| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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McCord of Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection on the legal and constitutional authority behind deploying the U.S. military. | |
| And a discussion about current deportation policy and the ongoing protests in Los Angeles. | ||
| First, with Florida Republican Congressman Carlos Jimenez and later with New York Democratic Congressman Adriano Espayat. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. | ||
| And the president, he did it on purpose. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Wednesday, June 11th. | ||
| That was California Governor Gavin Newsom responding to President Trump's deployment of over 4,000 National Guard and 700 active duty Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests of his immigration actions. | ||
| We'll have more of the governor's remarks for you and President Trump's response. | ||
| And we'll take your calls and get your thoughts on that. | ||
| Republicans, call us on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We have a line set aside for active and retired military members. | ||
| Call us on 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can also use that same line to text us your comments, include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| You can also post your thoughts on social media. | ||
| It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Let's start with the LA Times. | ||
| Here's what they're reporting. | ||
| Curfew enacted for downtown LA. | ||
| ICE expands immigration raids. | ||
| It says that LA Mayor Bass announced a curfew for downtown Los Angeles following four nights of sporadically chaotic protests. | ||
| Also, ICE has expanded into rural communities following days of coordinated raids in urban areas of Los Angeles. | ||
| And here is the front page of the Washington Times this morning with the headline, Newsom bid to evict troops rejected. | ||
| The article says that a federal judge allowed President Trump at least two more days of free action to deploy troops to Los Angeles, putting off California's request for an immediate restraining order Tuesday as the city prepared for another round of clashes between anti-deportation protesters and law enforcement. | ||
| The judge said Mr. Trump deserved a chance to answer California Governor Newsom's demands, and he has set a hearing for Thursday to review the legal arguments over the deployment, which grew to 4,000 National Guard as well as 700 active duty Marines. | ||
| And let's take a look at what another portion of Governor Newsom's remarks from last night calling Trump's law enforcement activities an authoritarian regime. | ||
| If some of us could be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. | ||
| Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves, but they do not stop there. | ||
| Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control. | ||
| And by the way, Trump, he's not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. | ||
| What more evidence do we need than January 6th? | ||
| I ask everyone, take time, reflect on this perilous moment. | ||
| A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions. | ||
| This is a president who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. | ||
| He's declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. | ||
| Databases, quite literally, are vanishing. | ||
| He's delegitimizing news organizations, and he's assaulting the First Amendment and the threat of defunding them. | ||
| At threat, he's dictating what universities themselves can teach. | ||
| He's targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly in civil society. | ||
| He's calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to, in his own words, for getting elected. | ||
| And we all know this Saturday. | ||
| He's ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past. | ||
| Look, this isn't just about protests here in Los Angeles. | ||
| When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. | ||
| This is about all of us. | ||
| This is about you. | ||
| California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. | ||
| Other states are next. | ||
| Democracy is next. | ||
| Democracy is under assault before our eyes. | ||
| This moment we have feared has arrived. | ||
| Want to get your response to that? | ||
| His full remarks are on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| They run about eight minutes if you'd like to take a look at that in its entirety. | ||
| And President Trump has responded. | ||
| He put this on True Social about a little over 10 minutes ago. | ||
| He says, the incompetent governor of California was unable to provide protection in a timely manner when our ICE officers, great patriots they are, were attacked by an out-of-control mob of agitators, troublemakers, and or insurrectionists. | ||
| Make America great again. | ||
| Let's go to calls now. | ||
| Let's go to Samuel, South Pasadena, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Yeah, I think that Governor is totally wrong because when they were in there rioting and everything on the first and second day, they should have had the National Guard in there and they should have had more police in there from different cities around. | ||
| And, you know, when they were burning up the town and everything and looting and everything, they should have put down a curfew and all that. | ||
| They didn't do it. | ||
| Mayor Bats and the governor of California, let me tell you something, man. | ||
| They have a big problem on their hands. | ||
| And I'm glad that President Trump put all those National Guard and the United States Marines in there to protect those federal buildings. | ||
| Because if he didn't, they would have went in there and started burning everything in there. | ||
| So, Samuel, you're in South Pasadena. | ||
| How far are you from the protests? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're about maybe five, six miles away. | |
| Okay, and so does the curfew apply to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it don't. | |
| No, it don't. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the areas where they were looting and everything, and they were causing a lot of havoc in there. | |
| And, you know, that was terrible how they were throwing those cement boulders and rocks down the freeway, hitting those cars and everything. | ||
| Oh, this was a terrible riot down here. | ||
| And, Samuel, everybody. | ||
| Sorry, just one more question. | ||
| How are you following the news? | ||
| Are you watching national cable news or are you watching your local LA broadcasts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm watching Spectrum News, the local, and I'm watching cable, Fox News, and I'm watching CNN. | |
| I'm watching them all and everything. | ||
| And let me tell you something. | ||
| Fox News is telling the truth. | ||
| All the other stations, they're not telling the truth. | ||
| They're saying that 95% of the people were protesting and then 5% were causing a lot of trouble, lighting fires. | ||
| You got to be kidding me. | ||
| And then, when Gavin Newsom put the law down that he put a TRO down, he didn't want those National Guard or the Marines here. | ||
| And the federal judge heard, he says, no way, no way. | ||
| I was watching it. | ||
| I've seen what was going on. | ||
| We need those people here. | ||
| All right, Samuel. | ||
| And here's Alan in Brooklyn, New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you so much for the opportunity. | |
| I have the opportunity also to tune into your station about half an hour before this program, where they had a replay of President Trump speaking at Fort Bragg and stirring up the troops to be ready for a mission in Los Angeles that he very badly distorted. | ||
| And it was really kind of frightening to listen to the rhetoric. | ||
| I'd seen the speech by David Newsom last night and also your preview this morning, and the contrast is quite jarring. | ||
| Trump was appealing to these troops on the basis of a supposed invasion of our country by a foreign power. | ||
| And I know that when Hagseth was before the Congress the other day, and one of the congressmen asked him, which of the three legal bases that would authorize you to bring Marines onto the scene here to support federalized National Guard, which of those do you believe applies here? | ||
| And all three of them clearly did not apply. | ||
| And Hagseth had the nerve, instead of being specific, to say that all three applied, including an alleged invasion by a foreign power. | ||
| If the troops are going to be so lied to, what freedom are we defending here? | ||
| We supposedly defeated fascism in Germany, and during the President's speech yesterday, or the other day in Fort Bragg, he was praising heroes of all of our wars going back from the revolutionary through Vietnam and Iraq and totally ignored the context that the war in Europe was not just against Germans and Japanese, | ||
| it was against fascism, it was against lies, it was against the ability to propagandize the populations. | ||
| He was focusing on blood over national pride in our tradition of freedom and diversity. | ||
| He was emphasizing individual descendants of war heroes who were there. | ||
| And then after mentioning the names of each of them, he was again stressing, we have great genes, we have great blood. | ||
| He mentioned the hero of Sergeant York, and he focused on him not just being a Tennessee hero, but a Tennessee Christian hero. | ||
| So here he is praising the wars we've won in the past for supposedly American values and turning it into a celebration of ethnicity and religion and untruth. | ||
| And it was just frightening. | ||
| He did not once mention that he had the opportunity to defend the capital of the United States from rioters on January 6th, and he not only refused to bring in National Guard for hours, but then praised the rioters and then pardoned those who had been convicted. | ||
| And here he is claiming we need to come into Los Angeles. | ||
| All right, Alan, let's take a look at a portion of the President's speech from yesterday at Fort Bragg that Alan was talking about. | ||
| I want to applaud the courage and the strength of the incredible troops who are right now standing guard to protect federal property and personnel and uphold the supremacy of federal law. | ||
| That's what they're doing. | ||
| They're protecting our ICE agents. | ||
| They're protecting the police in Los Angeles. | ||
| The head of the police in Los Angeles, a good man, I hear a good man, but he was actually saying we really did need this help. | ||
| It had gotten away from them. | ||
| It had long gotten away. | ||
| And we gave it to him. | ||
| Not only are these service members defending the honest citizens of California, they're also defending our republic itself. | ||
| And they are heroes. | ||
| They're in there, the heroes. | ||
| They're fighting for us. | ||
| They're stopping an invasion just like you'd stop an invasion. | ||
| The big difference is most of the time when you stop an invasion, they're wearing a uniform. | ||
| In many ways, it's tougher when they're not wearing a uniform because you don't know exactly who they are. | ||
| In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles, they're incompetent. | ||
| And they paid troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists. | ||
| They're engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders. | ||
| It's what it is. | ||
| They're invaders, no different. | ||
| That was the president from yesterday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. | ||
| And here is Sean in Columbus, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Sean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| In regards to Governor Newsom's words, I think that he's dealing with a lot of facts when he's talking about examples of the president's disruptive leadership. | ||
| I know that both sides of the politician spectrum like to aggrandize things, but specifically yesterday when Harriet Hagerman was on, she was giving disinformation to a caller when they asked why the president didn't call the National Guard in for D.C. during January 6th. | ||
| The fact is the president is in charge of the National Guard of D.C., and she pushed it back on the mayor and the Speaker of the House, and that just wasn't true. | ||
| So, I mean, it's hard to consider things when they're not factual. | ||
| And all the examples that Governor Newsom gave are examples of what the president is currently obstructing, destroying. | ||
| So those are my thoughts on. | ||
| All right, Sean, here's Bradley in Clear Fork, West Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Bradley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| You know, the guy in New York and the guy in Ohio used to live in Ohio. | ||
| Get a suitcase, pack it up, and get out of the United States because you're not a true blue American. | ||
| Listen, we don't need these people running the border. | ||
| We don't need all this hectic stuff going on and burning stuff. | ||
| Wake up. | ||
| This morning I was on Channel's NBC before I got on Fox or C-STAN. | ||
| And Savannah made a comment that Trump was making a parade for his birthday. | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| It's a military anniversary, not necessarily his birthday. | ||
| But what does the Democrats have to do? | ||
| Blow it all out of proportion. | ||
| People like the guy in New York, people like the boy or kid in Ohio, they need to get their suitcase, like Sam, pack it up. | ||
| And, you know, these people coming in the United States, illegal, needs to go back. | ||
| Come to the United States with your paperwork, your green card, and all these people raising cane about them, picking strawberries and all this stuff. | ||
| They're here. | ||
| A lot of them are here with green cards. | ||
| You've got people to do this. | ||
| We don't need people in here illegal raping and killing the guy out in New York and Ohio if he had a sister or mother and got raped in the middle. | ||
| Very Bradley. | ||
| Got that. | ||
| And he did mention the parade. | ||
| That is set to happen this Saturday. | ||
| We will have coverage of that here on C-SPAN. | ||
| It will get underway. | ||
| Our live coverage begins at 6 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| And the parade itself begins at 6:30 p.m., followed by an enlistment and re-enlistment ceremony attended by President Trump. | ||
| And the evening will end with a parachute demonstration by the Army's Golden Knights, a concert, and fireworks. | ||
| That's all live starting at 6 p.m. right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| If you'd like to take a look at that, this is Mark in Ponca City, Oklahoma. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just want to say that the burning of the American flag and stuff is real disrespectful. | |
| And these people who are taking and doing it and playing the Mexican flag and stuff, if they're that loyal to Mexico, take Trump up on his $1,000 deal and get a plane ticket or so and go back to Mexico or whatever country they come from. | ||
| But I think Congress and the House of Representatives need to stand up to Trump and slow him down because he keeps sending all these people that these other countries don't want to other countries to house forever, literally, for being here illegally and spending all that money. | ||
| And I'd like to know how much that money is that Trump is spending. | ||
| And we're supposed to be trying to save money and everything, and the veterans parade and stuff. | ||
| And I think that, like the Russian president and stuff, Trump looks up to him. | ||
| All right, Mark. | ||
| And regarding costs, this is the AP reporting Los Angeles deployment to cost at least $134 million and last 60 days. | ||
| That's according to the Pentagon. | ||
| And Secretary Hegseth was in front of the House subcommittee hearing, Appropriations for Defense, where California Representative Pete Aguilar questioned him about the cost and President Trump's authority to deploy those troops. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What is the estimated cost of the deployment for the Guard and the Marines to LA, and where's this funding coming from? | |
| Will it be coming from quality of life programs that affect our service members or our families if you want to wait till I finish? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Before I hand it to such as updates, housing and barracks. | |
| Before I hand it to Bryn, the insinuation that we're pulling money from housing and barracks in order to fund this is disingenuous and incorrect. | ||
| Bryn can give you the numbers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So the current estimated cost is $134 million, which is largely just TDY costs, travel, housing, food, et cetera. | ||
| Where's it coming from? | ||
| That's the cost, but where is it coming from? | ||
| Their OM accounts. | ||
| With the most recent deployment of the Marines, Mr. Secretary, what's the justification for using the military for civilian law enforcement purposes in L.A.? | ||
| Why are you sending warfighters to cities to interact with civilians? | ||
| Every American citizen deserves to live in a community that's safe. | ||
| And ICE agents need to be able to do their job. | ||
| They're being attacked for doing their job, which is deporting illegal criminals. | ||
| That should happen in any city, Minneapolis or Los Angeles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if they're attacked, that's lawless, and President Trump believes in law and order. | |
| So he has every authority, and he has done mobilizing National Guard or active duty troops under U.S. code to protect federal agents in their job, which is exactly what we're doing, and we're proud to do it. | ||
| 10 USC of the U.S. Code 12406 as a legal basis that the President used cites three examples and circumstances for the Guard. | ||
| Invasion by a foreign nation, a rebellion or dangerous rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States, or the president is unable with regular forces to execute the laws of the United States. | ||
| Which authority is triggered here to justify the use? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| You just read it yourself and people can listen themselves, but it sounds like all three to me. | ||
| If you've got millions of illegals and you don't know where they're coming from, they're waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers and law enforcement officers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the problem. | |
| The laws of the United States. | ||
| The governor of California is unable to execute the laws of the United States. | ||
| The governor of the California has failed to protect his people along with the mayor of Los Angeles. | ||
| And so President Trump has said he will protect our agents and our Guard and Marines are proud of it. | ||
| It also says, Mr. Secretary, that the orders for these purposes shall be issued through governors of the states. | ||
| You and I both know that President Trump has all the authorities necessary, and thankfully he's willing to do it. | ||
| And this is also from the Associated Press. | ||
| School graduations in Los Angeles have added security over fears of ICE actions. | ||
| It says the ceremony, the ceremonies, which number over 100 between Monday and Tuesday alone, included a beefed up presence of school police, quote, to intervene and interfere with any federal agency who may want to take action during these joyous times. | ||
| That's a quote from the superintendent of Los Angeles School District. | ||
| And this is Rob in Port Crane, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This is exactly what I voted for. | ||
| If there were 20 million illegal aliens here, and that's what they're called, illegal aliens, they need to leave. | ||
| I saw them also waving those, waving Mexican flags and burning American flags. | ||
| And I totally agree with Pete Hegseth. | ||
| If they're going to burn U.S. flags, they don't need to be here. | ||
| And as far as what's his face goes, the governor of California, he needs to be locked up. | ||
| Tom Homan should lock him up, Karen Bass, all the rest of these politicians, these Democrats, that invite these people here in our country. | ||
| This is an invasion. | ||
| And I live in New York, like you said, and we are one of the worst states. | ||
| We're right there with California. | ||
| We have a governor who does not give a crap about the taxpayers and the citizens that live here. | ||
| She invited this invasion. | ||
| So, C-SPAN, you guys can get off your high horse because you guys are on the side. | ||
| Joe in West Covina, California, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a registered Republican, and I consider myself an American if we can all just get to declare that we're American. | ||
| Now, you had a first caller calling from Pasadena, which I'm just as close as he is to this area. | ||
| And I will tell you, folks, people that are calling in from around the country who aren't here, including President Trump, who's 2,000 miles away, does not know the demographics of our area. | ||
| It is a small area that ends at the 10 freeway going into the area where it's a small area where there's more homeless people than there are protesters at Union Station. | ||
| It was unnecessary for them to call in the National Guard to have this taken care of. | ||
| This could have been handled by the LAPD. | ||
| When they have concerts and different things, this all gets handled. | ||
| And there are some bad people out there running around blowing stuff up or shooting off fireworks or doing whatever it is. | ||
| But at the same time, the people that are burning the flags are Americans. | ||
| They aren't Mexican people. | ||
| You can fly an American flag and a Mexican flag as long as the American flag is above the Mexican flag. | ||
| That's legal. | ||
| I am just appalled at the way that this is being handled. | ||
| The reason I think, I just want to tell you the reason I think this is being handled this way is that they want you to detract from what is going on in this country right now. | ||
| That he was told that he was in the Epstein files. | ||
| And I just want to get this out because I don't know. | ||
| I'm not watching TV if you've got your finger on the button on me already. | ||
| But let me tell you guys: if you go to the ports around here, which gets all your stuff, your food, your medications, on those dollar stores across Oklahoma and all these people you were calling in, they are empty. | ||
| There are no ships. | ||
| There are no ships coming. | ||
| And in the next few months, you are going to find out what exactly is going on in this country. | ||
| And it's too late. | ||
| They were just making up for COVID after a couple of years, people. | ||
| And you're just not looking. | ||
| You're just not watching. | ||
| And you're getting wagged like a dog and they're wagging their hand. | ||
| And you're looking over here, but you're not looking at what's really going on. | ||
| Got it, Joe. | ||
| Let's hear from another portion of Governor Newsom's speech from last night, accusing President Trump of heightening the unrest in LA by calling up those troops. | ||
| Thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelinos who protested peacefully, the situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown. | ||
| But that, that's not what Donald Trump wanted. | ||
| He again chose escalation. | ||
| He chose more force. | ||
| He chose theatrics over public safety. | ||
| He federalized another 2,000 guard members. | ||
| He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines. | ||
| These are the men and women trained for foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement. | ||
| We honor their service. | ||
| We honor their bravery. | ||
| But we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces. | ||
| Not in LA, not in California, not anywhere. | ||
| We're seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots, kids afraid of attending their own graduation. | ||
| Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. | ||
| His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers, and seamstresses. | ||
| That's just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. | ||
| And back to the phones to Roberta, Decatur, Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| What do you think, Roberta? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think Gavin Newsom was right on in what he was saying. | |
| He was telling the truth. | ||
| And for people out there who want to say that in regards to Trump and how he cared, Trump was standing up and saying how he has to protect our police officers in California. | ||
| I think about January 6th. | ||
| I don't even think he even contacted the family members of those police officers who were injured or later died regarding what happened on that day. | ||
| So you can't have both. | ||
| You can't have, okay, we only protect when something is done on his behalf to police officers. | ||
| So you can't have it both ways. | ||
| And also, I really believe that this is a distraction. | ||
| Trump wants to talk about wants you to look over here, want you to look down on a certain segment of the population, while on this over here, we're picking your pockets and stealing from you. | ||
| So keep looking over here, people. | ||
| Furthermore, California was taken from Mexico by the United States during the Mexican-American War. | ||
| So if you're here and you're from other countries and you want to fly your flag, that's fine. | ||
| I don't believe in burning the United States flag, nor do I believe in looting or defacing buildings, but you can't have it both ways. | ||
| You can't say you can deface the Capitol on January 6th and defecate and urinate and try to harm or hang our vice president on one hand. | ||
| Then, on the other hand, want to say something different when it comes to a blue state or a Democrat-led state. | ||
| So, let's talk to Steve, York, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
| One of the things is the Constitution says invasion. | ||
| If you look at, I have several of them. | ||
| But this whole thing, this whole thing would never occur if people were coming into this country legally, the way they're supposed to. | ||
| The illegal situations got to a point where we're paying them money, we're taking care of their health care and all this. | ||
| Yet we ourselves, a government ourselves, cannot even take care of our own people. | ||
| You have to take care of these people coming in illegally. | ||
| And they even, some of them even had social security cards that came into motels and hotels and completely illegals now, destroyed the whole darn building inside. | ||
| And what I saw yesterday on the national desk was looting. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with protesting, not at all. | ||
| But do it legally, not destroy property, which the taxpayers of California or any other state, this is going to eventually continue to happen. | ||
| We have to pay for the bill. | ||
| We have to pay for the bill. | ||
| The illegals should never have come in. | ||
| The President of the United States at that time should have automatically stopped it because we are supposed to be a republic of law and order, laws. | ||
| And those laws are supposed to be enforced. | ||
| They have not been enforced. | ||
| All right, Steve. | ||
| Well, let's take a look at President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday talking about the potential use, potential invoking of the Insurrection Act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Question is present. | |
| What does the person think about the Insurrection Act to deal with the situation in California? | ||
| If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| But I can tell you last night was terrible. | ||
| The night before that was terrible. | ||
| We have, as you've seen, it was on most of your networks, people with big, heavy hammers pounding the concrete and pounding curbs, pounding it, breaking up all, and handing these big chunks of concrete to people. | ||
| And they were taking that concrete, going up in bridges and dropping it into the roof of a car. | ||
| They were throwing it at our police. | ||
| They were throwing it at our soldiers that are there. | ||
| And we got it stopped, and we have them in custody right now. | ||
| Look, if we didn't get involved right now, Los Angeles would be burning just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost. | ||
| Los Angeles right now would be on fire. | ||
| And we have it in great shape and not playing around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do you determine whether or not there is an insurrection? | |
| Take a look at what's happening. | ||
| I mean, I could tell you there were certain areas of that of Los Angeles as you could have called it an insurrection. | ||
| It was terrible. | ||
| And this is the Associated Press with the headline: Trump calls LA, quote, a trash heap as he promises to liberate it from criminals. | ||
| That's from his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday. | ||
| And here is Bill in Cleveland, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, this is just crazy. | ||
| I mean, Los Angeles historically, you know, is Hispanic, but it's also entrenched with cartels, you know, drugs, human trafficking, and the people that are in these streets, I don't know what they think. | ||
| They can just take over highways and everything. | ||
| They're throwing rocks, fireworks. | ||
| They were, someone delivered face shields or something to them. | ||
| It's not a grassroots effort. | ||
| This is paid for by, I don't know who's paying for it, but it's dangerous. | ||
| It reminds me of Minneapolis, you know, or in Minnesota when it was burning like that and nobody really did anything. | ||
| You have to shut it down right away. | ||
| And that's just beyond me how this is allowed to happen. | ||
| You know, I don't know what to say about it other than there has to be rule of law. | ||
| This is how people get hurt and killed. | ||
| So something's got to be done. | ||
| Got it, Bill. | ||
| Here's Betty in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Yes, I truly believe that Governor Newson hit it right on the head. | ||
| He came out and he said exactly what Trump is trying to do. | ||
| Incite people, distract us so we look at this area and we don't really see what's going on. | ||
| The ICE, I can't even call them police, raiding like a Home Depot parking lot. | ||
| How are they determining who is legal and illegal? | ||
| They don't have the papers, but I will tell you, they have the color of a person's skin. | ||
| And that's what they are doing. | ||
| They're trying to say anybody that doesn't look like us, a white Caucasian, has to go one way or another. | ||
| And it's just, you know, I'm 83 years old. | ||
| I just cannot believe how people are turning a blind eye. | ||
| Now, Saturday, yeah, he has already warned us that if we protest, there will be consequences. | ||
| So what does that mean coming from a president? | ||
| We can no longer protest legally. | ||
| That if even we are in a crowd holding up a sign where we can be attacked by the U.S. government. | ||
| I don't know, people, but when you take bits and pieces of what's happening to us and turning a blind eye, in a few months, if that budget is signed, we are all going to be really in big trouble. | ||
| Well, Betty, Senator Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor yesterday made that point of silencing protesters. | ||
| Here's what he said. | ||
| His order to deploy the National Guard and Marines, our own troops on Americans, is not just outrageous and provocative. | ||
| It's a dangerous authoritarian overreach that threatens the very fabric of our democracy. | ||
| This isn't leadership. | ||
| It's provocation. | ||
| To be very clear, violent protest is not the answer for achieving the work of justice. | ||
| Full stop. | ||
| Protest must remain peaceful, and law and order must be maintained. | ||
| Though let me emphasize, deploying federalized troops without a state's consent hasn't happened in over 60 years. | ||
| And when it did, it was to protect civil rights heroes marching for justice in Selma, Alabama. | ||
| That moment was about progress. | ||
| This one is about power and intimidation. | ||
| We must all stand up and say loud and clear: America will not be bullied into submission by a president who confuses strength with force and democracy with domination. | ||
| Americans don't deserve more fear, more division, more chaos. | ||
| The president is using the military not to protect the people, but to silence them. | ||
| He is playing politics with the lives of our troops and the safety of our citizens. | ||
| It's shameful. | ||
| It's unlawful. | ||
| It's deeply un-American. | ||
| Once again, President Trump is choosing chaos over competence and division over democracy. | ||
| We must all stand up and say loud and clear: America will not be bullied into submission by a president who confuses strength with force and democracy with domination. | ||
| The only consequence of Donald Trump's orders sending troops to Los Angeles is chaos, and Americans don't like it. | ||
| And back to the calls now to Patricia and Texas Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I really prayed before I came on here this morning because this country really is in bad shape. | ||
| I'm listening to everyone talk, and it's so much division. | ||
| But as far as the governor of California, he really spoke, he spoke the truth. | ||
| You know, my husband is a former Marine, and he actively fought in Desert Storm and Afghanistan. | ||
| And he didn't like the Marines being deployed out. | ||
| He said, this isn't right. | ||
| And then as far as ISIS go, you know, January 6th, Trump either has the wrong definition or he doesn't understand what insurrection means. | ||
| We win insurrection. | ||
| But with the division happening here in America, you got people saying it wasn't. | ||
| And with that being said, I feel personally, the way these people are attacking the ISIS people and they have the rhetoric in their heart. | ||
| And to me, I'm going to just say just hatred from being racist. | ||
| I believe some of those people that were pardoned on January 6th are being a part of ISIS. | ||
| I don't believe Trump does anything for free. | ||
| So with that being said, those people were pardoned. | ||
| And I really believe a lot of those people are a part of ISIS. | ||
| And here's Sean in Irvine, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty much, I'm about 45, about 45 miles removed from what's happening from there, south of there. | ||
| And, you know, the thing that, I don't know, I've been following stuff for a while. | ||
| And, you know, you go back to five years ago, you know, I mean, we know how people aren't mentally, you know, all there nowadays. | ||
| And, but I don't know. | ||
| I just, I'm trying to, I'm starting to listen to, you know, both sides here. | ||
| And it's, it's kind of, you know, it's like it's basically, you've heard the term, you know, eye for an eye. | ||
| You know, it's like, you know, going back to the fires we had here. | ||
| And I think a lot of people that are in politics in California knew that that fire was going to happen, but they didn't do anything about it. | ||
| And I think, I just, I think California is really, it's kind of scary, to be honest with you. | ||
| And I've even considered moving out of here to Arizona or something like that. | ||
| But, you know, I just try to keep to myself. | ||
| And, you know, you know. | ||
| So, Sean, as far as the deployment of troops, are you in favor of that? | ||
| I know you're on the Republican line. | ||
| Did you vote for Governor Newsom? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm not. | |
| Well, I'm kind of neutral about the deployment of the troops, but I think it's, I mean, when you have a situation that is so urgent, that's the reason why he did it, I think. | ||
| That's the reason why he did, is because the urgency of it, you know, I don't know. | ||
| I mean, it would take, I mean, you can't just hire a bunch of police officers and have them go through training in a short amount of time and be able to be on duty in public and stuff like that. | ||
| So I think he just, I think it was more a case of urgency, but I don't know. | ||
| I mean. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We got that. | ||
| And Bill is on the military line from Colport, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Miss Mami. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I have a couple things I'd like to talk about. | ||
| Governor Newsom, he seems to not quite tell the truth. | ||
| I'm one of those old people that believes it's an old Yeti saying, a half-truth is a whole lie. | ||
| And I believe pretty much that's where he comes from. | ||
| He's a true politician. | ||
| And I think the reason for the guard being deployed and maybe the Marines is the inaction of him and Miss Bass, Mayor Bass, with the fires from last year and the Minneapolis riots where things burned for weeks before anybody did anything. | ||
| And as far as the parade, I have forefathers that were in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and all the other wars of this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're simply just honoring my forefathers with this parade and everyone else's forefathers that have fought and died for this country. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And we'll be covering that, Bill, if you'd like to watch it on TV starting at 6 p.m. here on C-SPAN. | ||
| And here is Aaron in Michigan, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Aaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how you doing, Jamie? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my call. | |
| Yeah, I was just hearing a woman a couple callers ago about Gavin Newsom on the Democrat line. | ||
| She hit it right on the head. | ||
| He has the authority to call those National Guard troops in and knock Donald Trump. | ||
| I've also been hearing that. | ||
| So, Aaron, your line is breaking up. | ||
| If you don't mind just giving us a call right back, and we'll try to get you in, if not now in open forum. | ||
| Here's Stephen in Kentucky, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
| That's good to hear. | ||
| I want to start out by saying that I'm an American first, and I also happen to be a Democrat second. | ||
| I think many of us are really forgetting about that. | ||
| Now, I'm going to talk turkey here because I just heard that military man have the gall to say that, talk about this, complimentary about this military parade. | ||
| The fact is Donald Trump did not serve in the war. | ||
| He has called military people losers and suckers, number one. | ||
| Number two, another thing we need to consider here. | ||
| Trump, who is he to decide who can actually who is he to who is he to decide who gets to stay and who gets to go, considering the fact that his family is German and Scottish. | ||
| His wife came here from Slovenia. | ||
| His vice president's family came here from Ireland and Scotland, and Yusha Vance is Indian. | ||
| I mean, so if we're going to be consistent about this immigration idea, let's be consistent. | ||
| And let's also talk about something else. | ||
| How on earth is him going and staging these raids helping this situation? | ||
| I don't hear any reform from this man. | ||
| We're not talking about Cuba. | ||
| We're not talking about Mexico. | ||
| We're not talking about Cuba or Canada. | ||
| We're talking about Mexico only. | ||
| Number two, where is the penalties, strict legal penalties against these titans of industry that are exploiting these undocumented laborers for their own gain? | ||
| Where is the emphasis on possibly the bureaucratic red tape in these elected officials trying to educate their constituents about the worker visa program? | ||
| Maybe that's part of this problem, too. | ||
| We're talking about undocumented who have been here for years and who have contributed to the fabric of this country. | ||
| They're not criminal per se. | ||
| The criminals are sent back. | ||
| And I want to also say something else here, too. | ||
| You know, Donald Trump talks about how he plays the mob boss. | ||
| He wants to get up there talking about how he's fighting crime. | ||
| Really, he's the premier criminal right now. | ||
| He wants everybody to kiss his ring. | ||
| Quite frankly, we all have something he can kiss, quite frankly. | ||
| All right, Stephen, and this is Dennis in Tunnell Hill, Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that was scary there. | |
| You need some medication. | ||
| Hey, I just wanted to bring up a couple things. | ||
| I was raised in Paramount, California. | ||
| Actually, went to junior high there, and then I moved over to Southgate, graduated there. | ||
| Anyway, while I was there, I did notice that most of the Mexican people that were among us, they didn't like the people that were coming across illegal, even back then. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| Things may have changed because I moved away from there back in the 70s. | ||
| But also, I just wanted to bring up something about Gavin Newsom because when you hear him talk, you need to think everything he says is like a fairy tale because he actually owns a bunch of wineries that produce more CO2 than all the cows, chickens, and pigs in the whole state of Texas. | ||
| I mean, that's how bad the CO2 is from fermentating wine grapes. | ||
| Anyway, when you hear anything from Gavin Newsom, you need to remind you of that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And here's Ray, seminal Florida Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Ray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| I just have a couple quick things. | ||
| One, I was a corporate chef out of California at about 50 restaurants right inside L.A. | ||
| And we had a news called INS back then because I was a chef back in the late 90s, early 2000s, a place called Ote Mesa. | ||
| It's pretty close to the San Diego border. | ||
| I get a call one day. | ||
| INS is there. | ||
| They swooped up 50 people. | ||
| I had to go down with a couple of executives, close the restaurant, do rehiring and everything else. | ||
| So this isn't a new phenomenon. | ||
| If everyone thinks it is, it's not. | ||
| The second thing is you've got to quell these riots. | ||
| You can call them whatever the heck you want, but they may start, like Gavin Newsom said, oh, in a couple of blocks. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| We saw what happened in 2020. | ||
| I have a friend, one of my best friends in Atlanta as a police officer, frontline guy. | ||
| And he told me one of the saddest stories I ever heard. | ||
| He said, Ray, I had to build a shower downstairs because I had a newborn baby and wife. | ||
| I couldn't walk into my house and kiss my wife and baby. | ||
| I had to go downstairs, take my equipment off, shower, and go back and kiss my family because people are whipping piss and really nasty, nasty things at them. | ||
| So if you don't stop it, then all of a sudden it's going to get out of control. | ||
| And as far as the military, my feeling on that is they should protect all the federal property. | ||
| If there's any buildings, they are trained for that. | ||
| So Newsom has no idea. | ||
| We protect embassies. | ||
| We protect also at the building. | ||
| So that's really all of the. | ||
| And here's the Associated Press saying that protests have spread to other cities. | ||
| It says from Seattle to Austin and Washington, D.C., marchers have chanted slogans, carried signs against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, that's ICE, and snarled traffic through downtown avenues and outside federal offices. | ||
| While many were peaceful, some have resulted in clashes with law enforcement as officers made arrests and used chemical irritants to disperse crowds. | ||
| And here's Margie in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| I wanted to say that 10 years ago, when I was 77, a little more spry than I am now, I worked for the census and we had a little bit of studying to do. | ||
| And we learned that everyone is counted, not just citizens. | ||
| So I think that Governor Newsom and other Democrats are using a dislike of ICE as a ploy just to make sure that illegals don't go back because they want the count number to be up to increase their representation. | ||
| They're using their own people to fire them up to dislike ICE. | ||
| But I don't feel that that's the real thing. | ||
| And brings me to suggest a program for C-SPAN to, it's not near an election, but kind of timely right now to have a couple guests on maybe discussing the fact that of why everybody is counted, not just citizens. | ||
| So I just wanted to add that in. | ||
| All right, Margie, thank you for that suggestion. | ||
| Here's Guy in Stigler, Oklahoma on the military line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| You look very nice. | ||
| I like that beige color. | ||
| Mimi, I'd like to give the definition first of an insurrection. | ||
| An insurrection, by definition, is an armed group or armed coup which is trying to overthrow the government. | ||
| What we're seeing in California, and I'm from California, I grew up born in Pasadena, grew up in Long Beach. | ||
| And I left California in 2002 because the crime was so out of control back then. | ||
| I couldn't imagine what it's like now. | ||
| But anyway, what we're seeing are protests. | ||
| They're not insurrection. | ||
| And going back to J6, that was a protest. | ||
| You know, everybody keeps calling it an insurrection. | ||
| They were not trying to overthrow the government. | ||
| They were trying to stop the certification of the election and to send it back to the states for review where all of these, you know, I mean, call it whatever you want to call it. | ||
| The Democrats called it strange occurrences, unseen were events about the election results in certain states. | ||
| So January 6th was not an insurrection. | ||
| And also, you know, there's all these people that keep saying that Trump did not call out the National Guard for January 6th. | ||
| He did. | ||
| And Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. refused to let those troops come in to quell the protest. | ||
| And going back to California, there was a program on 2020 about two weeks ago. | ||
| It showed California, Long Beach, the boardwalk, the pier. | ||
| It was a Friday afternoon and it was empty. | ||
| People are, the crime is so bad in California now. | ||
| People are afraid to come out and walk on the boardwalk or walk on the streets. | ||
| That's how bad the crime is. | ||
| The news doesn't cover it, but it was a great segment on 2020 about how bad the crime is. | ||
| And people, they come home from work, they go to their houses, they have their groceries delivered because the crime was so bad, they're afraid to get out in public. | ||
| So, Guy, since you mentioned a former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, she was speaking yesterday, and she did bring up January 6th. | ||
| So, let's hear what she said. | ||
| In a bipartisan way, on January 6th, with violence against the Constitution, against the Congress, and against the United States Capitol, we begged the President of the United States to send in the National Guard. | ||
| He would not do it. | ||
| Not only would he not do it, when law enforcement people were being harmed, some later died, he would not send it in when his, an instigation that he, an insurrection that he incited was causing damage to those assigned to protect the Capitol and the Constitution that day to accept the results of the Electoral College. | ||
| That day, he didn't do it. | ||
| He forgave those people. | ||
| Now, his people want to raise money for them, and yet, and yet, in the contra-constitutional way, he has sent the National Guard into California. | ||
| Something is very wrong with this picture. | ||
| Inconsistent in his actions, contrary to his own statement that he couldn't, of a year ago, that he couldn't send anyone in without the governor's consent, any place, and in violation of the Constitution. | ||
| That's Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, and this is Deidre in Springfield, Missouri. | ||
| Democrat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to remind everyone that the Republicans are the one that loaded the immigrants up on buses. | |
| They put them on planes. | ||
| They flew them all over the United States. | ||
| And way too many of them got away from the border. | ||
| They should have been kept there and documented and got their paperwork ready so they could go to work. | ||
| And as far as him sending troops to California, it's just a distraction to keep people from thinking about what they need to be thinking about. | ||
| California is the fourth largest economy in the world. | ||
| They have all the resources there they need to do anything that's needed to do for the people. | ||
| And holding a sign is not against the law. | ||
| If he's looking for criminals, go to the courthouses, look up who they've drug in, who's got charges, and that's who they need to be rounding up right now. | ||
| Period. | ||
| And here's John in Esopus, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| The previous caller, do you, I mean, how long would it take your staff to look up? | ||
| Was it the Republicans that sent all these people in planes and buses and destroyed them across the United States? | ||
| You know, that's philony and fake. | ||
| You should point that out. | ||
| The other thing is, these protests down there, and where is it, in LA? | ||
| And I guess they're spreading out. | ||
| They were in Michigan and New York and stuff. | ||
| And it's so they have every right to go out there and express their First Amendment rights. | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| I expressed my First Amendment rights in the past election. | ||
| That's how I passed my First Amendment rights. | ||
| I voted for somebody that I felt comfortable with, and I agreed with their running for president, and other cabinet members were running, and I heard their arguments on TV. | ||
| I had a chance to listen to what they were proposing. | ||
| And my First Amendment rights is, I pick this person. | ||
| And the person I picked is my own personal. | ||
| It's not nobody's business, but I voted. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| So you have a First Amendment right to vote for somebody you want. | ||
| And if you lose, you don't go out there and march through the streets and fire, you know, charge, you know, shoot commercial fireworks at the police or throw rocks and bricks at everybody and disrupt everything in the city and loot and rob and burn. | ||
| And then say, oh, this is, we're just out there, you know, giving our First Amendment rights. | ||
| We have that to go out there and do that. | ||
| No, when's the last time you saw a bunch of Republicans go out there and march because they lost an election or something like that? | ||
| The only thing is you got, it was that January 6th thing. | ||
| What do you say? | ||
| How many people died? | ||
| You have the medical documents of how many people died on January 6th. | ||
| There was only one person that died that was shot. | ||
| And you will not tell the truth. | ||
| The liberal media will not tell the truth. | ||
| They perpetuate. | ||
| All right, John, and this is Mike in Strongsville, Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, guys. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I have to agree with that guy. | ||
| I hate to tell you that, and I know you don't want to hear it. | ||
| But the truth is, the truth is here, if it happened in anybody's state, I don't know what world everybody lives in, but if you see all this stuff happening, why wouldn't you want you? | ||
| You would hope God would show up to the party. | ||
| What's the big deal about them bringing the military in to protect you? | ||
| What right do they have shooting stuff and doing I've seen it on TV? | ||
| Everybody's seen it on TV. | ||
| To sit there and pretend it didn't happen really makes you sound stupid when you sit there and try to spin it. | ||
| We know the facts. | ||
| The facts are, and then somebody says, who's Donald Trump? | ||
| Donald Trump's the president. | ||
| Get with the program. | ||
| If you don't like them, then don't vote for him. | ||
| Three-quarters of Americans voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| I guess there's nothing you can do about it. | ||
| Charles in Morrisville, North Carolina, on the line for military. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, I took the oath 1972 to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. | ||
| These are domestic. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All these people getting on there, so bleeding heart liberals. | ||
| They're wrong, and they won't admit it. | ||
| You ever met somebody who won't admit that they're wrong about things? | ||
| Cav Newsom is just totally connected to Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| He's her nephew. | ||
| He's her nephew. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He's the worst governor that ever was. | ||
| I mean, the best governor California ever had was Ronald Reagan. | ||
| And one of the best presidents we ever had was Ronald Reagan. | ||
| Now, I've been down to South America, in the 80s. | ||
| I spent a lot of time down there. | ||
| Those people work very hard every day to just stay alive. | ||
| I don't blame them for coming here. | ||
| Everybody wants to come to the big PX. | ||
| And with that in mind, I mean, you know, they want a better life. | ||
| And we were down there, engineers, building clinics, building roads, helping these countries, these third world countries, you know, out of, you know, to help, you know, just to help them. | ||
| Now, with that in mind, also, you know, I don't think they do much of that anymore. | ||
| We did some stuff in Charles. | ||
| I am running out of time on this segment, so we will end it there. | ||
| But coming up on Washington Journal, we've got Republican Representative Carlos Jimenez of Florida to discuss the Trump administration's immigration policies amid ongoing protests in LA. | ||
| But first, Mary McCord of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection joins us to discuss the limits of presidential authority to deploy troops on U.S. soil. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | |
| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts. | ||
| As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | |
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are speaking to the country. | |
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| Joining us to discuss the domestic deployment of the U.S. military and the law is Mary McCord. | ||
| She's Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. | ||
| Welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Could you start just by telling us about the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection? | ||
| What does it do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| We are a nonpartisan, primarily a litigating institute within Georgetown law. | ||
| We bring constitutional impact litigation across a wide variety of issue areas. | ||
| That includes First Amendment, separation of powers, criminal legal system reform, many different things like that. | ||
| We also do engage sometimes in public education and policy work and public education is part of why I'm speaking here this morning. | ||
| Well, I want to ask you about U.S. Code Title 10. | ||
| The President has cited that as a means for employing troops. | ||
| And I'll just read some of it for our audience. | ||
| It says that the President may call into federal service members and units of the National Guard of any state in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. | ||
| Orders of these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the states or in the case of the District of Columbia, through the Commanding General of the National Guard of the District of Columbia. | ||
| Can you explain that and how that applies to the situation in Los Angeles? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think first listeners should understand that that is just one of the provisions of Title 10 that relates to federalizing the National Guard. | |
| You know, the National Guards are a dual enrollment system. | ||
| So normally they are in state status and they can be called forth by the governor as the commander-in-chief in their states to respond to natural disasters, to respond to protest activity, to respond to other things where the state law enforcement needs some augmentation. | ||
|
unidentified
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But when it comes to federalizing the National Guard, that means they are made part of our U.S. armed forces. | |
| They become federal armed forces, federal military. | ||
| They are then paid for out of the federal fisc, not out of state monies. | ||
| And ordinarily, for our U.S. military or federalized National Guard forces, there is a law that prohibits them from engaging in domestic law enforcement. | ||
| And that's very purposeful and it dates back centuries because to early in our founding, because our framers and people throughout American history, we have not wanted our military to be on the streets of the United States engaging in domestic law enforcement. | ||
| And when I say domestic law enforcement, I'm talking about the things that you classically think of your police as doing, like search and seizure, arrest, detention, those types of things. | ||
| Sorry, the law that you're talking about now is posse comitatus. | ||
|
unidentified
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Posse comitatus act. | |
| That's right. | ||
| It's actually a criminal statute. | ||
| It criminalizes any member of the military or federalized National Guard for engaging in domestic law enforcement, unless there is a constitutional or statutory exception. | ||
| And the most prominent exception is the Insurrection Act. | ||
| It is also in Title 10. | ||
| It is not what President Trump invoked on Saturday night when he called forth the California National Guard. | ||
| The Insurrection Act also applies when there's an insurrection, when the president considers something to be an insurrection or a rebellion. | ||
|
unidentified
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In almost every case that it's been used throughout our history, with just a few exceptions, it has been at the request of or with the consent of the governor. | |
| Exceptions to that occurred post-Brown v. Board of Education during desegregation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where there were times that the president invoked that act over the objection of the governor. | ||
| What President Trump has invoked here is a different statute. | ||
| It is Title 10, 12406. | ||
| It's something of a confusing statute because in some ways it reads kind of like the Insurrection Act, but it is not a declaration of the Insurrection Act. | ||
| It's not clear that it actually is any type of exception to the Posse Comitatist Act. | ||
| And the portion that you read that orders to federalize the National Guard shall be issued through the governors of the states certainly implies some role of the governor, which we know now in California did not happen. | ||
| The other thing that's very interesting about what has happened over these last several days is that the president in his presidential memorandum didn't actually say anything about California, Los Angeles, Paramount, any of the places where protests were occurring this weekend. | ||
|
unidentified
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His presidential memorandum invokes Title 10, 12406, directs the federalization of National Guard forces anywhere where a protest or acts of violence are inhibiting the enforcement of federal law, and he's calling that a type of rebellion. | |
| So he's not even limiting this authority to California. | ||
| He's basically saying, and I'm reading from it here too, at locations where protests against federal functions are occurring or are likely to occur. | ||
| So that could apply anywhere across the country when there are protests that this authority he's invoked would provide for calling forth and federalizing the National Guard in order to protect federal agents, federal property, and federal functions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The other thing I want to make sure listeners are aware of is that in that same presidential memorandum, the president authorized the Secretary of Defense to call forth active duty military to augment the National Guard. | |
| And we know that 700 Marines have now been called forth in California to augment the 4,000 California National Guard members who have already been federalized. | ||
| Title 10, 12406 doesn't talk about using the military at all. | ||
| It only talks about the National Guard. | ||
| So there's got to be some other legal authority for calling forth the actual U.S. armed forces, the Marines. | ||
| So let's talk about that part, which is the Marines. | ||
| And that is, I mean, does the president need any additional authority or given his authority over all the military as commander-in-chief? | ||
| So that he could. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So again, it really depends on whether he is wanting to have the military engage in domestic law enforcement, right? | |
| Because Congress actually has the authority over under Article 1 for the calling forth of the militia and for the deploying of or for the declaration of wars and the use of the military and the funding of the military. | ||
| President is, of course, the commander-in-chief. | ||
| So if he wants to have the military engaging in that classic police work, that's something he would need to use the Insurrection Act for as Congress has delegated that authority. | ||
| In this case, he's using it for the protection of federal property, which the Department of Justice has taken the position for decades now that when you're protecting federal property, federal agents, that is not domestic law enforcement. | ||
| I know listeners might think, well, if I see, you know, U.S. military and federalized National Guard on the streets protecting an ICE detention center or protecting ICE agents when they're conducting some sort of immigration activity or immigration raid, that sure looks like domestic law enforcement to me. | ||
| And I understand as a matter of sort of what it looks like, and appears to many of us, we would think that. | ||
| But the law has been interpreted rather narrowly to really apply to those classic things like search, seizure, arrest, detention. | ||
| So based on the authority right now that the president seems to be invoking, which is his inherent authority to use the military for that protection of federal functions, that protective power, we should not be seeing military engaging in search, seizure, arrest, detention. | ||
|
unidentified
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If that happens, we're in a different place. | |
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Mary McCord, she's the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. | ||
| If you've got a question about the deployment of National Guard and active duty troops domestically, you can give us a call. | ||
| Our lines are by party. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Do we know what the rules of engagement are for those active duty troops? | ||
| Have they been told what they can do and what they can't do? | ||
| Do we know anything about that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, that certainly should be coming down through the military commanders. | |
| You know, as I said, once the National Guard is federalized, they are then under the direction, and in this case, they're under the direction of U.S. Northcom, the Northern Command, that is U.S. military. | ||
| And so the rules of engagement that would apply would come from those military officers. | ||
| Now, when you say rules of engagement, though, remember, this is not combat, right? | ||
| We are on U.S. soil. | ||
| This is for protecting federal property. | ||
| And that is one reason, frankly, why it's dangerous to send U.S. military onto our streets. | ||
| They are trained for combat. | ||
| They are trained for missions, usually overseas, that are in very different missions than when they're working here in the United States on U.S. soil. | ||
| The National Guard, they do get trained for doing things kind of like protecting property and responding to disasters. | ||
| So they have a different training than the National Guard. | ||
| So one of the things that, I mean, I'm sorry, than the U.S. Arms Forces. | ||
| So one of the things that our military officers will want to be making very, very clear is that the rules of engagement here are very different than what they would be engaging in if they are in a combat zone in another country. | ||
| And also, it's important for people to know, military, National Guard, everyone here in the law enforcement here in the United States, even when deployed, still is subject to the Constitution, right? | ||
| That means First Amendment still applies. | ||
| The Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, all the amendments, right? | ||
| All the constitutional rights, the rights to due process, all of that, all of these things still apply. | ||
| So our military cannot just violate people's rights any more than anyone else is permitted to do that in the United States. | ||
| Now, this is a headline from NBC News that the California Attorney General sues Trump over, quote, unlawful National Guard order. | ||
| What can you tell us about that lawsuit and the basis for it? | ||
| So the lawsuit really alleges that President Trump has exceeded his authority by trying to use Section 12406, the law that we've been talking about, where there really is no rebellion as a matter of facts on the ground, nothing that would constitute a violent, hostile takeover of the government or attempt to take over the government or remove people from power. | ||
|
unidentified
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That is sort of the classic definition of a rebellion. | |
| They're saying the facts that, you know, there's nothing here, even in President Trump's proclamation, even in his memorandum, that simply says that protests or acts of violence that directly inhibit the execution of the laws of the United States constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
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And California is saying a protest or even individual acts of violence are certainly not a rebellion. | |
| So that's one thing. | ||
| They also say that the law, as we've been discussing, Section 12406, requires the consent of the governor, or at least the consultation with the governor. | ||
| And here, at least as alleged by California, the governor was completely bypassed. | ||
| So the orders came directly from the Defense Department to the Adjutant General in California. | ||
| That's the commander of the National Guard there, to call up these forces, bypassing the governor. | ||
| And then California also makes the arguments that this is a real infringement on California and California's sovereignty. | ||
| California National Guard, unless federalized, is there for you know working for the state for the purposes of the state. | ||
| And when those resources, 4,000 National Guardsmen are deployed to Los Angeles to protect federal property, they're not available for other crises where they might be needed. | ||
| You know, many of them deployed during the horrible, horrible fires in Los Angeles to help there with recovery and so many other things. | ||
| And there are fires again now. | ||
| There are other things happening that the California might need those resources for. | ||
| So one of their arguments is this also violates the 10th Amendment and their sovereignty. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers. | ||
| We'll start with Homer Florence, Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Homer. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, the reason that President Trump had to call in the troops is because Karen Bass wouldn't use the police to protect the ICE that were getting the illegal aliens out. | |
| And you guys can complain all you want. | ||
| We need to get these illegal aliens out. | ||
| There's over 12 million of them. | ||
| And it's just so funny that I heard some lady earlier, just for a quick second, please, Mimi, and the lady from Georgia said, well, January 6th was the worst day ever. | ||
| I didn't realize January 6, 2021 was a holy day for police. | ||
| And that's the only day that Democrats cared about the law because there were 574 riots in the 2020 Summer of Love. | ||
| And there's been so many riots lately. | ||
| A bunch of anti-Semites all over the campuses. | ||
| So, you know, he had to call them in. | ||
| They asked for help, and nobody would help them. | ||
| Got it, Homer. | ||
| Here's Nancy in Redondo Beach, California. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Nancy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| My question is: you know, we hear that the military, the soldiers, take an oath to the Constitution. | ||
| If they, if somebody in the Marines, or I don't know, the National Guard refused to, you know, move forward with a command that Trump is making, would they be in trouble? | ||
| And I'll hang up for the answer. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Mary McCord. | ||
| Well, my area of expertise is not in military justice or court martials, but they might have to face some sort of discipline within the military under the military's disciplinary system. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, people may be familiar with the concept that officers are not allowed to violate or not allowed to follow illegal orders. | |
| So if it is determined that the order was illegal and an officer was not following it, that would be acceptable. | ||
| That is part of what a military service and the oath that the military officers take. | ||
| They do believe it's different for rank and file, but that is something that would be handled within the military, and the person would make their argument about why they thought that they could not follow this any legal order. | ||
| On the Republican line in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Clara, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'd like to start off by asking the question: what is the legal definition of a riot versus a protest? | ||
| Because that would be what would have to have standing in law. | ||
| I'd also like to know at what point can you hold elected officials accountable and how would you hold them accountable when they refuse? | ||
| They would just prefer to see their cities burn and be destroyed to work with a president or to call in the troops. | ||
| And then the other thing I'd like to say is when these people come on there and say, well, there's just a few of them that's disobedient. | ||
| There's only just a few. | ||
| Let's just let them have at it and get over with this. | ||
| It only takes one person to bomb a city. | ||
| So I'm going to hang up and listen to what you have to say. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| All right, Clara. | ||
| Go ahead, Mary. | ||
| So, first of all, just to be clear, riot is not the word used in Title 10, Section 12406 that the President invoked. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's also not a word used in the Insurrection Act. | |
| A riot in some states violates criminal law, and the difference between a protest and a riot is the level of violence and the collective will of the people, a mass number of people to engage in violence. | ||
| And that is something that individuals who are engaged in that could be criminally prosecuted for. | ||
| And certainly, to the extent that there are individuals, whether it's in Los Angeles at the protests or any place else, who are engaging in acts of violence, those are things that many times people, and I know that there have been many arrests made in California, people can be prosecuted for, again, with due process, because that's the way our criminal prosecutions are pursued in this country with due process, with charges, and an opportunity to defend yourself in court, etc. | ||
| So, those terms have very little to do with whether there's authority to bring in the National Guard or the military. | ||
|
unidentified
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That requires a rebellion or an insurrection or an inability for the laws to be executed. | |
| And Clara also asked about holding elected officials accountable. | ||
| As you know, there is Tom Holman the Borders R has talked about arresting Governor Newsom, and KTLA has this. | ||
| Trump endorses the arrest of Gavin Newsom, saying, quote, it would be great. | ||
| Under what conditions would that be possible, I guess? | ||
| Or I mean, I wonder if the Borders R or if President Trump has said on what grounds the governor could be arrested? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, right now, that appears just to be political rhetoric. | |
| I mean, there's been no citation to any law that Governor Newsom or the mayor have allegedly broken. | ||
| I'm not aware of any. | ||
| Of course, I'm not out there. | ||
| But, you know, that seems to be political rhetoric. | ||
| I mean, you cannot arrest someone except for on probable cause of violation of a criminal offense. | ||
| And for the federal authorities to arrest somebody, it has to be violation of a federal offense. | ||
| And neither the president nor Mr. Homan, to my knowledge, has even mentioned any possible law that they would be purporting to arrest the governor on. | ||
| Let's talk to Janet in Orlando, Florida. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you guys doing? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, my question: oh, do I have to repeat my question again, or are you going to repeat it? | |
| No, you go ahead. | ||
| You're on the air now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I have several concerns. | |
| Number one, the definition of an by the definition of an insurrection, which I hope that can be recounted here, is that on January 6th, that was an insurrection. | ||
| And to this day, it absolutely astounds me that the President could have caused, with his rhetoric, a violent insurrection, which we know it was. | ||
| Anybody paying attention to that know it was. | ||
| So now, when people have the option to vote, and that isn't working because the psyche, again, due to president's rhetoric, has created sort of a, I guess I would call it a dumb-down or don't care effect, either or, which are dangerous, which will probably allow us to have a man who clearly wants to be a dictator take over our republic. | ||
| We've never had a full democracy. | ||
| It's kind of impossible to have a full democracy, but we might have been gaining some ground when Obama was elected, but we have too much hatred and too much divisiveness. | ||
| So, what is it that we can do now that it appears you can't even have it, you can't have a peaceful protest? | ||
| What can we do to stop this man from becoming a tyrant? | ||
| What do you think, Mary McCord? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a multifaceted question. | |
| With respect to January 6th, I would say that certainly the conditions there appeared much more like a rebellion against the authority of the United States in terms of the massive numbers of people, the violence in attacking the Capitol and attacking law enforcement. | ||
| And remember, the whole purpose and what the effort was was to prevent the joint session of Congress from opening up and counting the Electoral College ballots and certifying the vote. | ||
| But that's not where we're at right now. | ||
| And just because things are happening in Los Angeles and other cities where, well, so far, as far as I know, no National Guard have been deployed, federalized, and deployed in other cities. | ||
| But even when that happens, that doesn't mean that Americans don't have the right to protest. | ||
| And, you know, peaceful protest, that is a First Amendment right. | ||
| It is a constitutional right. | ||
| Peaceful protest alone is certainly not rebellion. | ||
| It is certainly not insurrection. | ||
| And then, of course, we have elections. | ||
| And so that's, you know, that is the main way, in addition to using all of our other First Amendment rights, petitioning your elected officials, your members of Congress, letting them know how you feel about these things, letting them know that they have a job in Congress to engage in oversight and learn from the administration how they're implementing not only immigration laws, but this decision-making with respect to the Department of Defense, the calling forth of the military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are all things that Congress should have a role in oversight. | |
| And so those are things that people can petition their elected officials to do more to ask questions about this. | ||
| Here's Beth, St. Paul, Minnesota, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Beth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, hi there. | |
| Yeah, I'm calling to express my outright outrage and disgust with what Trump is doing. | ||
| He has no business doing it. | ||
| He is the criminal that here's Nate in Franklin, Indiana, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Nate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| What this is really about is a $150 million Trump apprentice show in California, just like his $50 million birthday party. | ||
| You know, the military has become a trillion-dollar Trump toy. | ||
| And if you thought that he was a conservative Republican, then you're wrong. | ||
| The Republican Party, I thought we were fiscally conservative. | ||
| And I thought we had a $36 trillion debt that we needed to pay down. | ||
| But evidently we don't have that debt because he seems to be quick to spend money on these shows. | ||
| California is well capable of taking care of what's going on out in California. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They are certainly doing that. | |
| They've got this under control. | ||
| So we don't need to be spending $150 million for a show. | ||
| All right, Nate. | ||
| And Mary, Governor Newsom has sued the Trump administration. | ||
| He has asked the court to block President Trump's use of the military to support those LA immigration raids. | ||
| The federal judge has declined to do that, setting a court date for Thursday. | ||
| Can you explain the nuances of that case and what we should expect on Thursday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You know, when Governor Newsom and the state of California brought that suit, they asked for the court to just enjoin, meaning issue an order that would bar the federalization of the California National Guard and the deployment of U.S. military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They asked the court to just issue that bar even before hearing from a response from the United States government. | |
| That's what the judge said that he wouldn't do right then. | ||
| He has not actually sort of like denied forever the request of the governor. | ||
| He has said, I want to hear from the government, which most judges would want to do. | ||
| And he has scheduled that hearing for tomorrow at 1:30 Pacific time. | ||
| So at that point, the Attorney General for California and the U.S. Department of Justice will be heard before the court, and the court will maybe make a decision right then or maybe take the matter under advisement and issue a decision within the coming days. | ||
| I think the judge very well realizes that this is a fast-moving situation. | ||
| I mean, obviously, we still have National Guard out on the streets. | ||
| The Marines are, you know, en route or have arrived. | ||
| And so it's something he cannot wait. | ||
| You know, I think that court cases take a long time. | ||
| It's not something he can wait for weeks or months to rule on. | ||
| He will be ruling imminently because it is a motion for a temporary restraining order. | ||
| That's the most sort of emergency motion. | ||
| And as I said before, the case is brought on the grounds essentially that Trump's orders have exceeded the authorities of Title 1012 or 406 that he's relying on, that there is no rebellion, anything constituting a rebellion for purposes of the law happening in California. | ||
| Importantly, a part of that argument is that the California law enforcement, so Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the state police are all able to adequately protect the federal resources and maintain order. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, there are things that are acts of violence that have happened. | |
| There are times that order doesn't seem like it's being perfectly maintained. | ||
| But one of the points that California makes is that that is something that typically happens at large protests in places all around the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's almost always left to law enforcement to handle that. | |
| It's when things get much, much, much bigger, like January 6th, like the riots after the police were acquitted who had beaten Rodney King back in 1992. | ||
| The Insurrection Act was invoked there because we had thousands and thousands of people involved. | ||
| We had thousands and thousands of people injured, many, many, many people killed. | ||
| A very, very different situation. | ||
| Here's Jerome, Democrat in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Hi, Jerome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, how are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
| It's good to, do I have my TV down? | ||
| Can you hear it? | ||
| Yeah, we can hear it a little bit, but go ahead quickly, Jerome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, I was just, you know, like I said, I'm not a great communicator, but, you know, I've been kind of keeping up on this stuff. | ||
| And, you know, I see what I see and I hear what I hear, but I see all the things that everybody's talking about is, you know, it's, you know, I mean, that's pretty much true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I think the number one main reason why the troops were sent there like that without going to the governor or anything like that, I think that the reason why is because, see, | |
| when anybody that speaks up stands up and calls Trump out, see, what he did, he sent the military down there to disrupt that protest. | ||
| All right, Jerome, we got that point. | ||
| And Mary, I just want to ask: if President Trump were to invoke the Insurrection Act, what would change? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, it would depend on what he was, what then the mission of the military and the Federalized National Guard would be. | |
| As I indicated before, the Insurrection Act is an exception to the general criminal bar on the military engaging in domestic law enforcement. | ||
| So if he invoked that, it could be with orders that our military and federalized National Guard would actually engage in direct law enforcement, meaning making arrests, searching, seizures, detention. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, compliant with the Constitution. | |
| They're not free to just search anywhere they want or arrest anyone they want. | ||
| It would still have to be only on probable cause, but that's still a very dangerous thing to have our military engaging in that type of law enforcement. | ||
| And that is something also that could potentially be challenged by governors if it was over their objection. | ||
| There's a lot of deference given to the president when it comes to determining what is an insurrection or what is a rebellion, but there is some wiggle room for courts to review. | ||
| As our Supreme Court has recently told us with respect to the invocation of the Alien Enemy Act, that courts can review, you know, courts can interpret the statute and its constitutionality. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So if that were to happen, I would foresee that there might also be litigation about that. | |
| All right, that's Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Georgetown Law Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. | ||
| She's former acting assistant attorney general for national security during the Obama administration. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My pleasure. | |
| And later on on the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by two members of Congress. | ||
| First, Republican Representative Carlos Jimenez of Florida, a member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. | ||
| And Democrat Adriano Espayat of New York. | ||
| He chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. | ||
| But first, it is open forum. | ||
| Well, you can start calling in now. | ||
| I'd like to hear what's on your mind this morning, public policy-wise. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| and Independence, 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue. | |
| And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
| I love C-SPAN too. | ||
| That's why I'm here today. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
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| 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. | ||
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| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN One. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
| We are speaking to the country. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in open forum. | ||
| Our phone lines are open. | ||
| A couple of things just for you to be aware of. | ||
| President Trump put this out on Truth Social at 8.04 this morning. | ||
| This is in all caps. | ||
| It says, our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me. | ||
| Full magnets and any necessary rare earths will be supplied upfront by China. | ||
| Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities, which has always been good with me. | ||
| We are getting a total of 55% tariffs. | ||
| China is getting 10%. | ||
| Relationship is excellent. | ||
| Thank you for your attention to this matter. | ||
| Also, in other news, inflation rates have come out. | ||
| This is CNBC. | ||
| U.S. inflation rises 0.1% in May from prior month, less than expected. | ||
| It says consumer prices rose less than expected in May as President Donald Trump's tariffs had yet to show significant impact on inflation. | ||
| That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. | ||
| And we'll go to your calls now. | ||
| Here is Lee in Womego, Kansas, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| Hey, this Trump thing and immigration, this is all about the numbers. | ||
| Under Joe Biden, 271,000 undocumented immigrants were deported in 2024. | ||
| That's 22,600 per month. | ||
| Mr. Trump is having difficulty getting to 17 or 18,000 a month. | ||
| He's falling behind, and he's using illegal means while Joe Biden used legal means to get people out. | ||
| Also, just fun facts for you: there were 12.4 million undocumented immigrants in the United States at the end of the George W. Bush era. | ||
| There's 11.4 million during the Trump administration. | ||
| And during the Biden administration, there was 10.9 million undocumented until Title 42 comes in in May of 23, and then it goes up to about 12 million. | ||
| So we're talking not a whole lot about nothing. | ||
| Other numbers that Mr. Trump doesn't like is oil production. | ||
| You remember when he said drill, baby, drill? | ||
| The United States is producing 500,000 barrels of oil less than we did under Joe Biden. | ||
| 13 million barrels per day right now. | ||
| And for everybody, they need to go on YouTube and listen to David Beer of the Cato Institute in his House Judiciary January 22nd, 2025. | ||
| He'll explain immigration to you all. | ||
| And there was somebody on earlier that said Trump listened to Bowser and Pelosi about not sending the National Guard. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| But when does he listen to anybody? | ||
| Bowser and Pelosi? | ||
| They don't have anything to do with the National Guard. | ||
| Let me repeat this. | ||
| Washington, D.C. is not a co-state. | ||
| Therefore, they do not have a governor. | ||
| Therefore, the people that are responsible for sending the National Guard out are the President, the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Army. | ||
| All right, Lee, you got your point. | ||
| And in other news, we do have winners from the New Jersey primaries. | ||
| And this is an article from the Associated Press. | ||
| We will hear from them. | ||
| Both of the candidates here take a look at what they said. | ||
| We won because of our positive energy. | ||
| We won because we talked about the issues that matter. | ||
| The critical issues facing our state and my plan for a safer, more prosperous, and affordable New Jersey. | ||
| Along the way, we also made a strong statement of what our New Jersey Republican Party stands for. | ||
| A party open to anyone and everyone who's willing to work hard and play by the rules. | ||
| A party of Jersey values and common sense policies. | ||
| A party that believes our best days are ahead of us if we have the courage to think big and act boldly. | ||
| To everyone here tonight and all the people who voted for me and encouraged their friends, family, and neighbors to do the same. | ||
| To all the people who knocked on doors, put up a lawn sign, made the phone calls, hosted me in their home or business, or donated hard-earned money to this campaign. | ||
| Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for believing. | ||
| Thank you for believing. | ||
| And to our most well-known, part-time New Jersey resident who honored me with his endorsement and strong support. | ||
| Thank you, President Donald J. Trump. | ||
| I want to thank everyone supporting me so that I can continue to do just that. | ||
| Here's what I love about New Jersey. | ||
| I love that you can hike our mountains in the morning and hang out down the shore in the afternoon. | ||
| We are the state that has produced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to John Bon Jovi, Lauren Hill to Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, and the Jonas brothers. | ||
| We have everything from the best bagels to Bing Sioux, curry to cannoli, tailor ham, egg, and cheese. | ||
|
unidentified
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This state deserves the best. | |
| A state like this is not going to be led by a Trump lackey like Jack Cittarelli. | ||
| And you just heard Democrat Mikey Sherrill and Republican Jack Chittarelli, who will face off for New Jersey governor. | ||
| We're going to take you live to right outside the White House. | ||
| Here is Attorney General Pam Bondi. | ||
| They're coming in with these huge sledgehammers, breaking up the sidewalks and taking these huge pieces of concrete, throwing them off a bridge, throwing them at people. | ||
| It's truly a miracle that no one has been seriously injured or killed yet. | ||
| But we're going to do everything within our legal authority to protect our law enforcement officers and all the people in California right now. | ||
| You know, you guys, this is serious out there. | ||
| We want to protect people. | ||
| We want to protect law enforcement and all the hardworking people there who are trying to go to work every day. | ||
| Their businesses are shuttered. | ||
| They can't do anything because of this, and it has to stop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's ask Adam again. | |
| What is the threshold for invoking the Insurrection Act beyond California? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Are you seeing examples in other cities where the president might have to consider? | ||
| Well, first in other cities, well, we've seen it in New York, but what happened in New York was very different. | ||
| NYPD came in right away. | ||
| NYPD came in and shut it down. | ||
| We all believe in peaceful protests. | ||
| You saw New York, there were peaceful protests happening in New York. | ||
| Much different situation. | ||
| So law enforcement, they need to have their hands untied where they can do their jobs. | ||
| Right now in California, what we're doing is working by bringing in the National Guard, by bringing in the Marines right now to back them up to protect our federal buildings, to protect the highways, to protect the citizens. | ||
| So right now in California, we're at a good point. | ||
| We're not scared to go further. | ||
| we're not frightened to do something else if we need to right now we're trying to bang it up sidewalks is it something else like what's the threshold well Well, right now, right now, we're hoping it's going to get under control. | ||
| We hope the curfew will work and we're going to continue to do everything we can to keep California safe if the government of California is not going to help them. | ||
| One more question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One short question. | |
| The administration has talked a lot about defending law enforcement over the last week or so that the process is going on. | ||
| But you've been criticized for having a double standard with the president hardening all these people to attack police officers on January 6th in his first day in office. | ||
| How do you answer that criticism? | ||
| Well, this is very different. | ||
| These are people out there hurting people in California right now. | ||
| This is ongoing no longer. | ||
| We're going to protect them. | ||
| We're going to do everything we can to prosecute violent criminals in California. | ||
| California is burning. | ||
| These people are waving Mexican flags, yet they don't want anyone to go back to Mexico. | ||
| They're burning American flags. | ||
| This is the United States of America, and we're going to protect Americans. | ||
| We're going to protect all citizens out there. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Guys, have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| That was Attorney General Pam Bondi live right outside the White House. | ||
| And we're in an open forum. | ||
| Our numbers are on your screen. | ||
| You can give us a call about anything on your mind, as long as it's related to politics and public policy and current events. | ||
| Here's David calling us on the Republican line from Riverside, California. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi, and good morning, America. | |
| Some Democrats say that Trump and the Republicans are Nazis. | ||
| The Nazis are historical figures from the 1930s and 1940s. | ||
| As far as I know, there are no Nazi governments in the world. | ||
| There is, however, a communist government called China of 1.4 billion people. | ||
| The Chinese communist government is in control of one-sixth of the world's population, not to mention Communist North Korea or Venezuela or Cuba. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Plus, amongst the Congress or the Senate, I don't believe there's one Nazi, but in the Congress and Senate, there are quite a few communists. | |
| I live in Southern California, and the mayor of Los Angeles was mentored by the head of the American Communist Party. | ||
| Now she's defending illegal immigration as riots go on. | ||
| Trump has every right to defend our city so that it doesn't turn into another Minneapolis from 2020. | ||
| In a recent poll, AOC of New York City is a favorite candidate for president among Democrats. | ||
| She is a more attractive and charming Bernie Sanders. | ||
| Is this the Democratic Party anymore or the Communist Party of America? | ||
| I recently took an online college class from Hillstow College to learn about communism, socialism, and Marxism. | ||
| I learned that Karl Marx, the founder of communism, was opposed to the family, opposed to belief in God, and opposed to capitalism. | ||
| Some people say it's a red scare to complain about communist amongst us, but that was a long time ago when people were scared of communism. | ||
| Truth is, most people aren't afraid of communism anymore. | ||
| That is exactly the problem. | ||
| And why they're willing to vote for Bernie Sanders for president or AOC for president or Kamala Harris for president. | ||
| And as soon as we get a communist president like them, we will all regret the decision. | ||
| And who knows how we even recover from there? | ||
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| Here's Nancy in Austin, Texas, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Nancy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| One thing I think we've forgotten and tends to be mixed up is there's a big difference between a legal immigrant and an illegal one. | ||
| Every person that's in this country illegally has broken our laws to be here and are criminals just from that. | ||
| Now they go on and create another crime that makes them be a double criminal. | ||
| So all these people, you know, we need to get them out. | ||
| This number that's been counted since I'm 68 years old for decades has been 12 to 13 million. | ||
| Well, then Biden led in, if you talked to the Border Patrol, in excess of 20 million people. | ||
| I mean, they were flown in all kinds of stuff. | ||
| So if you add 20 to 12, we've got 32 illegal million illegal aliens in this country. | ||
| The other woman didn't mention anything. | ||
| And Judge Joe Brown came out with, it's called, you see, USC Title VIII, subsection 1324. | ||
| I suggest everybody go read it. | ||
| Harboring illegal aliens. | ||
| It says makes it an offense for any person who, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection. | ||
| And it sounds like to me, and he said, and Josh Joe Brown stated it, that a lot of people involved in the LACA riots, including the mayor, governor, congresswoman, et cetera, ought to be getting nervous because of USC Title VIII, subsection 1324. | ||
| Everybody can go look it up. | ||
| My final thing I want to say is I highly recommend people go to YouTube or live feeds and see for yourself what's going on. | ||
| The media that we have today is not the independent media that we had when I was a kid. | ||
| It's all corporate owned now. | ||
| And if you go do your research and look at who else owns what else they own, you'll see why you're being fed BS. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's Cynthia in Youngstown, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Cynthia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| First of all, I'd like to say to the Democrats, don't be distracted. | ||
| There's one issue here. | ||
| It's our freedoms that are on the line. | ||
| No party has desecrated and bastardized our flag more than the MAGA radical right. | ||
| Just take a look at the footage from January 6th. | ||
| You had shamans wearing it as capes. | ||
| You had it desecrated in every way, combined with the Confederate flag. | ||
| Look at Trump's product line, his so-called brand. | ||
| You know, let's face it, our whole democracy has become fodder for his profiteering and grift. | ||
| Flags with the president's face emblazoned is not proper use of the flag. | ||
| That's what dictators do. | ||
| And I just, that last post on truth that you read is very chilling because obviously Asian immigrants are Trump's next target. | ||
| He always lets us know what he's cooking up next because it's all about testing boundaries. | ||
| And each time he crosses one, he moves further across the line to taking away more of our freedoms. | ||
| And it will end, if it's not stopped in the courts, it'll end with Democrats or any other political faction that doesn't support Trump being arrested and disappeared. | ||
| And I want to say to judges, attorneys, policemen, local governments, you will all be powerless if this is allowed to continue. | ||
| The Supreme Court will mean nothing. | ||
| The military, your mission will be changed from defending democracy to being Trump's personal security force, and we will all be his minions. | ||
| And as far as immigrants, my ancestors were brought here to work in the steel mills, to work in the coal mines, to build cars for GM. | ||
| Slaves were brought here to harvest cotton. | ||
| Immigrants have always been brought here, okay? | ||
| And that's exactly what has happened over the last 20 years. | ||
| Hotel chains, restaurant chains, they need a workforce. | ||
| And Trump is among those who use that workforce. | ||
| And so, people, don't be fooled. | ||
| Got it, Cynthia. | ||
| On the Republican line in Hepzabah, Georgia, Woodrow, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing this morning? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Hey, listen, I'm so sick of these Democrats, man. | ||
| They were crying and whining. | ||
| Hawkeen Jefferson and Chuck Schumann them three weeks ago. | ||
| They hated Elon Musk for finding out fraud. | ||
| They hated Elon Musk because he was saying we need to get things in order. | ||
| They hated Trump for whatever his name is. | ||
| But I don't think we ever had a president that's been impeached twice by the same crew that's crying. | ||
| The real problem with America is the Democrats don't have a vision. | ||
| They don't have nothing. | ||
| The only thing they can run on is hate against Trump. | ||
| They ain't doing nothing. | ||
| I applaud this man because I sit here. | ||
| I did 25 years in the military. | ||
| And I live here and I pay taxes too. | ||
| I came here. | ||
| My folks came here. | ||
| They were bought here. | ||
| But it's a difference between being bought here and then you just coming over there breaking the law and coming across on your own. | ||
| But they don't never want to give Trump any credit for anything he's trying to do to make America better. | ||
| And the Democrats are in the position they're in now because they have no real plan. | ||
| They don't have no purpose for America. | ||
| What can they do besides take all of our money and give it away? | ||
| We're sitting here right now and don't even have a pre-screening for pancreatic cancer while we're giving millions and millions of dollars away to all these other countries, man. | ||
| To me, that is ludicrous. | ||
| We're one of the most best nations in the world, supposed to be the wise, best doctors, but we don't even have a pre-screening for pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most deadly forms of cancer because when you find out you got it, it already staged four. | ||
| Why can't we get somebody to try to do something that with all this money we've been giving away to do something for us? | ||
| And here's Salem in Las Vegas, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mimi, good morning. | |
| So little to talk about and so much time. | ||
| Wait, scratch that. | ||
| Oh, that was my Gene Wilder Willy Wonka impersonation. | ||
| You know, I've been listening to C-Sping. | ||
| I'm 54 years old. | ||
| I'm out here in Las Vegas. | ||
| You know, I'm up at five in the morning, sometimes four. | ||
| I get to hear all these opinions from all over our country. | ||
| I've been through three passports. | ||
| Some single, no children. | ||
| My grandfather, like I said, I'm 54 years old. | ||
| My grandfather came here. | ||
| He was born in 1876, 95 years between my grandfather and myself, okay? | ||
| In 1892, 1890, well, we can't even find the manifest when he came here. | ||
| I don't even know if he came here legally, but in 1898, I have the document where he presented himself in front of a federal district court judge, and he forsake. | ||
| We're Lebanese on my dad's side, Catholic Lebanese, Aramaic speaking. | ||
| He swore fealty to the United States and the Constitution. | ||
| And I don't recall anybody lately that has actually tried or made an attempt to assimilate themselves into this country. | ||
| Okay, it's a very small percentage. | ||
| Now, if you're going to take a situation where people can flood our country without any intention to assimilate, then we no longer are American. | ||
| We are basically Earthian. | ||
| And tell them what makes you believe that they are not willing or aren't trying to assimilate. | ||
| How do you draw that conclusion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's like any other community in America. | |
| Okay, we tend to flock together. | ||
| Now, I know that most of these people aren't criminals, but where do the criminals hide? | ||
| Okay, they have no intention. | ||
| I'm out here. | ||
| We have a school district out here that has basically uneducated children because the school districts are flooded. | ||
| They profess out here MTO, Mexicans take over. | ||
| They profess La Raza, where they think they can reclaim the lands that were stolen during the Mexican-American War. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| I mean, we all have to contribute, but you can't flood the country with people who do not intend to assimilate. | ||
| One more thing, just real quick, 15 seconds. | ||
| I think the biggest story of the week, since this is open forum, so now we're going to support a pirate, a piracy nation of Israel. | ||
| Now, Israel is going to go out 110 miles into international waters and kidnap people. | ||
| Think about that, Bible numbers. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Barbara, Tallahassee, Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, hey, Mimi, how are you this morning? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a lot to talk about. | |
| I'm going to make it sweet and short. | ||
| I heard a statement from the lady who was on as your guest a while ago, and she made the statement about Donald Trump wanting to be able to, you know, go and do what he's doing in California in any state, anywhere, or at least I thought I understood that. | ||
| America, wake up. | ||
| We're headed for martial law. | ||
| Donald Trump is, he's headed there, and so just watch yourself. | ||
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Thank you, Barbara. | ||
| And this is what our previous caller was talking about happening in Israel. | ||
| Here is CBS News. | ||
| Israel deports activist Greta Thunberg after the military seized Gaza Freedom Fotilla ship. | ||
| You can read more about that at CBS News. | ||
| And here is Alice in Walker, Los Angeles, sorry, Louisiana, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm calling about the January 6th. | |
| Can't you pull up where Nancy Pelosi's daughter recorded Nancy Pelosi saying that Trump called for the National Guard and she refused them? | ||
| Because people who listen to CNN and MSNBC has never seen that, I guess, because they keep saying that Trump didn't want the National Guard. | ||
| All right, Alice. | ||
| And later on, the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by two members of Congress, Republican Representative Carlos Jimenez of Florida, member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, and Democrat Adriana Espayat of New York. | ||
| He chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. | ||
| That is coming up. | ||
| Actually, Carlos Jimenez is coming up first. | ||
| We'll speak to him, Republican of Florida. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | |
| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And Book Notes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts. | ||
| As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was on C-SPAN 1. | |
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
are speaking to the country if you ever miss any of c-span's coverage you can find it anytime online at c-span.org Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | |
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Representative Carlos Jimenez. | ||
| He's a Republican of Florida, member of the Armed Services and the Homeland Security Committees. | ||
| Congressman, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's a pleasure to be here. | ||
| Just want to start with your take on what's happening in Los Angeles. | ||
| Look, it's unfortunate that it's gotten out of hand. | ||
| I certainly will support and will defend the right of people to protest in a peaceful manner, but I will never, ever justify violence. | ||
| And that's what's happening in LA. | ||
| I think they let it get out of hand. | ||
| And once you let it get out of hand, then things just stay out of hand. | ||
| And so then you have to use a lot more force than if you had just used it to begin with. | ||
| I mean, if you give people clear expectations that yes, we will protect your right to protest and we will protect you from anybody that wants to do you harm, by the same token, we're not going to allow you to, you know, to either perpetrate violence or set things on fire or destroy property. | ||
| That's just not what we're going to do. | ||
| And so unfortunately, they allowed it to get away in Los Angeles, and now we're paying the price. | ||
| And you do support President Trump's deploying of over 4,000 National Guard, federalizing the National Guard, deploying 700 active duty Marines over the objections of that state's governor. | ||
| Yeah, I have no problem with doing that at all. | ||
| I mean, look, if the local folks, if the state folks, you know, can't protect the people of Los Angeles and their property, then, you know, the federal government has the right to do that. | ||
| I mean, the people of the United States expect, that's one of the things they expect from their federal government, actually to protect them. | ||
| And so, yeah, they need to do that. | ||
| Fortunately, had they taken the action that they needed to take right away, then President Trump would not have had to do what he did. | ||
| It's because of their inaction that had happened. | ||
| And, you know, we saw that in the 2020 disturbances and riots that we had across the nation with George Floyd. | ||
| Those municipalities, those areas that allowed things to get out of hand suffered tremendously. | ||
| Those areas that allowed protesters to protest, but not get violent and not get it out of hand, then the protesters protested. | ||
| And that's the way it should be. | ||
| And it's unfortunate that LA, California didn't learn the lessons of 2020. | ||
| You know, during a press conference yesterday, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi criticized President Trump's deployment of the National Guard while calling out his refusal to do so on January 6th. | ||
| How do you respond to that criticism? | ||
| No, the president did not refuse to do that in January 6th. | ||
| As a matter of fact, I think one of your previous callers said, hey, there's videotape evidence that from Nancy Pelosi's own daughter that Nancy Pelosi on January 6th was saying, gee, wow, maybe we should have deployed those forces. | ||
| And so. | ||
| So those forces are under the control of the Speaker of the House then or under? | ||
| Oh no, they could have, yeah, she could have requested those. | ||
| And I think they were offered and she refused. | ||
| And so, yeah, and that's on videotape. | ||
| I've seen the videotape, and so I just find it ironic that she should say something like that. | ||
| And again, you know, there's rioting, there is looting, there are cars being set on fire, there's a property being destroyed, and we need to bring it under control. | ||
| And I'm happy that the president did what he did to bring it under control. | ||
| We need to bring it under control, and we want to make sure it doesn't happen anywhere else in the country. | ||
| And again, the local authorities, the state authorities have a lot to do with it, actually have most to do with it, making sure that it doesn't get out of hand to begin with. | ||
| Look, when I was mayor of Miami-Dade County, and I was the mayor of Miami-Dade County in 2020 during the George Floyd episode, and we had demonstrations in Miami. | ||
| They tried to get out of hand, and we shut it down. | ||
| And they tried again the next day, and we shut it down again. | ||
| And then by the third day, the agitators, because actually there are professional agitators that go around the country trying to agitate folks, they left town because they knew that they weren't going to get anywhere in Miami-Dade County. | ||
| That's all it takes. | ||
| And, you know, the protests continued after the agitators left town, and they continued in a peaceful fashion. | ||
| And we protected their right to protest because that's the right that we have as Americans. | ||
| Congressman, I do want to ask you about Miami because the Miami Herald has an article about the conditions of ICE detainees in a Miami federal facility. | ||
| It says the article starts with nearly 50 men spent hours in a small holding cell asking for water, food, and medication. | ||
| Instead, officers dressed in riot gear sprayed the room with rubber bullets and launched flash bang grenades. | ||
| What do you know about the conditions of that federal facility and will you be investigating those conditions? | ||
| I'll be investigating those conditions just like I did when I was the mayor of Miami-Dade County and they talked about we had a facility for young folks that were trying to, the federal government was trying to find a place for them, young immigrants that were in the country. | ||
| And outside was Kamala Harris and all the Democrats were outside demonstrating about the inhumane conditions in there. | ||
| So finally I just said, okay, I'm the mayor of Miami-Dade County. | ||
| I want to see it for myself. | ||
| I walked in there. | ||
| There was nothing wrong. | ||
| Nothing bad was going on. | ||
| Nothing that would make me ashamed to be an American was going on there. | ||
| They were teaching the kids how to speak English. | ||
| The kids had three square meals a day. | ||
| The dorms were nice and clean and they had chaperones. | ||
| They had plenty of opportunity to exercise. | ||
| Since I speak Spanish, I actually spoke to the kids and they said, no, they were all being treated. | ||
| They were all treated fine and the facility was fine. | ||
| And there were a whole bunch of folks, hardworking men and women that were in another room trying to find them adequate sponsors for these children to get out of the facility. | ||
| Outside, the Democrats and Kamala Harris was, they were demonstrating and they were telling people how bad it was. | ||
| Heck, why don't they just go inside? | ||
| They would have seen it for themselves that it wasn't bad. | ||
| So in this case, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. | ||
| I'm going to go and check it out for myself because actually, I've learned that maybe you should actually see it for yourself before you start making accusations about what's going on. | ||
| I find it hard to believe that the ICE agents have started using rubber bullets and all that. | ||
| But if they did, that's unacceptable. | ||
| So I'm going to find out for myself. | ||
| And when do you plan on going? | ||
| And when was your previous trip that you were just describing, Congress? | ||
| Well, that's when I was mayor of Miami-Dade County. | ||
| This was back in 17, somewhere around there, 16, 17, 18, where they had opened up a facility in South Dade for children, migrant children, that were unaccompanied, and they needed sponsors around the world. | ||
| And so again, like I said, there were demonstrators outside saying how bad it was. | ||
| I actually went inside, spoke to the kids, looked at the conditions, and there was nothing there that would make you ashamed to be an American. | ||
| So I'm going to do the same thing now as a congressman. | ||
| And I'm going to ask to go inside. | ||
| I'm going to say, okay, let me take a look at these conditions. | ||
| And if I find something that is wrong or shouldn't be, I'll be the first one to come out and say, hey, by the way, I found something. | ||
| This is what's going on. | ||
| And I'm going to protest to the administration. | ||
| Do you, Congressman, do you have that? | ||
| Do you have that trip scheduled and are you? | ||
| No, I don't because right now is the first I've heard of it, of this Miami Herald, you know, article. | ||
| And so I will be scheduling that. | ||
| And are you back on Friday? | ||
| That they will let you access that facility? | ||
| Yeah, they will. | ||
| As long as I give them 24-hour notice, they have to let me access the facility. | ||
| All right, and we are taking calls for Congressman Carlos Jimenez, a Republican of Florida. | ||
| You can give us a call by party. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll get right to your calls and take Debbie from Berryville, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| Go right ahead, Debbie. | ||
| You're on with Congressman Jimenez. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Every day, when I turn on my TV, all you see is riots, riots, riots. | ||
| Protest, protest, protest. | ||
| And it's very tarring. | ||
| So I have to agree with President Trump and the Congress that we need to shut all this down as soon as they get started because of all the chaos, the burning, the garfeeding on the walls and stuff. | ||
| So I have to agree with him because I am so tired of seeing it. | ||
| And it's bad. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Any response, Congressman? | ||
| Look, I think, you know, the lady is right. | ||
| In this country, you have the right to protest. | ||
| And when I was mayor and now as a congressman, I will defend your right to protest, but I will defend your right to protest peacefully. | ||
| Also, it's up to local and state authorities to make sure that it is peaceful. | ||
| And when people start to get out of hand, they've got to say no. | ||
| It's got to be a zero tolerance for violence. | ||
| Zero tolerance. | ||
| You can't let anybody step out of line. | ||
| Because once you let people start getting out of line, it gets out of hand. | ||
| And I don't understand how they haven't learned this lesson yet. | ||
| It's pretty simple. | ||
| Hey, stay within the lines. | ||
| You can protest. | ||
| You can protest all you want. | ||
| We will protect your right to protest. | ||
| But don't start to loot. | ||
| Don't start to burn. | ||
| Don't start to generate violence. | ||
| Once you step out of line, you're going to be arrested. | ||
| And we'll have zero tolerance for that. | ||
| And if you do that, I think things work out just fine. | ||
| Most demonstrations are peaceful. | ||
| People just want to demonstrate and let some steam out and let everybody know how they feel. | ||
| But there are demonstrations that you do have agitators inside there that stir people up and then get the violence going. | ||
| That's what they want. | ||
| And like I told you, when I was mayor of Miami-Dade County, we knew we had professional agitators. | ||
| We knew that they didn't come from Miami. | ||
| We knew they weren't from Miami-Dade. | ||
| And the good thing is that we had really good relations with our own community. | ||
| And they told us, hey, by the way, there's people here from outside that are trying to agitate us. | ||
| I said, okay, no problem. | ||
| Let us know who they are and we'll make sure that they don't get out of hand. | ||
| They tried us for three days. | ||
| On the third day, they jumped on a plane and they got out of there and went to some other town that didn't take the same steps that we did so that they can actually get the benefit of their agitation. | ||
| And so that's what happens. | ||
| And if people don't, and if you don't believe it, it's exactly what happens. | ||
| There are professional agitators. | ||
| They're professional agitators right now, I bet you, in LA and other parts of the country trying to generate anarchy, generate violence, and this is what they want. | ||
| All right, let's talk about that. | ||
| Local authorities have to take control and have zero tolerance for that activity. | ||
| Let's talk to Rhonda in the Jersey Shore, a line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Rhonda. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| First, I want to say to all of the American people that we are one in all. | ||
| That is. | ||
| That means we are one in God. | ||
| We are spirit beings in black, brown, and white bodies. | ||
| That's who we are. | ||
| Okay, the Republican Party was supposed to represent the church. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And you are Spanish descendant. | ||
| These people have been here all their lives. | ||
| He's not looking for criminals. | ||
| He's going to work sites. | ||
| He's going to schools. | ||
| He's kidnapping children. | ||
| And they're sitting in court alone. | ||
| Six-year-old children with interpreters. | ||
| This man said no National Guard on January 6th. | ||
| He sat there eating side chicken in the White House when they invaded and tried to kidnap our sitting vice president. | ||
| All right, Rhonda, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Congressman Jimenez. | ||
| Look, there are some things that ICE has done, as the lady has stated, gone into certain places where I certainly do not support. | ||
| And so I believe that ICE should be going after the criminals, should be going after gang members, should be going after folks that have deportation orders. | ||
| And from what I understand, that's exactly what they're doing. | ||
| But sometimes when they go get these folks and they have a location, there may be some other folks there that actually are illegal in the country and don't have a right to stay here. | ||
| And some of those folks are being picked up. | ||
| So those are, I think, the majority of these issues are coming from is what's called collateral, collateral pickups where they actually go get somebody and then there's somebody there alongside that individual that also is illegally here in the United States. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| ICE can't just say, well, it's fine. | ||
| You're illegal. | ||
| I'm just going to turn the other way. | ||
| We need to find, I think, a middle ground. | ||
| And I've communicated that with the administration. | ||
| But without a doubt, the administration, I know, is focused in on criminals, on those gang members, and then those that have active deportation orders. | ||
| You know, look, we are a country of laws. | ||
| And that's what kind of differentiates us from the rest of the world. | ||
| That we do have laws and we need to follow the law. | ||
| You know, the problem that we have is that you had a previous administration that allowed millions and millions and millions to come in through the border, saying that, hey, he needed more, I need more people, I need more money. | ||
| Well, no, you didn't need more people, and you didn't need more money because within a month of President Trump taking over as president, changed the policy, had the will, and what? | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| You know what we have now? | ||
| A reduction of 95% in the number of illegal counters at the southern border. | ||
| All it took was a change of policy and will. | ||
| Now, why did President Biden allow millions and millions and millions of people to come into the United States? | ||
| I don't have an answer to that. | ||
| But I can tell you one thing, President Trump is trying to fix it. | ||
| And so we're trying to fix President Biden's mess, which we kept telling him as Republican, hey, all you got to do is change policy. | ||
| We know you're doing this on purpose. | ||
| Why are you doing this on purpose? | ||
| And now we're paying the price for his policies. | ||
| Sorry, Congressman Jimenez. | ||
| I just wanted to go back to something you said earlier to clarify about visiting ICE detention centers in your state or in your district. | ||
| You know, a handful of your colleagues, your Democratic colleagues, were barred from entering ICE detention facilities in their states. | ||
| Actually, they do not have to give advance notice of a visit to gain access for oversight visits. | ||
| ICE is asking for 24-hour notice, but they're not required to give it. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
| Well, my thoughts are, yeah, you should give a notice. | ||
| I know as mayor of Miami-Day County, I gave a notice, hey, can I go see it? | ||
| And they said, sure, come tomorrow, come the day after. | ||
| I don't know how long it took me to get the appointment. | ||
| But for an oversight visit, Congressman. | ||
| Yeah, you just can't shove your way into a facility. | ||
| It's not safe for the ICE officers, not even safe for the inmates. | ||
| And so, yeah, you ought to give, you have to, I believe you do have to give a 24-hour notice or some kind of notice that you want to go into the facility. | ||
| All right, here's Gary. | ||
| He's calling from Miami, Florida. | ||
| Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to ask the governor, you know, I live here in Miami, and we have a lot of immigrants here who are illegal, but they don't speak any English whatsoever. | ||
| You go to parts of Miami, and you can't communicate with anybody because their language is Spanish, and they have no desire to learn English because there's no need for them to do it. | ||
| If you guys are so pro-America and pro-legal immigration, what are you doing for your state, especially Miami, for people who don't speak Spanish and looking for a job and can't find a job because you don't speak Spanish? | ||
| And I have a buddy of mine who was trying to find a nursing home for his mom. | ||
| And the majority of the nursing home, the staff, didn't speak any English whatsoever. | ||
| So you guys are worried about all this immigration stuff, but what are you doing for the people who are illegal who are not trying to learn English whatsoever for the American people who live in Miami? | ||
| What we're trying to do is build a great economy for everybody, including those that speak Spanish or those that don't speak Spanish who also speak English. | ||
| And so, look, Miami is a very international city. | ||
| We speak over 120 languages. | ||
| We have great schools that teach English to those that don't speak English. | ||
| And so, you know, and you're right, you know, in Miami, because we have such a large Hispanic population, I think, actually, Miami is majority Hispanic. | ||
| And I know when I got to Miami back in 1960, there weren't that many. | ||
| And so, yes, I was kind of, you know, I had to learn English, right? | ||
| Because there weren't too many Spanish speakers. | ||
| Right now, there are so many Spanish speakers that you can actually live in Miami without learning English, and that's unfortunate. | ||
| But there are good jobs for everybody in Miami. | ||
| That's why people are flocking to Miami from all parts of the world and also parts of this country. | ||
| Here's Margie in Brumall, Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Margie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good morning, Senator. | ||
| Congressman. | ||
| Congressman. | ||
| Thanks for the promotion. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman. | |
| Anyway, I just want you to tell President Trump that 77 million of us stand behind him that voted for him. | ||
| I really appreciate his calmness during all of this, the way he talks and everything else. | ||
| I just want to also state that what's going on in LA, I don't understand how people can blame him for being proactive and bringing in the National Guard when they're only there to protect property and everything else. | ||
| So I don't understand where the negativity comes from there. | ||
| Because again, when they blame him for January 6th, and state he didn't call in the National Guard and blah, blah, blah, and he did, Pelloji's own daughter verified that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I just don't understand all this. | |
| And also, if you could people need to be held accountable for what they say, because you've got to watch news, Max, and Fox. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is what it is. | |
| The rest of them are against President Trump. | ||
| He said himself, I could invent a cure for cancer and the Democrats wouldn't be happy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think so. | |
| Margie, let's get a response from Congressman Jimenez. | ||
| Look, I think that people are criticizing the president for taking decisive action, that he's just not going to tolerate what happened in 2020, say, in Portland, in Minnesota. | ||
| He's not going to tolerate that. | ||
| I mean, he learned the lessons of 2020. | ||
| Look, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. | ||
| If you allow rioters to start to riot, demonstrators start to riot and start to burn and start to loot, then you're going to get a riot, okay? | ||
| And that's what you're going to end up with. | ||
| It's beyond me how the mayor of LA, how the governor of California haven't figured that out yet, how they did not protect their property, how they did not protect their city. | ||
| It's their city, okay? | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| There are good, law-abiding people in that city that merit protection. | ||
| There are good people that have property there. | ||
| It's being destroyed, okay? | ||
| And so where are their rights? | ||
| Their rights lie with the government that is our duty to protect the people. | ||
| And it's not our duty to protect rioters, okay? | ||
| Our duty is to put them in jail. | ||
| And so the president had to do what he had to do because obviously the state and local governments didn't do what they had to do. | ||
| Let's talk to Vivian in Collierville, Tennessee, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Vivian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Please give me a few minutes to get my points over. | ||
| I'm sitting up here looking at this gentleman, sitting up there lying. | ||
| Everybody knows that the Republicans deep in their heart know Trump is lying. | ||
| He is wrong. | ||
| He's throwing up everything out there against America. | ||
| One thing I've got to say, every day he changes his minds on the terrorist. | ||
| Somebody asks him questions about what's going on. | ||
| He don't know it. | ||
| He don't recall it. | ||
| I would like to know what do he have on these Republicans. | ||
| You sitting up letting children, elderly people, people die. | ||
| I had three brothers who was in Vietnam War, died from Agent Orange. | ||
| My brothers died. | ||
| They denied my brothers. | ||
| Do you hear me? | ||
| And they had that cancer. | ||
| You all sitting up there talking about sending people up there, rioting. | ||
| Them people out there for rights. | ||
| I'm against you burning anything. | ||
| But I'm 74. | ||
| I lived through this area. | ||
| To me, it looked like the Jim Crow. | ||
| Mr., how can you sit up there? | ||
| You know how they did. | ||
| You all, people your color, too, like Debian. | ||
| But so before civil rights movement come along, you sitting up there, you are liars. | ||
| Let's get a response, Carton Grussman. | ||
| Would you like to say anything to that? | ||
| First, I want to apologize if somehow, if your brother was in Vietnam and he was exposed to Agent Orange, the government should have taken care of him. | ||
| And thank your brother for his service. | ||
| I really don't have much to say about the rest. | ||
| You know, I am 70 years old, you know, and I was here during the 60s and The issues that we have with race and the race riots that we had, and it was a difficult time in America. | ||
| But to say that somehow I know he's lying and all that, you know, what do you want me to say to that? | ||
| No, the President of the United States is trying to protect the people of Los Angeles and those that have property in Los Angeles, and they deserve peace. | ||
| And he should, and he is trying also to protect the rights of the demonstrators to demonstrate, but they need to do it in a peaceful way. | ||
| They can't continue to do what they're doing, okay? | ||
| Because that's not the American way. | ||
| Let's talk to Warren in Niceville, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Warren. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| Warren, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I have a couple short things to say. | ||
| I've been watching the riots on TV and things burning up and people stealing things and watching how the people, the government people respond. | ||
| Now, U.S. citizens have rights, like the right to protest and assembly and various other things. | ||
| Now, do not citizens, they're illegal entry people, have the right to come into our country and protest. | ||
| I'm sorry, is that a question? | ||
| You're asking, do people have the right to protest if they are not documented? | ||
| Is that what the question is, Warren? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, if they're not citizens and people could come into this country illegally from wherever, do they have the right to protest like Americans do for assembly and so forth? | |
| I believe they do. | ||
| And I don't have a problem with non-citizens protesting, assembling, et cetera, as long as they do it peacefully. | ||
| Now, I think, you know, I heard yesterday something that was really interesting: that you go to Mexico, you don't have that right. | ||
| If you're not a Mexican, you can't protest in the streets, and actually, they'll throw you out. | ||
| I don't know if it's true or not, but that's what I heard. | ||
| But here in this country, I believe in the right to assembly. | ||
| I believe in the right to protest as long as you do it peacefully. | ||
| And I will defend your right to assembly, and I will defend your right to protest as long as you do it peacefully. | ||
| Here's Robert in Greenville, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Carlos, do you have children and grandchildren? | |
| Yes, I do. | ||
| I have three children. | ||
| I have six grandchildren. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you must not worry about them because you know what Donald Trump is. | |
| We all know who Donald Trump is. | ||
| Don't bring my children. | ||
| Don't bring my children and don't bring my grandchildren into this conversation. | ||
| How dare you say that I don't care about my children or my grandchildren? | ||
| You know nothing about me or my children or my grandchildren. | ||
| And I think I've had enough of this gentleman. | ||
| Here's Laverne, Fort Worth, Texas. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| People are all over the place this morning. | ||
| I'm calling about the riot. | ||
| I believe in them arresting people that is unlawful and doing the burning and everything. | ||
| I seriously believe they, or the people instead of it, was in the January 6th incident because it was people riot all day and they wouldn't have any problems. | ||
| But all of a sudden, here come bits and pieces of people from nowhere. | ||
| And also, I'd like to know how is ICE doing their business about arresting people? | ||
| Because I saw on live feed, this woman was holding her newborn child, and they snatched the child out of her arms and arrested her. | ||
| And this morning, I saw OLAC, this woman was trying to go to her apartment. | ||
| And you have these trigger-happy police out here, and one of them just shot her with the rubber bullet for no reason at all. | ||
| So I wanted to know, I'm wondering, are we becoming a dictatorship under Marshall? | ||
| Because I see them taking the focus off of the Project 2025 and also taking the focus off the big bill or whatever, this legacy that he's trying to create. | ||
| So could you please tell me what is all this coming to? | ||
| Because there's no reason why he shouldn't have called the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Go ahead, Congressman Jimenez. | ||
| I'm sorry, I didn't get a lot of that, but, you know, are we becoming a dictatorship? | ||
| I'll tell you one thing. | ||
| There's one person I know right now that's not going to accept the dictatorship. | ||
| That's me. | ||
| I came from Cuba, all right? | ||
| I wasn't born in this country. | ||
| I was born in Cuba, and I know what dictatorships are like. | ||
| I know what dictatorships look like. | ||
| And this is not anywhere close to being that. | ||
| I mean, a lot of people are throwing that word around a little bit in a cavalier fashion. | ||
| If people are being arrested without cause, I'll be the first one there demonstrating against that. | ||
| And I will not tolerate it. | ||
| I know that my conference will not tolerate people's rights being squandered or being squashed. | ||
| Now, that there may have been an arrest warrant for an individual, and she may have a baby with her or a child with that individual. | ||
| Well, we want to make sure, A, there was an arrest warrant, that that person is maybe a deportable or somebody with a deportation order, and it's unfortunate that they had a child with it, but they can't take the child with the person that they're going to be arresting that individual. | ||
| And yeah, you're going to see some of these images, you know, sometimes, and they're going to be disturbing. | ||
| But what is behind those images? | ||
| Is there an arrest warrant? | ||
| Is there a reason why that individual is being arrested? | ||
| That's what you have to, you know, look behind. | ||
| If there is no reason, I'll be the first one out there protesting to make sure that doesn't happen because that's where I came from. | ||
| I came from a country where you have no rights. | ||
| Congressman, just briefly, are you going to be attending the Army parade this weekend here in D.C.? | ||
| No, I'm going to be back home with my children and my grandchildren. | ||
| All right, that's Representative Carlos Jimenez, Republican of Florida, member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| It's my pleasure. | ||
| Up next, we've got Representative Adriana Espeat. | ||
| He is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. | ||
| He'll discuss the Trump administration's deportation policies and the ongoing protests in Los Angeles. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue. | |
| And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
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| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | |
| C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | ||
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| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thanks C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
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| This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| In a town where partisan fighting prevails. | ||
| One table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Representative Adriana Espellat. | ||
| You are the Democratic Caucus Senior Whip, I believe, Congressman. | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| And Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair, welcome to the program. | ||
| Just want to find out your reaction to the events of Los Angeles and your caucus' response. | ||
| Well, first and foremost, I want to say that we ask all protesters who obviously have a constitutional right to protest to do so obviously in peace, peacefully. | ||
| That is the only way that we're going to get social change is by engaging in peaceful protests. | ||
| We reject anybody that comes in and tries to take advantage of a meritorious debate and protest for social justice. | ||
| So we ask that first and foremost. | ||
| Secondly, we think that we got here when the administration began to aggressively deport working people. | ||
| Folks that went to a Home Depot looking for work, moms who were taking daughters and children to a hospital appointment, as I saw with four U.S. born children, four U.S. citizens. | ||
| including a 10-year-old little girl with a cancerous brain tumor who were deported to Mexico when they were on their way to a hospital in Houston and were stopped at a checkpoint. | ||
| When people like a union leader, Mr. Huertas in Los Angeles gets stopped, cuffed, and arrested and put in a deportation track. | ||
| That's how we got here. | ||
| This is not just about violent criminals that went to court and were found guilty and should be deported. | ||
| We all agree with that. | ||
| This is about green car holders who are here legally. | ||
| This is about people who work permits, who are able to work legally in the United States. | ||
| And this is ultimately also about U.S. citizens that are being impacted dramatically by this aggressive mass deportation effort by the administration. | ||
| This is how we get here. | ||
| And furthermore, gas is thrown and top of the fire by moving military forces and the National Guard who are not necessarily trained or have the tools to deal with a local issue, a domestic issue that now obviously has escalated. | ||
| And Congressman, I mean, the administration says that the situation was not under control, that the governor and the local authorities were not able to maintain peaceful protests and to protect federal buildings and agents. | ||
| What's your response to that and that this was an appropriate use of federal power? | ||
| Well, first and foremost, we hear from the local authorities on the ground who very early on said they had everything under control. | ||
| The governor and the mayor said they had everything under control. | ||
| It is when the National Guard and the now the Marines showed up that is spiraled out of control. | ||
| And so we want to make sure that we listen to local authorities. | ||
| They are the ones that know the neighborhoods. | ||
| They are the ones that know the municipalities, the cities, the counties. | ||
| They are the ones that know the community organizations. | ||
| They're the ones that know the community. | ||
| First and foremost, they have deep knowledge of each of the neighborhoods. | ||
| And so we must listen to them. | ||
| And if they were telling us that it was under control, we should adhere to their wishes. | ||
| However, now it got spiral out of control when these federal forces came in. | ||
| Now, we went, we meeting the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, went to visit an ICE facility. | ||
| We heard that at the ICE facility, people that were trying to comply with the rules and regulations with the law, making a court appearance, an immigration court appearance, or visiting their ICE officer in a pre-scheduled appointment, were being arrested in the hallways, detained in an administrative building, not a detention center, and then put on track for deportation. | ||
| This was being done seven days a week. | ||
| So we went to look at the sites to make sure that the conditions were humane. | ||
| And we were not allowed in. | ||
| Of us were turned away from exercising our constitutional right to have oversight over federal agencies. | ||
| So we will continue to go back to ensure that everybody is complying with the law. | ||
| Representative Andreano Espayat, a Democrat of New York, is with us until for about 20 minutes. | ||
| You can call us if you'd like to ask him a question. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| Congressman, we are hearing that parts of New York City, parts of which that you represent, are having protests, immigration protests currently. | ||
| What are you hearing about that, and what are you hearing from your constituents? | ||
| First and foremost, again, I want to ensure that everybody understands that we as Democrats reject violence in any protest, that our history has been one of peaceful demonstrations from the civil rights movement, from the movement, the suffrage movement by women, from even the immigration debate has been one that has been characterized by peaceful demonstration. | ||
| We're not supportive of violence. | ||
| Our communities in New York will reject any type of violence. | ||
| We will push back against it. | ||
| And we are, for the most part, I would say we are very supportive of law enforcement because it is law enforcement that's there with us in our communities to fight crime. | ||
| It is law enforcement that's there with us in our community to ensure that our children are safe. | ||
| It is law enforcement in our community that's there right next to us to ensure that our seniors on their way to church or on their way to the senior center are there in a safe manner. | ||
| So we have a great relationship, I believe, with law enforcement in our communities. | ||
| And law enforcement is made up for the most part of many of our kids, many of our sons and daughters. | ||
| And we want them protected as well. | ||
| But we feel that the administration is aggressive. | ||
| Their tone is aggressive. | ||
| The president's tone and language is often over the top and aggressive. | ||
| And it's not really one that gives the people of our nation the ability to say that we're coming together. | ||
| In fact, what it looks like is that he's splitting us apart. | ||
| Let's talk to callers and go with Mickey in Tacoma Park, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you today? | |
| I've been listening for the last hour and a half to the programs that have been playing. | ||
| Everything, I would just like to make a statement, not so much as a question, so that maybe you can relate it to your Democratic constituents. | ||
| That this act that happened in LA with the military popping up there and being dispatched there, I said he was going to do this six months ago through his campaign before he came president. | ||
| This time around, everything I said about this guy and everything he's been doing in the last 140 or 50 days has transpired up to the military going on the street. | ||
| We have approximately anywhere from two weeks to another month before this guy declares martial law, or maybe a few weeks longer. | ||
| But if you guys do not take off the white gloves and stop handling this guy like a fine piece of art, we're going to be dismantled, just like what happened in the Philippines. | ||
| And Mickey, what are you asking Congressional Democrats to do, actually? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's time to go, everybody go to start bringing hearings to the Supreme Court, law cases, get him out of office before it gets any further. | |
| The 2025 plan has been devised by Putin and handed to him and his administration. | ||
| All right, let's go ahead and get a response, Congressman. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
| Well, I hear the caller. | ||
| You know, we are active in various fronts in the courts. | ||
| There's over 130 litigations going on right now challenging some very aggressive and we feel illegal executive orders. | ||
| We are also legislatively and budgetarily, every opportunity we get, we will confront his big ugly bill that proposes to cut your Medicaid, that proposes to cut your food stamps, that proposes to hurt seniors, veterans, children. | ||
| This is something that's very concerning to us because in the middle of this debate about Los Angeles and New York, everybody's forgetting the fact that he's taking your Medicaid away from you, that he's cutting your food stamps, that programs that are vital and important to you and the American families are being impacted in a dramatic way if this bill goes through. | ||
| We are being distracted by this, taking our eye off the ball, and we're not paying attention to what really is going to hit our pocketbook. | ||
| We want to know whether inflation is on the hole. | ||
| I'll tell you that it's not. | ||
| That you'll go to the supermarket today, you'll see that the prices are just as high as they were when he got elected. | ||
| So he hasn't done anything to cure inflation, to lower prices, to address pocketbook issues. | ||
| In fact, we're being distracted by this other debate, and we're taking our eye off the ball. | ||
| So we're in the courthouse, we're fighting legislatively and budgetarily. | ||
| And of course, the most important piece is public sentiment. | ||
| And Abraham Lincoln said right in the middle of the Civil War, we must have public sentiment on our side. | ||
| And I think public sentiment is looking at this mess and saying, what is the president doing? | ||
| What is he doing sending military personnel to my backyard, to my local street, where my son or daughter are riding in a bicycle, where my mother or father are going to the senior, walking to the senior center? | ||
| What is he doing sending military personnel when the local police department, who we trust, told us that everything control? | ||
| Let's talk to Ray next in Syracuse, New York, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Ray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| The congressperson appears to have Trump derangement syndrome or something like it. | ||
| We people who vote for Donald Trump, which happens to be a majority American, and an overwhelming wipeout for their candidate, you guys have still not learned. | ||
| When you come on this TV and you act like you don't know anything about what went down multiple days and nights, watched all over that city, at least in the places where they're having problems. | ||
| Those people were throwing bricks. | ||
| They were attacking people with all sorts of handheld weapons. | ||
| They did it multiple days. | ||
| They kept it up. | ||
| They defied the local police. | ||
| I watched local police do their best to not use the batons and they only did what they had to do and they were getting their rear ends kicked. | ||
| We saw it on TV multiple days. | ||
| What do you think of that, Congressman Espayot? | ||
| Well, we said from the very beginning and we continue to say vigorously that we reject violence, that we are a peace-abiding party, that the roots of our party are deeply rooted, deeply rooted in the peaceful movement for social change, and that we want things to be peaceful and we reject anyone, absolutely anyone that resorts to violence. | ||
| I may add that the last time I checked when we voted on the reconciliation bill on the House floor, it was a one-vote difference. | ||
| So obviously the election was not that much of a landslide when you only had a one-vote margin in the House to pass this bill that will devastate America, that will probably hurt the caller at the cash register in his hometown of Syracuse, that will probably take Medicaid away from him or folks that he knows that are Medicare recipients, Medicaid and Medicare recipients, | ||
| that will hurt single moms that are taking SNAP benefits, that will hurt the grocers that depend on SNAP benefits. | ||
| So this debate that we're having today is forcing us to take our eyes off the ball. | ||
| And we know that the reconciliation bill is on life support in the Senate. | ||
| So obviously the result were not a landslide. | ||
| It was a very tight election. | ||
| And we feel very strongly that we must protect the American people. | ||
| And we do that by guaranteeing their basic rights and privileges guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and by ensuring that programs as important as the Medicaid program, the Medicare program, your Social Security benefits, your SNAP benefits, the best vehicle for advancement in America is the public school system. | ||
| And he's trying to dismantle that. | ||
| So these are the programs that are important, not just to me, but I'm sure to the caller itself. | ||
| And we will continue to fight for them. | ||
| David is in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Senator, with all due respect. | |
| I'm sorry, Representative, how can we believe what you say about the bill when you totally misrepresented the riots in California? | ||
| We all saw that they were shooting fireworks, dropping concrete blocks on police way before Trump sent days, days before Trump sent the National Guard in. | ||
| And here you say that he inflamed it. | ||
| It was peaceful until then. | ||
| So how can we take your word for the bill that it's a bad bill when you misrepresented Trump's actions in LA so bad? | ||
| And one other quick thing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| One other real quick. | ||
| This thing about arresting mothers and taking their children from them. | ||
| You know, I'm an American citizen. | ||
| I was born here. | ||
| And by God, when I was younger, I got arrested. | ||
| I had two small children at home. | ||
| I broke the law. | ||
| When you break the law, by God, you should think of your children first. | ||
| Don't break the law. | ||
| All right, Congressman. | ||
| Well, first and foremost, the case that I refer to was the case of a couple that were driving on their way to a hospital in Houston with four of their children, including a little girl with a very serious brain tumor. | ||
| They did this on a regular basis. | ||
| Their children were U.S. citizens, and they were stopped at a checkpoint and deported with four U.S. children. | ||
| The immigration mass deportation plan by Donald Trump is not just impacting the undocumented, it's not just impacting folks that are on their way to get their green car, it's impacting people that are here legally with their green car. | ||
| It's impacting people that have their work permits, and ultimately is impacting American citizens. | ||
| If I take this suit and tie off and I put on my geese and a t-shirt and a pair of sneakers, I will be profiled. | ||
| I will be stopped. | ||
| And believe me, they won't ask me for my passport or my driver's license. | ||
| So, this is a state of affairs in America right now. | ||
| And this is what got us all here: this very aggressive attitude by our president, this very aggressive and intolerant attitude by his administration that has fueled the conflict instead of bringing the country together. | ||
| Christine is a Democrat in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. | ||
| Hi, Christine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| You know, everything that the Congress is saying is correct. | ||
| The people that started that mess over there in Los Angeles, those are those toe boys that he let out of prison. | ||
| They're the ones doing that. | ||
| I looked at that in Los Angeles. | ||
| I didn't see nothing that happened that caused no problems until he started calling them different types of military scene. | ||
| They didn't do anything. | ||
| Mayor Karen Bass is black. | ||
| Of course, he's gonna give her trouble. | ||
| She's black. | ||
| Some make her look bad, but she's not. | ||
| She controls her city. | ||
| And another thing I want to say while I'm on here, I want everyone to listen to this. | ||
| That stimulus checks we got. | ||
| Trump denied them. | ||
| Our President Biden approved them. | ||
| And when he approved them, Trump said he wants his name on them because they happen in his cabinet. | ||
| So he approved it and let him put his name on there. | ||
| But he denied American people a stimulus check. | ||
| And y'all got to understand this. | ||
| He's giving America a whole lot of bad, bad, bad trouble. | ||
| Mm-hmm, Christine and Congressman Espayat, your response to that. | ||
| Well, I agree with the caller. | ||
| Two days ago, we met with the Secretary of HUD, and he agreed that there is a homelessness crisis in America. | ||
| He agreed that there is an affordable housing emergency in our nation, that many, many families are paying over 50% of their income towards rent because the rent is too high everywhere in America. | ||
| And yet, HUD and the president are proposing to cut the HUD budget by 51% Percent by over half of the budget while we face a homelessness crisis that is frankly all over the nation, anywhere you go, whether it's an urban city or even rural America, you will see homeless people, people that don't have a roof over their heads. | ||
| And you know that there is an affordable housing crisis when you're paying 50%, 60% of your income towards rent, which is too high. | ||
| And the minimum wage continues to be very low. | ||
| And yet, HUD, which is the agency that is supposed to take care of our housing needs, proposes a 51% cut on his budget. | ||
| That will exacerbate the crisis and will push us off the cliff. | ||
| So, yes, he is perpetrating the crisis. | ||
| Here's Jerry, a Republican in Carrollton, Ohio. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| I'd like to ask you a question: Why is it all right for Joe Biden to let these millions of people undocument enter our country? | ||
| And that's legal, evidently. | ||
| I'd like to know why it's so illegal for Donald Trump to get them out of our country. | ||
| And I don't think these people that come over here that are six, seven, eight months pregnant in Mexico or wherever they were, and then they have their kids in our country. | ||
| Now, that's American citizens. | ||
| That's not right either. | ||
| All right, let's take that up, Jerry. | ||
| Go ahead, Congressman. | ||
| What I've said time and time again is that we believe in due process. | ||
| We believe in people having the ability to go to the court system and defend themselves. | ||
| That is what this nation is built upon: due process, that under a court of law, everyone has the same rights and privileges. | ||
| And that's not being extended because the mass deportation machine is not making a difference between an American citizen, a green car holder that's here legally, someone that has a work permit and is allowed to work. | ||
| Farm workers are not going to the fields because they're afraid they're going to be deported. | ||
| The agricultural business industry here in America is hurting. | ||
| We hear from farmers that they're losing their crops because farm workers are not reporting to work on account of this fear, this cloud of fear that's gripping the nation. | ||
| This is how we got here. | ||
| This is how Los Samuels got here. | ||
| This is how New York got here. | ||
| It didn't come overnight, it came as a result of a series of actions taken by this president that's unhinged. | ||
| I don't need to tell you, you need to see him yourself. | ||
| He's unhinged, he's out of control. | ||
| Here's Stephen in Massachusetts Independent Line. | ||
| Stephen, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| All I'd like to say today is just a small statement about keeping things simple. | ||
| I believe that President Donald Trump's overreach is the problem. | ||
| His overreach is illegal. | ||
| The governor, the mayor of Los Angeles, California, did not invite him to be there with federal troops or call out the National Guard. | ||
| And that's wrong. | ||
| And we have to keep sticking to the subject and staying in the direction of what the legal response should be to Donald Trump. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Congressman last response. |