| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Well, coming up this morning on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live. | |
| And then we'll look back at President Trump's trip to the Middle East with Brian Cotullis, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute. | ||
| And then Politico's Grace Yarrow will join us to talk about House Republicans' budget proposals, including cuts to SNAP and other related news. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Saturday, May 17th. | ||
| This week, the House Budget Committee failed to advance the GOP's reconciliation package after a handful of deficit hawks looking for steeper spending cuts voted against the multi-trillion dollar legislation. | ||
| Also, Moody's rating service downgraded the U.S.'s creditworthiness, citing an increase in the federal government's debt and rising interest payments. | ||
| And President Trump is back in the U.S. following a four-day trip to the Middle East that focused on trade and economic deals. | ||
| Those are just a few of the stories C-SPAN has been following. | ||
| And for the first hour of today's program, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines: Democrats, 202-748-8,000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us. | ||
| We'll get to your calls in just a few minutes, but first, wanted to give you more information on one of the stories I just mentioned, and that is the House Budget Committee failing to advance the budget proposal from Axios. | ||
| It says Friday after Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team were unable to bring several Republican opponents on board with the measure. | ||
| It says why it matters. | ||
| It says why it matters. | ||
| It's a major setback for Johnson and President Trump on the marquee tax and spending cut legislation, which the speaker said he wants to pass by Memorial Day. | ||
| The panel rejected the bill by a vote of 16 to 21. | ||
| It says that Representatives Chip Rory of Texas, Ralph Norman, Andrew Clyde of George, both of Georgia, and Josh Breachen of Oklahoma joined all of the panel's Democrats in voting against the measure. | ||
| Yesterday, during the discussion about the bill, it was Representative Chip Roy who was explaining his opposition to the bill. | ||
| Here's a clip from that. | ||
| This bill falls profoundly short. | ||
| It does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits. | ||
| The fact of the matter is, on the spending, what we're dealing with here on tax cuts and spending, a massive front-loaded deficit increase. | ||
| That's the truth. | ||
| That's the truth. | ||
| Deficits will go up in the first half of the 10-year budget window, and we all know it's true. | ||
| And we shouldn't do that. | ||
| We shouldn't say that we're doing something we're not doing. | ||
| The fact of the matter is, this bill has backloaded savings and has front-loaded spending. | ||
| Nowhere near the Senate budget top line, by the way. | ||
| The Senate budget top line of $6.5 trillion, which, by the way, is what we were pre-COVID, inflation adjusted on interest, on Medicaid, I'm sorry, on Medicare and Social Security. | ||
| And if we would reform Medicaid, we could actually get to the core of the problem. | ||
| But we refuse to do it. | ||
| And I'm not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory when this is the budget committee. | ||
| This is the budget committee. | ||
| We are supposed to do something to actually result in balanced budgets, but we're not doing it. | ||
| Look at what happens under deficits. | ||
| By the way, this chart includes growth. | ||
| This chart demonstrates economic growth. | ||
| And right here, what do you see? | ||
| Baseline and the orange columns are the deficits under the House budget, assuming growth. | ||
| Only in Washington are we expected to bet on the come that in five years, then everything will work. | ||
| Then we will solve the problem. | ||
| We have got to change the direction of this town. | ||
| And to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, yes, that means touching Medicaid. | ||
| It went from $400 billion in 2019 to $600 billion this year. | ||
| It'll be over a trillion in the 2030s. | ||
| We are making promises that we cannot keep. | ||
| We do need to reform it. | ||
| We need to stop giving seven times as much money to the able-bodied over the vulnerable. | ||
| Why are we sticking it to the vulnerable population, the disabled and the sick, to give money to single, able-bodied male adults? | ||
| We shouldn't do that. | ||
| We should reform it. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| That message needs to be delivered to my colleagues on this side of the aisle, too. | ||
| We are writing checks we cannot cash, and our children are going to pay the price. | ||
| So I am a no on this bill unless serious reforms are made today, tomorrow, Sunday. | ||
| We're having conversations as we speak, but something needs to change, or you're not going to get my support. | ||
| More on that vote from Roll Call. | ||
| It says that the House Budget Committee plans to try again Sunday night to advance that reconciliation package. | ||
| It says that within hours of the budget panel's 16 to 21 vote rejecting the bill earlier Friday, Chairman Jody Arrington of Texas called for a second session on Sunday at 10 p.m. | ||
| The announcement came shortly after promising members they could spend the weekend with their families and that the panel wouldn't reconvene until Monday morning. | ||
| That is just one of the stories C-SPAN has been following this week. | ||
| If you would like to call in and talk about your top news story of the week, the lines Democrats 202-748-8,000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We will start with Andrew in Sterling, Virginia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Andrew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I think my top story of the week is the fact that our grifter-in-chief, the con man-in-chief, the most corrupted president we've ever had in office, was looking to get a free $400 million aircraft from Qatar. | ||
| Now, this is the same guy who, along with Republicans in Congress, are looking to take away and make drastic cuts to Medicaid, to SNAP benefits, to any kind of subsidies to keep Obamacare in place. | ||
|
unidentified
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The end result is millions of Americans will suffer because of the insanity of the Republicans and Donald Trump in office. | |
| Millions of children will get sick, possibly die. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| The Republicans really don't care. | ||
| All they care about is their big donors, their corporate sponsors. | ||
| Those are the only people that they give a damn about. | ||
| This country is going down and it's going down quick. | ||
| Those people who voted for Trump, whether they be Democrat, Independent, Republican, you thought that the price of eggs and bacon were bad. | ||
| Wait till the next couple years when you are drastically hit by that Trump tax cut. | ||
| I'm sorry, That Trump tax that's going to be placed on everything coming in from China and from overseas. | ||
| You people will suffer. | ||
| You guys will end up living basically in your car. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's go to Linda in Canton, Ohio, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Linda. | ||
|
unidentified
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Morning. | |
| I have a very odd idea. | ||
| I don't think anybody will go for it. | ||
| But to solve this whole budget problem, you have to start with the way we elect people. | ||
| First off, these PAC, where people can give an enormous amount of money and not tell who they are, is a problem because you don't know who is backing who. | ||
| I would like to see where everyone has to report what they're giving and who they are. | ||
| The other thing is, for every elected office, there should be a limit of how much money can be spent or given in their name for that office they're applying for. | ||
| From a local up to state, county, Congress, president, come up with a number and say, okay, this is what you can use to try to get elected. | ||
| Let's see you budget that money and how you can use it to get yourself elected. | ||
| And then we'll know if they can actually do a budget. | ||
| I mean, I have to do a budget. | ||
| It's not very much that I have to work with, but I have to, and I live within those means. | ||
| I know lots of people that do it. | ||
| I know lots of people who like to use the credit cards, which is nothing's wrong with it. | ||
| But at the end of the month, they don't pay it off. | ||
| So then they're paying more and more and more interest. | ||
| And that's what our country's doing. | ||
| So we've got to start with who's being elected to see that they can budget. | ||
| That was Linda in Ohio. | ||
| Dahlia in Miami, Florida, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Dahlia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What I would like to talk about is about the tape that came out yesterday of the interview of President Biden with her. | ||
| I would like to know who was in charge for the last four years. | ||
| We didn't have a president. | ||
| We don't even know who was making decisions. | ||
| It was obvious to everyone that he had dementia and he had it well at bands. | ||
| And I would like to ask Democrats who was in charge for the last four years. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| That's Dahlia in Florida. | ||
| Anna in South Windsor, Connecticut, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Anna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| As far as President Biden goes, anyone who can remember dates, try it. | ||
| Try it like that and see how you do. | ||
| But I call in on to say that I declare Mr. Trump to be an all in your face in the open, friendly presidential terrorist of America, friendly American terrorist. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Anna in Connecticut. | ||
| Rob in Tampa, Florida, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm calling about Trump. | |
| I believe that we're in trouble because of him. | ||
| Okay, Rob, do you want to tie that to your top news story of the week? | ||
| That's what we're talking about this first hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, about deficit, right? | |
| Whatever your top news story is. | ||
|
unidentified
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My topic is deficit. | |
| So what is going on with that? | ||
| He's not for the people, the poor, the struggling. | ||
| Carried. | ||
| I mean, he's really corrupt. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Rob in Florida. | ||
| Margie in Louisiana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Margie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I was just watching the budget hearings, and they mentioned $184,000 was spent on illegals and Medicare of California, but they're not talking about all of the ICE people that are getting rid of all of those illegals. | ||
| So there should be $184,000 available for Medicare in California. | ||
| My top story, of course, would be the $440 million airplane that Trump should not receive. | ||
| That if it comes to the United States, then that would be all right. | ||
| That was Margie in Louisiana. | ||
| Let's go to Rich in North Carolina, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Rich. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| Doing well, Rich? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought you'd be the Supreme Court decision. | |
| I think it undercover is that they're decided that police officers will only use split-second decisions in order to shoot people or to execute a longer spot. | ||
| And that has to cover the entire case, what happened and what occurred before and after. | ||
| Which I think is very chattering. | ||
| I hope they get enough coverage. | ||
| I think she fans should probably have a topic on that. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Rich, I'm sorry, we're having a hard time hearing your audio. | ||
| Why don't you try to go ahead and give us a call back? | ||
| Another one of the stories we have been following this week was yesterday's announcement from Moody that they are downgrading the U.S. credit rating. | ||
| It says this article from Politico says that Moody's rating service on Friday said it's downgrading the U.S.'s credit worthiness in a response to an increase in government debt over the past decade and rising interest payments and a blow to the Trump administration that could push up borrowing costs. | ||
| It says the downgrade, which puts the U.S. one notch below the highest credit rating, was mainly driven by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending, and relatively low revenue generation. | ||
| That's what Moody's said about their decision. | ||
| It says the fiscal outlook has not improved since the firm put the federal government on notice in November of 2023 that it was at risk of losing its pristine reputation as a borrower. | ||
| The article goes on to say that Moody's is the last of the three major credit rating firms to say the U.S. is no longer qualifies for the highest level of credit worthiness. | ||
| Fitch lowered its ratings for the U.S. debt in 2023, while Standard and Poor did so much, did so more than a decade ago following an 11th hour showdown over raising the debt ceiling. | ||
| That decision comes amid other economic news, including one that was announced on Monday, President Trump announcing reduced tariffs for 90 days in a deal with China from Fox News Business. | ||
| Says that the U.S. and China announced on Monday that tariffs against one another will be reduced for a 90-day period after officials held trade negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland. | ||
| It says the tariffs President Donald Trump announced against China on April 2nd are being cut by 24 percentage points for this temporary period while retaining the remaining invalium rate of 10 percent that was announced according to a joint statement. | ||
| It says that China agrees to the same stipulations, adding that it will adopt all necessary administration measures to suspend or remove the non-tariff countermeasures taken against the United States since April 2nd. | ||
| It was also on Monday that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to that announcement of the trade deal. | ||
| Here is his statement: On tariffs, early this morning, it was reported that Donald Trump caved to Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party with virtually nothing to show for American workers. | ||
| Donald Trump has changed his mind once again on his tariffs with a new deal with China to pause most tariffs for 90 days. | ||
| Sadly, it looks like China has once again gotten the better of Donald Trump. | ||
| They've hardly had to give up a thing. | ||
| It's another example of Donald Trump's chaos. | ||
| Trump has one policy for his tariffs on one day, a different policy the next day. | ||
| One day he's pretending to be a tough guy with China. | ||
| The next day he's caving to China and getting little, if anything, in return. | ||
| Who knows what Trump tariff policy will be in the next 90 days? | ||
| If I were a business person, I wouldn't count on what he's doing or what he says today. | ||
| That might be. | ||
| That probably won't be in effect in the next week or the next three weeks. | ||
| And even under this deal, tariffs are still significantly higher than they were before Trump's Liberation Day. | ||
| Businesses will continue to struggle. | ||
| Supply chains will continue to experience chaos, strain, and unpredictability. | ||
| And again, this is only a 90-day pause. | ||
| It's impossible, as I said before, it's impossible to predict what will happen next, even within the 90-day period, because Donald Trump changes his mind so quickly. | ||
| Whatever seems in front of him at the moment, he goes for. | ||
| First, he's mad at China, puts in the tariffs. | ||
| Then he gets lots of blowback, backs off. | ||
| Where will he be tomorrow? | ||
| Who the heck knows? | ||
| But businesses can't count on any reliability, only on chaos. | ||
| Donald Trump's trade war is a lose, lose, lose for American families and businesses, leaving them with increased costs and more chaos. | ||
| For this first hour, we are hearing from you on your top news story of the week. | ||
| You can give us a call. | ||
| You can also send us a message on social media or send us a text. | ||
| This coming in from Barb in Longrove, Illinois. | ||
| She says the top news story of the week is the House vote and the defeat of the Trump budget bill. | ||
| It is very encouraging to see more Republicans voting against tax breaks for the wealthy. | ||
| Let's hear from Jim in Tucker, Georgia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning, Tammy. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I have two stories that are tops. | ||
| First is going to be the weather. | ||
| I mean, I've been watching Fox What my local Fox affiliate has a nice weather channel that I get over the air. | ||
| And they were on all last night talking about tornadoes and extreme weather up in Kentucky and in the Ohio Valley. | ||
| And that's, you know, we're going to, I think, start seeing a lot more of that. | ||
| And in addition to all that, all the storms, the heat, the heat that's in the southwest. | ||
| And my friend who lives in Los Angeles was saying last week it was 90 degrees, and it's 1st of May. | ||
| So I think that the weather is a significant news story. | ||
| And tied with that would be this aircraft deal that Trump has made. | ||
| I mean, oh my goodness. | ||
| Your first caller said it very, very well. | ||
| I mean, this Donald Trump guy is just really, really bad news for us. | ||
| He's definitely a train wreck of a president. | ||
| And I just can't see how Republicans keep nominating people like this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just astonishing. | |
| I have to say that the Republican Party has really gone off the rails. | ||
| And lately, but even before that, I mean, they were the ones who wanted to have all these Mexican folks come in for cheap labor, going back in the 50s and 60s, I would say. | ||
| And now that they have their cheap labor, they're saying, oh, it's all the Democrats' fault. | ||
| And I just have to say, Republicans, they don't have any memory. | ||
| They just go on and blather and blather. | ||
| And anything they say, it just doesn't make any sense. | ||
| And so I applaud Mr. Schumer's remarks about how Trump's tariffs are really no good for anybody in America. | ||
| So those are my two top stories. | ||
| Jim, let me ask you about your first top story, the weather. | ||
| Where in Georgia is Tucker? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you close to the suburb of Atlanta? | |
| It's a suburb of Atlanta. | ||
| So basically Atlanta, but it's a suburb. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You'd mentioned hearing about tornadoes and hurricane season starting in a couple of weeks. | ||
| Just wanted to know if you were in a coastal area. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, I'm safe. | |
| I do have a brother who is down in Florida. | ||
| He's dodged at least one bullet, one hurricane so far. | ||
| But yeah, those folks that were in Tampa a couple of years ago, the devastation that they received from that hurricane that came through the Gulf, man, it was, I think it was maybe south of Tampa. | ||
| But wow. | ||
| Yeah, the weather is newsworthy, but I don't hear a lot of it on the mainstream news, and I would like to hear more of it. | ||
| That was Jim in Georgia. | ||
| Alan in Michigan, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My top issue would be the deficit and the tax bill that the Republicans just come up with. | ||
| The last guy was exactly right. | ||
| I mean, these guys are a train wreck from the top right on down. | ||
| I go back to Obama. | ||
| All we heard from the Republicans for eight years was how spending was driving us bankrupt, deficit, deficit, deficit, while Obama was trying to pull us out of the hole that the Republicans put us in. | ||
| And then we go to Trump, who come up with this tax plan that we know for a fact added $3 trillion to our debt. | ||
| And then they complain about Biden for four years, spending, spending, spending. | ||
| And now we've got Trump back in there, and they want to add $4 trillion to our debt to pay for a tax plan that didn't work the first time. | ||
| How does that make sense? | ||
| Okay, Republicans, please wake up. | ||
| These idiots from Trump write on down our entire government is ignorant. | ||
| Please wake up. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| That's Alan in Michigan. | ||
| Larry, Norwich, Connecticut, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm really shocked at some of these comments from some of these people. | ||
| You know, being a Republican, this is what's wrong with our country. | ||
| I voted for Democrats being a Republican. | ||
| I voted for Mr. Clinton. | ||
| I voted for Obama one term. | ||
| I vote for the person. | ||
| But when you say, well, you can't say that President Trump has done at least one good thing for our country, then you know that they're lying about everything. | ||
| He has the guts that no other president, Republican or Democrat, to try to get tariffs for the other countries, every single country, to stop ripping off the American people. | ||
| He's trying to do good things for the American people. | ||
| I'm not saying he's perfect, but at least he's trying to do some different things that nobody else had the guts to do. | ||
| He goes to the Middle East. | ||
| He's trying to make peace under that other president's war, war, war, war, war. | ||
| If you can't say one good thing about President Trump, then you're lying about everything. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's go to Larry in Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Or I'm sorry, let's go to William in Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how you doing? | |
| Doing well, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I want to agree with the last caller just called in. | |
| At least the president is trying to do something about the tariffs that's been going on. | ||
| And people just don't realize how much the tariffs have been stealing from the American people. | ||
| And I've been saying it for years and years. | ||
| When I was overseas in Germany, I spent 35 months, 18 days there, and I've never seen an American car dealership the whole time I was there. | ||
| But yet you could buy, when I was there, you could buy a fancy BMW in Germany for $10,000. | ||
| Then I come home and the same car was $10,000 there with $30,000 here. | ||
| And people can't see something wrong with that. | ||
| There's something wrong. | ||
| I think the president is doing a good job. | ||
| At least he's trying to do something more than the rest of them just sitting in there doing their terms. | ||
| You got people been doing terms, been in there since the 60s. | ||
| I think they need to put term limits and get them people out of there still living in the 60s and the 70s. | ||
| Let the young people get in and try to try something new and help America. | ||
| William, President Trump had a busy week in the Middle East. | ||
| Was there anything that he did while he was over there that caught your eye? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he did a good job. | |
| He's trying to make peace over there, get away from all of this. | ||
| Everybody want to get involved with each other in the country trying to take over. | ||
| I think he did a good job. | ||
| He did something a lot of presidents don't even think about because he's not a one thing about he's not a politician. | ||
| He's trying to do stuff that politicians should have been trying to do years ago, but nobody else had nerve enough to try to do it. | ||
| That was William in Florida. | ||
| And one of our earlier callers, Dahlia, brought up a story about newly released audio of former president, now former President Biden, and some having to do with memory lapses. | ||
| This is from Axios. | ||
| Says amid long, uncomfortable pauses, Joe Biden struggled to recall when his son died, when he left office as vice president, what year Donald Trump was elected, or why he had classified documents he shouldn't have had, according to audio axios obtained of his October 2023 interviews with special counsel Robert Hur. | ||
| It says the newly released recordings of Biden having trouble recalling such details while occasionally slurring words and muttering shed light on why his White House refused to release the recordings last year as questions mounted about his mental acuity. | ||
| Here is a clip of that newly released audio from that October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hurr. | ||
| I hadn't at this point, you know, I'm at Penn I hadn't walked away from the idea that I might run for office again if I ran again and be running for president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so what was happening though, once Bo dying, God may 30 years 2015, was it 2015 and died? | |
| It's 2015. | ||
| I'm not sure the months are buddy goes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's right, Mr. President. | ||
| And what's happened in the meantime is that as Trump gets elected in November of 2017, is it 16, 2016? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So 2017, that's when he left office in January of 2017. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But that's when Trump gets worn in. | ||
| And in 2017, Beau had passed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this is personal. | |
| More from that Axio story. | ||
| It says the audio surfaces as Democrats and the national media are grappling with the legacy of Biden's White House and campaign hiding his decline as he ran for another four-year term at age 81. | ||
| It says Democratic leaders have struggled this week to respond to reports about a new book on that topic, Original Sin, by Axios's Alex Thompson and CNN's Jake Tapper that will be released on Tuesday. | ||
| Just about 30 minutes left in this first hour of today's Washington Journal asking, What's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Let's hear from Ann in Missouri, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ann. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have two comments. | |
| One of them is I totally agree that they should have to show every donation that they have from anyone when they're running. | ||
| The second one is the Supreme Court saying, okay, we need to try all these people, give them fair judgment. | ||
| We're spending $17,000 and something to arrest one person. | ||
| Then we're spending $164 a day, according to what I understand, to house them. | ||
| Do you know how many people of Social Security, disability, and stuff don't even make $17,000? | ||
| And yet, no, we're shoving the money to these illegals. | ||
| Why can't we just march them out of the country? | ||
| Why do we have to house them a luxury when people can't even afford food and housing? | ||
| People are being moved out of their houses in the United States because they have such little money while we luxurize the places we're putting all these illegals. | ||
| The Supreme Court, in my opinion, made a very bad decision. | ||
| These people, if they're proven guilty, should be kicked out of the country as fast as a plane can fly. | ||
| That's my comment and thank you, and I really enjoy your program. | ||
| Now is Ann in Missouri. | ||
| Let's go to Gilbert in Alabama, line for independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Gilbert. | |
| Yes, good morning, deceased fans. | ||
| I'd like to echo the sentiment of one of your previous callers about the weather. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As we speak, the National Weather Channel says that over 700,000 people are out of power. | |
| And in the St. Louis area, over 18 people have been killed and over 500 structures damaged or destroyed. | ||
| The point is, this president, he knows everything, and he banned FEMA, the National, the Federal Emergency Management Association. | ||
| All this destruction and devastation that's across this country is going to be left out there for the brothers to come and clean up, I guess. | ||
| And on another note, I would like to, Walmart is saying that they're going to up their prices. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And every other store in America, they're going to follow suit, according to the syndicated talk radio. | |
| It seems as if America has become a country for the rich only. | ||
| But this thing about the weather, can you imagine 10 years, five years from now, you pass by a place that had a devastating tornado and you got rubbish piles here? | ||
| It's the worst thing ever happened in this country when the president banned FEMA from having the support of the people, the people having the support of FEMA. | ||
| It's a bad day in America. | ||
| And we all stand to lose. | ||
| It's sickening. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Gilbert in Louisiana. | ||
| Also in Louisiana. | ||
| Catherine, lying for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Catherine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| First, I'd like to say I don't think President Trump has done anything for the country other than enrich himself and his family. | ||
| Secondly, I would like to say, why is my tax dollars going to a parade for his birthday, a $400 million parade, just so he can look important? | ||
| I think that's ridiculous. | ||
| And he's also just totally doing what he wants to do. | ||
| He's not following the laws. | ||
| He's ignoring the Supreme Court. | ||
| I think this man should be kicked out of office totally. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's Catherine in Louisiana. | ||
| Tom in Ohio, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I listened to Schumer there talking for a couple minutes, you know, and I never heard him say one thing that was good about anything about Trump, and he kept saying the same things over and over and over. | ||
| If it wasn't for Trump, he probably wouldn't have a job. | ||
| I'm so sick of these people trying to separate this country. | ||
| And news media drive along with them. | ||
| They are constantly trying to cut each other up. | ||
| I spent two hitches in the military. | ||
| I'm 85 years old. | ||
| You had a president in there for the last four years. | ||
| Didn't know who he was hardly. | ||
| And you're bitching about. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Tom in Ohio. | ||
| Janet in East Freedom, Pennsylvania, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Janet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I've just been reflecting on what your previous callers had to say, and it seems as though there are some still on the Trump Kool-Aid, and that's unfortunate. | ||
| But I agree with the callers about the issue being the weather. | ||
| I live in central Pennsylvania, and we have never had storms like this where there's tornado threats weekly in May. | ||
| It's alarming. | ||
| And the fact that we're going to drill, baby, drill, reverse environmental regulations, and take away money from NOAA so that our weather reports can be accurate and timely is disturbing. | ||
| My other issue this week is the fact that I guess American companies have committed to exporting our artificial intelligence killing machines around the world. | ||
| And I don't understand how that's going to benefit anybody, let alone Americans. | ||
| So maybe somebody could explain that to me. | ||
| And one more thing before you. | ||
| The thing about the jet, the way I see it is it's a 21st century Trojan horse. | ||
| Thank you, America. | ||
| That was Janet in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Let's hear from Stuart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Stuart. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing this morning? | |
| Doing well, Stuart. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I want to correct one of the gentlemen. | |
| I want him to look back at history and see what all wars were started under a Democrat or Republican. | ||
| To my history, most 80% of the wars were started under a Republican. | ||
| And I would like to say, I don't see most of those deals, President Trump went over to the Middle East for said he signed. | ||
| We don't know if those deals are going to come through. | ||
| This is something they're saying. | ||
| People got to start watching closely what Republicans are doing, Tony. | ||
| That's what I say. | ||
| And I thank you. | ||
| There's Stewart in Louisiana. | ||
| Let's hear from Patrice in Spartansburg, North Carolina, or South Carolina, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Patrice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Glad Rising. | |
| So glad to see that a majority of the people are waking up. | ||
| I always, when I call in, I like to remind everyone that the news media is the number one weapon that's been used against we the peak. | ||
| Okay, my topic, my favorite topic for the week is witnessing President Trump take down the democracy. | ||
| America has always been, always been a republic, constitutional republic, by the founding fathers, which was Moore's. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We are witnessing war-mongering countries change to peace, corrupt lawmakers in Congress, as well as judges being taken down, and propagandist guys as news journalists. | ||
| President Trump promised us that the news media will be the last to go, and that's what we are witnessing, folks: the takedown of a corrupt America changed to a constitutional republic, which it has always been. | ||
| We just got hijacked by a democracy under a wrong judgment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Patrice in South Carolina. | ||
| Wanted to follow up on a story that Ann, one of our earlier callers, brought up. | ||
| This is in this morning's Washington Post. | ||
| The headline: High Court Holds Back on Wartime Act powers. | ||
| It says the Supreme Court on Friday kept a block on the Trump administration's use of a rarely invoked wartime power to deport migrants in northern Texas and said administration officials had not given those targeted for removal last month sufficient time to challenge their deportations. | ||
| Says the justices called the detainees' interest, quote, particularly weighty because of the risk of removal to notorious mega prison in El Salvador, where the migrants could face indefinite detention. | ||
| Goes on to say that the justices had told the administration in early April that it must give targeted detainees sufficient notice within a reasonable time and in such a manner that they can challenge their removal in the jurisdiction where they are being held. | ||
| It was after that decision was announced yesterday that President Trump responded on Truth Social. | ||
| He first posted, The Supreme Court won't allow us to get criminals out of our country. | ||
| And a short time later, another post saying the Supreme Court has just ruled that the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even those who are mentally insane who came to our country illegally are not allowed to be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive legal process, one that will take possibly many years for each person, and one will allow these people to commit many crimes before they even see the inside of a courthouse. | ||
| The result of this decision will let criminals pour into our country, doing great harm to our cherished American public. | ||
| It will also encourage other criminals to illegally enter our country, wreaking havoc and batum wherever they go. | ||
| The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do. | ||
| Sleepy Joe Biden allowed millions of criminal aliens into our country without any process. | ||
| But in order to get them out of our country, we have to go through a long and extended process. | ||
| In any event, thank you, Justice Alito and Thomas, for attempting to protect our country. | ||
| This is a bad and dangerous day for America. | ||
| That ruling from the Supreme Court came at the same time that a judge pressed the federal judge in Washington pressed the Trump administration to identify its efforts to return Kilmar Obrego Garcia and others, other Venezuelan men who were deported to El Salvador. | ||
| Yesterday, after that court ruling or court update, it was a legal representative for Arbrego Garcia giving an update on the effort to bring him home. | ||
| Here's a clip from that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As has been the case over the last few weeks, where the Supreme Court ordered the government to release and return Kilmer, as we have seen over these last few weeks, it was the same thing. | |
| The government being absolutely just being very clear that they had done nothing to comply with the court's order. | ||
| And so, you know, being in there was very encouraging, however, because you could clearly tell the judge was not buying it. | ||
| The judge was not buying it, and none of us will buy it, right? | ||
| But again, because of the nature of the arguments that the government is making, some of those last remaining arguments need to be made in secret, so to speak. | ||
| And so the public portion is over, and now they are having the remaining arguments in camera with the judge. | ||
| It is expected that at the beginning of next week, the judge will issue an order. | ||
| From the questions that she was asking and the way in which the hearing was going, even though it seemed very clear that she was not buying the government's argument, it appears that she will likely give the government one more chance, right, for them to actually produce something of substance. | ||
| But it is yet to be seen exactly what she will order and the timeline within which and the timeline she will set, right? | ||
| So we can expect to see that beginning of next week. | ||
| And as I keep saying, the fight continues. | ||
| The fight continues, period. | ||
| One of the statements that were made was: the government is delaying for the sake of delay, right? | ||
| With no end in sight. | ||
| And one of the most encouraging things the judge was saying, which made clear that she is not going to let this go much longer, was that at this point, the government's saying, yeah, we can't share some of these things because they're privileged, but they have no proof. | ||
| They're not explaining how and why those things should be considered privileged. | ||
| So the judge said, really, you're asking me to just take your word for it. | ||
| And that's not how it works, right? | ||
| So we should expect to see a decision from her at the beginning of next week that sets even more clearer specifications, right? | ||
| And a quick timeline as to when the government should submit critical information that allows lawyers in this case to know how to proceed to continue fighting to bring Kilmer back. | ||
| About 15 minutes left in this first hour, asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Bruce in Charleston, South Carolina, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just want to address a couple of things. | ||
| Donald Trump, who I grew up in New York with, I live in South Carolina now, was always a grifter who was always at the top of the headlines and always on radio and Howard Stern's buddy and all that. | ||
| And he is one of the most masterful magicians this country will ever see. | ||
| America doesn't understand, not the Republican Party, I'm talking about the Trumplican Party. | ||
| These people who are die-hard Trumplicans, they don't understand while he's watching you, the shiny objects in the room, he's switching everything that you believe and love in. | ||
| He's taking away all the health care eventually. | ||
| And you don't believe it because he tells you it's not so. | ||
| Well, Trump lies continuously, and I'll give you an example. | ||
| Mexico will pay for the wall. | ||
| He'll show you his tax returns when he's elected. | ||
| And on and on and on, I can go through a list, but I'm not going to have the time. | ||
| I just want to say, when you talk about immigration, no Democrat is for illegal immigration, just like no Democrat is for. | ||
| Not all Democrats are for abortion. | ||
| Most Democrats are not for abortions without limits. | ||
| They're lies. | ||
| They're not evil. | ||
| I've got family that are Democrats, friends, lawyers, accountants that are Republicans, I'm sorry. | ||
| And they believe. | ||
| These folks, these billion people believe in Trump. | ||
| But here's the deal. | ||
| He's going to wind up eventually having to take away your Second Amendment, not just your First Amendment, not just your, I think it's the 14th Amendment. | ||
| He's going to need your guns because autocrats, when they finally get what they want and they shut the government down, the army's on their side, they will need your weapons. | ||
| And you're fighting against, you know, duplicates. | ||
| Once that's thrown out the window, my friends, my family, my friends who I'm talking to as well, as Americans, he's going for your guns. | ||
| And let me know how that sits with you in the end of the day. | ||
| And that's what I have to say. | ||
| Let's go to James in Rome, Georgia, lying for independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| What Trump is doing is totally legal under this corrupt constitution where black people was three-fifths of a human being. | ||
| You know, it can be interpreted any kind of way you want to. | ||
| Democrats, when they get in power, they could do the same thing. | ||
| Biden could be doing it. | ||
| Biden could have actually did something to Trump because that imp that amnesty that they gave, that immunity, total immunity, under your duties, you can do anything. | ||
| This is what the Supreme Court said. | ||
| This is the reason why Mitch McConnell and Republicans were so concerned with stacking the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is going to have the final say on all these district court and appeal court issues. | ||
| And the reason why all these immigrants are over here, I want you to pull it up, is because of Ronald Reagan allowed open borders and immunity to 10 million of them, allowed them just pour in here. | ||
| And that year he won 49 states. | ||
| And Trump is going to be back to the end because this is the white privilege president. | ||
| And the white privileged president are giving these privileges to poor white people who has nothing in common with Trump. | ||
| But they want to feel special. | ||
| And what is actually going on with the Democratic Party? | ||
| You are going to lose again because you're not doing anything to help the base. | ||
| Trump brought South Africans over here. | ||
| Elon Musk is a South African, one of the most racist countries in the world, apartheid. | ||
| They brutalize our black people the same way Germany did. | ||
| The Nazis, they got that the way black people were being treated over here in the United States. | ||
| That's where it came from. | ||
| Up under the Constitution, we have never been equal. | ||
| You have never had rights. | ||
| And the Democratic Party is worried about these immigrants. | ||
| Pretty soon, you're going to lose all of the black vote. | ||
| And when you do that, this country is through. | ||
| Do not start talking about celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States because it is no longer a democracy. | ||
| It actually has never been. | ||
| Because what was happening to black people, it was dead up under the Constitution, slavery. | ||
| The Dred Scott decision. | ||
| This Supreme Court is corrupt. | ||
| That Constitution is obsolete. | ||
| And what needs to be happened is just Trump needs to show America what a Democratic president could actually do. | ||
| If he get in office and had some balls, he could do this. | ||
| South Africans, they're giving them. | ||
| Fire point, James. | ||
| We'll go to Tiny and Berkshire, Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tiny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| My top is the birthright citizenship and also the illegal immigrants. | ||
| I don't see how the Supreme Court can say that they have a right to be judged when they're illegal immigrants. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I don't see how we have, our tax dollars have to go to defend someone that came in here illegally. | |
| Yes, they're not legal. | ||
| Just the same way Biden allowed them to come in, but at least they're giving them a plane trip out. | ||
| And the birthright citizenship, it was the 14 Amendment was for the Negro people. | ||
| They went and fought in wars to be free. | ||
| And when they first came back, they made them slaves again. | ||
| They went and fought again to be free. | ||
| But everything that the black people has fought for, the Negro people, passing Martin Luther King, you want to give it away. | ||
| The black people is giving it away. | ||
| They do not have a civil right because they're not American. | ||
| And the birthright citizenship was for the people that came over here in shackles and chains, not for someone that walked across a border and you put them in a $300 a day motel and give them money. | ||
| No. | ||
| They were seas and rivers traveling here. | ||
| But yet you're taking away the rights that for the black folks, what they call themselves, the black people, the Negro. | ||
| The Negro civil rights bill was for the slave people. | ||
| I got your point, Tiny. | ||
| Tiny, talking about a Supreme Court oral argument that C-SPAN covered this week from the USA Today, it says Supreme Court on May 15th wrestled with whether to let President Donald Trump broadly enforce his changes to birthright citizenship as courts considered whether those changes are constitutional. | ||
| It says the justices seemed to pose tougher questions to the Trump administration's lawyers than to lawyers for states and immigrants' rights advocates challenging Trump's executive order. | ||
| But they also probed whether there's an alternative to the national injunctions the district courts have issued, which put the order on hold while it's being litigated. | ||
| The article goes on to say that Justice Elena Kagan said the government was trying to avoid a high court ruling on constitutionality while denying citizenship to children born to parents who are undocumented immigrants. | ||
| It says federal district judges across the United States have ruled the policy will likely be found unconstitutional when it is fully litigated. | ||
| So in the meantime, while the cases play out in court, Trump cannot enforce it. | ||
| Those oral arguments happened on Thursday. | ||
| Here is a clip of Justice Elena Kagan questioning U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer. | ||
| If we can't do it by a universal injunction, because you say Article III doesn't permit that, Article III wouldn't permit us to give a universal injunction, even if we rule, why don't we grant CERT before judgment so that all of these parents would have a firm Supreme Court decision that they can take where? | ||
| Because you're saying nobody can grant a universal injunction. | ||
| No party has asked for that in this case. | ||
| I think one reason is that would deny the court of the benefit of percolation and multiple lower courts of a novel, excessive, and important constitutional question. | ||
| We have no novel courts who've percolated this issue and said you're violating precedent. | ||
| Not only precedent, but the plain meaning of the 14th, of the Constitution. | ||
| Respectfully, I think what we have are lower courts making snap judgments on the merits that ignore the fundamental principle of the 14th Amendment, that it was about giving citizenship to the children of slaves, not to the children of illegal immigrants who really were not even very discreet class at that time. | ||
| And that's why we're talking about Congress who argued against the 13th Amendment just because of that. | ||
| Some people who argued against passing the amendment just because of that, because it would give citizenship to gypsies. | ||
| I think the relevant history of the 14th Amendment is the statements of Senator Trumbull, who emphasized that domicile was the key criteria. | ||
| And he said that in a letter to Andrew Jackson, and we've found our vice circumstances. | ||
| We can go into the history of citizenship, but I still go back to my question. | ||
| You claim that there is absolutely no constitutional way to stop, put this aside, to stop a president from an unconstitutional act, a clearly, indisputably unconstitutional act. | ||
| That was Justice Sonia Sora Mayor, not Elena Kagan, questioning U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer during those oral arguments on Thursday. | ||
| If you missed them or would like to rewatch them, you can find them on the C-SPAN website. | ||
| Just a few minutes left. | ||
| Let's hear from Kim in Columbus, Ohio, lying for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Kim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, so I've been watching, I work for DHL, but I've been watching a lot of people losing their jobs. | |
| Lots of them. | ||
| And I don't think we're adding them all up, but what I get the last count was $7 million and something. | ||
| I think you better watch. | ||
| And also, he shut down FEMA. | ||
| Hurricane season is coming, guys. | ||
| So you have to figure out how you're going to get your house back in order on your own. | ||
| People who got partners, we can just move. | ||
| You better figure it out because it looks like things get really, really bad for us. | ||
| And the last thing I want to say is: I've seen the farmers, and I see that they're bringing the South Africans over and they get ready to take the white farmers' farms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, make it make sense to me. | |
| What is going on? | ||
| And I'm going to get off the phone, but I'm telling America, you better wake up. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| That was Kim in Ohio. | ||
| David in Wisconsin, lying for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a lot of top stories. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| There's a lot of top stories that are going on out there. | ||
| I just actually wanted to come back to the one thing you said, Tammy, was in reference to that Moody's, you know, downgrade the SP Standard Poor's and Fitches downgraded back, I think it was during Obama years because of the problems that were going on down back then. | ||
| But Moody's, I mean, to put this in perspective, I mean, when you were putting those numbers out with growth, you know, decreased growth, well, yeah, we're shipping all of our jobs overseas. | ||
| We're seeing less growth here. | ||
| You know, we're not producing it. | ||
| You know, that probably is a big reflection on both parties, but mostly Democrats. | ||
| The entitlement programs, the increase in entitlement programs, again, that's primarily going to be Democrats because that's just really, really costly. | ||
| And unfortunately, someone's got to pay for that. | ||
| And that person is going to be the people that are laborers, the workers, and like your person in Texas said, the female, it's us slaves that are actually paying for those entitlement programs. | ||
| And then the interest payments going up on our debt, you know, they went up threefold when you have 2% interest rates on government debt that goes up to 7% to 9%. | ||
| That was all a direct reflection of the Democrats. | ||
| Democrats, and it's just going up more and more from that point. | ||
| So that was one of the big topics. | ||
| The other one that you might want to read to your listeners is with Reuters. | ||
| And Reuters came out and talked about the $20 billion money given for solar panels to China. | ||
| And now Reuters just came out with a report that those solar panels have kill switches in, as well as some other listening devices. | ||
| So kill switches to shut off all of our electricity in the event of a war. | ||
| So that's really nice that we give all of our money to China, which is what the Democrats are proposing, while the Republicans are saying, bring all that back here and that innovation and let's have us do it so we can monitor and make sure we're not going to have a kill switch that allows China to come and take our countries over. | ||
| So Democrats, stop the lies, listen to your other constituents, and hopefully you will love your family, friends, and neighbors, which again, you do not. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's David in Wisconsin. | ||
| And our last call for this part of the program is DJ, Brock, Texas, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, DJ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Hey, well, first I want to point out it's kind of funny how callers on the Democratic line just come in and bash on Trump. | ||
| They don't stick with the topic that we're talking about, which is the news of the week. | ||
| My topic for the news of the week, I would have to say, I was starting to think at the beginning of the week it was going to be Trump in the Middle East and everything he's accomplished in just a few days where it would take our government during my lifetime weeks, if not months, most likely years to accomplish, which he had done in just a couple of days. | ||
| It's quite astonishing and it's historical. | ||
| And I think that was going to be the big news until I saw this clip of Biden and her audio clip. | ||
| Now, my question to you is: what was that, a four, four, three, or four-minute clip that you're reporting on? | ||
| That clip is the same clip everybody is reporting on. | ||
| Can you back that up and play the four minutes prior to that clip so that we can have a full spectrum of what the conversation really was about? | ||
| Because the conversation had nothing to do about the recollection of dates at all. | ||
| But if you can back it up for everyone, let's play the four minutes prior to that clip you're reporting on. | ||
| Can you do that? | ||
| DJ, we are out of time, but you can find those clips online. | ||
| Axios has several of them on their YouTube channel. | ||
| That does it for our open forum. | ||
| If you didn't get in, we will, or for our first hour, if you didn't get in, we will have open forum later in the program. | ||
| You can try to give us a call back. | ||
| And also later this morning, Politico, Food, and Agriculture Policy Reporter Grace Yarrow will discuss House Republicans' budget reconciliation proposals, including cuts to SNAP. | ||
| But next, Middle East Institute Senior Fellow Brian Catoulis joins us to discuss President Trump's Middle East trip. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, Holocaust survivors speak at a remembrance ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945. | ||
| The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted the event at the U.S. Capitol. | ||
| Tom Hanks' immersive the Moonwalkers film on the Apollo missions to the moon and the astronauts who walked its surface. | ||
| Mr. Hanks co-wrote the script and narrated the film. | ||
| And on lectures in history, University of Texas history professor Mark Lawrence on the rise of Ronald Reagan, his impact on the conservative movement, and the Reagan administration's performance in his first term. | ||
| On the presidency, presidential historian Lindsay Chervinski talks about First Ladies Abigail Adams and Betty Ford, both known for their independence of thought and as political advisors to their husbands. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 6.30 p.m. Eastern, NPR international correspondent Emily Fang shares her book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, where she reports on individuals in China who are pushing back against efforts to control free expression. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Columbia University's John McWhorter talks about the use and evolution of language and argues that the current controversy over pronoun usage in America is largely overblown in his book, Pronoun Trouble. | ||
| At 9.15 p.m. Eastern, Steve Olson, author of Eruption, recalls the volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington on May 18, 1980, which resulted in the deaths of 57 people. | ||
| Then, at 10 p.m. Eastern on afterwards, University of Michigan law professor Leah Littman explains why she believes the Supreme Court isn't making rulings based on legal principles in her book, Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. | ||
| She is interviewed by author and Nation magazine justice correspondent Ellie Mistal. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss President Trump's Middle East trip is Middle East Institute senior fellow Brian Catoulis. | ||
| Brian, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great to be with you. | |
| I know you've been on before, but remind our audience about your organization, the mission, who you work with, how you're funded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are the oldest institute focused on U.S. relations with the Middle East. | |
| We were founded in 1946. | ||
| We're at .edu, so you can see all of our work on the website, mei.edu. | ||
| We do two main things. | ||
| We try to educate the American public about what's going on in the Middle East through policy, but also through arts and culture. | ||
| We have a wonderful library. | ||
| We're headquartered here in Washington, D.C., so anyone who comes and visits D.C., come see our art gallery out front. | ||
| So it's a place where we just try to offer independent analysis. | ||
| We're funded by a multiplicity of different donors, governments, corporations, foundations, but it's the diversity of the funding that makes our voice independent. | ||
| And there was a lot for your organization to follow. | ||
| This week, President Trump made his first planned foreign trip of his second term visiting Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. | ||
| Explain why this trip was important to the administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first, I don't know about you. | |
| I think it was nice to see President Trump out of the country for a few days in his happy place. | ||
| He was there primarily for one main reason, which was to cut economic deals with these countries that are quite wealthy for America, but also for his family, business, and people around him. | ||
| And he's doing this at a time, as we all know, he did a lot of damage with his tariff wars and the trade wars with China. | ||
| There's a lot of uncertainty already, just two, three, four months into his new administration. | ||
| So his main goal was to bind America's economic fortunes more closely together with what are the economic powerhouses in the Middle East. | ||
| That's important geostrategically because in this context of where the United States is competing with China and their different centers of power, the Middle East is increasingly seen as this arena for geopolitical competition on high tech, on energy, on investments. | ||
| And I think that was his primary goal. | ||
| There were a couple other things that are going on in the Middle East, as often happens these days, Iran, the Israel-Palestine question. | ||
| Those things were in the quiet discussions. | ||
| The public facing was about all of these deals. | ||
| And there were headlines pretty much daily about the deals that were coming out of the trip. | ||
| Overall, what is your assessment of the success of President Trump's trip? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, from a public relations standpoint, it was very, very smooth. | |
| And I think the thing that we as analysts need to look for is what do these deals actually entail? | ||
| When will they be implemented? | ||
| Because if you recall, President Trump eight years ago went to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and he announced a flurry of deals in 2017. | ||
| And if you look back on some of those deals, a lot of those things actually weren't fully implemented. | ||
| And part of the reason why we have such a big number, and the White House is touting $2 trillion. | ||
| If you look underneath the hood, it's quite likely less than that. | ||
| And some of these deals were already in place. | ||
| But the bigger point is how will these be implemented on the different sectors? | ||
| There's a $142 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. | ||
| White House says it's the largest. | ||
| These sorts of things take years if they move forward at all. | ||
| But very successful in doing that for America. | ||
| But then let's not forget there's something quite unusual going on here with this presidency, which is you've got a president who still has his own family business. | ||
| His sons and others are cutting deals before, during, and after that they financially will benefit from these discussions. | ||
| And we'll talk about the plane that Qatar has offered to him. | ||
| So it's quite different. | ||
| We've never seen anything like this. | ||
| And I hope the debate that started in Congress amongst Republicans and Democrats continues about this because it's a key part of how Trump is outside of the box here. | ||
| But it should raise questions about whether our leader should be doing this. | ||
| Our guest for the next 35 minutes or so is Brian Catoulis, Middle East Institute Senior Fellow. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We talked about the priorities and goals for the Trump administration. | ||
| Talk about what the countries he visited got out of it. | ||
| What were they hoping for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they've been for years trying to get reassurance from the United States after a decade where the United States was quite unclear about whether it was going to stay in the region or leave. | |
| And a lot of that discussion was the product of the U.S. being in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years in the military engagement, a lot of the questions about Israel-Palestine and other things. | ||
| They wanted reassurance, and they got it, I think, with these economic deals that the United States is going to have their back. | ||
| They'll be bound together, not only economically, but with armed support as well. | ||
| But the thing they'll, I think, continue to do, and I noticed this, I go to the region about once a month, about a month into the second Trump administration, what I heard was a subtle hedging against the United States as well. | ||
| So they see the United States as the strategic partner of choice, but they also see the United States as being very erratic and uncertain these days. | ||
| The politics, the divisions between Democrats and Republicans, but then importantly, the tariff war. | ||
| So I think these countries will continue to get as much as they can out of these economic deals, the military support, but they'll also continue to hedge in their relationships and diversify, build stronger ties with India. | ||
| For sure, they're going to continue to build stronger ties with China and even Russia. | ||
| And it's a function of just this complex multipolarity. | ||
| It's not a unipolar moment anymore. | ||
| These countries are looking to make sure that their own interests, economic and security, are guaranteed, and they don't see the United States as reliable as it used to be. | ||
| We will talk more about some of the business deals and developments that he interests that he made while he was over there, but wanted to get our audience, bring them into the conversation. | ||
| We'll start with Paul in Long Island, New York, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking the call. | |
| This gentleman that I'm listening to here, you know, what's interesting is he's focusing on what this trip has done for the Trump family. | ||
| He's made, in his opening statement, he really got away from the real purpose of the trip for our country and relations with the Middle East and began to focus on this benefit for the Trump family. | ||
| And I just have to call into question that kind of tactic by someone who so-called represents a diverse group of people in his institute. | ||
| You can really see his bias. | ||
| So I think someone needs to call him out. | ||
| Hey, that's a great comment, Paul. | ||
| I actually think if you listen carefully with what I said, I talked about the economic benefit that the United States could stand to gain at a time when there's been a lot of uncertainty here. | ||
| But I think we need to call it like we see it, which is there are two things going on here at once, simultaneous. | ||
| And I don't think it's a partisan issue. | ||
| It's just noting things that Republicans in Congress and Democrats in Congress have actually noted as well. | ||
| But I appreciate your perspective, and it's great to hear from you. | ||
| Let's hear from Richard in San Diego, California, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is, as these people come on, you know, and they want to talk about Trump and his family and different things. | ||
| Why can't we just let Trump be Trump and do what he's doing for America? | ||
| Why don't we give him a little time here? | ||
| I mean, he's been in office for a short time, really. | ||
| Let's give him a little time here, see how these things work out instead of these experts like this guy here thinks he is on Trump and his family and all that. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| The Democrats have nothing to talk about. | ||
| They have nothing, nothing to talk about. | ||
| So my question is, why would you do that? | ||
| Why don't you just come out and say, hey, the United States is better off than we was yesterday? | ||
| Richard, because it's my view, and I lived in the region and worked there and go quite frequently, is that it's not clear that we're better off. | ||
| I think, yes, it's good that we've got these deals. | ||
| The key point that I said was let's see what's implemented here. | ||
| Let's see importantly how this benefits American workers, American farmers, and how that racks and stacks up against a lot of the things that the Trump administration has done on the trade and tariff war front with relations with China, Canada, other countries too. | ||
| So, yes, it's early. | ||
| Let's wait and see. | ||
| But we need to see, as we saw in 2017 when President Trump went to the region, many of these things that are announced sometimes are not fully implemented. | ||
| And we need to have a clinical balanced analysis. | ||
| And we just need to call it like we see it. | ||
| And this is an area that you are an expert in. | ||
| You've spent a good portion of your career in this region, researching and working in this region. | ||
| Tell us a little bit more about the work that you've done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So I started about 30 plus years ago living and studying in the region. | ||
| I was in Egypt. | ||
| I was on a Fulbright scholarship in Jordan when we had those things. | ||
| Those things were cut in the last few months midstream. | ||
| And then I worked for about three, four years in Jerusalem, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Egypt. | ||
| But most of my career has been living in the region, studying and listening to people from the region, talking to leaders, and doing research that aims to inform the best choices that the United States can make in this part of the world, from the Iraq War to the Arab Spring to everything that was going on and has been going on with Iran. | ||
| Let's hear from Eva in Mississippi, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Eva. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling. | ||
| But first of all, I want to say this, what I did here on the news, and I want you to get out there. | ||
| Our president has stopped all transportation that the employees have going to VA and they left them stranded last Monday. | ||
| Nobody's put this on the news. | ||
| They left the workers stranded. | ||
| They ride the van. | ||
| He took the van service from them. | ||
| And also, they have a rip coming up, which I don't see anybody talking about it. | ||
| But yeah, I'm talking about Trump being over there. | ||
| He don't need no plane. | ||
| We need money right here. | ||
| We need money where these people houses are down. | ||
| So we don't need anything for that. | ||
| He didn't do anything, but still wouldn't have a good time with his family. | ||
| But I'm going to say this again. | ||
| You know, that's what I wanted to say this morning. | ||
| Thanks, Eva. | ||
| I mean, it's a concern we've heard for a long time with many presidents, not just Trump, but Republicans and Democrats, that perhaps the United States has been doing too much overseas. | ||
| And this is the interesting feature about what President Trump in his second term is trying to do. | ||
| He has essentially said that foreigners are taking advantage of America. | ||
| We're trying to keep some of them out in his immigration policy. | ||
| And we're also trying to get others to pay more in deals like the ones that he's trying to cut here in the Middle East. | ||
| What I'm saying is let's watch and see whether that actually benefits Americans and whether when you look at his full agenda and you look at the big debate Washington is about to have about the budget, whether this benefits working class Americans. | ||
| It's still early, as one of the callers, earlier callers pointed out. | ||
| But we should all watch carefully about each of these moves and how both the domestic policy moves, the things that you talked about, transport workers and people stranded, add up with what we're doing overseas and look at the bigger picture. | ||
| Ray, Tennessee, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I question this gentleman. | ||
| He's saying a lot of things, but he's showing no facts. | ||
| He's not showing where he's found this out. | ||
| And You should have this man on six months or later on after we can see what happened. | ||
| He's on spouting things that is in the future. | ||
| Nobody knows what's in the future. | ||
| At least Trump is trying to get things settled down. | ||
| I'm a Republican, but I see things both sides. | ||
| How can we look at these two presidents, Biden and Trump? | ||
| Biden didn't get nothing. | ||
| He just took everything down. | ||
| Trump is trying to clean up his mess. | ||
| So guys like this need to come on and wait till the proof comes out. | ||
| And then we'll see. | ||
| But you just can't spout all stuff without facts. | ||
| Well, that's your view. | ||
| And I love hearing it, Ray, and I love your great state of Tennessee. | ||
| If you look at the work we do at Middle East Institute and you look at my work online, one thing I do is a quarterly assessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East, including a report card with grades. | ||
| I did this for the Biden administration, and I'm doing it now. | ||
| The first report for the Trump administration was just released. | ||
| You can find it online. | ||
| And I think you'll see that I was a tough grader both for the Biden administration and now with Trump, I have high expectations that I hope he delivers on these things because it's important for America to actually set its economy straight, but it also is important not to get involved in endless long wars and costly ventures like we had for 20 years after 9-11. | ||
| So, but I really appreciate you tuning in and hearing your perspective. | ||
| One of the announcements made while President Trump was in the Middle East was lifting sanctions on Syria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| He made that announcement on Tuesday. | ||
| I want to play a clip of that and get your response on the other side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Syria with the crown prince, your crown prince, and also with President Erdogan of Turkey, who called me the other day and asked for a very similar thing, among others and friends of mine, people that I have a lot of respect for in the Middle East. | ||
| I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I | |
| do for the crown prince. | ||
| The sanctions were brutal and crippling and served as an important, really an important function, nevertheless, at the time. | ||
| But now it's their time to shine. | ||
| It's their time to shine. | ||
| We're taking them all off, and they're going to have, I think they're going to have based on the people and the spirit and everything else that I'm hearing about. | ||
| So I say, good luck, Syria. | ||
| Show us something very special like they've done, frankly, in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| Okay, they're going to show us something special. | ||
| Very good people. | ||
| Remind us about the sanctions that were on Syria and also what it means for President Trump to shift the approach to adversaries saying there are no permanent enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This move was the big move for the Trump administration in the Middle East and it was unexpected. | |
| It was a surprise and I think it's very important first and foremost for the Syrian people. | ||
| On the sanctions, the sanctions that the United States has had in place on Syria have been there for decades and for multiple reasons. | ||
| But first and foremost, Syria under the previous government, the Assad regime that was ruled by Bashar al-Assad and then previous to him, his father, Hafas al-Assad, aligned with terrorist groups and groups like countries like Iran that back terror. | ||
| So many of the sanctions were due to that. | ||
| Some of the sanctions were due to the brutality of the regime against its own people. | ||
| This was a regime during the Civil War that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people. | ||
| So there were all of these sanctions, and that regime fell in December at the end of the Biden administration. | ||
| And the Biden administration quickly went to Damascus and set a framework for engaging with the new de facto government. | ||
| And what's happened here in this often in our sort of partisan divisions, we often ignore some of the consistency between two different administrations. | ||
| It took the Trump administration a few months to make this decision, but they said we're going to lift these sanctions in part because our friends in Saudi Arabia and the UA and others want to actually help the Syrian people and this new de facto government. | ||
| Even though the head of the government is a man named Ahmed Ashara, who has a past that links him to al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, and groups like this. | ||
| For the Middle East, this is a huge move in part. | ||
| And some in Israel won't like it because of their concerns about the nature of this new government. | ||
| But the idea is here to lift these sanctions to give this new government and the Syrian people a chance to make their life better economically. | ||
| Now, to be clear, I don't think the U.S. is going to be doing much inside of Syria because it's an impoverished country. | ||
| What it does is it aids those rich countries in the region who want to do more. | ||
| It removes those blockades. | ||
| And it matters a lot. | ||
| Last thing I'd say on this, in the context of Iran. | ||
| Iran used to lean heavily on the former regime in Syria that was thrown out in December to actually threaten Israel, to present threats to the broader Middle East. | ||
| In the chessboard of the Middle East, helping the Syrian government stand on its own and be independent from Iran, I think is an important move. | ||
| And again, gold star, A-plus for the Trump administration in making this move. | ||
| There is some risk with it because it's this leap of faith that this new government and the people will use the resources that they're going to get to the best of their ability to stand on their own. | ||
| And to the point you made about it being a surprise, a headline from CBS News says Trump's decision to lift Syria sanctions took Treasury staff by surprise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it took not only Treasury staff. | |
| There's a senior advisor in the White House on counterterrorism, President Trump's top counterterrorism guy, Sebastian Gorkha. | ||
| Right before the trip, he did an interview on a Saudi TV program, A Shark, with a correspondent named Hibben Nasser. | ||
| He was very critical and negative of Ahmed Ashara, essentially saying once a terrorist, always a terrorist, and voicing his own skeptical views, his own views. | ||
| And this is telling. | ||
| It shows you how the Trump administration operates. | ||
| It operates in this way. | ||
| It follows the leader. | ||
| When the leader changes his mind, the staffers, no matter what they've said in the room, they're going to follow and implement. | ||
| And that's why it was such a bold stroke. | ||
| Was unexpected, but I think it was prompted mostly by these quiet discussions I talked about that Trump had. | ||
| Not the business deals and the commercial deals that we saw in public, but the quiet discussions that are ongoing with the partners in the region that essentially said we need to try our best here to help Syria stand on its own. | ||
| Let's talk with Marlene in Brooksville, Florida, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Marlene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Yes, I'd like to ask a guest. | ||
| You may have said, but I didn't quite get it. | ||
| Who funds him? | ||
| Like he said, he's lived over there in that vicinity for quite a few years and stuff. | ||
| And also, I wanted to know what projects or what research projects is he working under for Biden and Trump. | ||
| I didn't quite get that either. | ||
| And is he working for a university or what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we're an independent think tank and research center. | |
| And you can look at all of our work at the website MEI.edu. | ||
| I also have a twice-a-month podcast with officials and former officials that have served in the Trump administration, in the Biden-Obama administration across the board. | ||
| Our funding comes from foundations, from private individuals, corporations, some governments, but the key here is that, again, it's a diversified set of funding. | ||
| We're not dependent on one versus the other. | ||
| So we can call it like we see it. | ||
| You can agree or disagree, as we do in our democracies here in America, have different perspectives. | ||
| So what we try to do is prompt a sharper, sort of deeper debate about the Middle East based on our knowledge of the region and visits to the region. | ||
| I was just earlier this month for about a week in the Sultanate of Oman, which is playing an important role in the talks that Trump is doing with Iran and trying to understand and fill in the gaps on programs like this or in our work that we put out publicly that people may have some questions about where we're going in that part of the world. | ||
| David in Flemington, New Jersey, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you. | |
| I'm grateful for this opportunity to express my opinion. | ||
| My conundrum with the anti-Israel protest is that I believe, and I even see this on the callers, that about half of the people who have protested the brutality in Gaza and the brutality of Benjamin Nett and Yahoo authentically are for human rights as they would be in any situation. | ||
| But anything involving Jews always becomes a vehicle for people who are chronically anti-Semitic. | ||
| And basically, anti-Semitism is a mental illness that many people suffer from, and it's being studied as such now. | ||
| But it becomes a vehicle. | ||
| Anything that can be associated with Jews becomes a vehicle for anti-Semites. | ||
| And I think you can also see the differential treatment of Jewish students versus South Asian students on our campuses. | ||
| South Asian students aren't having to take refuge from being attacked because they're South Asian because of the actions of the Indian government. | ||
| But Jewish students have had to live in fear. | ||
| And the solution is to really start studying anti-Semitism as the mental illness it is. | ||
| And I'm deeply grateful for your letting me express these opinions. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks, David. | ||
| I'm glad to hear that. | ||
| And I'm disturbed as well by what we've seen, not just after the October 7th attacks against Israel by Hamas and how this prompted a debate, but the response that Israel has taken in Gaza and this ongoing debate, not only in college campuses, but in our society. | ||
| And my wish is that we would all take a pause and try to listen to all of the different sides and understand the concerns, the security concerns, the problems that are out there in not only Israel and Gaza, but also here and how it's refracted in our debate and listen to each other and see each other's humanity from across the broad spectrum. | ||
| So thanks for calling in from Flemington. | ||
| New Jersey is where I met my wife in graduate school. | ||
| I have a deep place in my heart for it. | ||
| And you made an important point there about anti-Semitism. | ||
| It's something that we all need to counter in everything that we do. | ||
| Edward in Leavenworth, Kansas, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Edward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question for your guest. | ||
| So MBS has Khashoggi murdered, body chopped up, remains put in acid and poured down the drain. | ||
| I just want to ask, yes, why would Trump go and hopknob with a murderous regime like Saudi Arabia? | ||
| That's the question. | ||
| Thanks, Edward. | ||
| Thanks for calling all the way in from Kansas. | ||
| So what I would say is it wasn't just Trump that's been meeting with Mohammed bin Salman. | ||
| In essence, our last three, four presidents, Joe Biden, when he was president, went in the summer of 2022. | ||
| And then before him, Trump went, of course, in 2017. | ||
| And then Barack Obama went in 2016. | ||
| And Biden went after this murder of Khashoggi took place. | ||
| There were other abuses of human rights actors and others. | ||
| And I think it's born out of a sense of pragmatism that Saudi Arabia is a huge economic country, a member of the G20, a key producer of oil. | ||
| Biden went, I think, in large part in 2022 because the price of oil and gas had spiked due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. | ||
| So he understood that we needed to have stable relations with a country like Saudi Arabia. | ||
| And we Americans, I think, have an allergy, understandably, to monarchies. | ||
| We were born out of a revolution against monarchies. | ||
| And some of these monarchs and a lot of the leaders in the Middle East actually do things that are deeply offensive to our values. | ||
| But when you're the president of the United States, whether you're President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden, you also have to take into consideration all of these other factors we talked about earlier. | ||
| America's position in the world, who we're relating with in the competition with China, the stability of oil prices that impact all of us at the gas pump. | ||
| So it's a tough job. | ||
| I wouldn't want it. | ||
| I wouldn't want to be the president of the United States, but you've got to balance all of these considerations. | ||
| My worry, which comes through, I think, in your question, is that we don't talk nearly enough about human rights and values and democracy in other places. | ||
| And then increasingly we have some challenges here at home. | ||
| And I hope that your question reminds us all that this needs to be part of that complicated debate when we talk about how the United States relates to countries like Saudi Arabia where we need to partner with them on certain things, but we also feel some gaps in certain fronts on values and how they've done things, like you mentioned, to that journalist. | ||
| Thanks for calling in. | ||
| I wanted to ask you about another big headline that came out of President Trump's visit. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Trump says, U.S.-Iran close to a nuclear deal. | ||
| What do we know about this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, this is another big surprise. | |
| And in that report card report I mentioned that I put out on the first three months of the Trump administration, the highest grade I give him is on the Iran front. | ||
| And again, people debate the grade that I give, but I'm quite surprised and pleasantly surprised in a good way that he sent, Trump sent his top Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and then other members of his team pretty rapidly to go and have talks with Iran. about its nuclear program. | ||
| Iran, as we know, there was a nuclear deal in place in 2015. | ||
| President Trump pulled back from that in 2018 and it's been moving headlong towards getting the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Could be just weeks away. | ||
| So these talks are very pivotal if we want to avoid nuclear arms race. | ||
| Now, there are multiple mediators. | ||
| Trump sent a letter through the United Arab Emirates to Iran. | ||
| Iran decided actually to respond through Oman. | ||
| This is the country I was there just a week or so ago meeting with some of their top leaders and people involved in these discussions. | ||
| There's sensitive discussions. | ||
| They want to keep them close hold. | ||
| But the fact that there's discussions and Trump is choosing the path of diplomacy for now as opposed to military means, he has sent more bombers to the region. | ||
| He's hearing from the Israelis, deeply concerned that these talks may not make them feel secure. | ||
| But I think it's a good thing. | ||
| And Trump towards the end of this trip, and again, this trip was about commercial and business deals, but they transacted a lot of important geopolitical things behind the scenes. | ||
| And he hinted that they're even closer than ever to get a deal. | ||
| So like I said on the Syria decision he made, which I think Gold Star A plus, important, a lot of work to follow up on. | ||
| If this deal looks, shapes up in a way that secure, feels, it makes countries in the region, especially Israel but the Gulf states, feel secure about the fact that Iran is not moving quickly to a nuclear weapon, that's a very good thing. | ||
| And if we do it, also avoiding war, most definitely. | ||
| So I hope he succeeds here. | ||
| You can find Brian's work as well as the report card that he has mentioned on the Middle East Institute's website. | ||
| That's mei.edu. | ||
| Let's hear from Jose in New York, New York, Line for Independence. | ||
| Hi, Jose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How you doing this morning? | |
| We're doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Jose. | |
| How you doing, sir? | ||
| I'm just going to state a few things. | ||
| With the Republican Party, it seems like they have a way of repeating the same thing Trump and his administration like to repeat talking points, right? | ||
| But there's no real deal. | ||
| And him going out there and saying we're trying to make a deal, get a deal, the word deal, it's always deal, deal, deal. | ||
| When in reality, they're chopping and cutting and doing everything they can here in this country here. | ||
| And what people don't seem to realize is that this country's in trouble because this administration only sees money. | ||
| And I don't know why people can't see that. | ||
| It's all about the money. | ||
| Follow the money. | ||
| Whoever got the money, he's friends with. | ||
| But people are playing our president like a hob because they know he likes to be praised and things of that nature. | ||
| But in reality, he signs anything they put in front of him as long as he thinks it's a deal. | ||
| And it's no deal. | ||
| He don't even read his briefs. | ||
| He don't even read the stuff he's signing. | ||
| This whole administration came out of nowhere, but these people have been planning this for years. | ||
| But there's no deal in anything, not in the terrorists. | ||
| Jose, we'll get a response from our guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jose, are you Mets or Yankees? | |
| I know they got the big subway series. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| We lost Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We lost Jose. | |
| I'll have to guess. | ||
| Thanks for calling in. | ||
| Look, you highlight a concern that many people have. | ||
| And I'll respond in this way. | ||
| The fact that Trump went to three of the leading economies of the Middle East, I think, was noteworthy. | ||
| It's part, as I was saying earlier, of his economic statecraft and trying to bind them together. | ||
| But the region, the Middle East today, is a tale of two regions. | ||
| There are countries that are very wealthy and rich, like the ones he went to, and then there are places like Syria, which we talked about, but the Palestinian territories, Gaza, where there's starvation breaking out because of this horrible conflict, and Yemen. | ||
| And my hope is that the people of the region, the leaders of the region, try to use their oil wealth in ways that benefit the people of the region that are left behind. | ||
| And that's what I think is happening in Syria. | ||
| And, you know, there are downsides, as I highlight it, to the way that President Trump operates with the blurred lines between his own corporation and his family business interests and the government. | ||
| We should debate that. | ||
| Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Congress are already raising these things. | ||
| We should keep this front and center because I do think there's some potential benefits from the commercial economic business deals that President Trump has announced for Americans. | ||
| There's follow-through, but we also should be deeply concerned about high-level influence peddling, other foreign governments trying to actually push their agenda through the most senior levels of the U.S. government here. | ||
| This is quite unusual and different than we've ever seen before. | ||
| Let's talk with Jeff in Rochester, New Hampshire, New Hampshire, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, guys. | |
| This question is for Brian. | ||
| Now, Brian, your Institute, I lean on it quite heavily when I talk about the Middle East. | ||
| And you said something earlier that I found fascinating. | ||
| You know, when we look at these monarchs, these very strong governments in the Middle East, how do you recommend the diplomatic corps from the United States where they look at it as uncertainty? | ||
| How do you have the diplomatic corps explain the diverse nature of our country, the democratic tendencies of our country, and certainly the constitutional purviews of our country that they, quote, look at as uncertain, but yet are still very, really important for us here in this country? | ||
| How do you recommend the diplomatic corps navigate that conversation so they better understand some of the difficulties we have in these diplomatic deals? | ||
| Yeah, Jeff, it's a great question. | ||
| And what I would answer is it's diplomats, but it's also citizens and independent groups like ours, the Middle East Institute, who are constantly in conversations with people trying to understand, help them understand the complexities of our system. | ||
| I remember in November, just after our elections, I was on a visit to the Middle East and I was explaining the Electoral College to a top leader, a foreign minister in one of the and one moment that really I think was hard for a lot of our partners in the Middle East to understand was what happened on January 6th, 2020, when there was a violent attack on the Congress and people were really concerned about it. | ||
| That came up again when you saw in the opening hours of the second Trump administration, the pardoning of a lot of these people and the debate that we have. | ||
| And here's the thing that I think we just try to explain and help people understand the nuance and help them understand that despite some of these divisions, we've heard some of these divisions from the callers, different perspectives, that when America, when the sum total of America comes together and when we actually can find agreement on different things, we can do great things, Republican and Democrat, together. | ||
| This was done despite sort of the partisan sniping in the media and our politics under Trump, under Biden, and I'm sure it will happen in Trump 2.0. | ||
| And I think it's a bit of a culture shock for some of these countries that are very top-down and they know who the one leader is, and sometimes that leader has been there for decades. | ||
| But I think they still see the United States as the strategic partner of choice, despite all of our flaws and everything out there in an open. | ||
| So thanks for calling in, Jeff. | ||
| We have one last call for you, Diana in Connecticut, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Diana. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| Yes, I have kind of a question and statement. | ||
| First of all, you had made the comments that Trump was doing this for his own personal gain for his businesses, but didn't he have executives from all different businesses like Elon Musk and the Apple people and wanted to help with them. | ||
| And my other question, my other comment had to do with Biden. | ||
| I don't know if they ever had any comment or any show in which they talked about Biden getting $2 million from Communist China when he was a vice president. | ||
| And nothing from what I can understand, nothing was said about that. | ||
| But my primary question was about getting gifts for everyone, not just for himself. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| So on the first point, yes, this trip by Trump in many ways was like a trade mission. | ||
| We brought the titans of industry to talk with the Saudis, with the Qataris, with the Emiratis about the deals that were already in place and things that will come as well. | ||
| What I'm saying is that in addition to that, while I was out in the region right before this trip, the president's son was signing deals for luxury hotels and the peace envoy's son was involved in cryptocurrency deals. | ||
| So all of this has happened and yes, what you said about Biden happened as well. | ||
| And yes, I think there was a lot of talk about it in our politics and congressional hearings and things like this. | ||
| And that's just the nature of our democracy. | ||
| And all I'm saying is the sum total of these visits, I hope it benefits the United States. | ||
| I think it might economically. | ||
| I hope it benefits ordinary workers. | ||
| For certain, when you look at the deals that were signed before, during, and likely to come for Trump and his family members, it will benefit them. | ||
| And we as Americans, Republican or Democrat, just need to be aware of it and discuss it in the way that it was discussed with Biden and his son and what you mentioned about China. | ||
| So I think it's important. | ||
| It's who we are as Americans to look at all these things as much as we can keep our minds open and eyes wide open about all the variables that are in play here. | ||
| We had several callers during this segment bring up the point that it's early on. | ||
| He just made this trip. | ||
| It's going to take some time to see how these things play out. | ||
| What would be good next steps for the Trump administration to build on this, to continue moving forward with these countries? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, three things I would say. | |
| First, with these countries and the deals that were announced, it needs to appoint people. | ||
| And there's a good person, I think, who's going to get in at the State Department. | ||
| He had his confirmation hearing yesterday named Joel Rayburn. | ||
| He'll be the lead diplomat for the State Department. | ||
| You need someone, because the president has a lot on his plate here at home and then in the world. | ||
| You need to appoint someone to make sure that the follow-through on all of these deals and coordinating between governments and our private sector, who are a big part of this deal. | ||
| So that's one. | ||
| Two, the ongoing diplomacy with Iran, because if you don't, if we don't get a deal and if there's more war, all of the talk of deals on AI, tech, and other things, they'll be slowed or scuttled if there's a bigger war in the Middle East. | ||
| And if there's one thing that could drive a larger war than we've seen in the Middle East, it's not getting a diplomatic solution with Iran. | ||
| And then third and importantly, and we didn't talk about it enough here as well, is that one of the big gaping holes in both Trump's policy, but also I think in Biden's policy too, is not finding a clear pathway to deal with the Palestinian situation in Gaza and the West Bank, but Gaza is the most acute right now. | ||
| And I used to live and work there. | ||
| I have friends whose families are really having one meal a day. | ||
| Food is becoming more scarce. | ||
| President Trump mentioned this at the end of his visit as well, his own concerns about starvation breaking out. | ||
| He heard it privately from the leaders that he met with in the Arab world. | ||
| It's so complicated for reasons that came up during the question and answer, but we need to double down and have a better pathway to actually help alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and provide a pathway and do it in a way that reassures Israel of its own security concerns because they're considerable, big concerns after being attacked on October 7th, attacked from multiple countries in the region. | ||
| So that formula, reassurance to Israelis that their lives will be more secure and better, but then also to those Palestinians that are often pushed to the sidelines and viewed in certain ways, they are an important part of the fabric of a more stable Middle East. | ||
| Our guest, Brian Catalas, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. | ||
| You can find his work online at mei.edu. | ||
| Brian, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Next on Washington Journal, Politico, Food and Agriculture Policy Reporter Grace Yarrow will join us to discuss House Republicans' budget reconciliation proposals that includes cuts to SNAP and other related agriculture news. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a City Hall lawyer and a brain trust aide to President Franklin Roosevelt. | ||
| Well, on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell, Cuneo mingled with the famous and powerful. | ||
| But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. | ||
| All of this is the way Hanover Square Press introduces readers to Thomas Mayer's book, The Invisible Spy. | ||
| Mayer, a graduate of Fordham and Columbia, is an author and a television producer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Thomas Mayer with his book, The Invisible Spy, Churchill's Rockefeller Center Spy Ring, and America's First Secret Agent of World War II. | |
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A, former Republican California Congressman Christopher Cox, author of Woodrow Wilson, The Light Withdrawn, takes a critical look at the 28th President of the United States and his attitudes toward racial equality and women's suffrage. | ||
| The battle, which had been going on for decades and decades for women getting the vote, had reached a tipping point because that's when he shows up on the scene. | ||
| And really, if you think of it like volleyball or basketball, you know, the ball was right there to be slammed. | ||
| And that's all he would have had to do as a leader of the country at that time because society had changed so much. | ||
| This is the 20th century. | ||
| We've got women in the workplace. | ||
| We've got technology that makes it possible for home industry to be offloaded to Sears Roebuck and Piggly Wiggly grocery stores and so on. | ||
| The country was ready for this and it got delayed for almost the entirety of Wilson's two terms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Christopher Cox with his book, Woodrow Wilson, 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. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss House GOP Agriculture Committee proposals that include SNAP cuts. | ||
| Cuts to SNAP is Grace Yorow. | ||
| She is a Food and Agriculture Policy Reporter for Politico. | ||
| Grace, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| We will start. | ||
| We're going to be talking about SNAP and we want to make sure everyone has a good understanding of what the program is. | ||
| Tell us how many people are on it and who typically receives SNAP benefits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So SNAP benefits more than 42 million people in the United States, low-income people who use it to buy food. | ||
| The average benefit, and this comes up a lot in our recent discussions on the committee, the average benefit is around $6 a day per individual, which Democrats on the Ag Committee especially have pointed out is quite low given current food costs. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it differs by state in terms of requirements, but there are some states that have particularly high participation rates, some like Oregon, New Mexico, Louisiana, Illinois, sort of all over the country. | ||
| And we'll get to what was happening this week. | ||
| The House Agriculture Committee, they passed their reconciliation budget proposals that included several changes to the current SNAP plan. | ||
| And one of those is having states contribute. | ||
| Right now, the program is fully funded by the federal government and also covers 50% of states' administrative costs. | ||
| Tell us exactly how the legislation passed this week, if it was signed into law, would change that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that is one of the biggest arguments that has come up in the last couple of weeks is this cost-sharing proposal that House Agriculture Committee Republicans have drafted. | |
| Originally, they were in talks to implement a flat rate cost share proposal. | ||
| And after some back and forth within the committee, they landed on this sort of sliding scale approach where all states have to contribute at least 5% to SNAP to pay for the SNAP program. | ||
| And then it sort of penalizes states with the highest payment error rates, which according to most recent data that USDA has released is about half. | ||
| 25 states have a higher than 10% error payment rate. | ||
| The average in the country is nearly 12%, so it's quite high in terms of the sliding scale approach. | ||
| But the argument from Republicans on the committee is that this will incentivize states to lower their payment error rates. | ||
| And as you mentioned to the proposal that advanced out of committee this week also requires states to pay for more of the administrative costs. | ||
| So now they'll be expected to pay 75% of administrative costs associated with SNAP. | ||
| The Agriculture, the House Agriculture Committee passed this out of committee 29 to 25. | ||
| It was a party line vote. | ||
| It still needs to get through the entirety of Congress, make it through the reconciliation process. | ||
| Wanted to share an opinion piece that was in MSNBC talking about the cost sharing. | ||
| It says, even at the base rate, that will add major costs to states that can't absorb easily. | ||
| And it isn't just Democratic-controlled states that would be paying the top rate out of their coffers. | ||
| The most recent figures from the USDA, which covers fiscal year 2023, shows that red states like Alaska, Florida, Missouri, and South Carolina would be among those forced to pay a quarter of the total cost for their constituents' SNAP benefits based on an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. | ||
| That would add roughly $3 billion to state budgets in Missouri and South Carolina over the next 10 years and a whopping $15 billion in Florida to Florida's balance sheet. | ||
| When we hear those numbers and knowing that members of Congress could see this hit their state, what has been the reaction from members who aren't on the committee that are going to be voting on the full package down the line? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a good question. | |
| I mean, this speaks to exactly why it was such a difficult conversation leading up to this vote. | ||
| We had Congressman Derek Van Orden sort of rallying against the flat rate cost share proposal, just saying that Wisconsin has a pretty low error payment rate. | ||
| It's probably around 4%. | ||
| He was worried that it would unfairly penalize everybody instead of being associated with the actual error rate. | ||
| But yeah, states like Alaska, according to most recent data, are in the 60% range or so in terms of payment error rate, which is much above everybody else. | ||
| I think it's interesting to note too: the House Agriculture Committee Chair, GT Thompson from Pennsylvania. | ||
| Pennsylvania is, of the members of the Agriculture Committee, is the highest payment error rate. | ||
| And when this came up in committee, he said he has confidence in the Pennsylvania governor's office and the state legislature to, before this cost-sharing proposal, kicks in in fiscal year 2028, to sort of iron out those overpayments, underpayments to make sure that the program is running smoothly. | ||
| But that is one of the reasons that this proposal is sort of, we'll see what happens next with it with lawmakers off the committee who will soon realize that this is going to target some of their states. | ||
| We had Alaska Congressman tell Politico last week that he's on board with it, which was interesting. | ||
| And we'll see what happens next. | ||
| Grace Yarrow, Politico Food and Agriculture Policy Reporter, will be our guest for the next 35 minutes or so on the topic of proposed changes to the SNAP program. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for her, you can start calling in now the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Want to let you know that we also have a special line. | ||
| If you are a SNAP recipient, you can call in at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Grace wanted to ask about another proposed change, and that is to work requirements. | ||
| Again, it can vary by state, different requirements for programs, but in general, what do the current work requirements look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so this is this is one of the bigger changes of the House Ags proposal, too. | |
| They are looking at this group that we call ABOD, so able-bodied adults without dependents. | ||
| And currently, the work requirements are from 18 to 54 for that group, and they are going to increase the work requirements until you are 64. | ||
| So, by about a decade, which is a pretty big change for that group. | ||
| Another key thing that they're doing is redefining what a child is, functionally defining a child for that category. | ||
| So folks without dependents would be starting at once a child turns age seven, the person, the parent would be considered to not have a dependent anymore. | ||
| That's come up a lot during the hearing, which stretched on for two days. | ||
| That was a really big pain point among Democrats. | ||
| That came up a ton. | ||
| So that's one of those are two of the biggest changes are simply the age and sort of how you define who's subject to work requirements going forward. | ||
| The legislation would close waiver gimmicks. | ||
| Can you explain what those are and what other change, how that would change the program? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So this has been a pressure point. | ||
| Republicans have been really talking about this for years, the abuse of waivers in states that allow people to escape work requirements is the argument. | ||
| So to crack down on those saves a good amount of money and that's a key part of their plan here. | ||
| So they are making counties that are asking for waivers to get out of those work requirements. | ||
| You have to have an unemployment rate of above 10% now. | ||
| That's not currently a requirement. | ||
| And there's just a lot of things in there that they're trying to tweak. | ||
| And right now, the sort of tolerance policy for SNAP over underpayments for overpayments is 37, or yeah, it's 37%. | ||
| And they would change that to a zero tolerance policy before punishing states and implementing fines. | ||
| Grace, we will be talking to callers. | ||
| We're also getting messages on social media and via text. | ||
| And this question comes in from Chris in Birmingham, Alabama. | ||
| He asks, how would cuts to SNAP benefits affect farmers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's, I mean, this has come up a ton. | |
| Obviously, the House Agriculture Committee is focused on the needs of farmers. | ||
| So this came up a ton this week. | ||
| Democrats' argument so far has been, and ranking member Angie Craig from Minnesota, who's the top Democrat on the committee, has made this a key part of her argument against the GOPs plan, pointing out that people purchasing food with SNAP benefits independent grocers and farmers and people who stock those shelves. | ||
| So she's really tried to make that case. | ||
| I would point out too in this bill the reason that they are cutting, I mean, their instruction was to find $230 billion in savings. | ||
| They are looking at about $290 to $300 billion, still awaiting a final CBO score overall. | ||
| But part of that is to pay for around $60 billion of farm bill programs that they argue farmers need due to economic uncertainty, natural disasters, you know, tariff uncertainty to help folks in farm country. | ||
| So. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We have a caller in Cleveland, Ohio on the Democrat line. | ||
| Good morning, Loretta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Gracie. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| I was speaking with the guy that answered the phone, and he asked for a little synopsis of what my question would be. | ||
| And I told him that I was having a hard time understanding Republicans. | ||
| Here we have Republicans who want to give trillions of dollars to those who don't need a dime in life. | ||
| They don't need it. | ||
| They didn't ask for tax cuts. | ||
| And Republicans are acting like tax cuts are written into the Constitution. | ||
| Like they got to get them or they have to get them or they're going to take them every year. | ||
| And this has been going on since Reagan. | ||
| I remember when Reagan made America a better nation given tax cuts. | ||
| Yeah, I'm old enough to remember that. | ||
| But what I don't understand is that the Republicans claim to be the Christians. | ||
| Make this make sense. | ||
| Where is all this money going to? | ||
| They haven't said a word about how much is going towards the debt. | ||
| All I hear is tax cut, tax cut, tax cut. | ||
| And everybody who pays taxes don't get a tax cut. | ||
| I never got a tax cut. | ||
| I didn't make that amount of money. | ||
| And I don't understand what income has to do with paying taxes. | ||
| We'll see if that's something Grace can answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think this exact comment speaks to kind of the pain points that have come up during arguments within the Agriculture Committee. | |
| This is exactly what Democrats are saying: is that the instructive cuts that Republicans are expected to meet, their argument is that they're going to tax cuts for billionaires. | ||
| That probably was said dozens of times during our markup this week. | ||
| And I think it's interesting too, there are a lot of those tax cuts or tax provisions in what Republicans are looking at for their tax package that are popular among farmers. | ||
| So it's sort of an interesting dynamic there where folks are trying to balance the interests of everyone. | ||
| But as Democrats were introducing amendments to vote on to Republicans' bill, the chairman, GT Thompson, and other Republicans were saying, even if they were, you know, sort of a lot of amendments were, you know, trying to force Republicans to vote to protect veterans or children or people in rural communities from any cuts to their SNAP benefits. | ||
| And Republicans argument back with that simply if they change their proposal, they won't be able to make their required cuts and they won't be able to pursue their tax cut package here. | ||
| Let's hear from Solono in the U.S. Virgin Islands on the line for SNAP recipients. | ||
| Good morning, Solono. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question. | ||
| I live in the U.S. Virgin Islands, as you mentioned, where it's an island, and the cost of living is extremely high. | ||
| And I was just rewarded $25 a month. | ||
| I recently retired. | ||
| I have a monthly income of $1,378. | ||
| And all they gave me was $25. | ||
| $1,378 in the United States Virgin Islands does not go very far. | ||
| So my question to the young lady is: is Congress making provisions for individuals that live in the U.S. territories where mostly everything is imported and the federal standard that is set to receive SNAP benefits does not in any way correlate with the cost of living in the United States Virgin Islands? | ||
| Is Congress taking U.S. territories into consideration when they make their decisions? | ||
| Thank you, and I'll wait for your response. | ||
| Yeah, I would say the cost of living and just the status of food prices in the United States has come up a lot in these discussions. | ||
| And as I said earlier, like the average NAT benefit for a person for a day is $6. | ||
| And Democrats did point that out a lot during the markup that can't even buy a carton of eggs in some places currently. | ||
| I spoke with Hawaii rep Jill Takuda last week, too. | ||
| Hawaii has one of the higher payment error rates. | ||
| And I spoke with her about that too. | ||
| She explained too that their payment error rate could be explained by a number of things, but including that, you know, folks are spread across islands. | ||
| And it's, you know, rural communities, it's harder to, you know, reduce the error payment rates. | ||
| So that has come up a lot, though. | ||
| I don't think that I have heard anything specific to considering U.S. territories in terms of the differing cost of living there. | ||
| So we have Doris in Georgia also on the line for SNAP recipients. | ||
| Good morning, Doris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| I've had so many cuts in my benefits, I don't really know where I stand. | ||
| All I know is my income at first was $14.25. | ||
| My house payments were almost $500. | ||
| Counting my utilities and incidentals, another $300. | ||
| Car expenses would go into that, I guess. | ||
| But then since I'm 87 years old and disabled and almost blind, I have medical issues and I need extra help. | ||
| And I've applied for all that. | ||
| I got $23 a month for SNAP benefits. | ||
| And my house payments have been raised to almost $700. | ||
| Can't figure that one out. | ||
| The Social Security took away $165. | ||
| So you do the math. | ||
| Tell me how I'm going to manage my budget with my situation and be able to buy food for $23 a month. | ||
| I think this exact comment speaks to some of the pain points on the Hill and why this is kind of a tricky pill to swallow for a lot of Republicans. | ||
| I would note too here that part of Republicans' reconciliation plans also include pushing some costs of Medicaid onto states. | ||
| And what's come up a lot in talks I've had with folks is that they're worried that states will have to choose between paying for SNAP programs or paying for Medicaid for folks. | ||
| And given cost of living, as you mentioned, there's just a lot of anxiety about what exactly that could mean in different states, especially those that already have tight state budgets and can't afford to cushion this too much. | ||
| Caleb in Aurora, Colorado, line for SNAP recipient. | ||
| Good morning, Caleb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a 32-year-old male. | ||
| I've received a SNAP within the last five, seven years of my life. | ||
| And I went from a benefit total of maybe $250, $240 to about $23. | ||
| You know, I'm not against the cuts just because it lets you know where your money really needs to go. | ||
| That $250, you know, lot of gay area, a lot of 7-Eleven snacks, lot of, you know, a lot of uh, as you would say, junk. | ||
| When I know people who are using the food stamps or uh, you know, going to KING Supers and going to uh uh, safely trying to make these, you know, get food for the family. | ||
| So I don't know I it'd be interesting to see how these cuts are going to happen. | ||
| That's just my uh, my input. | ||
| Grace, do you have a response? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, that's part of the. | |
| The piece of this that's tricky for Republicans to explain fully is exactly what this will look like on the ground. | ||
| Um, given that the cost sharing proposal is sort of the biggest overhaul here and it'll really just depend by state um there, I mean there, I haven't brought this up yet, but there's a lot of anxiety in the Senate, among Senate Republicans about this um. | ||
| Jim Justice, um senator from uh West Virginia, told us, I think, last week that you know he. | ||
| He just is really hopeful that this cost sharing proposal won't even make it out of the House. | ||
| He was really nervous about it and other folks in the Senate too are pointing out already that this um really implements a burden on, it puts a burden on states that they're just not really prepared for in some ways. | ||
| Um, and to your point on on junk food, I think I haven't brought this up yet either, but another part of the conversation here is sort of what's happening within the Trump administration, um around states, um asking for waivers from USDA to be able to ban snap benefits from being used for things like soda candy. | ||
| Um junk food, ultra processed food, sort of in line with um Robert Fennedy Jr's um make America healthy, healthy again mission um. | ||
| So that's interesting too, and I think um House Agriculture chair Gt Thompson again um told me that you know he said he doesn't appreciate that states are implementing those changes, doing these pilot programs, without having some skin in the game, and and that's been sort of the term of the last couple of weeks is that states need to have skin in the game if they want to be creating these different changes and pilot programs and and such. | ||
| So just wanted to note that as well. | ||
| Grace, following up on this uh specific topic, this tweet from Linda in Georgia asks, why does food stamps cover junk food? | ||
| Why don't we provide government food from farmers anymore? | ||
| That is all we had back in the day. | ||
| Can you explain what food stamps or uh what snap does cover and what it can't be used for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is this is where we've seen a lot of sort of splits between different states. | |
| There are states like Arkansas and Texas, um very recently, who have asked uh, USDA secretary Rollins um to implement these changes to ban soda, to ban certain ultra processed foods. | ||
| Um and interestingly, at the same time USDA, while it's doing its own overhaul of, of cutting spending and cutting the workforce um, they've made some changes to local food purchasing programs um, that also came up with Democrats in the last couple of weeks. | ||
| Um that uh, that money was set to go to schools and local food banks to be able to purchase locally grown and locally produced food and a lot of those. | ||
| That money has been cut or canceled or frozen. | ||
| So that's also another piece of this conversation um and yeah, hope that answers the question. | ||
| Let's hear from David in New York line for snap recipients. | ||
| Good morning David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes uh, I got a question about the uh snap benefits. | |
| Are they gonna cut just across the board or are they cutting people that are able to work and receive snap, or what? | ||
| How's this gonna? | ||
| What is their exact plans on what they're gonna do. | ||
| Yeah, so there's sort of a laundry list of changes that Republicans are pitching to the SNAP program and how things are paid for, who's subject to work requirements. | ||
| As I mentioned, there are some changes to folks who are considered able-bodied adults without dependents in terms of that age is being raised by about a decade to 64 that you'd be subject to work requirements. | ||
| But I think it's we're still in the early stages of trying to understand exactly what this will look like in states. | ||
| Some lawmakers have said that they have a lot of confidence that this won't directly impact benefits. | ||
| What Congressman Thompson, who helped design this plan for the Ag Committee, told me was that to reach their $230 billion instructed cuts, it was either to implement a cost-sharing proposal or to directly cut current benefits. | ||
| And he said that is a red line for him. | ||
| That's something that the White House has said that they are not interested in. | ||
| Even, you know, this, however, long before the election, they're not interested in cutting benefits. | ||
| So this cost-sharing proposal is sort of a more indirect way to find spending cuts related to SNAP. | ||
| So it's still early and there's a lot of different changes here. | ||
| So that states do have a couple of years to kind of figure out ahead of the cost-sharing proposals implementation exactly what this will look like. | ||
| So we'll be watching closely. | ||
| Grace wanted to ask you about a couple of the other proposals that were in this reconciliation bill. | ||
| And that is one, it makes all non-citizens aside from illegal from legal permanent residents ineligible for food stamps. | ||
| It also prevents the federal government from being able to increase monthly benefits in the future. | ||
| What can you tell us about these proposals? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack here. | |
| I will say, start by noting that undocumented non-citizens are not currently and have never been eligible for SNAP. | ||
| What is changing here is a list of non-citizen groups who are eligible for SNAP that will no longer be. | ||
| The proposal instructs that only permanent, lawful permanent residents or citizens will be eligible for SNAP participants. | ||
| So that starts to exclude some groups that include victims of severe trafficking. | ||
| That excludes certain refugees and a list there that USDA has created over the years. | ||
| That will be an interesting one to watch in the coming weeks. | ||
| That was something that was led by Congresswoman Mary Miller from Illinois. | ||
| She really wanted that to be a part of the proposal and Politica has reported that that was kind of a late add to the bill. | ||
| And it's sort of a more controversial one. | ||
| So that will be a good one to watch as this bill gets passed around and tweaked, likely. | ||
| And then you mentioned the limiting future updates. | ||
| This has been a conversation for years. | ||
| This is a key way that Republicans had planned last year to pay for their farm bill plans. | ||
| So this is limiting updates to the thrifty food plan, which is the basis for calculating SNAP. | ||
| That sort of changed. | ||
| Republicans' argument is that that was pretty much blown up by under the Biden administration during the pandemic to rapidly adjust to emergency situations where folks needed more help. | ||
| And Republicans are saying that that has gotten out of control and they want to be able to limit that going forward. | ||
| So that ties SNAP increases to a cost of living adjustment. | ||
| That saves about $37 billion over the next decade. | ||
| And part of including that means that Republicans will have to include their farm bill plans here. | ||
| Otherwise, they're losing a key pay for if they want to pass a separate farm bill, which is why that $60 billion in farm bill programs is a pretty crucial one here in the bill. | ||
| Let's hear from Shirley in New York, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Shirley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Okay, here we go again. | ||
| I remember back in, I believe it was early 90s, when they said people work for their food stamp and people shit. | ||
| I want to know where are all these jobs coming from from where they have laid off so many people. | ||
| Also, when they did that back then, the people that work for transit, sanitation, the Parks Department, and others, and then corporate, okay, they got wet workers. | ||
| That's what they will call wet workers. | ||
| So those people lost their jobs. | ||
| They used all a savings. | ||
| They used a 401k. | ||
| Then they tried to apply for SNAP and everything. | ||
| It was in the newspaper. | ||
| One man worked for the Parks Department. | ||
| He lost everything. | ||
| He had worked there for years. | ||
| They put him back in the same position that he had been let go of. | ||
| Now, with all these people coming over here, immigrants, I understand, you want to get the bad ones out of here, you know. | ||
| Hey, if they're going for citizenship, that's another thing. | ||
| Then you bring, Trump is bringing all of these South Africans over here. | ||
| What jobs are they going to do? | ||
| And then in some states, they even mow that working age limit because they're saying, hey, if the parents can get some kind of subsidy, then some of these children can work. | ||
| This is supposed to be the greatest country, the richest country, and yet we can't take care of all. | ||
| Shirley, we'll get a response from Grace. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. | |
| It did come up a lot during our agriculture committee markup with all of these changing work requirements and folks being expected to work or being subject to work requirements until the age of 64 if they're able-bodied and without dependents. | ||
| So that's an interesting point. | ||
| And it'll kind of become a little bit more clear soon exactly what that looks like in terms of if those jobs even exist for folks who the minimum for folks under this proposal, as Gigi Thompson has pointed out, would be 20 hours a week. | ||
| It'll be interesting to watch exactly that. | ||
| What you've mentioned is we'll be watching sort of if those jobs are there, if folks are able to find jobs, and what the impact of changing the waivers will be for folks who can't find jobs. | ||
| Grace, what's next for this bill? | ||
| It just passed out of committee. | ||
| What's happening next? | ||
| And if any changes were to be passed, when would they go into effect? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So what's next is a really good question here. | ||
| So as some of y'all may know, yesterday the House Budget Committee failed to pass the mega bill that includes this agriculture package. | ||
| They're meeting again tomorrow night, supposedly. | ||
| So we will see what happens next there and if Republicans are able to unify around this bill. | ||
| So that'll be the first step to watch here. | ||
| I mean, Democrats, when they were going through this process back in 2022, took months to get from, even after it advanced out of the budget committee, took a really long time to get it full passage. | ||
| So there could be some fights ahead, but we'll see what happens there. | ||
| And then some of the, I think it'll be interesting to watch ahead of this cost sharing proposal actually being implemented in 2028, fiscal year 2028. | ||
| That's sort of a key provision that Republicans included to kind of give some breathing room for states to try and figure out exactly how they can reduce their payment error rate, which will be interesting to watch given that the most recent data we have is still kind of impacted by the pandemic and when payment error rates were higher. | ||
| So we'll be watching closely to see which states are able to reduce them so that they will have to pay for less of this program. | ||
| But yeah, I think hopefully that answers the question. | ||
| Grace Euro is a food and agriculture policy reporter for Politico. | ||
| You can find her work online at politico.com. | ||
| Grace, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| We are wrapping up today's Washington Journal with more of your calls. | ||
| During open forum, you can start calling in now. | ||
| Here are the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue. | |
| And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
| I love C-SPAN too. | ||
| That's why I'm here today. | ||
| Answer questions all day, every day. | ||
| Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | |
| I love this show. | ||
| This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about. | ||
| American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thank C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable, because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them. | |
| In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins in a town where partisan fighting prevails. | ||
| One table, two leaders, one goal to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session. | ||
| The House plans to take up GOP tax and spending legislation, supporting President Trump's priorities, as well as border security and energy production goals. | ||
| The Senate will attempt to take up cryptocurrency legislation for a second time. | ||
| Senators voted against advancing the stable coins bill earlier this month. | ||
| Several cabinet secretaries will be on Capitol Hill next week discussing their budgets. | ||
| C-SPAN's live coverage begins on Tuesday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| Watch 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. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open form right up until 10 o'clock this morning. | ||
| We will start with Tim in Connecticut, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Tim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yeah, you know, I'm just calling because I just, you know, wanted to say, you know, it's very sad to see that, you know, that the food stamps and the Medicaid are going to be eliminated. | ||
| You know, the Republicans are being very heartless with this. | ||
| You know, and they keep saying that, oh, this is waste and stuff. | ||
| But all it is, it's just giving tax breaks for all the rich people. | ||
| That's Tim in Connecticut. | ||
| Let's hear from Grace in Virginia, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Grace. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi to you, ma'am. | |
| But valid, I think I was going to live to see that the United States finally gonna get what's coming to them. | ||
| When in all these countries destabilized them, stole from Donald Trump when he was in last office, when that country stole they all, putting it blindside in the people. | ||
| But the Bible tell you that immigrants, which are Nati Americas. | ||
| Yes, Natino, which are America. | ||
| Everybody else came wrong, but they think they're right. | ||
| And that's what will bring the United States down, ma'am. | ||
| I'm sorry to tell you this, but revelation is coming now in debt. | ||
| Donald J. Trump, when he was in the White House last time he was in the White House, he was the one who signed the White House had to pay them people in the end, Natalie America, all that money to keep that White House way at. | ||
| Yes, it was the president, Donald J. Trump. | ||
| And he got the people blind and good because of their day, the United States getting what's coming to them. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Grace in Virginia. | ||
| Let's go to Steve in Alexandria, Indiana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about Fauci and the Democratic Party funding the Wuhan Lab to start this COVID in the United States and all over the world. | |
| It was obvious of what took place. | ||
| I think it was one of the big factors in the election. | ||
| American people seen through all of it. | ||
| It was the only way the Democrats could get back into power was to start this COVID. | ||
| And then it caused our debt. | ||
| They added about $12 trillion to our debt on this COVID, plus all the money that was spent on this COVID in the United States. | ||
| All the businesses shut down, the schools shut down. | ||
| It was all a Democratic scam. | ||
| That's all it was. | ||
| Work with China. | ||
| Everybody sees through it. | ||
| And I don't know why the Democratic Party thinks that the American people is just stupid, you know. | ||
| But I'm just an old dom hillbilly, and I've seen through all of it, you know. | ||
| That was Steve in Indiana. | ||
| Let's go to Joe and Tampa, Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So I just wanted to highlight what I think is happening with the federal government job cuts. | ||
| It's invariably impacting more black federal workers. | ||
| Are they necessary? | ||
| I saw statistics that said specifically black female professionals, like 100 and something, 7,000 of them, have lost their jobs during these job cuts from the federal government. | ||
| So I wanted folks to kind of think hard and there were the impact that would be going forward when you don't have those professionals in those positions. | ||
| And secondly, in terms of the job cuts and the OMB director now, supposedly going to be in charge of DOGE Doge, I think with him being a federal worker, it's kind of like a catch-22. | ||
| On the one hand, you said you want to make federal workers uncomfortable, but you are also a federal worker. | ||
| So to what extent are these cabinet leaders going to be held accountable for the deep cuts that's taped into the federal workforce? | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Joe in Florida. | ||
| Carl, Little Rock, Arkansas, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for letting me talk. | ||
| I want to say first that first fellow that you're talking about saying that Republicans were wanting to cut Medicaid and food stamps. | ||
| You just had a lady on there talking. | ||
| They're not going to cut those. | ||
| They are going to modify them to get rid of the wasted stuff. | ||
| But anyway, I wish there'd be more people talking about that. | ||
| They're not cutting. | ||
| But what I want to talk about was Social Security. | ||
| Somehow to get to them on the Social Security when you file early. | ||
| You know, I mean, you know, before 65, I'm a case of that. | ||
| I filed before that. | ||
| I was actually handicapped, disabled, couldn't work. | ||
| And anyway, no income, whatever. | ||
| Anyway, they let you file early on that, but they take a sizable chunk of your Social Security when you file early. | ||
| You know, to me, it's a punishment. | ||
| And what I thought was once you turn 65, which I have, I'm 68 now, but they don't reinstate that money. | ||
| Like they take $800 out of my Social Security check because the only reason is because I filed early. | ||
| And I want the Congress or somebody to look into that. | ||
| Isn't there something that could be done about that? | ||
| That just seems so blatantly unfair that, you know, I'd like to comment on that. | ||
| Doesn't people think that's unfair? | ||
| I mean, Carl, we'll go to Lori in Rochester, New York, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Lori. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I just wanted to comment and ask a question. | ||
| People in my community and around the country actually rely on the food snaps, and they're woefully insufficient. | ||
| They need those to survive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, in my community, our chain grocery store just raised the price of bread 40%. | |
| I mean, the staples for American families, milk, eggs, and bread, should be at a lower cost. | ||
| And shouldn't someone, I mean, President Trump, his first day in office, didn't he say he would look into the issue of inflation? | ||
| I haven't seen that. | ||
| But shouldn't Congress look into addressing price gouging in grocery stores? | ||
| I mean, I just think that would help SNAP and everybody in America to see that. | ||
| I mean, what do we give our children with peanut butter and jelly, a spoon? | ||
| I just think that would be something to address by our elected officials. | ||
| That was Lori in New York. | ||
| This headline from the Associated Press: Russia-Ukraine peace talks end after less than two hours with a deal to swap POWs, but no ceasefire. | ||
| The article says that the first direct Russia-Ukraine peace talk since the early weeks of Moscow's 2022 invasion ended less than two hours, after less than two hours Friday. | ||
| And while both sides agreed to a large prisoner swap, they clearly remained far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting. | ||
| One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement. | ||
| The Kremlin has pushed back against such a truce, which remains elusive. | ||
| It was yesterday in the Oval Office that President Trump spoke about a potential ceasefire between the two countries and about the possibility of a meeting with Vladimir Putin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can we ask you a quick question on that? | |
| You said that Peter expects him to go if you didn't go. | ||
| The question might be then, what are you going to do with it? | ||
| Why wait? | ||
| Well, we're going to. | ||
| I think it's time for us to just do it. | ||
| I said, you know, they all said Putin was going and Zelensky was going, and I said, if I don't go, I guarantee Putin's not going. | ||
| And he didn't go. | ||
| And I understand that, but we're going to get it. | ||
| We're going to get it done. | ||
| We've got to get it done. | ||
| 5,000 young people are being killed every single week on average, and we're going to get it done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Were you surprised when Zelensky didn't show up either, sir? | |
| Were you surprised when Zelensky didn't show up either? | ||
| No, he didn't show up because he heard Putin wasn't going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When do you think you'll meet the president? | |
| As soon as we can set it up, I was going to, I would actually leave here and go. | ||
| I do want to see my beautiful grandson, Sasan, and we'll be doing that. | ||
| But I will tell you that the world is a much safer place right now. | ||
| And I think in two or three weeks, we could have it be a much, much safer place. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Debbie, Pennsylvania, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Tammy. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, thanks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My top news for the week is, which I'm surprised nobody else has said yet, is James Comey. | |
| I'm surprised that he hasn't been arrested and put in jail for posting 8647 against the president. | ||
| If it was anybody else, they would have been arrested and put in jail and asked questions later. | ||
| So I'm surprised that nobody else has been saying anything about that on the news. | ||
| That was Debbie in Pennsylvania and Debbie talking about this story from USA Today. | ||
| Secret Service Investigates ex-FBI Director James Comey, 8647 Instagram post. | ||
| It says that U.S. law enforcement officials said on May 15th, that was Thursday, that they were looking into a social media post by the former FDI FBI director depicting an image of the number, it's 8647, which some Trump supporters interpreted as a threat against President Donald Trump. | ||
| It says Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, later took down the post saying he was unaware of the apparent political message could have been associated with violence. | ||
| In U.S. parlance, the number 86 can be used as a verb meaning to throw someone out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly. | ||
| And 47 is a code for Trump, the 47th president. | ||
| Some Trump supporters interpreted the message as one to violently remove Trump from office, including by assassination. | ||
| It goes on to say the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says on its website that one recent meaning of the term was quote to kill, but the site did not adopt that quote due to its relative recency and sparseness of use. | ||
| The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president, said it was aware of Comey's post, but did not assess its meaning. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Jim, Dubuque, Iowa, Line for Independence. | ||
| Hi, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I think I'd really like to hear you interview a gentleman named David Rogers Webb, spelled W-E-B-B. | ||
| He was a hedge fund director back in 2008 when all the financial shenanigans went on and investigated the legal structures and found that over the last four decades the Uniform Commercial Code has been changed in all 50 states and now in Europe. | ||
| And most people don't realize that their pension plans, their brokerage accounts, insurance annuities, even the equity in their homes has been used as collateral against somewhere over $2,000 trillion in derivative bets, which if some fail will go like a row of dominoes and legally people will lose what they think they own. | ||
| He has a book out called The Great Taking, which is available for free online, or you can buy a hard copy, and there's an excellent documentary on YouTube. | ||
| But if you just search the Great Taking, you can find this information. | ||
| And it's only the lack of public awareness for these surreptitiously changed laws that allows it to remain. | ||
| This could be changed on a state-by-state level to protect people's savings. | ||
| But we are all in jeopardy, and this could happen any day. | ||
| It could happen today or a month from now or a year from now. | ||
| But it will happen legally unless something is done about it. | ||
| There's five financial entities which have priority to all these assets if there's a failure in the derivatives market. | ||
| Jim, how did you become interested in this topic? | ||
| And is everything that you're saying, is that coming out of the book that you are recommending? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it is fully documented. | |
| He footnotes all the legal changes. | ||
| They've tried to change this in Tennessee and South Dakota most recently, but the banking lobby comes in and intimidates the legislators. | ||
| And if there was some public support for consciousness or awareness of this on the state level, they could change these laws. | ||
| But this has been done. | ||
| This is the law right now. | ||
| People need to search the grape taking, and they can find out all about this themselves. | ||
| That was Jim in Iowa. | ||
| Diane in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Diane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Hi, Diane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I'm just calling about the individual that called about eight calls ago stating that the Democrats started COVID and talking about it being a scam. | ||
| Was it a scam that all of those people died from COVID? | ||
| Was that a scam? | ||
| There's Diane in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Bonnie in Alexandria, Minnesota, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Bonnie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I am totally opposed to this Trump and Musk thing where they're bringing in the white Africans. | ||
| It just really irks me. | ||
| I don't understand why this is happening. | ||
| I know they want to bring, from what I understand, they want to bring in like 100,000 of them. | ||
| And I know that they plan on bringing some to my state. | ||
| And the first ones that I'd seen, I mean, the men, some of the men, they look like they're 400 pounds. | ||
| And what the heck are they going to be doing? | ||
| I'm just mad. | ||
| I'm just mad as all hell over this. | ||
| It's just not right. | ||
| That was Bonnie in Minnesota. | ||
| Bonnie talking about this story. | ||
| This is from the Washington Post. | ||
| White South Africans arrive at Dulles as refugees under Trump order. | ||
| It says that a group of about 50 white South Africans landed at Dulles International Airport on Monday, this past Monday, as refugees coming to the United States under a humanitarian designation meant for people fleeing war or persecution that the Trump administration has suspended for all other groups worldwide. | ||
| It says that President Donald Trump has said the Afrikaners, a minority group descended from Dutch settlers in South Africa, are facing racial discrimination due to a land redistribution law in the country that seeks to correct an imbalance in property ownership stemming from four decades of apartheid rule. | ||
| No land seizures have been carried out under the law. | ||
| But Trump claimed Monday that a genocide was taking place in South Africa. | ||
| An allegiance government, an allegation, government officials say there lacks any evidence. | ||
| A related note on from this is from CBS News. | ||
| It says that South African President Cyril Ramposa will visit the White House next week. | ||
| His office said on Thursday, days after the arrival of those Afrikaners, it says that they have been granted the refugee status under a new Trump administration policy. | ||
| It says that Ramposa's office says the visit will provide a platform to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries. | ||
| The statement said Ramposa, who is the current president of the G20 and President Donald Trump, will meet on Wednesday, May 21st. | ||
| The White House, as of this article being published, had not commented on the meeting. | ||
| About 15 minutes left in today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Let's hear from Michael in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling to advocate for an increase in the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. | ||
| I'm interested in this because I think it will reduce the effect of money on our representatives in that a smaller district requires less money to campaign for. | ||
| I think it would help minority voices be heard in the House of Representatives. | ||
| I think it would reduce the inequality in district size, and I think it will help have representatives available for subcommittees so that we'll have enough representatives to properly do legislating in the House subcommittees rather than executive branch. | ||
| independent agencies. | ||
| But Tammy, I was wondering if you had any questions or concerns about such a policy. | ||
| I'm curious, who's your representative down there in Fort Lauderdale? | ||
| And you're an independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you vote for them? | |
| My representative is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and no, I have done everything I can to vote for anybody else but her. | ||
| And that was Michael in Florida. | ||
| Let's hear from David in Denison, Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And this is not a Republican call. | ||
| I'm following up on the guy who called in a couple of calls earlier about the derivatives. | ||
| He's 100% right. | ||
| And I don't know anything about that book he's talking about. | ||
| I've been studying this for years. | ||
| James Rickards is an economist, author of a lot of books. | ||
| He testified before Congress about threats to the economy following the 2008 crash. | ||
| He also went to Congress, the Treasury Department, and to the Bush team, campaign team, weeks before the crash to try to warn them about what was going to happen, specifically with derivatives. | ||
| And just briefly, it's a so-called financial instrument. | ||
| It's a figment. | ||
| It's something they create that they can sell as an investment tool. | ||
| Hedge funds use them. | ||
| They're multi-part, but minimally they're two parts. | ||
| They'll go long on one side of a bet or an investment and short on the other with the expectation if things work out like they anticipate, they'll make a small profit. | ||
| Then they buy millions and tens of millions of them, which is where they get the volumes of money they make. | ||
| In 1997, for example, one of the sides of the trades that was very popular then was the Thai currency. | ||
| It had been stable for years. | ||
| It collapsed overnight and created a huge mess, which actually is what caused Rickards to get into all the study that he did on it because he was involved with the company writing a bunch of those derivatives. | ||
| It's a real threat because you can take, and the same with gold markets and these other things, they'll take a trillion dollars in assets, I'll just pick a huge number, and they'll write these derivative contracts against it. | ||
| They can write contracts to any limit. | ||
| So you could have contracts of $100 trillion, and literally these things are over-leveraged by about 60 times value worldwide. | ||
| You can write contracts multiples more than what's there to back them up. | ||
| Nobody understands how they're connected to each other because they can write all kinds of derivatives. | ||
| That was one of the things Rickers was trying to get them to. | ||
| He had a computer program. | ||
| He'd worked with IBM. | ||
| He was begging the government to send out taxes back then to the companies to get them to turn in what their derivative contracts were so that when the crash happened, which he expected, they'd be able to unwind it. | ||
| You might recall, nobody got fired during that stuff. | ||
| The people that created these things, no one got fired. | ||
| They needed them to help them unwind it. | ||
| It was their get out of jail free cards. | ||
| And every time you have the guy from Moody's come on, I just want to throw something at the TV. | ||
| Sandy or whatever his name is. | ||
| Moody's and Standard and Poor and Moody's sold the ratings on those mortgage-backed securities that were frauds. | ||
| They rated junk as AAA, held the country of Iceland went bankrupt because of it. | ||
| This is such a mess. | ||
| Got your point, David. | ||
| Thanks for sharing the insight on that topic. | ||
| We'll go to Vaughn in Warrensburg, Missouri, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Von. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well, Von. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you know, I'm calling because, you know, I've heard, been hearing about the mess that's going on over there in Gaza. | |
| And it seems like nobody seems to care. | ||
| You know, I was thinking there was a state just recently banned the rainbow flag. | ||
| And I said, you know, that is so petty and it's shameless. | ||
| I grew up in this country believing that our government was bigger and more important than mess like this. | ||
| But I was thinking, what is the weightier issue that we ought to be addressing, like the inhumane treatment of the people of Gaza? | ||
| You know, that's important and it's huge. | ||
| I had a person to tell me, I don't know and I don't care. | ||
| I mean, it's just pitiful. | ||
| Out of sight and out of mind, that seems to be his motto. | ||
| So I want to ask the American people today: is that our motto? | ||
| And how in the world can we stomach this? | ||
| I mean, it's the ultimate in horror. | ||
| Can you imagine the terror these people live every day? | ||
| And do you Americans, do you know that we are consenting unto this genocide? | ||
| We're actually helping. | ||
| And then I have to ask, is there a God in heaven? | ||
| What's the difference between right and wrong? | ||
| Does it even matter anymore? | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| You would not even treat a dog like this. | ||
| That was Vaughn in Missouri. | ||
| Let's hear from Darryl in Cypress, California, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Daryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| How are you, C-SPAN? | ||
| Yeah, I have a couple of things I'm going to say really quick. | ||
| Hope I can get them out. | ||
| I'm a lifelong Democrat, but lately I've been really, really, really thinking about switching parties because I didn't vote for Trump, and I didn't vote for Obama either. | ||
| But the rhetoric that I hear about Trump is way worse than I've ever heard about any president. | ||
| So what I'm asking is, why they why they so hard on Trump after he was almost assassinated and Obama was never, no, no one ever tried to assassinate Obama that we know of. | ||
| But here Trump gets shot at, and they call him every day with the nastiest rhetoric you could ever hear, calling him Hitler and calling him all these names to cause more violence. | ||
| And yesterday, the FBI, former FBI director James Comey, he came out and he spawned an 86-47. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what he wrote on his beach there. | |
| And I'm telling you, I've been listening very closely. | ||
| And the Republicans that call in, they hate Trump too. | ||
| So if we had an election that was 50-50, pretty much 49% voted for Kamla, 49% voted for Trump. | ||
| So what are we doing here? | ||
| We got nobody supporting the president of our country. | ||
| And there's one more thing to say for the caller in Missouri. | ||
| I'll take an American flag over a rainbow flag any day of the week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| That was Darrell in California. | ||
| This headline from the Wall Street Journal, FEMA lagging behind on hurricane preparations. | ||
| We had a couple callers bringing up weather as a concern during our first hour of today's program. | ||
| The article says the newly appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency acknowledged in private meetings that with two weeks to go until hurricane season, the agency doesn't yet have a fully formed disaster response plan. | ||
| David Richardson, who previously served as a senior official at the Homeland Security Department and doesn't have a background in emergency management, told staff he would share a hurricane plan with Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam after he completes it late next week. | ||
| He said Thursday he's 80 to 85 percent done with the plan. | ||
| The agency is already months behind schedule in its preparations for the hurricane season, which starts June 1st, and is expected to have above normal activity, according to FEMA employees. | ||
| It also says Richardson has been drafting the plan for hurricane preparedness without the expertise of FEMA staff who are usually responsible for putting it together every year. | ||
| It says that those agency employees said, agency staff warned Richardson this past week in a document viewed by the journal that FEMA was ill-prepared for hurricane season. | ||
| Routine FEMA processes, routine FEMA processes such as assessing current capabilities have been derailed this year because of the staffing and other issues the document said. | ||
| The article also notes that in a statement, representatives for Homeland Security, which oversee FEMA, said the assessment was the, quote, unsubstantiated opinion of one official inside the agency. | ||
| Just a few minutes left in today's program. | ||
| Wanted to let you know that at 10 o'clock, we'll be going to the House of Representatives. | ||
| We'll briefly be gaveling in for a pro forma session. | ||
| Jim in Oregon, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning from Oregon. | |
| My question is, can we maybe look at Congress's perks and their swimming pools and gyms? | ||
| And can we cut back some of that? | ||
| And maybe that would help our budget. | ||
| And then when we've cut all of these programs out, how much will our deficit be? | ||
| Are we putting this money back to our deficit? | ||
| Or are we buying a new airplane for Donald or Christy Noam? | ||
| So, you know, if our deficit isn't addressed, the United States will be in big trouble. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That was Jim in Oregon. | ||
| Ellen, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Ellen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I know. | |
| I see you see that I'm disappointed. | ||
| I have this new bill coming up. | ||
| How does it affect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? | ||
| That was Ellen in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Paul in Lafayette, Louisiana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for having me. | |
| Go ahead, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I read that during Biden's administration, a half a million illegal migrants were supposed to appear before the courts to determine their eligibility, but a half a million never showed up. | ||
| And that is rule of law. | ||
| It's more like eluding the law because they never took advantage of our system. | ||
| And that's what happened. | ||
| You already were saying, oh, they need a rule of law. | ||
| Well, if they don't go to court, how can they determine whether they have a chance to stay in this country? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| This is Paul in Louisiana. | ||
| Robert, Lynchburg, Virginia, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everyone. | |
| All of the C-SPAN listeners. | ||
| My question, I wanted to address this guy that talking about the Democrats started the COVID. | ||
| If he would look at these Republicans, it's so gullible. | ||
| They believe anything that they hear or say from the president. | ||
| And I wish the president success also because of his success and my success. | ||
| But when you hear a person that just baiting a lie, I just can't take it anymore with so many lies. | ||
| You can't even believe our own senators and the president. | ||
| And we have a Congress that's supposed to do the same thing that Dodd did, look into what money is spent and to evaluate it and see if they overspend it. | ||
| So they're not doing their job. | ||
| Why don't someone do a dot on our congressman for the money that they make and also the president? | ||
| He ain't doing nothing but taking money from the United States. | ||
| And that's all I have. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Robert in Virginia. | ||
| Eve in Grand Rapids, Michigan, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Eve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Eve, I'm sorry, you only have about 30 seconds. | ||
| The House is going to be coming in, but go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just about to say that I haven't called since last year, but at the same time, Donald Trump is not fit to be president. | |
| I still say that. | ||
| And the thing about it is people will see, and we are still seeing, you know, he's all for himself. | ||
| Who goes to Saudi Arabia and get a plane and say that they're going to bring it back and put it in their stockpile? | ||
| It's laughable. | ||
| America, you're being duped. | ||
| That was Eve in Michigan. | ||
| And that does it for today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern and 4 a.m. Pacific with another program. |