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|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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| Welcome back. | ||
| We are an open forum this morning here on the Washington Journal until the top of the hour. | ||
| So any public policy or political issue on your mind, we want to hear from you. | ||
| We'll go to Scott, who's in Laurel, Maryland, a Republican. | ||
| Scott, good morning. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Longtime listener. | ||
| Love the program. | ||
| I called in a few minutes ago and I was specifically wanting to talk about the topic with Sean Spicer. | ||
| Yeah, well, go ahead and share your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, for the people who call in and say that the media is kind of even, I just want to remind everybody that, because I mean, I watch a lot of news. | |
| I switch back and forth to all the stations a lot. | ||
| But if you really think about it, you have NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC. | ||
| You have Stephen Colbert, 1130, Jimmy Phelan, Jimmy Kimmel, CNN, and Saturday Night Live on Saturdays, all bashing the president on a regular continual basis. | ||
| And then, yes, you have Fox. | ||
| So you have 13 of them against one. | ||
| And the people call in and say that the media is fair and Fox is this and Fox is that. | ||
| So having said all that, I just want to remind everybody that all of those shows, including Fox, all they are are shows. | ||
| And I really don't think they do the country any justice whatsoever because all they're doing is really dividing the country. | ||
| And if you listen to them every night, they will tell you straight out, we have a wonderful show tonight. | ||
| And that's all they are are shows. | ||
| But they're doing damage to the country, including Fox and the 13 of the others. | ||
| And I just don't like any of them. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's all I had to say. | ||
| Scott, who's a Republican in Laurel, Maryland, with his thoughts. | ||
| Bradley, Covington, Georgia, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Bradley. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I also too wanted to speak with Bob Spicer. | ||
| But yeah, what I would say is, well, first I got to address the last caller. | ||
| I watched the bottom of this too. | ||
| And there is bias on all these shows, true. | ||
| But you cannot compare like Rachel Maddow to Sean Pannady. | ||
| Like they're not the same. | ||
| Like we're basically just trying to get facts. | ||
| And if the NBC or ABC or any of these people lie, they have to pay. | ||
| They can't do that. | ||
| Okay, on to Sean Spicer. | ||
| Besides Kellyanne Conway, the president, he is like, he is a professional spinner. | ||
| I don't want to say liar, but that man has been lying since he first came out on the White House when he said that the crowd was the biggest crowd ever. | ||
| And then he said something about Donald Trump's prescription, prescription pill bill or something. | ||
| That is nothing. | ||
| Like everything Sean Splicer said was a lie. | ||
| Like everything he said. | ||
| And he's going to be upset because TikTok may be a danger. | ||
| Iran may be a danger. | ||
| But Donald Trump, he's going to flip on you too. | ||
| I promise you. | ||
| He's going to get a plane from Qatar. | ||
| And now he's not going to represent Israel as much as he wants to or should. | ||
| All right, Bradley in Georgia. | ||
| I'm going to go on to Stephen, who's in Quincy, Illinois, an independent. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
| Stephen, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Brett. | |
| I'm going to talk about Paul Waltz. | ||
| He was a Florida businessman who stole $3.4 million from his employees. | ||
| What he did was, when he deducted the employee's share of their Social Security obligation, instead of sending it to the Social Security Administration, he kept the money in order to buy a $2 million yacht, expensive cars, and a variety of other things. | ||
| He got caught and prosecuted by the federal government. | ||
| Upon conviction, he was sentenced to a year and a half in prison in order to pay restitution. | ||
| Lo and behold, Walt Zach's mother went to a greet and meet to meet Donald Trump at Mar-Lago and gave Trump $1 million. | ||
| Trump then pardoned Walt Zach. | ||
| He got released from prison and now doesn't have to make the restitution. | ||
| He gets to keep his yacht, his expensive cars, and everything else. | ||
| The Social Security's out $3.4 million. | ||
| And Waltz's employees don't get the credit for their Social Security when they retire for the years that they worked for Walt Zach. | ||
| So there you go, people. | ||
| Donald Trump, a million dollars richer, and the Social Security Administration $3.4 million poor. | ||
| Stephen in Quincy, Illinois, we are an open forum. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue is on the table. | ||
| Let me show you what the president just posted on Truth Social here this morning. | ||
| Two weeks ago, China was in grave economic danger, he writes. | ||
| The very high tariffs I sent made it virtually impossible for China to trade into the United States marketplace, which is by far number one in the world. | ||
| We went, in effect, cold turkey with China, and it was devastating for them. | ||
| Many factories closed, and there was, to put it mildly, civil unrest. | ||
| I saw what was happening and didn't like it for them, not for us. | ||
| I made a fast deal with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation. | ||
| I didn't want to see that happen. | ||
| Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized, and China got back to business as usual. | ||
| Everybody was happy, he says. | ||
| The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, has totally violated its agreement with the U.S., with us. | ||
| So much for being Mr. Nice Guy is what the President is writing this morning. | ||
| We were talking earlier about the President's trade and tariffs agenda. | ||
| Now, related to the topic of China, at the State Department briefing yesterday, the spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, was asked about a new policy toward China that would revoke the visas of Chinese students. | ||
| Here's what she had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
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There are 277,000 Chinese students in the United States. | |
| I mean, should all of them feel that they're at some risk of having their visas revoked? | ||
| I think everyone who's here on a visa has to recognize, certainly is what they've seen over the last few months, that America takes their visa seriously, that vetting is not a one-time process. | ||
| It's continuing. | ||
| And that when things happen, if you get arrested, if there's some kind of an issue, it's probably going to be seen at some point. | ||
| But I do think that with this particular dynamic, it's clear that there's an interest in making sure that those who are here from China on a visa understand that we are taking our national security seriously and we are looking at their visas. | ||
| And if everything's fine, terrific. | ||
| But that will be a vetting that certainly continues and is important clearly to the administration. | ||
| State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce from the briefing this week. | ||
| Cynthia in Youngstown, Ohio, Democratic caller. | ||
| Cynthia, good morning to you. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| There's one little thing Americans need to think about when they're supporting these radical right policies like censorship, book banning, creating hate and suspicion of people from other cultures. | ||
| You know, what really makes us the greatest country in the world is not money or wealth or power. | ||
| It's freedom. | ||
| You can't put a value on freedom. | ||
| It's been paid for with blood. | ||
| The number one tactic that this whole Trump and MAGA movement, it's the bully pulpit. | ||
| Calling names, shaming reporters, shaming a reporter who asks a reasonable question like about accepting a gift from Qatar that's a multi-billion dollar by the time they get done making it security. | ||
| They're going to have to completely redo that whole plane. | ||
| It's going to cost billions of dollars to make sure it's secure. | ||
| And Trump will say to a reporter who asks a reasonable question, you're a nasty person. | ||
| That's a nasty question. | ||
| And he'll shame and degrade the reporters for doing their job. | ||
| And calling far-right pundits and giving them jobs, important jobs like Hedsift. | ||
| He's overseeing our military. | ||
| He was from Fox News. | ||
| So tell me, there's the equivalent of that on the left, where a president has taken a radical, you know, far-left person who's in the media and give them a position like that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And Cynthia in Ohio, Democratic caller. | ||
| Let me go to Frank, who's in California, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I would like to say that I am very proud to be an American. | |
| I'm very proud that I voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| I like the way he fixed the border. | ||
| I like the way he's sending these people back. | ||
| But you don't hear the Democrat talk about that one in Georgia, where that guy from Venezuela raped her and killed her. | ||
| And they don't talk about the mother that they killed that had five children. | ||
| You don't hear talk like that, do you, by the Democrats, huh? | ||
| They're so out of touch, and I'm glad I'm not. | ||
| I grew up being a Democrat in Brooklyn. | ||
| They used to stand for something. | ||
| When Trump ran, I switched over to be a Republican. | ||
| Thank God I'm a Republican. | ||
| We represent freedom, values, and the American flag. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I like what Trump's doing. | |
| And I don't ever want to go back to New York. | ||
| It's not safe right now. | ||
| Okay, Frank, I'll leave it there. | ||
| Frank, happy with the job performance by President Trump in his second term. | ||
| We were showing you President Trump holding up the tariffs that other countries have on us back in the beginning of April. | ||
| That event was the so-called Liberation Day wherein he announced those sweeping tariffs. | ||
| The International Trade Court this week ruling that he does not have the authority to do sweeping tariffs against other countries, that he is limited by the role of Congress needs, the role of Congress needs to play in tariff policy, and that the act that the administration is using does not actually give him this authority. | ||
| Now, that ruling by the International Trade Court is halted by an appeals court while they take a look at this case. | ||
| We were talking about this earlier this morning, and you can certainly give us your thoughts here this morning in Open Forum on the President's trade and tariff agenda as well. | ||
| Petra in Bruton, Alabama, Democratic caller, good morning to you. | ||
| What do you want to talk about? | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I would like to talk about the chaos in this country. | ||
| You know, as a trans person, as a trans woman, you know, we, you know, we, when I advocate, right, they would talk about that they were anti-trans children, even though, you know, as a child, I was trans, you know, so then they came after, they're coming after adults. | ||
| So then, you know, I wanted to go, you know, we warned everybody about that. | ||
| We warned everybody about the fact that, you know, currently Trump has made over 40% of his wealth since he has become president this term. | ||
| He is on, he has gone on Twitter. | ||
| I follow him on Twitter. | ||
| I follow my true social. | ||
| I follow him through the crypto meetings on Twitter. | ||
| I followed him through his true social things. | ||
| You know, the stock market manipulation, the stock traders on Twitter are not flipping out because they are personally being affected by the huge manipulation of the amount of money that these people are trading, even they're out of the money. | ||
| You know, I was talking to a stock trader the other day. | ||
| One minute, two weeks ago, Friday closing bell, somebody out of the money traded a half a million dollars worth of stock, which would never been heard of. | ||
| And unless you have this $30,000 stock program, you're never going to see it. | ||
| So you have to be like a professional stock trader. | ||
| And he was talking about, like, look, I can't even do this. | ||
| So then, you know, we're going on, you know, and we're looking at the purse strings. | ||
| You know, Congress has been over tariffs. | ||
| Congress themselves are responsible for tariffs, not the president of the United States, you know. | ||
| And people are talking about freedoms. | ||
| We're not free. | ||
| You know, we're following the same path as my family did in 1930s Germany. | ||
| I'm going to be honest. | ||
| You know, I heard from my great-grandfather about the 1930s Germany and how they follow this propaganda. | ||
| You know, it's the immigrants, it's the minorities, it's the black people. | ||
| You know, it's always done. | ||
| But here's the fact. | ||
| If you go into Texas, there is about 20 to 1 that a pastor is sexually assaulting a child versus a trans person or a drag queen. | ||
| 20 to 1. | ||
| But nobody wants to talk about the fact that we have an epidemic of sexual assault in this nation by white men, to be honest. | ||
| If you check with the FBI statistics, you know, we need to start facing facts here, facts or feelings. | ||
| All right, Petra there in Alabama. | ||
| Coming up on the C-SPAN networks today, we have a UN Security Council debate over the Russia-Ukraine conflict that will start at 10 a.m. Eastern Time right here on C-SPAN, online at c-span.org, or you can download our free video mobile app, C-SPAN now. | ||
| And then at 1:30 this afternoon, the president's going to hold a news conference with Elon Musk. | ||
| It's his last day working for the government. | ||
| And they will hold a news conference in the Oval Office 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Again, here on C-SPAN, C-SPANNOW or online at c-span.org. | ||
| And then we said this earlier, the president's having an announcement on steel in this country. | ||
| He's traveling to Pennsylvania to make this announcement. | ||
| It's 5 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| And again, you'll be able to watch it on C-SPAN, C-SPANNOW or C-SPAN.org. | ||
| That's what's coming up on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| You can learn more if you go to c-span.org. | ||
| We'll go to Brad in Boyd, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Brad. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, everybody. | |
| I hope I'm not cut off, but I like to talk about immigration. | ||
| We're letting in a lot of people that hate us. | ||
| We got a lot of people that are already here that hate us. | ||
| The Muslims have called for a caliphate in our country. | ||
| They hate trans people. | ||
| They would kill them if they were living in Muslim countries. | ||
| It is pretty rough out here, especially in the state of Texas with all the Muslims invading us. | ||
| Please stop them from coming over here. | ||
| We need to report all of them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Those are Brad's thoughts in Texas. | ||
| Isaiah in Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| What I'd like to say is that, you know, when I would listen to the program and people call in and say that, you know, that they were bashing the president, well, you know, if you're telling the truth about something, that's not bashing, that's not bashing anybody. | ||
| And it's a fact that he is a convicted felon. | ||
| He got 34 counts. | ||
| It's a fact that he paid a lady for sexual abuse that he, you know, that he did, that he had to pay for. | ||
| So I would just like to make that announcement is that that's not bashing nobody. | ||
| If you call in telling the truth about somebody, the truth is the truth. | ||
| Got it, Isaiah Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
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Live now to a discussion on economic growth with U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright. | |
| Live coverage from the Reagan Foundation Economic Forum here on CC. | ||
| I had the privilege of serving on Ronald Reagan's advance team, which was like being on the front lines of freedom. | ||
| I also spent much of my career working closely with Boone Pickens and still run a company that we co-founded together. | ||
| Boone's business acumen, vision, optimism, and can-do spirit placed him squarely in the front lines of the energy sector of his era. | ||
| Now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce a leader who is on today's front lines of energy freedom, President Trump's Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. | ||
| Chris is a Coloradan and a graduate of MIT. | ||
| He's the founder of Liberty Energy, an oil company that helped kickstart the shale gas revolution and to turn America into a net energy exporter. | ||
| Today, Liberty Energy is valued at about $2 billion. | ||
| Chris is an advocate as well as a builder, championing every energy abundance in the face of climate pessimism and degrowth ideology. | ||
| You may have seen a viral video of an oil executive drinking a glass of fracking fluid to prove that it's safe. | ||
| That was Chris. | ||
| Now, Secretary Wright is bringing his crusade for American energy dominance to the Department of Energy, which is supporting American manufacturers, drillers, scientists, engineers, and innovators, not with the heavy hand of government, but with the freedom to act. | ||
| He's here to tell us about his first four months at the Department of Energy and the exciting opportunities ahead for America. | ||
| And moderating this conversation will be Maria Bartaromo, anchor and global markets editor from the Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our guests to the stage. | ||
| Thank you. Thank you so much. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Hi, everyone. | ||
| We are so excited to be here to talk about such an important subject. | ||
| The energy industry is President Trump's arguably number one most important policy of his new administration. | ||
|
unidentified
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Secretary, it's great to have you today. | |
| Glad to be here. |