| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Washington Journal begins now on this Saturday, April 26th. | ||
| You've been watching the funeral services for Pope Francis live from Rome. | ||
| We want to get your thoughts on the Pope's passing and his legacy, as well as his impact politically here in the United States. | ||
| For that discussion, we're joined by Peter Laffin, Deputy Editor of Commentary for the Washington Examiner and a member of the Catholic Media Association. | ||
| Peter, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thank you for having me, Mimi. | ||
| Initially, your thoughts on the funeral you just watched. | ||
| Oh, you know, it calls to mind that, you know, in addition to being the head of a church with 1.4 billion people and the vicar of Christ on earth, Pope Francis was also a man, had a mother and a father and loved ones, his own interests and passions and personality. | ||
| And that was all evident in what we just saw. | ||
| The very simple coffin, the simple burial rite. | ||
| And as a Catholic, you know, just having witnessed this, I'm mourning too, like all the other 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide. | ||
| It occurred to me as we were watching the funeral procession that if you are a practicing Catholic, if you go to Mass regularly, if you say the rosary regularly, you may have prayed for Pope Francis thousands of times during his pontificate. | ||
| You may have conjured up his face in your mind and wished him well and lifted him up into the light of God in your mind. | ||
| And you come to know somebody very well that way. | ||
| You come to know somebody in a very tangible sense. | ||
| And today, all Catholics say goodbye to that man that we knew, and that's very hard. | ||
| But we have great hope. | ||
| We have great hope in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. | ||
| It's Easter season right now, and there's something very poignant and beautiful about that too. | ||
| And we have great things ahead. | ||
| And this funeral, I think for everyone watching, it pointed us toward that future heaven. | ||
| And as Pope Francis did so many times in his life. | ||
| We will take your calls shortly, so you can begin calling in now if you'd like to weigh in and ask a question of our guest, Peter Laffin. | ||
| The numbers are regional this time. | ||
| So if you're in Eastern or Central time zones, you can call us on 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're in Mountain or Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| You can also send a text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Send us your first name and your city-state. | ||
| We're also on social media. | ||
| Peter, you contributed to a column on the Washington Examiner called Pope Francis Defied Easy Political Categorization. | ||
| Explain that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So Catholicism in general avoids easy political categorization. | ||
| It doesn't operate on the American domestic left-right paradigm. | ||
| And so when we attempt to, and it's a very American thing to do, superimpose our political paradigm onto things outside of the bounds of our politics. | ||
| We end up being very confused, especially by Pope Francis, who seemed to have these views that were on the one hand, we would categorize as on the left, and on the other hand, views we would categorize as being on the right. | ||
| I'll say it this way, too, maybe before getting into the specifics of what those are. | ||
| Our politics is very linear. | ||
| It's very within time. | ||
| Think of the slogans of our presidential candidates, right? | ||
| We had Kamala Harris pointing a new way forward. | ||
| And Donald Trump, of course, famously, we want to make America great again. | ||
| And so it's always either this way or that way, forward, backward, left, right. | ||
| But the Catholic worldview, and I think was espoused by Pope Francis beautifully, like all of our great popes, was not left or right. | ||
| It was up, connecting from us to God, from God down to us. | ||
| And when you try to see the world that way, when you attempt to put together a worldview in that way, not using our ideological constructs, but using the core principles of the faith, yeah, your worldview can seem a little scattershot, especially to the American viewer. | ||
| And so we see that in many cases. | ||
| And Pope Francis was not shy about admonishing political leaders on both sides of the American spectrum. | ||
| He admonished publicly President Joe Biden only a few years ago, calling his stance on life incoherent with his faith. | ||
| Recently, he had, he sort of did the extraordinary, took the extraordinary step of offering a public rebuke to the incoming vice president, JD Vance, over he Pope Francis didn't name Vance by name, but there was a debate going on online revolving around immigration, and Pope Francis interjected himself very directly into that and said, no, no, Vice President, I think you have that one wrong. | ||
| And as we know, he visited the border wall in 2015 as Donald Trump was running for president to make a point that maybe we shouldn't be keeping people out, but always attempting to identify with the plight of people beyond our borders. | ||
| Well, I know you say that it's not really a political thing, but I want to ask you about an article in Politico. | ||
| The headline is The Complex Legacy of Pope Francis. | ||
| And the subheading is, his was a dramatic papacy frustrating conservatives and progressives alike. | ||
| Beloved by the faithful, he leaves behind a divided church. | ||
| I wonder what you think about the divisions between the conservatives and the progressives in the Catholic Church. | ||
| And did Pope Francis accentuate those divisions? | ||
| He may have. | ||
| We should also say at the outset to, as much as we can, avoid sweeping proclamations. | ||
| A papacy is better measured in decades and centuries than it is years. | ||
| But in terms of what we can say now about his impact on American Catholics, conservative and liberals, yeah, it did seem that he accentuated that divide. | ||
| For liberals, for progressives, they were hoping, and it seemed that they had this expectation that the church under Francis would begin to resemble progressive politics more and more and more. | ||
| The problem is, of course, there are unchanging eternal truths that Pope Francis was responsible to answering for that just could not be changed. | ||
| For instance, maybe there was some hope that we could, among progressive Catholics, we want to liberalize our abortion laws. | ||
| And Francis would say, absolutely not. | ||
| You can't change that. | ||
| There's no progress to get toward a life as a life is a life. | ||
| You can't change the principle that it's wrong to take a life. | ||
| And in other areas as well. | ||
| And on the conservative side, there seemed to be a distinctly antagonistic relationship between American conservative Catholics and this pontificate. | ||
| A lot of that had to do with liturgy. | ||
| Pope Francis a couple years ago attempted to suppress the traditional Latin Mass, which many American conservatives are drawn to and have a great devotion toward. | ||
| And it's also very popular among young Catholics in America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Peter, explain that a little bit more. | |
| Why is that? | ||
| Is the liturgy all said in Latin and not in the language of the country you happen to be in? | ||
| Yes, much of it. | ||
| And it was the liturgy that existed and was practiced everywhere before the Second Vatican Council of 1962. | ||
| It's very beautiful. | ||
| I attend it on occasion. | ||
| I have some friends who are very devoted to it. | ||
| It's much longer. | ||
| It's a bit more difficult to understand. | ||
| You have to do a little studying before you get there. | ||
| And yeah, some people feel very, very drawn to that liturgy. | ||
| And I think there's a movement in general in America toward more traditional liturgy, even if it's not the Latin Mass. | ||
| There was a movement in the 1970s and 80s, kind of when Francis really came of age as a priest to Protestantize and liberalize the sacred liturgy. | ||
| That's where we saw the guitars and some other sort of goofy innovations that maybe made it feel to people a little less like a sacred rite that they were participating in. | ||
| And Francis was very much a man of the liturgical reforms. | ||
| And I'll say this, even though I'm certainly someone who prefers the traditional liturgy, there is a pocket in the people who practice the TLM, we call it, the traditional Latin Mass. | ||
| There's a pocket of people who maybe attempted to wield that Mass as something like something, some part of a resistance against the Francis papacy. | ||
| And that, you know, I think it was right that that was rebuked. | ||
| But the suppression of it in the diocese across America, yeah, it caused a lot of consternation. | ||
| So what would you say were his accomplishments then? | ||
| And what do you think he would point to as his major accomplishments? | ||
| What he's a, you know, a lot of people have been saying that this week, but I think it's important. | ||
| I think it's the defining trait of his pontificate. | ||
| He is a pope of mercy. | ||
| From the outset, he wanted to make sure that we Catholics were not staying inside of our churches, but going out into the world. | ||
| He had so many memorable phrases that encompass this. | ||
| He wanted his pastors to have the smell of their flock, go out into the world and tend to people, make sure everyone feels the mercy of God. | ||
| I'm confident that that would be among the things he would say he's most proud of. | ||
| Here's a great story. | ||
| And this is something I just learned this week. | ||
| Great reporting in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| That there's this little parish in Gaza that's been housing a few hundred people since the conflict broke out between Hamas and Israel. | ||
| And Francis, and this I guess has been true even through his sickness, has been video calling this little parish church every night for months. | ||
| And this hasn't been publicized. | ||
| It wasn't done to make a point about the war. | ||
| He just wanted to go out as far as he possibly could to where the suffering was and interact with it. | ||
| And so he had been checking in with the people who were there, asking questions. | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| Talking about people who had passed away, people who'd been born. | ||
| And they had such a relationship over the months that they didn't hear the news that he died, but they figured it out when he stopped calling. | ||
| They had expected it that much. | ||
| And so I think, though, it's those quiet extensions of mercy, something just so quintessentially Catholic and Christ-like about. | ||
| And I think that's probably going to be what we remember most as his accomplishment. | ||
| Our guest is Peter Laffin. | ||
| He is with us at least till about 8 o'clock Eastern time, and he'll take your calls. | ||
| He is a deputy commentator, commentary editor for the Washington Examiner, also a member of the Catholic Media Association. | ||
| Our lines are regional, so you can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| And before we get to calls, just want to go over some of the firsts of Pope Francis, first Jesuit pope, first pope from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere. | ||
| Can you talk about the significance of those firsts? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Mold breaking in many ways. | ||
| And another, you know, this isn't exactly a first, but another way he broke the mold. | ||
| He appointed bishops from all around the world, far-flung regions. | ||
| The Catholic Church is experiencing rapid growth in Africa, in Asia, the global south generally. | ||
| And he appointed bishops from everywhere. | ||
| And now the church, the clergy of the church resembles the world population much more than it did at the beginning of his pontificate. | ||
| Now that said, he also experienced probably more pushback for some of his reforms from those regions. | ||
| Africa in particular is much more conservative than maybe Pope Francis' orientation was. | ||
| And he probably received the most support and praise in Europe. | ||
| So it's interesting. | ||
| In one way, he'll be thought of as the global pope, but he was also very, very European in another sense. | ||
| Let's take calls now. | ||
| We'll start with Alexandra in Seattle, Washington. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Alexander, are you there? | ||
| In Seattle? | ||
| We'll go to Kyle in Honolulu. | ||
| Good morning, Kyle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Aloha, everybody, and God bless Pope Francis. | |
| Thank you for having this forum. | ||
| What I like, I'm a Catholic in Honolulu. | ||
| What I liked about Pope Francis is his focus on how the Lord came for us sinners. | ||
| I think that was a good reminder, not just to Catholics, but to the world. | ||
| I didn't like when he said, who am I to judge? | ||
|
unidentified
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And I didn't like the media's focus, made it seem like, you know, he stood for himself, not judging. | |
| We want, we Catholics, we want the Pope to judge. | ||
| He's the closest thing to God's ear. | ||
| It would be right for the conclave, the church, to not force or contrive Pope Francis Part II. | ||
| Choosing of the next Pope should be directed toward getting the church back to our bedrock values. | ||
| You know, what's kept it going for so long. | ||
| And thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And Kyle, before you go, what are some of the things that you would like to see change with the next Pope? | ||
|
unidentified
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Like I said, just get back to the Bedrock values, not do any of these kind of ambiguous, you know, who am I to judge? | |
| I'm sorry, God. | ||
| God forgive me. | ||
| I didn't like when Pope Francis said that. | ||
| I just didn't. | ||
| We need for him to be a leader. | ||
| And yes, the next Pope maybe shouldn't be from the Americas. | ||
| It just shouldn't. | ||
| Just get him from Europe, get the church back on track. | ||
| We don't need a Pope who's going to say, you know, we accept all this, we accept all that. | ||
| We just don't. | ||
| The church, you know, there's a reason why Catholicism is in this world, and it's to right the world. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Go ahead, Peter. | ||
| Well, thank you, Kyle. | ||
| Thanks for that call. | ||
| What I think Kyle's reflecting is, yeah, there was a lot of frustration regarding some of Pope Francis' more off-the-cuff remarks. | ||
| And he was a very spontaneous person and would speak spontaneously to the press all the time, much more than previous popes. | ||
| And this did lead to a good, healthy dose of confusion. | ||
| And this is another major part of his legacy. | ||
| And I think it's kind of the downside is that this was an era of doctrinal confusion. | ||
| Now, what I was saying earlier about extending mercy as far as possible, I think when he said things like that, like, who am I to judge, that was an attempt to extend that mercy, bring it all the way up to the line. | ||
| Now, we can't change things that we teach and we believe, but we can extend that mercy as far as possible. | ||
| But it did cause a lot of confusion. | ||
| And I think Kyle's speaking to that. | ||
| In terms of the next Pope, there's a comment I saw this past week from Archbishop Dolan in New York. | ||
| He was asked on one of the morning shows, what are you looking for in a new pope? | ||
| And I think it spoke to his answer, spoke to what Kyle's mentioning here. | ||
| He said, we want to find somebody, well, I hope we'd find somebody who has Francis' warmth and love and goodness. | ||
| Francis had this incredible way of being able to connect with people, so to keep that great pastoral leader, but also to find somebody who is maybe a bit clearer in their teaching. | ||
| Because there were so many things that Francis said. | ||
| And the one Kyle mentioned is probably the most prominent example, where many Catholics wanted the blanks filled in on that. | ||
| And we never really got it. | ||
| And so, you know, I just want to say, Kyle, yeah, I understand that. | ||
| And I do think the church moving forward, it would be my guess that the balance between telling the truth as clearly as possible and extending mercy, I think it will. | ||
| I think there will be an effort to concentrate it in a way that's more coherent for everyday people. | ||
| Here's Stephen in Ulster Park, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am grateful for the life and the humble message of Pope Francis, but yesterday, Trump arrested a sitting judge. | ||
| Never ever happened in America. | ||
| I would bet Pope Francis, as part of his legacy in life, would want us to stand against authoritarianism like this right now as part of our lamentation and respect and love for his life for service to the poor and justice. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Peter, what do you say about his relationship specifically with President Trump, who was at his funeral along with the First Lady? | ||
| Yeah, stylistically, very different between Trump and Pope Francis. | ||
| And the attempt to make Pope Francis as some anti-Trump, I think is particularly unfortunate. | ||
| And this is something I read the other day. | ||
| I think it was in the Bulwark, that very strident anti-Trump paper, where they said something to the effect of, I think the article was, well, here's Pope Francis was everything that Donald Trump is not, and vice versa. | ||
| And I thought, wow, what an unbelievably impoverished way to attempt to understand either of the men. | ||
| They're so different and they're attempting to accomplish different things. | ||
| Would Pope Francis have something to say about a judge being arrested? | ||
| His orientation certainly was always identify with the oppressed, identify with anybody who's being on the receiving end of any injustice. | ||
| And so I don't know that he would speak out against this particular incident. | ||
| And to tell you the truth, we're still learning a lot about that incident. | ||
| But I don't think he would be, he probably wouldn't be on Trump's side necessarily. | ||
| But that's not to say he's the anti-Trump either. | ||
| He would very, I'm sure he would say we would need to have good border security, enforce our laws. | ||
| That's also a very Catholic viewpoint: we need to enforce the laws that we have of our country to provide security. | ||
| And there's a lot of tension there. | ||
| There's a lot of tension there between how do we enforce our justice system in a way that's fair and just, but also the oppressed. | ||
| It's a tension. | ||
| It's difficult to live in. | ||
| And President Trump did meet briefly with President Zelensky there in the Vatican. | ||
| You can see here Kiev post on X. | ||
| The Office of the President of Ukraine released footage of the meeting between Zelensky and Trump, which lasted approximately 15 minutes. | ||
| The Ukraine and U.S. teams are currently working on arranging a follow-up meeting. | ||
| You can see that picture there. | ||
| And here's another angle from Nora O'Donnell, CBS News. | ||
| President Trump and Ukraine's President Zelensky met privately ahead of Pope Francis' funeral in what the White House called a quote very productive discussion. | ||
| The painting behind them depicts St. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus Christ in the Jordan River. | ||
| Let's talk to Paul next in Nampa, Idaho. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I think it's going to be a festive time after the non-festivities, but the solemnness of the passing of the pontiff. | ||
| I'm looking forward to new and brighter days, maybe, with another pontiff. | ||
| Part of the issues that I had, which we all have, maybe some similarity, are we have to draw a line in the sand, I believe the pontiff does. | ||
| And that's either you're for abortion or you're against abortion. | ||
| And I believe if you're going to be in a public eye, such as Pelosi and Biden, that if you're going to be against abortion, it's okay to take the host. | ||
| And if you are permissible with abortion, I believe you should be denied the host. | ||
| That's just my belief. | ||
| I'm sure some other people disagree with that, but I think you're playing both sides of the fence if you don't either make a decision whether you're for against or against abortion. | ||
| All right, Paul. | ||
| Go ahead, Peter. | ||
| Well, we can say for 100% certainty that Pope Francis was against abortion. | ||
| In fact, he likened abortion to hiring a hitman to solve a problem. | ||
| There was no weakness of Pope Francis on that particular issue. | ||
| However, and this is always the other side of the coin with Pope Francis, he did everything he could to extend mercy, mercy to anyone involved with an abortion, made sure that the forgiveness of God was always readily accessible. | ||
| And so I just want to make sure, because I know he's often thought of as a progressive pope, that that did not extend to the life issue. | ||
| In terms of politicians receiving communion, that is something that Pope Francis has left to, or he did leave, to the bishops of those individuals involved. | ||
| And as we know, there's been many different interpretations of this. | ||
| And this is something that could be cleared up a bit more in the next pontificate, but we'll see. | ||
| Reuters had a poll of American Catholics, and it says about 75% of Catholics in America viewed Pope Francis favorably, but that's down from 90% in 2015. | ||
| Can you put that into context for us? | ||
| Yeah, I think that has a lot, my guess would be without looking into the crosstabs there. | ||
| My guess is that would have a lot to do with the liturgy reforms. | ||
| For people who were very devoted to the traditional Latin Mass or to traditional liturgy in general, it was very painful for Pope Francis to restrict that practice. | ||
| And I know that that hurt people on a very, very visceral level. | ||
| The other thing I would say to maybe explain why that dip has occurred, there was also the Synod on Synodality that's been occurring for the last few years. | ||
| I think most Catholics, and I say this, I worked for a Catholic paper and talked to ordinary Catholics all the time to try and gauge where they were on this sort of thing. | ||
| They were just confused by a lot of what they heard coming out of Rome the last few years. | ||
| There were a lot of mixed messages. | ||
| Suddenly, they're studying whether women can become priests or deacons. | ||
| And then Pope Francis comes out and says, no, he tells Nora O'Donnell in an interview, no, that'll never happen. | ||
| So there seems to be all these conflicting messages. | ||
| On the one hand, you know, we're going to study things, we're going to look as hard as we can into it. | ||
| And on the other hand, it's a shut the door. | ||
| And I think most people just walked away from that, not really knowing what to take from it and wishing that they would maybe stop hearing so much from a political level from the Vatican and maybe return to tending the souls of the people who are in the church. | ||
| Those two things would be my guess as to why there's been a dip. | ||
| Here's Lori, who's in Marston's Mills, Massachusetts. | ||
| Hello, Lori. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| So I just wanted to say, first of all, really, I personally loved Pope Francis. | ||
| I just think he's just a wonderful disciple of Jesus Christ. | ||
| I mean, we have to for, you know, I hear people like one of your callers saying, you know, oh, he wasn't, you know, like conservative enough, I think is what he was trying to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And, you know, Jesus Christ was not a conservative. | |
| You know, I suppose if he was alive today, you know, people would still think he was a bit of a hippie. | ||
| You know, I mean, peace and love and, you know, love thy neighbor. | ||
| And, you know, the things that Jesus Christ preached is pretty much what Pope Francis was preaching. | ||
| And so I think we can't forget that. | ||
| You know, he was a disciple of Christ. | ||
| And secondly, you know, one of the things that, and I want to say this to your person there, you know, Jesus, I mean, Pope Francis had said about the Our Father prayer. | ||
| He had said that, you know, it had a line that said, lead us not. | ||
| And Pope Francis said, and let us not. | ||
| And I was surprised that when I went to church, and I don't go to church every Sunday, but the times that I do, it's not being said the way Pope Francis had told the church to say it because he thought it was grammatically incorrect. | ||
| And I agree with him. | ||
| I think he was right. | ||
| And I don't understand. | ||
| Maybe your guest there can explain why it wasn't such a simple request by the Pope not followed. | ||
| And I just want to say he will be greatly missed and he will be very difficult to replace. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Laurie. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So before I disagree with a couple of things you said and maybe disagree with the premises of a couple of things you say, let me extend that I also love Pope Francis. | ||
| And I share that with you today and I share that morning. | ||
| And I do think in many ways he is irreplaceable. | ||
| And so even if we disagree on what I'm about to say, I want you to know that we share that. | ||
| And you're my sister in Christ. | ||
| And I hope I'm your brother. | ||
| The idea that Pope Francis wasn't conservative enough doesn't just that doesn't line up with the facts at all. | ||
| That doesn't line up with reality. | ||
| As I was saying a little bit ago, he was plenty conservative on a number of issues that American liberals would find just deplorable. | ||
| And that extends beyond just the social issues. | ||
| Is also conservative in many other ways. | ||
| I also want to push back because this is something that you hear a lot. | ||
| The idea of Jesus as hippie, peace, love, love thy neighbor. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, all of that. | ||
| Peace, love, love thy neighbor, and that's part of it. | ||
| But there's a whole lot else in the gospel where Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, stands unbelievably firm in what he's saying. | ||
| And it is this, the liberal caricature, the American progressive caricature is Jesus as a socialist. | ||
| That also doesn't hold up to reality at all. | ||
| And that's, again, we have to remember to understand Catholicism is not a political program. | ||
| But the idea that Jesus was just walking around, you know, flashing the peace sign and saying, you know, go do whatever you want and you'll be fine. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Jesus said, do what I say. | ||
| If you love me, follow my commands. | ||
| So, yeah, there's a lot of premise things there. | ||
| And I'd encourage you to read the Gospel of Matthew. | ||
| Again, start from the beginning and hold up that conception of Jesus as socialist hippie and see how that stacks up to what you read as you go. | ||
| Here's Josephine in Livingston, New Jersey. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| To say I adore Pope Francis, I can't tell you enough. | ||
| Heartbroken, yes. | ||
| But I happen to think that there's a reason why at this time he was there so prominent, especially with migrants. | ||
| His caring for those like the Syrians that he brought into the Vatican when he went to countries that we should not be treating these people like they're animals. | ||
| They're one of us. | ||
| Love thy neighbor. | ||
| I mean, that was his philosophy was. | ||
| Don't be judgmental of people. | ||
| I know people were talking about conservative and liberal. | ||
| No, his philosophy was, I love you because you represent Christ. | ||
| And those of us who predain to be judgmental of other people, shame on you, because that's not what he taught. | ||
| Mercy in accepting other people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, and this is a beautiful thing about Pope Francis's pastoral style is the way he taught the faith. | ||
| When we're talking about policies, he always urged us to see that at the end of our policy, there's a person. | ||
| There's someone. | ||
| There is a child here, you know, in a lot of cases, particularly with immigration. | ||
| And that person, we need to make sure that that person is taken care of. | ||
| And we can't reduce that person to a number. | ||
| And this is something I think he reacted strongly against in terms of the American immigration debate, the reduction of human beings to statistics. | ||
| And now we can just do any sweeping law to make the numbers right. | ||
| No, people aren't numbers. | ||
| People are people. | ||
| And if you inflict suffering on a person, that's wrong. | ||
| So to always make sure that even as we're attempting to enforce our laws, that we're extending that mercy to the extent, to the greatest extent possible. | ||
| And I think that's an unbelievably beautiful part of his pontificate. | ||
| I do want to ask you, though, Peter, about the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, ABC News with the headline, Pope Francis had a troubled course on dealing with clergy sexual abuse. | ||
| How did he do in that aspect? | ||
| I think most people would say it was a mixed bag, that he instituted some much needed reforms, created much greater safety. | ||
| And I, you know, as a parent, as a Catholic, and most people I know are happy how things are cleared up into the future. | ||
| I think there's much more safety now than there was 30, 40 years ago. | ||
| But there were also, and I think this was a lot of American conservatives were a little upset at what seemed to be Pope Francis's inability to shed some of the institutional biases. | ||
| He seemed to favor the people, some people he was friends with. | ||
| And this is a larger problem for the church. | ||
| There was one, I was wondering whether I wanted to talk about this, but I think it fits here. | ||
| There's a Jesuit priest who's a very great artist whose art is hanging all over the Vatican. | ||
| His name is Marco Rupnik. | ||
| And he seemed to have close personal ties with Pope Francis. | ||
| Pope Francis still has his artwork hanging places. | ||
| This guy was an unbelievably sadistic and terrible sexual abuser. | ||
| And in that high-profile case, I think a lot of people were wondering, okay, so you talk a good game. | ||
| You're helping institute some reforms, but why is this person who is close to you seeming to get off easy? | ||
| And why are we not being more sensitive to some of the victims, particularly the victims of him, but victims of sexual abuse from the church in general? | ||
| Why are we not being a bit more sensitive and removing his artwork, making sure that he's never near, that he's never in a position of authority in the church again? | ||
| And I think that also will linger in his legacy as a slight. | ||
| Let's talk to Jennifer Oak Park, Illinois. | ||
| Hi, Jennifer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Sorry, you were on speaker because my dog likes to bark. | ||
| So I actually wanted to, so I was raised radically, well, I call it radical, but I'm sure this man knows what born-again Christians are like, John MacArthur, in the church and such like that. | ||
| So we were always raised and taught that Catholics were going to hell and they weren't real Christians. | ||
| But Pope Francis is literally the first, I guess I could say Pope that I actually thought preached. | ||
| He actually believed, you know, in the Jesus's teachings, let's be honest, like the Beatitudes and everything, like this man is talking like as if Jesus is somehow not for all the people that are the most suffering or the most abhorred, quote unquote. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I left, obviously, the born-again Christian faith after like 25 years, but I always found it interesting when I went to a Catholic church that the homomales, I'm sorry, I know I'm not saying it right, and everything were just, you know, I don't know, there was something like so simple and beautiful about it and being raised to not be able to hang out and talk to Catholics and everything like that. | ||
| I also want to bring that up, the idea of this Christianity. | ||
| There are lots of different beliefs. | ||
| People believe in predestination, election, all of these things. | ||
| And also, most Catholics don't know anything about that or anything about their Bible because there mostly aren't Bibles in a Catholic church. | ||
| And I'm interested that a man from the Washington Examiner is on because I really feel like the people that run that are born-again Christian Protestants. | ||
| And that's the belief. | ||
| They don't believe Catholics are real Christians. | ||
| But I feel like Pope Francis is the first one where I, and I love studying religions, you know, because we all wonder where do we come from. | ||
| So, Jennifer, what is your faith now? | ||
| Are you, do you have a faith? | ||
| Are you going to church? | ||
| What's your situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm not going to church just because of how I left the church. | |
| The church is very against women. | ||
| And if you get raped or assaulted, I wasn't allowed to come back to church for a month. | ||
| And then they shoved me in a room with men that didn't have any, they didn't even go to college. | ||
| This is the same thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They told me how I was supposed to be. | |
| So this is how I got it. | ||
| Now, is this your born-again Christian church that you're saying did that to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes. | |
| And I know Catholics are the same. | ||
| You know, it's mostly like to put down women. | ||
| I mean, Paul, St. Paul, like they say in Catholics, but Paul, like letters to the Corinthians, he's a huge sexist. | ||
| He hates women. | ||
| Okay, well done. | ||
| Jennifer, let's get an answer from Peter Laughin because there's a lot there. | ||
| There's a lot there. | ||
| I first want to say, Jennifer, I'm glad that you were drawn to the simple beauty of the Catholic liturgy. | ||
| And if you have that tug in your heart, that this is a good place, this is a good thing to experience. | ||
| Yeah, I'd encourage you to keep pursuing that. | ||
| So a few things. | ||
| Yeah, there was a lot there. | ||
| There are plenty of Bibles in Catholic churches. | ||
| I want to say that up front. | ||
| And Catholics certainly know their Bible. | ||
| The idea that Catholics and other types of Christians aren't both Christians, I think, is something it's an opinion held not by very many people. | ||
| It sounds like you were in a church that was perhaps a little extreme. | ||
| And certainly the other things you mentioned make it seem that way. | ||
| I think today there's actually great communication and great relationships between the Catholic Church and other Christian churches in America. | ||
| So, and the idea that Catholics are, most Protestants or born-again Christians think Catholics are going to hell. | ||
| I think that's held by very, very few people. | ||
| And so I'd also encourage you to look into that a bit more, and you might find a little more unity than you thought was there. | ||
| Here's Mary in Ellicott City, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Peter. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I just listened to everything you just said to Jennifer. | ||
| And you're telling her to look into maybe another church or some other help. | ||
| First of all, we're talking about a man who I didn't know much about the Pope because I'm so fed up with our church and the way molestation has just been overlooked. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's a mixed bag, which is the most ridiculous thing you could say about people being abused and how the church has ignored it. | |
| And then women who have been raped, who you don't know every single situation, and their rights have been taken away from their body. | ||
| Take rights away from a man's body, pal. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| I had a priest in our family, and he said, if men could have babies, abortion would be a sacrament. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Because it would be gotten away with. | ||
| And you're telling her to find that right person. | ||
| I'm a Catholic, too. | ||
| I have my faith. | ||
| I don't agree with my church. | ||
| But this thing of where women are just told what they can do. | ||
| And I mean, I called to talk about the Pope and I'm listening to everybody else's concerns. | ||
| And your point of abortion and how there's so many priests still out there doing this, and nobody's doing anything about it in our church. | ||
| All right, Marion, let's give him a chance. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, so listen, I'm with you in terms of any person who suffered any abuse in a church sexual scandal. | ||
| Yeah, my frustration is, I hear it in your voice. | ||
| Now, I'm a Catholic convert. | ||
| I converted a bit later in life. | ||
| So when the scandal really broke right at the turn of the century, I wasn't in the church yet. | ||
| But having been now for a bit, I see the unbelievable suffering that was inflicted on people. | ||
| And I think that everything should be done to root that out and hold people to account. | ||
| I couldn't agree with you more. | ||
| And Christ says in the gospel, for anybody who leads a child astray, it's better that they have a millstone tied around their neck and cast into the ocean. | ||
| Yeah, I'm with you. | ||
| I share your frustration. | ||
| And I wish you didn't have that impression of what I was saying. | ||
| So I hope I corrected it there. | ||
| So yeah, I'd say I share more in common with you what you just said than you probably realize. | ||
| In Welches, Oregon, Robert, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| I'm a Catholic. | ||
| I was Lutheran. | ||
| My Lutheran, the minister was great, but it was going more and more to accommodate the surrounding population here in Portland. | ||
| And I'm not reactionary or anything. | ||
| But the two things I really loved about this service for the, and what was shown here this evening was where it showed Zelensky and Trump before this painting of Christ getting baptized. | ||
| And that was just, that was so strong to me. | ||
| And I hope the peace and the revelation that comes from that guides both men and we get there. | ||
| You know, it just really floored me to see that. | ||
| It was just, it was so strong. | ||
| And then the other, the only brief comment I wanted to say is when you were talking about Jesus not being a hippie, that's right. | ||
| Because let's not forget when he confronted, when he saved the woman, you know, from being stoned, I guess he was a prostitute or had erred that way. | ||
| And he said, let he without sin cast the first stone. | ||
| But he also, after that, said, you've been saved, but remember, sin no more. | ||
| So Jesus wasn't just a hippie. | ||
| He had a balance to his message that would help us all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Peter Laughan. | ||
| Really important to emphasize too that we are all sinners. | ||
| We are all the person who is about to be stoned. | ||
| We are all in need of forgiveness. | ||
| We're all in need of grace. | ||
| That's really important to remember as we attempt to, and I'll say this was a great aspect of Pope Francis' pontificate. | ||
| It's very important to make sure that the mercy of God, there's nothing in between us and that. | ||
| And so that, yeah, it's good to have teachings. | ||
| And we certainly do in our church. | ||
| We have teachings that are solid, say very particular things, but also that mercy is always extended. | ||
| But it's a good point that you make that at the end of that parable of that story, Jesus says, now go and sin no more. | ||
| And that's not something you would hear a hippie say either. | ||
| I just want to also bring up the Zelensky and Trump meeting that you mentioned. | ||
| That was very fascinating to me, certainly. | ||
| There is nothing that I'm sure Pope Francis would hope would come out of this funeral than a peace deal in Ukraine. | ||
| He was a very strident pursuer of a peace deal there to the point where he'd even gotten in trouble for appearing to be on the side of Russia on more than one occasion. | ||
| He famously said one time recently, maybe four or five months ago, Zelensky should have the courage to wave the white flag. | ||
| And I think I understand Zelensky's point too. | ||
| Hey, we're not done here. | ||
| We're fighting for our country. | ||
| But also to say, to stop and pull back, there are thousands of people dying a day. | ||
| This is an unbelievable, unbelievable humanitarian tragedy that's happening here. | ||
| And we need to find peace somehow. | ||
| And so if a peace deal, if there is an advancement toward the cause of peace that happens at Pope Francis' funeral, I think that's just perfectly fitting. | ||
| And we'll talk about Ukraine in our next segment. | ||
| But here is Jerry in Reedfield, Maine. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| The hope I have for the future of the world, because a lot of the world looks at the Catholic Church, and there are a lot of people that don't know the words, actually, the biblical words that back up the Pope's emotion, the Pope's teaching. | ||
| I have a problem with Leviticus 18, forbidden sexual sins. | ||
| Moses comes to the mountain, God speaks to him, talks about homosexuality and things that he's going to send the people to the land where people are doing things that are improper. | ||
| And I just see my Methodist church, and I think one of the big churches that are upholding traditional, being traditionalist is the Baptist Church. | ||
| And everyone's looking to the Catholic Church to sort of set the precedent. | ||
| So I pray that we have the two previous popes were much more traditionalist and they weren't, as Jesus said, be not like the world. | ||
| And that's what bothers me about Pope Francis. | ||
| And I pray for people who fall into that lifestyle because it talks about what's going to happen, you know, in the judgment day. | ||
| So I guess that's my question for your guest. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So there's a lot there to answer. | ||
| And I wouldn't be able to do justice to the topics you raised in this bit of time. | ||
| I would encourage you, there's a Catholic apologist named Trent Horn who has written a great book that deals with some of the tougher verses, like the ones you mentioned in Leviticus. | ||
| And putting them in proper context, I feel that we far too easily impose our own value system onto what we're reading without maybe understanding exactly what is meant in context. | ||
| And, you know, one thing I can say as a Catholic, I'm very happy to have great teachers. | ||
| That's one great thing about our faith. | ||
| And as you mentioned, popes returning to tradition, like I said earlier, I do think that the next Pope is going to be somebody who gives clearer guidelines. | ||
| But also, I hope that he's somebody who extends mercy in the way Francis did. | ||
| And if you missed the funeral, you can see that on our website at c-span.org in its entirety. | ||
| Peter Laffin, Deputy Commentary Editor for the Washington Examiner and a member of the Catholic Media Association. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us this morning. | ||
| Thank you so much, Mimi. | ||
| Coming up next, we'll talk to independent journalist Suzanne Malvaux and discuss her on-the-ground reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. | ||
| Later, we'll talk with Faye Siddiqui, Washington Post technology reporter and author of the book, Hubris Maximus, The Shattering of Elon Musk. | ||
| We'll be right back today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Then our live coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner starts at 8 p.m. | ||
| Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Cesno will join us in studio during the dinner to discuss the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration. | ||
| And we'll take your calls to get your thoughts on the president's decision not to attend this year. | ||
| Watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner today, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern with arrivals online. | ||
| Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, live dinner coverage on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Next week on the C-SPAN networks, the House and Senate return from their two-week congressional recess. | ||
| The House will vote to repeal several of the Biden administration's emission standards rules. | ||
| The Senate will vote on more of President Trump's nominations for U.S. ambassadors to China, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Italy. | ||
| On Tuesday, after failing seven financial audits, financial officers from the Defense Department will appear before a House Oversight Subcommittee examining the DOD's financial practices, management of American taxpayer dollars, and its progress towards achieving a clean audit. | ||
| Also on Tuesday, as the Department of Education prepares to recognize its 45th anniversary, Education Secretary Linda McMahon will discuss why the department needs to be eliminated, how that can be done, and what American education would look like without a federal Department of Education. | ||
| Live next week on the C-SPAN Networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN. Democracy unfiltered. Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea, it's a process, a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| This is a strange and ugly year in politics. | ||
| There's a lot of name-calling out there. | ||
| Candidates hauling out terrible epithets like corrupt, liar, hypocrite, fascist, racist, incumbent. | ||
| After all, I believe in the First Amendment. | ||
| Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, beginning at noon Eastern, hold on to your lily white butts. | |
| Join us for a marathon as we look at past White House Correspondents Association dinners with presidential remarks. | ||
| Mike Devers in his book said that I had a short attention span. | ||
| Well, I was going to reply to that, but what the hell? | ||
| Let's move on to something else. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have actually shown up here for eight straight years. | |
| Looking back, that was probably a mistake. | ||
| Relive the jokes, the jabs, and other memorable moments. | ||
| On this special evening where politics and humor collide. | ||
| I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. | ||
| Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a challenge. | ||
| Welcome our marathon of past White House Correspondents Association dinners beginning today at noon Eastern on C-SPAN 2's American History TV. | ||
| Obama out. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by independent journalist Suzanne Malveaux. | ||
| She's also president and CEO of Malveau Global Media. | ||
| Suzanne, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mimi. | |
| Good to be here. | ||
| Now, you are in Kyiv right now, which was attacked by Russia on Thursday. | ||
| Can you tell us the latest about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, absolutely. | |
| I mean, it was devastating and very dramatic and something that very few people here in Kyiv even expected. | ||
| It was on Thursday. | ||
| I was in the hotel. | ||
| It was shortly after midnight or so. | ||
| And the routine had been that we did hear the air raid alarms about around the same time, the last couple of nights, and that was a little bit before one in the morning. | ||
| This was very different. | ||
| It was about around one in the morning. | ||
| We had those alarms go off at the hotel. | ||
| I barricaded myself in the bathroom. | ||
| That is, we have a shelter here at the hotel. | ||
| It's underground, of course, in a parking lot. | ||
| But unless you have a sense of a ballistic missile coming, they really say, you know, you can be safe in barricading yourself in the bathroom. | ||
| And that is what I did. | ||
| And shortly after one in the morning, I heard two very loud explosions, blasts from the hotel. | ||
| And afterwards, we weren't really sure what had occurred or what happened, but it was obviously not safe to go out. | ||
| There was a third blast that we heard about four in the morning. | ||
| When I emerged from my hotel the next morning, it was really kind of bizarre, maybe, because I went outside and it was really here, at least in the center of the city, very much like life was normal. | ||
| It was a beautiful sunny day. | ||
| People were going to work, taking their children to school. | ||
| And so you wouldn't have a sense at all that what had occurred. | ||
| But then, of course, we went to the site where this had happened and it was unbelievable what we saw. | ||
| There were 12 buildings that had been destroyed. | ||
| It was a residential neighborhood next to, it was a military post that several people had said a target that had been hit before, but this was away from that target. | ||
| And this really was something that they had not experienced or seen. | ||
| This was ballistic missiles. | ||
| This was regular missiles. | ||
| This was hundreds of drones that had been flying overhead. | ||
| There was very little time for them to get out. | ||
| They did have a warning, some of them at least. | ||
| And it was devastating because it leveled these buildings. | ||
| People went running out. | ||
| There was fires. | ||
| There was explosions. | ||
| When I got there, we saw the rescue crew that was essentially digging through the rubble, trying to find if there were any survivors. | ||
| And the crowd, it was quite sad and tragic because you had a group of classmates, 17-year-old boys and girls as well. | ||
| There was a high school that was nearby. | ||
| They were just waiting and just staring at that pile of rubble as they were digging through, trying to find if there was someone who was there. | ||
| And they were crying. | ||
| The girls were crying. | ||
| The boys were like just absolutely stunned, expressionless on their faces. | ||
| You could just see the anxiety and the worry. | ||
| And I spoke with one of those 17-year-olds, and he said this was inhumane. | ||
| And he pointed to me while he was talking to me that his hands were literally shaking. | ||
| I had a chance to talk to several people who had lost their homes. | ||
| A woman who was 75 years old, she lived on the first floor, and she did not hear the warning sign. | ||
| So she woke up to the signs of the explosion, she said. | ||
| And that is when the glass was falling, the ceiling was falling on her. | ||
| She has lost everything, she told me. | ||
| An 85-year-old woman who lived just about a block over, if you can imagine the power of the blast, blocks and blocks that these buildings were impacted and people who were wounded by the debris, more than 100 people impacted by this. | ||
| This was an elderly woman. | ||
| She was somewhat disabled. | ||
| She was not able to get out. | ||
| So her daughter ran and told her, hide in the bathroom. | ||
| They threw a blanket over themselves. | ||
| There was fire. | ||
| They were able to manage to get out, but their place was very badly damaged. | ||
| And finally, I spoke to another Ukrainian who was a young woman with her boyfriend, and she described to me, there was very little damage in their home, but it was terrifying for her because she said she and her boyfriend left their home with the cat, carrying the cat, to the underground shelter that was nearby. | ||
| And if you can imagine, hundreds and hundreds of people packed inside of this. | ||
| But to get to this shelter, she said there was a drone, you know, the buzzing sound that you hear above a drone, right? | ||
| We don't think of that as something that is common or normal here in Kyiv and across the country. | ||
| This buzzing sound, this drone sound, is quite common. | ||
| And she had heard it before, but it was very loud. | ||
| And right above her, she described it as the most terrifying thing that she has experienced. | ||
| And so she went running to the shelter and she heard a loud explosion, a blast, and then the buzzing stopped. | ||
| And so she assumed that there was a defense capability that took out that drone that was hovering above her. | ||
| And so these are just some of the stories, just some of them, of the people who were there who I had a chance to talk to. | ||
| And they described it. | ||
| It's been three years that the Ukrainians have been dealing with this war. | ||
| What is the sense among the people that you've been able to talk to throughout this trip about what they want to see? | ||
| I mean, obviously they want to see an end to the war, but under what circumstances? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's right. | |
| I mean, it's been three years now, and there is definitely a sense of war fatigue. | ||
| They are there's a sense of adapting to all of the chaos around them. | ||
| There's a sense of trying to make life as normal as possible. | ||
| I react to these air alarms and warnings. | ||
| A lot of the people here, particularly in Kyiv, do not. | ||
| They have gotten used to those sounds, to those drills, and life must continue. | ||
| I mean, they tell me they have to move forward. | ||
| They have to go to work. | ||
| They have to educate their children. | ||
| They have to take care of each other. | ||
| And so there is an adaptability piece that's jarring, right? | ||
| If you come here and you see that. | ||
| At the same time, they are very determined to fight, to continue to fight. | ||
| I was in a suburb of Kyiv, Bucha, that is right outside here, and spoke and had a chance to meet with these military female unit defense unit, all volunteers. | ||
| They call themselves the combat witches of Bucha. | ||
| And as you know, Bucha suffered terribly, a massacre in that area. | ||
| And they say, I spoke to the one who had started this group, Kate is her name, and she said she's fearless. | ||
| She's not afraid. | ||
| She does not want to be hunted. | ||
| She wants to be a hunter. | ||
| And so there is this war culture, warrior culture, and at the same time, definitely fatigue. | ||
| I want to update people that President Trump was at the funeral of Pope Francis that happened this morning in Rome, and President Zelensky was there. | ||
| They did meet briefly, privately together. | ||
| And Zelensky's put this out on X. | ||
| He says, Good meeting. | ||
| We discussed a lot one-on-one, hoping for results on everything we covered, protecting the lives of our people, full and unconditional ceasefire, reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. | ||
| Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic if we achieve joint results. | ||
| Thank you, POTUS. | ||
| What do you make of that, Suzanne Malbeau? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's interesting to read between the lines because he does talk about this being symbolic and not necessarily a reality at this point. | |
| He talks about these things perhaps being fruitful. | ||
| There's a real reality check in that statement. | ||
| He's very cautious about what he is saying publicly after the debacle that happened at the White House Oval Office meeting with the President. | ||
| And I think people here understand the kind of language that he needs to use. | ||
| There is some talk here that with the full support of Zelensky, and I would say it's a good majority of the people here, they still understand that the language in the language of negotiations has to be very thought out properly and carefully. | ||
| And so I think that the people here will understand what he is trying to say, which is that there has to be no conditions on a ceasefire and that that has to, the ceasefire has to happen before these talks about giving up territory. | ||
| People here do not believe in giving up Crimea and some of the other territory, the land that has been taken by the Russians. | ||
| They are very clear on that. | ||
| The mayor of Kyiv, very recently, the highest level official that we've seen in the country, has indicated that perhaps there should be some wiggle room, some room to discuss that. | ||
| And that is something, however, that a lot of people do not support and do not agree with. | ||
| And so you see the kind of delicate dance that President Zelensky is doing here. | ||
| People felt devastated and humiliated by how he was treated in the Oval Office. | ||
| And they know, and what they're asking for, what they want, is they say, we will provide the bodies. | ||
| We will be the soldiers. | ||
| We will fight for our country. | ||
| Can you continue to give us the resources? | ||
| That's what we're looking for. | ||
| We need those resources to support our people and support the troops. | ||
| And we will continue with that fight. | ||
| And if you'd like to join the conversation with Suzanne Malvaux, independent journalists on the ground in Kyiv, Ukraine, you can do so. | ||
| Our numbers are by party. | ||
| So Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| And Suzanne, why was it important for you to go to Ukraine now and report from there on the ground? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, this is a historic time. | |
| This is my third time in Ukraine. | ||
| I went back in 1998 with then First Lady Hillary Clinton for her trip. | ||
| She had visited Russia and six former Soviet republics. | ||
| It was a very quick trip. | ||
| It was about diplomacy, and it really was that delicate balance between trying to bolster those former Soviet republics to make sure that they had the tools that they needed to pursue democracy. | ||
| And at the same time, she did meet with the Russian leadership and needed to reassure the Russian leadership that this was not necessarily going to be a threat to Russia and its power. | ||
| But as we know, Ukraine was one of the places that she visited, and they have sought for NATO membership. | ||
| And that is something that a lot of those countries along that border really are very determined to accomplish. | ||
| And so that was what that trip was about. | ||
| Fast forward to May 2022 with CNN. | ||
| I had covered the conflict. | ||
| It was three months into the conflict. | ||
| And this was when things were very hot. | ||
| And at some point, though, it was obvious that Kyiv was going to hold. | ||
| And there was going to be a period where this was going to be a protracted war. | ||
| I'm here now through the International Women's Media Foundation. | ||
| I'm a member, board member of that organization, and through the Howard Buffett Foundation. | ||
| They have supported a group of journalists, young female journalists, to come here to Ukraine and tell their stories from the United States, Germany, and France to bring those stories back to their local communities and their networks and their media outlets to make them understand why it is important. | ||
| What is happening here after three years, because it has been so long, and it's pretty consistent. | ||
| The Ukrainian people are saying the same thing, that they are fighting for democracy. | ||
| They're fighting for freedom. | ||
| And they hope that the world supports them. | ||
| I asked them specifically about Americans and about President Trump. | ||
| They say, yes, they do feel betrayed. | ||
| They do feel abandoned. | ||
| But they make a separation. | ||
| They actually say this is an administration. | ||
| This is a president that perhaps is not at the moment with us the way the administration was before. | ||
| But they say that we believe wholeheartedly that Americans support Ukraine and that they are so grateful. | ||
| Everywhere I go, they are thanking me and thanking Americans, saying we are so grateful that you are here, that you have done what you have done. | ||
| We hope that it continues. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers. | ||
| We've got Dave, he's an independent in Northport, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I appreciate your explanation of the violence and the horror of the missile attack and what war is. | ||
| And it's true. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| I mean, who knows? | ||
| I've never experienced it, but I can't imagine how horrible that is for anybody. | ||
| But in saying that, I just think that Ukraine in 2002, they were in peace talks and they were close to signing. | ||
| I mean, they had a chance, and the deal would have been a much better deal than they're potentially looking at now. | ||
| I'm surprised I wish they would have signed it back then. | ||
| Even now, you know, Zelensky says he wants Ukraine, Crimea back. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| And, you know, I just don't, I don't see it happening. | ||
| I don't see Russia agreeing to anything. | ||
| I think they're very adamant about their position. | ||
| And they want to demilitarize Ukraine. | ||
| They want no NATO and all these things. | ||
| And really, the fact is, West, we have no leverage really to enforce that. | ||
| I mean, unless the only option is just the United States gets in a direct war with Russia. | ||
| And that's the only way you're going to stop this. | ||
| Or you just give Russia what they want and call it a day because we led Ukraine down the garden path. | ||
| They should have signed the peace treaty in 2022. | ||
| We talked them out of it. | ||
| Now it's a complete disaster. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's how I see it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Suzanne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you very much for your call and your question and your observations. | |
| One of the things that I've been discussing with people here is the meaning of Crimea. | ||
| And they say Crimea is Ukraine. | ||
| There is not any kind of negotiation, at least from many people here, feel very strongly that the language, the culture, the education, even generations of families who are there, that those are Ukrainian people. | ||
| And that even if Russia occupies, as they have the last 10 years of Crimea, that they can't change it. | ||
| They can't convert it. | ||
| And one of the things that some families are doing is that they are desperately going to some of those areas that had previously been occupied and taking, extracting, rescuing family members who were in those Russian occupied territories, bringing them back towards the West to the Western side of the country and trying to reprogram them, right? | ||
| Because they say that there are two wars going on here. | ||
| One is a hot war, which obviously the missiles and drones and so forth, and then the cold one, which is the propaganda war. | ||
| And that is something that they're fighting as well. | ||
| So I think they would say that there's not really, I mean, the point at which they are negotiating, they're not going to give up their identity, their Ukrainian identity, which is so, so strong here. | ||
| And Crimea is very, very much tied to that identity. | ||
| And you know, as well. | ||
| And, Suzanne, have you been able to find out anything about the Ukrainian children that have been abducted and taken into Russia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was able to go to a center, the Child Rights Protection Center. | |
| This was earlier in the week. | ||
| And it's one of their jobs, right, to go and find these children. | ||
| And we know that through a group out of Yale, that there were, at least according to them, 19,000 children who were taken Ukrainians and brought to Russia. | ||
| Very, very small group that has been able to be returned, I think about 1,200 or so. | ||
| But they have multiple groups and programs that are here specifically to try to find those children who have been in the Donetsk area and Luhansk area, where they have taken them, they've programmed them, they give them Russian education, language, the places and Odessa. | ||
| They have literally the land and the homes that the Russians have seized, they have been auctioning those lands off and selling them to Russian families who have now since moved into those homes and set up communities and taken those children into various places and provinces in Russia. | ||
| It has been very, very difficult to extract them and to identify them now. | ||
| There have been ways that they were able to do that before, but because of the lack of funding and communications, it has become much, much harder now. | ||
| And so you do have people here in Ukraine. | ||
| It's their one job or one job only is to go and try to find those children and bring them back and then reintegrate them into society. | ||
| We went, when I tell you about that center that I went to, I met these brothers who had been taken, and the older brother had rescued the young one. | ||
| And the young one had spent a good deal of time in that occupied territory and had been brainwashed. | ||
| And they went through the story of telling me about how they had to re-educate him and have him learn Ukrainian language and make sure that he was educated in the school system because he didn't even understand or believe that a war was going on. | ||
| So it's a very powerful force, that propaganda war. | ||
| On the Republican line in Little Compton, Rhode Island. | ||
| Sigurd, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I got a couple questions here for the lady. | ||
| Way back when President Obama was in office, the Russians moved in. | ||
| I believe they took Crimea. | ||
| And Mr. Obama gave them blankets and this and that. | ||
| Mr. Trump won in 2016 and he gave them javelin missiles, as I understand. | ||
| Now that they've had Crimea for some years, the Russians went in again when Trump lost the election in 20. | ||
| But now that Mr. Trump has inherited the war that started with Mr. Obama and when Biden was vice president, and then it started again, but for the four years that Mr. Trump was in the White House, as much as people like to say he was friendly to the Russians, they didn't move on Ukraine. | ||
| So now that he's inherited this situation from Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden, now this endless war and the endless money we're sending over there, when there's needy people in the United States, they want him to straighten it out. | ||
| And should he have said he could straighten it out in one day? | ||
| That was a misstep. | ||
| But he's done what he could. | ||
| It could go on and on and send munitions and munitions because I hauled bombs to Vietnam on a merchant ship for two and a half years to Vietnam. | ||
| So I just want to guest here to explain how she thinks and how C-SPAN thinks that all of a sudden Donald Trump can straighten out the mess that he inherited. | ||
| And most people don't realize and don't remember and are misinformed that Mr. Trump gave javelin missiles to the Ukrainians. | ||
| Okay, Segord, we got that point. | ||
| Go ahead, Suzanne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm certainly not going to speak for a CNN. | |
| Rather, not CNN, but C-SPAN that I'm on now. | ||
| But what I will say is that the people here say that this is something that they don't believe, even if the U.S. were to pull out now and not receive security measures. | ||
| They don't believe that a peace agreement or negotiations is actually going to hold. | ||
| They believe and are prepared for Russia to attack again. | ||
| Some who've been here for quite some time, who are also in a military position and also are working in a humanitarian capacity, say that what they think needs to happen is if you had a massive, massive injection of resources, military resources, very quickly this could shut down. | ||
| And if you had European forces that were able to establish some sort of peacekeeping force in that kind of no man's land along the border there, you would set up something they think might be successful, which is like the DMZ, where you've got that no man's land that is there. | ||
| And if you were able to actually strengthen Ukrainian forces so that they were up to NATO standards, you wouldn't really have the same kind of need that they're talking about now. | ||
| So there's some that feel like if you had a short-term burst of just massive support, military support, and then pulled out, that they could end this war very quickly and then reestablish with allies that they have in the neighborhood that could keep a long-term peace going. | ||
| That is what some people believe could actually end this war. | ||
| And what we're seeing is Zelensky reaching out to other allies. | ||
| To your point, perhaps they're not under the illusion that the United States is going to keep providing funds for the rest of this war forever. | ||
| They're actually working on establishing relationships and allies with other people. | ||
| That's why you saw Zelensky with the South African president talking about, hey, you know, what kind of help can you give us here? | ||
| They're turning to Africa, where they know there is a weakness there because Putin's already pretty much set up on that continent. | ||
| But nevertheless, people have remained neutral. | ||
| There might be a period of time where they say, you got to make a decision. | ||
| You got to decide which side you're on. | ||
| That is what Zelensky is trying to do: actually create more allies so that, yes, the United States says we're done, then they've got other places to go. | ||
| And, Suzanne, is there an understanding among Ukrainians about how much support they need and how much time they need to turn the tide on this three-year war? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The only thing I've heard is that people are willing to do what they have to do for a long time. | |
| It's a very resilient culture and very resilient people here who seem to understand the level of sacrifice, even though it has been absolutely devastating. | ||
| There's a sense of even people's well-being, their health, their mental health, that they need help, and they acknowledge that. | ||
| But I don't hear a timetable. | ||
| I don't hear a deadline from people here. | ||
| And Politico is reporting. | ||
| Kyiv reveals total Ukraine casualties in Putin's war for the first time. | ||
| So 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, 370,000 wounded. | ||
| That's compared to 600,000 dead and wounded on the Russian side. | ||
| But as far as the Ukrainians, you know, you have talked to soldiers who have lost their limbs and been severely wounded. | ||
| What are they saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did have a chance to go to a rehabilitation center for those soldiers, for the wounded Ukrainian soldiers, and met Anton, very special guy. | |
| He lost both upper limbs, the arms, and a leg, and he's so brave and so strong. | ||
| And I met him with his wife there, and the two of them run this, help run this place where they've got modern technology to help them kind of put their lives back together, their bodies back together. | ||
| But it is a very long and slow process. | ||
| And what he tells me is that, again, that their bodies, they're willing to give their bodies, and they're willing to give more bodies. | ||
| And you talk to these guys, they're back on the front lines. | ||
| I mean, they keep going back over and over and over again. | ||
| They want to go back. | ||
| And they say they want to go back. | ||
| And they actually need to, because they're not going to win a war of attrition. | ||
| I mean, they're men, they're boys, they're husbands, their wives. | ||
| Rather, not wives, but mostly men who are losing their lives. | ||
| And one more quick call for you on the Republican line. | ||
| Helena is in Virginia. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Mimi, do you hear me? | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you. | |
| I'm a Ukrainian immigrant here. | ||
| And what I see is so much misinformation. | ||
| And I have a few points, Mimi, but thank you for not interrupting. | ||
| So first of all, is there no democracy, not in Ukraine, not in Russia. | ||
| Nobody is fighting for democracy. | ||
| Everybody wants to end this senseless war. | ||
| It doesn't have sense for common people like us. | ||
| It has sense only for those who started this war. | ||
| And there are many goals for those people. | ||
| And they are all rich, but not us, orderly people. | ||
| We want to stop this war. | ||
| I voted for Zelensky, who is, by the way, is a stand-up comedian. | ||
| He is not a politician, but we voted for him to stop this war that started in 2014. | ||
| Many people don't realize it. | ||
| And he promised us to stop this war. | ||
| But look what he did with his friend, Putin, by the way. | ||
| Many people don't realize it. | ||
| But they are both work for very, very rich people who are making money on this war. | ||
| All right, Helena, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Suzanne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I can't really speak to what she's saying, only that there are journalists who I've spoken to Ukrainian journalists here on the ground who acknowledge that there is a level of corruption in this country, as there are in many countries, and that there is a frustration that they are fighting this on many fronts. | |
| So, on the one hand, they say he's not perfect, their president, and that there are things that they wish had been done differently in terms of the buildup of the defense, right? | ||
| After the first attack, Russia's attack, that there was a window of opportunity where that could have been more robust, or the window in which there was a lot of doubt, quite frankly, that Russia would invade a second time. | ||
| That they saw these military exercises that were going on right there at the border, and many people were still shocked, right, that this actually happened, that this invasion happened, that there wasn't kind of the mindset perhaps that was necessary to take this on or to be prepared. | ||
| So, that is something that some people in this country say, but they say more importantly, and to the caller there, is that yes, that the job now is to end the war, that there has to be stability and security, and that they have to create a country now where their children are safe, that they can grow up in a community that is in a country that is safe, | ||
| where a place where people will invest in the future of Ukraine. | ||
| And that is far, far away. | ||
| And so, they share your goal and your frustration, in a sense, that this war must come to an end. | ||
| All right, that's Suzanne Malveaux, and she is an independent journalist. | ||
| You can find her work at her website, SuzanneMalveau.net. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And we turn our attention to Elon Musk. | ||
| Coming up next, a discussion with Washington Post technology reporter Faye Siddiqui on his new book about Musk and the Tesla owners' impact on Washington, D.C. Stay with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a strange and ugly year in politics. | |
| There's a lot of name-calling out there. | ||
| Candidates hauling out terrible epithets like corrupt, liar, hypocrite, fascist, racist, incumbent. | ||
| After all, I believe in the First Amendment. | ||
| Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, beginning at noon Eastern. | |
| Hold on to your Lily White Bus. | ||
| Join us for a marathon as we look at past White House Correspondents Association dinners with presidential remarks. | ||
| Mike Devers in his book said that I had a short attention span. | ||
| Well, I was going to reply to that, but what the hell? | ||
| Let's move on to something else. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have actually shown up here for eight straight years. | |
| Looking back, that was probably a mistake. | ||
| Relive the jokes, the jabs, and other memorable moments on this special evening where politics and humor collide. | ||
| I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. | ||
| Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a challenge. | ||
| Watch our marathon of past White House Correspondents Association dinners beginning today at noon Eastern on C-SPAN 2's American History TV. | ||
| Bomb out. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| Sports journalist Jane McManus, author of The Fast Track, discusses the rise in popularity of women's sports since the early 1970s and the challenges female athletes have faced since then, including unequal pay and lack of media coverage. | ||
| What you do have now are women who see themselves as athletes first, and they aren't looking to be pleasing to anyone else. | ||
| And I think that is where things have changed quite a bit. | ||
| They see, today's athletes see sports as their birthright, not just their brothers. | ||
| And I think, honestly, their brothers would say the same thing for the most part. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jane McManus with her book, The Fast Track, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on the C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Fez Siddiqui. | ||
| He's a technology reporter for the Washington Post. | ||
| He's just published a book called Hubris, Maximus, The Shattering of Elon Musk. | ||
| Fez, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thank you so much for having me. | |
| I want to ask you about Tesla's financial condition because Elon Musk has announced that he's stepping back from Doge to refocus on his company, his car company, Tesla. | ||
| Tell us a little bit about that and the decision to step back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So Tesla's in a tough spot. | |
| It released its earnings report this week, and that showed a 71% year-over-year decline in income. | ||
| Revenue was also down. | ||
| The company has basically told Wall Street a story of largely uninhibited growth, and this cuts into that narrative quite a bit. | ||
| And it's put pressure on Elon Musk to step back from Doge and refocus his attention on the company that's pretty key to his wealth. | ||
| Now, had he thought that he could do Doge and be so involved in Washington and run his company at the same time and continue that growth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's probably right. | |
| He has his hands in so many different areas of American life, global life, maybe even. | ||
| And so I think he made the calculation that this was just another one of those ventures that he could spend some of his time on while still running his companies. | ||
| What do you think has been the impact of Elon Musk on Washington? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Musk has brought a new playbook. | |
| He's brought his playbook to Washington, and it's something that, you know, I think the federal government had never seen before. | ||
| And obviously, there were a lot of concerns about the way that Doge approached its work, essentially, you know, barging into some of these agencies and getting its hands on whatever data it could, sometimes pausing, you know, the outflow of funding from those agencies and making personnel decisions seemingly through its authority as Doge, even if ultimate authority rests with the cabinet heads. | ||
| It's been a tremendous impact, and it's shown the power that Musk's election donation and alliance with Trump has had. | ||
| I want to ask you about this Washington Post article. | ||
| Elon Musk had the government in his grasp, then it unraveled. | ||
| It says the billionaire head of U.S. Doge service clashed with Trump cabinet officials well before he announced he would soon head back to Tesla. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so Musk has had these sort of testy and increasingly heated interactions with members of the cabinet most recently over the acting IRS commissioner. | |
| Musk favored one candidate and Scott Besson favored another, and that resulted, as we reported, in this heated confrontation in front of the president. | ||
| And tell us more about how that was resolved. | ||
| And did the president hear it? | ||
| How did he respond? | ||
| Do we know anything about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So as we reported, it was just a highly unusual and sort of, you know, folks were taken aback by this idea that something like this would happen, you know, out in the open, such an obvious breach of decorum. | |
| But then there was this idea that, you know, this is Elon being Elon. | ||
| And so that just gives you a sense of how Washington has absorbed Musk. | ||
| I just want to mention to people that if you'd like to join our conversation and talk about Elon Musk with our guest, Fay Siddiqui, a technology reporter for the Washington Post, you can do so. | ||
| Our lines are by party. | ||
| So Republicans, 202748-8001. | ||
| It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats and 202-748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| You can also reach us on text and on social media. | ||
| How did you decide on the title of your book? | ||
| Is it all about hubris for Elon Musk? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, you know, originally I was thinking about like these sort of terms that might encapsulate his management approach, perhaps even his governing approach, you know, as a key advisor to the president. | |
| And I settled on these two words. | ||
| Obviously, you know, I think they're in a different order than they were before. | ||
| I was thinking, you know, maximum hubris. | ||
| That feels like it encapsulates the approach. | ||
| But then there were all of these, and as folks might see in the book, there were sort of these parallels to historical leaders and this idea of, you know, how Musk maybe viewed himself in the arc of history. | ||
| And it felt like it all came together in a way such that we could describe Musk's leadership this way. | ||
| I want to read to you a portion of your book and have you comment on it. | ||
| You say this: Musk's entrance into politics and governance is a predictable outcome. | ||
| At any time in Musk's history, given the scale of the gambles he has made with his fortune and power, he has variously seemed to be utterly in command or on the verge of total destruction. | ||
| But one thing remains: he is inevitable. | ||
| However, now that he has reached a new plateau of power, the stakes have shifted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so at every the book goes through basically three distinct stages where Musk was in an extremely powerful position, whether it was becoming the world's richest person or taking ownership of X, or he was in this precarious position of facing a securities lawsuit. | |
| And his leadership of Tesla was suddenly in question. | ||
| Musk seems to sort of dust himself off, recover, and emerge more powerful every single time. | ||
| And so Doge felt like this fits right in with this pattern. | ||
| And even now, I'm skeptical of the idea that I don't think anyone would predict Musk is just going to ride off into the sunset from here. | ||
| It seems like he would, you know, dust himself off and retool. | ||
| Regarding his management style with his companies, he does tend to, you know, he said, move fast and break things. | ||
| And if they need to be repaired, we'll fix them. | ||
| He brought that same philosophy into the federal government, the federal agencies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you feel like he has been changed at all by Washington? | |
| You know, I asked you about how Washington has been changed by him. | ||
| What kind of impact has his experience with Doge have on him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he, if anything, has maybe learned the limitations of Washington. | |
| Like, this is not something that he is used to, just in terms of like the slow march of bureaucracy. | ||
| Certainly at his companies, he deals with, you know, regulatory red tape, but he doesn't deal with outside political pressures. | ||
| He doesn't deal with approval ratings and polling and the decisiveness of elections. | ||
| This idea that something could be a referendum on your action that is so tangible. | ||
| You win or you lose. | ||
| So I think in those ways, Washington is different from what he's experienced. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers now. | ||
| We've got Rhonda in New Jersey on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, America. | ||
| I have a question for you and maybe for C-SPAN. | ||
| Is there any way that you could do like a platform on why we're giving Elon Musk $8 million a day? | ||
| And then it's also said that he even has another contract that he wrote himself that's like another $16 billion that we're putting in our budget. | ||
| And the fact that we're laying off thousands and tens of thousands of federal workers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I don't understand how the Congress has forfeited their leadership in government over the purse and allowed this man to go through all of our private sensitive information. | |
| Rachel Maddow had a show on last Wednesday where they had a whistleblower where Doge was downloading our information and 15 minutes later, Russia was logging in with our IP address and our exact password. | ||
| There's no way they couldn't have gotten that unless Elon Musk gave it to him. | ||
| You know, we're in big trouble. | ||
| Okay, so Rhonda, let's get a response. | ||
| Fez, there's two issues there. | ||
| Elon Musk's contracts with the U.S. government and also privacy issues with Doge access. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So Elon Musk's federal contracts are obviously coming under scrutiny because he's an overseeing Doge. | |
| As Scarlet points out, there are federal workers being laid off at the same time as Musk. | ||
| SpaceX is trusted to do a tremendous amount of work for the federal government. | ||
| And so I think that's obviously an area that increasingly will be ripe for scrutiny. | ||
| Elon was unquestionably, SpaceX was unquestionably positioned to carry out this work. | ||
| It pioneered the idea of a reusable rocket and was just extremely successful at a time when parts of the space industry were languishing. | ||
| But increasingly, I think that contract work is going to come under a bit of scrutiny. | ||
| And the second part, I'm sorry. | ||
| About privacy concerns and Doge having access to citizen information. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So those privacy concerns have definitely been raised, especially over the idea that Doge could be accessing personal information, you know, whether it's through IRS, whether it's through Medicare, Medicaid, social security. | |
| There is this feeling that, you know, there was a firewall between some of these agencies before and between who had access to the most sensitive data, even within the agencies. | ||
| And Doge has kind of brought those walls down by granting some of its workers seemingly unfettered access to highly sensitive information. | ||
| It remains to be seen, you know, if Elon is untethering himself from all of this, or at least pulling back from Doge, what about those workers? | ||
| Do they continue to have that very high level of access to some of the most sensitive data on millions of Americans? | ||
| It's just something to watch as Elon potentially starts to pull back. | ||
| So another article that you wrote in the Washington Post: Musk's fury over a Tesla investigation foreshadowed his war on Washington. | ||
| Obviously, it's not just contracts with the federal government, but it's also oversight of the federal government on his companies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I mean, so this was the first excerpt from the book, and it detailed how Musk, you know, in this fury, hangs up on the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who's asking him crucial questions and leading an investigation into Tesla autopilot death. | ||
| So, yes, I mean, this underscores how much power and how many, you know, potential conflict of interest concerns were raised by Elon's proximity to the White House. | ||
| And, you know, you saw, you know, there was an event earlier this year where there were Teslas on the White House lawn, one of which Trump selected for himself. | ||
| You know, what does that say about that oversight? | ||
| On the Republican line in Rochester, New York. | ||
| Edward, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Eli Musk was the darling deer of the left. | ||
| You know, El Gore, John Kerry, the whole Democratic Party, saving the environment with these electrical vehicles. | ||
| So Donald Trump came in and he rescinded the electric vehicle mandate. | ||
| So that doesn't help Eli Musk. | ||
| You know, what I don't understand is this. | ||
| You know, this country's almost $50 trillion in debt. | ||
| Social Security is going bankrupt. | ||
| People are entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts. | ||
| That Doge Commission is not charging the American taxpayers not a nickel, dime, quarter, or brown penny. | ||
| I'm African American, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm trying to get Social Security. | ||
| There is a backlog of me in Rochester, New York, trying to get Social Security. | ||
| So maybe I have to go to Syracuse or Buffalo. | ||
| And then they said I'm out of the zip coat of getting Social Security. | ||
| You know, they don't talk to each other. | ||
| The computer systems are outdated to the 50s. | ||
| And the legacy media in the Democratic Party has marginalized this guy as being almost close to Satan. | ||
| I can't believe this, man. | ||
| You know, and all I say is one thing. | ||
| Doge found out that to U.S. aid that they were giving money to a country in Africa for free cataract surgery. | ||
| I am an American citizen, and that is my tax dollars. | ||
| Now, I got health insurance here in America. | ||
| I have health insurance, but it's $600 per eye, a doctor fee for me to get cataract surgery. | ||
| I can't afford that, but I can give my tax dollars all over the world for people to have free cataract surgery. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Edward, we got it. | ||
| Go ahead, Fez. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm very sympathetic to this question because I think people are relying on these types of interventions to prop up. these crucial government programs. | |
| I think the question that I would ask probably somebody in Doge's position is, are your interventions going to improve access to Social Security? | ||
| And so far, there's evidence that these wait times have increased, that people's ability to access their benefits might come into question by some of these changes, especially if they target some of what Musk has raised as improper spending in these areas. | ||
| Of course, there has been hesitance to look into Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the other one being defense spending in order to achieve that $1 trillion worth of cuts that Doge has identified. | ||
| Doge is at, I believe, $150 billion at the last count per Musk. | ||
| So again, the question has to be asked. | ||
| The caller says, you know, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. | ||
| And I just wonder, like, Doge is saying a trillion, are they really getting there without hitting some of those key areas that they, I'm sure they don't want Americans to think, you know, you're going to target my Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security, but isn't there a reality that they would have to target some of those to achieve such drastic federal spending? | ||
| You know, Edward also mentioned the revoking of the EV mandate. | ||
| And I wonder what your opinion is as far as does that help Elon Musk by crippling his competitors or does that hurt him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that's been the position of Tesla that, you know, and the subsidies and the mandates because, you know, Tesla's in this established place. | |
| I believe it reached a point there was a threshold for the number of sales where you no longer qualified for the EV tax credit. | ||
| And Tesla was far and away the leader in EV sales. | ||
| So absolutely, one could make the argument that, yeah, this would only hurt Tesla's competition, not Tesla. | ||
| Here's Dee and Maryland Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I think it extends beyond Elon Musk. | ||
| I think it shows a growing degree of anarchy in the country. | ||
| And I think large corporations, they're going to be really careful at picking positions because of also, I'm kind of rumbling on my OG, the guy that stabbed the guy in the back. | ||
| Some people felt like he was a killer for not letting people have insurance. | ||
| So he deserved to die. | ||
| So I'm saying, I'm thinking we're beginning to see anarchy in this country on a very serious level. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| I want to ask you, Fez, about the interaction with President Biden and how that might have impacted Elon Musk's approach to politics. | ||
| You write that Biden did not invite Tesla or Elon Musk to an electric vehicle event at the White House in 2021. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and what I learned as reported in the book is there was a sense that If the United Auto Workers was going to be there, perhaps, you know, appearing alongside a company that has had spats with the UAW in the past would not be especially prudent. | |
| But Musk takes this extremely seriously and he sees it as a snub. | ||
| He is not especially willing to turn the other cheek on this, you know, because Tesla could make the argument that no, it's the one who had made the most progress in bringing electric or in mainstreaming the electric vehicle. | ||
| And so this idea that it then wouldn't get credit for doing so at an event where the Biden administration wanted to tout, you know, its EV ambitions seemed asinine. | ||
| Now, one could also argue that they were trying to raise the profile or tout the work of those who were trying to play catch up, frankly. | ||
| But it's very clear that Musk took this extremely seriously. | ||
| And it was on a time when he was already feeling slighted by the Democrats and he was on this journey to becoming more involved politically. | ||
| And this, it appears, gave him quite an opening. | ||
| Here's another portion of your book. | ||
| It says, Musk seemed to see himself as a common sense voter, a man above partisan politics, similar to a populist presidential candidate who urged the parties to simply work out their differences. | ||
| He didn't hesitate to align himself with government officials who could help him advance his companies and ambitions, regardless of party. | ||
| Politics itself was an inconvenience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is sort of the Musk as pragmatist, you know, and this is, you know, maybe an early, earlier era or iteration, but, you know, he who was, you know, which administration might be supporting, you know, ambitions of going to space and electric vehicle and, you know, solar, not necessarily mandate subsidies funding. | |
| You know, these were traditionally, you know, Democratic administrations and especially with state officials as well. | ||
| Like there, there had to be some alignment or some aspect of playing nice, especially as his companies were on the rise. | ||
| So yes, politics was just sort of this thorn in his side maybe at times, but it was something to be overcome as opposed to something to steer the way that he's doing now. | ||
| Jim in Stamford, New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Jim. | |
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| As far as Elon Musk, I thought he was a very smart man. | ||
| And he got himself involved with Donald Trump. | ||
| And who gets involved with Donald Trump loses. | ||
| I thought he knew that. | ||
| What do you think of that, Fez? | ||
| Do you think he knew that this was risky for his businesses to align himself so closely with Donald Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in the initial days after the election, he looked like a genius for doing this. | |
| I mean, his wealth soared. | ||
| There was this, you know, analysts on Wall Street were thrilled because there was this idea that Tesla's autonomous ambitions would now be on a glide path. | ||
| I don't know necessarily what to make of that given that Trump won and Musk aligned himself with the winning party. | ||
| I do think this emphasizes an aspect of Musk, which is risk tolerance. | ||
| You know, a CEO in a similar position might have a deep risk aversion, might be very careful about forging a political alliance. | ||
| This would seem to violate like a core tenant of running a business, which is, you know, you don't pick sides. | ||
| And so, if anything, this tells us something, but emphasizes something that has just been consistent with Musk. | ||
| Says, do we know about his net worth as far as the change between the election of Donald Trump and today? | ||
| Is there a substantial difference? | ||
| Has it gone up or down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it went way up in the days after because the Tesla stock soared and the Tesla stock has now fallen back to earth. | |
| I believe it's around, you know, down around 30% year to date. | ||
| And Musk's net worth has fallen, you know, in conjunction with that. | ||
| He's been in certainly worse places, you know, the richest man in the world. | ||
| So I don't think too many people are crying about that. | ||
| But certainly if you were an investor, I mean, in one of his companies, you might be feeling some pain right now. | ||
| So, yeah, I mean, it just affects so many more people than just Musk himself. | ||
| In Potomac, Maryland on the Independent Line. | ||
| Sharon, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for having a forum like this and for taking my call. | ||
| Faz, I was just hoping in your expertise that you might be able to comment in your understanding of Elon Musk and the work that you've done. | ||
| There's allegations out there perhaps about his family having ties to neo-Nazis. | ||
| And I wonder if you had any input if the symbol of X that he specifically uses with SpaceX and the symbol of X that he's chosen for Twitter has anything to do with his fascination for the Nazi swastika. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| What do you think, Fuz? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, Musk has long had a fascination with this letter and he sees it as, you know, I believe when he was talking about the naming of his son, you know, Grimes said the unknown variable, he named, you know, fintech startup X. | ||
| So, you know, I would say Musk's interest in the letter is well documented and goes beyond any political moment. | ||
| And I wonder what you made of the hand gesture that some people were calling the Siege Heil. | ||
| Did you see it that way? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, you know, having observed Musk for a very long time, I saw that as it was unusual. | |
| Even if the argument is made that he's awkward and he is awkward, he can be prone to just sort of like this strangeness with his stage presence. | ||
| But it struck me and there are not a lot of times when I see him go on stage and he does something that just kind of stops me in my tracks. | ||
| Here is John in Mechanicsville, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| John, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I've listened to all the callers call in and it's almost like you can say anything to anybody and they'll believe it. | ||
| And I try to maintain an independent point of view when I look at Musk, Trump and Biden and everything, Republican and Democrats. | ||
| And basically, when Trump got elected and developed an association with Musk, he was promising what he was going to do was to reduce the size of government. | ||
| I mean, government is so bloated, so big. | ||
| We're $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| We just had a surge of 15 million immigrants. | ||
| And the only thing that's really going to matter that takes care of these people is money. | ||
| We need money. | ||
| And what Trump and Musk, in my opinion, are going to try to do is to try to be as efficient as possible and put this country on a firm financial footing. | ||
| If you look at Musk, I mean, he's got a litany of successful ventures. | ||
| I mean, with Doge getting rid of Doge, he's, you know, his Neuralink, Tesla, the space exploration, it just reeks with success. | ||
| And, you know, he's looking at things in a cost-effective manner. | ||
| And that's really the only thing that I think that's going to restore this country to its former prosperity. | ||
| Right now, with this globalist mentality, we're in trouble. | ||
| We're in trouble financially. | ||
| And we have to correct that situation. | ||
| Basically, the other thing I like about Musk, and I want to say that, is the fact that he saw the way the legacy media was destroying Trump, all right? | ||
| And in the process of doing that, destroying free speech. | ||
| And with his money, he was able to, you know, buy out Twitter, start X, and give people who have an alternate opinion a form. | ||
| So Musk, he's probably got his problems. | ||
| There's no question. | ||
| We got that point, John. | ||
| Let's get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So I would just raise two things because I take your point about him being this great innovator with so many different companies. | ||
| I don't think that's indispute. | ||
| I mean, I think people forget. | ||
| There's so much recency bias with all of this, but like people forget that what people's reputation or Musk's reputation within the public before this was pretty much this like untarnished legacy of innovation. | ||
| And maybe that was eight years ago or so, but I still don't think it was that much in question. | ||
| I think what's happening now is just sort of a realization that that is not a completely unimpeachable reputation. | ||
| Even if you look at the free speech issue that the caller raised, I don't know if, and maybe this is our information ecosystem, but I just don't know if his leadership of Twitter reflects free speech absolutism, as he's put it. | ||
| You know, even some folks who have aligned themselves with Musk have, as I write in the book, you know, been disappointed in what ended up happening with that free speech promise. | ||
| You know, case in point, there was at one point an attempt to ban outside promotion of social media sites on X. | ||
| And then secondly, on I, there's so much, there's so much faith put in what he's going to be able to do with Doge, but he's now pulling back from it. | ||
| And is he going to achieve what the caller is hoping for him to achieve? | ||
| And if he doesn't, what has to be done with that disappointment? | ||
| And is it always going to be someone else's fault, but Musk's? | ||
| That's sort of the question that that leaves for me. | ||
| All right, and we'll leave it there. | ||
| Fez Siddiqui is the author of the book, Hubris Maximus, The Shattering of Elon Musk. | ||
| Also, he's a technology reporter for the Washington Post. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for having me. | |
| And we're wrapping up the show with more of your calls. | ||
| We are asking you what's the top story of the week, and we will get your opinion on that after we come back from the break. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| The numbers are on your screen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, 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 at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Then our live coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner starts at 8 p.m. | ||
| Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Cesno will join us in studio during the dinner to discuss the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration. | ||
| And we'll take your calls to get your thoughts on the president's decision not to attend this year. | ||
| Watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner today, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern with arrivals online. | ||
| Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, live dinner coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at cspan.org. | ||
| Dr. Hassan Teta, in his latest book, opens the introduction with a question. | ||
| How do we prepare for the future with AI? | ||
| His primary focus is on healthcare and AI, but it's subtitled, Harnessing Military Medicine to Revolutionize Healthcare for Everyone Everywhere. | ||
| Dr. Teta is currently based at Howard University and Enova Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia, after serving 25 years in military medicine. | ||
| His specialty is as a thoracic surgeon doing heart and lung transplants. | ||
| He retired from the Navy in 2023. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author and Dr. Hassan Teta with his latest book, Smarter Healthcare with AI, subtitled Harnessing Military Medicine to Revolutionize Healthcare for Everyone Everywhere. | |
| On this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We are with you until 10 a.m. Eastern, and we'll be taking your calls on your top news story of the week. | ||
| One of those stories, which we'll start with today, is out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | ||
| Here's the Journal Sentinel. | ||
| Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan charged with two felonies in ICE case. | ||
| This judge has been arrested. | ||
| Here's the New York Times. | ||
| Wisconsin judge arrested, accused of shielding immigrant from federal agents. | ||
| It says that she was arrested on suspicion that she, quote, intentionally misdirected federal agents away from an immigrant being pursued by the authorities, according to the FBI director. | ||
| It says that FBI agents have arrested the judge, this happened yesterday, charges of obstructing immigration agents. | ||
| They said that she steered an undocumented immigrant through a side door in her courtroom while the agents waited to arrest him in a public hallway. | ||
| The decision to charge a sitting state court judge is a major escalation in the Trump administration's battle with local authorities over deportations. | ||
| The administration has demanded, under threat of investigation or prosecution, that local officials not impede federal efforts to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. | ||
| And the arrest sent a message that the administration intends to take a harder line with those that do. | ||
| Well, let's hear from Attorney General Pam Bondi. | ||
| She was on Fox News, and she spoke about what led to the arrest of Judge Dugan. | ||
| This guy was in court being prosecuted by a state prosecutor for domestic violence battery. | ||
| He had beat up two people, a guy and a girl, beat the guy, the hit guy 30 times, knocked him to the ground, choked him, beat up a woman so badly they both had to go to the hospital. | ||
| And John, you know, it's so rare for victims to want to cooperate. | ||
| They wanted to cooperate. | ||
| They were sitting in the courtroom with the state prosecutor. | ||
| The judge learns that ICE was outside to get the guy because he had been deported in 2013, came back in our country, commits these crimes, charged with committing these crimes, victims in court. | ||
| Judge finds out, she goes out in the hallway, screams at the immigration officers. | ||
| She's furious, visibly shaken, upset, sends them off to talk to the chief judge. | ||
| She comes back in the courtroom. | ||
| You're not going to believe this. | ||
| Takes the defendant and the defense attorney back in her chambers, takes them out a private exit, and tells them to leave while a state prosecutor and victims of domestic violence are sitting in the courtroom. | ||
| Wonder what you think about that. | ||
| Also, of course, it was Pope Francis' funeral this morning that happened at the Vatican and in Rome. | ||
| You can watch our full coverage of that on our website, cspan.org. | ||
| President Trump was there, as was President Zelensky of Ukraine, and they met for about 15 minutes privately. | ||
| Here's what the White House posted. | ||
| President Trump sat down with, privately, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City this morning. | ||
| That happened before Pope Francis' funeral. | ||
| And we also have a tweet from President Zelensky about that. | ||
| He also posted about that. | ||
| And he said, good meeting. | ||
| We discussed a lot one-on-one, hoping for results on everything we covered. | ||
| Protecting lives of our people, full and unconditional ceasefire, reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. | ||
| Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic if we achieve joint results. | ||
| Thank you, POTUS. | ||
| And we'll start with your calls. | ||
| Stephanie Irmo, South Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Stephanie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm calling just to say that my feeling is, of course, Elon Musk is crumpling. | ||
| Everything Trump touches turns to sugar, honey, iced tea. | ||
| The people in New York knew that. | ||
| Bankers worldwide knew he was poisoned. | ||
| So when he needed money, as Don Jr. said, the Trumps ran to Russia because they were the only ones who'd give them money. | ||
| Now, why would Putin allow Russian oligarchs to hand money to Trump? | ||
| Putin's been playing the long game the whole time. | ||
| Putin's dream is to restore Russia to its former glory. | ||
| And destroying America from within takes him a long way toward that goal. | ||
| With our government in shambles and our military hobble with sub-par leadership, Putin's free to trample all over Europe. | ||
| And I don't think he'll stop with Ukraine. | ||
| He could trample any country he wants because the countries with intact military forces, they're autocrats too. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Stephanie, and here's Dan in Vienna, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| The most important freedom we have is freedom of speech. | ||
| Thank you for C-SPAN to let people call in. | ||
| Sometimes most of the people calling in, they know more than the subject that you have answering their questions. | ||
| Keep up the good work. | ||
| Let the people talk. | ||
| And freedom of speech is the number one freedom we have. | ||
| Remember that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is Matt, Germantown, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Hey, so much to say, so little time to say, so I'll skip around. | ||
| But, you know, all the lies are going on. | ||
| Oh, the Chinese are now, you know, I'm talking to the Chinese. | ||
| You know, we're going to work up a deal and we'll come to find out China has never, ever contacted the White House. | ||
| You know, it's kind of sad the way we are right now. | ||
| And mostly I blame the people who come on and say, oh, government should run like a business. | ||
| Because that's why the voter for a businessman put him in the White House, a man who has so many bankruptcies. | ||
| You know, if government is to run like a business, please, C-SPAN, I want to ask these people, which business should the government run like? | ||
| Should it run like Walmart, risk the profit and give the losses to the government? | ||
| How about the employees our own government cheese? | ||
| Should it run like Amazon? | ||
| Suppress made in America from what's made in China. | ||
| Should have run like should it run like Uber, rob the drivers, rob the rotters, cheat the government, and now the investors are on course to get a rude awakening from Uber stocks. | ||
| It's coming. | ||
| It's just a matter of time. | ||
| Government is not a business. | ||
| It cannot run like a business. | ||
| Government don't have debt. | ||
| People keep saying, oh, we're $70 with $37 trillion in debt, but government don't have debt. | ||
| Government is not a business. | ||
| Government job is to take care of the business. | ||
| But what do you mean by governments don't have debt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How does that work? | |
| What I mean by government don't have debt is, I will make it real short. | ||
| You tell me who the government owe, and I'll tell you what the government have done for them. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's Lisa in Alexandria, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I got two things, news stories. | |
| Russia and Ukraine will never leave the story until they decide to stop. | ||
| But I would like people to remember that in 1954, this is family arguing. | ||
| And they have been, you know, they were getting along and now they're not getting along. | ||
| And here it is, we're stepping in. | ||
| Africa has been that way since, I mean, I was born in the 60s, and all I've heard is the war is there. | ||
| We never get along, we never step in, we never fund one side or the other, but that's what we're doing for Ukraine. | ||
| And when you say that they were getting along, Lisa, are you talking about during the Soviet Union when Ukraine was a vassal state of the Soviets? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm talking about when Russia gave Ukraine, which was the SFR, the Crimea border state. | |
| When they gave them the state and said, hey, you run it, this was back in 1954, is what I'm talking about. | ||
| Now, before then, it wasn't, they were all working together, is what I'm my emphasis on that. | ||
| And they were, there are family members, there were Russians that lived in Ukraine and still live in Ukraine. | ||
| There are family members, you know, that are Ukrainian. | ||
| This is a family affair the same way it is with the Congo, with Nigeria, with African countries. | ||
| We're never going over there. | ||
| All right, Lisa. | ||
| And Milwaukee's Mayor Cavalier Johnson commented on the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan and his concerns about the federal government's approach to immigration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This overly dramatic arrest of a judge at a county courthouse adds to a big problem created by the federal approach to immigration enforcement. | |
| What they've done is drive away people from participating in what are legitimate courthouse activities. | ||
| Now, these folks, they may be victims, they may be witnesses, civil case participants, or people who receive traffic tickets. | ||
| When these folks are driven away, that makes our community less safe. | ||
| These folks should be encouraged to participate in court proceedings, not being encouraged to go away from court proceedings. | ||
| But that's what these actions actually cause. | ||
| They're not going to participate in court cases if they fear being swept up in immigration enforcement. | ||
| That's exactly the groundwork that the Trump administration has laid here in what is quite evidently an attempt to showboat. | ||
| And it's unfortunate. | ||
| I think it makes our community less safe. | ||
| Mayor, Judge Dugan is accused of misdirecting federal agents inside the courthouse if she did in fact do these actions. | ||
| Are you okay with those actions? | ||
| Look, I think that Judge Dugan is not a flight risk. | ||
| He's not somebody that's going to run away. | ||
| Typically, when something like this happens, an indictment of a potential defendant is ordered. | ||
| There'll be a court appearance. | ||
| That didn't happen in this case. | ||
| I think what happened here was just showboating. | ||
| They're just trying to have this show of force. | ||
| And in the process of doing this in a courthouse where people need to go for court proceedings, they're scaring people away from participating in the process. | ||
| We're taking your top news story of the week. | ||
| What do you think was the most important thing that happened this week? | ||
| What would you like to talk about? | ||
| What the mayor of Milwaukee there was just talking about was the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan. | ||
| Here is her. | ||
| This is FBI Director's Kash Patel's posting on X with a picture of her being taken away by the FBI in handcuffs. | ||
| If you can see that, that's on X. | ||
| And here's Jason, Philomath, Oregon, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I wanted to comment on. | ||
| That judge, you know, whether the guy was in there on new charges for domestic violence or not, he was in there. | ||
| That whole court, the whole court reason he was there was to get due process, which those goons showing up to stop all that were trying to stop. | ||
| Okay, and like I agree with what the guy says about showboating and making a big show of it and a show force for a reason. | ||
| And it's intimidation. | ||
| They're trying to intimidate the public. | ||
| And it's not just the immigrants are trying to intimidate now. | ||
| It's Democrats. | ||
| It's people who have their viewpoints that they do, who support the ideology that they believe in. | ||
| And they should be allowed to do that. | ||
| It's a free country, right? | ||
| It's actually not a free country. | ||
| That's always been a lie. | ||
| But, anyways, that's neither here nor there at this point. | ||
| What I'm saying is that's what's going on, and it's dangerous. | ||
| And I think the people who live in the Fox News bubble should get off their road, stop eating chicken tenders and Mountain Dew. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is Michael, Smithfield, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Michael, what have you been up to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I've been up to a lot of channel surfing between national news and some local news. | |
| And it's very sad to say the Pope is gone now. | ||
| He's gone to rest on that mountain high above. | ||
| And, you know, it's ironic that he's been sick and he's been battling this sickness for quite a while. | ||
| And you can just see in the pictures, you know, when he was younger, when he first became Pope Francis, he didn't have the fluid that it looked like it had gained in his face. | ||
| You know, you could just see the fluid had built up over the years in the weight gain. | ||
| Michael, are you Catholic? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm not Catholic, and that's why I bring this up. | |
| I'm actually Pentecostal Holiness. | ||
| And we are a religion that relies on the King James Version, and we believe in the Trinity. | ||
| And the thing that bothered me is I was watching some old Jimmy Swaggart preaching. | ||
| And I don't know if Jimmy feels this way still or not. | ||
| He probably does. | ||
| We are taught that we are to go to Jesus for everything, that you're not to ask God for anything. | ||
| You're to ask Jesus. | ||
| And if you believe that someone is worthy of praise, it's Jesus and Jesus only. | ||
| So I was kind of bothered that Jimmy made the comment when he was younger in the pulpit at an evangelist scene. | ||
| He said, well, you know, you're praying to a dead saint. | ||
| You're praying to a dead saint in the Catholic community. | ||
| And that breaks my heart because, you know, at one time Michael did live. | ||
| He lived three different lives in the Bible that I know of. | ||
| And the third is yet to come. | ||
| So it's just, I wish we could all come together and not try to attack one another's religion because that's not what Jesus would want. | ||
| Amen to that. | ||
| And this is Robert in Beaumont, Texas, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to get online when the gentleman that was writing that, he wrote that book about Elon Musk. | ||
| And I was wanting to comment on that. | ||
| Sure, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What it was, he was worth about $416 billion when he went to work for Trump. | |
| And then right now he's worth $373. | ||
| He's lost over $40 billion. | ||
| And he only owns 12% of Tessa stock. | ||
| So the other 88%, those people are taking a big hit right now. | ||
| And all the damage just going on at Tessa, you wouldn't see a Republican out there doing that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are paid actors. | |
| And they're going to get to the bottom of it. | ||
| And as far as Doge goes, right now, all the people screaming the loudest are probably the ones that are on the take. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just like that governor, that lady who run for governor over in Georgia, well, she took on $2 billion and channeled it through all these places. | |
| You think she's not getting a piece of that action? | ||
| Now she wants to run for governor again. | ||
| And so what Doge is doing is exposing all this, and they are chasing the money back to all the Democrats and Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Both are probably involved some way or another in getting a piece of that pie. | |
| The sad thing is they're not bringing them out there to let us see who they are just yet because they want to get enough evidence on them so that way they will all be prosecuted or pay back the money that they've taken from USAID, from Medicare, through doctors or through clinics or however they're getting their money. | ||
| I just know that the government has been and has been being ripped off for years and years, and we're sick of it. | ||
| We want this to come to a stop. | ||
| So when they say Elon Musk is fixed to step down, well, he's got a lot of people that are investors into Tesla that are taking a hit. | ||
| So he's got to try to help that recover. | ||
| But I'll promise you, he's going to be a phone call away. | ||
| He's got anywhere between 100 and 200 people that are going to be infiltrated into the government, into each one of those sections, to help keep this going on because it needs to be exposed. | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| Well, let's hear from President Trump on Wednesday. | ||
| He was at the Oval Office signing an executive order, and he talked about Elon Musk making plans to step back from Doge. | ||
| I can't speak more highly about any individual. | ||
| He's an incredible guy. | ||
| He's a brilliant guy. | ||
| He's a wonderful person. | ||
| I've seen him with his family. | ||
| I've seen him with a lot of his children. | ||
| He's got a lot of children. | ||
| He treats them good. | ||
| He loves his children. | ||
| But he's a brilliant guy. | ||
| And he was a tremendous help, both in the campaign and in what he's done with Doge. | ||
| And, you know, we're talking about almost $200 billion and rising fast because many of the things that we were looking at are now being found out to be fact. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| I mean, the fraud, the waste, the abuse, everything that's happened is just terrible. | ||
| So I also know that he was treated very unfairly by the, I guess you'd call it the public, by some of the public, not by all of it. | ||
| He makes an incredible car, everything he does is good. | ||
| But they took it out on Tesla. | ||
| And I just thought it was so unfair because he's trying to help the country. | ||
| But he has helped the country. | ||
| I also want him to make sure that he's going to be in great shape. | ||
| And I know he is. | ||
| I mean, he's going to do great. | ||
| He loves the country. | ||
| He didn't need to do this. | ||
| He did it. | ||
| And I told him, I said, you know, whenever you're ready, I'd like to keep him for a long time. | ||
| But whenever you're ready, he's an exceptional guy. | ||
| When you see those rockets go up and come back and land in the same gantry, nobody else can do that, but this man. | ||
| So he's just an incredible person, and he's a friend of mine, and he's a nice person, too. | ||
| He's a very nice person. | ||
| He really helped the country, saved us a lot of money. | ||
| And I heard him say that he'll start easing, which is always, he was always at this time going to ease out. | ||
| And when he goes back to Tesla, that'll be taken care of. | ||
| It was just, it's artificial. | ||
| These were sick people that thought they were doing something. | ||
| He really, he's a great patriot, and he should, really, it should be, it shouldn't be the way that should never have happened to him. | ||
| And back to the calls now, John in Tigno, Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Yes, I just want to make a couple of comments. | ||
| One is about Pam Bundy. | ||
| She said no one is above the law. | ||
| Maybe the rich is above the law. | ||
| The poor is not above the law. | ||
| And she should go back on the rock that she came out from under because Donald Trump have 34 felony accounts, but he seemed to be above the law. | ||
| So this country is messed up. | ||
| People don't have justice. | ||
| People don't have, you know, the law to stand up for them, especially the poor. | ||
| So she needs to go back on the rock that she came from under. | ||
| And another thing I would like to say, why is Donald Trump is over and attend the Pope's funeral? | ||
| He's not about anything that the Pope is about. | ||
| So why is he there? | ||
| And those are the only comments that I wanted to bring. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| On the Independent Line in Milford, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Michael, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| First of all, I'd like to say great job that the judges were locked up. | ||
| They should be. | ||
| I also want to let you know that I would like to ask, who are the people that are like creating all the crimes here against Elon Musk? | ||
| Isn't it the liberals? | ||
| And I hope that you guys pick up your baby diapers soon and go cry to mommy. | ||
| Larry, Rapid City, South Dakota, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Actually, as I've been listening, three things I'm showing up. | ||
| We did a poll here called Democrats, called Republicans, called Independents, and asked him, what would you like to give up so that rich can have a tax break? | ||
| And what did they say? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| We don't want to give anything up so the rich can have a tax break. | ||
| As far as Elon Musk, he was really easy on those people that he laid their jobs off, dropped them up. | ||
| Oh, that guy's got a big heart. | ||
| And it's just one of those things that everything you hear is baloney. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Craig in Waterville, Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Craig. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just want to say to the judge that was locked up, I just feel like Democrats are for the illegal aliens and not for the American people. | ||
| Another thing is Elon is doing a great job with those, and I wish he wouldn't leave, but there's a lot of fraud in our country. | ||
| And I feel like the Democrats take more from the American people versus the Republicans. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| And here's NBC News with this former New Mexico judge accused of tampering with evidence in Trendi Aragua case. | ||
| Federal officials accused Joel Kano of destroying the cell phone of a Venezuelan man who was in the country illegally and allegedly staying on property the recently resigned judge owns. | ||
| It says this, a former New Mexico judge arrested by federal Homeland Security agents Thursday, accused of tampering with evidence in a case against a man suspected to be a member of the Trenda Aragua gang. | ||
| That's according to the criminal complaint. | ||
| It alleges that he, Mr. Cano, a former Anna County division magistrate, destroyed evidence in a federal investigation into the Venezuelan man accused of being in the United States illegally and residing in a back house on property owned by the judge and his wife in Las Cruces. | ||
| Here is Linda in Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| I'm thankful that we do have somebody in our office that is protecting America interests. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| The things that have been done to him and against him is so outrageous. | ||
| I mean, I'm an independent and I love our country. | ||
| And if you go back and listen to President Trump, over 50 years, he's been saying the same thing. | ||
| Russia, China is our threat. | ||
| Why are people so against having our country protected and our country saved? | ||
| And when it comes to these judges, throw the key away as far as I'm concerned, because they're not protecting the American citizens when they're protecting illegals. | ||
| It's got to stop. | ||
| God bless America. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And the president was asked about the arrest of federal judges or judges on Air Force One. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| That's a terrible thing. | ||
| The judge was arrested because he was housing a trendy Araqua, right? | ||
| Is that the one you're talking about? | ||
| It's pretty surprising. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| We're having a very hard time with judges because they don't want people to be moved out of the country. | ||
| Shockingly, nobody's ever had this before. | ||
| No other president. | ||
| There's never been a time when this has ever become an issue where they talk about due process when you have millions of people that you're moving out that are really bad people, very dangerous people, and you have a judge that wants every single one of them to have a trial. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they want us to millions of trials there for. | |
| And how long does the trial take? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Weeks? | |
| Trial can take weeks. | ||
| That's not what it's about. | ||
| That's not what our country's about. | ||
| And that's not what I got elected on. | ||
| And these are judges that just want to show how big and important they are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're local federal judges, and they shouldn't be allowed to do it. | |
| You know, we have hundreds of thousands of people that we want to get out of the country. | ||
| And the courts are holding us back. | ||
| Some judge that nobody ever heard of is holding us back. | ||
| It's very dangerous for our country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you want to see a country that will have crime? | |
| Let that happen because it's really dangerous for our country. | ||
| And I can't believe the Supreme Court would let that stand. | ||
| Here's Mike, Reston, Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| I don't know where to start. | ||
| Anyway, but I just want to let everybody know that when a person touches a United States soil, he is a U.S. person. | ||
| A U.S. person has the same right as a U.S. citizen in court, not to vote, not for benefit, but in court to be treated and be given a due process. | ||
| This is what you should know. | ||
| That's why the terrorists, the September 11, September 11th terrorists, they are in Vikmo because many of the evidence that were attained were attained by hearsay, by torture, by enhanced interrogation. | ||
| And if they bring it in the United States, they will not be admitted in court. | ||
| This is the first thing. | ||
| We are living in an unusual time. | ||
| The truth becomes false and false become truth. | ||
| A judge being arrested because somebody gave him the phone and whatever. | ||
| I mean, illegal aliens, U.S. citizens, people who protest to stop the slaughter in Gaza, not to support Hamas, but to stop the plot or to want peace. | ||
| They are being deported. | ||
| This is not right. | ||
| What for us? | ||
| Trump goes to golf, play golf, but I'm a contractor with the government. | ||
| We used to work from home. | ||
| We have to be on our computer. | ||
| If we get an email within 15 minutes, we have to answer the email. | ||
| But now we have to go to work. | ||
| We're losing $5,000 for parking, for gas, for all that stuff. | ||
| And he is making money. | ||
| People who invested in his crypto coins, he's inviting them over at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| He is using to enrich himself. | ||
| He has no friends. | ||
| People don't understand. | ||
| The first senator that endorsed him, session, and became an attorney general, he went at them because he disagreed with him on the Russian allegation. | ||
| This man violates every rule. | ||
| I don't understand how people talk about a convict, a guy who wants to grab warm parts, a man who is violating everything we know, every ethics. | ||
| He has no respect for our law. | ||
| Plus, I got to agree with him on one thing. | ||
| The Ukraine, the Ukraine issue, he is right. | ||
| Russia has the right to national security. | ||
| We really don't care about the Ukraine. | ||
| If we really care about the Ukraine, we wouldn't be talking about gas as much. | ||
| All right, Mike. | ||
| You got your points. | ||
| Sherry is in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Sherry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing this morning? | |
| Good. | ||
| I just wanted to say, and I know this is something you've been there a while, but the 14th Amendment, I don't think people are reading one part of that right where it does say, if you were born in the United States of America, you are a citizen of the United States. | ||
| But it does not say if you are born in the United States of America, you are a U.S. citizen, and the rest of your family becomes one, even though they're not. | ||
| So somewhere along the line, if the rest of the family is not U.S. citizens, they need to go back. | ||
| And if they had children, they knew they shouldn't have had children. | ||
| So they should have gone back to their country and then made it legal. | ||
| I worked for the Department of Motor Vehicles for 13 years. | ||
| I know what it takes for a person to become a U.S. citizen. | ||
| It's not hard. | ||
| You just have to make the efforts and do the things in the right process. | ||
| But anybody that is not legal in this country with U.S. citizens needs to go back where they belong. | ||
| We are tired of paying for them. | ||
| I know people that keep having children, keep having children. | ||
| We have so many Mexicans. | ||
| We have so many people. | ||
| I have people that I work with. | ||
| Their visa is five years out of date. | ||
| And they're still here and tell me they can't go home to see their family because they can't come back. | ||
| Well, I said, why didn't you get it renewed? | ||
| So, I mean, they have choices. | ||
| They make wrong choices. | ||
| And no, everybody don't need to just come over here and be a U.S. citizen out of another country unless you have the legal rights. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Got it, Sherry. | ||
| And another thing that happened this week was the signal chat, a second signal chat of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sharing sensitive military information on that with his wife, his brother, and his personal lawyer. | ||
| And we have this on semaphore. | ||
| Top Democrat on House Intel Committee says Pete Hegseth is, quote, deeply out of his depth. | ||
| And we have a portion of that to show you. | ||
| This is House Intelligence Ranking Member Jim Himes expressing concerns about those allegations surrounding Pete Hegseth from Wednesday. | ||
| Not sure if we have it. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| We'll show it now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I don't think Pete Hegseth is up to the job. | |
| I think he's deeply out of his depth. | ||
| And that sounds like an attack on Pete Hegseth. | ||
| It's probably the hardest job in Washington. | ||
| I mean, it's the most complicated, largest, most sprawling bureaucracy, subject to all sorts of authorities and controls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, a genius would struggle to do that job well, and Pete Hegseth is not that genius. | |
| And so, you know, I'm not surprised by where we ended up. | ||
| You know, I know why he put up weapons, systems, and weather is good, 0800, MQ9. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, it's just, it's the kind of thing that, especially if you're a guy, you just, the testosterone flows. | |
| You know, it's sort of, it's self-validating. | ||
| But what worries me in a way, you didn't ask this question, but what worries me more about that maybe predictable thing is Mike Waltz putting it up on the first signal chat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know Mike very well. | |
| I respect Mike. | ||
| I trust Mike. | ||
| Mike was a Green Beret. | ||
| I mean, very few people in the government are trained with the discipline and the prudence and the care and the abiding by all protocols and procedures than Mike Waltz. | ||
| But what happens is when Mike Waltz gets into an environment where accountability is an abstraction, maybe optional, where the rules aren't clear, Mike Waltz starts a signal chat and inadvertently includes a reporter. | ||
| So I worry more about the context that can even warp a good, well-trained, disciplined person like Mike Waltz. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a little frightening. | |
| That was from Wednesday. | ||
| Also Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on Fox News talking about that story. | ||
| If you remember when this all started, the first go-around, because this is the second go-around, right? | ||
| They peddle old stuff, they kick it back up. | ||
| I said repeatedly, no one's texting war plans. | ||
| You know why I said that? | ||
| Because I'm in the bowels of the Pentagon every single day. | ||
| Just 10 minutes ago, I was looking at actual war plans of things that were ongoing or pending things to happen. | ||
| Because that's on a regular basis on classified systems. | ||
| That's my job for the warfighters, for the president of the United States. | ||
| I look at war plans every single day. | ||
| What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination and other things. | ||
| That's what I've said from the beginning. | ||
| At the beginning, it was left-wing reporters from the Atlantic who got a hold of it and then wanted to create a problem for the president. | ||
| This is what it's all about, trying to get at President Trump and his agenda. | ||
| Now, here at the Defense Department, because Brian, I want this to be very clear. | ||
| We take the classification of information very important. | ||
| It's very significant to us that we safeguard it. | ||
| And so when we had leaks, which we have had here, we did a serious leak investigation. | ||
| And through that leak investigation, unfortunately, we found some folks that we believe were not holding to the protocols that we hold dear here at the Defense Department. | ||
| Through that investigation, they have been moved on, and that investigation continues. | ||
| As a result of that, everything we do here is above board, trying to make sure that we safeguard information. | ||
| Back to the calls now for your top story of the week. | ||
| It's Joseph, Buffalo, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I got two points, and it's something where I don't see the media covering these stories. | ||
| One, it has to do about a Russian girl who was going to school here in the United States, where she had the right to talk about the criminal acts of Russia invading Ukraine. | ||
| She was taken away. | ||
| And if she's sent back to Russia, God knows what can happen to this poor girl. | ||
| She was taken away by who, Joseph? | ||
| I understand ICE. | ||
| The other one, it has to do about a whistleblower from the National Labor Relations Board. | ||
| I saw this on the Rachel Maddow show. | ||
| And what happened was, is this guy saw all this information being sent out outside that agency? | ||
| And within minutes, the Russians were trying to penetrate all that information. | ||
| He also had, he was a whistleblower, and he had this photograph of him walking his dog. | ||
| The photograph was taped to his wall, taped to his door, and it was from a drone. | ||
| And it's shocking with these two stories. | ||
| And I don't see this thing being covered by ABC, CBS, or NBC or anything. | ||
| So, Joseph, I did find this on PBS. | ||
| NLRB, that's National Labor Relations Board, whistleblower claims Musk's Doge potentially caused significant security breach. | ||
| I'll just read a little bit of it. | ||
| The NLRB protects workers' rights to organize and investigates unfair labor practices. | ||
| A whistleblower complaint filed by an IT staffer claims that Elon Musk and his Doge team gained access to sensitive data that could have led directly to a significant cybersecurity breach. | ||
| That's on PBS. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Well, that's only one little snippet of the media world. | ||
| I mean, we're talking the NBC, CBS, and I, you know, I just don't see it. | ||
| I don't see it in the newspapers. | ||
| So, and like I said, also with this Russian student in the United States. | ||
| And here's, sorry, one more thing. | ||
| Here's NPR. | ||
| More than 50 House Democrats demand answers after whistleblower report on Doge. | ||
| That was just yesterday on NPR. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was yesterday. | |
| Yep. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, at least something is happening. | ||
| All right, Joseph. | ||
| We'll talk to Scott next. | ||
| Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, Republican? | ||
| Scott, you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, can you hear me? | |
| Hi. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can hear you. | |
| I'm in Effingham, Illinois. | ||
| I'm not North Carolina. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| Anyways, I really need some help about the judicial system going on in this country. | ||
| I've got this gangbanger tattooed from neck to ankles, and he's 35 years old living with his mommy at 70 years old. | ||
| And I'm an old Vietnam veteran, and I'm going on the honor flight in June. | ||
| I'm going to be honored to visit D.C. and my buddy's on the wall. | ||
| Anyways, I went. | ||
| He's been after my life for 15 years. | ||
| And I called the cops. | ||
| I was mowing the yard Thursday, and he missed me on an e-bike about 30 miles an hour. | ||
| I was looking at the mower pushvower, and he almost ran me over. | ||
| So I called the police. | ||
| Two police officers told me to get a restraining order. | ||
| So I got the order, filled out nine pages of paperwork, went in front of a judge, and he told me denied. | ||
| I said, why, Your Honor? | ||
| He says, because you have to have documentation for 15 years that this guy's threatening your life. | ||
| And they said, both his father and brother are in prison, not jail, prison, and he's been in jail. | ||
| This family's bad. | ||
| Scott, why is he targeting you specifically? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I says, well, what you're telling me is I have to take matters into my own hands. | |
| He says that I'll see you in court. | ||
| You will go to jail. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| Scott, why is he targeting you specifically? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I had a construction company and he wanted to work and his brother, and they steal from people. | |
| They stole from my wife's grandma's guns from her brother. | ||
| They're just bad people. | ||
| And then they can't keep a job in this town. | ||
| And whatever. | ||
| But the thing is, I'm worried about my life. | ||
| I already had a big heart attack homo side. | ||
| I'm diabetic. | ||
| I got the Vietnam crap in me. | ||
| And he says to the cop, I said, I could have had another heart attack. | ||
| It was right there. | ||
| He almost hit me at 30 mile. | ||
| What's he doing on the road? | ||
| Came through my driveway onto the sidewalk. | ||
| They're not even allowed on the sidewalks, and yet he doesn't get in trouble. | ||
| And then the judge says, well, I'll set a court dating this. | ||
| I said, Your Honor, just go with your denial. | ||
| We'll just stick with that. | ||
| And he says, well, I hope I don't see you in court. | ||
| Well, I don't know what to do, so I'm asking the American people, please help me. | ||
| I'm just one case. | ||
| But I heard one woman, her son got beat up, stepson got beat up by the original father. | ||
| Documentation in the hospital and pictures, and they got denied. | ||
| What's going on in the judicial between right and wrong and common sense, people? | ||
| When I grew up, and it wasn't that long ago, it was respect for people. | ||
| We left the doors open in the house. | ||
| We'd leave our bikes in the front yard. | ||
| Nobody would steal them. | ||
| Now I got 100 locks on ladders, everything. | ||
| I just, you could tell I'm upset and I apologize to the country. | ||
| But if anybody could tell me what recourse do I have other than just, I just told the police, tell him to leave me alone. | ||
| That's all I wish to God. | ||
| I got five great grandbabies I'm taking care of before I die. | ||
| I don't know how long I'm going to be here, but that's okay. | ||
| I'm going to the hotter flight. | ||
| And let me say my respects to my buddy at the Toomini Unknown Soldier. | ||
| All right, and here's the line for Democrats in Orlando, Florida. | ||
| Donna, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| It's tough to do a top news story in these days, but I think a judge being arrested is the most horrifying. | ||
| Well, in addition to American citizens' children being deported, this administration is so corrupt and so frightening. | ||
| Every day there is a new top news story. | ||
| And where does it stop? | ||
| When will these people be held accountable? | ||
| How much further do we have to go arresting judges? | ||
| How much further do we have to go before Trump is stopped? | ||
| I'm very disturbed. | ||
| There's just so much. | ||
| There's so much. | ||
| And I'm old enough to remember a time when we didn't worry about our government every waking hour because we elected representatives who took care of things for us and the civil servants who worked for us quietly. | ||
| And now everything, it seems that he's trying to destroy everything and to what end except fascism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He just wants to be a king and he's not going to stop until the whole system is destroyed with the help of Doge and with the Republicans not standing up as they should. | |
| Shame, shame, shame. | ||
| And we have to keep taking, as citizens, taking to the streets. | ||
| But what good does this all do when he is never held accountable? | ||
| Someone needs to hold him accountable for something. | ||
| All of this is wrong. | ||
| It's just wrong, wrong, wrong. | ||
| But I thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| All right, Johnna. | ||
| And this is the story that she was talking about from NBC News. | ||
| Two-year-old U.S. citizen apparently deported, quote, with no meaningful process. | ||
| The judge says it says the child's mother was being deported and wanted to take the girl, U.S. lawyer said. | ||
| When the judge asked to speak to her, they were already in the air. | ||
| That's at NBC News, if you'd like to read more about that. | ||
| And this is Darren in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Darren. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, ma'am. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just have two problems here with like the young lady just spoke about. | ||
| Every morning and every week, it's always something new that's happening, and it seems like it's never going to end. | ||
| But here's one of my problems that I want to address. | ||
| I think we're already into a constitutional crisis when you see the Attorney General and ICE go arrest a judge. | ||
| Now, my question to them is: every attorney general in every state should arrest Elon Musk every time he comes to their state for this doge cyber attack that he's turning over Social Security and IRS information to Russia on personal information dealing with every citizen here in America that filed taxes and social security disabilities. | ||
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I served in the Gulf War and I fought a person like Saddam Hussein, sort of like with President Trump. | ||
| Now, President Trump is doing some great things. | ||
| I don't agree with everything he does, but I am in agreement with him getting these foreigners out of our country. | ||
| My second question is: I would like to see when the ICE is going to start going to these states like California and New York and arresting these be of the knees and Chinatown people. | ||
| I mean, we just can't be picking on one race of people. | ||
| We got a bunch of Chinese and Vietnamese in this country that need to be can check because they are very disrespectful. | ||
| They steal every day. | ||
| All right, Darren. | ||
| And here's Joe in Cromwell, Connecticut, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for accepting my call. | ||
| My thing is, everyone's complaining about the judge being arrested and that mayor. | ||
| How do you? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| Okay, the kid got arrested. | ||
| The judge, they investigated her, and he's living on the property. | ||
| He's doing work for her, and he is an MS-13 member, you know, gang member. | ||
| And I just don't know how that mayor can say that it was wrong what they did by, you know, intervening during court proceedings. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy. | ||
| They got proof. | ||
| They have evidence. | ||
| You're talking about Wisconsin, right? | ||
| Or New Mexico? | ||
| You know, there's two judges. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, both. | ||
| Well, the one that was holding that kid that was going up for whatever he was charged for, he was living on the property. | ||
| New Mexico. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was also. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| He was, I guess, seeing their daughter, and he is an MS-13 member. | ||
| Again, how could that mayor say it was wrong when there was evidence? | ||
| I mean, you know, MS-13, they're the other gang there. | ||
| Trendar Aragua, you're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| However, you pronounce that name there. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Well, we got it. | ||
| We got it, Joe. | ||
| That's all the calls that we're going to be able to take for today. | ||
| Want to let you know about the White House correspondence dinner and our coverage of it. | ||
| That's happening tonight. | ||
| C-SPAN will be live from the Washington Hilton for that dinner. | ||
| Various journalists are going to be recognized with awards for their work in the field. | ||
| President Trump and members of his administration will not be in attendance. | ||
| They declined that invitation from the White House Correspondents Association. | ||
| Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Cessno will join us in studio during the dinner to discuss the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll also give viewers a chance to call in and share their thoughts on the dinner and the president's decision not to attend this year. | ||
| Live coverage begins 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also watch on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Thanks everybody for watching. | ||
| We'll be back with you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | |
| Coming up Sunday morning, we'll look at the latest voter analysis and shifts in political polarization with the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman and Amber Duke, senior editor at the Daily Caller, talks about media coverage of the Trump administration and press access at the White House. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Tonight, C-SPAN will be live from the Washington Hilton Hotel for this year's White House Correspondents Association dinner, as various journalists are recognized with awards for their work in the field. | ||
| President Trump and members of his administration will not be in attendance after declining an invitation from the White House Correspondents Association. | ||
| Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Cessno will join us in studio during the dinner to talk about the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll also give viewers a chance to call in and share their thoughts on the dinner and the president's decision not to attend this year. | ||
| Our live coverage begins at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also watch on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| This is a strange and ugly year in politics. | ||
| There's a lot of name-calling out there. | ||
| Candidates calling out terrible epithets like corrupt, liar, hypocrite, fascist, racist, incumbent. | ||
| After all, I believe in the First Amendment. | ||
| Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, beginning at noon Eastern, hold on to your Lily Whitebuts. | |
| Join us for a marathon as we look at past White House Correspondents Association dinners with presidential remarks. | ||
| Mike Devers in his book said that I had a short attention span. | ||
| Well, I was going to reply to that, but what the hell, let's move on to something else. | ||
| I have actually shown up here for eight straight years. | ||
| Looking back, that was probably a mistake. | ||
| Relive the jokes, the jabs, and other memorable moments. | ||
| On this special evening where politics and humor collide. | ||
| I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. | ||
| Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a show. | ||
| Watch our marathon of past White House Correspondents Association dinners beginning today at noon Eastern on C-SPAN 2's American History TV. | ||
| Obama out. | ||
| C-SPAN. | ||
| Democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| Oh, you think this is just a community censor? | ||
| No, it's way more than that. |