| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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When should they pull back? | |
| And at the same time, they're fighting lawsuits about immigration and about their deportation efforts. | ||
| So, and to make matters even more complicated, they're still trying to get this one big beautiful bill done. | ||
| I mean, that's held up in the Senate. | ||
| I know the president had a phone call with Senator Rand Paul about that, about some of the fiscal concerns in the Senate. | ||
| So, really, in the courts, internationally, on the immigration front, this is an extremely busy week for the president. | ||
| And Luke Broadwater and his colleagues in the White House Bureau of the New York Times cover it all, and you can, of course, find all that coverage at nytimes.com. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We always appreciate your time, and thanks for starting Monday with us. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's just a sampling of some of the headlines this morning in the wake of those shootings over the weekend in Minnesota. | ||
| This is from the front page of the New York Times: Violent action tied to politics is the new reality. | ||
| Partisan divide in the U.S. drives the rise in threats. | ||
| This is from the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| Minnesota killings show depth of the nation's political fractures. | ||
| And this is how the Associated Press puts it in their story. | ||
| The assassination of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. | ||
| The Associated Press going on to say, the list in the past two months alone, the killings of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, the firebombing of the official residence of the Pennsylvania governor on a Jewish holiday with his family inside. | ||
| The story goes on to say, and here's just a sampling of some of the other attacks before that: the killing of a healthcare executive on the streets of New York late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in a small Pennsylvania town during the presidential campaign, the 2022 attack on the husband of the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for a congressional baseball game. | ||
|
unidentified
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Quote, we've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels that the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence has been lifted. | |
| That's Matt Dalek, a political scientist at George Washington University here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| He said, A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture. | ||
| This morning, we're asking you for your suggestions on reducing political violence in the United States. | ||
| Again, having this conversation in the wake of those killings in Minnesota. | ||
| It was late last night that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz spoke to the public about political violence. | ||
| This was after the suspect in the shooting had been arrested. | ||
| The news conference after that, this is the governor of Minnesota. | ||
| A moment in this country where we watch violence erupt. | ||
| This cannot be the norm. | ||
| It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences. | ||
| Now's the time for us to recommit to the core values of this country. | ||
|
unidentified
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And each and every one of us can do it. | |
| Talk to a neighbor rather than arguing. | ||
| Debate an issue. | ||
| Shake hands. | ||
| Find common ground. | ||
| This is who Melissa Hortman was. | ||
| In the first negotiating session that I had a chance to work with her, she got all the partners in the room and she provided each and every one of us a copy of a book called Getting to Yes. | ||
| And the whole premise was debating with a sense of goodwill, a sense of trying to come to compromises that serve everyone. | ||
|
unidentified
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And because of her, we did that. | |
| Because of her, we did that year after year after year. | ||
| That's the embodiment of how things are supposed to work. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's not about hatred. | |
| It's not about mean tweets. | ||
| It's not about demeaning someone. | ||
| It's leading with grace and compassion and vision and compromise and decency. | ||
| That was taken from us in Minnesota with the murder of Speaker Hortman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that was late yesterday evening talking to you this morning and simply asking for your suggestions on reducing political violence. | |
| President Trump weighing in over the weekend after the shooting took place on Saturday, this was what he posted on Truth Social. | ||
| He said that such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. | ||
| God bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place. | ||
| That was part of the president's statement that he put out on Truth Social. | ||
| We'll look for more today and hear from you on your suggestions for reducing political violence in the United States, a conversation in this first hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Matthew is up first out of Dearborn, Michigan, line for Democrats. | ||
| Matthew, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know what we can do to stop it. | ||
| I know open carry laws and concealed carry laws haven't helped in one bit. | ||
| And let's hope our thoughts and prayers have a little more wisdom to it. | ||
| That's all I can say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Matthew, when you say thoughts and prayers having more wisdom to them, explain what you're referring to. | ||
| Well, they always say thoughts and prayers, but they never put any mustard behind it. | ||
| You know, and then they drop the subject. | ||
| They always drop the subject. | ||
| They don't have the courage to make any kind of controls on all these weapons that people carry around. | ||
| And let's face it, America, we are armed to the teeth. | ||
| I don't know why everybody's so afraid, but anybody anywhere can own a firearm in just about every state and carry them around on their person. | ||
| Now, that's a paranoid culture. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| Matthew, in terms of political violence and it being on the rise, the Associated Press going through some of the recent incidents, why do you think it's on the rise in this country? | ||
| That's another one I completely don't understand. | ||
| We live in the wealthiest country, and we are the wealthiest country. | ||
| We have a lot of wealth disparity, which is a sad thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I mean, on a weekend, you can go to a ball game. | |
| You can be in a park with your kids. | ||
| You'd think people would want to do more of that. | ||
| But for some reason, I don't understand why people gravitate to the end of the world stuff. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| It's all gloom and doom, but it's not gloom and doom. | ||
| I mean, America is, I can't think of a better place to live. | ||
| I play golf on the weekend. | ||
| I see my friends a lot. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| I don't understand why people are so bitter at the world. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| Matthew, how did we get to a culture of gloom and doom and bitterness? | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I don't know how we got there. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| I mean, I wish I could find the answers. | ||
| I wish we had more positive thoughts. | ||
| I just don't know how we got there. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I wish I did. | ||
| That's Matthew in Dearborn, Michigan. | ||
| James in Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| I can hear you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I'm an independent. | ||
| I'm also a high school history teacher in Philadelphia. | ||
| I think one of the ways we could hopefully quell the violence is I think it's really not going to be us as individual citizens, but it's going to have to be some of the leaders of our country, lawmakers, specifically lawmakers of whatever political affiliation that the people committing violence are affiliated with. | ||
| So like conservatives need to talk down extreme right-wingers and condemn them publicly, just as it's going to take liberal lawmakers to condemn hard left-leading extremists. | ||
| And James, do you think that we have the leaders who can do that or will do that? | ||
| Perfectly honest with you, no. | ||
| Only because I feel like it's become for many of our lawmakers profitable in the sense that they need those votes of those extreme candidates. | ||
| Because if you saw a lawmaker condemning this, I guess you could call it extreme supporter from their base, it makes them look weak. | ||
| It makes them not look affiliated with the party or the ideas. | ||
| And I think on some level, they're also a little bit afraid of these people because they're afraid that they'll become targets. | ||
| But they need to step up, I think, and tell them, look, this is not okay. | ||
| And it's only going to be able to come from like a conservative leader is only going to be able to talk to an extreme right leader, just as a liberal leader is only going to be able to talk to an extreme left violence person. | ||
| Sorry, I'm a little nervous on TV. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| You say you're a high school history teacher. | ||
| What do you think of this comparison? | ||
| This is from that New York Times story I showed the headline a little bit earlier. | ||
| This is diving in on the jump page. | ||
| They say, like school shootings, political violence is both sickening and becoming almost routine. | ||
| Another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarized country. | ||
| What do you think about making that comparison to school shootings to where we are right now with political violence? | ||
| Wow, that is a heavy question. | ||
| No, I think it's appropriate. | ||
| I mean, literally, what was it? | ||
| The first week of school this past year, we just wrapped up. | ||
| We had a whole day of training on how to prepare in case there was an active shooter in our building. | ||
| I posted a photo of our training session on my personal Instagram, and someone was like, what the heck are you doing? | ||
| And it has become routine. | ||
| Like, we treat it like a kind of daily routine now where it becomes almost you feel desensitized. | ||
| I don't think we're there yet because political violence, I think, we're still a little bit shocked with. | ||
| Whereas I fear with school shootings, which is something we've had since Columbine, the trainings and mass murders, we're slowly, and I hate to say this disturbingly, becoming desensitized to. | ||
| James, you're a history teacher. | ||
| Would you equate to a certain moment in history where you feel like we are right now? | ||
| Is this, we're this year, 60 years from the assassination of Malcolm Max. | ||
| There's a new book out about his legacy. | ||
| 68, 1968, the political assassinations of 68 often gets brought up. | ||
| Is there a comparison that you would make historically? | ||
| Well, there's the old adage, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. | ||
| I would say there's, depending on which historian or history teacher you ask, you're going to get numerous answers to that. | ||
| I know many have equated this to like the years before the Civil War. | ||
| God willing, I hope that's not the case. | ||
| There are those who've compared us to like the 60s with like many of the radical movements and changes, which I kind of hope is more so the case because we're seeing a lot of different social movements right now. | ||
| But in terms of political violence, it could go any numerous way in the U.S. Civil War, pre-Civil War. | ||
| The political violence of the 60s is an appropriate comparison, I think. | ||
| And then also, you could look at some historical revolutions in Europe and Asia and possibly equate it to that as well. | ||
| Does that make sense to you? | ||
| Sure, James. | ||
| What grades do you teach? | ||
| I have taught 10th grade and 11th grade. | ||
| I have taught U.S. and world history and a little bit of African-American history. | ||
| And in terms of obviously, this incident in Minnesota happened over the weekend, but are you getting questions from your students about what's going on right now when it comes to politics and violence? | ||
| I had some questions. | ||
| We just actually let out, so I would not have, so I won't be explaining that to my students this week because we're on summer break. | ||
| But I did get some questions earlier last year when it came to foreign policy regarding the conflict in Israel and Palestine. | ||
| In terms of what's going on now, I had a lot of questions from students the beginning of 2025, so like January, February, regarding the ICE raids, which I am firmly against, just to be very clear. | ||
| And many of my students were concerned about their friends, their family members, especially, and wondering why they might be detained, what would happen. | ||
| They were detained, what should they do? | ||
| That was a very concerning issue. | ||
| They are, my students are very alert and concerned about the current situation in America. | ||
| In terms of political violence, I think, because some of them also come from countries where there's political violence, they've kind of seen this before. | ||
| James, some of the issues that you bring up that your students are interested in, we're going to be talking about throughout the course of today's program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Alex Norasta of the Cato Institute joining us to talk about the Trump administration's deportation policies. | |
| That's coming up at 8 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| And Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute will dive into the latest when it comes to Iran and Israel. | ||
| That's at 9:15 a.m. | ||
| James, thanks for the call. | ||
| Thanks for talking about the kids and the students out there in Pennsylvania. | ||
| No problem. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Brendan, up next, White's Creek, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I think a lot of this violence is because constituents don't have a formula. | ||
| I'm sorry, senators don't have a formula to how to really appease their constituents. | ||
| If they actually did what their constituents needed them to do in the state, there wouldn't be so much unrest. | ||
| When you're not getting served by your senator or your elected officials, it causes unrest. | ||
| What do they need to do, Brendan? | ||
| I really think that a lot of political things need to come to an app where people are informed on what their senator does or didn't get done. | ||
| And I'm 45 years old. | ||
| I've served in the military, and I find it daunting to have to really research my elected officials and see what they do and what they don't get done. | ||
| And I'm always surprised how, you know, Kentucky suffers, but they continue to elect a Lindsey Graham and the senators, you know, who have these long tenures, their states suffer. | ||
| So I think that's starting to contribute to a lot of the violence. | ||
| Do you think members of Congress are doing less than they used to do? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, if you look at it right now, there are like two or three mainstream apps that watch senators make money off of the stock market. | ||
| I mean, that's a prime example of like some of the things that senators are not supposed to do. | ||
| They get previewed information. | ||
| They throw it into the stock before the stock does anything. | ||
| Like I think that lady from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has a profile. | ||
| She's investing in one of the companies that's snatching up the illegals and putting them in the ICE detention centers. | ||
| But, Brendan, if there's more frustration today, is what you're saying. | ||
| Why is that frustration turning to violence today? | ||
| Why is that an avenue that is happening more often? | ||
| Because there's not accountability. | ||
| Senators, not an accountability. | ||
| What does your senator do? | ||
| But why is that an excuse for violence, Brendan? | ||
| Because you can't stick a system or a process in front of people and the system is unaccountable. | ||
| You get violence, just like, you know, like you're locking up all these criminals. | ||
| There's supposed to be all these criminals, but all of a sudden there's more immigrant criminals. | ||
| That makes no sense. | ||
| I'm just saying, like holding people accountable to the job that they're supposed to do. | ||
| They're supposed to make you safe. | ||
| They're supposed to make sure that there are jobs and stuff in the state. | ||
| And they're supposed to make sure that the state roads and services that you need as a constituent are taken care of. | ||
| When that doesn't happen, there are reasons. | ||
| That's Brendan in Tennessee. | ||
| Thanks for the call, Brendan. | ||
| Words from federal officials, members of the House and Senate, plenty in the wake of the shootings over the weekend out of Minnesota. | ||
| This is Senator Susan Collins, the Republican of Maine, on her ex-feed on Saturday, saying the attacks on public officials and their families in Minnesota are tragic and horrifying. | ||
| Incidents of political violence and threats are becoming far too common in our country. | ||
| We must stand united in support of the victims' families and survivors and local law enforcement as well. | ||
| Susan Collins from Maine on his ex-feed on Sunday, the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted this video. | ||
| The targeted and tragic attack directed at two Minnesota elected officials is disgusting. | ||
| And it should disgust anyone who has any decency in this country. |