| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Like the dollar. | |
| And on C-SPAN 3 at 10, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies on his agency's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. | ||
| And Wednesday, the House Rules Committee is holding a late-night session. | ||
| They're set to debate and vote on the Republicans' tax and spending cuts proposal. | ||
| If approved by the Rules Committee, the bill would go to the House floor for a vote this week. | ||
| That starts at 1 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can also watch live coverage on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| You think this is just a community censor? | ||
| No, it's way more than that. | ||
| Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lifts so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Virginia K. Salamon joins us now. | ||
| She serves as president and CEO of Common Cause, an organization whose mission is one. | ||
|
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Well, we hold power accountable. | |
| That is point blank, period. | ||
| That is our role to do. | ||
| And so we serve as a watchdog for government. | ||
| We also really just support everyday individuals in making sure that their voices are heard in our government across the country, both at the federal level, local, state, you name it. | ||
| How do you hold power accountable? | ||
| And how long have you been around? | ||
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So we've been around since 1970. | |
| So for 55 years now almost, we've been doing this work. | ||
| And the way that we hold government accountable is by working in both state legislatures, by working at the federal government, looking at what the ethics rules are and what exists in those local and state and federal legislatures to make sure that they are abiding by those rules. | ||
| And in addition to that, we work really closely with people at the community level to make sure that government leaders are not engaged in any kind of grifting, right? | ||
| And so we want to make sure that everyday people have trust in the elected officials that they have. | ||
| One of the biggest challenges that we see is that people won't participate in government civically if they don't trust the leaders that have been elected. | ||
| One of your latest efforts is a petition to encourage Congress to block President Trump from accepting that Qatari luxury plane. | ||
| One, why are you against it? | ||
| And two, what can Congress do about it? | ||
|
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Well, there's a lot of reasons why we're against it. | |
| But first, there is a new plane that is being built. | ||
| Boeing is taken on the contract to do that. | ||
| It is set up to all the specific specifications that would be required from a security standpoint. | ||
| So taking a new plane on, not only in addition to the fact that it just really looks bad from an optic standpoint, it is an ethical conflict, we believe. | ||
| But the amount of money that it would cost taxpayers to be able to get that plane up to speed from a security standpoint from our government will cost about a billion dollars, according to the most recent number that we've seen. | ||
| So a free is not free. | ||
| You get a free $400 million plane that would still basically need to be stripped down to the nuts and bolts of it to be able to make sure that it was safe for any elected leader. | ||
| How is that saving money? | ||
| That is not a gift, number one. | ||
| And number two, it just looks really bad. | ||
| I mean, from an ethics standpoint, George Bush couldn't take a dog when he was president without going through all kinds of ethics and compliance rules. | ||
| We're talking about a $400 plane. | ||
| So what can Congress do to stop this? | ||
| If they wanted to? | ||
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Well, because of the Emoluments Clause, Congress wouldn't technically need to approve it. | |
| So if they wanted to, they actually could say, we do not approve this. | ||
| We will not allow this gift to be accepted. | ||
| The concern right now is just that Congress is not doing anything, at least on the people who are in the majority who could hold him accountable. | ||
| I would add that there was a review done by Pam Bondi, who is the now Attorney General, but she was getting $100,000 a month lobbying for the same government who is gifting this plane to President Trump prior to her becoming Attorney General. | ||
| So the conflicts and the optics around this are just really, really terrible. | ||
| Never miss an opportunity to quote the Constitution. | ||
| Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 is the emoluments clause. | ||
| No person holding any office or profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind, whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state. | ||
| When the consent of Congress, is that just a simple majority vote? | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| And is that something that both the House and Senate have to vote on? | ||
| And can the president step in in any way? | ||
|
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So here's the thing. | |
| This is not a usual administration as far as adhering to laws and ethic guidelines. | ||
| I just want to name that first because what should be happening is yes, it should go through congressional approval. | ||
| Will it actually happen and will we see a plane show up at some point is another question and that is why it is so concerning right now because we've seen so many rules and guidelines and norms that have been bypassed. | ||
| So I will say yes, it should go through congressional. | ||
| The concern is that are there loopholes or can he just bypass these things and do it anyway? | ||
| I mean that that is really what so there's yes there should be congressional approval. | ||
| Yes it should be going through the House. | ||
| They should be looking at this. | ||
| The question is will it happen? | ||
| And what we're concerned about is just the courage that is coming out of many elected leaders on the Hill right now who are afraid to speak up. | ||
| You saw people like Susan Collins who recently said we are afraid to. | ||
| So rules are supposed to apply. | ||
| It doesn't feel like they necessarily are. | ||
| The Treasury Secretary Scott Bassent was on CNN's State of the Union yesterday. | ||
| He was asked about the Qatari plane. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
| Even if Cutter isn't asking for anything in return now for the jet, I mean that's a bill that could come due. | ||
|
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Nobody in the Middle East gives things just to, or anywhere in the world, just gives a $400 million jet just to be nice. | |
| Well, I don't know, Jake. | ||
| The French gave us the Statue of Liberty. | ||
| The British gave us a resolute. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm not sure they asked for anything in advance. | ||
| And the more important airplane deal was there's $100 billion of orders from Qatari Airlines to Boeing. | ||
| Kelly Oortberg, the CEO of Boeing, was with us in the Middle East. | ||
| This is the biggest order in the company's history. | ||
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So I think that that plane deal is much more important than this other one. | |
| Well, I will just say about the Statue of Liberty. | ||
| I mean, that was authorized by Congress, and it belongs to the American people. | ||
| It doesn't belong to whoever was president at the time. | ||
| Well, I think that this plane would be a gift to the American government. | ||
| Virginia Case Salamon, your response to what the Treasury Secretary had to say. | ||
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That's disconcerting. | |
| A. Congress authorized the Statue of Liberty, which is still sitting in New York right now to this day. | ||
| It was a gift to the American people. | ||
| It was not a gift to an American president for specific use. | ||
| The president wasn't holed up on Ellis Island or, you know, sitting, not Ellis Island, but sitting in the Statue of Liberty. | ||
| It is frustrating because it is a twist, in my opinion, and on ethics watchdog opinions that you could even conflate the two. | ||
| We're talking about a jet that will be used for personal reasons when there is a perfectly good, there's nothing wrong with Air Force One right now. | ||
| It's maybe it's not as updated, it's a little bit older than he would like, but by all means, there is nothing wrong with it. | ||
| And he has said that it would go to his presidential library afterwards. | ||
| Again, it is just such a twist on reality. | ||
| And at the end of the day, business is business, and I get that, right? | ||
| But it should not be a quid pro quo situation that we're facing here, where Qatar, for example, saying, oh, we're going to do all these contracts, but we're also going to get you a free plane out of this gig. | ||
| That just feels really wrong, and it stinks. | ||
| And I would just say this: you know, there was so much conversation from this president and from the administration, many administration officials, about quote-unquote draining the swamp. | ||
| And I just feel like we've got it, we just dumped a bunch of alligators and crocodiles in the swamp and said, Hey, guess what? | ||
| We've drained it, but we've got new visitors here. | ||
| And it's just all very, it's just very nasty and mucky. | ||
| Virginia K. Salamon is our guest. | ||
| She's the president and CEO of Common Cause. | ||
| If you want to check them out, commoncause.org. | ||
| Phone lines for this segment. | ||
| As usual, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| About a half an hour left in our program this morning. | ||
| So go ahead and get your calls in as folks are calling in. | ||
| What's your view on the Donald Trump meme coin? | ||
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Again, this family has enriched itself beyond means. | |
| This family also, previous presidents have always had an ethics executive order. | ||
| There was never one. | ||
| There was an executive pledge that was signed to have outside counsel review ethics. | ||
| Here you go, once again, this family being enriched. | ||
| I think it's a total of $2.9 billion since him coming into office that we have seen this family make just an exorbitant amount of money. | ||
| It's hard to put into words because this is not the type of thing that we've ever seen before. | ||
| We saw some things in the last administration. | ||
| I think what is concerning here is not only that the family and the president are making just ridiculous amounts of money, but it's at the cost of the American taxpayer. | ||
| And what I mean by that is we're talking about they were just getting ready to have a legislation that would have potentially started cryptocurrency, kind of a national reserve for cryptocurrency. | ||
| That legislation actually got pulled by Republicans because they were concerned that this was a bad look and that it could be abused. | ||
| The president himself is actually raising alarm bells, not only with Democrats, but with Republicans in the House and the Senate. | ||
| And while many of them will not say it out loud, this is what we're hearing behind closed doors, that they are very concerned about what they are seeing. | ||
| You mentioned you had some concerns in the previous administration. | ||
| Let me anticipate perhaps some callers' questions. | ||
| What did Common Cause raise a red flag on in the previous administration? | ||
| And is there a way to make comparisons between what you're talking about right now and what you were talking about then? | ||
|
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Yeah, I mean, before it was with his hotel, for example, the Trump Hotel that used to sit down on Pennsylvania Avenue, and you would see businessmen coming in, and people would need to kind of kiss the ring in order to be able to get a meeting with the president or to meet with administration officials. | |
| And so, there was a lot of gearing people towards the hotel. | ||
| Now, it goes to Mar-a-Lago, for example. | ||
| You can get a membership at Mar-a-Lago, and you get lots of direct access to Trump and his family and other people who are in his ecosystem. | ||
| And that's that direct line to the president that people are able to have. | ||
| That is no different whether it's in Florida or whether it is here. | ||
| When it comes to some of his business practices, what we're seeing is direct benefit to Donald Trump and his family. | ||
| And they may not pay immediate dividends. | ||
| It might not all be happening right now. | ||
| But after the fact, we saw Jared Kushner being able to receive really, really big gifts from the Saudi government. | ||
| We've seen his family now with the Qatari government being able to make really strong business deals that will benefit them well into the future. | ||
| These things have not changed. | ||
| What were the things that you raised red flags about during the Biden administration, and how do those compare to what you were just talking about? | ||
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So we didn't have the same ethics concerns from a financial standpoint. | |
| We did have a lot of concerns about Hunter Biden and his interactions and what was happening with his financial dealings and really getting into trying to understand whether or not the president was actually involved. | ||
| And what we found during that was that as a father, yes, he was very involved in providing support to his son, emotional support. | ||
| He was also not financially involved. | ||
| And so there was, you know, a parent who had a child who had very serious substance abuse issues, who was making poor choices versus a situation now, but the president himself not directly being involved in those financial dealings versus a situation where it's a whole family that is involved and dad is in the White House. | ||
| So it's a very different situation. | ||
| Common Cause has filed all kinds of ethics lawsuits and investigations. | ||
| We were actually the ones who, on the Stormy Daniels hush payment money, it was an intern of ours who discovered that campaign finance conflict. | ||
| So these are the types of things that we tend to focus on. | ||
| But I think ultimately what we're saying is it's not good whether it's a Democrat or a Republican. | ||
| It's not good at all. | ||
| It's not about right and left. | ||
| It's about right and wrong. | ||
| And the American people are feeling bad right now when they see all of this stuff happening. | ||
| And yet we're talking about proposing cuts to Medicaid. | ||
| And so as we look at it, it's about not what's good for any political party or any politician. | ||
| It's what's good for the American people and what makes the American people have trust in their government. | ||
| Again, commoncause org, if you want to check out their work, and there are plenty of callers waiting to chat with you, this is Deborah Liu out of Forest Ranch, California. | ||
| Up first, line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
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Hello. | |
| Go ahead, Deborah Liu. | ||
|
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Well, my comment: I've seen everything that the Trump administration has been doing. | |
| And I think back on the McCarthy era with the quote, and I'm reading it from Wiki. | ||
| Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. | ||
| Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? | ||
| Have you left no sense of decency? | ||
| That was what started to change things during that era when McCarthy had so much power. | ||
| And the problem today, I believe, is that there are too many Republicans who have no sense of decency. | ||
| They're going after progressive values, and they seem to forget what the United States, how we began, and what we really stand for. | ||
| So I agree with everything Common Cause is doing, and I appreciate that. | ||
| Virginia K. Salomon. | ||
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Well, thank you. | |
| And I think that is a big thing that is missed in all of this, is that there is at it our country at its core is, I think, comprised of really good people who want to be able to have good lives. | ||
| And we also want decency and kindness in our politics. | ||
| And while politics are messy and it's nasty, and we should be able to have policy debates, what we're seeing right now has gone beyond any kind of norm. | ||
| The attacks on American people, American values, is what is really concerning. | ||
| And we're seeing this play out through a lot of these ethics challenges with this administration. | ||
| It can't be what's good for me as the president can't be good for you as the American people. | ||
| He shouldn't be able to take a $400 million airplane. | ||
| But yet at the same time, we're seeing a ridiculous amount of cuts to Medicaid, for example, that would harm a lot of vulnerable people. | ||
| So this is all, you know, again, going back to the idea of decency. | ||
| Have you no decency? | ||
| To John in California, Republican, good morning. | ||
| Thank you for waiting. | ||
|
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Good morning. | |
| I do believe that we need a lot more watchdogs and like that. | ||
| I love the way you whitewashed the Biden administration and his son going around the world gathering up funds and, oh, there was no financial involvement. | ||
| I don't think they ever, I don't think that was ever a conclusion by anybody that Joe Biden didn't profit from his son's graft and corruption. | ||
| I wonder what you think about the $2 billion that was given to this organization that was cobbled together in 30 seconds by Stacey Abrams that went out of the government. | ||
| Yeah, there's going to be cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, what they want to cut is the graft and the corruption. | ||
| And you have had Politico on this morning. | ||
| You've had the man that has been manager of office of management budget that came on to do nothing but belittle and whack Trump. | ||
| And now you've got this lady from Common Cause, which is a very left-wing organization. | ||
| And I don't want Trump to take the darned airplane. | ||
| I think it is bad optics. | ||
| But by the same token, I want some equity when it comes to the criticism. | ||
| And Joe Biden's administration, from the covering up of his health and mental problems to what his son did and what other people in his administration did. | ||
| And for you to sit there and say, oh, this is outside the norms. | ||
| The norms have got us $36 trillion, almost $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| There has been graft and corruption. | ||
| What about the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation that took literally billions of dollars from around the world when Bill Clinton was president? | ||
| Bring up the Common Cause on there berating that fact. | ||
| Bring up a lot of points, John. | ||
| Let me give Virginia K. Salomon a chance to respond. | ||
|
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Yeah, and I think one of the things that I would say is that, again, going back to it's not about right or left. | |
| It's about right and wrong. | ||
| And it's interesting. | ||
| Common cause We have not changed our values. | ||
| We were actually founded by a Republican in 1970. | ||
| A lot of people don't know that. | ||
| So what I would say is when it has come to speaking out against whether it's Republican administrations, Democratic administrations, Common Cause has actually done that. | ||
| You should check at us. | ||
| We have both sides of the aisle pretty angry with us all the time. | ||
| And when we talk about left-leaning, our values haven't changed over the past 55 years. | ||
| The political ecosystem has. | ||
| And so we always stand on behalf of voters. | ||
| We are nonpartisan. | ||
| We don't support or endorse candidates or political parties, but we do identify where we see wrong. | ||
| And we call it like we see it. | ||
| We call strikes and balls. | ||
| And if we're talking about specifically saying we're going back in history, and we can go back as far as you want. | ||
| I brought up the Clinton Foundation. | ||
| Was Common Cause concerned about money taken in by the Clinton Foundation when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State? | ||
|
unidentified
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I was not at Common Cause at that time, so I can't speak specifically to the work that Common Cause did around that. | |
| But what I can say is this. | ||
| If there is a commitment from an administration saying, moving forward, we are going to do X, we are going to drain the swamp. | ||
| He goes back in the history. | ||
| Wouldn't we say that moving forward, instead of saying, well, they did it too, let's start, turn over a new leaf, let's start on a new page and say, moving forward, these are the things that we want. | ||
| Because that is what was promised to the American people. | ||
| No different than Joe Biden, no different than the Clintons, whoever you want to point back to. | ||
| If there is this constant churn in Washington where there is finger pointing going like this with both sides pointing at each other, at some point, somebody has to be the adult in the room and say, enough is enough. | ||
| This has to stop. | ||
| You mentioned the Stormy Daniel hush money payments, that that was a Common Cause investigation. | ||
| What are some other Common Cause investigations, ethics complaints that you filed at the first one on it that viewers would know going back into your history? | ||
|
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So Common Cause has been working on ethics, I mean, since Watergate, honestly. | |
| So there were tons of investigations, a lot of the transformation that came out of Watergate. | ||
| We just celebrated the Federal Elections Commission at 50, just turned 50 years old. | ||
| That was actually born out of Watergate, and that was one of the things that Common Cause helped to set up. | ||
| So from Watergate until now, Common Cause has been a part of that. | ||
| Going back to the Iran-Contra affair, you name it. | ||
| There are many, many different times where Common Cause has looked into these ethics investigations. | ||
| How do you fund Common Cause? | ||
| How do you fund this work that you do? | ||
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So we raise small dollars from donors across the country, whether it's $5, $10, $25. | |
| We have a lot of small dollar giving that comes into our organization. | ||
| We also have money from foundations and philanthropy. | ||
| We take zero business dollars. | ||
| We take zero federal money. | ||
| And the reason that we do that is because we want to make sure that we can maintain that nonpartisanship. | ||
| And again, we work with Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| We're in all 50 states in every congressional district, and we have offices in 23 states. | ||
| To Barbara in Florida, Independent, thank you for waiting. | ||
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You're very welcome, and thank you for letting me speak. | |
| I would like to ask her how she enjoys flying on airplanes that go all the way back to where they started. | ||
| And I don't like it. | ||
| I don't like the fact that all of our, even commercial planes, are so old until my children are younger than that. | ||
| So Barbara, bring me to the ethics issues that we're talking about right now. | ||
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It's about the airplane that was given to him, and the Arabs have given us more contracts for arms and things over the years than you can probably name any other country. | |
| So you're okay with the gift, Barbara? | ||
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Israel. | |
| You're okay with the gift of the plane? | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I am very okay taking the plane because it's for the United States of America. | ||
| It is not for the president, no matter who he is. | ||
| But I happen to like most of the things this one is doing. | ||
| I happen to be 82 years old, and I've always listened to politics. | ||
| And frankly, he's doing a pretty freaking good job. | ||
| I don't mean he's great. | ||
| I don't mean he's terrible. | ||
| He's neither one. | ||
| He's just doing the best he can to do what he does. | ||
| Let me take your point and allow Virginia K. Salaman to respond. | ||
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I would just say, going back to what I said earlier, a $400 million gift of an airplane that would cost nearly a billion dollars to bring it down, strip it down to the nuts and the bolts, basically to make sure from a security standpoint that the president was safe to fly in that plane, number one. | |
| And number two, that our national security and our national secrets would be protected while on that plane. | ||
| Those to me, the math isn't mathing when it comes to that. | ||
| Why would you spend that additional amount of money? | ||
| It's going to cost us more. | ||
| It's going to cost taxpayers more. | ||
| And that's money that could be used, again, towards something like Medicaid or protecting Social Security or making sure that our FAA system is fixed. | ||
| We know, talking about aviation, right now, the FAA is broken. | ||
| Air traffic controllers are at the highest levels of stress. | ||
| I'm more worried about getting on a plane as most Americans are when we're hearing of all of the issues that we're seeing with air traffic control than I am on the act that I'm worried about the actual planes themselves. | ||
| Less than 15 minutes left this morning. | ||
| On a different topic, I did want to ask you, your view on members of Congress making stock market trades and managing their portfolios as they are making laws. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, absolutely. | |
| We are 100% in support of stock trading and bans on stock trading for members of Congress and their family members. | ||
| It makes absolutely no sense. | ||
| The rest of the world in the private sector and in civil society have 401ks or 403Bs, right? | ||
| They go and they invest in their portfolios like normal folks. | ||
| You should not be able to have insider information about what is happening potentially around different stocks and then be able to go and trade those stocks accordingly. | ||
| And so we are kind of very serious when it comes to that issue and we are 100% in support of a stock trading ban. | ||
| So what are you doing about it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, we're lobbying on those issues and we have been for a long time. | |
| We're currently looking at the Pelosi Act that Senator Hawley has put into place. | ||
| I think that seems like a good solution. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's the devils that are always in the details. | |
| I don't necessarily like naming legislation after people unless it's honoring somebody personally, but I think the components of it, the legislation itself, actually make sense. | ||
| What I will say is that there are lots of pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the past that have not made it through. | ||
| And the one thing that I think really is important and one of the things that we need to be reminded of is that the lobby industry in this town is huge. | ||
| There is still a disproportionate amount of influence that they have. | ||
| And I think that that is why we're seeing some of these challenges because they want their stock to be able to be traded. | ||
| They want to be able to go in, whether you're big oil, big agra, you name it, big pharma, crypto. | ||
| You want to be able to go in and have that access. | ||
| And so the people that will vote on your behalf, there is a lot of influence going there. | ||
| We always have to follow the money trail. | ||
| It's interesting, you know, your concerns about the lobbyists. | ||
| You said we're lobbying on this issue. | ||
| Do you consider what you do a form of lobbying? | ||
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unidentified
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I think we do advocacy. | |
| And I think that's one of the things that's important. | ||
| You have to register as a lobbyist in order to be able to meet with legislators on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Again, we are 501c3, 501c4 organization, and so we are tax exempt. | ||
| We don't take any big corporate money. | ||
| So what we're doing is on behalf of the American people, we consider our work advocacy, though. | ||
| Ithaca New York, Faye Democrat, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, John. | |
| Please, please let me elaborate on a few things. | ||
| I will just because you cut me off last over a month ago when I was about to talk about offshore accounts. | ||
| Just jump into it, Faye. | ||
| Just go for it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, okay. | |
| So, yeah, offshore accounts. | ||
| But so, okay. | ||
| So let me just make it very simple. | ||
| I agree with the woman that you have on. | ||
| I can't hear what you're saying because I muted my TV. | ||
| So I agree with the woman, what she's saying. | ||
| I want to make something very clear that's bothering me, and that is I watch a lot of news and a lot of good news. | ||
| PBS, your programs, BBC, I don't watch Fox, and I could always tell the people that are watching Fox when they call in. | ||
| Now, about the airplane. | ||
| The reason I brought up the news programs is because I don't see anybody talking about the fact that Trump wants to fix this airplane. | ||
| It's going to take a couple of years and then it's his. | ||
| I mean, it's clear as day that this plane is his gift. | ||
| Got your point, Faye. | ||
| And you were making this point earlier, the amount that it would cost to fix this airplane. | ||
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The amount of money that it would cost the American taxpayers, I think that's the most important thing. | |
| And if we're talking about huge deficits, our credit rating has just been downgraded. | ||
| There's a lot of uncertainty around our economy. | ||
| Why would you take something like this on knowing that it just looks horrible, horrible, horrible, not only to us as taxpayers and as people who live in this country, but to other countries? | ||
| Are you doing like a whip count, as it were, on who has come out against this and whether he would have the votes if he went through Congress to get it approved? | ||
|
unidentified
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Our staff is looking at that right now. | |
| And I will be honest, I just got back from vacation, so I'm not sure where we're at from that, but I will tell you that they are looking at what that would look like. | ||
| Tim in Michigan, Republican, good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I was just listening. | ||
| It's quite interesting how for the last 58 years that I've been around, we have talked about the same stuff every day. | ||
| And things seem to never get better, but we always blame each other too or whatever. | ||
| And the people out here in the actual real world that go to work and pay their bills, we're talking about billions and trillions and all that stuff every day. | ||
| It's so funny that it doesn't even make sense to us because when we go eat or when we go buy a car that's not even worth it, I worked in a car plant for 30 years. | ||
| I don't understand how we get this trillions of dollars. | ||
| The jet, who cares about if he gets a jet and brings it back here and flies around, he's going to do that anyway. | ||
| He was going to do it as a businessman. | ||
| That's Tim in Michigan. | ||
| Speaking of President Trump and what he's said about this jet and about previous ethics concerns that have been brought up, he famously said, a president can't have a conflict of interest. | ||
| What's your view on that? | ||
| Can a president have a conflict of interest? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Anybody can have a conflict of interest. | ||
| And I think, you know, I want to go back to what the previous caller said is that, you know, this has been happening for a really long time in his 58 years of life. | ||
| This is what he's seen. | ||
| And that's what's concerning is that we have normalized things that should not be normal. | ||
| We have said this corruption is okay. | ||
| These ethical concerns are okay because everybody does it. | ||
| That's what that's what is concerning. | ||
| That is not normal in a healthy functioning government. | ||
| It shouldn't be okay if it's a Democrat. | ||
| It shouldn't be okay if it's a Republican. | ||
| And I think what this president is doing is just raising the bar for people's tolerance to be able to accept corruption and ethical issues and say, well, I'm the president. | ||
| We can't have any ethical conflicts. | ||
| And quite frankly, he's never been held accountable. | ||
| So at the end of the day, people are going to be like, meh. | ||
| And that's just really what's sad and concerning in this moment. | ||
| Charles is in Alexandria, Virginia. | ||
| Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, John, to your guests, ma'am. | |
| I could not argue with you more. | ||
| I'll be very brief. | ||
| I'm a retired military army guy, and I fought and served for the Constitution of this country. | ||
| Therefore, I can't agree with this president taking a gift such as that plane. | ||
| I won't repeat everything that you've said about the money that it's going to cost to refit it. | ||
| But to my caller, friend in California and to the last Republican caller, I'm an independent. | ||
| I just don't understand why we allow our morals to go down to the ground. | ||
| As long as this man is a quote-unquote businessman, it's okay. | ||
| Corruption and his family's benefited or benefiting from what he's doing. | ||
| I mean, the trip that he just came, the trip from overseas just now, his sons benefited from it, the golf courses. | ||
| I mean, the whole family is benefiting. | ||
| No one is talking about Kushner in the last administration when Christian went to Saudi Arabia and got millions or billions of dollars or his daughter. | ||
| But that's okay because he's a businessman and it's right in our face. | ||
| As long as it's in our face, according to some people, it's okay. | ||
| What is not okay? | ||
| And I didn't serve this country and fight for this country for this to be oath, for this to be okay, especially when Medicare, my mom's Medicare and Social Security may be being threatened because he wants to cut assistance. | ||
| But yet you can, your family can benefit. | ||
| They don't need Medicare. | ||
| They don't need Social Security. | ||
| They've got money. | ||
| But I guess the country doesn't care about that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Charles and Virginia. | ||
| Give you the final minute here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, thanks, Charles. | |
| I think one of the things that we want to just be reminded of is when we think about what our country needs in this moment, we're looking for us to be able to continue to have people thrive in this country, to be able to do simple things like go to work, make sure that you know you can pay your rent, that you can buy food in the grocery store, that you can take care of your family, and know that when you retire, there's going to be a little something in place. | ||
| People shouldn't have to be distracted, and the legislature should not have to be distracted by all of these, all this outsized noise. | ||
| These are distractions from doing the people's business. | ||
| When we see these types of ethical concerns, whether it's Republican, Democrat, I guess the question I would ask is if you would be okay with the previous president or future presidents doing exactly the same thing, or if you're just okay because it's Donald Trump. | ||
| Same thing I would say about Biden when he was in office. | ||
| Were you okay with the things that he did because he was Biden or because he wasn't Trump? | ||
| And so we have to get back to a different place where we're looking specifically at the issues and apply everything evenly and fairly across the board. | ||
| And there's got to be a restart at this country at some point, or else we're going to continue along this partisan divide that doesn't help us drive our country forward. | ||
| In fact, it further divides us. | ||
| Virginia K. Salomon is president and CEO of Common Cause. | ||
| You can check out their work at commoncause we appreciate the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| 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. |