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| Coming up on Washington Journal, we get the latest on the Israeli strikes on Iran and what they mean for the region. | ||
| We'll also get the latest on the detainment and removal of California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla from a DHS press briefing where agency head Christy Noam was speaking. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Welcome to the Washington Journal. | ||
| On this Friday, June 13th, we'll begin with the escalating conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran. | ||
| It began with Israel deploying 200 warplanes Friday morning, dropping hundreds of bombs, targeting nuclear facilities, and killing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander as well as other top military brass. | ||
| Iran has retaliated with more than 100 drones launched toward Israel. | ||
| And Prime Minister Benjamin Yatnahu vowed the battle would continue for, quote, as many days as it takes. | ||
| Your message to Washington this morning: how do you want the U.S. to react? | ||
| Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text, include your first name, city, and state to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or an ex with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| We will get to your message to Washington on the strikes in Iran by Israel and the retaliation by Tehran. | ||
| Right after a little bit more from Benjamin Yetanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in a video message to his country and the world, this is what he had to say yesterday. | ||
| In recent years, Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs. | ||
| Nine. | ||
| In recent months, Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before. | ||
| Steps to weaponize this enriched uranium. | ||
| If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. | ||
| It could be a year, it could be within a few months, less than a year. | ||
| This is a clear and present danger to Israel's very survival. | ||
| 80 years ago, the Jewish people were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. | ||
| Today, the Jewish state refuses to be a victim of a nuclear holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime. | ||
| Now, as Prime Minister, I've made it clear time and again, Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal. | ||
| Tonight, Israel backs those words with action. | ||
| We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear enrichment program. | ||
| We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear weaponization program. | ||
| We targeted Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz. | ||
| We targeted Iran's leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. | ||
| We also struck at the heart of Iran's ballistic missile program. | ||
| Last year, Iran fired 300 ballistic missiles at Israel. | ||
| Each of these missiles carries a ton of explosives and threatens the lives of hundreds of people. | ||
| Soon, those missiles could carry a nuclear payload, threatening the lives not of hundreds, but of millions. | ||
| Iran is gearing up to produce 10,000 of those ballistic missiles within three years. | ||
| Now, just imagine. | ||
| Imagine 10,000 tons of TNT landing on a country the size of New Jersey. | ||
| This is an intolerable threat. | ||
| It too must be stopped. | ||
| Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, early Friday morning Israel Time, last evening here in Washington, addressing his country and the world, confirming that Israel had issued a strike against Iran. | ||
| And as you heard him say, CNN reported six nuclear scientists were killed in that targeted attack by more than 200 warplanes. | ||
| Also, three of Iran's top military brass and the main nuclear facilities in Iran. | ||
| Iran has retaliated with more than 100 drones toward Israel. | ||
| Here is the response from Iran's supreme leader in a statement. | ||
| The Zionist regime has committed a crime in our dear country today at dawn with its satanic, blood-stained hands. | ||
| That regime should anticipate a severe punishment. | ||
| By God's grace, the powerful arm of the Islamic Republic's armed forces, he writes, won't let them go unpunished with this crime. | ||
| The Zionist regime has prepared for itself a bitter, painful fate, which it will definitely see. | ||
| The foreign minister of the Iranian government putting out this statement. | ||
| The Zionist regime's acts of aggression against Iran could not have been carried out without the coordination and approval of the United States. | ||
| Consequently, the U.S. government, as the primary patron of this regime, will also bear responsibility for the dangerous repercussions of the Zionist regime's reckless actions. | ||
| President Trump on Truth Social this morning putting out this statement. | ||
| I gave Iran a chance after chance to make a deal. | ||
| I told them in the strongest of words to just do it, but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done. | ||
| I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world, by far, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come, and they know how to use it. | ||
| Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen. | ||
| They are all dead now, and it will only get worse. | ||
| There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. | ||
| Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what has once known as the Iranian Empire. | ||
| No more death, no more destruction. | ||
| Just do it before it's too late. | ||
| God bless you all from the President of the United States earlier this morning. | ||
| Now, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News reported that the White House was aware of this attack, but the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says the U.S. was not involved. | ||
| We want to know your message to the lawmakers here in Washington on the situation between Israel and Iran. | ||
| Tina in Pell City, Alabama, Republican. | ||
| What do you say to the president and lawmakers here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, may God bless Israel. | |
| If you understand the 3,000 years of history in these areas, you'll understand that Israel is a chosen nation. | ||
| And those who oppose God will not fare well. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's historical, and it's true. | |
| And our nation needs to be aware of that and needs to be the nation we've been. | ||
| It disturbs me greatly. | ||
| This Alex Fadilla situation, also that you mentioned at the beginning, when congresspeople get up and they don't take the whole context of his situation where he entered a press Tina, we're going to talk an open forum later and we'll talk about that situation there. | ||
| Sticking with what you said, though, about this conflict between Israel and Iran, would you call it war? | ||
| And what do you think the United States should do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, of course it's war. | |
| And I think we ought to abide by what we're doing. | ||
| Which is what? | ||
| Which is what, Tina? | ||
| Abide by what we're doing, which is what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we need to support Israel. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Tina and they're in Alabama. | ||
| We'll go to Hyattsville, Maryland, Republican caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is it Ira Patab? | |
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm speaking as a Christian. | |
| That is Confucian. | ||
| The lady who spoke was the children of Israel returned from the Babylonian captivity to establish the state of Israel thereafter, and then the Lord Jesus Christ came into the scene. | ||
| These European settlers in Israel are still expecting the Messiah. | ||
| Well, the Messiah has already come and has already beautified the world by bringing people of various nationalities together as Christians. | ||
| But this racist group that are causing problem in Palestine, why don't the people go back to Europe? | ||
| If they go back to Europe, there will be no problem because there were already Jews who returned from the Babylonian captivity. | ||
| One rabbi was born even in Jerusalem. | ||
| But Israel, he was saying, hey, we have been living here quite peacefully with these people. | ||
| Why are you coming in with your racist ideas? | ||
| Yeah, they nearly killed him. | ||
| That rabbi escaped and he's now in another. | ||
| All right, Color, I'm going to go to Robert, who's in Nashville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Robert, your message to lawmakers here in Washington on the conflict between Israel and Iran. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very disappointed in the provocative actions of the Israeli government, of the Netanyahu government. | |
| You know, they are a provocative regime, okay, who is trying to draw the United States into a regional war. | ||
| And I'm not interested in seeing that. | ||
| You know, we give them, you know, billions of dollars. | ||
| They don't want peace. | ||
| They act like they want peace, but they're trying to stir up problems because Netanyahu and his group do not want a nuclear deal with Iran. | ||
| How many people has Iran killed, okay, in the last decade? | ||
| Whereas Israel seems to be concerned about their existential survival. | ||
| How about the existential survival of the Palestinians or of Iran? | ||
| Israel is the aggressor, okay, and I don't want to see any American blood shed because of this radical reactionary regime that's in Tel Aviv now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, Robert, what do you want to hear from President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to hear from President Trump that it's time for Israel to listen to the people who are trying to help them, okay, which is trying to advise them and suggest to them that they learn how to get along and not to be provocative. | |
| You know, they're calling for war, you know, but what has Iran actually done directly to them? | ||
| This is a violent colonial settler regime, and it's time that we stop letting them manipulate us. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, Robert, you've heard this from the prime minister of Israel saying that Iran is an existential threat, that they have called for wiping Jewish people and Israel off the map. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These are old quotes, okay? | |
| You know, yeah, there's people in Israel who have called for wiping any number of people off the map, okay? | ||
| We don't take that seriously. | ||
| You know, Iran is not making any threats, and Iran is trying to do a nuclear deal. | ||
| Netanyahu didn't want Witkoff to go to continue those negotiations. | ||
| Trump is being manipulated. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| And on those negotiations, Robert, the sixth round was slated for this weekend. | ||
| Iran has already called them off. | ||
| And the U.S. officials saying that they will be there. | ||
| So whether or not those, any discussions happen is up in the air. | ||
| Richard in Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Richard, good morning. | ||
| Your message to Washington. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is the first time I've ever called C-S-Ban, but I think there's a real lack of understanding about the Islamic religion. | |
| There are two sects, Sunni and Shia. | ||
| Iran is a Shia, and they are mortal enemies, the two sects. | ||
| The Ayatollah says he has a firm belief that the 12th Imam will arrive from heaven, and he will settle the Sunni issues and all of Iran's enemies, which would include the Jewish state. | ||
| This is a very serious, the Ayatollah is a king of, whatever needs to be done, he will decide it. | ||
| Well, now they've neutralized the nuclear programs, which I think is great. | ||
| And it always worried me. | ||
| I'm married to a Jewish lady, and she has had relatives in Israel. | ||
| On October 7th, the Massacre that took place was done by Iranian surrogates. | ||
| It is that's a mark that will never be erased. | ||
| And I think it's a lot, has a lot to do with this attack. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Richard's thoughts there. | ||
| In Georgia, a Republican Roosevelt's a Democrat in Garland, Texas. | ||
| Roosevelt, let's hear from you. | ||
| Your message to Washington this morning as the U.S. awakes to this news and the escalation continuing between Israel and Iran. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I feel that the Trump administration escalated this. | |
| I know that the current events are between Benjamin Yahoo and the Iranian regime, but this all started when the first Trump administration tore up the deal that President Obama had negotiated with the Iranian regime for nuclear control. | ||
| I feel like if the administration, we heard your thoughts there. | ||
| You're looking at video from Reuters this morning on your screen. | ||
| We're taking your thoughts about Israel's strike on Iranians' nuclear program, killing nuclear scientists, killing military top brass, and taking out nuclear facilities across the country. | ||
| Iran has retaliated with more than 100 drones. | ||
| Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, his statement last night, Israel's attack on Iran clearly intended to scuttle the Trump administration's negotiations with Iran, risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America and is further evidence of how little respect world leaders, including our own allies, he says, have. | ||
| And this is Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas. | ||
| Iran is the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism, has the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands, and is rushing to build not only nuclear weapons, but also missiles that can strike the United States. | ||
| We back Israel to the hilt all the way. | ||
| Your reaction to these lawmakers and others, what is your message to them this morning? | ||
| Stephen, Fayetteville, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everybody. | |
| This is my second time calling. | ||
| And the first time I called, I warned everyone that there's a bad storm coming, and it's arriving. | ||
| President Trump can't say anything that's going to change anything. | ||
| What's going to happen is exactly what the Bible says is going to happen. | ||
| And that's Iran and China and Russia are going to declare war on Israel. | ||
| And just before Israel is defeated, the good Lord will come back. | ||
| So all you Christians hang in there. | ||
| We were told about these things and now they're starting to happen. | ||
| Jackson in Alexandria, Virginia, independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| I can't tell you just how upset I am by this. | ||
| I do not support Israel whatsoever. | ||
| And my message to my congresspeople is that you have failed. | ||
| Israel is not worth one minute of my time, nor is this a fight that any of my children should even support. | ||
| This is disgusting to me. | ||
| And I think that I think that this is something that has been planned. | ||
| I served in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| And I think the gentleman who's of the people who've talked before about this is in the Bible, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| No, this is something that these people have been creating for thousands of years because they believe something that they wrote in a book. | ||
| I mean, Harry Potter, for example. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| This is nonsense. | ||
| The idea that we're allowing this to happen is frustrating. | ||
| I reject the idea that I'm going to let my kids, myself, go into a war for people who do not matter. | ||
| This is disgusting. | ||
| Jackson, how much of your experience in Iraq and Afghanistan shapes your comments here this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fantastic question. | |
| I know for a fact that this thing about Shia Sunni, that the gentleman who was talking about before, I spent four years in Iraq and I spent a year in Afghanistan is nonsense. | ||
| These people have been attacked. | ||
| Eyewitnesses, and I used to do a lot of intelligence work. | ||
| I witness that these people are under attack. | ||
| And before I move from this point, October 7th, Zionists attacked October 7th. | ||
| That's what happened. | ||
| Jewish Zionists attacked and they created, they forced America to pivot away from Asia back to the Middle East. | ||
| We knew about this when ISIS was created back in the early 2000s. | ||
| We knew that the boogeyman was being created by the Israelis. | ||
| They needed a catastrophic event to force what you see is happening right now, to bring America into a war. | ||
| This is stupid. | ||
| The Israelis have been doing this for decades. | ||
| Phoebe Netanyahu has been doing this since the early 90s. | ||
| This is nonsense. | ||
| So yes, I was in Iraq and I know for a fact ISIS created, manufactured, October 7th, manufactured. | ||
| This is stupid. | ||
| This is stupid. | ||
| But Jackson, when you say you know for a fact, what evidence you have? | ||
| Because people out there listening thinking that this is a conspiracy theory, what you just brought up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I'm telling you, October 7th, you sat and you heard people tell you that it was Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, manufactured. | |
| Zionists. | ||
| What evidence do you have? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| President Kennedy was shot by one man in the grassy knoll. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's my evidence. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Jackson, Alexander, Virginia, independent caller. | ||
| Politico this morning with this head. | ||
| Deeply alarming. | ||
| World leaders urge restraint as Israel pummels Iran. | ||
| From their reporting, they have captured the statements by several world leaders. | ||
| The European Commission president calling it deeply alarming and urged all parties to exercise restraint, de-escalate, and not retaliate. | ||
| The NATO Secretary General said it was crucial for Israel's allies to work to de-escalate tensions. | ||
| And from London, the Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, said the reports of these strikes are concerning, and we urge all parties to step back and reduce tensions urgently. | ||
| Reaction from world leaders this morning as we get your reaction and your message to Washington on the conflict between Israel and Iran. | ||
| Let's go to Matt, who's in Texas, a Republican caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Matt, good morning to you. | |
| Yeah, I'd just like to say I support Israel 1,000% and Donald Trump 1,000%. | ||
| He's doing an excellent job. | ||
| And Iran, they're just a bunch of knuckleheads and evil. | ||
| And just like it states in the Bible, they're going to go down and go down hard. | ||
| Trump, you know, he tried to tell them here a few days, you know, been trying to tell them, you know, what was going to happen, but they wouldn't listen. | ||
| So now they're going to find out the hard way. | ||
| And Matt, do you think the United States needs to get involved militarily? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, we're giving Israel all the firepower they need. | |
| You know, right now, just let Donald Trump handle it. | ||
| He knows how to handle his fine. | ||
| He's doing an excellent job. | ||
| Netanyahu doing a great job and just let we furnish the weapons, you know, as long as Iran don't attack us. | ||
| Now, if they do, they're really gonna find out what getting their tail kicked is. | ||
| I mean, I mean, right now they're getting the tail kicked. | ||
| They're fishing to really get their tail kicked if they miss the United States. | ||
| It should have been done years ago. | ||
| Biden, he was too weak. | ||
| Obama was weak. | ||
| And these Democrats that call in and go against Israel, that shows you right there they don't know the first thing about the Bible. | ||
| And that lady, Matt, are you saying that we should be making military decisions, policy decisions, based on the Bible? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if you read up in Daniel and other findings in the Bible, it clearly states you're going against the Lord God. | |
| That's what you're doing. | ||
| That's what Iran is doing, and they're going to go down hard. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That is Matt's thoughts there in Texas, a Republican. | ||
| From the State Department's website, back in March of 2025, I have signed a declaration to use emergency authorities to expedite the delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel. | ||
| The decision to reverse the Biden administration's partial arms embargo, which wrongly withheld a number of weapons and ammunition from Israel, is yet another sign that Israel has no greater ally in the White House than President Trump. | ||
| This statement from Marco Rubio back in March. | ||
| Since taking office, the Trump administration has approved nearly $12 billion in major military sales to Israel. | ||
| This important decision coincides with President Trump's repeal of a Biden-era memorandum, which had imposed baseless and politicized conditions on military assistance to Israel at a time when our close ally was fighting a war of survival on multiple fronts against Iran and terror proxies. | ||
| Again, that was Marco Rubio in March of this year on the approval of billions more to Israel in military aid. | ||
| Sarah in Edgewater, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Sarah, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I'm just saddened by what happened, and it's unfortunate because I was excited that our president actually negotiated or started to negotiate with Iran. | ||
| And now all of that is up in the air. | ||
| And it's more than unfortunate. | ||
| And I'm afraid that there is going to be a wider military conflict because it looks also that other countries in the Middle East are now raising the alarm bells. | ||
| And I'm just really upset that our president was undermined like that in a way because he really started to negotiate with them. | ||
| And now everything is up in the air. | ||
| And I just don't want to see our troops going over there having to fight another war. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Oman, the country of Oman, which was mediating the Iran nuclear talks, put out a statement on these strikes saying Amman considers this act a dangerous, reckless escalation representing a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter, the principles of international law. | ||
| Such aggression, persistent behavior is unacceptable and further destabilizes the regional peace and security. | ||
| Israel said it launched airstrikes against Iran on Friday, hitting 100 targets, including nuclear facilities and missile factories, and killing top military commanders in Iran. | ||
| We're getting your reaction and showing you reaction from world leaders and others, lawmakers here in Washington. | ||
| We heard from President Trump earlier this morning saying he had warned Iran and what's to come could be even worse. | ||
| Your message to the president and lawmakers here in Washington. | ||
| How do you want them to respond? | ||
| Linda in New York, Democratic caller. | ||
| Let's hear from you, Linda. | ||
| Linda, it's your turn. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, it's shocking what Israel has done. | ||
| But as far as negotiating, Trump negotiating a treaty with Iran, he should never have just thrown the one away that had worked so hard on under Obama. | ||
| Because I understand basically what they're negotiating is very much just about the same thing that was already in effect. | ||
| So that's just years of waste. | ||
| And as far as that gentleman that talked about the Bible, Iran may be evil, but you can't just pick parts of the Bible that you want to use. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are going against the teachings of Jesus with the way this immigration thing is going. | |
| So you can't just pick and choose what you want out of the Bible for political reasons. | ||
| If you're a Christian, then you should be living by Jesus's teachings. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| We'll go to JJ next in Hollister, California, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
JJ, your turn. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you, too. | |
| Well, I agree. | ||
| You know, Iran, they're behind everything. | ||
| They put Hamas and the Houdies, and they hide behind them, and they put their cronies out to do their work for them. | ||
| Now, all these crises have been going on for decades, and I believe that it all started from, we all know, Iran was broke. | ||
| They couldn't do anything. | ||
| But in their hearts, they didn't want America and they didn't want Israel. | ||
| Now, I believe it was a miracle that God saved Trump. | ||
| And Trump will lead us into battle, and we will have somebody, if we have to go into battle, we should follow what Trump leads us to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he wants peace. | |
| But what eventually is going to happen, all these people that are going for Hamas demonstrating, they're going to come out of the woodwork. | ||
| They're going to come out representing Iran. | ||
| And you watch that. | ||
| We have to be very careful because they're going to come up on America. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| JJ, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netya, who used part of his video statement yesterday to talk to a U.S. audience, and he warned that this is a threat to the United States as well. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| I want to assure the civilized world, we will not let the world's most dangerous regime get the world's most dangerous weapons. | ||
| And Iran plans to give those weapons, nuclear weapons, to its terrorist proxies. | ||
| That would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real. | ||
| The increasing range of Iran's ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe and eventually to America. | ||
| Remember, Iran calls Israel the small Satan. | ||
| It calls America the Great Satan. | ||
| And this is why for decades it's led millions in the chance of death to Israel and death to America. | ||
| Today, Israel is responding to those genocidal calls with action and with a call of our own. | ||
| Long live Israel and long live America. | ||
| Our action will help make the world a much safer place. | ||
| I want to thank President Trump for his leadership in confronting Iran's nuclear weapons program. | ||
| He has made clear time and again that Iran cannot have a nuclear enrichment program. | ||
| Today, it is clear that Iran is just buying for time. | ||
| It refuses to agree to this basic requirement of peaceful nations. | ||
| That is why we have no choice but to act and act now. | ||
| The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Yetanyahu yesterday in the East Coast time there in the evening. | ||
| This was early Friday morning in Israel announcing those 200 warplanes that targeted Iran, took out nuclear facilities across the country, killed nuclear scientists as well as top military brass who had convened a meeting underground. | ||
| That attack taking place early Friday morning in Israel, Iran retaliating later Friday morning with more than 100 drones. | ||
| Israel said that they had that drone attack under control. | ||
| We're getting your reaction to all of it this morning. | ||
| Here's Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia, with his statement. | ||
| I am deeply concerned about the escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran and the risks for U.S. personnel and citizens in the region. | ||
| I commend the Trump administration for prioritizing diplomacy and working to curb Iran's nuclear program and for refraining from participating in tonight's actions. | ||
| I cannot understand why Israel would launch a preemptive strike at this juncture, knowing high-level diplomatic discussions between the United States and Iran are scheduled for this weekend. | ||
| These talks are the only viable and sustainable path to curtailing Iran's development of nuclear weapons and protecting the U.S. national security interests in the region. | ||
| We must always defend U.S. personnel and assets against those who might seek to harm us, but the American people have no interest in another forever war. | ||
| Do you agree or disagree with Senator Tim Kaine? | ||
| It is your turn to tell Washington what you think of this situation in the Middle East. | ||
| Richard in Nashville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good. | |
| I thought you had cut me up. | ||
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| Good to see you back. | ||
| Bill, I'm an old man, and I'll tell you, I've got my niece's husband retired from the Black Hawk crew out of Fort Cameron, Kentucky. | ||
| And he'll tell you straight up that he's been fired upon in Iraq. | ||
| He just got back, and he's just recently retired. | ||
| They fire on the troops in Iraq. | ||
| This is Iranian through their proxies, as we mentioned, whether it be Hezbollah, Hamas, or whether it be the Hooji, whoever. | ||
| They shut down the shipping lanes. | ||
| Remember, they shoot at the ships. | ||
| They do everything they can do to do whatever, because we're the infidel. | ||
| It's a religious war. | ||
| It's a political war. | ||
| And the only ones that's going to suffer in this is the good people, both of each side, whether it's religion or whether it's politics or whatever you're at that background. | ||
| We're all going to end up suffering because the Bible tells us so. | ||
| We went back to the Shah of Iran. | ||
| Don't cut me off, Nell. | ||
| Shah of Iran all the way up to today. | ||
| Now, what happened in Israel? | ||
| The guy in Nashville, they called your first caller, he's an idiot. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Richard, there in Nashville, Tennessee, while Richard was talking, we were showing you video courtesy of Reuters posted on X of the targeted attacks by Israel in Iran. | ||
| Bill in Kissimmee, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Bill, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So what's going on is really good for the United States. | ||
| Netanyahu is one of the greatest freedom fighters that ever lived. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| This guy's going to straighten out problems. | ||
| Over here, we're bogged down with politics. | ||
| This guy's going to take care of his country. | ||
| They've been attacked for years. | ||
| The money has been coming from Iran. | ||
| They have to be taken care of. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And Trump won't force help. | ||
| But this is going to happen, and they're going to win. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And if you think 9-11 was bad, how would you like to live over there? | ||
| They got a lot of problems, and they got to be taken care of. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, Bill, should the United States get involved? | ||
| Oh, we lost Bill. | ||
| Sharon, Silver Spring, Maryland. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Sharon, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm glad to hear you. | ||
| Good for Can. | ||
| Mr. Netanyahu is no better than the thing that lives in the White House. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| And isn't it interesting? | ||
| During President Biden's years, there was no attacking. | ||
| My, my, my. | ||
| What a coincidence. | ||
| It's just so ironic. | ||
| And Mr. Trump knew exactly what was going on. | ||
| He'll lie to America like he does every single day. | ||
| But the two of them, you know, where Netanyahu and Trump belong in the Cesspool and Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| They're a disgrace. | ||
| They're lying and they're criminals. | ||
| And don't forget, Mr. Trump, the agreement with Iran was doing great. | ||
| Who came in? | ||
| Because he was so jealous of President Obama. | ||
| He canceled the agreement. | ||
| So whatever happens, Iran should tell him to go to hell. | ||
| Sharon there. | ||
| Democrat in Silver Spring, Maryland. | ||
| Cleveland's in Stockton, California, an independent. | ||
| Cleveland, Cleveland, your turn to tell Washington your message on the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to say that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon. | ||
| America should not have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Do you understand there are a handful of people that control the fate of billions while billions sit back and watch what happens? | ||
| There's a force controlling these handful of people that none of us understand. | ||
| There are forces that they're not economic or political, and they're not spiritual. | ||
| There are forces that control these people that they don't even understand. | ||
| Everybody's fighting everyone else around the world. | ||
| No one should have nuclear weapons. | ||
| No one should have intercontinental ballistic weapons. | ||
| The world will be destroyed. | ||
| And the people that's destroying it don't even understand why. | ||
| That's a subject that's so intense that no one is willing to look into. | ||
| It has a lot to do with the space program and those forces out in space that don't want humans in their environment. | ||
| And they're controlling us mentally and at a level that we don't even understand. | ||
| All right, Cleveland and California. | ||
| Tony in Detroit, Democratic caller. | ||
| Tony, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I feel sad that that person lasted about what he was just saying. | ||
| I'll just say this. | ||
| Like the lady from Silver Springs just said, there was a deal already in place by Barack Obama. | ||
| I don't know what's wrong with the people. | ||
| It's like attention deficit disorder, and it's working throughout. | ||
| Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump are in cahoots. | ||
| This is all a smokescreen because they want war to keep the people preoccupied with looking the other way while they do what they want to do. | ||
| Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. | ||
| Donald Trump came into office and tore up the deal that Barack Obama had already made. | ||
| How can you tear up a deal that's already in place and then renegotiate a deal? | ||
| Where does that make sense at? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, Tony, George is next. | ||
| He's in Fremont, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| George, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Just really quickly, the president ran on not going to war with Iran in his first term. | ||
| Then he turned around and he put Marco Rubio in charge of the State Department, which is baffling to me considering how much money that Marco has taken from APAC and from Israeli lobbyists. | ||
| This state, the U.S., has been captured. | ||
| Miriam Adelson has more power than our president, and that's very disturbing. | ||
| We should not be going to war. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| And, George, what evidence do you have of the connection between Adelson and the money he's contributed and APAC and the money that they give to lawmakers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep, Greta, money talks. | |
| And the Adelsons were at the inauguration. | ||
| They've been in the Oval Office multiple times. | ||
| They have a lot of influence, way more influence than we do. | ||
| I guarantee you, the president is not watching C-SPAN right now. | ||
| We should not be going to war. | ||
| And all this AIPAC money is all tracked. | ||
| You can look it up on X and see what the money is that every politician has taken. | ||
| The only ones who haven't taken it is like Thomas Massey and AOC. | ||
| And George, I'll just say the president does watch C-SPAN. | ||
| We've heard him talk about watching C-SPAN. | ||
| So if he's watching this morning, he is listening to all of you and your message to him and other decision makers here in Washington about how they should respond to Israel's strike on the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's response. | ||
| The president posting on Truth Social earlier this morning, I gave Iran a chance after chance to make a deal. | ||
| I told them in the strongest of words to just do it. | ||
| But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they couldn't get it done. | ||
| I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far, and that Israel has a lot of it, which with much more to come. | ||
| And they know how to use it. | ||
| Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen. | ||
| They are all dead now and will only get worse. | ||
| There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. | ||
| Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. | ||
| No more death, no more destruction. | ||
| Just do it, he says, before it is too late in all caps. | ||
| Gussie in Winona, Texas, Democratic caller, Gussie, good morning. | ||
| What is your response? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| First of all, I'm in disbelief and very disappointed. | ||
| This prime minister of Israel is so very wrong to attack Iran. | ||
| He's a warmonger. | ||
| No one wants to wipe Israel off the map, but no country is going to at least sit by and allow Israel to wipe them off the map either. | ||
| All lives are valuable. | ||
| This prime minister doesn't want peace. | ||
| Trump has added fuel to the fire as usual. | ||
| I don't want U.S. to be involved in this mess, but either Israel is right or wrong. | ||
| We're 100% behind him, and I don't understand it. | ||
| Trump is behind him, and it's so very wrong. | ||
| This will not end well. | ||
| So, Gossi, when you say that the president has added fuel to the fire, how? | ||
|
unidentified
|
With the words that he used, it was already a deal already made with Iran. | |
| But Trump doesn't care anything that the prime minister of Israel wants to do, Trump is behind him, either right or wrong, whatever it is. | ||
| And before the war even started with Israel, the people were out there protesting, trying to get this man out of office. | ||
| He's wrong. | ||
| All right, Gossie. | ||
| Winona, Texas, Democratic caller. | ||
| The Times of Israel has this headline. | ||
| They say, according to a report, U.S. helped lull Iran into belief no attack was imminent. | ||
| The U.S. participated in a massive campaign to lull Iran into thinking an attack was not going to happen immediately, according to Channel 12 in Israel. | ||
| U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites, quote, could very well happen, but advised against it, saying the possibility of a deal was, quote, fairly close. | ||
| If Tehran compromises on its atomic ambitions in ongoing talks with the United States, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in an interview yesterday that Israel was unlikely to attack Iran without a green light from Washington. | ||
| That story, that headline on the Times of Israel. | ||
| Matt in Bath, New York, Republican Bath. | ||
| Matt, good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| First of all, the Silver Spring lady, she's got to quit watching MSNBC and CNN. | ||
| First of all, this great deal that Barack Hussein Obama made with Iran did not stop them from having fissile materials. | ||
| From the day it was signed, it was estimated they would have a nuclear weapon in 15 years. | ||
| It was a BS agreement. | ||
| Iraq is a fundamentalist-run country. | ||
| They don't care about making deals with the great Satan United States. | ||
| So you people who are living in Lila Land think they were going to honor that. | ||
| You're nuts. | ||
| Also, this concern about all kinds of countries being involved, there was a little thing called the Abraham Accords, which Donald Trump should have gotten a Nobel Peace Prize for. | ||
| Right now, previously and last night, Jordan shot down Iranian drones. | ||
| Jordan did that. | ||
| That's an Arab country defending Israel. | ||
| I don't think anybody but Saudi Arabia, now Saudi Arabia condemned it, but it's a smokescreen. | ||
| They're happy that Iran is getting the crap knocked out of them. | ||
| How do you know that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do you know they're happy? | |
| First of all, they're different sects of Islam. | ||
| And the Iranians have destabilized the Mideast for years, and it's not good business for Saudi Arabia or anybody else when they're paid proxies, which Iran got the money from whoever was running the country while Biden was supposedly president, gave them that $6 billion when they were on the financial break. | ||
| And on top of that, the Silver Spring lady said there had been no attacks while Biden was there. | ||
| Well, there's a thing called October 7th. | ||
| There's hundreds of attacks were made on U.S. military bases throughout the Middle East the whole time. | ||
| And did we do anything to deter it? | ||
| No, not until Donald Trump came into office and hammered the Houthis and some of these other outfits that Iran has been funding. | ||
| Iran's been behind all of the destabilization efforts in the Middle East. | ||
| And anybody that doesn't really see that, I don't know what to tell them. | ||
| All right, Mike. | ||
| I'm going to read the statement by the Saudi Arabia. | ||
| Saudi Arabia expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the blatant Israeli aggression against the brotherly Islamic Republic of Iran, which undermined its sovereignty and security and constituted a clear violation of international laws and norms. | ||
| That's the statement from the Saudi Arabia government on this Israeli strike against Iran and now retaliation by Tehran. | ||
| Chris in Huntsville, Alabama, Independent. | ||
| Chris, what do you say to Washington decision makers and the president? | ||
| How should they respond? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| They should consider Gold of Mair's statement from like 70 years ago. | ||
| When will they stop forcing us to kill their children? | ||
| That is a horrible thing to say. | ||
| There is nobody who forces you to kill their children. | ||
| It's a decision that's made. | ||
| It's an action you take based on the decision you made. | ||
| And this recoup party is just a group of messianic genocidal maniacs that are manipulating Trump. | ||
| They're slaughtering children by the tens of thousands. | ||
| It's evil. | ||
| It's wrong. | ||
| We should not be supporting Israel. | ||
| Okay, those are Chris's thoughts there in Alabama and his opinion this morning. | ||
| Wall Street Journal, by the way, reporting earlier about Jordan and the actions that they're taking, intercepting missiles and drones in its airspace. | ||
| The interceptions took place because the missiles and drones were likely to fall within Jordanian territory, posing a threat to civilians. | ||
| It said Israel has been intercepting some of the 100 drones launched by Iran outside Israeli airspace. | ||
| So that is why Jordan intercepted and shot down the drones coming from Iran. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson on X posting this last night, Israel is right and has a right to defend itself. | ||
| And then the leader of the speaker, the Republicans in the Senate, Senator John Thune, said, for too long, the mullahs in Iran have publicly aspired to wipe the only democracy in the Middle East off the face of the map via any means possible, funding and arming terror groups on Israel's borders, choking off international sea lanes and multiple barrages of missiles, he writes in his post on X. | ||
| Melvin in Chicago, Democratic leader, Melvin, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, good morning, brother. | |
| Democratic caller, I should say. | ||
| Melvin, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| This is what I don't understand. | ||
| All right. | ||
| When Harry Truman announced that Israel was a country of his own, okay, that was cool. | ||
| When he announced that Jerusalem was in Palestine, when Ronald Reagan was president, Jerusalem was in Palestine. | ||
| When Obama, Clinton, the first term of Trump, both Bushes, Jimmy Carter, Jerusalem was part of Palestine. | ||
| Can somebody please explain to me how all of a sudden did Jerusalem become the capital of Israel? | ||
| Netanyahu was a war criminal. | ||
| He was supposed to have been arrested the minute he landed, according to the United Nations. | ||
| There's nothing never said about that. | ||
| The Palestinian Liberation Authority recognized Israel as a country and a right to live. | ||
| The minute that they did that, Netanyahu sponsored Hamas and had Hamas built Hamas up, and Hamas just stole the election way back in 1987. | ||
| That's the last time God's ever had an election going on. | ||
| All the people that got killed so far, they weren't even born just about when this happened. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Melvin's thoughts there in Chicago. | ||
| I'm going to go to Vegas. | ||
| Greg, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there, Greta. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The guy from New York took part in what I was going to say, but in addition to what he said, I'd like to respond to that lady from Maryland that said there was peace when Biden was president. | |
| But the reason for the peace was that he gave $16 billion to Iran at the same time they want to say death to America. | ||
| That just doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Greg and Vegas, there, a Republican caller. | ||
| Let's go next to Stephanie, who's in Millersville, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Stephanie, good morning. | ||
| Your message to Washington on this Iran-Israel conflict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a Democrat, but that's fine. | |
| I'm an independent Democrat. | ||
| But this is, I'm also a child of the 50s, and I grew up with a nuclear Holocaust over my head, walking home from school expecting missiles to drop. | ||
| This is frightening to me, the entire situation. | ||
| I don't know which way I want them to turn. | ||
| And I hope that they bring more consideration to it than some of the callers. | ||
| I'm really frightened as well by the biblical literalists who think that this is Armageddon now. | ||
| And oh boy, the Savior will come back. | ||
| It's terrifying what religion can do. | ||
| Through the ages, every religion, every religion, and the situation we're in right now where opposing parties vilify the opposition rather than try to sit down and speak to one another reasonably, | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think everybody should start whispering for a while because raising your voice, and I would say two-thirds of the callers that I've listened to since I started watching the program this morning have gone from zero to 120 within the few minutes that they get. | |
| It doesn't accomplish anything. | ||
| It doesn't clarify thinking. | ||
| It doesn't inform. | ||
| And it's essential right now that we become informed. | ||
| There's a nuclear clock that scientists keep track of, atomic energy scientists. | ||
| And it's been like within the last minute before midnight at midnight, the world goes up in flames. | ||
| We're closer to that than I think we've ever been. | ||
| And I think that people need to stop arguing and thinking about solutions for everyone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Republicans are not my enemy. | |
| I am not their enemy. | ||
| We are all Americans here. | ||
| All right, Stephanie, Stephanie, I'm going to jump in at that point. | ||
| AP, with a map this morning of Israel's attacks on Iran and its nuclear sites and key officials. | ||
| You can see it here where multiple sites and officials were struck in the capital of Tehran and then around the country at different nuclear sites. | ||
| This, the Nataz, Iran's main enrichment facility, was struck as well. | ||
| That's some of the video that we've been showing you. | ||
| Washington Times reporting this morning that analysts generally agree right now, they write this, that generally agree right now that Iran's uranium enrichment efforts are at a point where it could make enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon within days. | ||
| The construction of a nuclear bomb itself would take significantly longer. | ||
| Iran insists that it be allowed to continue enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, such as power generation. | ||
| But the Trump administration said recently it would not allow any such enrichment to take place on Iranian soil. | ||
| Israeli strikes and any Iranian retaliation would mark the third such back and forth between the two rivals in a little over a year. | ||
| Before the most recent attacks, Israel had twice carried out direct military strikes on Iran since the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. | ||
| Iran had launched its own drone and missile attacks against Israel, but those assaults were unsuccessful thanks to Israeli air defenses aided by the U.S. military. | ||
| We'll go to Diane in Key West, Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
| Diane, you're up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, everybody. | |
| I love C-SPAN. | ||
| There are some really intelligent people in this country. | ||
| And you had a previous caller who mentioned something that got me thinking. | ||
| He had explained that October 7th was done by Zionists. | ||
| And you asked him what proof did he have. | ||
| Well, there's, but then, so there is no proof at this moment, but I put two and two together. | ||
| Just recently, last night, yesterday, Iran was attacked. | ||
| Israel was so precise in hitting their nuclear locations and their nuclear scientists. | ||
| So Israel is so good in the military, and yet that October 7th happened, it doesn't make sense. | ||
| And I do side with this fellow. | ||
| I think that that attack was done by Israel, the Zionists, to have an excuse to go to war. | ||
| And it's an excuse now that they say Iran has six nuclear possibilities. | ||
| It's a hypothesis. | ||
| There's no proof. | ||
| So we really have to stop this war effort and stop funding Israel because if the United States wants to take down the deficit, this is one area. | ||
| Stop funding Israel weapons that would save Americans money in our deficits. | ||
| Thank you for letting me share. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Charles is a Republican, Black River, New York. | ||
| And Charles, it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning, Briarna. | ||
| Greta. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just think I'm very pro-Israel. | |
| And I believe, my belief is that President Donald Tron Trump was not assassinated because he's very pro-Israel. | ||
| That's the only reason I think. | ||
| And I think that Nyahoo, President Trump, is protected and just win the war here. | ||
| Just get it done. | ||
| It's it done. | ||
| So, Charles, you want to see U.S. involvement? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, if need be, B2 send all help get rid of this nuclear power plant. | |
| That's it, Don. | ||
| I retired from the Army. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I, yeah, it's it. | |
| All right, Charles. | ||
| Tim, in Minnesota, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'm glad to be following up from the lady in Key West and the gentlelady in Maryland. | ||
| The two things that Donald Trump and Joe Biden had in common was they both delivered bombs to Israel to drop on the heads of civilians. | ||
| And what I want Washington to know is you better get to the table of peace and to the people of the world. | ||
| The people of means will have someplace to go when the crap really hits the fan. | ||
| Most of the 7 billion people on this planet won't. | ||
| So thanks a lot for listening. | ||
| Okay, Tim in Minnesota, Independent there. | ||
| David in Concord, North Carolina, Democratic caller. | ||
| David? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm glad that you put my call. | |
| I think that Israel should wipe out Iran. | ||
| I mean, when you have a country that is promising, hey, I'm going to kill you and every one of your children, I'm going to do the same for the United States. | ||
| Why not take the threat away from you? | ||
| Show them that, hey, you don't scare us no more. | ||
| Iran should back it away a long time when they've been talking for what, three months and no trade, I mean, no agreement made. | ||
| Iran said they're going to make nuclear weapons. | ||
| So, you know, if you think that you're strong enough, go ahead and do it. | ||
| But I don't think that God will let them. | ||
| You have a great day. | ||
| Dolly in Crescent City, California, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dolly. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Listen, I want, you know what? | ||
| That Jewish Israel is, it just doesn't belong there. | ||
| Stalin and Churchill set that up. | ||
| FDR never would have let that happen. | ||
| The reason that it's Europeans down there. | ||
| They're not Arabs. | ||
| They don't belong down there. | ||
| And Yahoo's daddy was born in Poland. | ||
| He married a Palestinian, but that was the Ottoman Empire then. | ||
| They have no business there. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| Yeah, they're going to start World War III. | ||
| And we're running around. | ||
| The United States says we're not going to support any religion. | ||
| That's a religion, a goofy religion. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Dolly's thoughts there. | ||
| And Independent. | ||
| Gary's in Bundle, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Gary, your message to Washington on the Israeli-Iran conflict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think he said earlier in the program that Trump sometimes listened to Ceaseband. | |
| I'd just like to give him a message. | ||
| It's a brilliant strategy what he's doing. | ||
| It's called the Carrot and the Stick. | ||
| You know, if they don't come to the bargaining table, then hit them over the head with the stick. | ||
| I think we might be doing the same thing in Ukraine because shortly after Zelensky talked to the president, Ukraine wiped out half of the Russian Air Force that's participating in the war. | ||
| And the other thing I want to say was I just really don't understand all these people coming in against Israel. | ||
| Basically, they're aligning themselves with the anti-Semites in this country and around the world. | ||
| That's a pretty dangerous philosophy to be cozying up to. | ||
| And I just don't understand it when in this country, Iran is constantly saying they want to wipe us off the face of the earth. | ||
| I mean, why in the world would you come out in favor of Iran? | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| All right, Gary, a Republican in Florida, Fred in Philadelphia, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| My take on this here is the history. | ||
| A lot of people, I'm just like that lady who grew up in the 50s, also, too. | ||
| I've been around. | ||
| I've been watching politics most of my life and everything. | ||
| And people have short memories. | ||
| And in 79, when the show of Iran fell, you know, well, he came to America. | ||
| Because he got sick and the radicals took over the country because the country was very rich. | ||
| You know, it's really a shame that people are not really following with history and all. | ||
| But, you know, and also too, when Net Net Yahoo, he was educated in the United States. | ||
| Matter of fact, he was educated right outside of Philadelphia. | ||
| So I just want to let people know that. | ||
| And my take on this here, I think Israel has a right to defend itself. | ||
| Because I remember back in the 70s and the 60s when Lebanon was killing their kids and all. | ||
| So that's just what I wanted to say on that there. | ||
| All right, Fred, they're in Philadelphia. | ||
| We'll leave it there for now. | ||
| Later on in the program, we'll have more reaction to last night's strikes by Israel on Iran's nuclear program and what's next in this conflict. | ||
| We're going to talk with Benem Ben Taliblou, who heads up the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense and Democracies. | ||
| But first, right after this break, a conversation with Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible. | ||
| We'll talk about the nationwide no-kings protests his group is organizing and their message to the Trump administration. | ||
| Those conversations coming up on the Washington Journal. | ||
| stay with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, at 3 p.m. Eastern, Frank Garmin, author of A Wonderful Career in Crime, on Charles Cowlin's career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist during the Civil War era. | ||
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| We want to know what are your thoughts on the upcoming military parade in Washington, D.C. | ||
| I think it's hopefully a start of a great tradition. | ||
| 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States Army. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us this morning as Ezra Levin. | ||
| He's the co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible. | ||
| Ezra Levin, reminder viewers, what is Indivisible? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, we're a pro-democracy grassroots movement of local volunteers who have formed local indivisible groups in basically every single congressional district in the country. | |
| And we're organizing to protect American democracy. | ||
| So that means pushing our elected officials to actually represent us, in some cases, organizing to replace our elected representatives. | ||
| And in a moment like this, we're organizing to push back against an autocratic overreach from the federal government. | ||
| And you have organized, you're one of the key groups that has organized this No Kings protest rallies across the country on Saturday. | ||
| What are they? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, when we heard that Donald Trump was planning a military birthday parade for himself that would cost $100 million of taxpayer dollars, your money, my money, everybody who's watching your taxpayer dollars, we were shocked. | |
| I mean, that's not the kind of thing we've seen in America. | ||
| It's the kind of thing you would more likely see in North Korea. | ||
| And that's really dangerous. | ||
| What we know from the experts in authoritarianism is would-be authoritarians want to project strength like this. | ||
| They want to show that they are the supreme leader. | ||
| And we couldn't let that stand. | ||
| We didn't want to play into Trump's hands. | ||
| We didn't want some kind of counter protest of that parade. | ||
| We didn't want to give him the narrative device that he could say we're protesting in the military. | ||
| So instead, we said, look, Donald Trump can have downtown D.C. for his little birthday parade. | ||
| We're going to organize peacefully, joyfully, boisterously, and powerfully everywhere else. | ||
| And on Saturday, there are going to be more than 2,000 locally led peaceful protests for No Kings Day, not just in the big city centers, but in places like Homer, Alaska, in Winnebago, Wisconsin, in Eureka, Montana, in small towns and cities across the country. | ||
| People are standing up and saying, we don't do Kings in America. | ||
| What's your prediction for how many people will turn out across the country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this is always hard to tell, but this is not our first rodeo. | |
| Earlier this year, on April 5th, we held the then single largest day of peaceful protest in many years. | ||
| It was called Hands Off, and we saw events in more than 1,300 communities worldwide. | ||
| The conservative estimates held that there were about 3.5 million people who showed up for hands-off. | ||
| 1,300 events were hands-off, more than 2,000 for No Kings Day. | ||
| So I would expect millions more. | ||
| There is a rally in Philadelphia. | ||
| We will have coverage of that at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| The No Kings protest taking place in Philadelphia. | ||
| 1 p.m. Eastern Time is featuring Congressman Jamie Raskin, Randy Weingarten, the teacher union president. | ||
| And you'll be able to watch that rally at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN, on C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, as well as online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| Ezra Levin, I want to play for you what the president had to say yesterday in the Easter room at the White House when he was asked about these no kings protests. | ||
| I don't feel like a king. | ||
| I have to go through hell to get stuff approved. | ||
| A king would say, I'm not going to get this. | ||
| A king would have never had the California mandate to even be talking to him. | ||
| He wouldn't have to call up Mike Johnson and Thune and say, fellas, you got to pull this off. | ||
| And after years, we get it done. | ||
| No, no, we're not a king. | ||
| We're not a king at all. | ||
| Ezra Levin, how do you respond? | ||
| The president is saying there's checks and balances in place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he's doing everything he can to undermine those checks and balances. | |
| And that's not just me saying it. | ||
| You look to the scholars of authoritarianism. | ||
| You look to Maria Steffen, Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Erica Chenoweth, the folks who have studied this for decades. | ||
| And the way they describe the moment that we're in right now is using the term autocratic breakthrough. | ||
| And autocratic breakthrough is not just defined by a right-wing government pushing a conservative agenda. | ||
| I would disagree with that agenda, but that's not autocratic breakthrough. | ||
| Instead, autocratic breakthrough is defined by the concentration of power in the hands of one individual and then attacks on other sources of power. | ||
| So when I think of autocratic breakthrough, I'm thinking of the attacks on media institutions and universities and businesses and nonprofits. | ||
| When I think of autocratic breakthrough, I think of the undermining of the rule of law, disappearing Americans to a foreign gulag, militarizing American cities and sending Gestapo forces out across the country to tear apart American families. | ||
| That's what it looks like to see a moment of autocratic breakthrough. | ||
| What it doesn't look like is some sort of monarchical rule from the history books that you can identify. | ||
| It's a slow descent into authoritarianism. | ||
| And one day we wake up looking for our First Amendment rights, looking for our rights to peacefully organize, and we find out we don't have them because we didn't stand up to protect them. | ||
| That's why it's so important for us to peacefully but powerfully stand up today to protect those rights. | ||
| How do you respond to critics who say overreach by the executive branch has happened with previous presidents as well? | ||
| Former President Barack Obama said he had a pen and he was going to use it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, former President Barack Obama wore a tan suit and the right-wing media ecosystem lost its mind. | |
| The idea that you would compare, that you would compare some form of overreach from Barack Obama or frankly other Republican presence in decades past to what's going on now betrays a total lack of understanding of the current moment and history. | ||
| Again, look, you don't have to ideologically agree with me. | ||
| You don't have to be a progressive in this moment. | ||
| If you're only organizing with progressives in this moment, your room's too small. | ||
| We need people of all ideological stripes. | ||
| We need progressives and moderates and conservative Democrats and never Trump Republicans. | ||
| And yes, even Trump voters who wanted lower prices of eggs and bread, but now are seeing their fellow community members be disappeared overseas. | ||
| We need them standing up in this moment saying, look, we might not agree on everything, but what we do agree on is this is a constitutional republic. | ||
| We have freedom of speech. | ||
| We have the right to organize. | ||
| We believe in due process. | ||
| And while we might not agree on the precise budget we might pass next year or education policy or tax policy, that's okay. | ||
| What we can agree on is we don't do kings in America. | ||
| We'll go to Jim, who's in Stanford, New York, Democratic caller, up first for this conversation. | ||
| Jim, you're on the air with Ezra Levin. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| As far as tomorrow with the parade or a so-called king, tomorrow is flag day. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And I don't hear people mentioning that. | ||
| Jim, thank you for bringing that up. | ||
| We just did a call with participants last night, and I specifically called that out. | ||
| And if you look at our resources at nokings.org, in addition to finding an event near you, you'll find some toolkits for how to put on those events. | ||
| I think it's very important that we lean into patriotism right now. | ||
| Part of the point of holding a big old military parade, rolling tanks through the streets of D.C., is for Trump to kind of claim the mantle of American patriotism. | ||
| He is America. | ||
| We can't cede that narrative to him. | ||
| As you note, it is Flag Day on June 14th. | ||
| It's not just Donald Trump's birthday. | ||
| It's also the 250th anniversary of the forming of the Continental Army, that army that was formed to push back against another mad king. | ||
| So I strongly recommend if you are going to a protest on No Kings Day, you know, have some fun with it, bring your family, bring your friends, prepare to dance, prepare to chant, but also prepare to wave your American flag, prepare to listen to some veterans that are going to be having speaking roles, I'm sure, at your events. | ||
| Embrace patriotism in this moment and show the rest of the country and world what pluralistic democracy in our representative democracy looks like. | ||
| Ezra Levin, what do you say then to President Trump as he prepares for this military parade and asks that Americans celebrate the U.S. Army and its birthday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, Trump is somewhat irrelevant to the day. | |
| He has his little parade that I do not think is going to be well attended, and that's in downtown D.C., and he can have it. | ||
| There are going to be millions more people all around the country who are standing up for American democracy. | ||
| I would say the most quintessentially American thing that you can do is to stand up in defense of your constitutional rights and peacefully organize in defense of them. | ||
| That's more American than apple pie. | ||
| I hope to see people of all stripes, all ideological persuasions, all geographies showing up on this day. | ||
| I think it's going to be an awesome, incredible, empowering display of what makes America one of the best places to be in the world. | ||
| As we said, we will have coverage of the No Kings protest rally in Philadelphia at 1 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow. | ||
| We will also have coverage of the 250th anniversary parade and celebration of the U.S. Army. | ||
| That starts at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN on C-SPANNOW and C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Ezra Levin is with us here this morning talking about the No Kings protests that are planned across the United States on Saturday. | ||
| We'll go to Daniel, who's in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
| Daniel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey there, Ezra. | |
| And I would agree with you if it was like, for example, like how MLK went with peacefully protesting, even though they were really brutalized by the police and stuff. | ||
| But the thing is, though, with the LA riots, I agree with Trump and the National Guard and even the Marines because you saw what they were doing. | ||
| They were looting Adidas. | ||
| They were looting Apple stores. | ||
| They were causing chaos and they were throwing rocks off of the bridge at police cars that were driving by. | ||
| And the thing is, the thing is, I remember I wasn't born when the Korean rooftops. | ||
| I wasn't born when that happened. | ||
| That's what happens when the National Guard or the Marines even don't show up to these riots. | ||
| Okay, let's take your point, Daniel. | ||
| As relevant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Daniel, I appreciate your question because I think what this hits on is a core part of the discussion right now, which is what is the role of peaceful protest and how can it show up? | |
| And what is the strategic logic of it? | ||
| I would be first to say Indivisible has been rooted in the principles of nonviolence from the get-go. | ||
| And frankly, if I had to compare receipts with Donald Trump on who is more committed to nonviolent political engagement, I would be happy to. | ||
| As I mentioned earlier this year, we were helping organize the hands-off protests with 1,300 events all across the world. | ||
| Not a single incident of property destruction or violence reported in 1,300 events all across the world. | ||
| Whereas Donald Trump, we were shocked and appalled when he instigated a riot, a violent, murderous riot at the Capitol on January 6th. | ||
| And then the first chance he got when he was elected again, he pardoned those violent insurrectionists. | ||
| I think what's happening in LA is atrocious, but I think it requires some context. | ||
| The people of LA, the mayor of LA, the governor of LA, identified that there were some small number of people that were engaging in property destruction. | ||
| That's bad. | ||
| And they said they had it under control. | ||
| The LAPD said that they had it under control. | ||
| Nobody asked for Donald Trump to send in troops. | ||
| Nobody asked for him to nationalize the Guard or send in the Marines. | ||
| What he is doing there is inflaming the situation intentionally. | ||
| And Daniel, I think we agree here on the importance of nonviolence, but I would ask you to look at the full context there and understand that authoritarians often do exactly this. | ||
| They aim to inflame tensions and spread chaos, not just to cause harm, but to escalate the situation so that they can claim more authority and militarize more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
At the same time that Trump is escalating in LA, he and the Republicans in Congress are asking for $150 billion more dollars for ICE and immigration enforcement. | |
| What we are seeing in LA is a rehearsal for the rest of the country. | ||
| They would like to hire 10,000 more ICE agents to tear apart families around the country. | ||
| And the way that you push back against that kind of authoritarian escalation is broad-based, ideologically diverse, geographically dispersed, peaceful, people-based organizing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's what we're doing. | |
| Who or where are you getting the funding to organize this effort? | ||
|
unidentified
|
From viewers like you. | |
| The single largest source of funding for Indivisible is people going to indivisible.org and sending us 20 bucks. | ||
| That is the fuel for the grassroots movement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And primarily what's happening on the ground, though, is normal everyday people deciding to take it upon themselves to organize themselves. | |
| Nobody's getting paid to show up or organize these protests. | ||
| There are more than 2,000 of it. | ||
| I got, I don't even know how you would do that logistically to pay to have millions of people show up. | ||
| Instead, if you go to a hands-off rally in April or you show up tomorrow at a No Kings Day protest, what you'll see is moms and grandmoms. | ||
| You'll see teachers and IT technicians and government workers. | ||
| You'll see normal everyday folks from the community. | ||
| We have a saying in Indivisible, politics in this moment is too important to leave up to the politicians. | ||
| So look, by and large, we're not professional politicos. | ||
| We're not professional organizers. | ||
| We're even maybe not activists. | ||
| What we are Americans who are concerned for our democracy. | ||
| All right, we'll go to Henry next in Michigan. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Ezra, a congresswoman, Monica MacGyver, is up on charges for shoving or interfering with ICE. | ||
| A senator yesterday was manhandled in a presser by Christy Noam. | ||
| We're not slow walking towards dictatorship and authoritarianism. | ||
| Trump has threatened that the marches tomorrow, the protests, they're going to be met with force. | ||
| Now, I'm concerned that last night's attack by Israel is just another cover for Trump to move headlong into his agenda to take over America and establish authoritarianism here. | ||
| I wonder if you can speak to that for us, please. | ||
| Is Nathan Yahoo working in concert with Donald Trump to take America into a dictatorship and authoritarianism with this attack on Iran? | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| Can I just be honest? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What I do know is America should stop sending hundreds of billions of dollars to an authoritarian in Israel who is subjugating his people and starting foreign wars that could drag the United States in. | ||
| I think it's a waste of U.S. dollars. | ||
| I think it fuels atrocities. | ||
| And I think it does not make one American safer. | ||
| As for what Trump is doing this morning, I think you're right. | ||
| He is escalating quite quickly. | ||
| Again, I've mentioned this. | ||
| I'm not a scholar of authoritarianism, but I read the scholars of authoritarianism, and it scares me where we are right now. | ||
| What we need to recognize, though, for those of us watching this right now, most of the time, most people are not paying attention. | ||
| It is not going to be that one day we wake up and suddenly democracy is gone. | ||
| Suddenly we're under monarchical rule. | ||
| That's not how it works. | ||
| Instead, we are a frog in the slowly, increasingly boiling water. | ||
| And so we have a responsibility, us organizing and paying attention, to alert as many of our family, of our friends, of our community members to this fact. | ||
| And when they do lift their head up and say, oh my gosh, they're disappearing people to El Salvador. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my gosh, they're trying to militarize cities across the country. | |
| Oh my gosh, they're tearing apart families. | ||
| Whatever it does that makes people lift their head up, we need to welcome them into this pro-democracy movement. | ||
| What we know from folks like Erica Chenoweth, one of these authoritarian scholars, is it is very difficult for an authoritarian to maintain their hold on power if just 3.5% of the population organizes in a persistent, pro-democracy, peaceful, insistent manner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the U.S. context, that's somewhere between 11 and 12 million people. | |
| It's a lot. | ||
| It's not impossible, but we need to continue to build the peaceful, insistent pro-democracy movement around the country. | ||
| And this is one of the exciting things about No Kings Day because I think it's going to be a cool place for people to be. | ||
| I think people are going to want to be part of it. | ||
| I think people are going to have fun. | ||
| And people are then going to get plugged into organizing persistently in their own communities. | ||
| Corey in Garner, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so we did get back to the No Kings issue at hand at the end. | |
| So, you know, Esra, I would like to kind of understand your meaning of politics not left to politicians and how that relates to the previous administration versus now six months in. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So I think politics should never be left to the politician. | ||
| Look, Indivisible is not an arm of the Democratic Party. | ||
| We've called for Chuck Schumer to step down from leadership because we don't think he's a good leader. | ||
| We've regularly pushed Democrats to actually fight back in defense of our democracy when we've seen them not doing that. | ||
| I don't think democracy works if it's just the politicians who are leading, because you know what the politicians are? | ||
| They're weather veins. | ||
| They are weather veins and they go where the wind blows. | ||
| And you know who's blowing that wind? | ||
| It's donors. | ||
| It's industry. | ||
| It's interest groups. | ||
| If we want a functioning democracy, I don't care if you're a Republican or an Independent or a Democrat. | ||
| If you want a democracy that responds to you, you got to blow that wind. | ||
| You got to be part of what's influencing them. | ||
| And the way to do that is to focus on organizing in your own community. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what works. | |
| That's how our democracy is structured. | ||
| Donald Trump wants everybody to think that he is the sole elected official. | ||
| He is the owner of political power in this country. | ||
| It's just not true. | ||
| That is not how the founders designed our constitutional republic. | ||
| There are literally hundreds of thousands of elected officials in this country. | ||
| And you build power by organizing locally, focusing on who your representatives are, and pushing them. | ||
| And that is true regardless of what your ideology is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I do believe our democracy will be stronger if people do more of that and less doom scrolling or yelling each other on the internet. | |
| Organizing your own community. | ||
| Talk to each other. | ||
| Build community. | ||
| That's what's going to strengthen our democracy. | ||
| Mr. Levin, which leaders are doing an effective job pushing back? | ||
| And are there leaders on both sides of the aisle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so certainly there are plenty of folks like Chris Murphy, like Maxwell Frost, like Jasmine Crockett, like Jamie Raskin, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like Bernie Sanders. | |
| We see lots of leaders who are standing up. | ||
| I wish I could point to some elected Republicans in Congress, but the Republican Party has fully been taken over at the national level by Donald Trump. | ||
| This wasn't true in his first term. | ||
| In 2017, there were actually plenty of elected Republicans who were willing to stand up to him. | ||
| Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, among others. | ||
| These are, frankly, Republicans who I strongly disagree with ideologically. | ||
| We wouldn't agree on tax policy. | ||
| We wouldn't agree on education policy. | ||
| We didn't even agree on many elements of civil rights policy. | ||
| But we agreed that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy and folks needed to stand up together. | ||
| That's not the Republican Party that we have at the national level today. | ||
| And that's part of what makes this moment so dangerous. | ||
| Somebody mentioned earlier that the United States Senator yesterday was tackled to the ground and put into handcuffs. | ||
| That senator is Senator Alex Padilla, one of the senators from California. | ||
| If you haven't seen that video, I would recommend you take a look. | ||
| He was attending a press conference with the Secretary of Homeland Security, attempted to ask a question, and in response, he was forcibly removed, pushed to the ground, and put into handcuffs. | ||
| In response to that, in response to that, this incredible, egregious act. | ||
| What did Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, the Republican Speaker of the House, said? | ||
| He said that the senator should be censured by the Senate. | ||
| This is the Republican Party we're dealing with now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would love to have a Republican Party that I disagree with on policy. | |
| What we have right now is a Republican Party that is not standing behind the Democratic Republic and our Democratic institutions. | ||
| Esther Levin, as you were talking about that situation at the news conference with the Homeland Security Secretary, we were showing that video, that video put on X by the Senator Padilla's office. | ||
| And you can see there on the, he's on the ground being handcuffed by the officers there. | ||
| And we're going to talk to our viewers about that and other public policy political issues coming up in our last hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Donna in St. Louis, Missouri, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Donna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Three things. | ||
| First of all, what Trump wants is an oligarchy where a few billionaires have all the power. | ||
| The bombing and the arrest of Senator Badilla, that is a distraction which the media is eating up to keep our attention off the Republican bill in the Senate where they're going to give billions of tax cuts to the richest 10%, billions of cuts in Medicaid, millions of people will lose their health care, and also in Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| And secondly, the Homeland Security Secretary Noam, she knew who the senior senator from California was. | ||
| She was in the federal building where he has an office. | ||
| She was standing there where he has this office, and either she's stupid, the stupid person in the building if she didn't know who he was. | ||
| But the fact is, Trump did not want her to answer any questions. | ||
| So the FBI agents should be fired for arresting a senator and are acting like they didn't know who he was, who, along with the rest of us, does have the right to freedom of speech, which is the real reason he was taken out of the room. | ||
| And that is scary, people. | ||
| That is right. | ||
| Look, Donna, so can I respond to both points? | ||
| One, we have to live in these two worlds because in the one world we've focused a lot on here, which is this authoritarian overreach, we see Trump consolidating power and him attacking our most basic constitutional rights. | ||
| That's a scary world that demands us to think as anti-authoritarians. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And how do you organize peacefully a broad-based movement to push back against that? | |
| But we also live in this world where there is legislation moving forward in Congress, as it would any given year. | ||
| And there is a Republican trifecta, so there's a Republican controlling the Senate and the House and the presidency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they're pushing forward this reconciliation bill that you're exactly right gives tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and does nothing for the bottom half of the country. | |
| And that's intentional. | ||
| Why do you think, why do you think the Republicans are pushing forward a deeply regressive bill that concentrates power in the hands of a tiny few and gives tax cuts and concentrates wealth in the hands of a tiny few at the same time that they're attacking our fundamental rights? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why do you think those two things are happening at the same time? | |
| It's not a coincidence. | ||
| Because if your policy agenda is deeply regressive, if it is all built on concentrating wealth in the hands of industry and millionaires and billionaires, that's not a policy agenda you can maintain if you live in a free and democratic society. | ||
| If people are able to express their opinions and organize and vote freely, they're going to vote you out of power. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you have to also, at the same time, systematically attack those freedoms. | |
| Otherwise, you're not going to be able to implement your policy agenda. | ||
| I see these two things not as in conflict or not a distraction. | ||
| I think see them as part and parcel of the overall plan, as you said, to build an oligarchic system. | ||
| Now, as for what we saw with Senator Pia, you're absolutely right. | ||
| They knew who he was. | ||
| He self-identified. | ||
| He said, I'm Senator Padilla. | ||
| So the White House and the Homeland Security Secretary came out with a lot of straight-up lies describing the situation and expecting that their people, if nobody else, their people will believe those lies. | ||
| And what that will develop is two alternative worldviews about what reality is. | ||
| And they benefit when Americans can't agree on what reality is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So again, I come back to this basic request for everybody watching. | |
| Please watch the news to become informed. | ||
| Please understand what the issues are, but also organize in your own community and have conversations with each other, even with people who you don't agree about what is happening right now, because we cannot afford to let these would-be authoritarians define what reality is for us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to be defining reality based on what we see, what we hear, and what we discuss with our fellow community members. | |
| We're going to go to Northport, Florida. | ||
| Cindy's a Republican. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I have been listening to Mr. Levin, and I know that he seems to be doing an awful lot of complaining about this parade and the money that's been spent on it. | ||
| But he didn't seem to complain about Joe Biden spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for queers and lesbians and cross-dressers to be at the White House for a big party on Easter. | ||
| And he seems to have no respect for common sense people who freed this country so that we can have this conversation. | ||
| How much taxpayer money is he spending on this organization for people standing on the streets complaining? | ||
| That's probably going to get nasty. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mr. Levin, any taxpayer money for the no kings protests? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, of course not. | |
| That's bizarre. | ||
| I would say, Cindy, though, I don't know what you're talking about with the Joe Biden spending, but let me just take you at your word that Joe Biden spent $100,000 on a party of some sort that you disagree with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I don't know if that's true, but let's say he did. | |
| That's $100,000. | ||
| How much is the Trump military parade for his birthday going to cost? | ||
| $100 million of taxpayer money, your money. | ||
| And he's doing this at the time, Cindy. | ||
| Unless you're a millionaire or a billionaire, Cindy, I don't think you are. | ||
| Unless you're a millionaire or a billionaire, he is doing this at a time where he is cutting taxes for the millionaires and billionaires in your state and not doing anything for you. | ||
| So, Cindy, I would really encourage you to take a close look at the facts here. | ||
| Donald Trump is duping you. | ||
| He is duping you. | ||
| He is playing on your own lack of understanding of his operation. | ||
| That's intentional. | ||
| He does not want you to know what he's doing. | ||
| He is trying to make you hate your neighbor, whether the LGBTQ community, whether they're immigrants, whether they're federal workers. | ||
| He wants you to focus on them so that you don't see him take money out of your pocket and give it to his billionaire friends. | ||
| Cindy, I'm with you in being upset when the federal government misuses money, but I would highly encourage you to pay close attention not to just what Donald Trump is saying, but what he and his Republican allies are doing, which is directly harming you and your community. | ||
| Carla is in Aurora, Colorado, Democratic caller. | ||
| You're talking with Ezra Levin this morning. | ||
| Go ahead, Carla. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Ezra. | |
| Thank you for what you're doing. | ||
| I'm a proud member of a progressive group, Indivisible, in Aurora, Colorado. | ||
| And I've been livid ever since Donald Trump said he was going to run. | ||
| Right now, I would like people to understand that this man is not mentally well. | ||
| In 2017, Dandy Lee, a doctor, started a duty to warn conference. | ||
| Can Google Duty to Warn a Conference, and you will find that since 2017, more than 240 highly trained mental health experts have deemed him in writing to be unfit to be the commander-in-chief. | ||
| I go to these groups with people who are educated, retired teachers, retired professors. | ||
| These are lawyers. | ||
| These are people who know what the heck they're talking about. | ||
| They've been paying attention since he began to run. | ||
| This whole situation has me so upset. | ||
| I just can't even tell you how much. | ||
| But. | ||
| All right, Carla, I'll jump in and I'll jump in and have Ezra Levin respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Carla, I feel that too. | |
| Look, here's what I would say: no single one of us is going to solve this on our own. | ||
| And it is not our job to psychoanalyze Donald Trump. | ||
| We can't control what he does. | ||
| That is not in our power. | ||
| And we should be focusing on what is in our power. | ||
| So what I encourage people to do is by all means be informed and watch the news and make sure that you understand the basics of the issue. | ||
| But if we're going to do anything positive for this country in this moment, it's going to start with what you are doing, which is organizing in your own community. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe that's forming or finding a local indivisible group. | |
| That's what a lot of folks have done all across the country. | ||
| But you could join your local union. | ||
| You could join your local Working Families Party chapter. | ||
| You could start your own community institution. | ||
| But the way that we push back effectively is by joining with each other and identifying what is our piece of this. | ||
| What can we actually do? | ||
| I'm not looking for people to just feel good about being on the right side of history because we had the right opinions. | ||
| What I want to see people do is take action and specifically take strategic, effective action. | ||
| And so what you do in Aurora is going to be different than what somebody does in Beaumont, Texas, which is going to be different than what somebody does in San Francisco, which is going to be different than what somebody does in Winnebago, Wisconsin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's good. | |
| That's right. | ||
| But it's up to you to use your brain, organize with your fellow community members, identify, here's what I can do in Aurora. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's do that. | |
| And I think you're not just going to feel better. | ||
| It's cheaper than therapy, we say. | ||
| You're not just going to feel better. | ||
| You're also going to make a positive impact in this current moment. | ||
| We'll go to Paul in New York, Independent. | ||
| Paul, question or comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So first of all, I agree with, actually, oddly enough, I agree with Ezra a lot of things, particularly the participation stuff. | ||
| Let me tell you where I disagree with you. | ||
| One is this role of hyperbole. | ||
| I think part of the problem is that everybody seems to be calling, you know, these sort of, for instance, George W. Bush was called a fascist, a Nazi. | ||
| Obama was called a socialist. | ||
| So there's a sort of crying wolf effect, if you follow me, where since there've been so much description in such extreme terms of every politician, if an authoritarian does show up, I'm not sure people would recognize it. | ||
| That's the first thing. | ||
| The second thing is, you said that like a military parade is similar to what you see in North Korea. | ||
| Well, it's not my cup of tea, but it's actually something in France. | ||
| It's called the Steel Day. | ||
| I was actually there and I was taken aback about how militaristic it was. | ||
| And that's the sort of, you know, that's a big day for them. | ||
| So, I mean, do you think they're authoritarian? | ||
| My guess would be that you don't. | ||
| When it comes to Padilla, very quickly, you know, I don't agree with what happened to him, but I don't see why it seems to be that it would be okay if he wasn't. | ||
| If he wasn't a senator, then it would be okay to arrest him. | ||
| And if that's the case, we should be all under the same laws. | ||
| If I make a disruption at a press conference, why should I be subject to being arrested, Ezra? | ||
| Why is that so kosher with you? | ||
| Why is that so acceptable that if I were to go to an ICE facility and make a scene and push somebody, then I should be able to be arrested. | ||
| But if it's a congresswoman, oh, well, that's unacceptable. | ||
| I mean, I suppose there's a double standard here that you guys have. | ||
| All right, Paul, Paul, let's have Ezra Levin respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Let me, maybe I'll try to take it in reverse order. | ||
| So, Paul, I agree. | ||
| If you go and assault somebody at an ICE rally, I think you should be arrested. | ||
| Full stop. | ||
| I think that's right. | ||
| That's not we saw Senator Petia do. | ||
| We saw Senator Petia at a press conference attempt to ask a question and then was immediately apprehended by the FBI, tackled to the ground, and put into handcuffs. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think you should have been arrested had you attended a press conference and attempted to ask a question. | |
| So I agree with you overall. | ||
| I do think you're making this good point about the language that we use and it being almost insufficient for the moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You say, when a real authoritarian comes, will we even be able to know it or describe it because of the language we use? | |
| I think from my perspective, which is informed by the perspective of the experts in authoritarianism, that moment has arrived, Paul. | ||
| I don't know what other language to use to tell you this. | ||
| I would encourage you to study up on what folks who study this for a living say we are experiencing right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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I am left without additional language other than to say this is an autocratic breakthrough, and that is defined by the specific behaviors of this would-be authoritarian ruler. | |
| And I don't want to be there. | ||
| What I would like is a Republican president who I disagree with on tax policy, and I wouldn't describe that as authoritarianism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say, look, he's coming to cut your Medicaid. | |
| He's coming to cut your Medicare. | ||
| He's coming to cut our education spending. | ||
| And I disagree with that for these reasons. | ||
| I wouldn't call that authoritarianism. | ||
| What we define as autocratic breakthrough here, again, is not a right-wing agenda. | ||
| That is not something I agree with, but something that is normal for our political system. | ||
| The not normal thing that is happening right now is the attack on the pillars of liberal democracy and the concentration of political power in the hands of the White House. | ||
| So when you extort Paul Weiss' law firm or threaten Columbia University or tell businesses they have to take certain actions, otherwise they're going to be targeted by the administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's where you get into autocratic breakthrough. | |
| And I wish I had better language to describe it, but I do really try to rely on the experts here and then follow their lead. | ||
| We'll go to Las Vegas. | ||
| Doug is joining us there, a Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Morning. | ||
| Just a simple uneducated high school dropout, but I'm 65 years old. | ||
| I started working when I was 14 years old, worked every day of my dang life. | ||
| Got a retarded daughter that's been retarded when she was born. | ||
| All this liberal stuff is ridiculous. | ||
| I fought with these people over that since day one. | ||
| Everybody causes complaints about their food stamps. | ||
| And I said, well, the government gives me a whole trip. | ||
| Doug, do you have a question or comment about the no kings protest or what the actions by the president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mad. | |
| You keep talking over people when they call. | ||
| All right, I'm going to move on. | ||
| Larry in Southport, North Carolina, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Larry, it's your turn. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to tell them about it these protesters. | ||
| They're paid protesters, but uh I don't know. | ||
| This fellow's so despicable that I don't maintain any talk. | ||
| All right, Larry, all right, Ezra Levin, he says the protesters are paid. | ||
| And this is something that you've seen reported by Fox News and heard from the White House and from Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would love to see where that money's coming from. | |
| I mean, I don't know how you organize a peaceful protest with literally millions of people all over the globe. | ||
| We're talking 17 countries, every single congressional district, blue states, red states, purple states, rural areas, suburban areas, urban areas. | ||
| Gosh, we got more than a dozen in Montana, more than a dozen in Alaska, one on every island of Hawaii. | ||
| Who is cutting the checks for these paid protesters? | ||
| Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the key groups organizing the No Kings rally that's happening Saturday, tomorrow, and we'll have coverage of it at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Go to c-span.org for more information or our free video app, C-SPAN. | ||
| Now, you can watch it right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Ezra Levin, thank you for the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great talking. | |
| Up next in the Washington Journal, more on those Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| We'll talk with Benim Ben Taliblou, who heads up the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, at 3 p.m. Eastern, Frank Garmin, author of A Wonderful Career in Crime, on Charles Cowlin's career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist during the Civil War era. | ||
| Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, a discussion about African-American law student Lloyd Gaines, who petitioned the Supreme Court when he was denied entry into a whites-only law school at the University of Missouri. | ||
| In 1938, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, but months later, Mr. Gaines disappeared and was never seen again. | ||
| And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, a discussion on food at the executive mansion and how even the food at the White House is political with a former White House chef, food historians, and presidential scholars exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Experience democracy in action with C-SPAN's Voices, where we hear directly from you. | ||
| We want to know what are your thoughts on the upcoming military parade in Washington, D.C. | ||
| I think it's hopefully the start of a great tradition. | ||
| 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States Army. | ||
| There's probably no organization that deserves to be honored more than our U.S. fighting forces, particularly the Army. | ||
| I consider myself pretty anti-military, seeing Army parades in the U.S. | ||
| I can't help but think of depictions of Army parades from countries like Nazi Germany, from the Soviet Union. | ||
| My thoughts about the military, I think it's great. | ||
| We need to honor our veterans and our soldiers. | ||
| My thoughts on the armored parade is this is just a tremendous waste of money and waste of energy on a man that really doesn't deserve a parade. | ||
| My name's Guy. | ||
| I'm from Florida, and I think it's a wonderful thing. | ||
| I mean, we see military parades throughout the country. | ||
| However, this being the headquarters for freedom and serving in the military myself, I really think it's a wonderful idea. | ||
| It's a waste of taxpayer dollars. | ||
| We generally would like to see our taxpayer dollars go towards improving infrastructure and social programs and things like that rather than a parade for the Army and for Trump's birthday. | ||
| C-SPAN's Voices, delivering democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Be part of the conversation. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Benem Ben Taliblou, who is the Iran program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. | ||
| He's here to talk about the Israeli strikes on the Iran's nuclear facilities and its program there. | ||
| Let's just begin with these targeted strikes. | ||
| According to news reports, over 200 warplanes taking out nuclear facilities, nuclear scientists, and top military brass. | ||
| In these strikes, what did Israel effectively do, in your opinion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a pleasure to be with you. | |
| I think the most interesting thing and the most unique thing is even though everyone is framing this, as you just mentioned, as a counter-proliferation operation, basically targeting the regime's nuclear program, I think you even had the Prime Minister of Israel talk about going after the crown jewel of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. | ||
| Not every single nuclear site was hit. | ||
| What you've had is a lot of military sites hit and really the gutting of the mid-to-high level command and controls. | ||
| Several, probably you can count on one hand, senior ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, generals basically, taken out by this regime, the decision-making brain trust of the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism when it comes to these military issues. | ||
| And so I think what the Israelis first tried to do here with this strike, which is being described more of a campaign rather than just a single operation, is to really defang the Islamic Republic. | ||
|
unidentified
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So what I'm looking at is actually how effective were they against the regime's ballistic missile program, which is the biggest ballistic missile arsenal in the entire Middle East. | |
| Do they want to stop the regime's drone program, which is also the biggest drone arsenal in the entire Middle East? | ||
| And do they think they'll have other chances to get shots in based on how and if the Iranians respond? | ||
| Your take on how precise Israel capabilities are, to know that there was an underground meeting happening with the Iranian military leaders to strike there and six nuclear scientists. | ||
| And as you said, these facilities. | ||
|
unidentified
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And as well as targeting the homes of some of these individuals. | |
| You know, you've seen some images on social media, both in Persian and English, of these luxury penthouse towers where the middle one or two floors are essentially just taken out, which is where some of these either nuclear scientists or high-ranking military officials were. | ||
|
unidentified
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This reminds me a lot of September 2024 in Beirut when the Israelis with what is popularly called PagerGate and Biepergate targeting mid-to-high ranking Hezbollah officials. | |
| It means that they must have had assets, probably intel, eyes on the ground, and it is proof that whenever we're talking about kinetic operations with the Israelis, there is always this intelligence component to it that can take their limited quantity and make up for it with massive quality. | ||
| So, the Israelis have shown again that they've had the edge against the Iranians for quite some time, penetrating their system, knowing their whereabouts of where these generals and high-ranking officials come and go to be able to pull off this operation in this chronology. | ||
| The president says that he was aware of this campaign, the word you use. | ||
| Mark Arubio, the Secretary of State, said the U.S. was not involved. | ||
| The Iranian foreign minister says this would not have been capable. | ||
| They would not have been able to pull this off without U.S. help. | ||
| What do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, we don't know what we don't know to repropriate Donald Rumsfeldism. | |
| But I will say this. | ||
| Essentially, Washington didn't participate in the strike against the Islamic Republic. | ||
| I think the Iranians are looking to basically overconnect the dots here. | ||
| Certainly, maybe they're talking about potentially going over Iraqi airspace or something like that. | ||
| But I think what the Trump administration may have done, if you're looking at the comments after the strike by the president himself, most recently, I think, to ABC, calling it excellent, is that the president may have been okay with a pale green light because, A, his own two-month deadline had elapsed. | ||
| He had reportedly given the Iranians 60 days for negotiations. | ||
| And then, B, I think he was increasingly frustrated of the impasse at the nuclear talks. | ||
| I mean, the president has been investing considerable time and capital into trying to extend an olive branch to the Islamic Republic, and the regime kept stalling and wanting more. | ||
| And I don't think the regime understood just how precisely the Israelis and the Americans understood how weak the regime was. | ||
| So, do I think America was a participant in this? | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| I think Secretary Rubio is right. | ||
| But do I think there are some officials in the Trump administration quite content with this? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And just a few hours ago, a story on Axios of great, I think, import to the viewers and listeners is that there are some Israeli sources that allege the Trump administration actually knew about this and injected a false sense of optimism all this week about nuclear talks to make sure that there would be no change in the patterns of some of those persons who were targeted in Israel's strike last night. | ||
| The president did post this this morning two months ago. | ||
| I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to make a deal. | ||
| They should have done it. | ||
| Today is day 61. | ||
| I told them what to do, but they just couldn't get there. | ||
| Now they have perhaps a second chance, is what he wrote. | ||
| This is after he had posted earlier today similar words saying that he had warned them and that what could come next could be worse. | ||
| Do you believe that Israel and Iran are at war? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in so many ways, Israel and Iran have been at war for years, if not decades. | |
| You know, the Islamic Republic, unfortunately, as you know, means what it says when it says death to America, death to Israel. | ||
| This is not a regime that says this for some perfunctory, far-off ideology. | ||
| They spend national resources, which they abscond with from the Iranian people, and they sacrifice it on the altar of these ideological causes. | ||
| I mean, that's basically the story of 46 years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. | ||
| You have a fundamentally Islamist government governing over a fundamentally nationalist population. | ||
| So these two things don't mix. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And essentially, I think the regime meant what it said, and I think the Israelis sensed that there was an opportunity and took it. | |
| I mean, all of 2025 has been filled with stories, as you know, about a potentially closing window that builds off of the success of Israel's increasingly more overt military operations in 2024 that respond to Iran strikes in Israel in 2024 that tell us that already the shadow war had left the shadows. | ||
| What responsibility does the United States have here to de-escalate or to follow Israel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the president is quite clear that he wants before the strike, after the strike, and even well before he entered office when he was campaigning before term one, the president with respect to the Iranian threat, which he primarily but not exclusively defines as the nuclear threat, the president wants a deal. | |
| He was critical of the Obama-era deal, but he wants a deal. | ||
| I still think he even post-strike would seek some sort of a deal. | ||
| I think he seeks, you know, he sees the strike as a potential to have leverage. | ||
| I mean, we're all doing kind of Monday morning quarterbacking here trying to read the tea leaves and what the president wants through tweets and through his official commentary. | ||
| But I think he wants a deal, and he may seek to use this as a threat to the Iranians, saying the only thing standing between you and certain death, between the Israelis and certain death, is me. | ||
| So take this olive branch round 2.0. | ||
| I think that might be his approach. | ||
| But what ought the U.S. approach to be to make sure that there is no daylight between the Israelis and the Americans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
America need not immediately go follow in. | |
| I think right now is the time for a private, very tough communique to the Iranians to say that if you move, if you harm one American, if you fire even remotely directly towards a U.S. military facility, a U.S. diplomatic facility, you're next. | ||
| Well, those warnings were given by several leaders saying, I mean, Lindsey Graham, senator, said the exact same thing, that if you target any U.S. personnel or any facilities, that the U.S. would respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And ultimately, to hold the regime accountable for all of its actions, not just that which comes from its own territory. | |
| If you may remember, the high bar President Trump set for the use of force against Iran's proxies back in 2019 was the loss of American life. | ||
| And it was precisely this cycle of violence that we saw in the fall, if not winter of 2019, that led into the presidential decision in January 2020 for Trump in term one to pull the trigger against Iran's chief terrorist, Qasim Soleimani, in Baghdad, Iraq in January 2020. | ||
| What do you think is next? | ||
| Because we heard the Israeli prime minister say, well, this will take as many days as it takes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, again, we have to think of this as a campaign from the Israelis rather than just operation. | |
| They've been talking about a potential military option against Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| But again, given the nature of this strike being a counter-regime strike, handicapping much of the military, I think the Israelis anticipate there will be an Iranian response, and then they may seek to try to follow off and respond to or offset that Iranian response by targeting, when they have a freer hand, more of Iran's nuclear infrastructure in that potential second round. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what I'm guesstimating here. | |
| Again, Iran's response thus far has been to send 100 drones, much like they sent in the early attack back in April 2024. | ||
| Back in April, every single Iranian drone was intercepted and prevented from entering Israeli territory. | ||
| That's basically been in the case now. | ||
| The million-dollar question is, will the regime layer that attack with those ballistic missiles? | ||
| And would the regime widen the front to potentially go after U.S. assets or interests? | ||
| Is that a measured response by the Iranians, the drones? | ||
| I would say the Iranians, whatever they do, the criteria governing their response will be how to save face without losing your head. | ||
| If I had to judge military to military, obviously it was a weak and lackluster response. | ||
| But do I think also that that which they may have had in the can or on the docket for a potential response if they ever got hit? | ||
| I do think there's a high likelihood that that plan has had to be junked given the Israelis gutting their military command and control. | ||
| Again, think of the damage done by taking out that top military brass of Hezbollah back in the fall of 2024. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now you have to think of that with respect to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. | |
| I mean, just a few hours ago before I walked in here, I saw in the Persian press confirmed that the man with his finger on the trigger of the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, Brigadier General Haji Zadeh, a name known to basically every SENCOM commander over the past two decades, was killed in this strike. | ||
| He would have been the one responsible for organizing what the Iranians call a hard revenge. | ||
| He is no longer there today. | ||
| I think this raises real questions about how Iran may respond because to some degree, personnel is policy. | ||
| Benem Ben Taliblou is our guest here this morning. | ||
| He's with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, their senior director of their Iran program. | ||
| Let's hear from Kevin, who's in Gaithersburg, Maryland. | ||
| Democratic caller, you are up first, Kevin. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Question. | |
| Both Elon Musk and President Trump have recently made disparaging comments about stealth technology, which is quite curious. | ||
| Given the likelihood that stealth technology was used in this recent attack, can you give some explanation for why you think U.S. leadership would be disparaging stealth technology and how important do you think stealth technology was in this attack? | ||
| Oh, well, I actually hadn't heard of those comments by the president and by Elon Musk about stealth technology. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it would behoove the U.S. not to make those comments because there are strategic bombers, as you know, like the B-2 that significantly do employ stealth technology. | |
| There's a whole host of fighter jet programs like the F-35 that employ stealth technology. | ||
| Again, that would be, I think, with respect not wise to undermine the deterrent capacity of those stealth weapons. | ||
| Again, I don't know the technical or the political comments they made about stealth, but certainly I think stealth technology played a role in paving the way for this strike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you look at precisely what the Israelis were able to do back in October, responding to Iran's largest ballistic missile barrage, largest single-day ballistic missile barrage. | |
| We don't know the degree to which we don't know every single munition. | ||
| We don't know every single platform the Israelis have used in this one, so time will tell. | ||
| But if one had to guess stealth, but also I would say capacity, they threw more in. | ||
| There was about 200 planes, as you mentioned, partaking in this operation. | ||
| Capability, the individual operational performance of their fighters. | ||
| And then most importantly, what connects the DAS for a lot of these Israeli operations is intelligence. | ||
| That's a force multiplier for even more conventional baseline military capabilities that these countries have. | ||
| Give our viewers your background in studying Iran. | ||
| Give us sort of your bio over the years, but also personally, why do you study Iran? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, I'll try not to bore you too much with it, but I'm a first-generation Iranian American, born and raised in the States, like probably many other Iranian American friends or acquaintances you have. | |
| Probably a typical story. | ||
| Folks migrate after 1979 on the mother's side, a bit more political. | ||
| Her father, my maternal grandfather, was a reporter prior to the revolution. | ||
| He was taken to Ebin prison by the new revolutionary regime. | ||
| Once they got him out on bail, they all fled. | ||
| My mother met her father, met my father while they were in Milan, Italy. | ||
| They got engaged, came to the States shortly thereafter, yours truly. | ||
| And most of my life, I've kind of struggled on a personal and cultural level to see the Iran and the Persian culture that I got to experience at home and with family not necessarily mesh with the Iran that you see in the news and on television. | ||
| And as a first generation growing up in America, you always kind of wanted to square the circle. | ||
| I was a nerd. | ||
| I was always interested in history, but I wanted to do something with that history. | ||
| And now I've had the pleasure of being in D.C. for 19 years, kind of studying, looking at Iran, basically using subject matter expertise to learn new functional skills. | ||
| And I've been with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies for almost 13 years now. | ||
| And it's been a real pleasure to actually be able to lead, I think, what is their most impactful portfolio, which is their Iran work. | ||
| They have a great Iran team there. | ||
| Mark, Cliff, Zaeed, formerly Rich, Andrea. | ||
| I mean, it's a really great team. | ||
| Jonathan, a new guy hired. | ||
| I really do find myself lucky to be able to work on an issue of the head and an issue of the heart in Washington, D.C. You talked about the people of Iran not agreeing with their leadership. | ||
| Do you still have family there, friends there? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| What can you tell us about the Iranian people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Essentially, large swaths of family were out after the 1979 revolution, but there are ways people do communicate. | |
| I try to make sure that whoever you do speak to is safer and that method of communication is not used against them because I do have a very close friend whose cousin was killed in the November 2019 protests that were triggered by the spike in the fuel prices once the subsidies were cut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the reason I'm saying this is because those protests, but the larger pattern of anti-regime protests that we've seen in Iran, prove that there also is a very different Iran that may not always be represented in the news media or be represented in the story of the U.S.-Iran strategic competition. | |
| I mean, you have, again, an Islamist regime governing a nationalist population, an anti-American regime governing over a fundamentally pro-American population. | ||
| You've even seen that change in terms of the Iran-Israel issue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Since 2009, protesting Iranians have been chanting, not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life only for Iran. | |
| I mean, you have to contrast Iran as a Muslim-majority country and their response socially, the street, to the Palestinian issue after October 7 with the whole host of U.S. partners and allies where large swaths of those society were decidedly anti-Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was not the view or value set of large swaths of Iranian society. | |
| It fundamentally is a very different society compared to its own government. | ||
| And I think playing on that, noticing that, making that part of U.S.-Israeli-European-Western policy really is going to be the key. | ||
| I think what the regime has done for two decades is to handicap us, prevent us from being able to see that very clear reality by coming up with one threat after another, by like a chef with many burners, moving pans, forcing us to deal with something in front of us, terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, nuclear drone, and not really that, you know, those are all fires created by one arsonist. | ||
| And if the Israelis and the Americans actually kind of deal with the facts on the ground in Iran as they are and actually create a policy to support the Iranian people, that FED, we have an initiative called Maximum Support. | ||
| I think that would do wonders for U.S.-Iran policy and actually facilitate the thing that many Americans have been wanting for a while, which is a smaller American footprint in the region. | ||
| You can't do that when you have a state this size with those resources spending every waking hour contesting your major partners and contesting you. | ||
| Did you agree with the Obama administration's nuclear deal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was a respectful but firm critic of the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. | |
| I essentially believe, as the Trump administration did later on, that the juice was not worth the squeeze. | ||
| I particularly think that the administration is to be commended for signing a lot of those congressional sanctions into law, particularly post-the-green movement, post-the crackdown in 2009. | ||
| The Obama administration got the toughest ever UN Security Council resolution against the Iranians in the summer of 2010. | ||
| That's resolution 1929. | ||
| But they had a significant amount of leverage and with immense respect. | ||
| I think they squandered it at the negotiating table. | ||
| I understand the stakes were different. | ||
| I understand they had to keep this European transnational consensus on board. | ||
| But there were quite a few own goals in the Obama administration approach that brought us to this position. | ||
| For one example, that one UN resolution that I mentioned, 1929, builds off of a whole host of UN resolutions the Bush administration got, where the entire P5 plus 1, so Russia, China, the Europeans, the Americans, you know, countries who don't even agree on the color of the sky, were able to agree that Iran should not be enriching uranium on its own soil. | ||
| The entire nuclear crisis was kicked off because of the spring of 2006. | ||
| Iran began to very publicly take off the seals and enrich uranium on its own soil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And to this day, Iran has not stopped enriching uranium for a single day on its own soil. | |
| If I was going to be doing a nuclear deal with the Iranians, that would be the thing I'd be trying to stop. | ||
| Unfortunately, the Obama-era deal permitted that, gave the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism sanctions relief that allowed it to bail out its partner, the Assad regime in Syria for many years, and paved the pathway for a very bumpy Middle East. | ||
| Before we get to calls, respond to viewers who said, who referenced the Bible and say that this is biblical, what's happening. | ||
| And then also we'll say that the Islam religion is evil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm actually probably not the world's best Muslim, but I am a Muslim. | |
| I don't think the Islamic religion is evil. | ||
| In fact, it's part of the larger faith family of Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism. | ||
| You've actually seen now being able, Republicans and also lots of faith-believing folks be able to use this shared ancestral heritage to build bridges for peace in the Middle East rather than boundaries or walls that kind of enshrine more localized ancient feuds and hatreds. | ||
| And I think that was one of the major successes of the Trump administration in term one, which was the Abraham Accords. | ||
| Many hoped that it would be expanded in the Biden administration or the Trump Term 2 administration to include a major U.S. partner like the Saudis, for example. | ||
| But perhaps that's another issue for another day. | ||
| I'm happy to get into a theological sidebar, but no, it's a Middle Eastern religion, you know, 1,400 years old. | ||
| And I think the thing we have to focus on is not necessarily the texts, but the people who practice those texts. | ||
| There's a huge, huge difference between a Muslim, between an Islamist, and a jihadist. | ||
| And it's critical for U.S. policymakers to know that because you can't be fighting a war against, I don't know, 1.4, 1.7, I forgot the number, but it's the second or third biggest religion in the world, that many people. | ||
| In fact, many of them are your natural partners, your natural allies in a larger fight against extremism. | ||
| We'll go to Brooklyn, Massachusetts. | ||
| Chris, Democratic Collar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, anybody who knows anything at all about the Middle East knows that the FDD is nothing more than a lobbying outfit for the Israeli interests and that they masquerade as a 501c3. | |
| One of their biggest contributors is the Israeli-born Zionist Miriam Adelson. | ||
| And last year, they hired as an advisor Jonathan Conricus. | ||
| Jonathan Conricus was a spokesperson for the Israeli occupational forces. | ||
| So if you are looking for any kind of objectivity from this person, forget about it. | ||
| Okay, let's get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for your comments, Color. | |
| Listen, FTD actually is a 501c3. | ||
| It's a think tank founded in Washington, D.C. after 9-11 shortly, focusing on the threats to us and our Democratic partners, of which Israel is one. | ||
| Unlike many other think tanks, which the caller forgot to mention, we do not take any foreign government funding or any foreign government direction. | ||
| So we're proud to be taking only U.S. funding. | ||
| We don't take even corporate funding. | ||
| Did we take money from Mr. Adelson? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't believe we're taking money from Mr. Adelson. | |
| I think there may have been only one year in 2012 or 2013 where there was a reported story about it. | ||
| But to the best of my knowledge, no. | ||
| But FTD's 1099s, the full returns of the organization, because it is a 501c3, are all public. | ||
| You can see the highest salaries. | ||
| You can see where the money comes in. | ||
| All of this stuff is above board. | ||
| Unfortunately, I'm not sure where the caller's views, values, or even financial interests are coming from. | ||
| All right, so you can see a 1099 from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| It's public information. | ||
| Charles, in Newton, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to ask Mr. Taliblou about the Iranian people. | ||
| It's so hard to get information about the Iranian people and what the possibility of the overthrow of the theocracy that governs Iran is in terms of what has happened in the past days in Iran and what his vision is for what would happen if the theocracy did topple and what would replace it and how it would be administered. | ||
| I have so little understanding of the democratic movement in Iran itself. | ||
| Okay, Charles, let's take those questions. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Charles. | |
| It's actually a great question because the democratic movement in Iran is not recent. | ||
| In fact, Iran, for over a century, you've had Iranians protesting for a fundamentally much more representative government across a whole host of different regimes. | ||
| So it's not some kind of alien imported project, a la, you know, Iraq or Afghanistan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is an organic movement that has been seeking basically a government in line with their own views, values, and interests for over a century now. | |
| I would say critically, you've seen a shift in the views of the Iranian population post-2009. | ||
| As long as there's been an Islamic Republic, and that is 46 years, there have been protests against the Islamic Republic. | ||
| But some flashpoints that really matter, 1999 and 2009, those were political protests triggered by an event tied to one faction of the regime, the closure of a reformist newspaper and the storming of a university campus in 1999. | ||
| And in 2009, you've had the stealing of an election away from reformist candidates and the paving of a way for an ultra-hardliner like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those were two periods where the population protested in favor of one element of the system, the quote-unquote reformists. | |
| But given the over-promise and under-delivery of those reformists, given the fact that their fingers were never really on the levers of power, what you saw beyond 2009 is that Iranians, it would correlate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The more likely the protests or the more the number of protests, the lower the voter turnout. | |
| So the street essentially wait went from trying to reform the system to seeking wholesale revolution, or that very dangerous word in Washington, seeking regime change against the entire system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this was brought to you by a quiet host of labor strikes, protests, acts of civil disobedience on a near daily basis for over a decade between 2009-10 and 2017. | |
| And 2017 to present inaugurates this massive boom and bust cycle of anti-regime protests that we're living in, where the period between each protest is not a decade like 99 and 2009. | ||
| It can be a year like 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. | ||
| Not a year has gone by without major anti-regime protests or major anti-regime strikes. | ||
| Just before, for example, this Israeli strike on Iranian territory, you had a near two-week-long trucker strike in Iran. | ||
| Truckers were protesting, gas issues, wage issues, quality of life issues. | ||
| You've had in Iran over the past decade, decade and a half, social issues like the hijab. | ||
| You remember the women life freedom movement? | ||
| 150 city, 150 different cities, towns, and villages protesting in their entirety, in all of their demographic and ethnic diversity in one voice against the government of the Islamic Republic. | ||
| You have, again, with respect to Iran, a fundamentally nationalist and pro-American population and a fundamentally anti-American and Islamist government. | ||
| And the differences are as stark as North Korea and South Korea. | ||
| If this current government were to be toppled, its leaders, who would take over, I think was one of the questions as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it's an excellent question. | |
| There could be an entirely separate seminar on this, both vis-à-vis the perspective of what U.S. policy is and should be, as well as, of course, what is the Iranian opposition doing, as well as, of course, what is happening on the ground in Iran. | ||
| And we can't over-wish things. | ||
| You know, we have a view, but you don't want to project your views onto analysis. | ||
| So analytically, first things first, with respect, this is the Middle East, which means things can always get worse, not better. | ||
| You're surrounded by examples of that. | ||
| That being said, there are elements of this regime, like the quote-unquote deep state, the hardcore military security political elite, that may try to find a place for themselves in the future by changing colors like a crocodile. | ||
| And these folks essentially, what's the best way to put it? | ||
| These folks essentially would be seeking to avoid a revolution by pushing for some sort of devolution or evolution. | ||
| So Iran could move from Islamist theocracy to military dictatorship and hope that no one really notices. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is one unfortunate path that could happen. | |
| That's not what we want. | ||
| That's not what we advocate for. | ||
| But we have to be honest, that is one potential thing. | ||
| In the instance that the regime does fall under a combination of foreign pressure and domestic pressure, well, then elements of the Iranian diaspora, as well as multiple elements of the Iranian opposition, not organized, unfortunately, but within, you know, on the ground, brave protesting Iranians who have been fighting for a qualitatively different life, they would be the ones well poised to be able to put it to those security services to not fire on them every time they do protest and from there create a coalition for change. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It would be no doubt an exceptionally bumpy ride, but I think the throw your hands up in the air and tolerate the devil you know of 46 years has produced an equally, if not more dangerous, bumpy ride. | |
| We'll go to Denver, Colorado. | ||
| Keith, Democratic caller, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Very interesting conversation, and I'm very much enjoying it because the issues are complex and nuanced. | ||
| So I have a couple of questions. | ||
| One, as your organization's defense of democracies, how can that be credible based on American democracy is in question right now, and particularly when we're not defending Ukraine as much as we are Israel. | ||
| And there have been mixed messages from the administration, both from the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and also from Trump this morning. | ||
| So, and secondly, can you address the threat of fundamentalism based on whatever religion or belief system people adhered to? | ||
| In America, we have Christian dispensationalism, which is a literal interpretation of prophecy. | ||
| So they're trying to fulfill prophecy. | ||
| And thirdly, I support Israel. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Three things there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Keith. | |
| Yes, I was just getting them all down. | ||
| Working backwards, I'll speak generally about the fundamentalism issue. | ||
| Academically, fundamentalism is very interesting to study because it sounds like it's always been some original concept. | ||
| But fundamentalism is actually a reactionary movement. | ||
| So in whatever society, whatever state, whatever culture, whatever religious context one views fundamentalism, fundamentalism is a response to something, often modernity or pre-modernity. | ||
| And then in responding to or trying to contest modernity, they try to quote unquote go back to the fundamentals. | ||
| And almost always, this is a very regressive view. | ||
| I won't comment on where and which context and what country, because again, it will vary drastically. | ||
| But it's always interesting to study fundamentalism as a response to something, not fundamentals having almost always been there. | ||
| So in that way, some different strands of fundamentalism are much more politically motivated. | ||
| You know, it doesn't come out of a social vacuum. | ||
| That's on fundamentalism. | ||
| Going to the first point on credibility, I certainly think that just because we have problems at home doesn't allow us to take a holiday from history. | ||
| The U.S. has values. | ||
| The U.S. has interests. | ||
| It behooves the U.S. as the world's sole superpower to defend those values and interests, and particularly when they actually align in the Middle East. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You don't get a lot of times, a lot of opportunities to actually marry your head and your heart. | |
| You often have to hold your nose or turn the other way. | ||
| You mentioned the case of Israel. | ||
| That's been one major exception. | ||
| I would add another exception to that too, which is supporting the Iranian people. | ||
| We should be able to connect the dots here between all of the different fires in the Middle East and the main arsonist of those fires, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hopefully, you know, U.S. policy, Israeli policy, European policy, Western policy, what have you, again, connects the dots and realizes that. | |
| But on credibility, yes, there's the power of our example. | ||
| But even if our example is poor, I don't think that gives us a free pass to not have to look at these issues, particularly because they can and do come back to get us at home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, we are a diverse country, the United States of America. | |
| It is a huge privilege, gift being born and raised here, being able to partake in this diverse fabric that is our country. | ||
| But at the same time, our different views, our different values are often exploited by our authoritarian adversaries. | ||
| I mean, you don't have to take it from the Trump administration. | ||
| The Biden administration DNI, Avril Hines, actually talked about the Iranians being able to sponsor pro-Hamas protests in America without those Americans even knowing where their support was coming from. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So always be aware of how our authoritarian adversaries use our domestic cleavages against us. | |
| And we should keep that in mind for our own democratic discourse as we kind of compete and debate and talk to fellow Americans. | ||
| And on the third point about Ukraine and Israel, look, I would say in this early part of the 21st century, there's a whole constellation of anti-American authoritarian regimes, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, that are contesting a whole host of beleaguered democracies like Israel, like South Korea, like the Ukrainians, for example. | ||
| I think it behooves any administration to understand both the value sets at play here as well as the strategies and interests at play here. | ||
| You know, there's no straight line, for example, from losing to the Taliban and being able to deter Putin, or there's no straight line from losing to the Ayatollah's and being able to deter the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it behooves America as a democracy to be able to stand up for democracy, be a great role model for it, but then also to realize that these axis of aggressors that we face, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, are anti-American and are authoritarian. | |
| And we have to contest them on the value front as much as we have to on the politics and strategy front. | ||
| And that begins at home. | ||
| But just because things aren't perfect at home doesn't mean that that competition isn't vicious or lethal abroad. | ||
| Can Iran afford a conflict with Israel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Obviously, the Islamic Republic can't afford, quote-unquote, a conflict with Israel. | |
| Talking about their economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, economy, no, certainly not. | |
| But that has, whether material in terms of conventional warfighting capabilities or economy, certainly not. | ||
| But that has unfortunately never stopped them. | ||
| You know, when you have ideological regimes like this and you put them to the choice like U.S. sanctions have, like Israeli military pressure has, between guns and butter, they almost always double down on guns. | ||
| So the, for lack of a better word, the art of the deal here is if you have an adversary that keeps doubling down, that keeps putting those limited resources towards those ideological ends, you have to make it as costly as possible for them and as painful as possible for them to continue down this path. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if they're content on fighting you still in that place, well, then you have to be handicapping them, making sure that if they're punching, they're punching at least with one arm tied behind their back. | |
| We'll go to Shelby, North Carolina. | ||
| Avery, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| How are you all? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yes, it goes back to, young man, in the Christendom. | ||
| The leaders, the religious leaders and the government leaders, have no understanding. | ||
| God's understanding through his Christ, the anointed one, the holy one, that isn't given to every denomination, every religion, every preacher, every prophet that claims to be because these I don't support because a new Jerusalem, a new earth, a new heaven he will make. | ||
| And the day is upon us. | ||
| And these nuclear, you know, they're transpiring as it was prophesied, man. | ||
| And without the understanding, you and I can read a brain surgery book. | ||
| Avery, I'm going to jump in. | ||
| Mr. Telvu, you've probably heard this line of argument before. | ||
| What's your response to it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
With respect, I wasn't familiar. | |
| What was the line of argument? | ||
| I think you mentioned something about apocalypse. | ||
| Yeah, what I was referencing before, that this was in the Bible, that this was supposed to happen, that this is playing out the way that the Bible predicted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, if one believes that, one is absolutely entitled to their opinion. | |
| One has to respect their opinion. | ||
| I'm not sure, you know, if any religious text prophesies really mastering and splitting the atom to this degree, that doesn't mean you devalue or disrespect those religious texts, but I think that their place at 21st century, you know, strategic competition, that might not be the first book that one turns to. | ||
| It's not to devalue or disrespect it. | ||
| It's to say that there may be other forces at play here. | ||
| But if one is talking about good and evil, it doesn't matter the weapons. | ||
| It doesn't matter the countries. | ||
| Those themes are for time immemorial. | ||
| We will go to Marcy, who's in Advanced North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Marcy, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I was wondering, with the past four years of open borders, what's the danger of us having cells buried within the United States carrying out October the 7th? | ||
| And how should we be prepared to defend ourselves? | ||
| And what's our leaders doing to prevent this? | ||
| Well, Marcy, I'm glad you mentioned that question because several years ago, the follow-up commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, Ismail Khani, who his status and whereabouts are unknown after this most recent Israeli strike, had actually talked about turning Americans against one another. | ||
| So not necessarily smuggling people in, but taking advantage of those different divides so that Americans would be carrying out acts of terror against other Americans. | ||
| You mentioned immigration in the border, for example. | ||
| You know, lest we forget, little over a decade and a half ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran tried to work with Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. | ||
| Thankfully, that plot was thwarted. | ||
| It was detected. | ||
| But it just goes to show you our open border is something many of our adversaries are cognizant of. | ||
| And that means that the first line of defense is a non-partisan immigration debate and a non-partisan solution to the border that doesn't make it into this political football, but that actually gets to seal the border and make sure that everyone who is in this country is documented. | ||
| We'll go to Miriam in Texas, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Miriam, quick question or comment from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, they took us into Iraq under a false premise. | |
| Now, and a lot of our soldiers got killed. | ||
| Now Israel leveled out Gaza. | ||
| They killed a lot of people. | ||
| And we say tilt. | ||
| Now Israel is bombing Iran. | ||
| Okay, they're bombing Iran. | ||
| They didn't consult with the United States. | ||
| They didn't think about our troops because our troops are going to end up going over there. | ||
| All right, Miriam, I have to jump in at that point. | ||
| We'll get a response from our guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much, Miriam. | |
| To the first part of your question, I'm not sure who the they is that brought us into the Iraq war. | ||
| But if you're talking about the U.S. bases in the region, absolutely, yes, that is a huge concern right now in the sense that if the Iranians do respond against U.S. facilities, U.S. embassies, U.S. bases in the region, those are all unfortunately within Iranian missile range. | ||
| And as you saw in January 2020, the Iranians actually did fire 16 precision strike short-range ballistic missiles in response to the killing of their chief terrorist in January 2020 in Iraq. | ||
| So the chance of that being there is on the table. | ||
| The way you get around this is you make sure those bases are hardened. |