.
		So, when I think about my own household, I think about all the things that are plastic, and I know that there are alternatives.
		And if this audience, this well-informed audience, would do just a few things, it would have a major impact on conservation.
		One is we should buy all of our sodas in aluminum cans and recycle those separately.
		Then, we should also stop buying the individual water bottles for ourselves.
		I stopped that three years ago.
		I have plenty of bottles and reusable.
		And then, I don't know if people realize that, but from cornstarch, from hemp, and from sugar cane, you can produce disposable, biodegradable plastics.
		So, if we focus on conservation, we can make a difference.
		When we focus on climate, there are things we can't control.
		Our next solar cycle between 2030 and 2045, NASA has one model that shows that we might have a cooling period during that time period.
		And as one guest explained earlier about the mirrors, it has to do with that.
		So, there is no doubt that there are things that we can do To improve, improve our daily lives and focus on conservation and get politics out of this.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Deborah will take the call here on Earth Day.
		That's Deborah at Ohio.
		This is Earl in Nashville, Georgia.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, C. Claire to y'all.
		Allow me to call.
		It's been a while since I spoke.
		You know, I was just sitting there thinking about what this caller said, but the most important thing to us that could make our life better, I think that we have separated ourselves from our Lord Jesus Christ.
		And I think that if we just take time to listen and not hear what these politicians are telling us, we will learn a lot more about what this president is going to do, what he can't do, what he can do.
		That's some of our problem in this United States of America.
		You know, we don't take time to listen.
		We hear it, but we don't listen.
		And to me, the main thing is that I would say I believe that people in this country have forgotten about their first love, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Earl in Georgia, Gary in Connecticut, Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		I want to say, firstly, that I believe in free enterprise.
		I think what we're witnessing, not just in the United States, but worldwide, is the triumph of what I would describe as predatory capitalism.
		That is everything going into just a few hands.
		If you look at the inauguration of President Trump, look who was front and center.
		You know, Bezos and Musk and company.
		I've told you in the past, you know, during the first Trump administration, I went to live in Italy.
		I have European citizenship, and it's happening there too, in Hungary and Russia and other countries.
		But they're resisting it.
		And were it not for the fact that my health is in serious decline, I'm 78 years old, I would go to live in Europe permanently because at least there it's not happening quite as rapidly as it is here.
		This September, I plan to spend two months in Italy as sort of a vacation from the madness.
		So I don't know if you have any questions about what I've said, but that's what I believe.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Gary, hope you enjoy your trip.
		That's Gary in the nutmeg state to the Yellowhammer State.
		Tommy, Republican, good morning.
unidentified		How are you doing, sir?
		Go ahead.
		How are you doing this morning, sir?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing well, Tommy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead with your comment or question.
unidentified		Like all that terrorist tax, if they do like I do, like all my lung equipment made in USA, Shaddao Bo, that's why I buy that over there for terrorist tax.
		He's got to do it, or we're going to have a congress we ain't going to get out of.
		Trump's trying to save us from doing our way.
		We broke and don't have the money.
		I just want everybody to get along, get along with God, and pray about all weeks.
		Pray to God about all weeks.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Tommy in Alabama.
		Heightsville, Maryland.
		Sheena.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Sheena, you with us?
unidentified		Independent Christians.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It works better if you turn your phone down while you're waiting and just turn your TV down and listen through your phone.
		It's the best way, the only way it works.
		This is Howard in Fort Lee, New Jersey, Independent.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I have a comment regarding illegal deportation of illegal aliens.
		Under President Obama, I believe 3.5 million people were deported.
		I never heard in that time anything about due process, which is about 70,000 deportees per week over his four years.
		Under Mr. Trump, as far as I understand it, there are 10,000 deportees per month.
		What is it that Mr. Obama did that didn't affect due process?
		And what is it that Mr. Obama did in getting 70,000 people a month out of the country as against Mr. Trump getting 10,000?
		Questions that I don't know that anybody can answer it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Howard, do you think that Barack Obama was better on the issue of illegal immigration than President Donald Trump?
unidentified		Well, the facts speak for themselves.
		If he deported 3,500,000 people or 70,000 a month, and Mr. Trump deports about 10,000, obviously, Mr. Obama did something absolutely different, and I never heard the term due process, which the Democrats have invented as a scheme, I guess, to challenge everything Mr. Trump is doing.
		So apparently, Mr. Obama had a methodology that didn't include the concept of challenging deportations with due process.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Howard in New Jersey, to Massachusetts.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Brian, Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, sir.
		Thank you for letting me talk.
		I've spoken before on Washington Journal.
		But I asked you before, the National Rifle Association is having an annual meeting this week, and I'm wondering if C-SPAN could select some segments to broadcast.
		I think President Trump has addressed them before, but if you could consider that broadcasting that, that's what I'd like you to do.
		Thank you very much, sir.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Brian, what do you think the main issues are right now when it comes to the Second Amendment?
unidentified		Well, to put it frankly, I think there's too many gun grabbers.
		I think it's working fine just the way it is.
		And I don't think we need any more restrictions.
		And just let it go through the courts and the voters and what they want to do.
		But I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment.
		And I don't know what else you want me to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Brian in the Bay State 2.
		Brian in the Cornhusker State.
		This is Line for Democrats.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, thanks for taking my call.
		I have three comments on events that are going on.
		I'm going to make it quick.
		Last night I was watching the show on CNN, and there's a Republican, Mike Lawler.
badass uncle sam in new orleans ▲ ● ▼		Every time he feels he gets attacked, and they were talking about Mr. Hegseth's signal chat, he always brings up the 13 service people tragically killed in the pullout of Afghanistan.
unidentified		And the thing he always fails to talk about is, you've got to remember, Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban.
		I didn't know my taxpayers, my tax dollars, was going for us to train the Taliban in Afghanistan.
		If you're going to put an equal instead of always Biden, always Biden, why did Trump do that?
		Why did he negotiate with the Taliban?
		My second comment is on the deportations, the gentleman they want to bring back from El Salvador, what's the difference?
		You hear Republicans say he comes back, he's not going to be free.
		Yes, that's right.
		And he will be deported.
		Here's the difference: we don't have to pay for him.
		Why is my tax dollars paying $6 million for another country to house these trans-alawagua MS-13?
		Why do I have to pay that?
		When you deport somebody, we don't pay them.
		Money doesn't follow them.
		They get deported.
		They go back to a different country.
		I had another one, and I just completely lost my train of thought.
		But basically, that's what it is.
		This Mike Waller.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point, Brian.
		That's Brian in Nebraska.
		You started by talking about the Hegseth signal chat story, the latest iteration of that story.
		Here's one of the follow-up articles today.
		First Republican lawmaker calls for the removal of the Secretary of Defense.
		Congressman Don Bacon on Monday became the first Republican lawmaker to suggest that Pete Hegseth should be removed from his position.
		Mr. Bacon of Nebraska, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico on Monday that he previously had reservations about Mr. Hegseth being chosen for the role because he didn't have a lot of experience.
		Mr. Bacon said he wouldn't tell the White House how to handle the situation, but he finds it unacceptable, and I wouldn't tolerate it if I was in charge.
		Quote, Russia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all those phone calls at the very top of the number one target list because the president would be the president would be the Secretary of Defense.
		Mr. Bacon said Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right.
		He's acting like he's above the law, and that shows an amateur person.
		Don Bacon being quoted there.
		This is Tom Leesberg, Virginia, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Can you hear me?
		Yes.
		Yeah, good morning.
		Well, gosh, I don't know where to start.
		You've got so many interesting things going on right now.
		I don't remember when this country was as unfocused as it is now.
		We are all over the map.
		That gentleman who called earlier was saying he didn't understand why he didn't hear anything about due process when Obama was in there.
		It's because they were following the law.
		They were giving people a hearing and saying, do you need to be expedited?
		My friend was an administrative law judge.
		He took hearings on this all the time.
		So, you know, when you're wondering, well, what's the difference?
		How did Obama get all these people?
		And now I didn't hear anybody talking about due process.
		Yeah, in Obama's era, they didn't have goons with blankets not wearing ID or badges grabbing students off the street and shipping them to some other state that we don't even know where it is.
		I mean, the only time I've ever heard of this is when I had history class in high school, and they're explaining what the Russians and their gulags are like.
		So I'm really a little disappointed that some of these people who walk around with the Constitution in their pocket don't seem to be reading it at all.
		So there's that.
		For the other side of the coin here, I appreciate this guy Bacon out there in Nebraska, who I'm going to start following him because he's doing the right thing.
		I don't care what party he's in.
		I don't care what party anybody's in if they do the right thing.
		And it just seems to me like right now, everybody's like, oh, well, we don't need all this science.
		What do we need the science for?
		The water's melting.
		The ice is melting.
		The polar bears, they can swim 40 miles.
		I think the whole world needs to sit back, step back, and look at it because the latest thing is if the economy's not going good, fire the head of the Federal Reserve.
		That's not what we're about.
		We're about getting the economy right, and this has been a disaster.
		I talked to two people the other night that each lost $200,000 or more in their personal retirement in the last three weeks.
		I mean, we're just all over the map here.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On the economy, the headline from the Washington Times: markets fall after Trump dials up attacks against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
		Dow Jones Industrial yesterday plummeted more than 900 points or nearly 2.5%, while the SP 500 and NASDAQ indexes closed down 2.3% and 2.5%, respectively.
		It's also the lead story in today's Wall Street Journal on the front page.
		The headline there: stocks and dollar nosedive as Trump flogs the Fed.
		Dow Jones index falls 972 points there.
		That story, noting the Dow Jones Industrial Average drop is on pace for its worst April since the year 1932.
		That's in today's Wall Street Journal story.
		This is Griff back in the Bay State, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Not a Republican.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Did you call in on the right line, Griff?
unidentified		I don't know if I did or not.
		I've only got one line.
		So do you want me to go ahead?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Griff.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How would you describe yourself?
unidentified		I would say I was a Democrat.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Okay, what's on your mind?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's open forum.
unidentified		Well, I'm concerned about the fact that we don't seem to have enough educated voters, so to speak, that can really discuss with the factual background for the various problems that we very definitely have.
		I think that we don't do a very good job.
		Maybe it's because we just don't have enough time on the news or because they're loaded up with things that might fit in about 30 seconds.
		They don't seem to have enough information from people who really do know what is going on in a particular aspect of foreign policy or even local policy or a national policy.
		I don't really think people understand exactly how that all works.
		The money, of course, is very, very important for all that.
		I spent 20 years on active duty as a naval officer, and I've also spent decades dealing with children's issues in terms of people who had gone into Russia, taken children out, and getting them adopted, which was a very, very interesting business.
		But there's a lot of things.
		How did you get involved in that issue, Griff?
		I was an attorney that dealt with things in court, and they wanted somebody who would spend some time with them.
		And at the time, I was a retired naval officer, so I had the time.
		The money wasn't important to me at all.
		It's just that these were people who had gone into Russia and, you know, on their own time, I'm going to use the word bought, but I'm saying they obtained a child, brought the child back into the country, came into my court.
		I'm not going to tell you which court it is.
		And then proceeded to process them, which is what I did, process them through the court system in order to them to adopt the child.
		So this is a completely different mechanism, which had nothing to do with the federal government or the local government.
		Just had to do with people who are trying to do the right thing, men and women.
		It was just amazing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Griff in Massachusetts.
		This is Steve in Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		I just wanted to thank the psychologists and psychoanalysts who have stepped up and been able to tell us what kind of problems we're going to have.
		At least we're forewarned, which is forearmed.
		And I think it's very important from the gentleman you had on this morning to Dr. Vandi Lee to, I guess, hundreds now.
		So thank you.
		And I feel hopefully some things will change because it's not going well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Steve in Charlotte, North Carolina.
		Just a few minutes left if you want to get your calls in in open forum.
		One other story that we've been tracking along the weeks and months here to update you on, the wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was found guilty yesterday of helping her husband generate a steady flow of bribes and gifts that totaled about $1 million and included gold bars, cash, and a luxury car.
		The story in the Washington Post, Nadine Menendez, 58, was convicted of bribery, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit those crimes and related counts after a roughly month-long trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
		She faces the possibility of a decade in prison.
		Quote, it all boils down to a classic case of corruption on a massive scale, helping a politician put his power up for sale.
		That was Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Montaleone in his summation on Thursday, calling Menendez, quote, someone who knows what she's doing is wrong and simply doesn't care because she wants to get paid.
		Bob Menendez, the former sender, was convicted in July.
		He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and is set to surrender in June.
		This is Mike, Republican Line, Paducah, Kentucky.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Mike.
		Turn your TV down.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		I've just got one thing to say.
donnie in oklahoma ▲ ● ▼		I think, real quick, is the guy that just called in a little while ago on the Republican line, which was a Democrat, which I've never seen y'all take that call before.
unidentified		And he says there's not any intelligent or informed voters.
		Well, how smart is this guy if he doesn't even know which line he's calling in?
		So he, you know, has something to say.
		And that's all I got to say.
		Thanks.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Mike in the Bluegrass State.
		Sophia is in Manhattan.
		Independent, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Sophia.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's on your mind?
unidentified		Oh, I'm so glad I couldn't get in to talk to about the Earth Day.
		I started it yesterday.
		Like, even when I eat gum, I take it off in Manhattan.
		Every three blocks, there is a trash can.
		People told in the street, I even bend down and pick it up and put it in the trash.
		And I remember it was 29 years ago.
		Jill Crabberg lives in Monkisco.
		Her son, Michael, he was nine years old.
		She was sending them to pick up the trash in the street over the weekend.
		Those days ago.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sophia, do you remember the first Earth Day?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Were you around in 1970 for the first Earth Day?
unidentified		No, I remember it.
		The first one is I was a supervisor at the, oh my God, River Club, and Bush was elected, President Bush was elected president.
		That is when I knew, but at that time I explained to them about Mikey going in the street.
		He's nine years old, the dog is following him and picking up garbage from the street.
		And over there, it's a suburb, you know.
		The streets are small.
		He's staying in the corner, nine years old.
		I don't know how old.
		And I wanted to find him.
		Anyway, thank you.
		Another one.
		Can I ask you a question?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, Sophia, I've run out of time here.
		I've got a minute left, and Sheena is called back in from Hyattsville, Maryland, Democrat.
		Sheena, are you with us?
unidentified		Yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's on your mind?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Final minute here.
unidentified		You know, I just would like to know if people would just stop talking about Mr. Trump and calling it what it is.
unidentified		Anybody could replace that spot, and still, the things that are going on are not normal.

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