| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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The country. | |
| Coming up Monday morning, Center for American Progress's Bobby Kogan and National Taxpayer Union's Damien Brady discuss potential cuts to the budget found in the White House rescissions package and the one big beautiful bill. | ||
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| Also, the Hills Emily Brooks examines the week ahead in Congress. | ||
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| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
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| Good morning. | ||
| It's Sunday, June 8th, 2025. | ||
| President Trump has ordered deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles following two days of protest in response to ICE raids throughout the city. | ||
| It's the latest escalation in the Trump administration's efforts to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants across the country. | ||
| Immigrant advocates and Democrats argue that the raids are sweeping up many people beyond the criminals the White House says are the primary focus of the crackdown. | ||
| This morning, we want to hear your thoughts on the ICE raids and the president's order to deploy the National Guard in response to the LA protests. | ||
| Our phone lines for Republicans 202-748-8001, for Democrats, 202-748-8000, and 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 we're also on social media at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| Now for a recap of how we got to this point, here's a story in the LAS news outlet from California. | ||
| Federal agents conduct immigration raids across LA. | ||
| Trump orders National Guard response. | ||
| Going on to say that federal agents conducted a series of immigration sweeps across Los Angeles on Friday, prompting anger and resistance from onlookers and immigrant rights groups that have braced for this type of action for months. | ||
| By Saturday, tensions were rising between state and local authorities and Trump administration officials who said they were calling up the National Guard in response to what they said were violent mobs attacking ICE officers and federal law enforcement agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles. | ||
| With that order, President Trump issued a statement saying, in light of these incidents and credible threats of continued violence by the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby call into federal service members and units of the National Guard to temporarily protect ICE and other United States government personnel who are performing federal functions, | ||
| including the enforcement of federal law and to protect federal property at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations. | ||
| Now, California Governor Gavin Newsom also issued a response to this order saying the federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers. | ||
| That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions. | ||
| LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment's notice. | ||
| We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. | ||
| The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. | ||
| This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust. | ||
| White House Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations Tom Homan spoke about the ICE raids in California on Fox News on Saturday. | ||
| Here's a clip. | ||
| Look, we're going to continue doing our job. | ||
| And yesterday we got 118 arrests. | ||
| You know, I was out here yesterday to kick off this operation. | ||
| And what people aren't talking about is I served several warrants yesterday. | ||
| These were criminal warrants. | ||
| This is a criminal investigation. | ||
| And today we're continuing operations. | ||
| They're not going to shut us down. | ||
| We're out there right now doing operations. | ||
| We're going to keep doing operations. | ||
| We brought in more resources to push back the protesters. | ||
| But I'll say it again, a serious warning. | ||
| You can protest all you want. | ||
| You got your First Amendment rights. | ||
| But if you cross that line of impedement or you're putting hands on officers or destroy property, you will be prosecuted. | ||
| There's zero tolerance on crossing that line, and that's what we're standing by. | ||
| We're bringing more resources as we speak. | ||
| We'll have more resources tonight. | ||
| We're going to continue doing the job that American people voted Donald Trump in the office to do, and we're not going to apologize for doing it. | ||
| Also on Saturday, in an interview with a local television station, California Democrat Jimmy Gomez spoke out against the ICE raids. | ||
|
unidentified
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This administration is operating outside the bounds of the law. | |
| They're doing tactics like showing up with masks. | ||
| They don't present themselves. | ||
| They show up on unmarked cars, and that's all to not only enforce immigration laws, but to intimidate. | ||
| And then on top of that, they're starting to go to sensitive sites, arresting people who aren't presenting themselves at court or going through the asylum process or checking in. | ||
| Never been done before. | ||
| And what that happens is people stop showing up. | ||
| Or when they, at hospitals or at schools, at graduations, you present this fear because they want that fear to permanate so people self-deport. | ||
| That's absolutely shameful. | ||
| Congressman, what would you say to those really quickly to those who are watching at home saying, you know what, the Department of Homeland Security is just enforcing the federal law, making sure that those who are undocumented don't stay in this country. | ||
| Well, we have seen over and over again that they have also arrested U.S. citizens. | ||
| They have thrown the U.S. citizens to the ground. | ||
| They have put them in jail. | ||
| And then they had a fight to prove, even when they had their documents, their passports, their identification, that they were arrested. | ||
| So we know that this is not just about them. | ||
| This is about intimidation and what's going to occur. | ||
| And it's intimidation based on how you look, right? | ||
| I haven't seen a Canadian here who lives here illegally or who has documented, been thrown to the ground. | ||
| It's always a Latino or a brown person that gets detained. | ||
| That was U.S. Representative Jimmy Gomez, who represents part of the LA area in California. | ||
| Now, our numbers again for your thoughts on the ICE raids and the National Guard deployment. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Let's start with Billy in Carrier Mills, Illinois on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Billy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, how are you doing this morning? | |
| Fine, thank you. | ||
| You know, what I want to say is this: California is Mexico. | ||
| Billy, can you turn down the volume on your TV, please, and then please continue your comment? | ||
| You need to turn it all the way down for us to hear you clearly. | ||
|
unidentified
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Can you tell me this morning? | |
| Fine, thank you. | ||
| Okay, it's all the way down. | ||
| Okay, go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| What I want to say is this: from Florida all the way up to Oregon and Washington is Mexico. | ||
| It's been Mexico forever. | ||
| Only thing we did was take over that state. | ||
| That state is a country within itself. | ||
| The president don't have a right to send those people somewhere where they don't belong. | ||
| If he was sent back to Germany, how would he feel? | ||
| You know, so what they need to do is just leave California alone and let California be California because California is Mexico. | ||
| It's been that for thousands of years. | ||
| Look at all the names of the cities in California. | ||
| All of them got Mexican names. | ||
| Okay, Rory, who's in California, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rory. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I had a feeling this would happen one day. | ||
| Over 20 years ago, I was in detention across from Terminal Island, and now it's vastly bigger, and everything is happening. | ||
| I think those Marines, Al Pendleton, they're going to be troops that will cut San Diego from Northern California. | ||
| And I think a lot of people now are going to be very thoughtful. | ||
| It's becoming, well, how shall I phrase it? | ||
| You won't be able, if you're an alien, to talk back to an American citizen and they'll make it clear. | ||
| Not because it's right or wrong, you just won't. | ||
| And everybody's going to start to hide, and now they're going to get them. | ||
| And I think Trump will tell Newson they'll bring all the troops in and they will deport these people. | ||
| If they have legal documentation, they'll stay eventually, but they will get arrested. | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| Marshall is in Chicago, Illinois, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Marshall. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, America. | |
| Thank you for this opportunity. | ||
| C-SPAN is wonderful, and I really enjoy your moderation ever since you joined the staff at C-SPAN. | ||
| I think you bring excellent decorum to the weekends, and I am delighted when you're on. | ||
| I just wanted to use my time to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the invasion of D-Day and the Allied forces and all that we accomplished there as a team. | ||
| And telling America that 3.5 years from now, we're going to get our act together, and America will once again be a leader with a United Nations. | ||
| So, Marshall, our topic this morning is the ICE raids across the country, as well as Trump ordering a National Guard deployment in California. | ||
| Do you have thoughts on that? | ||
|
unidentified
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My thoughts are that it really is another indication of our own government unleashing troops on our citizenry. | |
| How much lower can we go here? | ||
| And think about all the jobs that Americans do not want to do, and these individuals are doing them for us. | ||
| And if you really want to make an impact, go after the people who employ them. | ||
| Prison time, heavy fines. | ||
| I think we're taking on the victims here, and we really should be dealing with the business owners. | ||
| But we never hear about that in this administration. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Homer is in Kansas City, Missouri, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Homer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America, and thank you for C-SPAN. | |
| This is just furthering this current POTUS we have, and I use that term lightly, is just he even said to Welker that he doesn't know whether he needs to follow the Constitution. | ||
| And you've got to know that the guy doesn't know the Constitution. | ||
| And, you know, it would be different, but these people show up unannounced, wearing masks, and it's like, like I said, it's turned into a police state, but this all started back whenever they did the drug war, and they were doing the same thing, no knock raids. | ||
| But it's just ridiculous. | ||
| And habeas corpus, he wants to suspend habeas corpus. | ||
| This goes back to the Magna Carta, for God's sakes. | ||
| It's just, it's unreal. | ||
| And to think that once upon a time, Reagan gave like 2 million, mostly Mexicans, amnesty. | ||
| It just boggles the mind. | ||
| And prices were going to go down day one, and that's not going to happen because of what they're doing here. | ||
| Because who's going to pick the berries? | ||
| Who's going to pick the produce? | ||
| This guy in the caller before that talked about D-Day, Trump said it wasn't even a great day. | ||
| It's just, it's beyond belief what this country has devolved into. | ||
| And you notice that the Trump supporters will call in, and like at least half of them, I doubt if they even have a GED. | ||
| Trump loves the uneducated. | ||
| And that's where we're going through. | ||
| We don't need to be attacking the other callers. | ||
| Let's hear from Susan in Worcester, Massachusetts on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
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That was a Democrat I just heard. | |
| Very, very stupid man. | ||
| We don't need to be attacking our other callers, but what's your point, Susan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| Okay. | ||
| The point is, I would protest, yeah, peacefully. | ||
| But why do you have to go after ICE like these left-wing cooks are doing? | ||
| It's all left-wing. | ||
| This is their plan. | ||
| I don't know what they're trying to prove. | ||
| We got Tom Holman, thank God. | ||
| And he's going to arrest you people. | ||
| And you're all left-wing cooks, and you're never going to win again. | ||
| I heard Bootigens the other day. | ||
| We've got to get away from woke. | ||
| Now they say it. | ||
| They're desperate. | ||
| They're a desperate party. | ||
| They're never going to win again. | ||
| We've got the greatest president right now because you know why you don't like him? | ||
| Because he's doing things that your vegetables Biden couldn't do. | ||
| He couldn't even sign executive audits. | ||
| He should be in prison. | ||
| Look at what he's done. | ||
| 20 million people in this, letting these people come in. | ||
| That's what they're doing now. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| But you Democrats believe it's illegal and pedophiles. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Here's a bit more from Tom Holman about the ICE operations in Los Angeles. | ||
| Here he's discussing the public officials who speak out against ICE operations. | ||
| I mean, we got people like Hakeem Jeffries saying he's going to dox ICE employees. | ||
| You know, ICE agents out there with masks on. | ||
| They're wearing masks to protect themselves and their families because they've been doxxed. | ||
| Their families have been doxxed. | ||
| Their life has been threatened. | ||
| Their families have been threatened. | ||
| I know myself, I had over a thousand protesters in my house. | ||
| I expect that as the borders are, but these men and women are putting their lives online every day. | ||
| They arrested a lot of bad people yesterday and today. | ||
| They arrested child sex offenders. | ||
| They arrested people convicted of robbery. | ||
| They arrested public safety, not only significant public safety threats, but national security threats. | ||
| They arrested gang members. | ||
| We're making Los Angeles safer. | ||
| And Mayor Bass ought to be thanking us for making her city safer. | ||
| And the term migrant, as Joe Concha rightfully said earlier, they're illegal aliens. | ||
| There are illegal aliens in this country. | ||
| We welcome. | ||
| We're the most given country in the world. | ||
| But these are illegal aliens who committed a crime by crossing this border illegally, then yet committed another crime. | ||
| Again, yesterday is about a criminal investigation into money laundering, tax evasion, and some of the funds going to cartels of Mexico and Colombia that fund their operations of sending narcotics to this country, killing American people. | ||
| Now, while the National Guard deployment is set for Los Angeles, according to Trump's order, immigration enforcement has been happening across the country. | ||
| Here's a story in Axios, where the hotspots are for immigration enforcement. | ||
| This is a story from June the 3rd, looking at the 287G agreements between ICE and law enforcement agencies by state. | ||
| It says efforts to arrest and remove unauthorized immigrants appear most aggressive in five southern states with Democratic-leaning cities, while deeply red rural states are seeing less activity, according to an Axios analysis. | ||
| Our review of removal orders, pending deportation cases, and agreements between immigration officials and local law enforcement agencies sheds light on where the Trump administration is dispatching resources to support its mass deportation plan. | ||
| The analysis shows local law enforcement agencies in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia have been most cooperative with immigration and customs enforcement in rounding up immigrants through deals known as 287G agreements. | ||
| There are 629 such agreements now in place across the country. | ||
| About 43% of them are in Florida, followed by 14% in Texas and 5% in Georgia. | ||
| Again, that story in Axios. | ||
| Let's go back to your calls. | ||
| Keith is in Madison, Wisconsin on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Keith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, why do you show clips to that fascist network? | ||
| That Holman is a total fascist. | ||
| This guy's a good idea. | ||
| We try to include a variety of news sources as our sources. | ||
| Why don't you quote the World of Socialist website, for example, or other left-wing outlets? | ||
| You quote liberals to outright fascist, and we're not getting on all sides. | ||
| Okay, I think immigration is a human right, and I totally support the people of L.A. for resisting and rebelling against this thuggery, this Nazi Gestapo-like tactics by ICE. | ||
| They're not arresting criminals only. | ||
| They're arresting four-year-old children. | ||
| They're arresting mothers and separating mothers from their families and their husbands from their wives. | ||
| And you can't expect people in L.A. to curl up in a Buddha pose when they're brutalized and terrorized like this. | ||
| So I hope this spreads all over the country, and Trump isn't going to be able to squelch this. | ||
| This is a human right. | ||
| And these people have every right to rebel against this garbage. | ||
| And they are great American citizens. | ||
| Good American citizens rebel against this fascism. | ||
| Next up is Betsy in Charlotte, North Carolina on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Betsy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Nice to talk to you. | ||
| I'm a retired AP government teacher and daughter of the greatest generation. | ||
| Many gone would be aghast at these. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| Yes, we can hear you, Betsy. | ||
| Please continue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| The greatest generation, mostly gone now, that we are remembering, and my generation, boomers, are aghast that we are having to put up with this abominable, | ||
| weak imitation, Trump's version of the SS, arresting innocent people, anybody they can find, anybody they can blame. | ||
| This is a nation of immigrants. | ||
| We have had problems with xenophobia from extreme groups all the way back in the history of this country, and they've always been wrong. | ||
| This is a terrible indication of a position that the U.S. government is in right now. | ||
| We have corrupt, ignorant, prejudiced, abominable excuses for humanity running things. | ||
| We need to get rid of them. | ||
| We need to reinstate real United States democracy. | ||
| We are tolerant of people who want to come here and be U.S. citizens. | ||
| We should not be beating up on them, jailing innocent children. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Patricia is in Sewell, New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Patricia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I am watching your TV advertisement right now. | ||
| And what I'm hearing from the American people on the phone is absolutely unwarranted. | ||
| The American people in this country do not realize and don't want to realize the depth of what is happening. | ||
| The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has the right and the go-light to do exactly what he is doing. | ||
| These people do not belong here. | ||
| And what they are doing right now, okay, plainly, everybody could see that it is not right what they're doing. | ||
| They are criminals. | ||
| They are doing exactly what they are worth. | ||
| They are destroying our property. | ||
| They do not belong here. | ||
| Right then and there. | ||
| The people that are on the phone that are calling in and saying that putting the children in, the children have nothing to do with this, okay? | ||
| They have sent their children over here to be free of everything that they could get. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Now, that's not the story right now. | ||
| The story is that the people in this country better wise up and look to see exactly what they are doing to our country. | ||
| Plain and simple. | ||
| People in America, wise up. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So Patricia was saying that President Trump has the right to do what he's been doing, what he's doing with the calling up the National Guard to California. | ||
| The New York Times has a story about this issue saying Trump is calling up National Guard troops under a rarely used law. | ||
| President Trump bypassed the authority of Governor Gavin Newsom to call up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests. | ||
| President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state's governor, Gavin Newsom. | ||
| It is the first time since 1965 that a president has activated a state's National Guard force without a request from the state's governor, according to Elizabeth Gotin, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy organization. | ||
| The last time was when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators in 1965, she said. | ||
| Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, immediately rebuked the president's action, saying that move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions, Mr. Newsom said, adding that, quote, this is the wrong mission and will erode public trust. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Paul is in Milton, Massachusetts, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you to C-SPAN. | |
| We had an election a while ago, and we have a president who is taking his job seriously. | ||
| Your earlier callers refer to illegals as refugees, immigrants. | ||
| They are not. | ||
| They are crime causers, and they are breaking the law. | ||
| Thank God that we have a president that does represent the silent majority. | ||
| Have a work ethic. | ||
| Get out there. | ||
| Don't be looking for everything that is being provided to these illegals, these criminals, simply so many people have a job. | ||
| It's simply outrageous. | ||
| And again, I would like to encourage the silent majority to do what they can to support this president. | ||
| Write a letter. | ||
| Send a thank you. | ||
| Raise a question as necessary. | ||
| But please, silent majority, get involved. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Speaking of President Donald Trump, he posted on Truth Social about the Governor of California's response to his National Guard order, saying, If Governor Gavin New Scum of California and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles can't do their jobs, which everyone knows they can't, then the federal government will step in and solve the problem: riots and looters the way it should be solved. | ||
| That was a post on Truth Social. | ||
| Rosemary is in Virginia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Rosemary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for C-STAN. | |
| This move is all about the next election. | ||
| These people need to step back and take a breath. | ||
| He's setting up a scenario to call national law. | ||
| He is going to shut down the next election. | ||
| Please, everybody, just step back. | ||
| Quiet down. | ||
| Don't give him no reason to declare anything to destroy our next election. | ||
| This is what all of this is about. | ||
| And I don't see him going into red states being this extreme. | ||
| He's doing it only with the blue states. | ||
| I don't see him arresting illegal immigrants per se. | ||
| This is about the next election for him to declare martial law. | ||
| Everybody, please step back, take a breath, and just be calm. | ||
| Don't give him an excuse to declare martial law. | ||
| This is what this is leading up to. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| We have a comment from Lisa Wright on Facebook who says, fully support. | ||
| They are doing what they need to do. | ||
| And if some mayors and governors would do their jobs and follow our laws and not harbor these criminals, then ICE wouldn't have to go in and drag them out. | ||
| Ken is in Lancaster, South Carolina, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, I can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, could you please give me a little time because it's been like a year since I got in. | |
| First, I'm a black veteran, and less than 1% of illegal immigrants is working in agriculture, picking fruits and vegetables. | ||
| And people act like that's the only thing that they are doing. | ||
| They're doing other jobs and agree, corporations should be punished. | ||
| But as a black man, I'm disappointed in my black Americans. | ||
| We only 13 to 14% of the population. | ||
| A black Harvard professor testified before Congress years ago. | ||
| Illegal immigration is hurting all Americans, but it's hurting black Americans the most. | ||
| The Democrats is not fighting for Americans, the high cost of health insurance, and et cetera. | ||
| They're fighting for people who don't supposed to be in America. | ||
| President Joe Biden relaxed the laws, remained in Mexico, and allowed 15 million illegal immigrants to cross to the United States illegally. | ||
| 26,000 communist Chinese flew 30,000 people in and up from Venezuela and other countries to get on government services and benefits. | ||
| Half of them is working-age people who cannot speak any English. | ||
| And if illegal immigrants bring their children in America, they knew they were breaking the law. | ||
| We and our American politicians are going to fight for Americans. | ||
| And one more thing: Donald Trump won the election, the popular vote, the Electoral College vote, on a mandate of deporting illegal immigrants. | ||
| What about Americans, especially black Americans? | ||
| Don't you care about your own future kids and grandkids, prosperity in America? | ||
| And technology is going to wipe out hundreds of millions of jobs in the near future. | ||
| It's about laws. | ||
| You cannot go to any other country in the world and get benefits and think you're going to stay. | ||
| It's not going to work. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Ken was mentioning the various industries where undocumented immigrants work. | ||
| It's a little bit challenging to find recent data on this, but I did find a report from New American Economy that looked at this back in 2018 and found that the top industries by undocumented share of the workforce in 2018, | ||
| 13.7% in agriculture, 12.1% in construction, 9.7% in administrative support, 7.1% in tourism, hospitality, and food service, and then 6.2% in general services. | ||
| Anna is in Chicago, Illinois on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Anna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My comment, many of the callers say immigrants, and we're doing this to immigrants. | ||
| You have to distinguish between immigrants and illegal immigrants. | ||
| And that's the problem. | ||
| You have to make that distinction. | ||
| These people that they're arresting are illegal immigrants. | ||
| Now, there may be some people who are not illegal who accidentally get caught up in this, but I support getting rid of all these people who are here illegally. | ||
| And well, they're not criminals. | ||
| They didn't do all these criminal things. | ||
| They're criminals by being here illegally. | ||
| That's a crime. | ||
| And they're committing this crime every day. | ||
| Repeat offenders, serial illegals. | ||
| So that alone is a reason to get them out of this country. | ||
| And they can come back like other people, immigrants who come here. | ||
| And so I have no sympathy for them at all. | ||
| I think this offering them a reward for self-deport, increase it, triple it if you self-deport within the next six months, and then double if the six months after that to give you an incentive to do the right thing. | ||
| And these people who are doing this, they have to wear masks because otherwise they're family, they're just doing their job. | ||
| You do for the police, if they come and arrest somebody who broke in your house, you don't put their names everywhere because you're glad for them to get the person out of your house. | ||
| But they break in the country, you don't care. | ||
| And like the last gentleman said, they're hurting mostly the black folks who are, or anybody who has little education or don't come from wealthy families and they need these little jobs. | ||
| These illegals are taking those jobs and that's not fair. | ||
| So I support getting them out of here as soon as possible. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is Rick in Tampa, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| My question is: we're real quick to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. | ||
| Where was the National Guard on January 6th when the insurrection occurred? | ||
| You know, last night, Good Day and Good Night, the play with George Clooney, showed the parallels between 1950s and 2025 and the showdown between TBS news legend Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. | ||
| And the parallels between then and now are very real. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, I will not be afraid to speak out against the atrocities that are going on in this country. | ||
| The Proud Boys have announced that they may sue the federal government for $100 million when they were prosecuted for January 6th. | ||
| And what happened with Ashley Babbitt, her family sued, and President Trump gave her $5 million when she was intruding and told not to advance in the Capitol that day. | ||
| It's just where we're at in this country is really, really scary. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Rick mentioned the lawsuit being pursued by the Proud Boys. | ||
| There's a story about this in USA Today. | ||
| Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol on January 6th sue the government for $100 million. | ||
| In interviews with USA Today in February, Proud Boy leaders, Proud Boys leaders, defended their participation in the insurrection and said they'd do it again. | ||
| Five members of the right-wing extremist group, the Proud Boys, who stormed the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection and were later pardoned by President Donald Trump, are suing the government for more than $100 million. | ||
| They allege the Justice Department and the FBI violated their constitutional rights after arresting and jailing them for their participation in the effort to stop Congress from certifying former President Joe Biden's election victory in 2020. | ||
| The Proud Boys and their families were subjected to forceful government raids, solitary confinement, and cruel and unusual treatment, they argue in their lawsuit, which seeks $100 million in damages plus 6% post-judgment interest. | ||
| Now, back to your thoughts on the ICE raids, as well as President Donald Trump ordering the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles. | ||
| We'll go to Sandy in Sorrento, Florida on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Sandy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Just even hearing that the Proud Boys are suing is heartbreaking because if Trump, if they allow this, this is just funding the Proud Boys. | ||
| And so the reason for my call is, you know, I think about Ellis Island and we wouldn't be here. | ||
| I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the immigration that was allowed for my grandparents and their parents. | ||
| And it just, I think about the special visas that, you know, I work for Walt Disney World and the people who they're here on special visas, Haitians that I train and Venezuelans and things like that. | ||
| And they are here legally and they work very hard. | ||
| It's not true that immigrants don't work hard. | ||
| They are hardworking people and they are just here to get a better life just like our ancestors were. | ||
| And I think it's just a shame that our government cannot be democratic. | ||
| That's the problem in America is that we cannot come together. | ||
| I'm not a Republican, I'm a centrist, and that we cannot come together as Americans and work this out. | ||
| I believe that there are some things that Trump are doing that is right and some things that Biden did right. | ||
| One thing that's the most important is that we need to work together. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Jerry is in New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was just doing a little research, and it said that on MSM that Medicaid had 1.3 million illegals on it, and that $6.5 billion was spent on the illegals. | ||
| Now, to me, that $6.5 billion would help a lot of Americans and not illegals. | ||
| Now, I have a nurse friend whose daughter was killed by an illegal. | ||
| He was drunk. | ||
| He didn't have anything legal in his vehicle. | ||
| He killed her daughter, hit her, killed her while she was jogging, and then just went back to Mexico. | ||
| So I think if people knew someone who had lost their sister or their mother or their daughter from these illegals, they'd have a different perspective on what's going on. | ||
| Now, my grandparents came from Ellis Island, but they came legally. | ||
| That's the only way we want all these immigrants, as they're called. | ||
| Now, I'm shocked that 80%, this was an 80-20 thing when Trump ran, that America do want these people, not here. | ||
| They want all those rapists and murderers and child pedophiles and drug dealers. | ||
| We don't want them here. | ||
| We want them gone. | ||
| I don't understand how so many people say, this is horrible, this is terrible. | ||
| But, I mean, six Dems went to El Salvador to see this Garcia, and they have video of him trafficking human trafficking. | ||
| They showed videos of it. | ||
| And all these Democrats, I mean, I'm shocked that six Democrats went to El Salvador for this Garcia, that they're rioting at the ICE detention centers. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries says, get their masks off. | ||
| We want to know them all. | ||
| Why didn't he say that about the hundreds of students at all the colleges that had the masks on? | ||
| Yeah, you want the masks off on the people that are protecting us, but they don't want the masks off on all the rioters at all the colleges. | ||
| My granddaughter is best friends with a Jewish girl, and they were spit on in Columbia University. | ||
| And my granddaughter was spit on just because she's got a close friend that's Jewish. | ||
| There's too much hate. | ||
| And the Democratic Party, everything that Trump does, they resist. | ||
| But I just don't understand how they can resist getting rid of these violent offenders. | ||
| What is wrong with them? | ||
| I want to circle back to something you mentioned about Democrats going to El Salvador. | ||
| Those Democrats went to visit with Kilmar Obrego Garcia. | ||
| And on Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Kilmar Obrego-Garcia has returned to the U.S. and is facing human trafficking charges. | ||
| Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice. | ||
| On May 21st, a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee returned a sealed indictment charging Abrego Garcia with alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling in violation of Title VIII U.S.C. 1324. | ||
| We want to thank President Bukele for agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. | ||
| Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country. | ||
| We're grateful to President Bukele for agreeing to return him to our country to face these very serious charges. | ||
| This is what American justice looks like. | ||
| Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador. | ||
| The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Obrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring. | ||
| They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. | ||
| He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. | ||
| He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country. | ||
| MS-13 members, violent gang terrorist organization members throughout our country. | ||
| Thousands of illegal aliens were smuggled. | ||
| This is especially disturbing because Abrego Garcia is also alleged with transporting minor children. | ||
| The defendant traded the innocence of minor children for profit. | ||
| In a response to the indictment, Kilmar Abrego Garcia's lawyer, as reported here in ABC News, called the charges against his client an abuse of power. | ||
| Quote, they'll stop at nothing at all, even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable, just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake, which is what everyone knows happened in this case, said Attorney Simon Sandoval-Moschenberg. | ||
| Quote, Mr. Garcia is going to be vigorously defending the charges against him, the attorney said. | ||
| That was in ABC News reporting. | ||
| Now, back to your thoughts on the ICE raids as well as President Trump ordering a National Guard deployment to California. | ||
| John is in New Hampshire on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I think we need to clarify: illegal alien is a term. | ||
| It's in our legal documents. | ||
| And the opposite of illegal alien is an immigrant. | ||
| These people are not immigrants that ICE is trying to take out of the country. | ||
| They're illegal aliens. | ||
| The callers that call in here, I can't believe some of the hate I hear. | ||
| We just want to get illegal aliens out of the country, especially the ones that have committed crimes. | ||
| We should never see again like we saw under Biden, where 51 illegal aliens try to come into the country and they all die in the back of a truck because they just burned. | ||
| They burnt up. | ||
| It's incredible some of the callers on here. | ||
| 50% of the country or better voted for Trump. | ||
| Why are only 25% of the callers on this line or on this show are Trump supporters? | ||
| Shouldn't it be 50%? | ||
| I mean, the hate is incredible. | ||
| Now, as far as people, you know, we're not going to have food, we're not going to have this, we're not going to have that. | ||
| Name me a product that we can't pick with a machine at this point. | ||
| Even strawberries or cotton or anything like that. | ||
| We have machines that pick this stuff. | ||
| So as far as these illegal aliens being in our country, I don't know what people are thinking here that call this show. | ||
| And they get so angry. | ||
| They hate Trump so much. | ||
| He's this, he's that. | ||
| And that's the other thing. | ||
| You'll stop callers from calling each other names, but you'll let callers call Trump Hitler and Nazi and everything else. | ||
| Those people don't even know what those terms mean. | ||
| And you're letting them get away with it. | ||
| Maybe you can explain to them when they say things like that. | ||
| I mean, think of all the words out there now, Nazi, Hitler. | ||
| Who wrote all those words? | ||
| Democrat, hateful Democrat. | ||
| I don't know what else to say. | ||
| I just, you know, this lawfare, that's why I voted for Trump. | ||
| I never voted for Trump. | ||
| The law fair made me vote for Trump. | ||
| And you people are continuing it. | ||
| The judges out there are continuing the lawfare. | ||
| They don't belong in the process they're in. | ||
| This is between Trump and Congress. | ||
| Congress releases the funds. | ||
| If Congress didn't like what Trump was doing with the tariff, it's their job to stop him. | ||
| Let's hear from some other folks. | ||
| Linda is in St. Louis, Missouri on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Linda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Can you turn down the volume on your TV then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Am I ready to speak now? | ||
| Yes, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| First of all, Pam Bondi, I don't believe anything she says. | ||
| I guess they're going to, you know, maybe if they had done what they had did in the beginning and admit that you made a mistake, it would be better. | ||
| I don't know what it is with all the lies. | ||
| And the woman from Illinois, the woman that says that the immigrants are hurting the blacks most of all, I don't know any black people that picked a strawberry or anything. | ||
| I know plenty of black people that have bachelor, master's, and PhDs. | ||
| So they can forget that crap. | ||
| No, they're not hurting us. | ||
| I don't see anything wrong with these people wanting a better life. | ||
| And all I hear is hate, hate, hate. | ||
| And it's always these old white folks when they were not here first either. | ||
| They all immigrated from somewhere else. | ||
| And another thing, too, when they talk about the immigrant that killed someone, yeah, they may have killed someone. | ||
| My niece was killed, but she wasn't killed by an immigrant. | ||
| So they can stop trying to highlight that type of hatred because all these people do less crimes than what we do here that are U.S. citizens. | ||
| They just need to stop. | ||
| It's just greed, greed, greed, and hate. | ||
| And I really hate that. | ||
| When I look around and see people standing next to me these days that put Donald Trump with his hatred in that office, it just makes me think even more. | ||
| Is this what we have really come to? | ||
| What is America now? | ||
| I have never seen any of this nonsense, none of it. | ||
| And it really needs to stop. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Betty is in Blacksburg, South Carolina on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it is. | |
| It's the Democrats is the one that's destroying America. | ||
| They are the main ones. | ||
| They just keep on, like they said, keep on, keep on, and keep on. | ||
| Y'all say what you want to, the people that put calls in, and all it's about is Trump, Trump, Trump. | ||
| I don't say he does when he wasn't first time. | ||
| You just tell y'all that. | ||
| Betty, what are your thoughts on the ICE raid as well as President Trump ordering the National Guard deployment to California? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whatever he orders, he's doing it for the American people. | |
| The people that, you know, that bogey born. | ||
| All these people, they don't, the Democrats destroying this world. | ||
| You can bet, and they're probably laughing, but they're going with us. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Bruce is in Summitville, Indiana, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my call. | |
| I guess I have a question. | ||
| I've tried to look it up, and we have laws on how many people are allowed in to the United States, | ||
| but nobody ever talks about those being enforced or what the penalty is for politicians that don't try to get it stopped at the number that's set by law. | ||
| So I just haven't ever understood that, and it's not something that you hear much about. | ||
| So I guess that's my main thought on the immigration. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Charles is in Washington, D.C. on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, C-SPAN, how y'all doing out there? | |
| First of all, a little history lesson. | ||
| People are not aliens, they're human beings. | ||
| And I guess in the Bible, it says, how do you treat the least of you? | ||
| I know for a long time in black America, they were the ones at the bottom of the economic ladder. | ||
| Now, the new sort of people, actually, people who have been on this continent before the Europeans have got here, the people from South America, Mexico, Native Americans. | ||
| So everybody's an immigrant here, except for the people that were here before. | ||
| Talking about illegal, how can you be illegal to be a human being? | ||
| How do we treat the least of us? | ||
| Raise ourselves up with ourselves. | ||
| Have some spirituality about you and understand what the Bible says. | ||
| Help the least of us. | ||
| The people who are trying to come here to get a better shot at life, and people are trying to push them out because of need or greed or fear, mainly fear, fear that somebody else will take over. | ||
| Give people a chance. | ||
| It's nothing about people being illegal. | ||
| It's nothing about because you own a land on this particular planet and somebody's trying to take this little piece of land on this small planet we own together. | ||
| And we live here together and we got to figure out how to coexist together or cooperate with each other, opposed to pushing people out or being afraid of somebody new. | ||
| Everybody that came to America, if you weren't Native American, you are immigrants here as well. | ||
| Ed is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I'm a little disappointed this morning hearing some of my fellow Republicans speak with such a just openly dehumanizing lens aim towards our fellow Americans or Americans to be. | ||
| I'd like to just say briefly, you know, that Donald Trump himself is not the person who is authoring the executive orders and the stuff that he is enforcing right now. | ||
| Most of those executive orders are understood to be written by Stephen Miller. | ||
| And I'd just like to point out briefly that Stephen Miller's own family, when they arrived here in 1903, his great-grandfather had $8 to his name and tuberculosis. | ||
| And under those terms, under Jay's rules, he would be rejected and he would have to wait more than two years to even try to reapply. | ||
| I would like to say when it comes to what we're talking about right now, that the current structure of the approach to federal government and ICE to what we want to call quote-unquote illegal aliens is actually not discernibly different from that of the brown shirts and the fascists in early Nazi Germany. | ||
| And that appeasing these people will never work. | ||
| And it's very disappointing for me to hear people who claim to be conservatives speak about people who are blatantly subverting checks and balances and constitutional order. | ||
| It is a misrepresentation of the facts to be kind to say that 50% of the electorate voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| And just because the Congress is unable to pass legislation, that is why they are letting the executive work the way that it is. | ||
| You can let this happen now, but you are setting a precedent here for something worse. | ||
| And it's actually very simple. | ||
| And that is not conservatism. | ||
| And that is not conservative politics. | ||
| It is not the Republican Party that you claim to represent. | ||
| We live in a time right now where these people are trying to say that they're going to revoke people's visas, anybody's visa, for being quote unquote, anti-Semitic, for criticizing the state of Israel. | ||
| That is absurd. | ||
| As an American, you have a right. | ||
| As someone who's just in this country, you are afforded the due process of law. | ||
| Even Antonin Scalia himself agreed with that. | ||
| And the simple fact is that everybody has a right to their day in court. | ||
| If I were Mr. Garcia's lawyers, I would file for an immediate dismissal of all charges based on malicious prosecution. | ||
| I would like, the last thing I want to say before I get cut off is I would like to remind everybody, okay, that what is going on right now is a distraction from the fact that just like last time, this administration does not know how to govern. | ||
| They are the dog that caught the car. | ||
| They live on fear. | ||
| If you want to talk about a body count, these people let a million of our countrymen die. | ||
| They feast on fear. | ||
| Okay, Pam Bondi lets you. | ||
| Where are you getting that call? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, are you referring to the COVID pandemic? | |
| Who was in charge during COVID? | ||
| They'll let it happen again. | ||
| Let's hear from some other folks. | ||
| Gene is in Virginia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Gene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, America. | ||
| I like to look at myself as being, I'm not red, I'm not blue, I'm not independent. | ||
| I'm American. | ||
| So I just would like to also comment, there's some really great things that people are saying. | ||
| Everyone is saying. | ||
| We have to calm down, everybody calm down. | ||
| And let's just look at a couple of the other callers where they talked about everyone is illegal until you apply for citizenship. | ||
| And that's true. | ||
| And the gentleman that just spoke, he made some very good points about Stephen Miller's family. | ||
| So again, we all have to, unless you were bought here by force, everyone was illegal until they applied. | ||
| So what do we do? | ||
| We're here. | ||
| There's a chain of authority, a chain of command, and by those individuals advising the president to send in the National Guard, it took over the authority of the leadership or government of California, which does not look right. | ||
| Allow that government, communicate with that government on what to do. | ||
| So what I would ask, what is the government of California going to do? | ||
| Governor Newsom, what actions can you take now? | ||
| You have to, of course, you have to get a hold of the situation, let the people know, calm down, this is what we're going to do. | ||
| If ICE is arresting them, have a process and get your team of lawyers, have a processing center in the jails, in the facilities that they're being held at, and start their process for, if they are illegal, for applying for a green card. | ||
| No, it's not right to come here illegally, and it's not right to be here for so many years without applying to go about it the right way. | ||
| So government leadership, Governor Newsom, I would encourage you to have a press conference and in spite of what has been done, go ahead on and set up some procedures to take care of the people that have been wrongly or that have been put in jail. | ||
| And then, of course, encourage those people that are here illegally. | ||
| Set up some processing centers within the counties to go ahead on and start their process for applying for citizenship. | ||
| That way people are not living in fear. | ||
| And yes, companies have to be held accountable if they are hiring or employing those individuals and they knowingly know it. | ||
| Of course, we know that people go in and they can take ID cards and driver's license. | ||
| We're just about out of time, Jim. | ||
| I want to get to a couple more folks. | ||
| Let's hear from Mitch in Seattle on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mitch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| We're heading for Civil War, people. | ||
| It's time to wake up. | ||
| This administration is disgusting. | ||
| They're acting like they're fascist. | ||
| This is 1930s all over Germany. | ||
| What happened in Germany all over again? | ||
| You can see it. | ||
| The propaganda from these so-called politicians on the Republican side is disgusting. | ||
| Some of these comments are great. | ||
| The gal that talked about the black people that she didn't have any problem with picking strawberries. | ||
| You know, we don't have, these people aren't taking jobs from us. | ||
| They're helping us. | ||
| And it's disgusting to hear the propaganda from the right side, and they're believing it. | ||
| I asked our Republican people out there, wake up. | ||
| This immigration was all going to be settled with a Republican-sponsored bill that Trump killed during the pre-election time. | ||
| He killed it because he wanted to use this to divide us. | ||
| Republicans, Democrats, get together. | ||
| Open your mind. | ||
| This is a political toy he's using. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's hear from Steve in Anaheim, California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| You people have got to quit demonizing each other. | ||
| I've said this before. | ||
| It's counterproductive. | ||
| Now, see, the raids they made out here, basically, the crime is really out of control. | ||
| We've got small businesses closing because I'm in Southern California. | ||
| I'm not in Northern California, so I get firsthand of this stuff. | ||
| Okay, so the small businesses are having to close their businesses because they just walk in and they steal whatever they want and they can't take it. | ||
| You got jewelry stores that they're breaking in, cutting open the stick to the safe, and stealing and putting these people out of business. | ||
| Now, the ICE came out, plus you got gangs coming up from Chile that are planting cameras in people's yards and then breaking into their houses. | ||
| I mean, this is what's going on out here. | ||
| I mean, it kills me that you people never look at the crime reality that some of this immigration brings. | ||
| Now, the ICE has come down here to arrest whoever they, you know, they got on record that has broken the law and tried to get them out of the country. | ||
| Now, the riots that you see on TV are kind of overblown. | ||
| They weren't as bad as the Black Lives Matter riots where they were actually coming at night and just destroying businesses. | ||
| This is just an orderly process of where they have to go into the building where they have courts and procedures and they go pure this and then they get turned over to ICE. | ||
| Steve, if you think that the protests are being overblown, what do you think of the president's decision to deploy the National Guard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he overstepped his boundaries too. | |
| What are they going to do? | ||
| Are they going to bring the National Guard out here and they're just going to stand around and do nothing? | ||
| I mean, it's not, I mean, it's just the press, you know, you know, oh, here, we got a riot. | ||
| Let's put it on the news. | ||
| And then everybody picked it up. | ||
| It wasn't that big of a riot, okay? | ||
| It was just a bunch of, it's in Los Angeles. | ||
| Most of the people in Los Angeles are Hispanic, all right? | ||
| So what did you think was going to happen, especially since it's in downtown Los Angeles? | ||
| They're going to, you know. | ||
| Profanity. | ||
| But, you know, it's just, you know, like I said, it's overblown. | ||
| It's, you know, they came in, they removed some criminals, and they've got that, you know, you know, pro-immigrant. | ||
| We are out of time for this segment, but thank you to everyone who called in this hour. | ||
| Coming up on Washington Journal later on, we're going to be joined by Sophia Tripoli, Health Policy Senior Director at Families USA, who will discuss the impact of the GOP reconciliation bill on Medicaid and health care programs. | ||
| But up next, Hudson Institute Defense Strategy Senior Fellow Aaron McLean will join us to discuss the recent Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's Air Force as well as lessons for U.S. readiness. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And a count of two balls and one strike. | |
| And a swing of base hit left deal. | ||
| Tune in Wednesday to C-SPAN's live coverage of the Congressional Baseball Game coming to you from Nationals Park. | ||
| Since 1909, this tradition has united Democrats and Republicans on the field for a spirited evening of camaraderie and competition. | ||
| And this is drilled into center field of base hit. | ||
| Two runs are going to score. | ||
| Don't miss the historic matchup. | ||
| Live coverage starts Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern on the C-SPAN Networks. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| This week on the C-SPAN networks, the House and Senate are in session. | ||
| The House will consider legislation to cancel $9.4 billion in pre-approved government funding requested by the White House. | ||
| The Senate will continue voting on President Trump's executive nominations. | ||
| Several cabinet secretaries and department officials will be on Capitol Hill this week discussing their budgets. | ||
| C-SPAN's live coverage includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John Kaine testifying before two committee hearings about their department's fiscal year 2026 budget, first on Tuesday before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, then on Thursday before the House Armed Services Committee. | ||
| On Wednesday, it's the Congressional Baseball Game between the Democrats and Republicans at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. Also on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee about the Treasury Department's priorities. | ||
| And on Thursday, Democratic Governors J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Kathy Hochul of New York, and Tim Walz of Minnesota testify before the House Oversight Committee on their sanctuary state policies. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by the Hudson Institute's Aaron McLean, where he's a Defense Strategy Senior Fellow. | ||
| Welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| So let's talk about the raid that Ukraine made on Russia. | ||
| It was big in the news last week, and you wrote about it in a piece here, Ukraine, the future of war is now that Ukraine's strikes into Russia illustrate the historic role of surprise in battlefield success. | ||
| They also test the country's fragile relationship with the fractious leadership of the United States. | ||
| Can you talk about the recent drone attack that Ukraine made? | ||
| What happened and why you think it's so significant? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| So a week ago, more or less as we speak, the Ukrainians launched an extraordinary series of raids, deep strikes into Russia, targeting the Russian strategic air force. | ||
| So these are air platforms, bombers, other aircraft that are part of the Russian strategic deterrent. | ||
| That is to say, many of them can carry nuclear weapons and deter NATO in the United States, but that have also been used to launch strikes, in particular cruise missile strikes, into Ukraine. | ||
| What was notable about the raid and makes it unusual given the fact that there's an ongoing strategic air campaign between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for some time now, is the use of drone technology and the way in which the drones were infiltrated into Russia. | ||
| Essentially, pieces of the equipment that ultimately attacked these bombers were snuck into Russia, apparently assembled in the country, loaded onto trucks that appeared to be civilian in nature, sort of semi-tractor trailers. | ||
| These trucks were driven in the vicinity of the airfields. | ||
| The tops of the trucks popped open. | ||
| The drones flew out and then struck these bombers. | ||
| The control mechanism appeared to be some combination of leveraging local cell networks, so leveraging the Russian civilian telecommunications network, and also some degree of autonomy. | ||
| And the details there are not entirely clear. | ||
| It was an extraordinary operational success. | ||
| It, at the very least, at the margins, has diminished the Russian ability to continue to conduct these kinds of cruise missile strikes into Ukraine, at least at the margins. | ||
| The strategic implications are a little less clear, and we can talk about that for the war in Ukraine itself. | ||
| But I think there are some enormous implications for the nature of warfare itself and some threats to the United States that we can clearly see sort of rehearsed or demonstrated in these attacks. | ||
| So let's get to the drones themselves, because you wrote that Ukraine was able to pull this off with what you describe as cheap drones in trucks. | ||
| Many of the drones that the United States use are notably expensive. | ||
| Why has this been so successful with what you're saying are rather cheap drones? | ||
| Yeah, well, that's one of the many striking aspects of the attack. | ||
| I mean, the Ukrainians released a number for what they destroyed in Russian assets of $7 billion. | ||
| It's hard to confirm whether that number is accurate. | ||
| Let's say it's 90% overstated. | ||
| Let's say it was $700 million in Russian assets that were destroyed. | ||
| There's no way that the attack itself from the drones themselves, and let's count staff costs and things like that, administrative overhead, this attack cost in the low single millions of dollars. | ||
| So the disproportion between the cost of the attack itself and the cost of the destroyed assets is extraordinary. | ||
| Now, that's not necessarily anything that's new under the sun. | ||
| You've seen the Houthis in the Red Sea use relatively cheap platforms to tie down extraordinarily expensive American warships and put them at risk and also provoke the American Navy, American military into firing extremely expensive munitions in their own defense or at targets in Yemen. | ||
| So the use of cheap munitions and cheap platforms to put at risk and impose costs on extremely expensive platforms on the other side is not particularly new. | ||
| But this was an extraordinary, even spectacular application of the principle. | ||
| And one of the really notable aspects of the attack. | ||
| One thing I would point out, I think the Ukrainians right now are producing something like 2 million drones a year domestically, just in Ukraine, not buying from abroad, producing. | ||
| In the United States, the number is in the low hundreds of thousands. | ||
| Speaking of the United States, how is the Trump administration reacting to this attack? | ||
| So a week on from the attack, nothing substantially appears to have changed in the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, which is, let's just say, complicated. | ||
| There was for 24-48 hours after the attack a kind of open question about whether or not the Trump administration would react critically to the attack, and there were certainly voices around the administration that were criticizing Ukraine for engaging in actions that they said were escalatory. | ||
| Because again, the targets were many of them Russian strategic bombers, that is, say, bombers that carry nuclear weapons and are part of what's called the strategic triad of bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear-capable submarines that are like we do. | ||
| It's what Russia uses to deter a nuclear attack from the United States, from NATO, from its enemies. | ||
| So the claim that these critics made was in attacking these assets, the Ukrainians are escalating the war. | ||
| They're risking a wider war. | ||
| They're risking drawing the United States into a wider war. | ||
| They need to stop. | ||
| They need to stand down. | ||
| The response to that, I think, is, be that as it may, the bombers are also being, the struck bombers are also being used to attack Ukraine on a regular basis. | ||
| So to say that essentially what is an act of self-defense is escalatory is to say that self-defense is escalatory. | ||
| It's not a very tenable position to take with respect to the Ukrainians. | ||
| What do you make of the fact that they didn't give the United States a heads up about this attack? | ||
| That seems to have become pretty common at this point. | ||
| You know, the level of coordination between the United States and Ukraine, between the United States and Israel in some cases, our allies are being cautious about what information they share. | ||
| Now then, do you have confidence that the current Pentagon leadership is focused on potential vulnerabilities or the way that warfare is changing? | ||
| Now that's an excellent question. | ||
| In some ways, I think the key question. | ||
| So at an intellectual level, what happened last weekend, the fact that that kind of thing could happen and that it could target the United States is well known. | ||
| There are any number of analysts who have been talking about this for years now. | ||
| The notion of containerized, you know, of shipping containers being used to launch a surprise attack is an old one. | ||
| Tom Clancy uses it as a trope in Redstrom Rising, which is from the 1980s. | ||
| So there's nothing particularly new about the idea, and it's been obvious for several years now to the people who follow these things that this kind of thing could happen and that in the opening stages of a war, say with China over the future of Taiwan, that there could be attacks in the First Island chain, in Hawaii, maybe in places like San Diego, maybe in places like Norfolk, maybe in the middle of America where our strategic bombers are housed. | ||
| That's not new. | ||
| The question is, has the connection between intellectual realization and aggressive urgent action been met? | ||
| I'm not sure that it has. | ||
| I'm not sure that if we walked around the bases where our strategic bombers are kept, or if we walked around the naval bases where our major platforms are docked, that we would be satisfied with the hardening of those targets. | ||
| And I'm certainly confident that the countermeasures that are needed, you need, these are cheap platforms, right, that can be used in these attacks. | ||
| And if you constantly expend very expensive countermeasures to shoot them down, well, that's not tenable in the long run. | ||
| So you need cheap countermeasures. | ||
| We don't have those. | ||
| Nobody really has those. | ||
| There's a lot of options there that are being explored. | ||
| But it's we are in an emergency. | ||
| That's this attack. | ||
| One very smart analyst described this attack as an alarm bell in the night. | ||
| We are in an emergency now. | ||
| It's a very dangerous world. | ||
| At least two major wars of the 20th century that America fought in off the top of my head, World War II and the Korean War, began with surprise attacks. | ||
| And the time to prepare for this kind of thing is long past. | ||
| We are in the emergency now. | ||
| There are some members of Congress thinking about this as well. | ||
| In a hearing last week with Army leadership, Republican Congressman Pat Harrigan of North Carolina was raising questions about the Army's capability, capabilities around drones, what he called S-U-AS, small unmanned aircraft systems. | ||
| Here's that exchange. | ||
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As we all have seen, as the Ukrainian battlefield has fundamentally changed the rules of modern conflict, where currently drones, FPV drones, are accounting for greater than 80% of the casualties that are inflicted on that battlefield today. | |
| Small arms only account for 2%. | ||
| Artillery accounts for less than 12%. | ||
| The rules are changing. | ||
| And if we are to win the economics of conflict, we must address SUAS. | ||
| As we saw with Ukraine over the weekend in Operation Spider's Web, 117 different drones at an average cost of $800 per unit, costing Ukraine less than $100,000 worth of investment, inflicted more than $7 billion worth of damage against the Russians. | ||
| This is capability that we need. | ||
| It is also capability we need to defend against. | ||
| And we have neither at scale right now. | ||
| We know that we are significantly behind both our adversaries and our allies in our ability to produce SUAS at scale. | ||
| Last year, China spent $29.4 billion on drones, with some experts estimating that their production volumes and capacities may exceed 500,000 units per month. | ||
| Last year, the Ukrainians produced 4 million SUAS units and are on track to produce over 5 million units this year. | ||
| The Russians are on track to produce similar numbers. | ||
| And in our current posture, we in this country is, we are only capable of producing 50,000 SUAS per year. | ||
| So General George, my question for you is: given what we are seeing play out in Ukraine and across the globe, do you think that the United States is currently behind in the attributable SUAS space as well as the counter-SUAS space? | ||
| And if so, how do we close the gap? | ||
| I agree with everything you said, Congressman. | ||
| We have to get cost curve is a big part of it, and then we have to be able to produce things at scale. | ||
| And I think that that's one of the things that we're talking about with our industrial base, that we need to be able to produce brushless motors, controllers, you know, all those things that we know go into that. | ||
| That right now, Chinese companies, let's say DJI, is producing 15 million drones a year, and we need to have the ability to do that. | ||
| So that's where when we talk about scale, and we're doing some of that with 3D printing, that's exactly what we need to be able to do. | ||
| And on the flip side, the same thing with scaling on counter-UAS. | ||
| Aaron McLean of the Hudson Institute, I saw you nodding along as you were watching that. | ||
| What do you think of that assessment and what would it take to actually bring the United States to where you think it needs to be? | ||
| Yeah, Congressman Harrigan is a very smart guy. | ||
| I agree with all of the implications and premises of his question. | ||
| And as we were talking about before, you could see the Chief of Staff of the Army there agree in principle that he's completely right. | ||
| But the question is, can we close the loop between agreement and principle and intellectual awareness, which I think we have, and actual action? | ||
| And that's where the gap is. | ||
| And we need it in hardening of targets on the defensive side. | ||
| We need to, for example, have our aircraft not sitting out in the open like the Russians had their aircraft sitting out in the open to include in the depths of the United States. | ||
| That's the really significant, or among the many significant parts of this attack, was that these were not aircraft that were proximate to Ukraine. | ||
| These were deep in Russia, a country famous for vast strategic depths that defend it. | ||
| Those no longer matter. | ||
| They won't matter in the United States in the event of a conflict like this. | ||
| So we need to harden targets. | ||
| We need to have cheap drone countermeasures. | ||
| So whether those are directed energy in some form, you see the Israelis developing so-called iron beam, a laser system to shoot down drones, for which ultimately when it's up and running, the cost of the shootdown should just be the cost of electricity. | ||
| There's microwave technology that's being developed, essentially EMP-directed technology to take down drones. | ||
| And then finally, I think a really important point. | ||
| Is that electromagnetic pulses? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly, that's right. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| And then the final thing that the congressman pointed to that is essential is we need our own capabilities. | ||
| We need our own capabilities to conduct the offense using cheap materials like the Ukrainians just did, like the Chinese, the Russians, et cetera, are clearly preparing for. | ||
| How much damage do you think this did, you know, in the larger picture to Russia's military and also to the prospects, if any, for peace? | ||
| So this is where we have a big dispute in Washington, and I think a dispute around within the Trump administration itself. | ||
| In terms of the Russian military, time will tell. | ||
| Like I say, it's certainly there's a marginal improvement in the sense that there are now fewer bombers that can launch these cruise missile attacks into Ukraine. | ||
| There's also a big blow to Russian morale. | ||
| There's also a demonstration of Ukrainian capability. | ||
| Those are all good things. | ||
| It's all kind of a good day's work from the Ukrainian point of view. | ||
| The question is, you know, is something like this going to shake the Trump administration's resolve, such as it is, to, on some level, stick with Ukraine, not abandon Ukraine completely. | ||
| And this is a very complicated issue because there are at least four factors you have to consider with the Trump administration in this debate. | ||
| There's multiple schools of thought here. | ||
| One school is traditional Republicans around the president who don't much care for Russia and support the Ukrainian cause. | ||
| You have quote-unquote realists who believe that we need warmer relations with Russia because of this cold calculus of power politics and Ukraine is kind of a sacrifice on that altar. | ||
| You have a third group of people who wish somewhat enthusiastically for Ukraine's defeat. | ||
| And we can talk about why that is and why people believe that. | ||
| And then fourth, frankly, you have the president himself, who's not squarely in any of those three camps. | ||
| He is his own unique strategic thinker with his own particular conception of things. | ||
| A week on, again, there seems to have been no immediate impact from the attack. | ||
| We seem to be today where we were a week ago in terms of the U.S. relationship. | ||
| Whether we're there a week from now or not, life in the Trump administration is such that only that week will tell. | ||
| We're ready for questions from our audience about this issue and the attack that Ukraine made on Russia, as well as drone warfare and the future of warfare more broadly. | ||
| Our line for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Let's start with Wayne in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Wayne. | ||
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How are you all doing today? | |
| Good, thank you. | ||
| I have a few questions, right? | ||
| The airplanes that Ukraine's supposed to get shot down, how do we know they owe airplanes? | ||
| And the numbers that you are talking about, I don't believe that they are true because the United States are on the ground teaching Ukraine how to work them weapons. | ||
| And then, how do we know a million, I heard a million people in Russia got killed? | ||
| How do we know that? | ||
| Now you should know how many people in Ukraine got killed. | ||
| In the United States, it's your fault because you give them the weapons. | ||
| All right, Wayne, you've raised several questions there. | ||
| Let's let Aaron respond. | ||
| I guess the first one was, how do we know the details and the nature of the planes that were, you know, the Ukraine claims it destroyed? | ||
| Yeah, no, it's a perfectly reasonable question. | ||
| The short answer is we know because the Ukrainians have chosen to release information about the attack. | ||
| In fact, built into the attack in a really interesting way was an information campaign. | ||
| A very important part of the attack was the release of the video of the strikes immediately after they occurred. | ||
| That was a choice by the Ukrainians to release that imagery to prove, right, that they had struck some of these targets. | ||
| And again, to damage Russian morale and demonstrate their own capability and improve Ukrainian morale. | ||
| Have the Russians confirmed these details that the Ukrainians are claiming? | ||
| No, of course not. | ||
| In fact, their estimate of the damage is substantially, substantially less. | ||
| Where's the truth? | ||
| I'm personally more inclined to trust the Ukrainian report than the Russian reports, but it's also, you know, I also didn't fall off the back of a turn-up truck this morning. | ||
| You know, it's possible those numbers are somewhat inflated. | ||
| But again, this was to my point earlier. | ||
| Let's say it's not $7 billion in damage. | ||
| Let's say it's $1 billion in damage. | ||
| The cost differential advantage of the attack is still overwhelming. | ||
| He was also asking if we can trust the numbers on the number of people killed, particularly in Russia, and also the role of U.S. training of Ukrainians in this conflict. | ||
| So the 1 million number that is out there, I believe that's, by the way, casualties rather than deaths. | ||
| So that includes people who are wounded, named, otherwise removed from the battlefield. | ||
| That's a number that's been widely reported. | ||
| It's an estimate. | ||
| This is a grinding attritional conflict that is grueling for the soldiers on both sides who are partaking in it. | ||
| Awful, bloody, nasty fights take place for a few meters here and there. | ||
| It reminds me really of World War I and the Western Front. | ||
| It's sort of like that with drones. | ||
| In fact, one of the really striking aspects of this operation last week was the way in which it showed how even in an environment like the one that we have, which is, again, grueling, violent, attritional, sort of favors the side with more stuff. | ||
| It's very hard to maneuver. | ||
| It's very hard to move. | ||
| Actually, if you leverage surprise and intelligence dominance like the Ukrainians just did, like the Israelis did fighting Hezbollah last fall, the fall of 2024 when they went into Lebanon, like Hamas did in October of 2023 when they conducted a surprise attack against the Israelis in the south of Israel. | ||
| You actually can still maneuver on the modern battlefield. | ||
| And another point that I think we need to take out of these attacks is the central role of surprise in warfare in 2025. | ||
| Same as it ever was. | ||
| We also have a special phone line for this segment for folks who are active and former military. | ||
| You can call in at 202-748-8003. | ||
| And on that line is Ed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who's former military. | ||
| Good morning, Ed. | ||
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Hey, good morning. | |
| I'm a former Marine Raider, Markom, my company, first MSOB. | ||
| JTAC qualified as a helmet in 09. | ||
| You know, we swept 611, and then the Taliban I rewired with 15-buck pressure plates. | ||
| And Our buddy here represents Herman Kahn and his show of force ladder, but I watched it fall in real time. | ||
| So did he. | ||
| You know, the things that Herman Kahn recommended at Lisbon, they copy the same playbook that Trump and them are on today. | ||
| They want to herd people in the strategic villages. | ||
| They want to rack up civilian deaths and they're going to lose the colony. | ||
| This guy right here, he wants that ladder right now pointed at Moscow, while the Army's got 155 mil stocks in the 20% service. | ||
| I think you're using a lot of jargon that a lot of folks won't understand, but I think you're following. | ||
| So can you help us understand what Ed is saying and then respond? | ||
| Yeah, first of all, separately Ed. | ||
| I was in Helmand in 2009, 2010, so it's good to talk. | ||
| The reference to Herman Kahn, Herman Kahn is the founder of the Hudson Institute, so it's the delight to have him here mentioned on Washington Journal, a great man and a great thinker. | ||
| Look, to your point about, I think part of your point, Ed, is that the cost differential question can be used against the United States, and it was used against us in Afghanistan. | ||
| I think that's your reference to the cheap pressure plates and IEDs, which I personally, unfortunately, experienced, or my Marines' experience. | ||
| That's absolutely true. | ||
| Look, I had the experience in Afghanistan, maybe you did as well, of employing major air assets. | ||
| I'm talking F-18s, Harrier jets, A-10s, to do gun runs on individual IED emplacers. | ||
| That is to say, one, two, three people with a shovel and some explosives planting a bomb in the road. | ||
| That is an extraordinary mismatch of military resources. | ||
| Why did we do it? | ||
| Because we could. | ||
| And in the long run, those tactical successes did not obviously add up to strategic success in Afghanistan. | ||
| So your point is well taken. | ||
| This question of how cheap technology connected to sound strategic concepts can defeat more expensive technology that's connected to unsound strategic concepts is one that should absolutely worry us. | ||
| We have a text from Joe in Syracuse, New York, who says, the Russian bombers destroyed were in the open because it was part of a nuclear pact that required them to be so. | ||
| This was a gross nuclear era violation, and you can expect a resounding reply when Putin sees fit. | ||
| The world is in a precarious position. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's a bit of a mischaracterization of the laws governing these things. | ||
| And look, I think we've already seen the Russian response. | ||
| The Russians signaled that they were going to respond. | ||
| Vladimir Putin apparently told President Trump in a phone call earlier this week that he was going to have to respond. | ||
| President Trump reported that to the world. | ||
| And we saw just, it was two nights ago, the second largest strategic airstrike or set of airstrikes of the war from Russia targeting Ukraine. | ||
| Characteristically in these airstrikes, the targets were a mix of military and infrastructure targets, but also civilian targets. | ||
| The Russians intermingle strikes against Ukrainian forces and warm capabilities with terror strikes against the civilian population. | ||
| Was that the sum total of the response? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We will see. | ||
| Look, there's a risk of escalation that's been true since the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022. | ||
| That risk is there, and I'm not trying to say it doesn't exist. | ||
| I'm not trying to minimize it. | ||
| I am trying to say that the Russians use our sensitivity to that risk to push us into a place where we will help them achieve their war aims. | ||
| I'm looking at a story in Reuters and an exclusive where they report that the U.S. believes Russia's response to Ukraine drone attack is not over yet and expects a multi-pronged strike. | ||
| Reuters is reporting that the United States believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin's threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its drone attack last weekend has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant multi-pronged U.S. strike, U.S. officials told Reuters. | ||
| The timing of the full Russian response was unclear, with one source saying it was expected within days. | ||
| A second U.S. official said the retaliation was likely to include different kinds of air capabilities, including missiles and drones. | ||
| Entirely possible. | ||
| Again, it's possible that that strike two nights ago was only a part of a larger whole. | ||
| I mean, I do think there's a question short of major escalation into the nuclear space of what capabilities the Russians have that they haven't used. | ||
| Look, the trends are very dangerous for Ukraine here. | ||
| In a straight line, the world does not look great for Ukraine. | ||
| They are banking on, as were the Allies in 1917, banking on a fundamental change in conditions to allow them to achieve some sort of outcome from this war that is good for them. | ||
| A question here from Doug in St. Louis, Missouri, who asks, what was the purpose of dotting the Russian aircrafts with tires? | ||
| Yeah, I think it was a failed and sort of mediocre and half-hearted attempt to defend from these sorts of strikes. | ||
| I mean, you have the Ukrainians targeting very specific points on the aircraft because these are small drones with relatively small explosives attached to them. | ||
| So you can't just hit anywhere on the aircraft and hope for a catastrophic kill. | ||
| You have to go right to critical parts of the aircraft. | ||
| And you saw those tires in places where there's critical stuff like fuel tanks and things like that in the aircraft. | ||
| I think more was needed. | ||
| For folks who might be listening to this show and not watching, we have video provided by the Ukrainian government that shows some of these planes as they're being struck by the drone with actual car or truck tires sitting on the wings of the planes themselves, as Aaron just described. | ||
| Now, let's hear from Jesse in California on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jesse. | ||
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Thank you very much. | |
| We have to remember that it was Russia who started the war with Ukraine. | ||
| And if we even go back further, we could look at Trump, who wanted Ukraine to give dirt on Joe Biden, who has a very unhealthy and very negative relationship with Ukraine and a love relationship with Putin. | ||
| And if Ukraine, Ukraine never asked the United States to put boots on the ground in Ukraine to help them. | ||
| They asked for help with weapons and things like that. | ||
| And if Ukraine has to need help to protect themselves, they have every right to ask for that. | ||
| They want to be as democratic as the United States. | ||
| And boy, we better get back to being a democratic country ourselves because we are losing it. | ||
| And so what Ukraine has to do, if they have to send drones to protect themselves, then that's what they have to do because Ukraine is not trying to shoot drones just to kill people in Russia, but Russia sure is sending missiles and drones to kill people in Ukraine. | ||
| That's my opinion. | ||
| So it's certainly the case that Ukrainians are fighting for their survival. | ||
| They're fighting for the survival of an independent Ukraine. | ||
| And it's certainly the case that the Russian war aim is to destroy that. | ||
| President Trump, I think his words and his actions since coming into office pretty clearly show that what he wants is peace. | ||
| He wants an agreement between the two warring parties. | ||
| The terms seem less important than the finalization of the agreement itself. | ||
| And he would like it done, and he would like it done now. | ||
| And he is frustrated, understandably, that it is not happening. | ||
| The Ukrainians have agreed to a ceasefire measure during which negotiations could take place. | ||
| The Russians have rejected that. | ||
| They've made counteroffers on the ceasefire front that are absurd. | ||
| And we are into a phase now of intermittent talks, the scope and length of which is not entirely clear. | ||
| The fact is, these things take a lot of time, and I think this administration is coming to terms with that fact. | ||
| If you think from a couple examples from American military history from the 20th century, we started talking to the North Koreans in 1951 in the midst of the Korean War. | ||
| That wasn't exactly a peace agreement. | ||
| The armistice was resolved in 1953. | ||
| So that took two years. | ||
| In Vietnam, there were some efforts towards the end of the Johnson administration. | ||
| Then in the Knicks administration, more or less from the start, in earnest, there was an effort to resolve the war along diplomatic lines. | ||
| That agreement was signed in 1973. | ||
| It then collapsed in 1975. | ||
| These are multi-year, difficult diplomatic efforts that occur during the course of bloody on-the-ground struggles. | ||
| It is very, very difficult to resolve these things quickly. | ||
| David is in Sacramento, California, and on our line for active and former military. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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I have been listening to this gentleman, and he has his perspective. | |
| When it comes to the drone attacks that Ukraine did, I say kudos. | ||
| I thought from the beginning of this entire conflict that we as Americans should have provided for Ukraine weapons that would reach to Moscow. | ||
| You want to blow up Kiev? | ||
| Then we should blow up Moscow also, too. | ||
| There's so many people that are trying to claim that Ukraine wants peace. | ||
| What Ukraine wants, in my mind, is they want to be free. | ||
| We all would want that. | ||
| It seems to me that we keep talking about 1935 and all other things. | ||
| Who should we have to make a solution? | ||
| Everybody keeps talking about the problem, but nobody is coming with a solution except for Ukraine. | ||
| Vladimir Vladimir. | ||
| Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. | ||
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And when they first invaded, the United States asked him, do you want us to remove you and your family and give you sovereignty or help in the United States? | |
| He said, I don't need a ride. | ||
| I mean weapons. | ||
| And today, you mean weapons. | ||
| So, David, you raised a bunch of points. | ||
| Let's let Aaron respond. | ||
| Look, I want to be clear about the question of escalation and its risks here. | ||
| I, too, was impressed by the Ukrainian strikes last weekend, and I think that there is a strong argument that only continued operations like this that show the Russians that continuing this war runs major risks for them is going to lead to Russian seriousness at the negotiating table. | ||
| Indeed, to go back to the Korean and Vietnam examples, two wars in which the United States, of course, was directly engaged. | ||
| We're not directly engaged in this war. | ||
| We really kept the pressure on during those talks, particularly with air campaigns, but also ground action in both wars to encourage and incentivize the other party to be serious at the table. | ||
| In both those cases, it took time. | ||
| I think there's a serious case that Ukrainian operations like this can contribute to Russian seriousness, ideally in combination with other forms of pressure that we would help provide and the Europeans would help provide, not only military, but also economic. | ||
| That all said, those who are worried about the risk of escalation are not without arguments to make, and they're not entirely wrong. | ||
| You know, this attack had not targeted those Russian bombers, but instead say had gone after Russian nuclear submarines, which are not being used to strike Ukraine right now. | ||
| These are sorry, submarines that launch ICBMs, to be clear, nuclear in that sense. | ||
| You know, that's a different question than the one we are actually addressing. | ||
| There are legitimate questions about escalation here. | ||
| There are questions about when the Russians would be willing to use nuclear weapons, perhaps in a so-called tactical employment on the Ukrainian battlefield itself, that we have to be conscious of and we have to manage. | ||
| I disagree with those who think that last Sunday's attack really pushed into the danger zone in any way more noticeably than anything the Ukrainians have done recently. | ||
| But it's not an illegitimate question or subject of conversation. | ||
| Troy is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Troy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-Spain. | |
| My question is: one, those bombers that were out had those tires on there and their canopies were covered. | ||
| So you couldn't see inside the cockpits, which means that I think that they were out there for the satellite look at our nuclear on their side, their nuclear, and we do the same thing on our side with our B-1 bombers so they can see them. | ||
| So I'm thinking, and then also the Ukrainians used trucks driven by civilians next to the airport, so there was no defense against it. | ||
| It was a terrorist attack. | ||
| And only people who would have knew the time would have been the Americans because we put ours out, they put theirs out. | ||
| And what he is not telling you is that we are rolling up against midnight because of incidents like that. | ||
| They hit a couple months ago, they hit an over the horizon radar site. | ||
| That's only for nuclear. | ||
| It's not for fighting the Ukrainians. | ||
| And when the war first started, they had got a lot of our RPG, I mean, not RPGs, but our anti-tank weapons and stuff like that. | ||
| So when their airborne units dropped in, they were cut off. | ||
| So Troy, did you have a question for Aaron as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm just saying. | |
| Aaron looks like he's so happy that we're getting close to that clock. | ||
| And people like me who had three tours of duty, I'm afraid for the civilians. | ||
| So let's let him respond to that. | ||
| Well, I think we should be clear about terminology. | ||
| So you describe this as a terrorist attack. | ||
| Strictly speaking, terrorist attacks target civilians for political purposes, right? | ||
| That's the definition of terrorism. | ||
| There are so-called terrorist groups that do it. | ||
| This was al-Qaeda's business, but states are capable of terror campaigns and of campaigns that target civilian populations. | ||
| Indeed, Russia engages that, engages in such strikes regularly in the course of this war. | ||
| This strike was not a terrorist attack by the strict technical definition of it. | ||
| It was a surprise attack. | ||
| It was a daring attack. | ||
| It was an attack that does bear, as would any bold strike like this, some risk of escalation. | ||
| But here's the problem with conditioning everything according to the question of escalation: if we truly believe that Ukrainian self-defense is inherently escalatory, then our policy as the United States should be to seek Ukraine's defeat, which perhaps is your view. | ||
| And it is certainly a view that's out there. | ||
| The problem with Ukraine's defeat is the enhancement to Russian power. | ||
| And the problem with the enhancement to Russian power is that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea are in an increasingly cohesive axis of powers that seek to dominate Eurasia. | ||
| Preventing the domination of Eurasia by a hostile power or coalition of powers has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy since the Second World War, at least. | ||
| I don't think we will like the prospects for our freedom and prosperity if Eurasia does in fact come under the control of this coalition of powers. | ||
| Barb in Longrove, Illinois asks via text, what are Mr. McLean's views on Trump's proposal for a golden dome in the United States? | ||
| I think it's very important. | ||
| Explain what it is first. | ||
| Yeah, the Golden Dome is a proposal from the president with very typical branding that we invest heavily in missile defense in the United States of America. | ||
| I think it's long overdue. | ||
| I think there are real practical questions about what within that category needs to be prioritized. | ||
| And in some ways, that proposal is actually about the threat posed by higher-end weapon systems, right? | ||
| Ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, things like that, not the cheap stuff that the Ukrainians were using in this operation. | ||
| So it may or may not address the exact kind of subject that we're talking about this morning. | ||
| The truth is the cost of such a thing is very, very substantial and raises real strategic and prioritization questions about how we're going to execute it. | ||
| But I'm for it. | ||
| Dave is in Long Island, New York on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I'm going to try and go quick. | ||
| I just think this drone thing, everybody loves it because it's on TV. | ||
| You get the video, the drone hitting the plane, it blows up very exciting, James Bond Mike. | ||
| But we've been through all this stuff before. | ||
| Everybody hypes it up. | ||
| There's a lot of propaganda, a lot of psychological operations. | ||
| The big thing in 2003, you had the summer counteroffensive, total disaster. | ||
| You had the F-16 is going to come. | ||
| Never heard a thing about those. | ||
| Total wash. | ||
| Then the Kursk offensive, they were going to break through to the nuclear power plant in Kursk. | ||
| That got shut down in like two days. | ||
| What a disaster. | ||
| Now Dave, you're breaking up. | ||
| I think we lost your line. | ||
| Can you still hear us? | ||
| I think we may have lost Dave, but do you want to respond to the points you raised? | ||
| Just to respond to that, yeah. | ||
| I mean, this is a long and grueling war. | ||
| There was really dramatic maneuver in 2022. | ||
| There were a few weeks there where the Ukrainians were really at risk. | ||
| Then by the fall of 2022, there was some time there where the Russians looked like they were really at risk. | ||
| Then things stabilized. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| The Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 did not achieve its goals. | ||
| And here we are, or strictly speaking, here the Ukrainians and the Russians are slugging away at enormous human cost. | ||
| It's entirely reasonable to want this thing resolved. | ||
| The question is, what are the terms of the resolution? | ||
| That's the open question right now. | ||
| James is in Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The fact that we are, you know, we need to help Ukraine, and there's a man named General Patton told us about we were going to have one of these days trusting, we can't trust communism. | ||
| And at the end of the day, he was totally right. | ||
| And I just feel like we need to help Ukraine and help the people. | ||
| They're so vulnerable. | ||
| And Russia is going to threaten World War III on us. | ||
| It's something that General Patton had preached, and he was absolutely right. | ||
| I know in my heart he would help the Ukrainians if he had a chance. | ||
| Well, I'm a George Patton fan, and we brought up George Patton and Herman Kahn this morning, so this is a great morning for me. | ||
| Look, I do think that an outright Russian success in Ukraine would be bad, in particular bad for the interests of the United States of America. | ||
| So that's why I take the positions that I take. | ||
| I also think, and just to come back to the point, because I think it's important, what's happening in Ukraine, just like what's been happening in and around Israel since 2023, is a kind of laboratory of warfare where we are seeing played out and rehearsed the kinds of things that will be involved in any kind of war that the United States may find itself directly engaged in. | ||
| I don't say that with any enthusiasm, by the way. | ||
| It's just the grim business that I'm in to think about those things. | ||
| And the nature of this attack that was launched by the Ukrainians last weekend in Russia, the thing that we should take away from it is that if you apply this scenario to the Western Pacific, we're the Russians, right? | ||
| We are the people who are most at risk of having this happen to us. | ||
| And that is the urgent emergency point that I think everyone in America, most importantly, should take away from this attack. | ||
| Phil from Houston, Texas says, can you comment on the impact of drone warfare on the foot soldiers? | ||
| I read an article that new drone tech using optic fiber are nearly unjammable and soldiers can't venture out of their hidden trenches at all during the day. | ||
| So drones impact on soldier morale is a big issue. | ||
| Yeah, no, this is a really important point. | ||
| And the nature of the battlefield right now is kind of a terrifying one, where motion on the battlefield, maneuver of any kind is very quickly visible. | ||
| You watch these videos from the battlefield. | ||
| You hear the sort of buzzing of the drones in the overhead. | ||
| You watch these awful videos of soldiers being killed in the last moments of their lives as they're struck by these FPV drones. | ||
| It's an awful, awful scene. | ||
| Again, what's striking about last week's attack is that it joins a list of major operations over the course of the last few years that show that under certain circumstances and under certain conditions, maneuver is possible. | ||
| Surprise can be achieved. | ||
| You can make battlefield progress or you can make strategically significant progress, or at very least operationally significant progress. | ||
| But the battlefield has changed since American troops were last engaged in combat in a wide scale in recent years. | ||
| And it is, again, long past time for our military to be ready for that kind of environment. | ||
| Well, thank you so much for all of your expertise. | ||
| Aaron McLean is the Defense Strategy Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. | ||
| Really appreciate your time. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Now, later on, Washington Journal, we'll hear more of your calls and comments in open forum. | ||
| But next, we're going to have Sophia Tripoli, Health Policy Senior Director at Families USA, who will join us to discuss the impact of the GOP bill on Medicaid and healthcare programs. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics at Harvard University and former International Monetary Fund chief economist. | ||
| In his most recent book, Our Dollar, Your Problem, he argues that America's currency might have reached today's lofty pinnacle without a certain amount of good luck. | ||
| However, as Professor Rogoff nears the end of his 345-page book, he writes, quote, If rapidly rising debt is left unchecked and there seems to be little political appetite to rein in massive deficits, the United States and the entire world is in for a substantial period of global financial volatility, marked by higher average real interest rates and inflation, unquote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Harvard University professor of economics and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Kenneth Rogoff with his most recent book, Our Dollar Your Problem, on this episode of Book Notes Plus, with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| C-SPANShop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | ||
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at cspanshop.org. | ||
| Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the pro-peace feminist grassroots organization Code Pink, talks about her life as an activist and the nonviolent disruptive actions taken by Code Pink at congressional hearings and elsewhere to bring attention to their causes. | ||
| We don't disrupt every hearing. | ||
| The majority of hearings we go to, we don't disrupt. | ||
| We sit through to learn. | ||
| We use the opportunity to talk to the members of Congress when they're on their way in and when they're on their way out. | ||
| So, you know, when you're there every day, you have developed a relationship not only with some of the members of Congress, but with the officers. | ||
| And some of them are quite nice to us. | ||
| They recognize that we are nonviolent people, that we are passionate about these issues, and that this is part of what a vibrant civil society should look like. | ||
| Some of them don't like us very much and are meaner to us. | ||
| We try to report them when they abuse our rights because, again, we go on this principle: it is the people's house. | ||
| They are no better than us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They are public servants, and they should be listening to what we, the public, want to say. | |
| Medea Benjamin, tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Sophia Tripoli, who is the Health Policy Senior Director at Families USA, and she's here to talk about the GOP tax and spending bill and how they'll affect health care programs. | ||
| Welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Can you talk a bit about Families USA, what you all do, who funds you, and any ideological position you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Families USA is a nonpartisan healthcare organization. | ||
| We work to make sure that every person living in the country has access to high-quality, affordable health care and the health that everybody deserves. | ||
| We have been in existence for more than 40 years, working here in Capitol Hill and also with partners across the country and across all states working to afford our same exact mission around most affordable health care and best health for everybody. | ||
| And how are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are funded primarily through philanthropy, excuse me, and through grants and programmatic work. | |
| Now, let's get some baseline information about who is covered by government health care programs. | ||
| We've got some data on that from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: that more than 72 million adults are enrolled in Medicaid. | ||
| Nearly 7.3 million minors are covered by the Children's Health Insurance Program. | ||
| And then ACA marketplace insurance plans covered more than 24 million people last year. | ||
| Now, then, when we look at the House and spending, the tax and spending bill that was passed by the House, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it would make some significant changes that would have some knock-on effects for these health care programs, including almost 11 million people would become uninsured over the next decade, according to that CBO estimate. | ||
| 7.8 million would lose Medicaid coverage due to more strict stricter work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks. | ||
| And then it includes 1.4 million people that would lose their insurance coverage because they don't have verified citizenship and would lose coverage under those programs because of changes in the legislation. | ||
| Another 5 million would become uninsured from a combination of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and a new ACA rule. | ||
| And then federal spending on Medicaid and the ACA would be reduced by $902 billion over a decade. | ||
| So can you sort of help us understand what's in this legislation and why it would have such a strong impact on America's health care programs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely, and I think your numbers really speak volumes. | |
| Those numbers coming from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that has analyzed this legislation. | ||
| And really the numbers don't lie. | ||
| This bill, taken together on healthcare, would cut more than a trillion dollars from health care programs, including the numbers you outlined on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| And the bill actually also triggers a cut to Medicare because of the increase in the deficit spending that the bill would have. | ||
| And so it triggers an automatic $500 billion cut to Medicare as well. | ||
| And so ultimately what this is, is 16 million people at risk for losing their health care if this goes into effect. | ||
| And we're talking about low-income people with disabilities, low-income seniors, children, working adults, all at risk for losing their health insurance if this bill moves forward and is enacted into law. | ||
| Let's talk a bit more about Medicaid specifically because this is the program that's been getting a lot of attention in relation to this legislation. | ||
| What are the current eligibility requirements and who's using Medicaid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Medicaid is a program for low-income individuals, low-income adults and children, seniors, people with disability. | ||
| And there are a number of factors that are used to determine whether somebody's eligible for Medicaid. | ||
| And all of that is set in federal law. | ||
| And the people who rely on this program are people in our communities, seniors who rely on Medicaid for paying long-term service cares and support so that they can get nursing home care. | ||
| It's veterans who are low-income. | ||
| It's children who live in families who have low income. | ||
| People in our communities who rely on Medicaid as a health insurance program, who have no other option to buy or purchase affordable health care. | ||
| I'm looking at some data from the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, and they talk about people participating in both SNAP and Medicaid make generally an average of about $30,000 a year. | ||
| There's been a lot of complaints, though, that this program, Republicans have complained, that there are a lot of people using this program who shouldn't be, whether they be undocumented immigrants or there's been a lot of talk about young able-bodied people. | ||
| How real is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think those are, it's a bit of fear-mongering, to be honest. | |
| And I think what we look at these programs, I think the people who have Medicaid are eligible for Medicaid under current federal and state law. | ||
| And so when we look at the program, you know, the fact of the matter is that there is this rhetoric around able-bodied folks who are just kind of pulling benefits down from the system and don't belong to be there. | ||
| But more than 92% of people who rely on Medicaid for health insurance are working or have an exempt because they're a person with a disability or they're a full-time caregiver. | ||
| And so a lot of the requirements in this bill are about attacking, sort of using rhetoric to attack people's access to health care who belong to be, who need the program, who belong there, who are eligible for the program under current rules. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So this legislation for the first time imposes a national work requirement on the Medicaid program. | ||
| Already some states have programs like this. | ||
| It would require people, certain individuals covered by Medicaid, to work at least 80 hours a month or potentially engage in community service work or training or be enrolled in school. | ||
| What evidence do we have that work requirements on Medicaid actually encourage more people to find work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very, very little evidence and I would say almost no evidence that work requirements in Medicaid actually result in more work. | |
| And again, that stat of 92% of folks in Medicaid are working already or have an exemption because they're a caregiver or a person with a disability and can't work. | ||
| And we've actually seen states try to implement work requirements. | ||
| Arkansas, for example, a few years back under the first Trump administration. | ||
| And we know that work requirements are just about creating red tape. | ||
| It's just about creating hoops for folks to go through. | ||
| It's, you know, these folks are already working and now they have to demonstrate every month that they're working. | ||
| And in states like Arkansas, who tried this, we saw 18,000 people lose their health care coverage just in the first seven months that the program was operating, costing the state $24 million. | ||
| These are very expensive burdens to place on states, and it's just about creating more paperwork burdens to put low-income individuals through just to justify and prove to the government that they're working when in fact they are. | ||
| Last Wednesday on Fox Business Network's Kudlow, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz discussed why he thinks work requirements are necessary and beneficial for Medicaid recipients. | ||
| Let's listen to this and I'll get your response. | ||
| Well, just to reiterate, there is no scenario in which we do not spend more money on Medicaid than we spent last year. | ||
| So the question is how much more money and how do we save Medicaid so it doesn't continue to grow 50% every five years, which is just what happened. | ||
| So if you go back in history and look at other programs that are similar, they're support programs like Food Stamps, which is the SNAP program, or TANIP, which is temporary assistance to needy families, they have work requirements. | ||
| Why don't we have work requirements for Medicaid? | ||
| Well, the reason is 60 years ago when the program was created, it never dawned on anybody that able-bodied people who could work would be on Medicaid, so they never bothered putting in work requirements. | ||
| We're asking that able-bodied individuals who are able to go back to work at least try to get a job or volunteer or take care of a loved one who needs help or go back into school. | ||
| Do something to show you have agency over your future. | ||
| And if you're willing to do any of those things, we will check the box and you get to keep your free Medicaid. | ||
| But if you're not willing to do those things, then we're going to ask you to go on and do something else, like go on the exchanges or get a job and get into regular commercial insurance, but we're not going to continue to pay for Medicaid for those audiences. | ||
| And I think that is a very realistic effort, and it's been done in the past. | ||
| Actually, under the Clinton administration, when they reformed the temporary assistance for needy families, they did it and they showed a dramatic 15% increase in workforce participation amongst those people. | ||
| So Democratic presidents, Republican presidents have all felt that work was an important part of the deal with America, and we're just acting on that reality. | ||
| Sophia Tripoli of Families USA, what did you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think, look, I think we can all agree, and I think every American knows, that the health care system is too expensive, that care costs too much, it's incredibly complicated and burdensome to navigate the system, and people are frustrated. | |
| But I don't think the solution to that is to create bureaucratic burdens, force people to submit unnecessary paperwork, and just to appease some rhetoric. | ||
| I think the reality is that the Medicaid work requirement programs are inefficient. | ||
| They don't work. | ||
| They make it more difficult for people to get coverage and to stay insured. | ||
| And we know that the numbers don't lie. | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office is telling us that nearly 8 million people for Medicaid will lose coverage because of many of the provisions in this bill. | ||
| And so I think that, again, the vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working or they have an exemption. | ||
| And so this idea that these are able-bodied folks who don't belong to be there is just simply not true. | ||
| If you have questions for Sophia Tripoli, you can call us Republicans at 202-748-8001, Democrats at 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| And we've talked quite a bit about Medicaid. | ||
| I want to ask you about some of the other programs that could be affected by the GOP's tax and spending bill. | ||
| What about the Children's Health Insurance Program? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, absolutely. | |
| I think the cuts that we're seeing in this bill will have impact for Medicaid and CHIP. | ||
| One of the biggest impacts for the CHIP program is that it actually, this law, if it were to go into effect, would pull back a rule that was finalized under the Biden administration, a federal law, that would actually make it easier for low-income children to get enrolled and stay enrolled into CHIP. | ||
| And so this bill would actually pull that back and make it much more difficult for low-income children to get health care. | ||
| In addition to the fact that it also pulls back rules for improving eligibility and enrollment for adults and all the other attacks on the adult population of Medicaid taken together, it have a significant impact for children. | ||
| About a million children could be at risk for losing their health insurance just from the pulling back of this one particular rule that would make it easier for them to get enrolled. | ||
| And what changes would the bill make to, say, the Obamacare Exchanges or the Affordable Care Act exchanges? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are a number of very technical changes that this bill would make to the ACA exchanges for people who purchase their health insurance directly from the federal state marketplaces. | |
| And the effect of them all is that it reduces benefits, it increases costs, increases cost sharing, meaning people will have to pay more money. | ||
| It makes it much more difficult for people to get enrolled and stay enrolled, getting rid of a lot of the processes that actually made the system much more efficient, streamlining enrollment and eligibility, making it easier for people to get into the health insurance for the ACA marketplace. | ||
| This rule would pull all of that back by design to make it more difficult for people to access their health insurance because the goal is, again, to force people off of health care. | ||
| Some lawmakers as well as advocates have raised concerns about the impact this legislation as written could have on rural hospitals and rural patients in particular. | ||
| Why would they feel a more significant impact than other groups? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a great question and really important. | |
| I think one of the provisions that this bill would do is it attacks one of the mechanisms that states use to generate the revenue that they need to pay for Medicaid services. | ||
| Medicaid is funded both from a federal partnership with federal state partnership. | ||
| And so it attacks this tool that states have. | ||
| And of course, the result of that is that it means that there's less resources coming into the state. | ||
| Medicaid is one of the biggest funders, sources of federal funding coming in the states. | ||
| So what that means for hospitals is that you have revenue that's all of a sudden not coming in directly back into the system. | ||
| And so there are some estimates I've seen that predict that about for rural hospitals, 20% of their operating margins could be reduced pretty significantly. | ||
| For many of those rural institutions, it means they'll likely have to shut their doors. | ||
| For those communities, it means you don't have access to care. | ||
| You've got to travel farther distance to get care, like prevent primary care and pregnancy-related care, care for your kids, care for seniors. | ||
| And so it has a significant impact on rural communities and hospitals broadly, but in particular, I think rural hospitals are at very high risk if this bill goes into effect. | ||
| These changes that will result in some of these estimates the CBO has put out are effectively to help pay for the extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, individual tax cuts, along with some other initiatives the Republicans put in this legislation, as well as, as the Republicans say, to cut back on waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| What do you think of this trade-off? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think at the end of the day, it's a bit of a kicker that this bill is about forcing 16 million people to lose their health insurance, threatening state economies and health care system, sustainability of those systems, just to fund tax breaks for big corporations and billionaires. | |
| That's the trade-off. | ||
| And I think as far as fraud, waste, and abuse, I think the data shows us that there's very, very little fraud or abuse in the Medicaid program. | ||
| Less than 1% of Medicaid beneficiaries actually in that bucket. | ||
| And I think there's often some numbers thrown around about improper payments. | ||
| And the reality is those improper payments account for only 5% of Medicaid billing and actually are errors because you've got a doctor or nurse making a mistake on a billing code or a health plan who makes a mistake. | ||
| And so I think the fraud, waste, and abuse is blown out of proportion as a way to justify cuts. | ||
| Because at the end of the day, this bill is happening. | ||
| The negotiations on what happened in the House is all behind closed doors. | ||
| They don't want constituents. | ||
| They don't want your viewers to know that it's going to result in 16 million people losing health insurance. | ||
| That's why it's been very sort of backdoor dealing about the provisions in the bill and what the impact will be on people because it's not good. | ||
| And the numbers, again, don't lie. | ||
| We see the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. | ||
| The independent agency telling us exactly what the impact of this legislation will be on people. | ||
| Let's get to your questions. | ||
| Our phone lines again for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll start with Michael in Richmond, Indiana, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
| You're on with Sophia Tripoli. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| My name's Michael. | ||
| I'm 56 years old. | ||
| I had to quit working in 2021. | ||
| I went on Social Security disability, and I am on Medicaid. | ||
| Well, I'm on 12 different types of medication. | ||
| I got diabetes. | ||
| I can Parkinson's hardly walk half the time. | ||
| And, you know, with these work requirements coming out, well, my question is, you know, if I have to go to work, I'm at the doctor about four times a week. | ||
| I got 11 different specialists plus a family doctor. | ||
| I mean, who's going to hire me? | ||
| I mean, because I'll be at the doctor most of the time. | ||
| I mean, there's no job going to hire me if I'm at the doctor all the time. | ||
| So, I mean, I don't know how that's going to work out. | ||
| Michael, thank you so much for that question. | ||
| And I think your experience is exactly the point, right? | ||
| Is that you have a very good reason for your circumstances? | ||
| And these programs are not thinking about what it's going to be like for an individual like yourself to have to go through the hoops to either prove to your state government that you have an exemption or prove to your state government that you are working the minimum hours required that would be under this this law. | ||
| So it will be extremely difficult. | ||
| And I'd encourage you to share, if you haven't already, to share your thoughts about your personal experiences with the lawmakers in your state to help them understand what the real life impact of this bill would have for yourself and people who have similar circumstances to you. | ||
| And just to sort of give people an update on where this is, this version of the legislation that we're talking about is the version that was passed by the House. | ||
| The Senate's looking at it now. | ||
| The Senate will make its own version that they'll vote on, and then the House and the Senate would have to come together to pass something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's exactly right. | |
| That's exactly right. | ||
| The House already passed this out, and now the Senate is negotiating over the provisions. | ||
| I think we're waiting to see some of those initial, sort of what some of those negotiations yield on the health care programs. | ||
| We expect potentially next week we could see some initial text. | ||
| But whatever comes out from the House will have to be reconciled with the, sorry, from the Senate will have to be reconciled with the House. | ||
| And so there's still a bit more here until we know how exactly this bill will move forward. | ||
| Although it is important that the way that this bill is structured, it doesn't take 60 votes in the Senate. | ||
| It would only take a simple majority. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Okay, let's hear from Mark in Dayton, Ohio on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
| Go ahead, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're on with us in Washington Journal. | |
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| I greatly appreciate the opportunity to put in a question. | ||
| I just wanted to make a comment that C-SPAN is quite an impressive show to watch on these matters. | ||
| And in the terms of Medicare and Medicaid and all the expenses we incur, I happen to be a physician, and I just wanted to ask, you know, a perspective of mine is that, you know, that we do pay a great deal of taxes, you know, in the United States for these services. | ||
| And I think certainly physicians feel that everyone should have a right to care. | ||
| And I certainly feel that way many times from nonpayers. | ||
| I don't really care, frankly, if we always, you know, make money for our care. | ||
| But that being said, you know, there is concern, in my view, anecdotally, rather long period of experience taking care of patients where there are many patients who really, in my view, can work and aren't doing a fair part in their efforts in society, younger ones that maybe get on disability for maybe not such great valid reasons, you know, from a physician perspective. | ||
| And we have this rising cost in our budget, and this is a big element. | ||
| You know, what's the answer to that when we have these bills that we can just criticize because someone like the last caller can say he's disabled, and I agree he is. | ||
| But how do we discriminate between those who are genuinely disabled and not? | ||
| Don't we have to have some regulation on this point? | ||
| Mark, thank you so much for the question. | ||
| I think it's a really important one. | ||
| And I would say to you, look, the system is complicated, and I think this legislation could be focused on making the system more efficient. | ||
| It could be focused on actually improving some of the processes and addressing some of the underlying drivers of what makes care so unaffordable and the cost of care increase year after year. | ||
| It could be focused on reducing the complexity of the system and making it easier for individuals to navigate the programs, but that's not what it's doing. | ||
| This system, this bill is about making it much more difficult for people who are eligible for Medicaid to stay eligible or eligible for the ACA marketplaces to stay eligible. | ||
| And so forcing them to terminate their coverage and to fall off. | ||
| And I think to your point about individuals and working, I think again, like the data shows us that the vast majority of folks who rely on Medicaid for health insurance are already working or they have an exemption because they are a person with disabilities. | ||
| They are a full-time caregiver or they're a student. | ||
| And so there are checks and balances in place already to make sure that the folks who are eligible for Medicaid are on Medicaid and get to stay on Medicaid. | ||
| But I appreciate your concern and understand where you're coming from on that. | ||
| It is a challenging balance to strike. | ||
| Healthcare policy organization KFSKF has some polling on who's using Medicaid and the ACA marketplace. | ||
| I just want to read a little bit here. | ||
| Millions of adults who get health insurance from Medicaid and the ACA marketplaces across the political spectrum are at risk of losing coverage if the current version of the reconciliation bill becomes law. | ||
| While most Medicaid beneficiaries under the age of 65 are Democrats or lean Democratic, 37%, or do not lean towards either party, 36%, more than one in four are Republicans or lean that way, including one in five, 19%, who identify as MAGA supporters, President Trump's strongest base of support. | ||
| Republicans also make up 45% of adults who purchase their own health insurance, most of whom do so through the ACA marketplaces, including about 3 in 10, 31%, who identify with the MAGA movement. | ||
| About one-third, 35%, are Democrats or lean that way, and one in five do not identify or lean towards either political party. | ||
| And here's a graph showing that. | ||
| And this is, again, looking at people aged 18 to 64 enrolled in either the ACA marketplace health care plans or Medicaid. | ||
| So the distribution of these programs goes across the political spectrum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, absolutely. | |
| I mean, the thing about health and healthcare is that it doesn't see political parties, right? | ||
| I mean, everybody, whether you're Republican, Democrat, or anything in between or other, needs access to health care, affordable health care that's high quality so they get the care they need at a price that they can afford and that's exactly what these programs are designed to do. | ||
| Dave is in Armstrong Creek, Wisconsin on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my call. | |
| Our health care system is a mix of private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans insurance. | ||
| It's very expensive. | ||
| It's more expensive than any other place in the world for the type of country we are. | ||
| It seems to me that the less people that are on insurance, some kind of an insurance, they're just going to go to the emergency room. | ||
| We can't deny people coverage at the emergency room, but that's just going to make it more expensive for everybody else. | ||
| So my solution would be some type of a universal care system. | ||
| We should be able to figure that out. | ||
| It's just there's no political will to do it. | ||
| It'd probably be cheaper, more efficient, with less paperwork and administrative stuff involved. | ||
| So that's my view of it. | ||
| And as far as kicking people off insurance for whatever reason they can come up with, basically it's just going to end up making it more expensive for everybody else. | ||
| So that's my point. | ||
| Dave, thank you so much for the question. | ||
| I think you're exactly right. | ||
| When people lose their health insurance, they delay care, they skip care altogether until they're sicker and sicker, and then they show up in the emergency room when they're much, much sicker and need much more costly intervention to treat the illness that they're dealing with. | ||
| And those emergency departments, those hospitals and health systems end up being overwhelmed and have to absorb all the additional individuals who don't have insurance and haven't gotten that preventive care that you've talked about, haven't been able to see their doctor far in advance of that emergency room visit to help them manage their heart disease or their diabetes or to make sure that they can get access to their medications to treat their asthma or whatever the illness or condition might be that they're dealing with. | ||
| So I think you're absolutely right when folks are uninsured. | ||
| The emergency room absorbs, the hospitals absorb a lot of those costs and it's extremely expensive. | ||
| It's the most expensive care in the country. | ||
| And I think you raise a really important point, which is that health care is very expensive in this country. | ||
| And this bill could be focused on actually addressing the underlying drivers of why our premiums go up every month, why our out-of-pocket costs go up every month. | ||
| But it's not. | ||
| It's focused on creating red tape, making it more difficult for people to get enrolled to force people off coverage for those tax breaks for the billionaires, big corporations. | ||
| But it could be focused on making the system work better. | ||
| It could be focused on addressing the fact that we see big health care corporations sucking up more and more power so they can just increase our prices and our premiums year after year with no oversight. | ||
| Something that has had bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats in the past. | ||
| But we haven't actually seen this Congress been able to take that up or those priorities articulated in the context of this bill. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mary is in Newport, Rhode Island on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
| I guess we lost Mary there. | ||
| Let's hear from Crystal in Hillsdale, Michigan on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Crystal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi there. | ||
| You're on with Sophia Tripoli of Families USA. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Out here in the real world, there is a lot of scam going on. | ||
| I have had people ask me to buy their food stamps, okay? | ||
| So you can't tell me it's not going on. | ||
| I've seen people in the parking lots pouring out cans a pop to get the deposit here because our deposit is 10 cents for each can. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So, I mean, if you're going to let them, let them have what they want, you know, but make them pay their own deposit if they're going to do things like that. | ||
| You know? | ||
| As far as health care, do you know if I as an insured person go to a clinic and use my insurance, it costs me $75 to $100 more than a person that walks in without insurance? | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| I think I can't speak to the specific circumstances of your insurance benefits or sort of what your arrangement is, but I think ultimately what you're pointing out is actually a very big challenge in the healthcare system, which sometimes to pay out of pocket without insurance, healthcare costs less than to pay through your insurance provider. | ||
| And that is getting to that point that I sort of mentioned in response to the last caller about what are some of the underlying reasons why healthcare is so expensive in this country. | ||
| And it's not because too many people are in the program, it's because we have these, we've seen this incredible proliferation and growth of corporate health systems that are finding all the different ways to identify loopholes and game the system and making that part of their business model. | ||
| And the business model is about how do I increase prices as fast as I can. | ||
| And I would say that's probably the underlying reason why you're seeing such a price differential. | ||
| And there's been attempts, including from the current president and his last administration, to increase the transparency of what the prices are that people have for insurance for exactly that reason because there is so much variation in what people are paying. | ||
| And we have to get our arms around that as a healthcare system. | ||
| We have a text from Judith in Newark, Delaware, who's an independent, and says, As a medical resident in Florida, I cared for many women who flew to Florida from other countries in the late stages of pregnancy to facilitate delivery, with the result being an infant with U.S. citizenship. | ||
| Medicaid paid for their care and the care of the infant. | ||
| The infant would return to the country of origin to later return later in life as a U.S. citizen. | ||
| Can the guest comment on whether this is an appropriate use of Medicaid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I can't comment on those specific circumstances, but what I can tell you is that for individuals who have without documentation, so undocumented individuals, they are already prohibited under federal law from having access to federally funded health care programs. | |
| There are some lawfully present individuals, such as green card holders or people with working visas, that are able to be eligible or qualify for some health care programs, including Medicaid, after what's referred to as a five-year waiting period. | ||
| And so those are already federal laws on the books. | ||
| It's very rigorous. | ||
| But the bill that we're talking about here today, the Big Beautiful Bill Act, would make it so that many folks who are lawfully present would actually lose their access to health coverage. | ||
| It also takes it one step further. | ||
| And in some of these instances, states are able to determine that they want to use their own state dollars, so not federal dollars, but their own state dollars to extend benefits to certain individuals based on the state decision, which they have the authority to do. | ||
| And what this bill would do is actually penalize the states have done that by taking away some of their federal money to help fund their Medicaid program. | ||
| And so I think those specific circumstances I can't speak directly to, but I do know that it's very that those are the current federal laws around immigrant health care. | ||
| John is in Hickory Flat, Mississippi, on our line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Yes, I got a question. | ||
| They're talking about work requirements. | ||
| I've been on Medicare and disability stuff since 2012. | ||
| But I worked since I was 15 years old. | ||
| I'm totally blind now. | ||
| So is there going to be work requirements for me? | ||
| And are they going to mess with my substance current? | ||
| So I think the work requirement provisions are specifically for states who've expanded Medicaid. | ||
| I believe you said you're from Mississippi. | ||
| So those provisions would not be applicable to you in Mississippi, but there will be other impacts of the program that potentially could affect you and others in Mississippi. | ||
| But these provisions around work requirements are specifically targeted to 10 states, so that's 41 states, including the District of Columbia, who have expanded Medicaid, and it targets the folks who rely on Medicaid in the expansion population. | ||
| Rodney is in Elgin, Texas, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Rodney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Your guest states that she doesn't think or the system is not designed for. | ||
| But, you know, it can be changed. | ||
| You know, under the Affordable Care Act, which is a law, able-bodied people can be on it. | ||
| Okay, you got 20 million people that over the last four years came into this country. | ||
| They need housing. | ||
| They need education. | ||
| They need jobs. | ||
| They need medical costs. | ||
| Where do you think this stuff has come from? | ||
| It's coming from these programs that are allowing these people to live here. | ||
| Although they couldn't function. | ||
| So when she says these things, it's just in generalist at best. | ||
| You gotta be aware of that. | ||
| Rodney, which thing specifically do you think is disingenuous? | ||
|
unidentified
|
About what she says about she doesn't think that illegal immigrants are on these programs, SNAP and Medicare and stuff like that, that gives you aid so you can survive. | |
| So hold your thought for a moment. | ||
| I want to let Sophia respond to your characterization of her comments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rodney, thank you so much for the question. | |
| And I can hear the conviction in your voice about how important this is to you. | ||
| And I understand that and really appreciate you raising the point. | ||
| Look, I can't speak to the specifics of who you're interacting with in your community, but what I can tell you is what the federal law currently is. | ||
| And it's that undocumented immigrants, undocumented immigrants, already are barred from accessing health care programs that are funded with federal dollars. | ||
| That's already the law on the books. | ||
| You have some states who are using their own state dollars to fill some of those holes. | ||
| That's a state-level decision. | ||
| And you have folks who are here legally who have lawful residency status because they're green card holders or they have work visas or they might be refugees or seeking asylum, all here lawfully present individuals that eventually, after five years of waiting, eventually could be eligible for some programs. | ||
| And so those are the current rules under the books, on the books already. | ||
| And this bill is trying to undo some of those provisions. | ||
| Did you have a follow-up question, Rodney? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because do you have 20 million people that need care? | |
| And the last administration allowed this to happen. | ||
| You can build a house for one family and change it to have four families in there. | ||
| So you can't sit there and just say that the laws are in the books. | ||
| How do you expect to keep 20 million people in this country? | ||
| I see. | ||
| So Rodney, it seems like your point is that regardless of what the laws are, what's happening is that these folks are using these benefits. | ||
| Nope, I think we lost Rodney there. | ||
| Okay, well, let's go on to another caller. | ||
| Sally is in Malvern, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I worked in the adult probation office in Pittsburgh for 24 years. | |
| And at the end, I felt very strongly that people who are in this population have so many burdens to bear that they have had no control over in their lives. | ||
| And I do not think it's fair to place any additional burdens on them. | ||
| I feel that if they can work, they usually do. | ||
| And if they don't, it's because they can't. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Do you want to respond? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I mean, thank you very much, Sally. | ||
| I think you make a really good point. | ||
| I think it is a challenging. | ||
| I think, you know, half of folks around the country don't have $400 or $500 in their bank accounts for emergency for emergencies. | ||
| And so I think my experience is the same, that if folks can work, they are. | ||
| And again, in these programs, we know that the vast majority of folks are working or have reasons under federal law that they can't be. | ||
| And so they have an exemption from being able to work. | ||
| Next up is Mike in Montgomery, Alabama on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call, Kimberly. | ||
| So earlier this year, the country witnessed the assassination of United Healthcare executive gunned down in the streets of New York City. | ||
| It seems leaders of other large health care providers like Blue Cross, Anthem, Aetna have kept a low-key profile and limited their public appearances with just cause. | ||
| Can your guests comment on this latest phenomenon in the country? | ||
| Thank you very much for the question. | ||
| I think I want to just say, you know, as an individual, I think any violence against anyone, particularly murder, is definitely not the path forward. | ||
| So I think there's that. | ||
| I will say, you know, I think this larger dynamic around people's deep frustration with the health care system. | ||
| And healthcare costs are exorbitant. | ||
| They're increasing every year. | ||
| We know that the system is incredibly complicated. | ||
| It's hard to navigate. | ||
| And when people are able to navigate it, they're feeling like they're getting dropped through the cracks of the system, that they are not getting the call back, that they have to wait six months to see their primary care provider. | ||
| The healthcare system does need important changes. | ||
| It does need to be improved. | ||
| The costs need to come down. | ||
| And we know that voters in the November election told us that costs was their number one issue, including rising health care costs. | ||
| And so there are solutions on the table that are bipartisan, that have been Republicans and Democrats alike that have championed in the past Congress. | ||
| And I think are still on the table for this Congress as well to address some of those underlying issues of the health care system to make it more efficient, to actually make it more efficient, to actually bring down the cost of care. | ||
| But it's not forcing people off of health care coverage. | ||
| It's not making them more economically vulnerable. | ||
| It's about how do we make the system work better for everybody and how do we bring down health care costs? | ||
| And we know that forcing people off of health care coverage does increase health care costs for those individuals. | ||
| Another question about potential fraud, this one from Kent in Graham, Texas, who asks, how about Medicaid fraud is practiced by misuse of block grants and borrowed matching funds that are immediately repaid when the federal money is received? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This question from Kent in Graham, Texas. | |
| I'm not exactly sure. | ||
| I'm tracking the question, but I think that Medicaid is not a block grant program. | ||
| It's funded through a federal and state partnership where the federal government, there's a technical formula that's used to help determine how much the federal government contributes and how much each state contributes. | ||
| And that's the current funding structure under the Medicaid program right now. | ||
| Well, that is all the time that we have. | ||
| Thank you so much, Sophia Tripoli, who is the Health Policy Senior Director at Families USA. | ||
| We appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you very much to you. | ||
| And coming up next, we'll take more of your calls and comments in open forum. | ||
| Our numbers, again, for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Weekends bring you Book TV, featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Book TV presents coverage of this year's Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland. | ||
| Authors will discuss wrongful conviction, AI and art, the American Revolution, and more. | ||
| Pennsylvania Republican Senator Dave McCormick and his wife Dina share their book, Who Believed in You, which talks about the importance of mentors and shares stories of successful politicians and business leaders who have had their lives changed by them. | ||
| Then, on afterwards, Stephanie Land discusses her path from working as a maid to earning a journalism degree and later writing about the working poor in her book, Maid. | ||
| She's interviewed by Rachel Schneider, co-author of The Financial Diaries. | ||
| Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| this show and c-span is one of the few places left in america where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue and And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
| I love C-SPAN too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's why I'm here today. | |
| Answer questions all day, every day. | ||
| Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | |
| I love this show. | ||
| This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about. | ||
| American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thank C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked and where people have to answer to them. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open forum, ready to take your calls and comments. | ||
| We'll start with Jack in Monticello, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wanted to thank you for C-SPAN and giving the various opinions and thank you for your presentations this morning. | ||
| Very quickly, I'd like to say on the issue of welfare, it's amazing how the biggest part of the national debt is military spending. | ||
| And no one on the Republican side seems to be addressing that. | ||
| I think that the same approach that they take with welfare, they should take with military spending, as well as the high budgetary prices that are occurring because of greed. | ||
| So if you could have someone to address that, please. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Robert is in Virginia Beach, Virginia on our line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Robert. | |
| Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to say that I support President Trump and his sending of the National Guard. | ||
| I do support legal migrants, you know, people who apply and receive permission and come the correct way. | ||
| And as for myself, I will continue voting Republican because we need law and order as we're seeing with these protests. | ||
| These big Democrat cities are not supporting law and order. | ||
| And I also support the Republicans as far as social issues. | ||
| And that's all I wanted to say. | ||
| Have a good Sunday, everyone. | ||
| Jack is in Torrington, Connecticut, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, I'd just like to say that calling from the Constitution state, I'm not quite sure why everyone is so angry, so upset. | ||
| We have a document that has been provided to us from men of vision who understood that there had to be a different way that we conducted our society going forward. | ||
| So we have this Constitution that gives us these inalienable and unalienable rights to pursue our God-given talents and purposes to be the best that we can be. | ||
| And now, here we are with all these God-given blessings about to destroy what God has done for us in this country. | ||
| And I'm not quite sure. | ||
| The last gentleman, not to pick out anyone, is kind of a prime example, but we're so invested into these political parties. | ||
| Why? | ||
| We need to understand, we need to put responsible people in office, people who understand the Constitution, the spirit of the Constitution, the men who wrote the Constitution, the history. | ||
| People talk about slavery, for example. | ||
| Well, the Constitution is the best narrative for slavery because it gave us a way out of slavery to show us what our inalienable and unalienable rights bring us. | ||
| And to be living in a day and in a time when the leader of this country is putting the Constitution under fire. | ||
| He is supposed to be uplifting, protecting, defending the Constitution, and I'm not sure that he even understands it. | ||
| And we all need to take a civics lesson, and we need to watch more C-SPAN, get our news from Washington unfiltered, so we can see how our representatives are really acting while on the job and not just getting sound bites that are filtered through their favorite media outlets. | ||
| Thank you very much for giving me this time and continue the great job at CPAN. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Jack was mentioning history there and American history, and some of that is being marked this weekend. | ||
| A story in the Associated Press that D-Day veterans returned to Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings. | ||
| This is in France. | ||
| Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings, a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler's regime. | ||
| Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments. | ||
| Now, our previous guest who was with us earlier in the show, Erin McLean of the Hudson Institute, also has a podcast called The School of War. | ||
| And the most recent episode is on the invasion of Normandy. | ||
| That's at the School of War podcast. | ||
| And then a previous episode is also on the Ukraine attack on Russia, which we were discussing earlier in the show as well. | ||
| Back to your calls and open forum. | ||
| Katrina is in Columbus, Ohio on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Katrina. | ||
| And can you turn down the volume on your TV, Katrina? | ||
| Then please continue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Along the coastline and near the D-Day. | |
| One moment doing that. | ||
| Okay, can you hear me better? | ||
| Yes, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm actually calling in because I actually was a SNAP benefit worker when I worked in Ohio. | ||
| And what I have a problem with is that we gave undocumented citizens benefits and we would turn down actual taxpayers, which I thought was unfair. | ||
| You only use half of the income of the undocumented citizen, meaning that they always are going to be eligible for SNAP benefits. | ||
| And it's in the parent's name and not the child. | ||
| So I just feel like to where in this being in the state of Ohio, there are a lot of, I would say, refugees that are here. | ||
| Like I said, I would be able to give benefits to them and not tax paying citizens. | ||
| And I also would see where the system was being, you know, abused by, you know, refugees that are coming into the country. | ||
| So I don't understand why that is happening when you got taxpayers that are paying into a system that's being denied and given and benefits is given to people that are non-citizens just because they had a child here in the United States, but she never was supposed to be here anyway. | ||
| So I just have a problem with that. | ||
| So Katrina, what do you think of the Republicans, the House bill that the Republicans passed that proposes to make even more federal benefits ineligible if you're an undocumented immigrant? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree with it. | |
| And I say that because I've seen so many people getting turned down that are taxpaying benefit, you know, taxpayers, you know, in the state of Ohio. | ||
| And like I said, you'll have somebody come in and you're an undocumented citizen and you have to proclaim that to me that you're an undocumented citizen and you're granted benefits. | ||
| That's just really unfair. | ||
| Thanks let's hear now from DeAndre in Baltimore, Maryland on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, DeAndre. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good to see you again. | ||
| I hope everyone's doing great. | ||
| So that's open forum. | ||
| I definitely went to give a tribute and a homage to USS Liberty. | ||
| 58 years ago today, USS Liberty and international waters was attacked for six hours, actually. | ||
| 34 sailors were killed and 173 were wounded. | ||
| And that was the only time actually the American military never responded when they were directly attacked. | ||
| And the person that came to that attack is our greatest ally, and we all know who that is. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting how right now Steve Witcost, you know, and Iranian nuclear deals kind of fell apart. | ||
| And, you know, they're like, you know, that helps to Israel's advantage so they can continue their ongoing genocide and extermination. | ||
| Andre, just because I think folks may not be familiar with this story that you're referencing, this is from history.com. | ||
| Israel attacks the USS Liberty. | ||
| During the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty in international waters off Egypt's Gaza Strip. | ||
| The intelligence ship, well marked as an American vessel and only lightly armed, was attacked first by Israeli aircraft that fired napalm and rockets at the ship. | ||
| The Liberty attempted to radio for assistance, but the Israeli aircraft blocked the transmissions. | ||
| Eventually, the ship was able to make contact with the U.S. carrier Saratoga, and 12 fighter jets and four tanker planes were dispatched to defend the Liberty. | ||
| When word of their deployment reached Washington, however, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered them recalled to the carrier, and they never reached the Liberty. | ||
| The reason for the recall remains unclear. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you so much for pointing that out. | |
| I think it's an important day, especially in the times now, to point out these facts and things that actually happened. | ||
| I think people are starting to agree that Israel and the Zionist state and their war-mongering campaign is not necessarily compatible with America and what we want to do for our nation and our interests. | ||
| And I think the Zionist lobbyist and the Christian Zionists as well is definitely a fork in the road. | ||
| But God willing, we'll make a way. | ||
| I think our veterans and our military servicemen will eventually come to their senses and try to do something by a moral compass, not just Midas, right? | ||
| I think after 20 months, we've seen enough. | ||
| We've seen enough. | ||
| We see who's a bad guy. | ||
| We see who's taught alive. | ||
| We American people, we're being humiliated right now. | ||
| By our representatives who was put in office to represent us, and they're receiving hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars from APAC. | ||
| Let's hear from Gary in Connorsville, Indiana on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
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Gary. | |
| Hello, everyone. | ||
| And start off with, I want to commend Jack in Connecticut for all the points he made about the Constitution. | ||
| They were really excellent. | ||
| And I got to respect that. | ||
| Unfortunately, there's not enough people out there who do respect the Constitution. | ||
| And, you know, it was put together for a reason. | ||
| You know, it was for our well-being and our best interest as a whole and as each one of us individually. | ||
| And I've always honored the Constitution myself. | ||
| And so kudos to Jack and other supporters of the Constitution. | ||
| But another thing I want to point out is the topic of discussion with Mr. McLean and the speech by Mr. Harrigan in court. | ||
| And he was talking about how we're not up to the same level of Russia and China as far as their defense methods and whatnot. | ||
| And that's troublesome. | ||
| And we better, I don't know why we didn't do what we needed to do to get up to that point before. | ||
| Because we know what we're dealing with. | ||
| China and Russia hate us and they hate democracy in general, anything to do with it. | ||
| And I hope we got a lot of good allies ready because they're going to I'm afraid they're going to come after us and I don't know how we've been spared this long. | ||
| I don't know what they're waiting on. | ||
| And plus we're a nation divided. | ||
| You know, they got to be licking their chops like wolves, getting ready to jump on meat. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Gary, your line's breaking up a bit. | ||
| So let's go to Tom in Miami-Spurg, Ohio on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Good morning, dear. | ||
| This is the old dumb knocking on 99, 90-year-old Hillbilly. | ||
| I don't know where to start. | ||
| So I'll Tom, can you turn down the volume on your TV and then you can go ahead with your point? | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, this is Tom, Mr. Knocking on 90-year-old Hillbilly. | |
| I paid into Social Security from the time I was 14, and I worked till 77. | ||
| I think I'm entitled to that. | ||
| But where you got people, Make America Great Again, you know what that stands for, don't you? | ||
| Make America go away. | ||
| And then this Doge nonsense. | ||
| That's Department of Government Elimination. | ||
| I am so thankful that I don't have much longer to go, but I feel sorry for my 12 grandkids, 11 great-grandkids. | ||
| They're not going to stand a chance whatsoever to survive. | ||
| I've got a granddaughter who was in the Navy, got out, thank heavens. | ||
| She was a nuclear engineer, her and her husband both. | ||
| They both got out of the service. | ||
| I am so thankful, maybe, that they will have a chance. | ||
| It's just a shame that we let politics and money get to the situation that we are in now. | ||
| As I say, it's just a shame. | ||
| I used to live in West Palm Beach. | ||
| I used to see Psycho Don every day. | ||
| My wife lived there from 53 till 88. | ||
| Her sister lived there till she passed away five weeks ago. | ||
| In fact, she was in school with Don, Psycho Don, when he was in Palm Beach County schools. | ||
| He lasted three days and got kicked out, barred from Palm Beach County schools. | ||
| I think we've got your idea, Tom. | ||
| Let's go to Rick in Pensacola, Florida, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, good morning. | |
| A couple of things. | ||
| I'm a physician, and I'm speaking in reference to the last guest that you had talking about the cost of health care. | ||
| When folks that are uninsured, including current immigrants that are not covered by any health plan and are barred from participating in Medicaid, they need health care. | ||
| They have babies. | ||
| They get sick, and they access our emergency departments in the United States. | ||
| And those costs are passed on to everybody else. | ||
| And so whether they're part of a program or not, we were really not prepared to absorb the number of people that came into the United States over the last several years. | ||
| And we are paying for those. | ||
| Personally, my insurance is $2,000 a month, so that's $24,000 a year, and I have a $6,000 deductible. | ||
| So as an insured person, nothing is covered until I reach $30,000 each year. | ||
| And it's to pay for those things. | ||
| And the other thing that's interesting is just the fact is that about 50% of the health care expenditures in the United States are spent on about 5% of the population. | ||
| And those are most of the chronic illnesses that you hear so much about in the news. | ||
| And the other thing that's interesting with respect to these chronic illnesses, these are not children that are born with conditions they have no control over. | ||
| Most of this in the United States is self-inflicted injury, either through tobacco or obesity with overeating or drug use, lack of exercise. | ||
| And so it's a complicated system with a lot of moving parts. | ||
| But I felt that some of the information that was provided by your guests was a little misleading, although probably fairly factual. | ||
| It was a little superficial and lacked some nuance. | ||
| Thanks for sharing your expertise, Rick. | ||
| Let's hear from Scott in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, hello there to everybody. | |
| And when Bob Marley would give a concert, he would always say, you know, it's so good and pleasant for brothers and sisters to be here together in one entity, which is unity. | ||
| And this is how I feel when I watch the program. | ||
| I want to say, Kim, you've gotten just tremendous at what you're doing. | ||
| And it's such a joy to watch. | ||
| I mean, you've just improved spectacularly. | ||
| You know, I was watching a few days before the election, and three people were interviewing Donald Trump, and they were peppering questions at him. | ||
| And it came around to the subject of the JFK files. | ||
| And, oh, Trump blurted out immediately, oh, yes, we're going to release that. | ||
| And then the lady asked about some other files, and oh, immediately, yes. | ||
| And then the Epstein files, and he immediately said yes. | ||
| And then he began to backtrack. | ||
| And as I was watching this in real time, I'm thinking, if Trump wins, we are never going to see the Epstein file. | ||
| Okay, now, I would like everyone to really see that. | ||
| You should show it one day. | ||
| He puts his head down. | ||
| He starts, he says some gibberish about why. | ||
| Well, that might not be a good idea now. | ||
| You know, there might be somebody in there that, oh, really? | ||
| Now, subsequently, and you reporters, please get on this story. | ||
| Subsequently, we have had Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, who went out of their way to say that they did not believe Epstein killed himself. | ||
| They went out of their way to say this. | ||
| I saw it a few times from both of them. | ||
| And the other day I see now, I don't know where this took place. | ||
| I don't know what interview it was. | ||
| Those two were standing next to each other. | ||
| It looked like a hostage video. | ||
| First, Cash said, oh, no, no, no, we, no, he committed suicide. | ||
| You know, that's all there is to it. | ||
| And then Dan Bongino kind of piped in. | ||
| I would like the reporters out there to please get on this story. | ||
| Okay, let's hear from a few other folks. | ||
| Neil is in Fountain Inn, South Carolina on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Neil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Awesome. | |
| First of all, thank you, C-SPAN, for what you do. | ||
| I feel like I'm in graduate school every time I turn your show on. | ||
| So I want to make three points. | ||
| Point number one is: I really do wish that someone would do a deep dive training on the importance of Citizens United legislation and how when that legislation was enacted, it completely gutted the agency of the vote. | ||
| Number two, when you have a person that is convicted of 32 felonies and we wait and see if he gets elected before we decide to sentence, that completely guts the Constitution. | ||
| It guts the concept of law and order. | ||
| And then point number three. | ||
| How can we talk about law and order when we saw with our own eyes what happened January 6th? | ||
| And now we're convinced to just let it go away. | ||
| In fact, let's pardon the criminals who committed the act. | ||
| And we're talking about a Constitution. | ||
| And I'll say one other thing. | ||
| The challenge with capitalism is that it does not require democracy. | ||
| So we're being led to believe, oh, we're fighting for this democracy. | ||
| No, we're not. | ||
| No, we're not. | ||
| Because with Citizens United legislation and this person being allowed to occupy the White House, my vote stands the chance of meaning absolutely nothing. | ||
| Thank you, C-STAN, for what you do, and I hope everyone has a great day. | ||
| Kevin is in Illinois on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| God bless everyone this fine Sunday morning here in southern Illinois. | ||
| Just want to let everyone know that the reason we're here today is because of God. | ||
| The reason Trump's there, it's because of God. | ||
| If you don't mind, I'd like to say a prayer for the country. | ||
| Our Father who art in heaven, excuse me, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. | ||
| Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | ||
| Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. | ||
| Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. | ||
| For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. | ||
| And God, we pray you bless our country. | ||
| We pray you keep our leaders strong. | ||
| We pray that, Lord, we stand for our values. | ||
| And I tell you, you people that say God's not real, Jesus is not real, the Holy Spirit's not real, God showed me what he showed Moses. | ||
| I left a pan of water on my house. | ||
| I went to church. | ||
| I was gone four hours. | ||
| I went back home. | ||
| The pan was shining with no water in it, just like the bush burning for Moses. | ||
| Thank you, Kevin. | ||
| Jake is in New York City on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jake. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
| Okay, I don't know what that whole thing was about, but I guess he's a religious guy. | ||
| Open forums. | ||
| Yeah, so I just want to just mention real quick, just I don't know if it's been mentioned just because of the, you know, housewives of Pennsylvania have no ever be watched this week, but the whole thing regarding about how Donald Trump just got rid of the executive order that Joe Biden put in for allowing emergency abortions to happen. | ||
| So I guess we're just going to continue to believe that the whole country is just going to ignore all these little stories because this is all about distraction. | ||
| It's all about distraction. | ||
| And then the biggest distraction next weekend, because there's already video online that's showing tanks are rolling into Washington, D.C. for his parade. | ||
| Let's be very clear. | ||
| It's his birthday next weekend. | ||
| It has nothing to do with representing the military, nothing at all. | ||
| So please, people, wake up. | ||
| This is becoming North Korea. | ||
| And it's becoming Russia. | ||
| So please, everyone, please wake up. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Jake was making reference to a rolling back of a Biden-era executive order. | ||
| I found a story about this in Healthcare Dive. | ||
| Trump administration rescinds Biden-era guidance protecting access to emergency abortions. | ||
| The CMS, Centers for Medicare Services, Medicare and Medicaid Services, says it will continue to enforce EMTALA, including in cases where the health of pregnant women or unborn child are in serious jeopardy. | ||
| The Trump administration rescinded guidance on Tuesday directing hospitals to perform abortions during medical emergencies, even in states with restrictive abortion bans. | ||
| The Biden administration published the guidance in 2022, shortly after Roe versus Wade was overturned, asserting that doctors were required to perform emergency care, even if that included abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. | ||
| Derek is in Indianola, Mississippi, on our line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Derek. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I find it appalling right now that people are complaining about people that were here to work for all of the things that is being fielded from Florida, California, and you know, in cases. | |
| What are you complaining about? | ||
| These are things that you want. | ||
| You want this, but you complain about them having health care. | ||
| You can't be complaining about that and then want them deported. | ||
| That doesn't make sense. | ||
| They have to be healthy as well. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, that is all of the time that we have for our show today. | ||
| Thank you to everyone who called in for Open Forum and our other segments in the show. | ||
| As usual, we're going to be back tomorrow morning with another edition of Washington Journal starting tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| We hope you'll join us, and everybody have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy. | |
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| Coming up Monday morning, Center for American Progress's Bobby Kogan and National Taxpayer Union's Damien Brady discuss potential cuts to the budget found in the White House rescissions package and the one big beautiful bill. | ||
| Then, Joey Garrison of USA Today previews the week ahead at the White House. | ||
| Also, the Hills Emily Brooks examines the week ahead in Congress. | ||
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| And next, U.N. Security Council members discuss a failed resolution calling for an immediate end to the Israel-Hamas war, a resolution which was vetoed by the U.S. | ||
| Then Senators question Education Secretary Linda McMahon about her department's 2026 budget proposal, and later more from the Education Secretary testifying before the House Education Committee on her department's priorities. | ||
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