| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Your calls and comments live. | |
| And then political commentator and social media influencers Stephen Bennell and Brad Palumbo will talk about the role non-traditional media plays in political discourse. | ||
| Also, author and attorney Alan Dershowitz talks about legal and constitutional issues in the news and his latest book, The Preventive State. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. May 18th, 2025. | ||
| President Donald Trump is back in the United States following the first international trip of his second term. | ||
| His MIDI's tour included multiple major announcements of defense and economic agreements and provided another angle of the president's approach to foreign policy beyond the trade war, a trade war that's contributing to a significant decline in America's reputation around the world. | ||
| Our question this morning: Do you approve of President Trump's handling a foreign policy? | ||
| Our phone lines for Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you'd like to text us, that number is 202-748-8003. | ||
| Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from. | ||
| And if you'd like to reach us on social media, that's facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Now, there's been some polling looking at how the United States' reputation has changed since President Trump started his second term. | ||
| Here's a story from Politico showing that U.S. popularity collapses worldwide in the wake of Trump's return. | ||
| The world is more divided than ever, but there's still something nearly everyone agrees on. | ||
| The U.S. is unloved. | ||
| The United States is becoming less popular globally in the aftermath of Donald Trump's return to the White House, according to new data. | ||
| The 2025 Democracy Perception Index summarizes attitudes towards democracy, geopolitics, and global power players and canvassed more than 110,000 respondents across 100 countries. | ||
| And in that survey, they found that China is now more popular worldwide than the United States. | ||
| You can see this chart changing from 2022 all the way up to 2025 with that steep decline here for the United States starting in 2024 and ending here, whereas China's reputation has improved. | ||
| A majority of people surveyed had an overall negative perception of the U.S., marking a steep decline from last year. | ||
| America's reputation took a particularly massive hit in EU countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, as U.S. President Donald Trump has called the block horrible, pathetic, and formed to screw the United States. | ||
| Now, some other polling from back in April from Ipsos found also that America's reputation drops across the world. | ||
| The proportion saying the United States will have a positive influence on world affairs has fallen in 26 out of 29 countries over the last six months. | ||
| America's reputation has fallen most markedly in Canada. | ||
| For the first time in Ipsos' decade-long survey series, China is placed ahead of the United States when it comes to playing a positive role on the international scene. | ||
| And if you'd like to have a look at some of these rankings for the countries, the global country average of 46% believing that America will have a positive influence, the highest being Peru having 76% of those polled believing that. | ||
| But if you go all the way back down to the bottom, Canada is at the very bottom with just 19% of Canadians believing that the United States will have a positive influence in the world. | ||
| Now, one of the ways that President Trump is attempting to have a positive influence in the world is by mediating between Russia and Ukraine in the ongoing war there. | ||
| But there was some news overnight. | ||
| Here's a story from CNN. | ||
| Russia launches the largest drone attack against Ukraine since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian military says. | ||
| Russia has battered Ukraine overnight with its largest drone attack since the war began, Ukraine's military said Sunday, as Moscow intensified its military assault despite holding direct peace talks with Kyiv on Friday. | ||
| Russia launched 273 Shahed drones in one night, the Ukrainian Air Force said, predominantly targeting the central Kyiv region. | ||
| A 28-year-old woman was killed, and three others, including a four-year-old child, were injured, according to the governor of the Kyiv region. | ||
| Now, President Trump commented on the state of Russia-Ukraine peace talks in the Oval Office, excuse me, and a potential meeting with Putin. | ||
| He made these comments to the press on Friday during the final stop on his MIDI's tour. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Rushlike, can we ask you a quick question? | |
| Yeah, you said that you didn't expect him to go if you didn't go. | ||
|
unidentified
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The question might be then, what are you going to do with why wait? | |
| Well, we're going 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Our question again this morning: Do you approve of President Trump's handling a foreign policy? | ||
| We'll start with Edward in Kalamazoo, Michigan on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Edward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Well, my view is that it's a complete disaster. | ||
| I mean, if you think about the countries that used to be our allies, just name the countries that were our allies, the NATO, the European countries now Trump has completely ignored and offended. | ||
| And NATO may be in trouble. | ||
| We've lost our European allies. | ||
| And then you go here to this continent. | ||
| Canada is just because of Trump's statements on Canada making Canada the 51st state. | ||
| God, I mean, we are good partners with Canada. | ||
| I don't know why you would say such incendiary language with Canada. | ||
| And then Mexico. | ||
| We do, again, we do a lot of trade with Mexico. | ||
| And why would you, I mean, you could work out deals with Mexico about border security. | ||
| But so, you know, our allies, and then you could go to Australia, you could go to Japan. | ||
| All of our main allies have fallen away. | ||
| And who are our allies now? | ||
| Russia? | ||
| Russia, Hungary? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| What are the great countries that we're friends with? | ||
| Qatar? | ||
| Edward, are there particular components of the president's foreign policy that you either specifically support or don't support? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he has never been serious about Ukraine. | |
| I think he's pro. | ||
| He's with Putin. | ||
| My guess is he takes direction for Putin. | ||
| And he will not solve that war because Putin does not want to end the war. | ||
| Zelensky is willing to negotiate. | ||
| Zelensky was the one that showed up. | ||
| Zelensky showed up at this meeting. | ||
| They were supposed to have a meeting somewhere. | ||
| I'm not sure where the summit was supposed to be. | ||
| Zelensky showed up. | ||
| Putin didn't show, and then Trump decided not to go. | ||
| And that war, the war in Ukraine, despite all of Trump's silly rhetoric, it's just silly that he's going to end the war, you know, on day one. | ||
| No, there's no plan. | ||
| There's no plan to end the war. | ||
| And, you know, I mean, what do we do? | ||
| Divide Ukraine in half and give some of it to Russia? | ||
| I mean, it's, it, I, and, yeah, it's, and it's not, we're not spreading democracy. | ||
| We're not spreading free trade. | ||
| We're not spreading good government. | ||
| We're spreading corruption and authoritarianism. | ||
| It's just a horrible, horrible word policy, in my view. | ||
| All right, let's go to Anita in Ypsilanti, Michigan on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Anita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm very disgusted with President Trump. | |
| I'm also disgusted with the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. | ||
| President Trump, for his, I don't know what his problem is, is that he, I mean, with Stephen Miller in office with the Heritage Foundation, you have to, have to, have to engage with Africans. | ||
| And I was watching Putin when he was on TV with Xi. | ||
| I saw a whole bunch of black leaders sitting behind them. | ||
| That should have been a red flag to say if you want to get Putin off the stage, you have to make sure he does not get the gold, the oil, or any kind of mineral from Africa. | ||
| The reason why I'm disgusted with Republicans, well, Republicans, well, they just sit around and do nothing. | ||
| But the Democrats, when it comes to Africa, which you don't talk about, you always say, abort your baby and be gay. | ||
| The Africans have said that is a non-starter. | ||
| They told the president of the United States, Barack Obama, when he went to Africa, we are not going to deal with this. | ||
| So I want to appreciate that. | ||
| Even the media will start having African leaders, African diplomats, African pundits just show the America what needs to be done to put us back on the world stage. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Joel is in Spring, Texas, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Joel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Kim. | |
| You're a great moderator. | ||
| I appreciate you. | ||
| Been a viewer since 79. | ||
| I don't know what popularity has to do with it of any importance. | ||
| I agree with some of the prior statements that's being done well. | ||
| No. | ||
| But in terms of Canada being a greater force for the good of the world, they do nothing for the good of the world. | ||
| And that they're incapable of doing so. | ||
| And, Joel, just a bit of clarification. | ||
| That poll was looking at the percentage of people within that country that believe America is a force for good in the world. | ||
| So that wasn't looking at whether or not people think Canada has a positive influence on the world, but they were looking at whether Canadians think the U.S. has a good influence in the world. | ||
| But please continue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you, Kim, for that delineation and that clarification. | |
| Firstly, and this, you know, always gets my gun. | ||
| We live in a hemisphere called America. | ||
| We've got North America, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America. | ||
| We're all Americans. | ||
| So I think us in the U.S. need to keep that in mind as well. | ||
| We're not the only Americans around here. | ||
| We need to stand up other people's business and let them run their own country, help out when we can if they ask us for help. | ||
| But in general, Trump is, I believe, doing an excellent job. | ||
| Some of the craziness of talking about taking over Iceland or Canada or regaining the Gulf of Mexico, that's wasted time. | ||
| An effort is never going to happen. | ||
| Trump is, you know, somewhat like a Peckham and Child. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he's there. | |
| And he's overall, I think, doing a good job. | ||
| So I'm sure I'll have a lot of people disagree with me there. | ||
| But Kim, I've been watching you since the first day you came on. | ||
| You handle yourself with a plum. | ||
| You could handle the show. | ||
| You shut a dude down on the first day. | ||
| And it's like, this gal needs business bad. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I do want to highlight one of the accomplishments that the Trump administration is touting from the Middle East tour. | ||
| The Trump and the Saudis secure a $600 billion investment deal to include billions in U.S. defense weapons. | ||
| And President Trump on Tuesday secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States along with a multi-billion dollar defense partnership following a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh. | ||
| The investment, according to a White House fact sheet, will strengthen energy security, defense, technology, and access to global infrastructure and critical minerals. | ||
| It includes a $142 billion defense and security deal that equips Saudi Arabia with state-of-the-art war equipment provided by dozens of U.S. firms. | ||
| Next up is Otis in Orange Park, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Otis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I think we, Donald Trump, has really destroyed this country reputation. | ||
| You know, when you pick over your friends first and then you start aligning yourself with our foes, you kind of set us up for failure. | ||
| You know, when you start firing some of the best technicians we have when it comes to intelligence, when it comes to trying to decipher intelligence, then we hurt ourselves. | ||
| This is just like not even 120 days into his administration. | ||
| That's four months. | ||
| Chaos has been going on. | ||
| But we got enemies in this world. | ||
| They're looking for weaknesses. | ||
| When you destroy your intelligence committee, when you're saying that your most focus that you have is getting immigrants out of this country who came over at two, three, four, five years old, but they're a threat to our society. | ||
| When you bring in white Africanas into this country, then take them to Mississippi, driving to Mississippi, then Mississippi fire the black foreign workers they got and give them a raise on top of that. | ||
| But then you look at the rest of the world when you only want to bring in one particular demographic, so then he's the one to bring it up. | ||
| I don't see race. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| You got to be Steve Wonder not to see race in that situation. | ||
| But when you then you put 145% terrorists on China, 25%, 35%, 45% on the rest of the world, because you say you have the power to do so. | ||
| This country is connected. | ||
| We can't separate ourselves from the world. | ||
| We still need things that people make from other countries. | ||
| We don't make these things because they would take up space and you're not going to make much money. | ||
| And just for Trump allies, keep this in mind. | ||
| It's still early. | ||
| You will see difference when it comes to your paycheck. | ||
| Go to the grocery store, pack a hamburger beef, a large pack, $23,25. | ||
| In January, you was able to get that. | ||
| Usually they get two packs for that. | ||
| Now, Otis, do you think that that is due to the trade war, or is there more of a domestic policy issue that you think is contributing to where we are with food prices? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's due to the trade war. | |
| Because I personally think it's to the trade war. | ||
| And to some small degree. | ||
| Might be domestic policies. | ||
| But because all business people in America, they got a sense of greed in their heart to try to squeeze out every little bit of profit that they can make. | ||
| Even today, I think Trump told Walmart, check this out, you need to eat the loss because he don't want Walmart, Amazon, or the rest of the big box manufacturing companies saying we're going to have to raise the price on our American citizen. | ||
| We're not stupid and we're not blind. | ||
| You know, we're not a hamster. | ||
| So, Otis, I want to provide some context to what you were saying about Walmart. | ||
| There's a story in the Associated Press, a rare warning from Walmart during a U.S. trade war, higher prices are inevitable. | ||
| Walmart, which became the nation's largest retailer by making low prices a priority, has found itself in a place it's rarely been, warning customers that prices will rise for goods ranging from bananas to car seats. | ||
| Executives at the $750 billion company told industry analysts Thursday that they're doing everything in their power to absorb the higher costs from tariffs ordered by President Donald Trump. | ||
| Given the magnitude of the duties, however, the highest since the 1930s, higher prices are unavoidable and they will hurt Walmart customers already buffeted by inflation over the past three years. | ||
| Trump's threatened 145% import taxes on Chinese goods were reduced to 30% in a deal announced Monday, with some of the higher tariffs on pause for 90 days. | ||
| Those higher prices began to appear on Walmart shelves in late April and accelerated this month, Walmart executives said on Thursday. | ||
| However, a larger sting will start to be felt in June and July when the back-to-school shopping season goes into high gear. | ||
| Now, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was on the Senate floor Monday talking about the rollback of some of these tariffs and saying that President Trump blinked. | ||
| 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's 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 wars lose, lose, lose for American families and businesses, leaving them with increased costs and more chaos. | ||
| Back to your calls and our question of whether you approve of President Trump's handling a foreign policy. | ||
| Iris is in South Lyon, Michigan, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Iris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning to you. | |
| First of all, you just showed Chuck Tumer, and he's talking to an empty room. | ||
| Now, if their comments in Congress and in the U.S. Senate are meant for the public, maybe they should go on all the other programs that are out there so they could be talking more to the public. | ||
| Where are the senators? | ||
| Where are the congresspeople when they're supposed to be at their job and digesting and working on the issues that we pay them to do? | ||
| So that's just that statement that you filled time in with showing what Chuck Tumer had to say to a camera. | ||
| There's no one in the room. | ||
| Anyway, getting back to the issue. | ||
| First of all, I think it's a wonderful idea that we get a new airplane for the president since the one that he's flying around in has more mileage on than the whole fleet of cars in the United States. | ||
| And personally, I wouldn't get on a plane that had that much mileage on it. | ||
| You wouldn't drive a car with that much mileage. | ||
| They would probably take it off the market, and it could be added to the amount of cars that are sitting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off of Oregon, where you can see it from the ground, looking down, and see where all the cars went that Obama bought. | ||
| And this is where they're parked. | ||
| Iris, can I pause the water on the president? | ||
| I'd like to read you a bit of an article from thehill.com about that plane that you're talking about and then get your thoughts on what you think. | ||
| So this is a story. | ||
| It says, GOP lawmakers signal discomfort with Trump's Qatar jet, Middle East diplomacy. | ||
| Republican lawmakers are raising concerns about elements of President Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, expressing discomfort about the president's decision to accept a luxury jet from Qatar and voicing reservations about lucrative Trump family business dealings in Qatar as well as the United Arab Emirates. | ||
| Republicans on Capitol Hill are also asking whether Trump has done enough to loop Israel into negotiations with the Houthi rebels in Yemen and his administration's talks with Iran over its nuclear program. | ||
| So obviously Democrats have complained about this jet that you mentioned, Iris, but there are some Republicans expressing concern about the president potentially accepting that as well. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's a good idea if it's a good plane. | |
| We need a good plane for our president, not some old one that's been remodeled by Barack Obama to give him wider bed space as he did to Air Force One. | ||
| I want our president, whoever it is, to be flying around in the safest best plane available because they use it more than the rest of the planes in the American fleet. | ||
| So, yeah, I want them to have a quality plane, and I don't care who provides it for it as long as it's not Boeing, which, you know, was more or less a startup company when they went into the airplane business. | ||
| But the reason I call this, I would like to know where the people in the Ukraine are getting all their food. | ||
| They don't seem to, we never hear about issues that they do a lot of farming there. | ||
| They all look well-fed. | ||
| The children are dressed beautifully. | ||
| They all look healthy. | ||
| They're active. | ||
| But we never see them doing farming. | ||
| Is Russia providing them with food? | ||
| And if they're not, who is? | ||
| Are we? | ||
| Look at our children. | ||
| Look what they eat. | ||
| Look what we eat. | ||
| Hot dogs, tacos, fast food stuff. | ||
| You know, burritos. | ||
| We eat in the car. | ||
| So I do want to play a little bit of a clip of President Trump responding to that point that Iris raised earlier. | ||
| But first, just a bit more of that article from The Hill. | ||
| Senator Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wasn't comfortable with Trump using the jet from Qatar to become his mobile command center in the sky. | ||
| I'm not comfortable accepting it, he said. | ||
| I think there are national security concerns that need to be addressed about listening devices, safety specs, and potentially other issues. | ||
| We will ask that those be addressed, he added. | ||
| Now, President Trump made some comments about his accepting an offer from the Qatari government for a $400 million refurbished Air Force One. | ||
| Here is that moment from Monday. | ||
| I think Qatar, who has really, we've helped them a lot over the years in terms of security and safety. | ||
| I feel they, I think that, and very, very nicely, and I have a lot of respect for the leadership and for the leader, Qatar. | ||
| And I think they knew about it because they buy Boeings. | ||
| They buy a lot of Boeings. | ||
| And they knew about it. | ||
| And they said we would like to do something. | ||
| And if we can get a 747 as a contribution to our Defense Department to use during a couple of years while they're building the other ones, I think that was a very nice gesture. | ||
| Now, I could be a stupid person and say, oh, no, we don't want a free plane. | ||
| We give free things out. | ||
| We'll take one too. | ||
| And it helps us out because, again, we're talking about we have 40-year-old aircraft. | ||
| The money we spend, the maintenance we spend on those planes to keep them tippy-top is astronomical. | ||
| You wouldn't even believe it. | ||
| So I think it's a great gesture from Qatar. | ||
| I appreciate it very much. | ||
| I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. | ||
| I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, no, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane. | ||
| But I thought it was a great gesture. | ||
| And I think it was a gesture because of the fact that we have helped and continue to. | ||
| We will continue to. | ||
| All of those countries, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and others, we keep them safe. | ||
| If it wasn't for us, they probably wouldn't exist right now. | ||
| And I think this was just a gesture of good faith. | ||
| And I don't get it. | ||
| Someday it'll be like Ronald Reagan. | ||
| They decommission them. | ||
| You know, they get to a certain age. | ||
| They decommission them. | ||
| It'll go to my library. | ||
| They're talking about going to my library in years out. | ||
| But I thought it was a great gesture. | ||
| And it's something that was done by Ronald Reagan. | ||
| They actually decommissioned the plane and he put it in his library. | ||
| And it actually has made the library, I think, a Boeing 707. | ||
| It's actually made the library more successful. | ||
| So it was good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you plan to use the plane after you leave office? | |
| No, I don't. | ||
| No. | ||
| It would go directly to the library after I leave office. | ||
| I wouldn't be using it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Mark is in Wesley Chapel, Florida, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you. | |
| First of all, it's nice to know the Democrats finally care about inflation because they certainly didn't care about inflation during the four years that Biden was in office. | ||
| It's going to take time to get gas prices, energy prices, and eventually gross prices down. | ||
| It took Reagan a year and a half. | ||
| Ronald Reagan inherited massive inflation and massive interest rates when he took office 40-plus years ago. | ||
| So this is going to take some time, but we're moving in the right direction. | ||
| Now, when it comes to this issue with these trade deals, we had 35 to 40 years of massive imbalance with our trading partners around the world with all these other countries. | ||
| I knew before the beginning of this year that it was going to take the bulk of this year for all of these trade imbalances to get ironed out. | ||
| We're heading in the right direction. | ||
| After 90 days, if China doesn't come to the floor with Trump and agree to something, well, guess what? | ||
| Remember when Trump was in office the first time? | ||
| He forced China to buckle. | ||
| He also forced Mexico to buckle. | ||
| He got what he wanted then. | ||
| Then Biden took office and never followed up on anything. | ||
| So China, Mexico, Canada cannot engage in trade wars with us. | ||
| Our economy is too strong for them. | ||
| They're all going to buckle at some point. | ||
| But of course, this is always going to take several months, if not the bulk of the year. | ||
| But we're heading in the right direction. | ||
| So everybody relax. | ||
| And when we go into next year, I don't know what the Democrats are going to run on because we're going to have a powerful economy. | ||
| All is going to be well. | ||
| And the Democrats, let me remind everybody of something else. | ||
| Every Democrat on Capitol Hill during Biden's administration were engaged in this massive cover-up. | ||
| They lied to the country about Biden's cognitive decline. | ||
| Hopefully the Republicans run on this issue next year and just pound away on the Democrats and make sure the voters do not forget the fact that the Democrats on Capitol Hill engage in this massive cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. | ||
| And once the economy is humming along, the Democrats are going to have absolutely nothing to run on. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Terrell is in Owings Mills, Maryland, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Terrell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This guy, he talks about Ronald Reagan. | ||
| I was back there doing Ronald Reagan. | ||
| Ronald Reagan also had dementia. | ||
| They used to suck dementia. | ||
| Ronald Reagan used to fall asleep at the G7 meetings, but the media never showed it. | ||
| But getting back to the tariffs and economy, it was Charlie Gasperino of Fox News said that Donald Trump had bent the knee to Qi. | ||
| It was Senator Kennedy up there telling, Mr. President, make the deal with China. | ||
| Make the deal with it. | ||
| Put sugar on top. | ||
| And then you got Cal Thomas, who was on your show, who said that Donald Trump didn't have a plan. | ||
| So now that's on the domestic side. | ||
| So now we go to foreign policy. | ||
| So now he wants to get back into the Iran deal. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And that Iran deal. | ||
| You know, they said that America gave Iran all these billions of dollars. | ||
| Yeah, it was Iran's own money. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Iran, and then after President Obama, which is what it's all about anyway, Obama, okay, when President Obama gave Iran their money, then Boeing went into Iran. | ||
| It was Caterpillar that went into Iran. | ||
| Nissan went into Iran. | ||
| All the capitalists went to Iran to try to get some of that money. | ||
| But Kimberly, I'm going to say one thing. | ||
| This is all about Obama and Obama beating Obama beating Donald Trump with Biden. | ||
| They don't want to say that Obama beat Donald Trump, but Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. | ||
| I mean, Biden beat Trump in 2020. | ||
| And they know that Obama was instrumental in that. | ||
| But they don't want to say that Obama had two terms. | ||
| And then with Biden's is a third term. | ||
| They don't want to say that. | ||
| So when they say who was running the White House, of course we knew that Obama had something to do with running. | ||
| We know Joe Biden had dementia back in 2020. | ||
| But then again, Kimberly, why did Donald Trump lose? | ||
| If Donald Trump was just so instrumental in running the economy and doing all these good things, why didn't he win in 2020? | ||
| That's my question to the Republicans. | ||
| Donald Trump. | ||
| So our question this morning is about foreign policy and whether or not you approve President Trump's handling of it so far. | ||
| Let's hear from Connie in Bakersfield, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Connie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I would like to, first of all, say the United States is at war. | ||
| The government is at war with each other. | ||
| The Democrats against the Republicans. | ||
| And nothing will ever get settled. | ||
| It's a war of words. | ||
| They are trying to kill each other by just talking and never getting anything done. | ||
| And do you remember President Kennedy with Cuba? | ||
| What he did and how he stopped them from the Russians going over there. | ||
| I mean, I may not be completely right, but going over there, he told them, stop. | ||
| And he was very serious. | ||
| I think all the countries should get together and tell Russia, stop. | ||
| These Ukrainians do not want to give up their land. | ||
| They do not want, they are willing to die. | ||
| And they don't. | ||
| And who says it? | ||
| He doesn't even want to go and meet. | ||
| He doesn't want to talk. | ||
| Take the hint. | ||
| He won't listen until something's done. | ||
| And everybody should get together and say, stop, and give them back their land and behave yourself and stop trying to take the world over. | ||
| Okay, Patrick is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Patrick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
| The disinformation on here is just absolutely staggering. | ||
| I'm an intellectual property specialist and an expert in technologies. | ||
| We have never been in a greater place because of this new president. | ||
| I changed political parties because of the derangement of Biden and Harris. | ||
| And what we're looking at from a national economic perspective is absolutely breathtaking. | ||
| What the media isn't telling the American people is the horror show that has unfolded in China. | ||
| The country is literally imploding. | ||
| Because of the authoritarian nature of G, because of the isolation and the nationalism, the entire world is, it's not just the United States that's pulled away from China. | ||
| The entire world has. | ||
| Their entire real estate system is imploding. | ||
| There are over 35 million people that have been furloughed in the last two weeks. | ||
| They had three manufacturing facilities closed in one day. | ||
| The unemployment is absolutely staggering. | ||
| Stores are literally closing up in every major city. | ||
| Ports, there are massive trailers that are sitting ten deep all over the place. | ||
| It is so bad that the government has mandated that all of the materials that are in the crates are going to be sold by pound. | ||
| Now, let's just look at what the president, the masterstroke that the president has just created within his trip to the Mideast. | ||
| More than $2 trillion in deals. | ||
| He has literally just in Boeing contracts over 200. | ||
| They have 200 planes being acquired. | ||
| The plane that was given to the president was not given to the president. | ||
| It was given to the United States Air Force. | ||
| The media is literally covering up every aspect of the monumental achievements that the President of the United States, we are so lucky to have in the White House. | ||
| And on top of that, the Treasury Secretary, he's an absolute stone-cold genius. | ||
| You know, rather than coming together, the only thing that Democrats can do is destroy, divide, create enmity, racial strife. | ||
| They want our country to be destroyed. | ||
| There was literally a young adolescent criminal who killed a child and he got out. | ||
| The media is so shameful in so many ways, you can't even overstate it. | ||
| And what are we hearing? | ||
| We're hearing nothing but derision, nothing but strife when inflation is down, gas prices are down. | ||
| You can't overstate the level of deceit and dishonesty from the Democratic Party, especially Schumer. | ||
| Schumer is nothing but an embarrassment. | ||
| You have AOC. | ||
| This is the best that he can produce there with his jazz looking. | ||
| So, Patrick, you mentioned that you think the president's economic foreign policy is working well. | ||
| What do you think of some of the work that he's been doing related to Ukraine and Russia, or also his efforts to mediate in the Gaza war as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we're dealing with in the Ukrainian war, which was completely illegitimate. | |
| It was designed specifically to fleece the American people. | ||
| The numbers are staggering. | ||
| We don't even know where the money is. | ||
| The CIA was sent over there along with Deloitte and Touch to examine the books. | ||
| And what they found was the theft from Zelensky, who, by the way, who has done away with all civil rights, who has become a de facto dictator, who's put priests in jail. | ||
| He has lied repeatedly to the United States. | ||
| Finally, the president, and that's another thing, the president, in another master stroke, has assured major mineral rights for rare earth minerals. | ||
| You know, Gaza is going to be over. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's hear from Paul in York, Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Love you so very much. | ||
| First of all, I'll be honest with you. | ||
| Trump's highly deferred policy is not good. | ||
| I've been reading a lot of MSNBC that there are a lot of people, especially the ones on the Gaza Strip. | ||
| It's the same way President Trump and his Corey's unfortunately want to get rid of more than 400 Palestinians. | ||
| And he wants to turn Gaza Strip into this somewhat oasis of a hotel in the area. | ||
| It breaks my heart. | ||
| You know, it seems to me that President Trump here does have no respect for humans, no respect for the world. | ||
| And I say to you right now, it's a dark say why this country and this world can't get along. | ||
| Now, you cover up a tariffs, you know, it's breaking my heart why we have to suffer for all this. | ||
| It's the same way, you know, I was reading about Walmart and he's telling the CEOs of Walmart to eat the tariffs. | ||
| It's the same way. | ||
| Now we have to suffer, you know, for the high cost of groceries and the high cost of everything. | ||
| And then, you know, I agree with the last two callers. | ||
| I think Congress needs to get their ad together, for one, and try to put some kind of solutions. | ||
| You know, it's the same why they, for some reason, want to get rid of Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| I am a Medicaid, Medicare beneficiary. | ||
| And it would break my heart to see almost 14 million people that have their coverages being taken away for no reason at all. | ||
| And what do we do? | ||
| What do we deserve this? | ||
| It's just to say this country here is falling apart. | ||
| It's to say why Congress can't get their ads together. | ||
| And I hope and pray one way or the other, because I'll be a Democrat all my life. | ||
| And hopefully, you know, if the midterms come apart, I hope the Democrats, one way or the other, can get their ads together and take back this country. | ||
| This country was based on immigrants that already made this country very strong. | ||
| And not only that, to make the country who we are. | ||
| Right now, it's the same way he and ICE, all its ICE agents here want to kidnap some people that he don't even know and go to the take them to detention centers for no reason. | ||
| This is a country that's falling apart. | ||
| And the economy, he claims that he got the economy for himself. | ||
| No, it was Biden and Obama that got the economy in. | ||
| I'm going to go ahead and go on to Joseph in Worcester, Massachusetts on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, C-Span. | |
| Yeah, I'm satisfied with President Trump making what's going on in the world, what he's doing. | ||
| I voted for him because this is what I wanted. | ||
| I wanted him to get involved with the world because the Democrats have lost their mind. | ||
| They're like, Cook for Coral Puff. | ||
| How are you going to provoke? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Joseph, it looks like your line dropped on us. | ||
| Let's hear from Nikki in Panama City, Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nikki. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there, Kimberly. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I sure did love that poll you showed at the beginning. | ||
| It's just like Trump has said all along, these countries want nothing from us but our money and our defense. | ||
| The minute that Trump says you need to start paying for your own and you need to start treating America fairly, then the minute he says that, then they turn straight to Russia and China. | ||
| That's what your poll shows. | ||
| It just blows my mind. | ||
| And, you know, I don't care about the plane. | ||
| I don't understand why Boeing has taken over four years to make the new Air Force norm. | ||
| I don't understand that at all. | ||
| And, you know, I'm just pleased to see all the Input: All of the, you know, Apple and all of these other countries, I mean, businesses that are coming, all the people that I know that do those sorts of jobs, iron workers and construction people that are going to have jobs working in these plants. | ||
| You know, mills in these plants, I'm just, I'm thrilled. | ||
| And this weekend, eggs were $4 in my local store. | ||
| So I don't know who's paying seven, but you know, you're getting ripped off. | ||
| Buy somewhere else. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Felipe is in Reading, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Felipe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to talk. | |
| And let's think about the people who suffered the consequences of a rough storm on Friday afternoon. | ||
| But as far as the president's and his interaction with other governments and other entities and their relationship, it's kind of a weird situation where it changes from day to day. | ||
| We really don't know what his agenda is other than self-enrichment or familiar enrichment. | ||
| That's the only commonality in this whole situation: what is in it for him and not in it for the American people as a whole. | ||
| It is just exposing more and more that this is down to those who are willing to play ball with him and much like a mobster would have or whatever this character is that we have as president. | ||
| I don't know how we never have however old Trump to try to figure out what he's about. | ||
| It's changing from day to day and we're witnessing his cognitive decline. | ||
| But as far as our relationship with the rest of the world, I mean, who are we to tell anyone what source of power they can use to power their country when we're the only country on the planet that's used that same technology to kill innocents? | ||
| I mean, it's kind of like the whole splinter and plank situation. | ||
| Who are we to tell about violation of human rights when we violate human rights? | ||
| So one of the biggest things, he's just showing exactly what we are. | ||
| We're a bunch of hypocrites. | ||
| And instead of concentrating on the commonality and not the other stuff, that's where we're at. | ||
| But it's by design. | ||
| So if you want to look, it's a shell game. | ||
| So you're moving around, pay attention to this, pay attention to this. | ||
| But what I even heard this week was that we just did a huge bailout for the American farmers, and it went nearly uncovered. | ||
| And it tunes to billions of dollars because of this shell game that's currently going on. | ||
| Another thing you may want to check out is that our agriculture, a large portion of our agriculture, is exported. | ||
| So in reality, our price, if there were this trade war, using this word war as if it's not this trade situation, I think it has more effect on Americans than does the rest of the world because they're buying into the future. | ||
| They're buying future production of eggs and future production of stuff like that. | ||
| We export more eggs and chicken and milk to China, which is, I don't know how many more times greater in size and population and magnitude. | ||
| That's what a lot of people just don't understand. | ||
| That China is a huge and very successful nation of people, a society. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Roger in Fort Wayne, Indiana on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Roger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Washington Journal and everybody. | |
| As far as this foreign policy with Trump, I don't like it, not because I'm a Democrat, but here's one of my reasons. | ||
| You know, Trump and the conservatives, they rather make peace with the very people that helped kill many Americans on 9-11 than make peace with their own fellow Americans. | ||
| They rather, Trump and the conservatives, they rather fight and wage war against their own fellow Americans than stand up to and hold accountable the very people that helped kill many Americans on 9-11. | ||
| Like, do we just forget about that? | ||
| I mean, now we're gonna even sell these terrorist people our weapons so they can go around the world and drop American bombs and weapons on whom they choose. | ||
| Come on, people. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| I mean, we can't be doing. | ||
| Before I go, there's a story that I've been seeing over the weekend about how this administration has ushered in El Chapo, the drug cartel guy and his family into the country over the border. | ||
| If you could, could you pull that up and read a little bit of that? | ||
| But before I go, I'm going to say it again. | ||
| Conservatives, you guys, y'all rather make peace with the very people who killed many Americans on 9-11 than try to make peace with your own fellow Americans. | ||
| So, Roger, I'm going to go ahead and read a little bit of a story of what you're referencing with El Chapo. | ||
| And so, this is from the New York Times. | ||
| Cartel family members cross-border in apparent deal with the U.S. official says. | ||
| Mexico's security secretary confirmed reports that 17 family members of Sinaloa cartel leaders had entered the United States, likely as part of a deal with the Trump administration. | ||
| A group of family members of Sinaloa cartel leaders crossed into the United States last week. | ||
| For days, rumors had spread that 17 relatives, including one of the ex-wives of the crime boss known as El Chapo, had flown from a cartel stronghold to Tijuana, Mexico, and then crossed into the United States. | ||
| A news outlet, Pia Donota, reported that they had surrendered to U.S. federal authorities there, citing anonymous sources. | ||
| When asked, the Sinaloa cartel is one of the most powerful criminal groups in the world, although it's been divided by violence. | ||
| And so there are a lot of anonymous sources citing this, but it's being pretty widely reported about this deal. | ||
| Next up is Quinte in Sacramento, California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Quinte. | ||
| Can you hear us? | ||
| All right, let's try Mohamed in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mohamed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I am so disappointed in the Trump administration's handling of the foreign policy. | ||
| He kept promising that within 24 hours, I will end the Ukraine-Russia war. | ||
| Nothing has been done. | ||
| Over 100 days goes by and it only gets worse. | ||
| So it's been disastrous all over. | ||
| Why are we picking a fight with Canada, our closest ally, our neighbor? | ||
| The whole debacle with China has been a complete disaster. | ||
| Every day things change. | ||
| You know, I'm an importer. | ||
| I import area rugs from China. | ||
| And I've seen how my business has been damaged. | ||
| And he gave in to Chi. | ||
| He gave in. | ||
| I understand that China is eating our cake, all the fentanyl that is coming into the United States. | ||
| That was the idea of to be able to put a stop to this fentanyl that is coming into our country. | ||
| As far as the imports, this is the consumer's problem. | ||
| The consumer demands lower prices. | ||
| Why do they run to Walmart? | ||
| Why do they run to Target or Home Depot? | ||
| Because of low-priced Chinese goods. | ||
| That's why people, they're not, this has been going on for over 40 years. | ||
| This is nothing new that China is producing goods. | ||
| Everything in our home right now, if you look, 90% of what is in your home is made in China. | ||
| It's not that it cannot be made in the United States. | ||
| It's that the cost will be a lot higher and people aren't willing to pay the higher cost. | ||
| I know it. | ||
| I'm an importer. | ||
| As far as Iran, it's been a disaster. | ||
| Trump, during his first administration, he pulled out of the JPOA. | ||
| And then, look, Iran went, and most likely, Iran already has enough uranium to enrich a bomb. | ||
| They just don't know how to put it on a missile. | ||
| Otherwise, they probably have reached that level already. | ||
| Nothing has happened. | ||
| And now accepting a $400 million plane, the Arab Air Force One, we're going to be calling it now. | ||
| I mean, it's either a bribe, which is against the law, or it's a gift, and that's also against the law. | ||
| What do they want from him? | ||
| And selling these meanie coins. | ||
| So the whole thing, handling the economy, there's a caller who called. | ||
| He said, people, China is closing down factories, closing down stores. | ||
| 35 million people have lost their jobs. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Had he not pulled back? | ||
| Had he not bowed down to chi, that same thing was happening in the United States. | ||
| There was nothing being imported. | ||
| And right now is the time to import for upcoming Christmas. | ||
| Donald Trump doesn't know. | ||
| It's Scott Beffett who knows everything, and he has to finally listen to Scott. | ||
| Everyday change. | ||
| You know, as an importer, this last two, three months that Trump has been in office, he changes policies so fast that even the custom protection border, you know, when we file for our imports, they can't keep up with the changes. | ||
| There are import documents coming in with the wrong customs fees that are being produced on our paperwork. | ||
| So, Mohamed, I want to play for a moment a bit of President Trump Monday in the Oval Office talking about that trade deal that you referenced, the temporary trade deal with China that was struck last weekend. | ||
| In addition, yesterday we achieved a total reset with China after productive talks in Geneva. | ||
| Both sides now agreed to reduce the tariffs imposed after April 2nd to 10 percent for 90 days as negotiators continue on the larger structural issues. | ||
| And I want to tell you that a couple of things. | ||
| First of all, that doesn't include the tariffs that are already on, that are our tariffs, and it doesn't include tariffs on cars, steel, aluminum, things such as that, or tariffs that may be imposed on pharmaceuticals because we want to bring the pharmaceutical businesses back to the United States, and they're already starting to come back now based on tariffs because they don't want to pay 25, 50, or 100 percent tariffs. | ||
| So they're moving them back to the United States. | ||
| I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he's going to, I think, even up his numbers, $500 billion. | ||
| He's going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. | ||
| And we look forward to that. | ||
| I really do look forward to that. | ||
| But the talks in Geneva were very friendly. | ||
| The relationship is very good. | ||
| We're not looking to hurt China. | ||
| China was being hurt very badly. | ||
| They were closing up factories. | ||
| They were having a lot of unrest. | ||
| And they were very happy to be able to do something with us. | ||
| And the relationship is very, very good. | ||
| I'll speak to President Xi maybe at the end of the week. | ||
| We have some other things we're doing. | ||
| Our question again this morning, do you approve of President Trump's handling of foreign policy? | ||
| A few text messages we've received. | ||
| This one from Alex, a Republican from Connecticut. | ||
| I think President Trump's foreign policy is excellent. | ||
| He isn't apologizing for America like other presidents did. | ||
| He's making deals. | ||
| He's a businessman. | ||
| He's dealt with these countries for decades. | ||
| He's putting our interest first. | ||
| Another one from Mike in Woodbury, Minnesota. | ||
| No, despite Trump's promises, Gaza and Ukraine are a mess. | ||
| Canada and the EU are both upset with us, and China is emerging as a world leader. | ||
| Trump promises made, promises not kept. | ||
| And Steve in Tampa, Florida says, President Trump is a disruptor, and he is focused on a policy of peace through wealth. | ||
| The Democrats have allowed the debt to rise to $37 trillion. | ||
| Trump is enhancing the GDP of America by bringing businesses back to the U.S. Ernestine is in Nashville, Tennessee on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ernestine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trump is building wealth for himself. | |
| He's not a businessman. | ||
| Anytime you have seven or eight bankrupts, you are not a businessman. | ||
| He's building wealth for himself and his family. | ||
| So he's a big liar. | ||
| A liar. | ||
| And what do you think of his foreign policy, Ernestine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He doesn't have a foreign policy. | |
| He doesn't have a foreign policy. | ||
| He's building wealth with those foreigners for his family. | ||
| And he's not going out. | ||
| He's a liar. | ||
| Trump always wanted to be a celebrity, and he's a liar. | ||
| Okay, Michael is in Stanford, Connecticut on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Hey, I've been listening today, and there's some lot of people out there that are suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. | ||
| Those people that are backing Trump, you're totally deranged, all right? | ||
| That Blaine, how many of you out there think it's brand new that he wants to get from Qatar? | ||
| It's not. | ||
| It's either 13 to 15 years old. | ||
| This guy, he can't finish the sentence. | ||
| He doesn't know where he's at. | ||
| The other day, he confused the toy company Mattel for a country. | ||
| So he's going to put more tariffs on Mattel, the country. | ||
| It's not a country. | ||
| It's a toy manufacturer. | ||
| That 8647 the other day that was put down, I went to Amazon to see if they have hats. | ||
| There's tons of hacks. | ||
| It didn't start just yesterday. | ||
| It started months ago. | ||
| People wanted to get rid of this guy. | ||
| Oh, yeah, when is his first factory going to open up in this country? | ||
| I could see it happening next when? | ||
| Never. | ||
| It's never going to happen. | ||
| And he is a bad businessman, like that woman just said. | ||
| How many businessmen go bankrupt seven times? | ||
| Really? | ||
| You can't be a very good businessman going bankrupt this many times. | ||
| And these tariffs, who are they hurting? | ||
| He has no idea what he's doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's got no clue. | |
| He's really, really dumb. | ||
| You think about it. | ||
| You think what he's saying. | ||
| And then all of a sudden you're like, could he really be this stupid? | ||
| And I really think he is. | ||
| Robert is in Cincinnati, Ohio on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Trump is doing an excellent job. | |
| I'm very happy to see what he's doing for our country. | ||
| And I just don't understand how people can't see what he's doing because, yeah, he may have failed a couple of times. | ||
| Bankruptcies teach you to learn to do better. | ||
| That's why he's very successful. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is Kurt in Anaheim, California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Kurt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
| And what do you think of the president's foreign policy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think his foreign policy is very good. | |
| He's out there trying and, you know, trying to represent the United States. | ||
| And I wanted to say that you're very good at what you do. | ||
| You're very a nice person and you're very pretty. | ||
| And I appreciate you for so many years. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| And thanks to everybody who called in this segment. | ||
| Later on the program, we're going to hear from attorney Alan Dershowitz, who's going to join us to talk about legal and constitutional issues in the news, as well as his new book, The Preventative State. | ||
| But first, we'll have a conversation with two political commentators and social media influencers, Stephen Bennell and Brad Palumbo, about the growing role of non-traditional media and how it's affecting our political discourse. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| This 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 this 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 this 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 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 aid to president franklin roosevelt | ||
| While 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 BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're going to have a discussion about political commentators and the role that non-traditional media is playing in political discussions right now, especially with younger voters. | ||
| For this conversation, we've got Stephen Bennell, who is a social media political commentator. | ||
| Welcome, Stephen. | ||
| Hey, thanks for having me. | ||
| And also Brad Palumbo, who is also another social media political commentator. | ||
| Thank you both for joining us. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Now, I'd like you both, starting with you, Brad, to explain your programs, your politics, and the platforms that you're on. | ||
| Yeah, I'm the host of the Brad versus Everyone podcast, primarily on YouTube, but also on all audio platforms, where I take on kind of the craziest and most extreme takes from across our politics, our media, and the internet from an independent, right-of-center political perspective. | ||
| And it's a weird moment to be kind of on the center right politically if you're not fully on board the MAGA train, but you also really reject a lot of modern liberalism and the state of the Democratic Party. | ||
| But something about that independent perspective has resonated with people, at least somewhat, especially on YouTube, where I post videos every single day, basically, and focus on that platform primarily. | ||
| And Stephen, what about you? | ||
| Hey, I have a YouTube channel. | ||
| It's just called Destiny. | ||
| I don't really have a formal name for the show. | ||
| I kind of cover politics from a center left to far left-ish perspective. | ||
| My politics are pretty moderate, but my messaging is a little bit extreme sometimes. | ||
| My background is in kind of like internet video games, where everybody's a bit more, I guess, I would say aggressively coded, I guess, in how they communicate with each other. | ||
| So I do a ton of kind of contemporary political analysis, sometimes historical political analysis, combined with a little bit of philosophy or science or whatever the topics of the day are. | ||
| One of the advantages of doing the program live on YouTube is I can interact with my audience in real time, and there's just a ton of feedback. | ||
| And as a result, the, I guess, programming can be pretty dynamic. | ||
| Now, for those in our audience who may not be consuming their news or political commentary online on these streaming platforms like YouTube or Twitch, can you talk about where you sit specifically in the ecosystem there and what the environment is like for news on these platforms? | ||
| Brad, why don't you go first? | ||
| Yeah, well, I think on most social media platforms and most content platforms, you have a lot of voices that are fully on team red or a lot of voices that are fully on team blue. | ||
| So you will have very huge YouTube accounts that are reliably kind of spinning a MAGA narrative, right? | ||
| A pro-Trump narrative, covering things from a pro-Trump perspective. | ||
| And then you'll have a lot of kind of bog standard resistance liberal type content creators that will get millions and millions of views just criticizing Trump, covering what's going on from a very solidly team blue perspective. | ||
| Then there's a handful of people somewhere in the middle, which is where I would categorize myself, though I'm definitely right of center in my politics and in my bias. | ||
| But there is a market for that. | ||
| It's just perhaps harder to succeed and harder to kind of stand out in the tribalistic and partisan nature of political conversations today. | ||
| That's where I'd place myself, but most of the conversations do tend to be dominated, not unlike traditional media, by reliable partisans on either side. | ||
| And Stephen, are you seeing any change in the role that political commentators like yourself are playing in the broader media ecosystem in this current environment? | ||
| Unfortunately, yes, I would say that alternative media is playing a larger and larger role. | ||
| And I think that we've kind of left that era of caring at all about any kind of factual reporting or any kind of understanding of an issue. | ||
| And now it just seems like it's pure rhetoric and it's kind of pure partisan talking points where everybody just kind of tunes into their, I guess, alternative media personality that tells them the things that they want to hear, regardless of whether or not they're divorced from reality. | ||
| And yeah, I feel like alternative media, unfortunately, has played a really negative role in moving us in that divorced from reality direction. | ||
| Now, Stephen, can you talk a little bit about your audience? | ||
| Who's tuning into you and anything we know about their demographics? | ||
| Yeah, I would say the demographics of my audience probably tend to skew a lot younger than traditional media. | ||
| Whereas I think Fox and CNN and MSNBC all, I want to say that the average age is, I think, like in the 70s. | ||
| I think it's quite older, not old, just older. | ||
| I would say online, the demographics skew much younger. | ||
| And then in my community, especially with the background in gaming and everything, my audience skews probably on average, I think, around like 27 to 28 years old, maybe a tad younger, depending on what exactly I'm talking about. | ||
| They tend to be probably a bit more affluent, probably a bit wider, a bit more international, maybe than people that would be watching cable, Fox, or MSNBC. | ||
| What about your audience, Brad? | ||
| Yeah, I think the plurality of my audience is in that like 18 to 35 range. | ||
| It's about even gender split, which actually somewhat surprised me when I first learned that. | ||
| So a lot of women like to tune into me as well, which is perhaps a little bit different than a lot of male political commentators in the online space. | ||
| But it's a lot of people who are disaffected from one side or the other's reliable narrative and are looking for something different and feel often kind of disillusioned with how delusional and extreme our politics are these days. | ||
| Now then, given that you're independent content creators, how do you decide what stories to cover? | ||
| And are there particular stories that you feel you're better positioned to cover than maybe more traditional media outlets? | ||
| Stephen, go ahead. | ||
| There's always kind of a buzz on social media and on really all the mainstream media channels in terms of what's going on for the day. | ||
| Thankfully, it's not really hard to figure out what you need to talk about since we have a live streamer president who is going live sometimes two or three times a day to talk about whatever his current agenda is. | ||
| So if there's a new executive order being signed, if there's a new massive vehicle being accepted, if there's a new trade deal being spoken about, usually it's pretty easy to figure out what you want to cover. | ||
| Like the entire media is kind of focusing on whatever's going on for the day. | ||
| And you could look at social media or just look at the audience. | ||
| They'll be talking about things and you can get feedback from what people want to hear about there. | ||
| The second part of that question, what are we best primed to cover? | ||
| I guess, I mean, I would argue things that I've done individual research or reading into are things that I'm probably the best primed to cover. | ||
| But I think that when it comes to alternative media, I think that people just want to hear you cover whatever are the important stories of the day, regardless of whether or not you know what you're talking about, for better or for worse. | ||
| And I think that a lot of the alternative media sphere kind of plays into that. | ||
| Like the joke, and I'm sure Brad's made it, maybe you guys here have made it, that everybody becomes an expert on whatever the current geopolitical or financial issue or science-based issue is of the day. | ||
| Everybody suddenly has a strong take on it. | ||
| And Brad, what's your process? | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm a little different because I'm only doing about 30 minutes of content a day. | ||
| So I have to pick and choose what do I cover and what do I not. | ||
| And I try to go for a mix of what I think will be entertaining to people because if we're being honest, a lot of new media is entertainment, essentially, but also what will have some sort of broader informative value or connect to some broader lesson. | ||
| And then in terms of what I think I'm well positioned to cover, well, there's entire ecosystems and entire storylines that are unplaying with millions and millions of people tuning into them that mainstream media is not even really attuned to. | ||
| I mean, there was just a huge scandal on TikTok where an anti-Trump resistance tour imploded over alleged microaggressions. | ||
| This is something that millions and millions and millions of people were talking about online, but barely even got noticed or covered at all in traditional media because they're just not plugged into those spaces. | ||
| And as somebody on the younger side, as somebody who's chronically online, I can be plugged into those. | ||
| So I think I'm well positioned to cover those. | ||
| My background's also in traditional economics. | ||
| I was a political reporter for several years, so I can cover all of that stuff. | ||
| And then I tend to try to avoid talking about topics where I truly don't know that much. | ||
| So when we're talking about foreign affairs or geopolitics, I kind of lean out and focus more domestically where I do have years as a traditional, you know, media analyst and writer and did actually study those topics. | ||
| Well, if our audience has questions for either of our guests, you can call in Democrats at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| And because our guests have special expertise reaching younger audience, we have a special line for folks under 35. | ||
| If you're under 35, you can call in at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Stephen, I'd like to go back to you. | ||
| There's been so much, you brought this up yourself, so much polarization and political discourse online with this idea of everybody finding their own niche. | ||
| How do you balance the need for sort of viewer engagement with the need for, and being right with sort of bridge building and maybe acknowledging points from other perspectives? | ||
| That's a funnier question than you realize for me. | ||
| One of my big complaints about alternative media is I really truly do feel like it is the worst of the worst when it comes to actual media coverage. | ||
| And in terms of actually finding independent points of view where people are doing research, where people have some political or philosophical foundation of which they can filter news through and then kind of give you their individual take. | ||
| Hell yeah, that is incredibly rare. | ||
| I try to do that on my program, but I feel like most people are typically just going to give you whatever the current thoughts of the day are. | ||
| If I tune into like a progressive YouTube channel, I'm going to hear what progressives think about an issue. | ||
| I'm probably not going to hear anything that's going to surprise me. | ||
| If I tune into a conservative channel, you know, except for the exceedingly rare never Trump conservatives or, you know, not Trump conservative, I'm going to hear the Trump talking points of the day. | ||
| I would say that alternative media overwhelmingly coalesces around whatever the talking points are for their individual factions. | ||
| That's just how alternative media works right now, unfortunately. | ||
| A question we received on X from Michael Thornton. | ||
| Can you address audience capture of independent media? | ||
| Brad, do you want to attempt that one? | ||
| Well, yeah, I think to understand that, all you have to do is watch one of these influencer briefings that the Trump administration has hosted with all these new media personalities where they just basically ask them, oh, Mrs. Press Secretary, Madam Press Secretary, why are you so amazing and wonderful? | ||
| Because they've decided to just become kind of, you know, the traditional media, I do believe, has a strong liberal and democratic bias. | ||
| Well, new media was supposed to be independent and different, but it's very easy to fall into those incentives, to want, you know, to just pander to a certain audience that wants to hear a certain thing these days, to want access and connection with powerful people. | ||
| And I think a lot of new media really does become kind of a PR arm for the Republican Party when we're talking about right-wing new media. | ||
| And it's just unfortunately kind of rare to actually have critical and independent perspectives. | ||
| They definitely do exist, but that was sort of the promise of new media. | ||
| But unfortunately, I do think we're seeing a lot of it descend into slop, honestly, that rivals kind of the worst parts of old mainstream media. | ||
| And in some cases, I would actually say is worse. | ||
| This actually relates to the next question that we have, and I'll give this one to you, Stephen. | ||
| Stephen Brad, do you support banning wire news associations like the AP from the White House press room and Air Force One when these organizations feed thousands of smaller news outlets? | ||
| Unless I'm mentioning something, I don't know why you would ban people that are doing original on-the-ground reporting. | ||
| Things are pretty essential for us to actually have stuff to talk about. | ||
| Most, well, almost all alternative media is going to be too underfunded to actually commit to on-the-ground reporting to gather original facts. | ||
| So, unless there's a recent thing I'm missing, I don't know why you would want to ban people like APR Reuters from the newsroom. | ||
| I guess this person is trying to get both of your input on the Trump administration's back and forth with the Associated Press over access to the White House. | ||
| Also, the Trump administration trying to potentially change the way that the White House briefing room is set up. | ||
| They've created a new chair for some of these alternative media outlets. | ||
| Brad, did you want to comment? | ||
| Yeah, well, there's two different questions there. | ||
| On the first one, with the Associated Press, I've been very critical of the Trump administration's moves on that. | ||
| And in fact, even a Trump-appointed federal judge blasted their move there as contravening the First Amendment because what they're doing is attempting to basically punish the Associated Press for its refusal to adopt their preferred name. | ||
| Forget preferred pronouns. | ||
| We got preferred names now for the Gulf of America, is what the Trump administration now calls it, which was traditionally called the Gulf of Mexico. | ||
| The Associated Press is not going along with that name change. | ||
| And maybe you think that's stupid. | ||
| Maybe you think that's obstinate. | ||
| They should just do it. | ||
| But it is their right as a free press organization to call it whatever they like. | ||
| Yet the Trump administration is explicitly retaliating against them for it. | ||
| So I don't support that because I think about the shoe on the other foot, right? | ||
| By that logic, the Biden administration could have banned Fox News from the briefing room because it wouldn't use the correct, in their view, pronouns for Admiral Rachel Levine or someone like that. | ||
| I don't want the government punishing media outlets for their word choice. | ||
| So I'm against that. | ||
| I actually do support the initiative by the White House to bring in new media voices and add a seat alongside the traditional press outlets in the press briefing room. | ||
| I think my disappointment has come with how those new media personalities are choosing to use that platform. | ||
| But I think in and of itself, it's a great idea because huge swaths of America no longer get their news from traditional media sources. | ||
| So they shouldn't be the only ones represented in the press briefings. | ||
| Nathan is in Dallas, Texas, on our line for viewers under 35. | ||
| Good morning, Nathan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I was wondering, in the new climate we're moving into where people maybe sort of want to reconnect more or build bridges, what would successful conversations look like in that space? | ||
| And what kind of goals would we want to have in these conversations? | ||
| All right, Stephen, why don't you go first then, Brad? | ||
| I think at its best, alternative media could be providing a platform where you have people with different perspectives that have some kind of shared factual reality, where we get together and we have heated arguments or discussions on how best to achieve some common end. | ||
| I really do believe, even as divided as we are today, that everybody kind of wants the same things in life. | ||
| I think that, again, at its best, alternative media could be hosting a passionate discussion between two people about what it looks like to, say, support Ukraine or to support Israel in their foreign conflicts. | ||
| Instead, it seems like we're endlessly focused on weird conspiracy theories or misinformation about what our support even currently looks like or the facts on the ground at all. | ||
| So instead of having these discussions that are contributing towards building a better understanding of the other side and kind of building towards some moderated opinion on how to move the entire country forward, instead, we're all endlessly arguing over how many Nazis are in the Azov battalion, how many bio labs exist that are creating viruses for Russians, or how many hundreds of billions of dollars of cash, you know, actual cash have we sent to Ukraine? | ||
| It's just like it's gotten really ridiculous, I think. | ||
| Brad? | ||
| Yeah, I think there's a couple things. | ||
| I absolutely agree. | ||
| You've got to try to find mutual factual ground that you can start from. | ||
| But I also think it's really important that we avoid the lure of radical polarization and tribalism, especially in the independent media space, because it does reward you in the ecosystem. | ||
| But you're never going to have any true sort of cross-partisan or cross-ideological dialogue when you are dehumanizing and vilifying the other side constantly. | ||
| So I'm not perfect, but I try to avoid personal insult or ad hominems towards people. | ||
| I'm sure I don't always uphold to that rule. | ||
| And then, look, I'm really alarmed by what I see as a rise in political extremism to the point of support, outright support for violence. | ||
| You, of course, do have this on the far right, but I particularly am observing this with the young progressive left. | ||
| You have an entire online cultish movement for free Luigi, where they openly support somebody who is seriously accused of openly assassinating someone and killing them in cold blood. | ||
| A father, you know, who wasn't accused of any crime, had no trial, just executed. | ||
| And you have huge swaths of people on the internet who support that. | ||
| Meanwhile, you have public polling showing people, I mean, the Network Contagion Institute with Rutgers University polled left of center Americans and found that a majority at least somewhat approve of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. | ||
| This is a really dark time, whether it's people vandalizing their neighbors' Teslas to make some sort of stupid political point or openly supporting political violence. | ||
| And unfortunately, I mean, this is where I do think political commentators have to take responsibility for their role in this. | ||
| And I have to call out Stephen a little bit here because I've appreciated a lot of his commentary. | ||
| He's definitely a sharp guy, but he made fun of the dude who got shot at Trump's attempted assassination and died. | ||
| He was on TV and refused to condemn the assassination. | ||
| I mean, I think when you have a platform this big in such a boiling hot country politically, we've got to take the temperature down and stop, even if you think the other side does it, stop, you know, flirting with or playing footsie with political violence. | ||
| It's a sickness that could tear this country apart. | ||
| Stephen, I imagine you'd like to respond. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot that I could say on this topic. | ||
| Funnily enough, I think Brad might actually agree with me on most of it. | ||
| He just disagrees on the prescription. | ||
| One of the things that I stress to people is in a political system, there is no virtue for taking the high road. | ||
| If anything, I would argue that there is an immorality attached to it. | ||
| At the end of the day, politics is the practice of power over other people. | ||
| You're trying, at least in a democracy, you're trying to gain some political influence to move your country towards some policies that you approve of. | ||
| And if you're not doing that, you're necessarily seeding ground because to some extent, politics is a zero-sum game. | ||
| For every election winner, there is an election loser. | ||
| I think that one of the huge issues is I think conservatives have become completely and totally deranged and unhinged with how they approach the media environment. | ||
| I think that conservatives think that they can say or do literally anything and just, you know, enjoy it and enjoy, reap all of the entertainment rewards and everything that comes from it. | ||
| But then when anything happens to them, they immediately want to go to the other side and say, you guys need to apologize for this. | ||
| You guys need to feel bad for this. | ||
| I think a really great example, unfortunately for Brad, is over the past couple of days, we've seen this. | ||
| I don't want to say all four numbers in a row because I don't know if the Secret Service is going to visit me as well. | ||
| But it's the number below 87. | ||
| And it's the number that refers to what number President Trump is having right now in office. | ||
| For conservatives who, you know, Trump tweeted out the video of Biden tied up in the back of the truck. | ||
| We've seen them say 86, whatever people like overnight. | ||
| You've seen tweets pop up from Jack Prisovic for this. | ||
| You've seen tweets pop up from Matt Gates for this. | ||
| Then all of a sudden now, when the Democrats do it, all of the Republicans are like, you need to stop this. | ||
| You need to apologize. | ||
| These are calling for an assassination of the president. | ||
| I think that world is ridiculous. | ||
| I do take a pretty hyperbolic stance. | ||
| I don't think anybody should be getting killed for political purposes in the United States. | ||
| I think that's way over the line, but I absolutely will not acquiesce to conservatives that want a pearl clutch over it when I think that we are exactly in this environment because of exactly the type of behavior they exhibit. | ||
| And I'd rather be a bit unhinged about it and force the conversation than to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness because a registered Republican tried to kill the president. | ||
| Just because many folks may not be as quite online as you are, could you explain a little bit more about this 87 trend that you're talking about? | ||
| The prior director of the FBI, James Comey, took a picture of some seashells on the seashore and they spelled out 8647. | ||
| And people are interpreting this as 86-something apparently now means you have to murder something. | ||
| And so people were saying that when Comey put this on his Instagram page, that he was calling for the assassination of the current president. | ||
| I think Tulsi Gabbard and others have made incredibly strong statements saying he needs to be jailed or investigated and then jailed for what was obviously a call to assassinate the president. | ||
| Here's a story, excuse me, on NPR about that, that James Comey is under investigation for his 8647 Instagram post. | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
| And the Trump administration is investigating former FBI director James Comey over a social media post that some government officials and supporters of President Trump are interpreting as a threat to the president. | ||
| On Thursday, Comey shared a picture on Instagram of seashells on a beach arranged in the numbers 8647. | ||
| The caption read, cool shell formation on my beach walk. | ||
| 86 is a slang term that means get rid of, and Trump is the 47th and 45th President of the United States. | ||
| According to Merriam-Webster, the most common meaning of 86, which has its roots in the service industry, is to throw out or refuse service to a customer. | ||
| The dictionary notes the term has also come to mean kill, but the dictionary says it does not include this meaning in the official entry due to its relative recency and sparseness of use. | ||
| So let's get back to calls. | ||
| Lou is in Buffalo, New York on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| First off, in the restaurant industry, 86 means we are out of. | ||
| But anywho, my question was about the young voters. | ||
| And I know there was, I had heard there was a push to drop the voting age. | ||
| And I was just wondering what the guests' opinion were on either dropping the voter age, keeping it the same, or even raising it up to 21. | ||
| Go, Bills. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Brad then, Stephen. | ||
| Yeah, look, I think we need some consistency in this country. | ||
| So I'm actually not against the idea of raising the age of illegal adulthood to 21 and then making everything 21. | ||
| What I do have a problem with is this like weird piecemeal approach that we have in our current legal and political system where you got to be 18 to do some things and you're considered an adult and you can vote, but you still can't do a bunch of other things that are, if anything, a lot less severe than some of the things you can do at 18. | ||
| I think with what we know about brain development, with what how college has kind of, whether you like it or not, turned into an extended adolescence for a lot of young people, there's an argument to say raise everything to 21, but I wouldn't support lowering it below 18. | ||
| I mean, people are, you're 16, look at the things 16-year-olds say and do and believe and tell me they should be voting. | ||
| But they're also just not full-fledged adults or independents, really, at any point. | ||
| But neither are a lot of 18 and 19-year-olds. | ||
| So I do understand the point. | ||
| I think you got to either keep it where it is or move everything to 21, and we're going to decide that's the new age of legal adulthood. | ||
| I just don't understand how we can continue with this bizarre piecemeal approach. | ||
| Stephen? | ||
| Yeah, I think consistency is good. | ||
| I think for the most part, we recognize 18 years old as being age of majority in the United States, so we should probably keep the voting age around there. | ||
| If people want to raise it even more, I'm okay with that, as long as we lower the voting cap age as well. | ||
| If you're no longer cognitive enough to maintain, say, a driver's license, then you shouldn't be voting. | ||
| I'm joking when I say that. | ||
| But I think 18 is a good age to keep the voting age at. | ||
| John. | ||
| I think we also need a maximum age on the presidency stat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| That age is going to be whatever your president is. | ||
| Plus, not you personally, but everybody will have different opinions about that. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| John is in Michigan on our line for folks under 35. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Yep. | ||
| I'm 30 years old, and I feel like the format of online YouTube podcast thing, it's really not even that new to me. | ||
| It seems like maybe it came into its heyday about four years ago, but the format's been around for quite a while. | ||
| And, you know, I'm vaguely familiar with these two guests. | ||
| I've seen Brad on maybe the Breonna Joy Gray show. | ||
| And Destiny, I've just seen him debating different people. | ||
| And, you know, I'm of the view that these two gentlemen, they're what I would say. | ||
| Sorry, John, I'm just going to pause you for a moment to explain why you referred to Stephen as Destiny as a gaming term, your gaming name, right? | ||
| Yeah, that's where it came from, yeah. | ||
| It's just in the name of my channel now, yeah. | ||
| Okay, go ahead, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I view these two gentlemen, I'm sorry to say, as mainstream alternative media, which is they're doing pretty much the same thing as the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, which is pushing people towards a partisan narrative. | |
| And really, the real alternative media is a post-partisan in a sense. | ||
| And Destiny says he's far-left, for example. | ||
| I mean, if he's supporting NATO in the Ukraine war, I mean, there's nothing far left about that. | ||
| So you missed the mark, C-SPAN. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Stephen, I'll let you respond first then. | ||
| It's very difficult to draw kind of where the political compass is these days. | ||
| I guess we have a very one-dimensional view of things that maybe you think you can do on foreign policy. | ||
| But I mean, as we've seen over the past several years, it seems like the Democrats have definitely leaned more towards the supporting Ukraine position, and the Republicans, for a whole list of reasons, have leaned away from it. | ||
| I don't think you can very cleanly draw your political views based on something as simple as are you pro or anti-NATO anymore? | ||
| I think there are other kind of paradigms you can draw. | ||
| I guess what you'd fall on the political map, there are other issues that you would draw that around. | ||
| I will say that one of the big mistakes that the caller made is he seems to think that alternative media can be post-partisan or that there's some post-partisan media that he consumes. | ||
| I guarantee you that that caller consumes media that is basically identical to other forms of media that he consumes where it's not actually post-partisan. | ||
| It's just anti-establishment. | ||
| And because the anti-establishment narratives tend to draw people in who were traditionally left or who were traditionally liked or who were traditionally on the right. | ||
| So for instance, people like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard and then people on the right, any of the current, I guess like Trump people, because they get this kind of like mix of people. | ||
| They think they're in a post-partisan world. | ||
| But when you start asking questions about the establishment, all of a sudden all of them have the exact same point of view. | ||
| And then, Brad, what do you think of being referenced as part of the mainstream alternative media? | ||
| I mean, I'm not sure I take that as an insult. | ||
| I guess calling me partisan, I guess you can think that. | ||
| I'm sure you must not tune in too regularly to my content. | ||
| I criticize Republicans all the time. | ||
| I kind of think that both mainstream parties and their representatives are a joke at this point in American politics. | ||
| But I guess honestly, sometimes people accuse me of being establishment or mainstream as a pejorative. | ||
| And I just tell you the truth. | ||
| Like, I just give you my opinion. | ||
| And if that opinion aligns with the establishment, okay. | ||
| If I think it's true, I'm still going to say so. | ||
| If I think it's correct, I'm still going to say so. | ||
| The idea that you would always be against anything the establishment believes is equally as partisan and tribal and illogical as saying I'm always going to disbelieve anything the establishment tells me. | ||
| So, I do find there is kind of, obviously, there are people who are just biased towards the establishment, want to just believe everything they're told by the people they trust. | ||
| There's also sort of an anti-establishmentarian form of brain rot where, therefore, everything the government says is true must be false. | ||
| Therefore, everything mainstream media reports must be fake. | ||
| In fact, a lot of it is correct and is true, and it just requires like discernment and integrity and honesty to wade through it and try to accurately assess what's true and what's not, what's right and what's wrong. | ||
| And that's all I try to do. | ||
| I'm sure I don't always get it right, but I'm definitely not doing it purposefully in service of some side or some party. | ||
| I mean, if it is, I'm doing a terrible job of it because I've tried repeatedly to get the Trump administration to give me any sort of access or invite me to the influencer briefings or anything like that, and thus far have gotten the cold shoulder. | ||
| So, if I'm doing PR for them, they're clearly not pleased with the job that I'm doing. | ||
| Justin is in Pensacola, Florida, also on our line for folks under 35. | ||
| Good morning, Justin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Let's talk about lots to get into. | ||
| I just wanted to say to both of the guests: what's your view on the online media, the independent media, whatever you want to call it, new media? | ||
| Seems like both the left and the right are both kind of fighting back against Israel and the so-called JQ and the control of our government. | ||
| It seems like both the left and the right, the extreme fringes, maybe you want to say, are kind of uniting. | ||
| And where do you see that going? | ||
| Brad, why don't you go first? | ||
| Well, I actually don't know what is meant by JQ. | ||
| It gives me a little bit of pause to guess what that might mean. | ||
| Justin, do you want to explain? | ||
| Jewish question. | ||
| Ah, okay. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| So I think that that kind of pretty uncomfortable with anything framed that way. | ||
| I think obviously there's declining support for Israel on both sides of the American public. | ||
| And to the extent that the establishment continues to support Israel, I think that's a reflection not of foreign control of our government or anything like that, but of the fact that they have the muscle memory, particularly the GOP, of being pro-Israel for decades, and that the hardcore base, you know, the evangelical Christians are still very much with Israel. | ||
| So, look, public opinion shifts over time. | ||
| Politics eventually catches up, but it takes time. | ||
| So, if Israel continues to kind of lose support among the public, eventually politicians will change, no matter how many donations are made in either direction. | ||
| Money can't actually buy politics in the long run. | ||
| We've seen people like Michael Bloomberg burn millions and millions of dollars trying to prove otherwise. | ||
| So, if people are not satisfied that our current political class is reflecting the people's views on this issue, you got to give it a little bit of time for that to play out. | ||
| Stephen, did you want to comment on what the caller said? | ||
| Yeah, I actually think this is a large, this is largely a demographic question. | ||
| I think that for historical reasons, basically the entire older population in the United States is very pro-Israel. | ||
| I think that the memories that older people in the United States have of Israel are pretty fond ones. | ||
| It's, you know, this thriving nation in the Middle East that's one of the only democracies that's fighting against all the other Arab states, and their story is a pretty inspiring one. | ||
| I think that if you've grown up as a millennial, especially a younger millennial, or in a younger generation, your view of Israel is this is a huge country with a powerful military supported by the most powerful country in the world that seems to use all of their military to exclusively bully Palestinians. | ||
| That's like your perspective on it. | ||
| So, I think that from that perspective, it's not surprising that when you look at the mainstream media, you tend to get pro-Israel support from basically everywhere. | ||
| And then, when you go to the alternative media where the audience skews much younger, you find really harsh criticisms of our support for Israel on both sides, on the left and the right, because you don't have that same older attachment to it. | ||
| And it's very easy from the left to criticize Israel on humanitarian grounds on stuff related to the current claims of apartheidness and genocideness and everything else. | ||
| And then from the right, it's very easy to criticize them on the grounds of, you know, a foreign nation that has too much influence over U.S. foreign policy and this new conservative desire to be isolationist and everything as well. | ||
| Eric is in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on our line for folks under 35. | ||
| Good morning, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi, thank you. | ||
| I will be slightly over the age of 35 in the next presidential election in 2028. | ||
| And I'm just amazed that the Democrats have not taken on the issue of getting rid of the drug war. | ||
| You know, Obama had the House, the Senate, and the presidency to the Democrats his first term, and he still kept it illegal to treat, say, Parkinson's with marijuana. | ||
| And if you've ever seen how marijuana can help someone who has serious symptoms of Parkinson's, it's just despicable that the federal government would keep that illegal. | ||
| So my question is, in the age of social media, are you not surprised that no one has challenged the Democrats? | ||
| Because at this point, it's pretty embarrassing that the Democrats have not gotten rid of the drug war in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| Still, even marijuana is illegal for even treatment of Parkinson's and cancer nausea with chemotherapy. | ||
| So in the 2028 election, will there be a mandate for the presidential nominees of the Democrats to be against the war on drugs? | ||
| Especially given the Democrats are all pro-choice for reproductive rights. | ||
| What about your choice, using with a doctor? | ||
| I think we get the idea of your question. | ||
| Stephen, why don't you take that one? | ||
| Unfortunately, I'm going to give the same answer kind of as the last one. | ||
| I think this is a very boring demographics question. | ||
| I agree 100 million percent with the caller, but just because most Americans that vote skew older and most older people have probably more negative use of drugs, even drugs like marijuana than younger people, you just tend to see a lot less support for it and a lot less focus from politicians on that particular issue. | ||
| Let's hear from Bilal in New York, also on our line for folks under 35. | ||
| Good morning, Bilal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Big fan. | ||
| Hi, Destiny. | ||
| I just wanted to say, how do you guys deal with the double standards that the Republican Party does and how they get away with it from the Republican Party and what we can do to combat that? | ||
| And just shout out ESG chat. | ||
| Brad, do you want to go ahead with that one? | ||
| Yeah, I guess I, and this is where Destiny or Stephen and I differ. | ||
| I don't concern myself with the fact that other people have double standards. | ||
| I try to hold myself to my own personal standards. | ||
| So just because the other side does something, I don't respond by doing it in kind. | ||
| I actually consider that to be kind of a morally broken logic. | ||
| I mean, if I was fighting a war and the other side was, you know, sexually assaulting civilians, I wouldn't ever say, well, I guess we should do that too. | ||
| But unfortunately, when it comes to, you know, extreme rhetoric or name-calling or bullying or corruption or greed, there is a line of thought in politics or support for political violence where some people say, you know, we got to do that to the other side harder because they're doing it to us. | ||
| At the end of the day, I would rather lose, politically lose the debate than debase myself or become something I don't recognize or can't continence in order to win it. | ||
| So I just don't really concern myself with other people's double standards other than to call them out for it, but I'm not going to ever use it as justification to engage in the same kind of behavior because fundamentally, I mean, two wrongs don't make a right. | ||
| Jeff is in Crofton, Nebraska on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, guys, I'm 68, retired from the Marine Corps, hardcore conservative, news junkie. | |
| But I got to tell you, if there's anybody out there that thinks that the Democrats and the politicians, the media, did not come together as one unit and screw this country up, not only with all their lies, but they were all in one. | ||
| And I really do think that they need to change the news media in the White House with maybe Joe Rogan's representatives, your representatives, Megan Kelly representatives, and get rid of ABC, NDC, MSNBC, Fox, all of them, and change the whole scenario because we're not getting the truth out of the mainstream media. | ||
| And again, I'm a conservative. | ||
| I watched Fox. | ||
| I seen all the lies. | ||
| And the thing that Biden, what they did with Biden in this big cover-up, if they don't do an investigation and do like the Democrats say now, oh, we're going to move forward. | ||
| Well, of course they are because they're the one telling the lies. | ||
| And if we don't do something about it, it's going to happen again. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's let both of our guests respond. | ||
| Stephen, first. | ||
| I hope that we can vote to expand mental health care in the VA. | ||
| It sounds like that caller definitely needs some mental assistance. | ||
| Unfortunately. | ||
| That wasn't very kind, Stephen. | ||
| I mean, it wasn't very kind, but, well, excuse me, I'm sorry. | ||
| But the fact that there are people in this country who are teaching their children or grandchildren that the 2020 election was rigged or that there was some massive conglomerate of politicians, media, and Democrats that came together to hide something from the American people when Donald Trump is literally launching unprecedented attacks against law firms in the form of targeted executive orders and is investigating political rivals, has expressed disappointment that he can't go after people who are on the J6 committee. | ||
| I mean, I could run this list down infinitely. | ||
| The $400 million plane from Cutter. | ||
| No, I'm sorry. | ||
| I am tired of feeding into this delusion that both sides have issues and that both sides are exactly the same on this topic. | ||
| I think there is a very unique form of brain rot that has unfortunately corroded a large amount of the MAGA base. | ||
| I mean, Brad here, you are a Never Trapper Republican. | ||
| I'm sure you've probably seen this maybe even more than I have. | ||
| I think that there is a very scary world we live in right now where alternative media, unfortunately, I guess kind of the subject of the show, has fed into these kind of delusional narratives and have pushed them further along than they would be otherwise. | ||
| You even saw Fox News try this, for instance, with the Dominion lawsuit. | ||
| Not sure if that last caller was aware of it or not, but all of Fox News colluded and we can see it in all of their recorded conversations to push false narratives about Dominion voting machines stealing the 2020 election. | ||
| And they knowingly pushed those false narratives. | ||
| It's the reason why it was the largest corporate defamation payout in all time in all of U.S. history. | ||
| But nobody on the older conservative side seems to be aware of or cares about that. | ||
| But Stephen, do you not believe that people lied and covered up for Biden's cognitive decline in mainstream media and in Democratic politics? | ||
| I'm sure people do this, but the idea that there was some, I'm sorry, let me pose a question back to you. | ||
| Do you think that there was a top-down collusion between all of the media politicians and all of the Democrats to lie about Biden's cognitive health, but they still let him go on and do a debate? | ||
| I don't think there was any sort of like grand organized conspiracy. | ||
| But I think when you look at like MSNBC hosts like Joe Scarborough going out there and saying he's the sharpest he's ever been in my private meetings with him, when you look at mainstream media inventing a new term called cheap fakes for real videos of Joe Biden, and when you look at the things that Kamala Harris and others said about the Robert Herr recording, when it, I mean, it was obviously true and correct, but they slandered this man for allegations that were proved true about Biden's mental decline. | ||
| I think clearly people were incredibly dishonest and did cover this up. | ||
| There was a huge book that just was released by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about this very cover-up. | ||
| There doesn't have to be like some meeting where they all come together for there to be essentially a narrative that people start to espouse and just partisan loyalty that infects people and they want to make the administration look good. | ||
| So no, there's not like points. | ||
| Two things on that real quick. | ||
| Two things. | ||
| One, the caller was saying that there was a top-down narrative that was being controlled by a singular source. | ||
| That was the claim. | ||
| Yeah, well, I don't believe that, to be clear. | ||
| We're not surprised if you're not sure because I do want to get to a couple more callers before we have to end the segment. | ||
| Marion is in Grovetown, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead, Marion. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, first, I just want to say about Trump's wanting to get that $400 million airplane. | ||
| We furnish our employee, which is Trump, a plane for an office in the sky. | ||
| We do not need, he does not need a palace in the sky. | ||
| But what I want to read is something about the emoluments. | ||
| It says, and then I'm reading, in 1785, Lewis. | ||
| Mary, I'm going to have to ask you to be pretty quick about it because we're almost out of time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| He presented Benjamin Franklin a snuff box encrusted with diamonds inset with his portrait. | ||
| Americans believed it threatened to corrupt Franklin in altering his attitude towards the French in subtle and psychological ways in 2010. | ||
| So you're worried about the emoluments clause and this gift from Qatar, but what's your question for our guests? | ||
| Because we're just about out of time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what happened was that the Americans decide that's when the emoluments clause began because the Americans said, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, we don't, this is a gift that could alter the way he views the French. | |
| So in other words, now we're talking about a $400 million plane, gifts from other countries. | ||
| This is corruption on another level, and we need to fix it. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I'll let you both respond to Marion's point, and that'll be it for our segment. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Stephen, why don't you go first? | ||
| I mean, obviously, I would say the current administration is completely and wholly morally bankrupt when it comes to actually adhering to any kind of principled governance or rule of law. | ||
| I mean, this acceptance of a plane is just one domino in a line of many that have fallen when it comes to kind of an unprecedented abuse of the office. | ||
| Some of the worst, I mean, I've already mentioned the targeting of particular law firms or people with executive orders that Trump doesn't like. | ||
| The entire launch of the Trump crypto coin, where Trump launched a digital online currency that people could throw money into for him to personally benefit from in ways that are completely obscured from the American public. | ||
| Yeah, it's a tragedy, but I mean, it feels like he can do basically anything at this point, and the entire Republican apparatus won't call him out for it because they're too scared of losing the support that he's garnered from the party. | ||
| Brad? | ||
| Yeah, look, he absolutely shouldn't be accepting foreign gifts from Qatar, which is a state sponsor of terrorism. | ||
| And him hawking the meme coin, I think, is a disgrace. | ||
| Look, I think their corruption is obvious, but I think we should also reckon with like how bad do Democrats have to be that people chose this instead. | ||
| I mean, he was pretty open about everything he was going to do. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think politicians are corrupt, but it is very blatant, some of the things this administration is doing, and I absolutely will not defend it. | ||
| Well, thank you to you both. | ||
| Brad Colombo is a social media and political commentator calling in from Grand Rapids, Michigan. | ||
| And Stephen Bunnell, also another social media political commentator. | ||
| Thank you both very much for joining us on our show. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for having us. | ||
| And coming up at 9.15 a.m. Eastern on Washington Journal, we'll have Attorney Alan Dershowitz joining us to talk about legal and constitutional issues in the news along with his new book, The Preventative State. | ||
| But first, it is open forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Our number for Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tonight 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, tonight 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. | |
| There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-SPAN.org slash radio on SiriusXM Radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN radio. | ||
| Hear our live call-in program, Washington Journal, daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to House and Senate proceedings, committee hearings, news conferences, and other public affairs events live throughout the day. | ||
| And for the best way to hear what's happening in Washington with fast-paced reports, live interviews, and analysis of the day, catch Washington today, weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in open forum, ready to hear your questions and comments about the news of the week. | ||
| But first, let's get to a couple of comments that came through on the last segment, following up with our conversation on younger voters and alternative media. | ||
| Ellerby says on X, I think we have an up-and-coming great generation. | ||
| They have a more clearer picture than ever before. | ||
| Social media is massive to sift through, but ultimately more truthful than legacy media. | ||
| And then BC Venice shares: who can trust traditional media anymore? | ||
| We're in an age of propaganda, and it's mostly corporate-driven where truth is irrelevant. | ||
| Alternative sources are filled with landmines, but at least the truth is out there. | ||
| Finding it is your job. | ||
| Now, again, we're an open forum. | ||
| Our line for Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll start with Carolyn in Missouri on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carolyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I have a question I would like to ask. | ||
| The American people are being robbed blind through mortgage frauds and all these fraud cases that are going on. | ||
| But I see that this man that they put into office is president flying all over the world doing everything he wants to do for his family. | ||
| I want to know what is he going to do for the American people that needs to have his help and his service. | ||
| He was elected to serve all of the people, not just Republicans, but Democrats as well. | ||
| Here we are now dealing with an internal problem. | ||
| Financial fraud is running rampant over every state in this country. | ||
| And I want to know what type of legal services do we have at our disposal to resolve this problem that we have because we are working every day and our stuff is being stolen by people in this United States with the information that they have to steal our information to profit off of us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| William is in Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I have two quick comments. | |
| One is the Dominion thing. | ||
| Ain't they not using Dominion machines? | ||
| William, your line is breaking up a little bit. | ||
| I don't know if you're using headphones or something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, can you hear me now? | ||
| Yes, you can hear a bit better. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| First of all, Dominion, ain't they not using the Dominion machines anymore? | ||
| That's my first comment and the second comment. | ||
| You shouldn't have that guest sign anymore. | ||
| The one that was talking so much trash to the VM to the vet. | ||
| I don't know why you would bring our guests on that would trash a vet like that, a person who fought for a country for having to come out here and spew all the garbage that he's speaking. | ||
| Yeah, it looks like we lost your line there, William. | ||
| Let's hear from David in Marietta, Georgia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, this is my first time talking to you. | |
| I don't know your name, but I want to welcome you to the C-SPAN family, and it's nice to have you added to our collectiveness. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, great. | |
| You said that Mr. Derby Schewish was supposed to be on today. | ||
| Yes, in about 20 minutes, he'll be joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I guess I called a little bit too early. | |
| Can you ask him one question for me, please? | ||
| Can you do that? | ||
| What's the question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, great. | |
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Write this down. | ||
| With all, he defended O.J. Simpson. | ||
| With all the stuff coming out that he did not kill that woman, can you please, I see you smiling. | ||
| Can you please ask him why he is not talking about that? | ||
| It's all over the internet. | ||
| He did not kill him. | ||
| The plot and everything was all covered up to make him be guilty. | ||
| But he did the Kardashians had a hand in it. | ||
| So I just want to let you know, please ask him that. | ||
| I appreciate that so much, ma'am. | ||
| We'll probably keep the conversation to politics this time, but I appreciate your call, David. | ||
| Pamela is in Mount Morris, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Pamela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I came in at the very end of your last segment. | ||
| The last thing I heard was the man who trashed the Democrats at the end of the segment. | ||
| I take issue with that because of one thing. | ||
| They had such a slim margin of winning this last election, the Republicans did. | ||
| And it's been known now that Musk had a lot to do with buying the election. | ||
| I take issue with the fact that we're starting to trash each other with good and bad and evil and all that stuff. | ||
| If you think that the Democrats could do a better job than what's been doing now, I suggest that we vote in 2028 for someone else. | ||
| This man is destroying our democracy and our Constitution. | ||
| And I would rather have Mr. Biden in the Oval Office right now in his older condition than what we have now. | ||
| And the other thing I'd like, last thing I'd like to say is: please stop trashing President Biden. | ||
| He became an old man overnight over what they did to Hunter Biden. | ||
| And Hunter got on TV and suggested, you're going to kill my father with me. | ||
| I've never seen a man age so quickly as he did during that trial for his son. | ||
| And I think it was just mean-spirited and a way to crash the Democrats because Hunter Biden had nothing to do with our government. | ||
| I am a former substance abuse counselor, and he was an addict, and he had a problem. | ||
| And he did something wrong that he made right. | ||
| And that is just outrageous that they ever used that man to hurt the president. | ||
| And they did a damn good job of it. | ||
| And I'm just, I think that a man that spent all of those years, 35 plus years in service to America, and an expert in foreign affairs to keep us safe, much safer than what we are now, should be respected as he's leaving office. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Stephen is in Rice's Landing, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I just have two quick comments, actually. | ||
| One was for that gentleman that you had on before that was trashing the Marine and said he is mentally ill. | ||
| You know, that's not a thing to say on the air for somebody he doesn't even know. | ||
| The second, that lady had just talked right now. | ||
| Both Republicans and Democrats lie about a lot of things. | ||
| And there's really no way to stop it. | ||
| Hunter Biden was a drug addict and did crimes, and he didn't give himself up and got help. | ||
| He was forced to get help. | ||
| That's basically, you know, this country is so divided right now that when they're talking civil war, it's liable to come. | ||
| You know, we need to all get along better no matter what party you are. | ||
| And also with the lady previously, if gas goes down to $1.50, $2, and she gets a $5,000 check from the Republicans, you know, from approving the Great Big New Deal, is she going to complain? | ||
| That's my comments today. | ||
| Ben is in Owings Mills, Maryland on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| I'm doing an outstanding job, by the way. | ||
| I wanted to talk, but I don't hear a lot of talk nationwide, but this 2025 fiscal year, the Republicans in Congress decided to take the Washington, D.C.'s city budget, operating budget, | ||
| and place it into Congress and treat the city as a federal agency whereby the District of Commons budget has to be placed on the floor and go through the entire process as a federal agency would do. | ||
| This is the first time this has happened since home rule. | ||
| The district had a robust budget. | ||
| There weren't any issues with any type of mismanagement or anything of that nature. | ||
| And it passed through the Senate and it goes to Congress. | ||
| And Mike Johnson has decided to sit on it. | ||
| Now the District of Columbia is looking at almost a billion dollars in cuts. | ||
| They're going to have to furlough employees. | ||
| All of this based on a contrived budget crisis because the Republicans are being playing mean politics. | ||
| And meanwhile, city services have to be cut. | ||
| Employees are going to have to work three-day work weeks. | ||
| And there's been no movement whatsoever by Congress on this budget. | ||
| And I just, I've never seen anything so evil and mean in politics as the issue with the district government. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Hannah in St. Paul, Minnesota on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Hannah. | ||
| Hannah, go ahead. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Let's hear from. | ||
| Oh, Hannah, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is Janet from Minnesota. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I'm sorry, you said your name was Jess? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Janet, Janet, M-E-T. | |
| Apologies, Janet. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| What's your comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My comment is: number one, I'm 83. | |
| I live in a senior housing complex with a lot of people. | ||
| And most of us here tend to be for Palestine, the Gaza Strip, and are horrified at what's happening. | ||
| Not because we want to shut down Israel, but we're just horrified of what they're doing to Gaza, the people there. | ||
| Likewise with Ukraine, you know, we don't think Russia should be in there. | ||
| And I get my news mostly from free speech TV, especially for democracynow.com. | ||
| And it's just so different from anything else. | ||
| That and the public television news. | ||
| I think people do need to be very careful as to where they're getting their news and what they want to understand and work on. | ||
| We protest every Saturday on the main street with big signs for issues, not for people, but for issues like justice and concern for animals and water and things like that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Bob is in Iowa on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, our current government that's in power now in the first hundred days spent $200 billion more than the previous administration did in their first 100 days. | |
| And we also have a parade that was coming up that we're going to spend millions of dollars for that I think is unnecessary. | ||
| And Doge, I think it's there, they started out saying they were going to save $200 trillion or $2 trillion down to a trillion, and then it's down in the millions. | ||
| And I'd just like to say it was a breath of fresh air with the two young social media people that you had on. | ||
| I would like to see more of that on. | ||
| And I'm a senior citizen and a moderate. | ||
| I voted for both Republicans and Democrats in local, state, and federal elections. | ||
| And I'm just thankful for C-SPAN and some of the guests that they have on there. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Richard in California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Now, I just have a short thing to bring up for everybody. | ||
| The way how easily it was for when the Democrats were in power the last four years to let in like 12 million illegal people over the border. | ||
| We were totally helpless to stop that. | ||
| If they get elected again, just think of how many more are going to be able to come in across the border. | ||
| It'll totally change our country. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Nellie is in St. Joseph, Missouri on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Nellie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, one comment is, I wouldn't sell my country out and democracy out for cheap gas, cheap eggs, or $5,000 per birth. | |
| The notion is ridiculous. | ||
| And you aren't a patriot if you would sell your country out that cheaply. | ||
| Democracy is more important than that. | ||
| And I agree with the other person who called in. | ||
| I'd rather see Biden in a wheelchair in any condition because he had integrity and honesty and was doing the best to do things in an orderly and legal fashion, where this president is not, nor the Republican Congress, nor the Senate. | ||
| They're all under his thumb. | ||
| And Elon Musk and Doge were a total disaster, wrecking havoc on people's lives. | ||
| Honest workers, not bureaucrats. | ||
| I don't know how a forest ranger or receptionist answering the phone can be a bureaucrat. | ||
| Where's their power? | ||
| They have no power. | ||
| They can't be a bureaucrat. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Bob is in Glenside, Pennsylvania on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| So really enjoying the segment. | ||
| I like when C-SPAN has two guests, sometimes with opposing positions. | ||
| I think that's helpful. | ||
| I do think it was really unfortunate that the guest sort of was demeaning to a caller. | ||
| And then when I listened to what the caller had to say, I didn't agree with all of it. | ||
| But the part about media I thought was true. | ||
| And I thought the caller was also saying that Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, they're all sort of corporate propaganda. | ||
| And they're not printing things that are helpful for Americans to understand what's happening in their country. | ||
| And then there's something that happened where the guest sort of belittled this man. | ||
| And I think that's happening too much in the country where when we disagree with someone, we attack them personally and we don't address the argument or the differences. | ||
| And I think that's something we need to stop. | ||
| I think it's something that C-SPAN should do a better job of policing, whether it's a guest calling up to attack somebody that's speaking there or if a guest there is attacking somebody. | ||
| So I'd like to see more of that. | ||
| And then I would like to see more independent media. | ||
| I don't think corporate media does do a good job. | ||
| And I also do not think that social media, you know, Facebook, the billionaires are controlling all of that information. | ||
| And so what we do need is we need good, independent journalism. | ||
| That's very rare today to get that. | ||
| You know, Americans' coverage of Palestine, the news there is just bogus in this country. | ||
| It's woefully inadequate to help Americans understand. | ||
| And there's so many subjects like that. | ||
| So it's not a surprise to me to have callers calling in, holding views that aren't true. | ||
| And I think we need to be kind to those callers and challenge them in ways, but definitely not personally attack them. | ||
| That was really disrespectful. | ||
| I like the guest. | ||
| Most of what your guest was saying, I thought he was articulate. | ||
| I thought he had good points, but he really hurt his own position by attacking that caller personally. | ||
| And we should not be attacking veterans or any other Americans for their viewpoints. | ||
| And that's all I have to say today. | ||
| Nicole is in Brooklyn, Maryland, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nicole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Like you said, Nicole, from Maryland by way of Missouri. | ||
| However, I want to go back to the media about untraditional media. | ||
| I know untraditional media changed the lives of a whole mass of people from where I'm from by me being educated through media. | ||
| I do like independent news. | ||
| As the call, the previous caller said, that a lot of the new news give mixed signals and do not allow the people to actually use their human capital as equity and be constituents to the people that serve us and let them know that this is what is not pushing or this is not what matters to us, that these are simple things that can change and cause us to be a better group of people to live cohesively in any diverse culture. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up, we have Howard in North Carolina on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Howard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi, top of the morning. | |
| You know, I heard a lot of people saying something about Hunter Fidel. | ||
| How Hunter Biden become the president that you could talk about Hunter Fidel. | ||
| They don't want to talk about Trump and the debacle that he's doing. | ||
| Look at all the disasters that we're having around America. | ||
| Not one person I heard yet call out for FEMA like they did when Biden was in office. | ||
| Oh, where are the trailers? | ||
| Where are the trailers? | ||
| We don't have nothing on the eagle. | ||
| But Biden was right there doing the best he can. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| With this administration, this administration fired everybody. | ||
| Now they're saying they're not ready when the hurricane season comes. | ||
| So y'all get ready to buckle up and buckle down. | ||
| And I got one more thing I want to ask. | ||
| When a white person gets up here and say it's going to be a revolution, I wish you question them about who are they going to revolution or fight against. | ||
| Now, Cole, we already seen that particular issue at January the 6th when they try to overrun the Capitol. | ||
| And it says that it's not a black person that's causing all this hammock, just lawfulness. | ||
| But so who are they going to revolution is beyond me? | ||
| You need to question them whenever they get up and say that. | ||
| And I thank you again. | ||
| But Democrats gave you everything that the government that the United States have right now today, and the Republicans are taking it away. | ||
| Joseph is in Florida on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
| Joseph, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Listen, yes, can you hear me? | |
| Yes, I can hear you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| About an hour ago, you had a gentleman in extolling the virtues for about 20 minutes about how great Donald Trump is doing and doing it for America. | ||
| I just want to bring a few things up. | ||
| One is we lost our AAA rating this week for the first time ever. | ||
| Of course, Trump will blame Biden, of course, but we know the real story, MAGA. | ||
| Secondly, Doge. | ||
| Okay, we're talking about $2 billion in savings in Doge. | ||
| Doge, and Mr. Musk admitted it, and this is why he's disappeared now from the scene, is under $250 million, of which $150 billion it costs to implement the program. | ||
| And last but not least is, can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, I can hear you. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| The last but not least is most disheartening is the deportation. | ||
| If you read the New York Post, which is a Republican paper, leaned, they had an article this week about a woman taking her two sons, 14 and 15, down to get their green cards, renewed their green cards, which they've done for the last two or three years. | ||
| The boys walked in. | ||
| They went to get the green cards. | ||
| They took the boys and deported them. | ||
| This is absolutely amazing to me. | ||
| So, MAGA, keep drinking the Kool-Aid of Trump. | ||
| Matter of fact, he'll probably start selling Kool-Aid, and you'll probably be the first people to buy it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Wendell is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Wendell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| You're an open forum. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, as far as I'm concerned, I'm a veteran. | |
| You know, I'm in my 60s. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, the Republican Party is a party of white supremacy. | ||
| And that's if they should just come out and say it and get it over with. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Herman is in Perry, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Herman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| I'm a veteran, and I do not understand the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans. | ||
| I don't understand how they can back Trump. | ||
| Okay, first of all, you know, he's part of all those criminals. | ||
| And not just that, I'm a veteran. | ||
| I hear people tell me all the time they thank me for my service. | ||
| What Donald Trump call dead veterans who fought for this country losers and suckers. | ||
| And they still can't stand behind you. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Bill in Kentucky on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Why does everyone always want to attack Boral Trump? | ||
| And everything the man tries to do for America, people always runs him down. | ||
| The man ain't been in office for four months. | ||
| They kept me off. | ||
| No, we didn't. | ||
| Oh, oh, but you cut yourself off. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Brian is in East Sandwich, Massachusetts on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for letting me speak on your open forum. | |
| Listen, C-SPAN isn't an agricultural or forestry or fisheries programming, but there's an issue that the Secretary of Agriculture has had to shut down the border because of the New World Screw Worm infestation that's moving up from Mexico. | ||
| Now, we used to have a barrier set up in Panama where they would use the sterile insect barriers to prevent infestations of our cattle, but there's a huge feedlot on Chihuahua and on Santa Teresa, New Mexico border, where the cattle just walk across, and that's worth millions of dollars. | ||
| But the Mexican government has been rather non-cooperative with trying to prevent the spread of this horrible, obnoxious fly parasite that took three decades last time we had it. | ||
| And there's been a push to have a sterile fly insect barrier set up again. | ||
| And I wish you folks could do a show on it. | ||
| Say, get an agricultural economist, or I know you had someone from SNAP last week talking, or an intermarriage or something about what our government's doing and some cattlemen or something that could prevent this loss to our cattle industry and eventually to consumers with the loss of beef production. | ||
| So thank you for letting me speak. | ||
| Well, thank you for calling and thank you to all of our callers who joined us for Open Forum. | ||
| Coming up next, we're going to have a conversation with Attorney Alan Dershowitz about legal and constitutional issues in the news, as well as his new book, The Preventative State. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is also the author of the new book, The Preventive State, The Challenges of Preventing Serious Harms While Preserving Essential Liberties. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thanks. | |
| It's always a pleasure to be on with you. | ||
| I love your callers. | ||
| They represent America. | ||
| And I appreciate your show. | ||
| We'll be hearing from them soon as they have questions for you later in this segment. | ||
| But first, what prompted you to write this book? | ||
| I've been working on this book for 60 years, believe it or not. | ||
| I'm 86 years old. | ||
| I started teaching when I was 25, and I discovered the concept of the preventive state. | ||
| I recognized that our government was moving much more toward preventing horrible cataclysmic harms and away from simply reacting to them. | ||
| And I started writing articles about it literally in the 1960s. | ||
| I taught courses called the Prediction and Prevention of Crime. | ||
| You know, for thousands of years, we've responded to horrible events, crimes and wars, by reacting. | ||
| And we created a jurisprudence for that. | ||
| Better 10 guilty go free than one innocent be wrongly confined. | ||
| But in the last years, we've been moving toward prevention because of two things. | ||
| One, the threats are greater than ever before, nuclear threats, health threats, environmental threats, terrorism threats. | ||
| And second, our ability to predict them and prevent them has increased. | ||
| And so the state has moved into the business of predicting and preventing harmful conduct, but we don't have a jurisprudence. | ||
| We don't know whether it's better to lock up 10 potential terrorists to prevent one cataclysmic event or not. | ||
| And so in this book, The Preventive State, I lay out all these differences and all these situations where the government is moving preventively. | ||
| Take deportation, for example. | ||
| It's in the news today. | ||
| The major goal of deporting illegals is to prevent them from committing crimes. | ||
| Yet we have no jurisprudence and we're acting in a very, very ad hoc way. | ||
| So the preventive state, after 60 years of thinking about it and teaching about it, it's my magnum opus. | ||
| I know that it's surprising that a person who's been teaching for 60 years would write his most important book at age 86. | ||
| But it took me a long time to have this issue percolate. | ||
| And finally, I was ready this past year. | ||
| And so I've published the book, The Preventive Status. | ||
| You know, I have the introduction is by Steve Breyer, Justice Steve Breyer. | ||
| I have wonderful blurbs. | ||
| My favorite one is by Larry Summers, who says, no one but Alan Dershowitz would seek to bring a common mode of thought to issues as divers as bail, climate change, and terrorism. | ||
| But that's exactly what I've tried to do, create a jurisprudence for this very important development that most people aren't noticing, that we're moving away from deterrence, away from reaction, and more toward prevention poses great danger to civil liberties. | ||
| It also poses tremendous benefits if we can stop things from happening, horrible things, before they actually occur. | ||
| Yes, you do write about this tension between security and preserving liberty. | ||
| I want to read an excerpt from very early in your book where you say, rarely in the long history of our planet have we faced such dire threats to our survival, but never before in our history have we developed tools individually and in combination so capable of predicting and preventing many of these potential disasters. | ||
| Can you talk a bit more about some of these tools that you think we have to address these concerns? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| The main one is obviously artificial intelligence, AI. | ||
| We now have the ability to gather together facts and information, history, and figure out who poses and what poses the greatest danger. | ||
| But as Benjamin Franklin said over 200 years ago, those who would trade a little bit of security by giving up a lot of liberty deserve neither. | ||
| So I want to create a jurisprudence where we give up a little bit of liberty and we always have to give up a little bit of liberty anytime you prevent something from happening. | ||
| Anytime you put a terrorist in prison or you send a terrorist out of the country and deport them, anytime you do that, you're depriving somebody or something of liberty. | ||
| But if we could have prevented 9-11 by arresting five people before it ever happened, that's a trade-off that's worth it. | ||
| If Israel could have arrested 10 Hamas leaders or even killed them in order to prevent October 7th, that would be a trade-off that's worth it. | ||
| On the other hand, if you have to kill or deport thousands of people in order to prevent a minor future crime, that's not a trade-off that's worth it. | ||
| And so I try very hard to create and construct a jurisprudence that allows us to balance the need for prevention against the need to prevent also diminution in our civil liberties. | ||
| Now then, our country, as you mentioned, was attacked on 9-11, and we've also faced COVID. | ||
| What kind of lessons do you think are to be learned from these instances and the ramifications of how we protect people from harm? | ||
| The lesson we've learned is we always overreact after it happens. | ||
| After 9-11, we passed the Patriot Act. | ||
| That went much, much too far. | ||
| With COVID, you know, some people think we went too far with mandatory masking. | ||
| I don't, but reasonable people could disagree with that. | ||
| Look, in my book, I quote a letter from George Washington to the troops during the Revolutionary War in which he says, we're not going to lose this war to the Brits, but we may lose it to smallpox. | ||
| And so unless all of you get inoculated, we're going to lose this war. | ||
| So there we had preventive inoculation. | ||
| So I think what we've learned is when we wait for harm to occur, we generally overreact. | ||
| You might argue that Israel is overreacting to what happened on October 7th. | ||
| If it could have prevented October 7th by killing or imprisoning a few dozen people, many, many fewer people on both sides would have died. | ||
| But maybe we would have made it, maybe Israel would have made a mistake. | ||
| Maybe they would have arrested the wrong people. | ||
| Take, for example, the issue that's now in the news. | ||
| Should the United States and Israel bomb Iran? | ||
| If they don't and Iran develops nuclear weapons and bombs Israel or other American allies, thousands and thousands of people might be killed. | ||
| In the book, I do an analogy between the Iran decision and what happened in 1935 in Europe. | ||
| If Great Britain and France had attacked Nazi Germany in 1935 and destroyed its war machine, they probably would have killed a few hundred people, but it would have prevented the death of 50 million people during the Second World War. | ||
| But history is blind and deaf to the future. | ||
| And so we judge actions based on what we know now, not what could have or would have happened. | ||
| And so we've made many, many mistakes on both sides. | ||
| We failed to prevent horrible actions during the Second World War. | ||
| We failed to prevent Pearl Harbor. | ||
| We failed to prevent the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. | ||
| And on the other hand, we've taken actions, like, for example, in Iraq, we went in and took action, killed a lot of people for something that never would have happened. | ||
| So it's the need to have very good intelligence to know what's going to happen in the future and then to strike the appropriate balance between taking preventive actions that could save lives and not taking the actions that might cost lives. | ||
| You know, we tend to be much more critical when people act and take lives because we don't know what they would have prevented than we do when they fail to act. | ||
| But the decision of France and England not to act in 1935 was one of the most costly and cataclysmic mistakes in our history. | ||
| And we don't want to repeat that kind of mistake either. | ||
| We also don't want to repeat the mistake of putting 110,000 Japanese Americans in detention centers after Pearl Harbor. | ||
| These are the kinds of lessons that you hope we learn from history. | ||
| And in my book, The Preventive State, I go through all of these decisions, every preventive decision that we've made throughout our history and the ones we didn't make, and try as a result of that looking at experience and using artificial intelligence to come up with a jurisprudence, much like our jurisprudence that we have better 10 guilty go free than one innocent be wrongly confined. | ||
| I want a jurisprudence that asks the question: how many false positives, how many people should be erroneously confined in order to prevent how many false negatives, how many Pearl Harbor attacks, how many 9-11s, how many October 7ths? | ||
| Those are the kinds of questions that don't get asked enough. | ||
| And it's the thesis of my book, The Preventive State, that in a democracy, you need to raise these questions. | ||
| For example, I raised the very, very difficult question: what if we knew somebody had planted a nuclear weapon in a city and the only way to stop the bomb from going off is to torture that person? | ||
| We don't want torture. | ||
| On the other hand, we don't want 10,000 or 100,000 people to be blown up. | ||
| How do you make that decision? | ||
| Who makes that decision? | ||
| These are the kinds of tragic choice decisions that we try to avoid making because they're so difficult. | ||
| But we have to confront them in a democracy. | ||
| And the most important question in a democracy is who makes these decisions? | ||
| Is it the courts? | ||
| Is it the executive? | ||
| Is it the legislature? | ||
| We're debating those issues right now in the context of the Trump presidency. | ||
| Speaking of the Trump presidency, one of the things that the Trump administration has been doing with the deportations is saying that this is to prevent crime. | ||
| And it was recently that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that the administration was actively looking at the suspension of habeas corpus. | ||
| Let's listen to him make those comments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, the Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. | ||
| So I would say that's an option we're actively looking at. | ||
| Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. | ||
| At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act, which stripped Article III courts. | ||
| That's the judicial branch of a jurisdiction over immigration cases. | ||
| So Congress actually passed, it's called jurisdiction-stripping legislation. | ||
| It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren't even allowed to be involved in immigration cases. | ||
| Many of you probably don't know this. | ||
| I'll give you a good example. | ||
| Are you familiar with the term temporary protective status or TPS, right? | ||
| So by statute, the courts are stripped of jurisdiction from overruling a presidential determination or a secretarial determination on TPS when the Secretary of Homeland Security makes that determination. | ||
| So when Secretary Noam terminated TPS for the illegals that Biden flew into the country, when courts stepped in, they were violating explicit language that Congress had enacted, saying they have no jurisdiction. | ||
| So it's not just the courts aren't just at war with the executive branch. | ||
| The courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well, too. | ||
| So all of that will inform the choice that the president ultimately makes, yes. | ||
| Alan Dershowitz, your thoughts on the comments there and this idea of suspending habeas corpus, and how do you think this idea fits into this lens that you're laying out in your book? | ||
| It fits in perfectly because habeas corpus is the remedy to make sure that we don't overuse prevention. | ||
| I don't think you can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. | ||
| It's been done a half a dozen times in our history. | ||
| Obviously, President Lincoln suspended it, but the Supreme Court basically said he needed congressional action, and we don't have congressional action. | ||
| Roosevelt, in effect, suspended it when he put 110,000 Japanese Americans in camps, and General Richardson overtly suspended it in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Look, some years ago, I was sent by Harvard as the official representative to the 750th anniversary of Magna Carta. | ||
| I sat four rows behind the queen as this great document of liberty was brought out, and I actually saw it. | ||
| And they just discovered in the Harvard Law School Library an actual original copy of the Magna Carta. | ||
| The Magna Carta sets out the framework for the writ of habeas corpus. | ||
| And I don't think we ought to be suspending that writ. | ||
| And I don't think the courts will uphold a presidential suspension of that writ. | ||
| If Congress were to suspend the writ, saying that the immigration is an invasion, I think that would be a mistake, but at least it would follow. | ||
| Remember, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus appears in Article 1 of the Constitution. | ||
| That's the article that outlines congressional powers, not presidential powers. | ||
| So I don't think that the president alone has the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. | ||
| That would not be an appropriate preventive action. | ||
| That would, by the way, be a reaction, not a prevention, because I'm not sure that by preventing the writ of habeas, by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, you're going to do much to prevent crime. | ||
| You're right that deportation is seen in part, in part, as a preventive measure. | ||
| But that has to be accompanied by due process. | ||
| And the way of assuring due process is by preserving the writ of habeas corpus and making sure that the government can justify every preventive act it takes, including deportation of suspected criminals. | ||
| First, you have to prove that they are aliens and not legally in the United States. | ||
| Second, you have to prove that they are likely to commit crimes. | ||
| And that's what my whole book, The Preventive State, is about. | ||
| How difficult it is to predict who will commit crimes and who won't commit crimes. | ||
| After the fact, we always say, oh, we should have known that 9-11 was coming. | ||
| We should have known that October 7th was coming in Israel. | ||
| We should have known. | ||
| But there's always mixed intelligence, and you never know for sure. | ||
| And you're always making probabilistic decisions. | ||
| And my book, The Preventive State, is all about how to make probabilistic decisions, both the mathematics of it, the science of it, the jurisprudence of it, the constitutionality of it. | ||
| So it's really the first book ever written, and surprising that nobody's written this before, the first book ever written on creating a structure for how we deal with this growing phenomenon of making decisions based on not what happened in the past, but what we think is going to happen in the future. | ||
| Let's get to some calls. | ||
| Marlon is in Coos Bays, Oregon on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Marlon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Alan. | |
| Thank you very much for everything you do for the United States. | ||
| So I got a couple problems. | ||
| One of them is: I thought the Supreme Court passed an amnesty for the president for anything that he does in office. | ||
| Main thing is to get the aliens, the illegals, and the criminals out of this country. | ||
| Why don't they, do you know of another act that he could use instead of this aliens enemy act that he keeps coming up against the courts upon? | ||
| The other thing is I wanted to say is there's no wonder we've got a problem with our kids on our colleges when you've got countries like Qatar and Arabia and those putting in many millions and billions of dollars into the college endowments and teaching Sharia law by these tenured presidents or these tenured teachers. | ||
| This has to stop or we're going to have a problem from the inside. | ||
| So Marlin, I want to pause because I'll highlight the fact that Mr. Dershowitz actually wrote recently about the efforts to withdraw funding from Harvard. | ||
| And so do you want to respond to Marlon's points as well as talk about your perspective on that? | ||
| Sure, it's a great question. | ||
| And I'm writing a new book. | ||
| The current title is Defund or Defend Who Will Win Trump's War. | ||
| Somebody sent me an alternate title, which is cuter, but I probably won't use it. | ||
| And that is Trump to Harvard, Go Fund Yourself. | ||
| But there is that movement toward using federal funding in order to influence what's going on on university campuses. | ||
| And there's a preventive measure to that, too, because the goal of defunding universities is to prevent them from tolerating the kind of bigotry that we've seen on campuses. | ||
| Again, you have to strike an appropriate balance. | ||
| You don't want research to be defunded, cancer research, child illness research. | ||
| On the other hand, if you have departments at universities that are promoting anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity, anti-American dogma, you can go back to the 1950s when I was a college student. | ||
| And when Southern schools, after Brown versus Board, Southern schools were allowing the Klein to come on campus and intimidate black students, were allowing teachers to teach white supremacy. | ||
| We all cheered when the federal government came in and said, no, no, no, we're not going to allow that to happen when Eisenhower sent troops. | ||
| And so you, again, have to strike an appropriate balance. | ||
| The governments do have something of a role to play to make sure that the universities aren't used as a way of fomenting violence and discrimination, etc. | ||
| On the other hand, you don't want the government to have an important role to play on the curriculum of universities. | ||
| So my next book's going to be about that. | ||
| But my book, The Preventive State, is about that as well because efforts to control universities are efforts to prevent the kind of thing we've seen at Columbia and Harvard and other places where some students based on religion, ethnicity, and national origin are attacked and intimidated and prevented from going to class. | ||
| So, you know, everything comes back to this issue of what you do to prevent and do you overdo it. | ||
| And that's why we have to strike the appropriate balance. | ||
| And that's what I try very hard to do in my book, The Preventive State. | ||
| Alex is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And Alan, another Alex, we can't hear you anymore. | ||
| Can you speak directly into the phone, please? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me now? | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| Sorry about that. | ||
| Alan, you know, you started this conversation with the mistakes that France and England made in the Second World War with Germany taking over Poland and then Czechoslovakia. | ||
| And I find it ironic that you bring that case up when we have an administration that through a billion cuts is destroying the Constitution and the democratic foundations of this country, taking away federal aid from Harvard, creating this panic situation where we are at a constant war with immigrants. | ||
| And now you talk about this preventive mode that we are in. | ||
| Well, people know what's coming. | ||
| The data is already there. | ||
| Global warming is coming. | ||
| We're going to have people coming into this country. | ||
| And it just seems inevitable that democracy will not survive this century. | ||
| Autocrats are coming up all over the world. | ||
| And there is no way to turn back the tide that is coming. | ||
| And I find it ironic that you write about this because who knows in 100 years when we look back at this presidency, you will have been one of the enablers of what this man is doing, the same way the Chamberlain was an enabler of Hitler. | ||
| And with all of your knowledge and experience and history, it just befuddles me of how you can look at this and look at the cases that you are literally outlining here and not see the red flags that we are facing, Alan. | ||
| Let's let him respond. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| This is a book. | ||
| It's almost 300 pages long. | ||
| Trump is not mentioned in it. | ||
| Republicans and Democrats aren't mentioned in it. | ||
| This is not a political book. | ||
| This is an analytical book. | ||
| It's all about how to preserve a democracy. | ||
| But in America today, you can't say anything about anything without being accused of being on the wrong side of Trump. | ||
| I did not, I am not a Trump supporter. | ||
| I, for years, was a liberal Democrat from the day I voted for John Kennedy. | ||
| I quit the Democratic Party after the convention when they had AOC and other anti-Semites speak at the convention without a single pro-Israel speaker. | ||
| So I can't be a member of that party, but I'm not a Republican. | ||
| I'm an independent, and I'm critical of many of the things that this administration has done, much as I was critical of many of the things that every administration has done during my lifetime. | ||
| We will survive. | ||
| We are not in a constitutional crisis. | ||
| Let me be very clear about that. | ||
| We were in a constitutional crisis when Thomas Jefferson refused to allow judges appointed by John Adams to be confirmed that led to Marlborough versus Madison. | ||
| We were in a constitutional crisis when Andrew Jackson refused to enforce John Marshall's Supreme Court decision about Native Americans. | ||
| We were in a constitutional crisis when President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. | ||
| were in a constitutional crisis when Franklin Delano Roosevelt threatened to pack the court and then put 110,000 Americans in detention centers. | ||
| We were in a constitutional crises. | ||
| We survived them. | ||
| We are not in a constitutional crisis now because President Trump has said, and I take him at his word, and if he violates that word, he will have a critic in me. | ||
| He says he will never disobey an order of the Supreme Court. | ||
| He is challenging. | ||
| He is pushing the envelope. | ||
| That's what Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt did. | ||
| Not comparing President Trump to anybody else. | ||
| I'm just giving a little bit of history. | ||
| So I think you overstate the problems. | ||
| One of the reasons I wrote this book is to preserve democracy and make sure we have the right tools to assure that if the government gets too involved in prevention and uses preventive rationales to deny people due process, that we have the constitutional tools to prevent that. | ||
| For example, on deportation, nobody should ever be deported without due process. | ||
| That's why I'm against the suspension of the right of habeas corpus. | ||
| But don't confuse the fact that I defended President Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment. | ||
| I also defended Bill Clinton against what I believe was an unconstitutional impeachment. | ||
| And I would have defended Joe Biden against an unconstitutional impeachment. | ||
| I'm a constitutional lawyer. | ||
| I defend the Constitution. | ||
| I don't do it on political grounds. | ||
| And so you're just dead wrong when you call me an enabler of Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm an enabler of the Constitution, and I am not a political supporter, never have been a political supporter of any candidate who would violate the Constitution. | ||
| And so to compare me with Goebbels and Goering and everybody else is just a historical and B nonsensical. | ||
| Even from Brooklyn, you can't get away with that kind of stuff. | ||
| I grew up in Brooklyn, and if we in Brooklyn, we would have a word to describe your analysis. | ||
| I'm not going to use that word. | ||
| But on the issue of constitutional questions, there was obviously in the last week a pretty big set of oral arguments at the Supreme Court about whether or not lower court judges should be able to stop President Trump's efforts on birthright citizenship. | ||
| This gets at the issue of universal injunctions. | ||
| I want to play a clip from those oral arguments, an exchange between Justice Sotomayor and the U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer from Thursday's oral arguments and then get your response. | ||
| Right. | ||
| 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, extensive, and important constitutional courts. | ||
| We have 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 at that time. | ||
| And that's what we need to serve. | ||
| 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 there we've found ourselves. | ||
| 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. | ||
| What are your thoughts on the argument that the administration is making here? | ||
| I think both sides missed the important point. | ||
| What if you have a situation where four judges say that the birthright citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, four judges, as they have four courts, but then you have one court saying, no, no, it's perfectly constitutional. | ||
| What if you have split decisions in the lower courts? | ||
| That's why I've made a proposal for how to resolve this. | ||
| Congress ought to create a new court, much like the Pfizer court, of five judges selected nationally. | ||
| And if you want to get a national injunction, you have to go to that court. | ||
| And if that court grants the national injunction, then there's an immediate automatic appeal to the Supreme Court. | ||
| So you can get the issue of the national application of the injunction litigated and decided within two or three weeks. | ||
| Right now, neither situation is tenable. | ||
| You can't have a situation where lawyers can judge shop and find four or five judges to find executive actions unconstitutional. | ||
| The other side can find four or five judges finding it unconstitutional. | ||
| That's a completely untenable solution. | ||
| And the other solution is untenable as well. | ||
| So I think we need a legislative answer. | ||
| By the way, I think we need a legislative answer also to birthright citizenship. | ||
| The Constitution says anybody born in this country and subject to its jurisdiction, subject to its jurisdiction. | ||
| Congress could pass a statute saying that a baby born in this country who then leaves two weeks later, has spent no time in the country, is not subject to the jurisdiction, and therefore is not a natural-born citizen. | ||
| So Congress has a role to play. | ||
| It can solve these problems, but Congress has not played its constitutionally appropriate role, and so it all gets left to the court. | ||
| And it's not going to be a satisfactory resolution if nine judges decide these big issues that could easily be decided by popularly elected legislative branch of the government, which is what was intended by our Constitution. | ||
| Tom is in Elverson, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And good morning, Mr. Dershowitz. | ||
| I really appreciate your outstanding career in teaching at Harvard. | ||
| And I appreciate everything you say. | ||
| But I had a little problem with your introduction. | ||
| And maybe I should take this up with the editor of your new book. | ||
| You quoted George Washington talking about smallpox as being a greater threat than the British. | ||
| Of course, at the time he appeared to have spoken those words was about 20 years before Edward Jenner introduced the inoculation against smallpox. | ||
| But as I say, that's a problem between me and your editor. | ||
| Wait, one moment, Tom. | ||
| I think Mr. Dershowitz had a response to that real quick. | ||
| On my wall, I have the handwritten letter signed by George Washington, written in the hand of his secretary named Alexander Hamilton. | ||
| I own the letter in which he talks about inoculation against smallpox. | ||
| So you're right that the better inoculations were not invented until later. | ||
| But as early as the middle of the 18th century, there was primitive inoculation. | ||
| Some people credit it to the Empress of Russia. | ||
| But what they would say would be so. | ||
| I think Tom had a larger point as well, though. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| I think Tom had a bigger question as well, right, Tom? | ||
| What was the question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Basically, that was my problem I would have with the editor of this book. | |
| Oh. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Did you have another question beyond that? | ||
| I own the letter in George Washington's hand, where he talks specifically about inoculation against smallpox. | ||
| So there was inoculation against smallpox. | ||
| It was being done, and it's part of our historical record. | ||
| Now, you can't establish a precedent from that because the commander-in-chief is allowed to tell members of the armed forces to do and not to do things. | ||
| For example, the commander-in-chief could make everybody take a haircut. | ||
| He can't make me take a haircut. | ||
| President of the United States is not my commander-in-chief. | ||
| He's only the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. | ||
| So he could make soldiers get inoculated, and they did. | ||
| The historical record demonstrates that soldiers were inoculated and the spread of smallpox was constrained. | ||
| That was a preventive action. | ||
| That's why I write about it in the preventive state, because it was one of the first instances where the president of the United States took preventive actions, which violated the rights of individuals. | ||
| There were individuals in the army who didn't want to be inoculated. | ||
| Ultimately, some years later, a person went to jail in Massachusetts because he refused to be inoculated, and the Supreme Court compelled inoculation. | ||
| But historically, the fact is that there was inoculation during the Revolutionary War, and Washington wrote a letter about it. | ||
| So let's get to a couple more callers before we run out of time here. | ||
| Let's hear from Vic in Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Vic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Good morning, Mr. Dershowitz. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| You're a lawyer. | ||
| You studied the law. | ||
| And I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how can you basically pick somebody up, kidnap them, lock them up for an extended amount of time, no due process, just label them a terrorist, and do away with them. | ||
| That's what's going on in Palestine, Israel, right now. | ||
| No electricity, no food, continued bombing. | ||
| Killing is killing. | ||
| Where's the rule of law and what Israel is doing? | ||
| Well, Israel is fighting a war of self-defense, just like the United States fought a war of self-defense. | ||
| The United States bombed Hiroshima, Nagasaki, bombed Dresden. | ||
| It needed to end the scourge of Nazism, and Israel has to end the scourge of Hamas. | ||
| Hamas, without any provocation, during a ceasefire, came over the border, murdered 1,200 innocent Israelis, captured 250 of them, 50 of them, some alive, some dead, are still there. | ||
| Every country in the world, every single country would act exactly as Israel did, acting in self-defense. | ||
| And the reason for there are so many people dying is because Hamas has made it a policy. | ||
| The United States recognizes this. | ||
| Both Biden recognized it and Trump that Hamas uses its civilians as human shields. | ||
| For example, Israel just killed, presumably, many of the leaders of Hamas, as many as maybe 10 of them, including Sinoa, who were hiding underneath the hospital. | ||
| And when you hide underneath a hospital, you are endangering the lives of everybody in that hospital. | ||
| And under international law, Israel was completely entitled to try to get these terrorist leaders. | ||
| And it was Hamas who was at fault for hiding these leaders, these military leaders, underneath a civilian hospital. | ||
| And so what Israel is doing is precisely what the United States did, what NATO has done. | ||
| In fact, Israel has killed fewer civilians in relation to combatants than any country in the history of modern warfare. | ||
| The ratio is somewhere between one to one and three to one. | ||
| During NATO wars, the ratio has been seven to one. | ||
| In some of the wars, it's been ten to one, civilians to combatants. | ||
| So what Israel has been doing is entirely consistent with international law and better than many other countries have done. | ||
| And if Hamas wants to stop the war, it's very simple. | ||
| Just give up and turn the hostages back and the bombing will stop. | ||
| Israel has made that clear and Trump has made that clear. | ||
| James is in Collins, Mississippi on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My name is James McGee. | ||
| Mr. Jushawich. | ||
| I'm calling you. | ||
| Can you turn down the volume on your TV, please, James, and then continue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me now? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Mr. Deshwich, I'm calling you because of Doge, and I'm calling you because this presidency, this president, the Republicans, are talking about all these different countries paying back America for what they did for them. | ||
| But how can you justify those countries paying America back when they hadn't even celebrated the restitution for black folks in slavery, segregation, discrimination, right here in Mississippi, right here in Mississippi? | ||
| They have sent 59 African white Americans over here because they say that there's a war going on. | ||
| So how can they say they're going to make America great when they owe African Americans? | ||
| Do you believe, do you believe, hold on, let me say this here. | ||
| Do you believe that the United States of America owed black children, ancestry children, for the debt that they owed the black family? | ||
| Let's let our guests respond. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| It's not a subject I cover in my book. | ||
| It's not a subject I've taught about. | ||
| Reasonable people disagree or agree about reparations. | ||
| We did make reparations, small amount of reparations, to Japanese Americans that we put in death camps. | ||
| Maybe we should make reparations to the Jews who were not allowed to come into the United States in 1939 when 900 of them were on a boat called the St. Louis and could have been rescued from the Holocaust. | ||
| And Franklin Roosevelt said, no, the whole issue of reparations is a complicated one. | ||
| And it looks to the past. | ||
| In my book, The Preventive State, I look to the future. | ||
| I look to what steps are taken now to prevent a repetition of what has happened in the past and whether we can take those steps without diminishing too much freedom from people. | ||
| And so the question is, for example, on reparations, do you tax people who are living today for terrible things that occurred by people that lived many, many years ago? | ||
| And the people who are being taxed are not even descendants of the people who did the terrible things. | ||
| These are hard questions, but they're not related particularly to the preventive state. | ||
| Robert is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, sir. | |
| You have a great mind. | ||
| I think you should write as many books as possible. | ||
| My question for you, please, is for you to explain the word oxymoron for me, not in a political terms, but in a terms that you define as oxymoron. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Oxymoron is something which is self-provingly wrong, something that's self-contradictory. | ||
| The word moron is in it, but I don't think it has anything to do with the word moron. | ||
| It's just a, you know, it's a kind of linguistic argument. | ||
| And there are many oxymorons in our society. | ||
| But it's an interesting word. | ||
| People misuse it because of the word moron. | ||
| Stephen is in Baltimore, Maryland, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mr. Gershwich. | |
| Excuse me if I should name, but I got a very quick question. | ||
| In 1948, Arabs were thrown off their land, about 700,000 of them. | ||
| Now, you talked about preventive state. | ||
| Now, if Israel hadn't done that, that would have prevented a lot of problems with the Arab community around that part of the world. | ||
| What do you say to that? | ||
| Let me respond to that because we don't have too much time. | ||
| You're dead wrong about that. | ||
| When Israel was established in 1948, not a single Arab was thrown off the land. | ||
| Then all the Arab countries, every one of them, attacked Israel. | ||
| In the process of winning the war, 700,000 Arabs were displaced. | ||
| At the same time, 700,000 Jews were displaced from Arab countries, ranging from Morocco to Tunisia to Libya to Egypt. | ||
| So there was an exchange of population, much as there was in Pakistan and India. | ||
| There would involve millions of people. | ||
| In Germany, at the end of the Second World War, millions of ethnic Germans were kicked out of Czechoslovakia. | ||
| When people are attacked, Israel was attacked in 1948. | ||
| It would have allowed every single Arab to stay in Israel. | ||
| Remember that Israel was established on land, all of which had a majority of Jews. | ||
| And so the Nakba, the elimination of these 700 or so thousand Arabs who left what is now Israel, was 100% the fault of Arab leadership for attacking Israel. | ||
| If they hadn't attacked Israel, not a single Arab would have been forced to leave. | ||
| On the other hand, 700,000 Jews with wealth worth trillions of dollars, they had been there for thousands of years before the birth of Muhammad in Arab countries, and they were expelled from their countries and they were threatened and they were murdered. | ||
| And so you had an exchange of population. | ||
| And so don't believe the propaganda about the Nakba. | ||
| The Nakba is 100% the fault of Palestinian leadership. | ||
| Not a single Arab would have been displaced from Israel had the Arab countries accepted the two-state solution that was offered them in 1938, 1947, 1948, 1965, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007. | ||
| The entire fault lies in the Arabs. | ||
| So we're just about out of time. | ||
| Did you have any closing thoughts on your book that you wanted to share? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Say it again? | |
| We're just about out of time. | ||
| Did you have any closing thoughts on your book that you wanted to share? | ||
| Who cares about democracy? | ||
| You should go on Amazon and learn about this new threat to democracy that is the preventive state. | ||
| The preventive state poses both a great potential benefit to the world and a great potential harm. | ||
| And those are the most interesting things to read about when there's a trade-off. | ||
| And I try very hard in the preventive state to create a jurisprudence that basically answers the challenge of preventing serious harms while at the same time not diminishing essential liberties. | ||
| So I hope people will read it and I hope people will comment on it, criticize it. | ||
| And I really appreciate your putting me on your show with such interesting questions from the audience. | ||
| So thank you very much. | ||
| Well, thank you, Alan Dershowitz, who is the author of The Preventive State: The Challenges of Preventing Serious Harms While Preserving Essential Liberties. | ||
| And thank you to everyone who called into Washington Journal today. | ||
| We're going to be back tomorrow morning with another edition of the show at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| We hope you'll tune in. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | |
| Coming up Monday morning, Douglas Holtz Aiken of the American Action Forum reviews the Republican budget and President Trump's economic and tariff policies. | ||
| And then Nicholas Wu, Politico's congressional reporter, on the week ahead in Congress. | ||
| Also, Washington Examiner White House reporter Naomi Lynn previews the week ahead at the White House. | ||
| And Virginia K. Suleiman of Common Cause discusses President Trump's decision to accept a luxury plane from Qatari Royals and reports of potential conflicts of interest in his administration. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Tonight, 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. |