| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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about former President Biden's declining health during the last year of his term and how it impacted the 2024 presidential campaign. | |
| And retired Colonel Peter Monsoor, chair of military history at Ohio State University on the Israel-Iran conflict and the deployment of U.S. Marines to Los Angeles. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is the Washington Journal for June 17th as the conflict between Israel and Iran continues. | ||
| Many in Washington have expressed what the U.S. role should be going forward. | ||
| President Trump and others calling for diplomacy. | ||
| Others saying if that doesn't prove successful, that the U.S. should have direct involvement in the conflict. | ||
| And still others calling on the U.S. to stay out of it altogether. | ||
| To start the program today, tell us what you think the role of the U.S. should be in the conflict between Israel and Iran. | ||
| And here's how you can reach out and contact us on the phones this morning. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you want to text us your thoughts on what role the U.S. should take in the Israel-Iran conflict, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can post on Facebook and on X. | ||
| It was on the way back from, or actually starting last night, that the president at the G7 meeting started making statements about what's going on between Israel and Iran. | ||
| This was posted late in the evening yesterday on his TRUF social site, saying that Iran should have signed the deal I told him to sign. | ||
| What a shame and a waste of human life. | ||
| Simply stated, and he put this in all caps, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| I said it over and over again. | ||
| Everyone should immediately evacuate. | ||
| Tehran is how he finished that this morning. | ||
| At about 1.15, he goes on to talk about the French President Emmanuel Macron mistakenly saying that he left that G7 summit to go back to DC to work on a, quote, ceasefire between Israel and Iran. | ||
| The president saying that it was wrong. | ||
| He has no idea why I'm on my way back to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a ceasefire. | ||
| Much bigger than that, the president says. | ||
| Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. | ||
| Stay tuned. | ||
| And then another post on his TRUF social site at about 5.20 this morning. | ||
| I have not reached out to Iran for peace talks in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| This is just more highly fabricated fake news. | ||
| If they want to talk, they know how to reach me. | ||
| And they should have taken the deal that was on the table, would have saved a lot of lives. | ||
| All those coming from the TRUF social site, it was the president himself talking to reporters on the way back from the G7 in the early hours this morning, asked specifically about what the conflict in Iran and Israel and the U.S.'s role. | ||
| And here's part of that from this morning. | ||
| You just posted right before we took off that you're not leaving because of a ceasefire. | ||
|
unidentified
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Why are you? | |
| Can you elaborate? | ||
| I didn't say I was looking for a ceasefire, that was Emmanuel, nice guy, but he doesn't get it right too often. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's just what you're going to get into this more. | |
| You're not going to call the U.S. in this problem. | ||
| Right now, we're doing pretty well. | ||
| Remember, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| It's very simple. | ||
| Not to go too deep into it. | ||
| They just can't have a nuclear weapon. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's the thinking on the call for Tehran to evacuate? | |
| Is there a threat or is there an incoming what was the thinking about the full fact? | ||
| I want people to be safe. | ||
| What specifically is better than a ceasefire? | ||
|
unidentified
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What are you looking for here? | |
| An end. | ||
|
unidentified
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A real end, not a ceasefire. | |
| Again, onboard Air Force One coming back from the G7 in Canada. | ||
| That's the president talking about the latest in Iran and Israel. | ||
| When it comes to the role you think the U.S. should take and to what degree that is, you can let us know on the phone lines. | ||
| Again, Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| In the Washington Post this morning, amid what's going on between the two countries, this is from their reporting saying that the Pentagon is dispatching refueling aircraft and warships near the Mideast. | ||
| The reporter is saying that more than two dozen tanker planes were deployed from the United States to Europe on Sunday and Monday, a movement that U.S. officials linked to commanders' desire for options. | ||
| Should American facilities near the war countries face a direct threat, flight tracking data shows the refueling aircraft, along with some heavy transport jets, took off from points across the U.S. and landed hours later at air bases in Spain, Greece, Germany, and Italy. | ||
| Among them were KC-135 Stratotankers and KC-46 Pegasuses. | ||
| And this story also adding that while President Donald Trump and other senior officials have said that the United States is not participating in the strikes, Washington is supporting Israel in other ways, including fending off Iranian attacks. | ||
| U.S. defense officials said Friday that the American ballistic missile defense systems, such as the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defenses, which goes by the acronym FAAD, were involved in taking down Iranian drones and missiles. | ||
| And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Yetjanah, who said during a news conference Monday that American pilots are also targeting Iranian drones, Netanyahu, who said he was in regular contact with the president and said in a separate interview on ABC that he would not rule out targeting Iran's supreme leader, something that would mark another drastic escalation in the conflict. | ||
| So that's some of the reporting taking place. | ||
| When it comes to the G7, by the way, the ministers there or the leaders there, including the United States, signing a statement taking a look at these developments and what these members of G7 member countries, the role they'll take, saying we as leaders of the G7 reiterate our commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East. | ||
| In this context, we affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. | ||
| We reiterate our support for the security of Israel. | ||
| We also affirm the importance of the protection of civilians. | ||
| Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror. | ||
| We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| We urge that the resolution of the Iranian crisis leads to broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza. | ||
| And then this statement, finishing up by saying we will remain vigilant to the implications for international energy markets and stand ready to coordinate with like-minded partners to safeguard market stability. | ||
| That's from the G7 conference. | ||
| Let's hear from Bruce. | ||
| Bruce in Massachusetts, Democrats' line on the conflict between Israel and Iran, the role the U.S. should take. | ||
| Bruce, go ahead. | ||
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unidentified
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I don't think we should take none. | |
| Why is that? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think we should get involved at all. | |
| Why are we the world's policemen? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Would you apply that to anything, any instability across the world or specifically to Israel, Iran, or what's your thinking on that? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think we should be giving billions of dollars to Ukraine either. | |
| I mean, there are plenty of problems right here in the United States. | ||
| Why are we spending billions of dollars to Ukraine? | ||
| Well, for Israel and Iran, why specifically stay out of it? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's their own fight. | |
| Why are we getting involved? | ||
| Okay, Bruce there in Massachusetts. | ||
| This was the question posed when it comes to the conflict there between two legislators that appeared on the Sunday shows, Representative Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Representative from Connecticut, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, asked the question about the role of the U.S. in Iran. | ||
| And here's Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal. | ||
| The worst possible outcome for the world is for the Iranian nuclear program to survive after all this. | ||
| How do you destroy their program through diplomacy? | ||
| I prefer that, or through military action. | ||
| If diplomacy is not successful and we live with the option of force, I would urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that when this operation is over, there's nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program. | ||
| If that means providing bombs, provide bombs, if that means flying busting bombs, whatever bombs, if it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel. | ||
| The worst possible outcome for the world is to take the Iranian nuclear program on and leave it standing. | ||
| That will be a disaster. | ||
|
unidentified
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Senator Blumenthal, what's your view? | |
| How involved should the U.S. get? | ||
| Let's begin with the basic proposition that ought to motivate American policy as well as the world. | ||
| A nuclear-armed Iran is an unacceptable threat to the world, not just to Israel, but to the United States as well. | ||
| And I support Israel's right to defend itself against this existential manifest. | ||
| I'm very concerned right now about United States personnel in the region, our servicemen and women, but also the civilians that are there. | ||
| I'm getting phone calls from families in Connecticut who are deeply worried about their children who were there, about the hostage families. | ||
| I support the president's effort to prioritize diplomacy. | ||
| Two legislators from Sunday, when it comes to your opinion on what role the U.S. should take in Israel and Iran, the conflict between the two countries, let's hear next from Robert, Independent Line. | ||
| He's in Tennessee. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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The fact of the matter is that Israel has nuclear weapons. | |
| They are also a provocative regime of extremist right-wing, a colonial settler project. | ||
| And their actions are forcing countries to arm. | ||
| So if they would act in a way that's responsible as a modern state, then the whole issue would be diffused. | ||
| Their project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine is what drives all this. | ||
| So what does that mean for the U.S. then? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, the U.S. should be trying. | |
| Israel should try and let the U.S. help themselves, okay? | ||
| And they don't take anyone's advice. | ||
| You know, there was a nuclear, you know, there's negotiations going on. | ||
| They executed these provocative actions to sabotage these nuclear negotiations. | ||
| But if I may follow up, if you say that Israel should help the U.S. help itself, what do you mean exactly by that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, there's a lot of people in the United States that would like to see Israel act more like a normal country. | |
| Okay? | ||
| And For example, this is their responsibility to protect the indigenous people of their country, you know, not to drive them out and make their lives a living hell. | ||
| You know, Iran has been one of the only people to stand up for the Palestinian people. | ||
| You know, this is an apartheid state in Israel, and it's a shocking, you know, it was a shocking action on October 7th, but considering how they have been treated, it's not shocking that it happened. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Robert there in Nashville. | ||
| This is Peter in Collierville, Tennessee, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, right. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| So I think you have to consider that remember the history that I was in college at this time, and the Iranian Revolution began around 1978. | ||
| And so if you look back at the events, 47 years now, Iran has been an immortal enemy of the United States. | ||
| And they've said it many, many times over. | ||
| You hear America the Great Satan, Israel the Small Satan, death to America, death to Israel. | ||
| You think it's rhetoric. | ||
| And maybe for some of the people, protests are out in the public, but for the leadership, they mean it. | ||
| They're serious about it. | ||
| And they've been at war. | ||
| We've been in a war with them for 47 years. | ||
| And if you allow them a radical Shia Islamic theocracy to obtain nuclear act usable nuclear weapons that they can deliver, then they'll use them. | ||
|
unidentified
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They said they'll use them. | |
| So for all that you said, what's the role of the U.S. then? | ||
|
unidentified
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To support Israel absolutely 100% on every level, every way possible, and then ramp up that support as necessary to eliminate the Iranian Islamist State nuclear program entirely. | |
| They're going to use those weapons. | ||
| And if you it will be like a replay of World War I, but with nuclear weapons, we'll think it's a regional war. | ||
| But if it becomes nuclear, it will become a horrible thing about it. | ||
| Okay, Peter there in Tennessee again. | ||
| What role the U.S. should take in the Iran-Israel conflict? | ||
| You can call the lines that best represent you. | ||
| Let's hear from Patricia in Arizona, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I think we should stay out of this whole mess. | ||
| It's getting so, it looks like to me, America is getting to be a third world country itself. | ||
| We need to take care of our own people here in this country. | ||
| We need veterans, need to be taken care of. | ||
| We have homeless people who need low-income housing. | ||
| And plus, one big thing, nobody wants to talk about the FEAS 702 Act, which is attacking American people all the way. | ||
| The Patriotic Act needs to be taken care of, but we must take care of our own here in this country. | ||
| The veterans, low-income housing, we need to do that first before we take care of somebody else. | ||
| But why do you think that an international conflict like the one you're seeing doesn't affect the U.S. in some way? | ||
|
unidentified
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I have no answer for that. | |
| All I know is we need to take care of our own veterans. | ||
| People on the streets are starving. | ||
| We need low-income houses. | ||
| Everybody can't afford $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom. | ||
| I'm blessed to have a home. | ||
| Everybody can't afford $4,000. | ||
| Some places they want $4,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. | ||
| A lot of folks can't afford that. | ||
| We need to build more low-income housing for our own American people. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's go to Terry. | ||
| Terry in Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| First of all, President Trump had no intentions of interfering with Netanyahu attacking Iran. | ||
| He's been saying he wanted to do it. | ||
| They've been planning on this for over since we attacked in 2003, Iraq. | ||
| So, I mean, you know, I can't believe American people could be that naive. | ||
| He had no intentions. | ||
| Whatever Netanyahu wants to do, he does what he wants to do. | ||
| If the American people, if our media would just tell the truth of the history of Iran and how we even got into this situation with the Middle East, it wasn't like this before 1953. | ||
| In 1953, the leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddegh, was on the picture of Time magazine as a hero. | ||
| And it was because of oil after World War II, which is why we're in this situation. | ||
| But the reality of it is, they never, Netanyahu always wanted to attack Iran. | ||
| And that's why we're in the situation that we're in. | ||
| It's just, and the thing is, this is going to affect the whole world in a very negative way. | ||
| And, you know, they tend to forget that Iran has a relationship with Russia, okay? | ||
| And Russia have weapons that are worse than ours. | ||
| So who knows where this may end up. | ||
| But the reality is, Trump had no intentions of ever interfering with. | ||
| Okay, that's Terry there in Washington, D.C., the editors of the New York Post this morning giving their thoughts when it comes to the conflict and potential U.S. involvement, saying, yes, Tehran is reportedly signaling that they'll resume nuclear talks if the United States stays out of the fighting. | ||
| The editor is going on to say, fine, except Iran treated Trump's 60-day deadline for those talks as a joke. | ||
| Now its opening offer should include handing over all of its enriched uranium with every last nuclear site and research facility demolished. | ||
| Also, inspectors must have free reign to verify that Iran can never again resume its nuclear weapons agenda. | ||
| Absent those concessions, any talks will be just another effort to buy time and or somehow tell team Trump the Brooklyn Bridge, bring on the bunker busters, the New York Post writes. | ||
| Yes, it entails some risk, though the Israelis have already pretty well defanged Iran and its chief proxies. | ||
| There's more there from the New York Post. | ||
| That's their editorial that was published last night. | ||
| You can find it online when it comes to their thinking on the Israel-Iran conflict and the role the U.S. should take. | ||
| You're telling us your thoughts as well this morning. | ||
| John in Virginia is next. | ||
| Independent line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| So how are you doing? | ||
| My concern is over that if you're if the Israelis fighting Iran, that's one thing. | ||
| And then so when the Americans get involved and you have you have casualties, that's something different. | ||
| So I don't know if that's all. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Brandy from Missouri, Democrats line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| General Cohen Powell was interviewed on C-STRAM years ago. | ||
| And he spoke about Iran being a 3,000-year-old culture that was not suicidal and would never set off a nuclear weapon because they would know the next day they would just be ashes. | ||
| And he said, therefore, as former chief of staff and the officer in patrol of 28,000 nukes, he knew that they no longer have a real tactical purpose. | ||
| They have a political one. | ||
| But they will never be actually used. | ||
| And we seem to forget that. | ||
| What does it mean then for today? | ||
| And potentially the role that the U.S. might take. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, they should just cut up all funds temporarily that Israel as they try to support a two-state solution and set that force. | |
| After 65 years of difficulties, I mean, I know there's a lot of issues, but rather than getting hired and just go the humanitarian way and do what should have been done 65 years ago. | ||
| You've mentioned the length of time that this has been going on, a two-state solution being part of that. | ||
| Why do you think that would be the solution? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it's the only solution. | |
| It's a political solution because it's the only fair one. | ||
| You can't come into a region and take over a million parcels of land and not pay for them when you're, you know, when there was an agreement. | ||
| I know it's muddy, but there was an agreement. | ||
| And there was a ratio of land that was supposed to be made available based upon the population living in that region on a certain date. | ||
| And that got played with politically by France and by proponents for Israel. | ||
| And it was just not fair. | ||
| And that's why Palestine and Israel in all this time has not defined all of its borders. | ||
| Now, you cannot be a sovereign nation without borders. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Randy there in Missouri giving us his thought. | ||
| We'll hear next from Ed. | ||
| Ed's in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, it's been a long time coming. | |
| This never would have happened if Trump would have won the second term a while back. | ||
| He had almost everything agreed on. | ||
| Now, Iran, all sanctions were taken off. | ||
| The eight years with Obama, then Biden, they built up. | ||
| They were a week away, maybe complete nuclear bomb. | ||
| Enough is stop. | ||
| This the Democrats, it doesn't matter what they say, any good. | ||
| This is about Israel will take care of them. | ||
| If we need to give them the bunker, the platinum's platinum, take them out. | ||
| All they've done is stalled and starred with all their hundred billions of dollars and got freedom. | ||
| They're desperate. | ||
| Now, let the country, the population, 80% will overthrow them. | ||
| They don't want the young ones. | ||
| Iran is the one that's been funding for years. | ||
| The Hamas, they're the ones funding all the money, the bombs, killing Israel. | ||
| And Palestine, by the way, never was a state. | ||
| Never was a state. | ||
| And the guy that's in charge of Iran right now, those fundamentals, Islamists that hate America, Big Satan, they need it. | ||
| One EM burst over this country while private grid in a whole country. | ||
| One burst of a nuclear thing. | ||
| 90% of the population will be dead in a year in this country. | ||
| It's about time that the president finished it. | ||
| And ours will, one or another, helping Open to Israel, our ally. | ||
| Enough of these Democrats. | ||
| They have no clue. | ||
| They would rather this country die than anything given to Trump. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's it there in Ohio giving us their thoughts this morning. | ||
| You heard from the editors of the New York Post. | ||
| This is the editor's thoughts from the Washington Post as of this morning, saying the United States could fly American B-2s with bunker busters to help Israel destroy the Fordow facility, but it would involve participating directly in a war with Iran. | ||
| Mr. Trump appears adverse to involving the U.S. in another never-ending Middle East conflagration, but he also seems torn between two competing camps among his supporters, the pro-Israel anti-Iran hawks, who want to see America join the Israeli bombing campaign, and the isolationist America First crowd, which says Israel started this war and should be left alone to finish it. | ||
| For its part, Israel has been asking Mr. Trump to get involved militarily. | ||
| The editor is also making the point that the United States is inevitably involved one way or another. | ||
| As Israel's primary international partner, it has leverage over Israeli leaders. | ||
| The United States will almost certainly help Israel deflect Iranian missile attacks. | ||
| The Washington Post, where you can find that editorial, you're giving us your own thoughts this morning on this topic. | ||
| Democrats lying from Virginia. | ||
| This is Philip. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| My thought is all the Republican personnel that call to your line, everybody always sounds so evil. | ||
| And Trump, the so-called president that we have here, and Netanyahu, they're just like Hitler. | ||
| You know, Hitler was a man about tearing down society. | ||
| That's what Trump and Netanyahu are doing. | ||
| They are two pieces of Hitler. | ||
| Well, specifically, how does all that state not only the conflict in Iran and Israel, but the U.S. role in it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm not going to go into that confrontation between the two, but he, as a president, should have more to say than what he says. | |
| He acts like this is a ball game. | ||
| Well, they little children, they'll death playing on the playground. | ||
| These are people's lives. | ||
| What more should he be saying? | ||
|
unidentified
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What more should he be saying? | |
| He should have his people go over there and deal with the situation. | ||
| How far are they from having a nuclear bomb? | ||
| If you don't know, don't say, well, it's right next door to you when it's about three to four years away. | ||
| If he gets his stuff right and stop writing like a three-year-old child, can't nobody understand. | ||
| So, Hitler, Netanyahu, Hitler Trump. | ||
| From Alan. | ||
| Alan is in Virginia as well, independent line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Pedro. | |
| Thanks for taking the call. | ||
| I have a couple thoughts about this. | ||
| It's hard to understand how some of these calls are coming out. | ||
| I don't know if it's a lack of understanding of history, but I'd like to start back from 1978 when the Shah Horan was in office. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Go ahead, Alan. | ||
| Yeah, but you're not going to be able to give us the whole timeline, so make your thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, quickly, when the Shah Haran was in, Iran was a great nation. | ||
| When Ayatollah came in, if you look at the history, they have been nothing but problems since existence. | ||
| They broke every agreement with Israel. | ||
| They've killed Americans. | ||
| They do everything that's evil. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| It's time to finish them. | ||
| They're almost finished. | ||
| Let's give them the bunker bomb, get it over with, so the Iranians can have the freedom they should have. | ||
| Iranian people deserve better than what they have now. | ||
| It would be better for the whole world if we just finished him up. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| But how does that freedom? | ||
| What cost does that freedom come then, in your opinion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in my opinion, look, it's what has its cost us already. | |
| If we'll go back for the last 40, 50 years, what has it cost the world? | ||
| How many lives do we have to? | ||
| How many people have to die because of an evil group there of regime? | ||
| I call it regime. | ||
| And they're not for peace. | ||
| They have a proven record. | ||
| So it has to deal with it. | ||
| We have a chance to deal with it. | ||
| No offense to anyone, but finish it up, give the people a fair chance of Iran. | ||
| Give the people of the world a fair chance. | ||
| We need peace. | ||
| We don't need these radicals around the country. | ||
| We have enough of them. | ||
| And maybe we can solve some other problems if we eliminate some of these people. | ||
| But that's my thousand. | ||
| Alan there in Virginia giving us his thoughts. | ||
| We'll hear next from Louie. | ||
| Louie's in Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, thanks for taking my call. | |
| As far as I'm concerned, just fly one sortie. | ||
| All it takes is one sortie. | ||
| I pray for these people that don't understand history. | ||
| I mean, this place is no size of New Jersey. | ||
| I mean, they gave them the Golan Heights, the Palestinians. | ||
| They ruined that. | ||
| They dug tunnels. | ||
| These people are evil. | ||
| And I pray to all my friends, Tennessee, Nazi, the narratives, read your Bible. | ||
| Well, let me go back to the thought you said. | ||
| If it's a bombing that has to take place, what do you think it produces overall then? | ||
|
unidentified
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That'll stop it. | |
| That'll stop the threat. | ||
| And they will have to go to democracy. | ||
| I remember, what, five years ago when they were chanting in the streets when Trump had them cut off, they wanted democracy. | ||
| You know, and I don't want to judge, but the Democrats came in and gave them all the money. | ||
| Then we support the Houdis and the Hezbollah. | ||
| And for a person to say, I want to kill a certain genocide, kill Americans, kill the Jews, that's not right, man. | ||
| I mean, you know, for me, you know, if you have to go, you got to go. | ||
| It's one sortie. | ||
| It's one sortie. | ||
| It ends it all. | ||
| But in a sense, then, from your own, from what you said before, isn't that killing Iranians then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Trump's telling them to get out so we can do it and finish the job. | |
| I mean, when people are chanting in the streets, and I know they're controlled by the big uppers. | ||
| Well, we've been taking out most of the big upper administration, but you can't hate if he won't want to kill them. | ||
| You know, I'm a Christian, and it's right there in the Bible. | ||
| This place ain't no bigger than New Jersey. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, you made that point, Louie. | ||
| We'll continue on. | ||
| Again, if you want to give us your thoughts, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| What role should the U.S. take in the conflict between Iran and Israel? | ||
| You can call us on the phone lines. | ||
| If you want to post and send us a text, you can do that too. | ||
| 202748-8003. | ||
| You can also make your conversations and your thoughts known on our social media sites. | ||
| That's on Facebook and on X. | ||
| This is Steven in Michigan saying that it's the United States that made Iran an enemy by eliminating Iraq as a counterweight to Iran. | ||
| Roseanne in San Diego saying, no, America should not get involved at all. | ||
| The Americans don't own Benjamin Yahoo anything more, and the U.S. servicemen and women should not be used at all for his hegemonic aspirations. | ||
| Bombs for bombing Gaza is enough. | ||
| Nobody ever heard of the role of deterrence between clear powers, which Israel is one. | ||
| D is in Radford, Virginia. | ||
| It says, Iran is a threat to everyone on the planet. | ||
| Israel and the United States should take care of that problem once and for all. | ||
| The front page of the Wall Street Journal talks about the diplomatic efforts that are being attempted by the parties. | ||
| This is the headline to Ron Signals readiness to renew diplomacy, saying that the story is saying that in the midst of a ferocious Israeli air campaign, Tehran has told Arab officials it would be open to returning to the negotiating table as long as the U.S. doesn't join the attack. | ||
| According to the officials, Iran also passed messages to Israel saying it is in the interest of both sides to keep the violence contained. | ||
| But with Israeli warplanes able to fly freely over the capital and Iranian counterattacks inflicting minimal damage, Israeli leaders have little incentive to halt their assault before doing more to destroy Iran's nuclear sites and further weaken the theocratic government's hold on power. | ||
| Let's hear from Carmen, who is in Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Carmen, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thank you for taking my call. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, good. | |
| Yeah, well, I just wanted to put out there that I, you know, to remind people, like, I believe Saudi Arabia was actually just ready to make a deal with Israel. | ||
| And boom, this happens. | ||
| We had a country overran from a lot of crazy people going raping and killing people, and they're our allies. | ||
| You know, our country has always been a peaceful people. | ||
| We try to spread peace and democracy through the world. | ||
| And we have war mongols. | ||
| We have them in Israel. | ||
| We have them in America. | ||
| We have them in other countries. | ||
| And I really believe that when this first happened, when they invaded Israel, that we should have stepped in right away and took care of business to really get them to backwalk on both sides. | ||
| We're the strongest country in the world, and we allow two little countries to make a mockery of the whole thing, the whole situation. | ||
| And now we're going to be pulled into this. | ||
| And I wish people would stop talking and asking questions about Donald Trump like he actually knew what he was talking about. | ||
| He doesn't know. | ||
| I'm a Democrat. | ||
| I'm not going to sit here on the line and become part of that. | ||
| I'm not going to down at another Republican because they have their own views. | ||
| I'm not a conspiracy theory. | ||
| I just believe in peaceful resolution, and I believe in force sometimes. | ||
| And I believe that America is strong enough to do that, and we're not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And someone's making a lot of money on weapons. | |
| If I may ask, Carmen, you said we're going to be pulled into it. | ||
| What leads you to believe that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I believe that, you know, like if it continues going on, I think they're going to keep bombing Israel. | |
| And someone's going to have to do something. | ||
| They are our allies. | ||
| If this happened to England, would we respond the same way? | ||
| Are we just responding differently because they're Jewish people? | ||
| You know, I mean, what happened if they invaded England? | ||
| Would we just sit here and allow our allies to be bombarded like this? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| And I really think that Trump is trying to disable NATO and other situations where we can have more power and we're peaceful resolutions around the world. | ||
| And all he's doing is ripping it apart. | ||
| Okay, let's go to Nolan. | ||
| Nolan is in Kentucky, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you, Major Orphe. | ||
| Thank you for accepting my call. | ||
| I've been listening to the program and listening to a lot of people talk. | ||
| One thing I am in favor of, I am thoroughly in favor of peace, because between Iran, we can have peace there. | ||
| There has not been peace in that country until the CIA admitted back in 1953 that the United States was behind the overthrow of Mogadishu. | ||
| And the reason why he was involved in that is because we helped Great Britain because Great Britain was controlling the Anglo-Saxon oil that was Iranian oil that was produced over there. | ||
| And they asked for our help. | ||
| We helped them. | ||
| The CIA overthrew the country and it's been a mess since then. | ||
| And everybody used, I've been hearing the statements about Israel has the right to defend itself. | ||
| And we got to go look at it this way. | ||
| Israel's been treating the Palestinians since the 1940s. | ||
| They have a holiday, not a holiday, but they have something they celebrate and they recognize the Nakba. | ||
| And that talks about the Palestinian war. | ||
| And they were being abused for a long, long time. | ||
| And the United States needs to step out and call and says, look, time for all of us to exercise peace and diplomacy. | ||
| We don't have to use weapons to solve anything. | ||
| Everybody's talking about wiping people out. | ||
| When you tell people to leave a country, where are they going to go? | ||
| That's their home. | ||
| We need to, we're the greatest country. | ||
| We profess to be the greatest country on this planet. | ||
| We need to celebrate and push peace. | ||
| We can live amongst each other and live with each other. | ||
| We need to be peaceful and not be fighting. | ||
| And that's what we can do. | ||
| The United States is strong enough to start sending that message out and we can get all the other countries to follow suit. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No one there in Kentucky giving us his thoughts. | ||
| The Washington Post takes a look at the conflict between the two countries through the lens of gas prices this morning in their pages talking about a variety of things. | ||
| How will those gas prices react to the conflict? | ||
| They asked the question, are gas prices in the U.S. going up because of this conflict? | ||
| Washington Post reporters saying yes, after Israel attacked Iran last week, oil prices jumped about $10 a barrel while they remain relatively low at around $74. | ||
| The jump translates into a price increase at the pump for U.S. consumers of roughly 20 cents per gallon. | ||
| According to the research firm Clearview Energy Partners, drivers will start to feel that in the coming days. | ||
| They also asked the question, how high are gas prices going to go? | ||
| The reporters answering, it's unclear. | ||
| Analysts warn that there are some scenarios in which they could soar quite high, pushing prices at the pump past $4 per gallon, but they are not necessarily expecting things to play out that way. | ||
| Many right now believe the price of oil will not go beyond $80 a barrel, meaning the shock at the pump for U.S. drivers will be limited to an increase of about 40 cents from the prices of today. | ||
| And then also asking what could force prices past $4 per gallon. | ||
| And then Elvin Halper responding, saying the big question mark right now is whether Iran will pursue a blockade of the Strait of Hammuz, which would risk, quote, tipping oil markets into heavy undersupply. | ||
| According to John Eve Shah, Vice President of Commodities Research at Reisted Energy, while Israel and Iran account for only 2% of the global oil supply, the Middle East overall supplies as much as 12% of the world's oil. | ||
| There's more there. | ||
| You can read it in the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| We're taking your thought, the role of the conflict or the conflict between the two countries and the role that the U.S. should take in that conflict and to what degree. | ||
| 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8,000 for Democrats. | ||
| And Independence, 202748, 8,002. | ||
| Let's hear from Aaron. | ||
| Aaron is in Alexandria, Virginia. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning, and thank you, Pedro, for the call. | ||
| What prompted my call was not only the topic, but the response from some of the viewers. | ||
| When we talk about conflict and two states going against each other, and some people may say, hey, it's not a state that Israel is in conflict with. | ||
| Just as the United States is not a Christian nation, because not everyone here who participates in the nation of the United States is a Christian, saying that Israel is not a Jewish nation. | ||
| There are non-Jews who live in Israel. | ||
| But the thing that when we're talking about peace, and I'm listening to some of the calls, and I want the other listeners to remember, and also I challenge them to try to go into a dialogue where they're not advocating for peace and at the same time saying it just takes one sortie to wipe people out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If they're not saying, hey, read your Bible and murder people at the same time. | |
| If you can go into a dialogue where you're not saying, hey, Trump is Satan, because Trump is totally different. | ||
| I don't, I mean, or Trump is Hitler. | ||
| Trump is totally different. | ||
| I don't believe Hitler tried to sell sneakers. | ||
| There's a difference between Trump and any other being that has ever existed because he's fleecing people while he's lying to people. | ||
| Also, I've noticed there's a hate for the other side. | ||
| I'm not saying from what side, but there's a distinctive hate. | ||
| When you talk about people or a country who they hate America, there are people in this country who hate their fellow Americans because I'm hearing it all the time with the Republicans this, the Democrats that. | ||
| Yeah, I vote Democrat on my ticket because those are my values. | ||
| I also have conservative values, too. | ||
| Let me take you back to the intent of the question as far as the role that the U.S. should take at this point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we're looking at the U.S. administration. | |
| Now, if we're talking about the administration versus the people that live here, then we should be advocating for peace. | ||
| We should be advocating for not killing each other because what's happening is a genocide on one side. | ||
| If we're funding a genocide, we are historically in the wrong. | ||
| So we should be truly advocating for peace, even if that means stepping out of it and saying, you guys figure this out. | ||
| It's been going on for a while. | ||
| We're not funding you anymore because as a taxpayer, I don't get to pick and choose where my tax dollars go. | ||
| I wish I did, but the United States should back out of it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Aaron there in Alexandria, Virginia, not too far from Washington, D.C., giving his thoughts this morning. | ||
| Frank is next. | ||
| He's from New York and Poughkeepsie, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'm going to listen to these people talk about how the Bible and everything, if they really read the Bible, they'll know everything's going on as prophecy. | ||
| And those people over there, you think they're Jews, they're not. | ||
| If you read your Bible, truly, you'll know who the people of Israel are. | ||
| None of them people were ever chained or enslaved or sent into ships to be scattered all over the world. | ||
| Okay, so Frank, as far as the U.S. role currently between Iran and Israel, what do you think it should be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The prophecy will figure that out for everybody. | |
| So you can play everybody, can play all this, the Democrats and the Republicans. | ||
| We're all going to pay. | ||
| The father and his son are coming here and they're going to judge everybody. | ||
| So you can play this Israel, which is not Israel. | ||
| And we all know this if you really read your Bible. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Frank there in New York, Axios, a couple of days ago posting this story, taking a look at particularly the Republican Party as they debate amongst themselves about Israel's strike in Iran, saying that some Hill Republicans, this goes back a couple of days, so take that in the context, saying, view the past 24 hours as a battle lost for MAGA's isolationist camp. | ||
| GOP Hill leaders united in support of Israel's targeted attack on Iran in spite of MAGA's media's month-long warnings against such strikes. | ||
| Major MAGA figures like Tucker Carlson to Charlie Kirk to Jack Procevic tried for months to rally the Trump base against the U.S., backing direct attacks on Iran. | ||
| Non-intervention is a core pillar of the America First movement, arguably as important to the MA base as immigration and trade, but elected Republicans' public support of Israel's actions indicates the more traditional national security hawks have some ground to stand on for now. | ||
| It is Charlie Kirk, one of those groups mentioned, the founder of something called Turning Point USA, recently making comments about what was going on between Iran and Israel. | ||
| His thoughts on what the role of the U.S. should be. | ||
| Here's some of his comments from a few days ago. | ||
| I think overwhelmingly, Americans stand with Israel. | ||
| The question is: do they support America getting offensively involved in this war? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I can say definitively, especially with younger Trump supporters, the answer is no. | |
| They want to have Israel fight Israel's war, to stand with Israel, intelligence-sharing defensive measures, totally defensible, and I think is legitimate because over 100,000 Americans, as Trey said, are in Israel. | ||
| And America and Jordan have a long history of having defensive measures to protect civilians. | ||
| But the question will be in the coming days and weeks: will there be clamoring for an offensive American strategy against Iran? | ||
| Will some people say, hey, we can finally wipe them out? | ||
| We have them on the ropes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would introduce a little bit of caution towards that, especially from a younger generational perspective. | |
| One of the main reasons we were able to get young people to vote for President Trump so overwhelmingly this last election was a reminder that President Trump is the peace president, that President Trump is able to broker the impossible peace deals. | ||
| Look what he did the other day between India and Pakistan. | ||
| Look at what he did in his first term. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so I do believe that President Trump is uniquely positioned here to stand with our allies, to stand on the side of civilization, but also understand that his voters want to return to America first to stand with what is right and just in the world. | |
| But we do not want a potential endless quagmire in the Middle East. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm confident President Trump will make sure that does not happen. | |
| Again, those comments made a few days ago. | ||
| Jimmy in Minneapolis, Independent Line calling in. | ||
| Jimmy, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| First of all, a big fan of the show, and I want to compliment you on your ability to be a moderator. | ||
| You do such a great job. | ||
| I really appreciate your work. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for calling in. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, these are very, very, very complicated issues to start with, so it's difficult to break it all down in sound bites. | ||
| I'm not really a fan of Trump. | ||
| I voted for him the first time, did not vote for him the second time. | ||
| And I'm just willing to evaluate on the issues. | ||
| And I think he's doing a really good job here. | ||
| And I think Israel is doing a really good job. | ||
| You cannot have neighbors that profess to want to remove you from the face of the planet, obtain a nuclear weapon. | ||
| It just is not something that is, let's just say, it's very difficult. | ||
| And so, how do you respond to that in a way that you're going to have consequences to the way you respond no matter what you do here? | ||
| Now, Trump, I will criticize him on the economic policies, but allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon cannot, cannot happen. | ||
| And if that means that we have to take a role in that, I do wish the MAGA folks would take a deep breath and just evaluate situations. | ||
| You know, this isn't Iraq. | ||
| This isn't going to be a quagmire. | ||
| Trump does not want it to be a quagmire. | ||
| I do not believe that. | ||
| And there's an opportunity here to, he does actually, I can't believe I'm saying this, but he does have an ability to bring a real peace here. | ||
| But it might take something that is distasteful to much of our own country. | ||
| And I get that too. | ||
| I'm appreciative of that. | ||
| But really, there is a great opportunity here. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Jimmy there, Minneapolis. | ||
| Democrats line is next. | ||
| And this is Tan Veer from Gaithersburg, Maryland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello, how are you? | ||
| I'm well, thank you. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Pedro. | |
| I think, as a Republican, I support what Mr. Trump is doing. | ||
| Are you a Republican? | ||
| Caller, are you Republican? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a Republican. | |
| I'm going to have to ask you to call back on the other line. | ||
| You're calling in on our line for Democrats. | ||
| So let me ask you to do that. | ||
| And again, I'll remind the folks at home: if you are calling in to pick the best line that represents you, only because people are calling in on those lines, hoping to get through and make their comments known. | ||
| We'll give them to you again: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Texting us always available if you wish at 202-748-8003. | ||
| And you can always post on Facebook and on X, a lot of you doing that before the show starts and continuing on through and after. | ||
| Always, you can use that as an avenue to make your thoughts known on the topics at hand as well, including the role the U.S. should take when it comes to Iran and Israel. | ||
| Let's hear from Bill in California, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, Pedro. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Pedro. | |
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead, caller, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Pedro. | |
| All I want to say is I believe that the U.S. should just give Israel that equipment over there to finish that mission, get that issue off the table with the nuclear facilities. | ||
| Khomeini is on his way to Russia anyway, where Ashar Bashard is. | ||
| So they need to get that issue off the table. | ||
| Pete Hag Sex needs to give them the weapons to finish the job at those nuclear sites, set them back so we can have that done. | ||
| Then the country can recuperate or either set up another government in there. | ||
| That's my point. | ||
| Do you think that if what you're advocating does happen, does it have long-term implications not only for Iran, but also the relationship between the Mideast and the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think if you get the right people in there that's handling them, that's working for the people of Iran. | |
| You know, as D.B. Netanyahu said, he said, we don't have an issue with the Iranian people. | ||
| We just have an issue with that government over there. | ||
| And they're the ones that is causing all the havoc with the Houthis, with the Hezbollah, the people in Yemen, and then the hostages down there in Gaza. | ||
| So if they get Trump keeps the pressure on them with the economics, economic pressure sanctions on them and just get rid of those nuclear facilities, those people will be free. | ||
| And that's what Bibi Netanyahu told them. | ||
| We don't have a problem with you. | ||
| We just want the government, we want you to be free. | ||
| This is your liberation moment. | ||
| And that's what needs to happen. | ||
| It needs to go back before the Mullahs got in control. | ||
| The king, the Shah of Iran, I believe he had a pretty good government going on back in the 70s. | ||
| But right now, the Mullahs and that whole cleric situation down there is the ones that's causing all the problems for everybody in the Middle East. | ||
| Okay, Bill there in California, again, giving us his thoughts. | ||
| Pat's up next. | ||
| He's in Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think that we're doing the right thing supporting Israel. | |
| And I think as far as Iran goes, with a little nudge, you have a lot of people there that want to make a regime change that they are normal, sane people, and they don't want a nuclear bomb. | ||
| They just want to live their lives in a prosperous economic environment. | ||
| As far as Gaza goes, I think the United States should go to the Palestinian people and say, look, you have to denounce Hamas. | ||
| Can't have a terrorist organization running your government. | ||
| You have to agree that Israel has a right to exist and try to nudge the Palestinians need a democratic government where they can all prosper. | ||
| But the first thing is to let Israel go in there, destroy all those tunnels. | ||
| I think it's 400 miles of tunnels, cap them off in the end, tell the Palestinian people you can't have terrorists running. | ||
| You need to run your own government, but in a democratic government, you can't support terrorists running your country. | ||
| And you have to admit that Israel has a right to exist and live. | ||
| If you don't start with that premise, they will never agree to a two-state solution. | ||
| So all these people saying that Israel shouldn't bomb Gaza, that's ridiculous. | ||
| You can't have a neighbor that wants to kill you every other day. | ||
| So these people spouting that are ridiculous. | ||
| And the money that the United States sent to UNRWA, United Nations, that money went to Gaza. | ||
| They built schools where they teach their children to hate the Jews and to kill the Jews. | ||
| So thank you for letting me make my comments. | ||
| Pat there in Florida, in Michigan. | ||
| This is Tom, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Israel attacked Iran unprovoked the day before Donald Trump was supposed to seal a peace deal. | ||
| I can't hear you. | ||
| I'm not saying anything. | ||
| Go ahead and keep going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Call it excess. | ||
| We can't beat Hamas. | ||
| We can't beat the Houthis. | ||
| Has anyone seen the strikes on Israel? | ||
| Israel is trying to get us to go to war with the world. | ||
| What are we talking about here? | ||
| Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. | ||
| I just want to say, if Zionists can no longer murder civilians and starve children, will they die like vampires? | ||
| Okay, that's Tom there in Michigan, one of the people in the lead up to what was going on post-the conflict, but in discussions, or giving us thoughts on what the U.S. should do with Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California, making comments on the Sunday shows, particularly when it comes to support for Israel and what next step should look like. | ||
| Here's some of his comments. | ||
| Would you support the U.S. military assisting in taking additional actions against Iran's nuclear sites? | ||
| Well, first of all, I think Israel has a right to defend itself, and I support what Israel is doing to defend itself. | ||
| Israel clearly made the calculus that at a moment when Iran has been weakened by the incapacity of its militia, of Hezbollah, and its other actors, the state-sponsored terrorism that it engaged in once it's been weakened, I think they found this the opportune moment to go after a nuclear program that was coming closer and closer to fruition. | ||
| So I support those actions, and I support the administration's actions in helping Israel defend itself. | ||
| In terms of whether the administration should go further and engage in direct hostilities against Iran, that's not something I support. | ||
| Now, I have to caveat that by saying I have not been able to get recently an intelligence briefing on whether Iran is trying to break out to get a bomb. | ||
| But I think the United States should be very loath to engage in another war after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| And there should be a very high hurdle to get over before essentially going to direct war with Iran. | ||
| Let's hear from Ann, who is in Washington, D.C., line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi, how are you doing? | ||
| My position is this. | ||
| It's my understanding that Israel has a very intelligent program, and it could attack anything that it wanted to attack militarily. | ||
| However, Israel decides to bomb residents and people and media, and they don't care whether they kill women or children. | ||
| Look at the fact that Israel has decided to starve people in Gaza. | ||
| I don't want the United States involved or help Israel at all. | ||
| Israel cannot defend itself without the United States. | ||
| United States should not be in agreement of killing children and women and families. | ||
| That's Ann there, and let's go to Frank. | ||
| Frank in Texas, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I think Netanyahu and Israel are doing a great job. | ||
| I think Trump's doing a great job. | ||
| I support him 100%. | ||
| You cannot allow these crazy Iranians to get a nuclear war. | ||
| They're very close. | ||
| Israel and America are doing the world a favor, especially Israel right now. | ||
| Yeah, we're furnishing the weapons and everything, but I mean, Israel is doing the world a great favor. | ||
| Saudi Arabia wants Iran gone. | ||
| Jordan wants Iran gone. | ||
| They know how dangerous murdering killers they are. | ||
| And anybody that keeps calling in, and they don't, well, first of all, I know a lot of people have referenced the Bible and 12-3 Genesis. | ||
| And any Christian that knows anything about the Bible knows about 12-3 Genesis. | ||
| And it's in the Bible and several other things. | ||
| Iran has got to go. | ||
| It's going to go down hard. | ||
| But is that the United States? | ||
| But is that necessarily the United States' role, then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I mean, Trump's doing a great job. | ||
| Well, tell me why you think that specifically, why do you think that's the United States role? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, it just, if you're a Christian country, you cannot allow a dangerous. | |
| I mean, Iran calls us the big Satan. | ||
| They call Israel the Little Satan. | ||
| They've done sword to wipe us all off. | ||
| You can't have people like that. | ||
| I mean, anybody with any sense, you know, now I know you got all kinds of people calling in. | ||
| They don't know the first thing about the Bible. | ||
| And, you know, especially Democrats. | ||
| They just get out there and they don't know the first thing about what it says. | ||
| And okay. | ||
| Frank there in Texas. | ||
| Let's hear from Michael. | ||
| Michael in Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Michael in Washington, D.C., hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One more time for Michael. | |
| Okay, we'll go to Mike. | ||
| Mike in Ohio, Independent Line, your last call. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you today? | |
| Good. | ||
| Glad to see Spin's doing a wonderful job, I think, and I'm happy to be able to call in. | ||
| I just want to say that anybody with common sense knows right from wrong. | ||
| And Iran, they're no good. | ||
| I don't know why these callers call in. | ||
| These Democrats, and I'm not saying all Democrats. | ||
| A lot of Democrats are good. | ||
| But most of them want to just tear up everything here in our country, but yet they don't care about Iran being the way they are. | ||
| It just doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Why be an agitator and be annoying? | ||
| Don't everybody want peace? | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| It's just common sense. | ||
| So as far as the U.S. role, what specifically should it be? | ||
| And if we go further than what we're doing, is that being an agitator of sorts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, no, I'm saying I think the U.S. should help Israel out and try to get a peace agreement. | |
| Nobody, Donald Trump doesn't want a war. | ||
| He constantly keeps saying it. | ||
| So it's going to play out the way it's going to play out. | ||
| But I think the best situation would be no war, obviously. | ||
| Nobody wants a war. | ||
| But Iran can't have their nuclear weapons. | ||
| So if it becomes to that point, then I guess it is. | ||
| But nobody wants it. | ||
| Mike and Ohio. | ||
| It's a touchy situation. | ||
| Mike in Ohio, Independent Line, finishing off this hour of calls. | ||
| To all of you who participated, thanks for doing so. | ||
| Here's a couple of things to watch out for on our networks today. | ||
| 10.30 this morning, a hearing taking a look at the military budget estimates. | ||
| High-ranking officials from each branch of the U.S. military will testify on the 2026 budget estimates for military construction and family housing. | ||
| That's in front of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee starting at 10.30. | ||
| You can see that on our various platforms, C-SPAN, our app C-SPANNOW, and C-SPAN.org, our website. | ||
| Also, later on this afternoon, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco hears oral arguments on whether the president acted beyond his authority by sending the National Guard into California in response to recent immigration protests. | ||
| The court is meeting after it blocked a federal judge's order that directed the president to return control of the National Guard troops to California. | ||
| Live coverage of that oral argument, if you're interested in hearing more, will start at 3 o'clock this afternoon. | ||
| Again, the various platforms there, TV on C-SPAN, the app, and the .org as well. | ||
| Later on in the program, we're going to talk about the conflict between Israel and Iran, what it means for the U.S. with Ohio State University military history professor and retired Colonel Peter Mansour. | ||
| But next, CNN author, anchor, and author Jake Tapper, the author of Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, will join us next when Washington Journal continues. | ||
| It's a story from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. | ||
| The book by Claire Hoffman is called Sister Center, The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Amy Semple McPherson. | ||
| FSG, the publisher, further emphasizes that the story is, quote, the dramatic rise, disappearance, and near fall of a woman called Sister Amy who changed the world. | ||
| Author Claire Hoffman, who has a master's in religion from the University of Chicago, says Amy Semple McPherson may not be known to many today, but she was a global star at the inception of global media. | ||
|
unidentified
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Claire Hoffman with her book, Sister Sinner, The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Amy Semple McPherson on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
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I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
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I saw it television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
| We are speaking to the country. | ||
|
unidentified
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Washington Journal continues. | |
| Our first guest of the morning is the host of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper. | ||
| Jake Tapper, also co-author of the book Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. | ||
| Jake Tapper joining us from Austin, Texas this morning. | ||
| Thanks for joining us. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| The book has been out several weeks. | ||
| I'm wondering what your reaction has been to the various criticisms from a lot of different sides about the contents. | ||
| I mean, I don't really have a reaction per se. | ||
| The book, my co-author, Alex Thompson of Axios and I, after the election, set out to figure out what just happened. | ||
| What exactly happened that night that we were all so stunned, the night of the debate in June 2024, June 27th, to be precise? | ||
| Was that the first time that that adult Joe Biden had ever reared his head as his aide suggested that night? | ||
| What was the decision-making that went on behind having somebody who was so clearly not up to the task of running for president decide he was going to run for re-election? | ||
| So we got to work and we made a list of more than 200 people, Democrats, people who work for the White House and the administration and Congress, donors, et cetera, and talked to as many people as we could to figure out what happened. | ||
| And the result is this book, Original Sin, which goes into what a lot of Democrats feel like was the biggest mistake, which was Biden, President Biden deciding he was going to run for reelection, and then the mistakes that followed, which include, of course, the effort by him, his family, and his top aides to hide the degree to which he was cognitively deteriorating as we saw the night of the debate. | ||
| And the book has been selling very well, and the reviews from the New York Times and the Washington Post, LA Times, et cetera, have been very positive. | ||
| And, you know, anytime anybody does anything in this day and age, I don't need to tell you, there's going to be criticism from the left and the right. | ||
| But generally speaking, we're really pleased with the reception to the book. | ||
| And I guess it's a follow-up. | ||
| What was the tension between perhaps you and your co-author of collecting this material, holding on to it for a book, but not releasing it previous to the election? | ||
| Well, we didn't start writing the book until after the election. | ||
| So this book was, there was no book until the day after the election when Alex and I got together and started working on the proposal and then started doing the reporting. | ||
| So there isn't anything in this book that we knew before Election Day at all. | ||
| And in fact, I mean, Alex and I often joke about this because I know there's this perception that there are a lot of writers who save the best stuff for after the election. | ||
| I don't know how true that is, but it's certainly not the case for me and Alex. | ||
| And we joke about the fact that if we had known any one of the scoops in the book, for instance, the fact that George Clooney didn't think that President Biden recognized him the night of that June 2024 fundraiser. | ||
| If we had known that at the time, either one of us would have loved to have reported that at the time. | ||
| But the truth was that President Biden and his family and his top aides convinced the Democratic Party that one, only he had ever beat Donald Trump, which is true. | ||
| Two, therefore only he could beat Donald Trump in 2024, which I don't know is true, but that was their argument. | ||
| And that three, Donald Trump, in their view, posed an existential threat to the nation. | ||
| And so if you convince yourself of those three facts, you can pretty much justify anything. | ||
| And any criticism of President Biden was therefore really kept quiet during the presidential campaign by Democrats because they were afraid that any admission that he was slipping behind the scenes would only help Donald Trump. | ||
| But after Election Day, finally, people that Alex and I had been reaching out to either started returning our calls or our texts or our emails or started being a lot more candid. | ||
| But there's nothing in the book that we knew before Election Day. | ||
| Everything we learned after. | ||
| If you started writing after Election Day, when did you know, what was the moment when you both figured out you were onto something as far as the theme of this book? | ||
| Well, I'll admit that when we proposed the book, we didn't know how much good stuff we were going to get. | ||
| But it was just, I probably within the first few weeks, we would just check back with each other after and share the notes that we had with each interview and realize that, oh my God, it was much worse than we thought. | ||
| And it was, and we traced the first time that President Biden showed some signs of decline, according to a top aide, was 2015, towards the end of his vice presidency with Barack Obama as president. | ||
| And it was just tracking all of the developments as seen through these top aides who felt like this a burden had been lifted that they could be honest about what they had seen. | ||
| As far as sourcing is concerned, one of the critics, and you've probably seen this already, Naomi Biden herself on the book saying it relies on unnamed anonymous sources pushing a self-serving false narrative that absolves them of any responsibility for our current national nightmare. | ||
| What was your reaction to that? | ||
| I mean, Naomi Biden is the president's granddaughter, and she's going to defend her grandfather. | ||
| The Biden family is a very tight-knit family, and they support each other. | ||
| So that removing Naomi from it, because I'm not going to criticize a young woman defending her grandfather, there are a lot of anonymous sources in the book. | ||
| There are named sources as well. | ||
| It's pretty well sourced for anybody who reads it. | ||
| Some of the anonymous sources are, like for instance, we have a number of cabinet secretaries who are identified in the book as Cabinet Secretary number one, Cabinet Secretary No. 2. | ||
| And I don't, I mean, I imagine that they are remaining relatively anonymous because they don't want to experience the wrath of angry Democrats or the Biden family. | ||
| What is more important, I think, is what these sources told us. | ||
| For example, there were cabinet secretaries in the book who told us that they didn't think towards the end of the Biden presidency that President Biden could be relied upon for that proverbial 2 a.m. phone call in the middle of the night with the national security emergency. | ||
| And that's a rather chilling thought. | ||
| Now, why the cabinet secretaries don't want to go on the record for that, that's probably because they don't want to experience the wrath and the harshness of Democrats criticizing them. | ||
| But it's still, I think, more important than the issue of whether or not of who the sources are and why some of them are anonymous. | ||
| Our guest with us until 845, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| You can text us questions if you wish at 202748-8003. | ||
| Mr. Tapper, you and your co-author talk about the decline of President Biden, but you also trace it back to after the death of his son, Bo Biden. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So one of the things that we've learned from talking to top aides is that a lot of the diminishment in President Biden's cognitive ability seems to have come, and this is not unusual, but it seems to have come during periods of real intense stress. | ||
| And obviously Joe Biden is somebody that has withstood a lot in his life. | ||
| It's one of the reasons why his supporters love him so much. | ||
| He's somebody that is able to get off the floor after life throws some of the cruelest twists of fate imaginable. | ||
| In 2015, he lost his beloved son, Beau, the Attorney General of Delaware, to brain cancer. | ||
| And a top aide told us that it was like watching then Vice President Biden's psyche was like watching somebody pour water on sand. | ||
| And that kind of horrific family tragedy really had a powerful, deleterious effect on President, then Vice President Biden. | ||
| We're also told that two of the most intense moments of diminishment, according to top aides, occurred in 2023 and 2024 during his presidency during moments of intense stress for his son Hunter, who I'm sure your viewers and callers know had some legal problems. | ||
| In 2023, he had a plea deal for a gun charge, and that plea deal fell through. | ||
| And then in the summer, in June 2024, he was tried and convicted, Hunter Biden, of that gun charge. | ||
| And what's significant, and I don't say this with anything other than sympathy for the family, but what's significant is that Hunter Biden, who as we all know, has also experienced tragedy in his family losing his brother. | ||
| President Biden, of course, lost his wife and daughter in 1972 in a car crash. | ||
| Hunter Biden, in addition, struggles with addiction, a horrible disease. | ||
| And Hunter was very outspoken during the period of 2023-2024, saying that he thought that the Republicans and those who were prosecuting him were trying to drive him into relapse and trying to drive him to suicide. | ||
| And what we ascertained from our reporting is that that fear that President Biden had, a very real, understandable and tragic fear that he would lose a third child, that he would lose Hunter, that was to a large degree one of the other reasons why his cognitive abilities declined in the summer of 2023 and the summer of 2024. | ||
| And that explains a lot about, in fact, why his performance at the debate was so awful, because that came right after that verdict, the guilty verdict of Hunter in Delaware. | ||
| And also why the decision was so bad and not well thought out because his decline was so significant in 2023-2024. | ||
| First call for Jake Tapper, co-author of the book Original Sin, is from Susan. | ||
| She joins us from Delaware. | ||
| Republican line, you're on with the guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Jake Tapper, I've been watching you for a long time, and I do appreciate your work. | ||
| And I will say I'm a Republican, but I have been a lifelong fan of Joe Biden. | ||
| I've loved his passion for people. | ||
| He's had a very compassionate heart for people. | ||
| And I was going to ask you, what was the motivation to even think? | ||
| Why did you think we needed to hear this? | ||
| But then I heard you at the very end say you believe the decline happened from all the stress based upon the fear of losing another son. | ||
| And so I think you answered my question, and I do have now a more open mind as far as even thinking about getting your book because I've watched your interview previously on C-SPAN where you and your co-author discussed this. | ||
| So if you want to talk more about his fear, that would help. | ||
| But I just wanted to put that out there. | ||
| I was kind of a little closed-minded. | ||
| I was like, no, rejecting any criticism against Joe Biden because I'm such a fan. | ||
| I have such a love for him. | ||
| But now I think you've answered the question. | ||
| But if you could just elaborate more on his fear, I appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Thank you for your call and thank you for your open mind. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I want to make clear that people understand this is not a mean book. | ||
| We have sympathy for the horrible situations and the horrible things that President Biden has gone through in his life. | ||
| And I think anybody can sympathize with a father who's watching his son go through something very difficult. | ||
| By the same token, it is a clear-eyed book because this is not just One Family's Tragedy. | ||
| The decision to run for reelection and then the decision to hide his diminishment were decisions that had repercussions on the entire world. | ||
| There are a lot of Democrats who feel that, not just Democratic voters, but Democratic officials, Democratic strategists, Democratic lawmakers who feel that President Biden should have abided by his implicit promise to be a one-term president and to be a bridge to the next generation of Democrats. | ||
| And that if there had been a Democratic primary process, then whoever emerged from that, and perhaps it would have been Vice President Harris or maybe somebody else, would have been a stronger candidate and would have had a better chance of defeating President Trump. | ||
| Now, President Trump's team doesn't think that that's true, that he was going to win no matter what, and it's a hypothetical, so we'll never know. | ||
| But it is also true that the decision to run for reelection and the decision to hide his diminishment are decisions that have ramifications for all of us right now as we wake up and try to figure out what is President Trump going to do when it comes to Iran, what is President Trump going to do when it comes to tariffs, what is President Trump going to do when it comes to foreign students, and on and on, all the important issues that C-SPAN callers and viewers absorb every day or discuss every day. | ||
| So I think it is important and I think it's essential that the United States voters understand what just happened and why it happened and how it was allowed to happen. | ||
| Because frankly, voters, when it comes to the incredibly powerful presidency in the United States, I think voters have a right to demand health information about their presidents. | ||
| And Alex Thompson, my co-author and I, feel that we quote a doctor in the book named Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who's an advisor to the White House medical team. | ||
| And he thinks that whoever the White House physician is, that person should have to give the health report that is given annually for a president traditionally, should have to give it under penalty of perjury. | ||
| Now, look, as we all know, no law that Congress passes would apply to the current president. | ||
| So forget President Trump for a second. | ||
| Let's just talk about future presidents. | ||
| Whoever the future presidents are, let's remove Trump and Biden from it right now. | ||
| I think the American voter has a right to know every medication that they're on, every test and the result of every test that they experience. | ||
| And I think it's, you know, we have a very powerful executive branch. | ||
| It's not this powerful in the U.K. | ||
| It's not this powerful in Australia. | ||
| It's not this powerful in Canada. | ||
| Therefore, I think that we voters have a right to know. | ||
| So I think that's also just part of the lesson of this book that we've learned. | ||
| From Virginia, this is Sarah, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Right now, I watch you on CNN, but right now I really don't like you. | ||
| I think you're doing a disservice to Joe and also to the American people. | ||
| When are you going to examine what is going on with Trump? | ||
| Joe Biden conducted himself for four years taking care of the United States. | ||
| He took meetings. | ||
| He went overseas. | ||
| He negotiated with other leaders. | ||
| This president has been pure chaos, which indicates to me that there is something wrong with him. | ||
| We will never get a straight answer on his medical examinations, what medication he is on. | ||
| And yet you have gone after Joe Biden with a vengeance that I'm very disappointed in you. | ||
| I enjoy watching your show, but not anymore. | ||
| And I think right now you ought to start writing another book examining Trump and how erratic and what he is doing, calling out the National Guard, the Marines, and everybody. | ||
| When has a president ever done that? | ||
| It's pure erratic. | ||
| Okay, okay, Sarah, they're in Virginia. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Mr. Tapper. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Sarah. | |
| Sarah, as you know, from watching my show on CNN, we cover President Trump every day for two hours, every day from 5 to 7 Eastern, and we cover all the things you talk about. | ||
| In terms of the president, the current president's behavior, we have covered times that he has confused Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley. | ||
| I think some of the questions about President Trump's behavior have more to do with personality than with cognitive decline. | ||
| But obviously, whatever lessons we've learned from covering President Biden, we would apply to any politician, any future politician or present politician. | ||
| So I'm sorry if I'm disappointing you by covering President Biden, but journalists, we are supposed to cover stories that we think the American people have a right to know, that we think will enhance their understanding of how the country's run. | ||
| And I think Alex and I are proud of this book. | ||
| But if you turn on CNN later today, tomorrow, the next day, you'll see we're continuing to focus on the today in our TV coverage. | ||
| Mr. Tapper, you write about the mythology of Joe Biden, the way he approaches things. | ||
| How did that contribute to not only the decline, but how that decline was handled within the White House? | ||
| So to understand how it is that President Biden thought that he could run for reelection in 2024, despite being 82 years old and obviously physically frailer than he had been, as happens to all of us, one has to understand the legend of Joe Biden. | ||
| All politicians have a mythology or a legend about them, and Joe Biden's is about his ability to rise up, to get up, as he would say. when talking about the lessons that his father would tell him. | ||
| Get up. | ||
| So, for example, he has a debilitating stutter as a child. | ||
| He learns how to talk and get past it to a degree. | ||
| He has that horrible car accident with his wife and daughter killed in 1972. | ||
| He is able to get up off of the floor for that. | ||
| He runs for president in 1987. | ||
| It doesn't go well. | ||
| He drops out in 1988. | ||
| He has two brain aneurysms. | ||
| The doctors aren't even sure if he'll ever talk again. | ||
| Get up. | ||
| Again, this is one of the things about Joe Biden that his supporters, and we've heard from a couple of them today, find so compelling. | ||
| His ability to get up no matter what life throws at him. | ||
| Now, at a certain point, the Biden mythology becomes almost like a theology, almost like a religion in a sense that skepticism is not permitted. | ||
| And the ability of Joe Biden to prove the naysayers wrong, to prove the elites wrong, to prove the news media wrong and all the Democratic detractors, that becomes part of this mythology or theology. | ||
| And that's one of the things you have to understand when looking at why did President Biden think he could run for reelection despite the fact that he was 82 and obviously frail. | ||
| It was because his has been a life of getting up off the floor and proving the naysayers wrong. | ||
| And that's part of the reason why he made the decisions he did. | ||
| This is Patty. | ||
| Patty's in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yep, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I just want to thank C-SPAN. | ||
| I think it's such a great service that the citizens get to call in. | ||
| I would say to the CNNs and the other networks, you can screen the questions, but maybe have three questions a day by citizens. | ||
| It really would go a long way. | ||
| Hello, Jake. | ||
| I was born in Philadelphia, raised in Northeast Philly, and the rest of my time in the suburbs of Philly. | ||
| And I just want to say that I think that you're pretty much way off as far as the book. | ||
| I understand your reason for writing the book with Alex Thompson, but what I don't understand is, you know, when we have somebody like Trump, and I understand you say you cover him, but, you know, there's so many things about Trump, maybe not cognitively, but definitely psychological problems that really need to be explored. | ||
| And, you know, as far as Joe Biden, you know, the one thing I agree with you is that he shouldn't have ran for a second term. | ||
| But, you know, and I don't, and that was a problem. | ||
| But to focus so much on such a good person, such a good man, and a good president, too. | ||
| I mean, he did a lot of things. | ||
| You know, he was just overrun by MADA, which is so strong and so dangerous. | ||
| And right now, the Americans are in such a precarious situation. | ||
| And I just feel that, you know, the book that you wrote is just too much of a focus on Joe Biden. | ||
| And I feel that it's unfair to do that to him. | ||
| That's just how I feel. | ||
| Patty in New Jersey from Atlantic City, Independent Line. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Well, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of Democrats feel is that the reason that Trump is president is because Joe Biden made this decision to run for reelection and then to try to hide the degree that he was deteriorating until it was exposed before the world the night of the CNN debate, June 27, 2024. | ||
| There are a lot of Democrats who look at the Electoral College and see that even though President Trump won the popular vote by millions of votes, that actually the electoral vote victory comes down to about 250,000 votes in about three states. | ||
| And had Kamala Harris or any other Democratic nominee been able to perform just slightly better in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, then Donald Trump would not be the president. | ||
| And there are a lot of Democrats who feel that because Joe Biden made the decision he did to run for reelection, and that because he and his team and his family made the decision they did to try to hide as much as possible his diminishment, that they basically set the stage for Donald Trump's return. | ||
| And look, maybe that's a premise that you don't agree with, but there are a lot of very intelligent Democrats who think that they were doomed and that Donald Trump was guaranteed to be reelected because of the decision made by President Biden. | ||
| So if you disagree, you disagree, I say go birds to you, and I appreciate your Philadelphia roots, if not your take on my book. | ||
| Which were the strongest Democrats making the case for Joe Biden to step aside and how were they received by the inner circle? | ||
| Well, not a lot of them were doing it at the time, but there were Democrats trying to make the argument behind the scenes that they didn't think he should run. | ||
| One was a guy named Bill Daly, who you know, who was an Obama chief of staff and a Bill Clinton Commerce Secretary, who had known Joe Biden forever and just couldn't believe that Joe Biden was making the decision to run again. | ||
| I mean, he had daley had worked on, he was political director for Biden's 1987, 1988 presidential campaign. | ||
| And he tried to talk to Democratic governors to see if one of them would consider challenging Biden in the primaries, but nobody would. | ||
| Congressman Dean Phillips, no stranger to C-SPAN viewers, a Democrat who, again, saw this happening behind the scenes, tried to convince governors like Newsom or Bashir or Pritzker or Whitmer to run against Biden in the primaries. | ||
| Nobody would. | ||
| So then Dean Phillips ran. | ||
| And he wanted to show the world, he says, that Biden is not up to the task of running for president in 2024, and wanted to get him on a debate stage. | ||
| But Biden and the Democrats avoided any sort of direct debate with Dean Phillips. | ||
| There were not a lot of people making the argument in front of the cameras or even directly to President Biden. | ||
| That's one of the things that was so shocking about this, how little process there actually was behind the scenes. | ||
| From Hearst in Mississippi, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on with our guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd like to know why the news media didn't talk about Biden wouldn't come out and have press conferences. | |
| And when he did come out, he'd all hit mess up, you know, do all kinds of stuff like that. | ||
| And I think the news media fail their job. | ||
| I don't think they're doing the job like they should be doing it. | ||
| And that's all I got to say about it. | ||
| That's Hearst in Mississippi. | ||
| Well, I mean, I do think that the media did cover the fact that President Biden had fewer press conferences than previous presidents. | ||
| And in terms of the gaffes that the gentleman alluded to, I mean, those would be aired. | ||
| It is difficult to argue, now that I have written this book with Alex Thompson, my co-author, it is difficult to argue that we knew everything because in our reporting after the election, we were able to find out so much more that shocked us about how bad things were behind the scenes. | ||
| And if that is a failure of the news media, then I think we should take our lumps on it. | ||
| I do think to a large degree, this is the responsibility of President Biden and his family and top aides and Democrats who saw things behind the scenes and were convinced to not say anything to reporters. | ||
| The reporters that would come out and write about this on occasion, Peter Baker wrote a piece in the New York Times, I think in 2023, about Biden's age, meaning that they wouldn't do long trips instead of a Europe trip and a Middle East trip all one big trip. | ||
| They would split them into two. | ||
| And he also covered the number of speaking events that President Biden held in contrast with Trump and Obama. | ||
| And then there were some reports by the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Annie Linsky and Siobhan Hughes of the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece titled something like Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping, that was published in June 2024. | ||
| A powerful piece. | ||
| They got attacked by the White House. | ||
| They got attacked by Democratic members of Congress. | ||
| So there were attempts to get to the bottom of this. | ||
| But at the bottom line is now that I have learned, and Alex and I have learned what we know, obviously we wish that we'd known it before and that there'd been more investigative reporting on it. | ||
| You had mentioned in a previous interview to that end that you felt humility, and I think that's the quote, humility, because of what you know now versus what's been out there. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
| Well, sure. | ||
| I mean, look, anytime one learns something as a journalist that you wish you had been more aggressive on or trusted your instincts more or dug a little harder or whatever, I think it's just a natural result of being an adult to realize shortcomings or failings. | ||
| I mean, I feel this way about, you know, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq story. | ||
| I was a reporter that was skeptical of the WMD claim, but certainly, you know, in hindsight, I wish I had been more skeptical. | ||
| And there are any number of stories along those lines. | ||
| Certainly when it comes to President Biden's acuity, it's an issue that I had covered. | ||
| I had asked him about in September 2020 when I interviewed him. | ||
| I asked him if he would pledge to be transparent about his health, and he said he would. | ||
| And there are a number of other times that I had covered it or asked people who worked for him about his age. | ||
| But sure, yeah, I mean, I wish I had covered it more aggressively. | ||
| I can't imagine that there are many reporters, with a handful of exceptions, that don't feel that way, knowing, you know, as soon as the debate made it clear, oh my God, look how bad his acuity is, at least at this moment. | ||
| I'm sure most reporters feel that way. | ||
| There's a story in your book, Dan Abasher, co-author, hand you a note saying he just lost the election on the debate night. | ||
| What's going through your mind as you're watching it play out? | ||
| So Dan Abasher and I were obviously the co-moderators of the debate, and we are at the Atlanta studios of CNN. | ||
| And first of all, it's really interesting because both Trump and Biden had been invited to do a walkthrough at the debate site, which is normal standard operating procedure. | ||
| Both of them did not show up on time, not surprisingly. | ||
| And then President, but President Trump does show up, and the president, editor-in-chief of CNN, Sir Mark Thompson, gives him the tour. | ||
| President Trump, you know, he's a student of television because of the apprentice. | ||
| And so he's finding out where is he standing, which is his camera, is he going to be on air when President Biden's talking? | ||
| How does he do a follow-up? | ||
| All the normal questions one would ask. | ||
| The debate is set for 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| At 8 p.m., President Biden has still not arrived at the studios. | ||
| Now, we know he's in Atlanta because he's the president, and we know from pool reports that Air Force One has touched down in Atlanta, but he's still not there. | ||
| He finally shows up around 8.32, which is really late for a politician to show up before a debate, just half an hour before the debate. | ||
| And he does his walkthrough. | ||
| So Dan and I go out at about 10 of. | ||
| When I'm walking out there, I'm thinking, wow, it's late. | ||
| I'm 56 now, and you're a younger man than I, but there will come a time when you appreciate sleep more than you do right now. | ||
| And the C-SPAN callers know what I'm saying. | ||
| And anyway, when I was walking out there, I was thinking, this is late. | ||
| It's almost 9 o'clock. | ||
| This is going to be going until 10.30. | ||
| This is way past my bedtime. | ||
| And then President Biden walked out, and I thought, man, what's it like for him? | ||
| Because at that point, we know from Alex's reporting that they tried to keep his activities between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on an average day, at least public activities, because, you know, he's 81 at that point. | ||
| Anyway, he comes out, he starts speaking. | ||
| President Trump comes out too. | ||
| Biden obviously has a cold. | ||
| His voice is thinner and reedier, and he's coughing. | ||
| But okay, he has a cold. | ||
| In that the first answer and rebuttal goes fine. | ||
| But then he gets lost, and I think it's the second answer, President Biden, and he's listing things that he wants to do for the American people, and he just completely loses his train of thought. | ||
| He's talking about child care and elder care, and then he loses his train of thought, and he's grabbing, he grabs on to like just a placeholder clause, all the things I've tried to do for people or something like that. | ||
| And he's just completely, it's very painful to watch. | ||
| And I think I've watched it since on TV. | ||
| I think it was even worse in person just because of how sad the moment was. | ||
| And anyway, we have iPads so that we can write down and communicate with the control room. | ||
| And I write, holy smokes, to the control room. | ||
| I kept it clean because I didn't know who was back there. | ||
| And Dana writes, Dana passes on a piece of paper to me, he just lost the election. | ||
| Because the bar for President Biden was that so many voters, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, already had concerns about his aging, his energy, his acuity. | ||
| They already had those concerns before the debate. | ||
| It was a major issue. | ||
| And what he needed to do and what his aides hoped he would do that night was come out and give an energetic performance and put those issues to rest. | ||
| And he did the exact opposite. | ||
| He made those issues the number one issue in the campaign, more so than anything President Trump had to say, more so than the chaos the Democrats would complain about or to some of our callers this morning talking about the chaos of the Trump presidency. | ||
| They made his ability to do the job the number one story. | ||
| Rahm Emanuel, who is another Obama former chief of staff who is President Biden's ambassador to Japan, calls Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, this is an anecdote in the book, and says, this is irretrievable. | ||
| It's irretrievable. | ||
| You can't go back from this. | ||
| This is now the issue. | ||
| So it was very stunning. | ||
| Let's go to Eddie in New York, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Jake. | |
| Back in 2020, you had an interview with Laura Trump, and she even told you, and you said it was his stutter and everything. | ||
| And if you watch Fox News or News Nation or even Newsmax, every night they would bring up what the problems were, how he couldn't talk, how he didn't know what he was doing. | ||
| And if you noticed, every time when he had an interview, he would have the picture of the reporter, her name, and even the answer to the question on there. | ||
| Mike Johnson in what was it? | ||
| 2022, they had an interview where they were talking about how he signed away the pipeline. | ||
| That was 2024. | ||
|
unidentified
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He suggested he said, no. | |
| No, I signed a thing for it to be investigated. | ||
| And he said, no, no, you signed a thing to get rid of it. | ||
| So the news media covered up for him. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Okay, Eddie in New York. | ||
| So, I mean, I ran those clips on my show, too. | ||
| I mean, I understand that people feel like that a lot of these clips and a lot of these acuity issues were known. | ||
| And I don't disagree. | ||
| I mean, it's the reason why so many voters had so many concerns about President Biden's ability to do the job because of what we all saw happening in front of the cameras, especially starting in, I would argue, at least according to our reporting, in 2023, 2024. | ||
| The Speaker Mike Johnson story that the gentleman was referring to was from a private conversation that Speaker Johnson had had with President Biden in early 2024. | ||
| I think a really important demarcation moment in the story of President Biden and his acuity came in February 2024 with the publication of the special counsel report, Robert Hurr. | ||
| Robert Hurr had been appointed special counsel in 2023 to investigate President Biden's mishandling of classified information. | ||
| And Robert Hurr did a report that came out in February 2024 in which he said that while he thought President Biden, I mean, I'm paraphrasing here, but basically he said he thought that President Biden had mishandled classified information, but he wasn't going to prosecute because he thought President Biden would come across to a jury as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| And the Biden White House freaked out. | ||
| First, they tried to, before the report was released, they tried to get the Attorney General to remove that from the special counsel report. | ||
| The Attorney General, Merrick Arlin, said, absolutely not. | ||
| We're not going to remove that. | ||
| And then when the report came out, the Democratic Party, the White House, Vice President Harris and others attacked Special Counsel Hurr as unprofessional, as a Republican hack, as gratuitous, that was the line they used. | ||
| And what Special Counsel Hurr had done was give us, the American people, a window into what it was like for him and his prosecutors to sit back and listen and talk to Joe Biden for five hours in October 2023 when they interviewed him. | ||
| And that window into President Biden's acuity, his rambling answers, his inability to recall dates in a very significant way. | ||
| And let me just give you an example. | ||
| The question about whether when President Biden, then Vice President Biden, had mishandled classified information was in 2017, 2018, after the vice presidency, before he was elected president. | ||
| And Special Counsel Hurr brought up that time, 2017, 2018, and President Biden, this is during his presidency, October 2023, said 2017, 2018, what you have to remember is that during that period, my son Bo was either deployed or he was dying. | ||
| Now, Bo, who served in Iraq, actually had been deployed in 2008, 2009. | ||
| And Bo, as we've discussed already on this program, died tragically in 2015. | ||
| So that's the kind of issues that President Biden was having in terms of not being able to come up with dates for major life events. | ||
| What the Biden administration did to Robert Hurr in terms of their effort to discredit him, he had difficulty finding work for several months after that, really is, I think, one of the most important moments of the Biden presidency. | ||
| And I would also argue I would judge news media behavior based on how they covered that. | ||
| Because coverage of Robert Hurr's report really split between some in the news media who took what he was saying seriously and others in the news media who ran to defend President Biden and attack Robert Hurr. | ||
| And to me, that's a very significant moment that we had not yet talked about. | ||
| One more call. | ||
| This will be from Catherine, Democrats Line from New Jersey. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Pedro Jake. | |
| I usually watch your show and I like you a lot, but I was a little disappointed in the book about President Biden. | ||
| But my question for you is, how did you come up with the title, Original Sin? | ||
| And I'll take my answer off the phone. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much, and hello to the Garden State. | ||
| As a Philadelphian, we would spend a lot of time in New Jersey during the summers. | ||
| Original sin was a term that some of the Democrats we spoke with who were bemoaning what happened in the election of 2024 talked about. | ||
| Because obviously the questions about Biden's acuity were top of mind because of what we all went through as a country, starting with the debate and then the three weeks plus until President Biden dropping out of the race, which has never happened before in this country, a truly historical event and a historical moment. | ||
| But people would say, just in conversation, oh, you know, but the original sin was that he ran for reelection. | ||
| It was a way of pinpointing the moment that they thought history could have changed. | ||
| That if he had not run for reelection, maybe things would have turned out differently. | ||
| Maybe there would have been a robust Democratic primary. | ||
| You could have had governors Newsom and Witmer and Pritzker. | ||
| You could have had Pete Buttigieg. | ||
| You could have had Senator Klobuchar, Senator Warnock, Governor Shapiro. | ||
| Like there would have been, in all likelihood, a very robust list of Democratic candidates. | ||
| And it would have been a fierce contest. | ||
| And then there would have been, in the views of all these Democratic officials we talked to for the book, a winner who would have had the backing and support of the Democratic Party and a better chance at defeating Donald Trump. | ||
| So it was a term used by Democrats with whom we spoke. | ||
| So there you go. | ||
| Jake Tapper co-wrote the book with Alex Thompson, Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. | ||
| Jake Tapper, thanks for giving us your time today. | ||
| Thank you, and thanks to all the great callers with the tough questions and the curveballs. | ||
| And I appreciate it, and I appreciate so much what C-SPAN does. | ||
| Thank you for what you do. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Coming up, a discussion taking a look at the events at Iran and Israel. | ||
| Ohio State University military history professor and retired Colonel Peter Mansur will talk about his assessment of what's going on, what it means for the United States as well. | ||
| That conversation coming up on Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
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It isn't just an idea. | |
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
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| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins in a town where partisan fighting prevails. | ||
| One table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now is retired Colonel Peter Mansoor with Ohio State University. | ||
| He's the chair in military history, also retired colonel from the U.S. Army. | ||
| Colonel Mansoor, good morning. | ||
| Thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thanks for having me on. | |
| As you've viewed the last five days of the conflict between Israel-Iran, being a historian and a military person, what have you assessed over these five days about not only what's happening, but where we're going? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, the Israelis' attack against Iran has been stunning. | |
| It's clear that their intelligence has been superb. | ||
| They had a secret drone base inside Iran. | ||
| They've been able to take down the entire air defense network of Iran and achieve air superiority. | ||
| And they have struck a number of significant targets, including the Natan's enrichment facility for uranium and a lot of the leadership in the Iranian armed forces. | ||
| What's not clear is how Israel is going to finish this conflict. | ||
| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got on air and encouraged the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah. | ||
| That's not going to happen anytime soon. | ||
| A lot of Iranians are fleeing Tehran to get away from the bombs. | ||
| So a good start to the destruction of Iran's nuclear program, but a very uncertain path ahead. | ||
| What does history, and especially as you view it from the lens of your previous military experience, what are the worst case scenarios? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so it's easy to get into a war and much harder to get out of one. | |
| The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a good example, seemingly very successful in just a matter of weeks, and yet we ended up staying there for eight years and exited not necessarily with a victory, not necessarily with a defeat, and 5,000 casualties or 5,000 dead, 30,000 casualties. | ||
| So, you know, you got to think about what you want to achieve and what's actually achievable before you launch a campaign like this. | ||
| I'm sure Israel has done that, but they may be banking on assumptions that may or may not pan out in the weeks ahead. | ||
| Assumptions such as what? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, assumptions such as the United States is going to enter the conflict on their side. | |
| There are some targets like the Ford enrichment facilities buried underneath a mountain that Israel simply does not have the wherewithal to destroy. | ||
| Only the United States has the deep ordinance penetrators that can penetrate and destroy that facility. | ||
| And Israel might have been banking on the fact that, hey, if we start this conflict, Iran will retaliate against U.S. forces in the region and then the United States will enter the conflict and finish the job. | ||
| That assumption may be right, but it may not. | ||
| And we'll see how that plays out in the weeks ahead. | ||
| You may have seen the reporting or maybe have read the post from the president on his truth social site regarding what's going on. | ||
| One of them saying America first means many great things, including the fact that this is in all caps, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, make America great again. | ||
| When you see postings like that and look at the possibility of how far we are going to go, what goes through your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, not just that, but the fact that President Trump was in Calgary for the G7 summit and left a day early to go back to Washington to meet with his National Security Council. | |
| If that's just to monitor the situation in the Middle East, there's no reason to leave the G7 summit. | ||
| So clearly something is brewing. | ||
| Whether he actually pulls the trigger remains to be seen. | ||
| But President Trump is clearly thinking about action. | ||
| There's also military forces that are streaming to the region. | ||
| The Nimitz battle group is on its way from Asia to the Gulf, and there's about 21 tankers that have left Europe heading for the Middle East that would be instrumental in refueling aircraft in a bombing campaign. | ||
| Retired Colonel Peter Mansoor joining us for this conversation of Ohio. | ||
| He's of Ohio State University, his chair in military history. | ||
| You want to ask him questions? | ||
| You can do so on the phone lines. | ||
| 202748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats Independents. | ||
| 202748-8002. | ||
| And if you wish to text us, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Colonel, if there are circumstances that would justify an increased U.S. response, what do you think those would be? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think if Iran attacks U.S. facilities, personnel, interests in the Middle East or worldwide, that should trigger a U.S. response. | |
| We can't allow a sovereign nation to attack our uniformed service members or civilians with impunity. | ||
| And I think Iran knows that. | ||
| So they're undergoing a calculation now. | ||
| You know, should we bring the United States into this conflict? | ||
| And would that be to our benefit or would that be the slow road to death? | ||
| So that would be the primary instigation of a U.S. response, in my belief. | ||
| What's their capability of doing that thing you talked about? | ||
| And how much of that depends on support from other countries? | ||
|
unidentified
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So Iran had about 3,000 ballistic missiles when this conflict began. | |
| Israel has destroyed about 1,000 of them. | ||
| And another third to a half of the ones that can actually reach Israel from Iran have already been expended. | ||
| So the primary means to retaliate, these ballistic missiles are being depleted at a rapid rate. | ||
| The other possibility is that Iran can use terrorism. | ||
| It has a large network of proxies, many of whom have been attacked by Israel and degraded significantly, Hezbollah and Lebanon, Hamas, of course, the Houthis. | ||
| But there are other groups in Iraq, for instance. | ||
| It has a wide variety of proxy militias that are beholden to the Ayatollah. | ||
| So Iran could retaliate with some sort of terrorist activity. | ||
| It could also close the Straits of Hormuz with mines or its submarines or other naval assets. | ||
| And that would trigger a worldwide oil crisis. | ||
| Who within Iraq's governing authority are making these decisions? | ||
| And who ultimately makes the call? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think you mean Iran. | |
| Iran, yes, I'm sorry. | ||
| Yes, apologies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the supreme leader, the Ayatollah, is in charge of everything in Iran. | |
| He's being advised by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Quds Force. | ||
| A lot of the leaders of those latter institutions have been killed by Israel, and their replacements are starting to be killed as well. | ||
| So there is a lack of senior leadership right now in Iran. | ||
| The Ayatollah so far has been off limits to a strike, but we'll see going forward. | ||
| Retired Colonel Peter Mansoor of Ohio State University joining us for this conversation. | ||
| We'll start with Mike. | ||
| Mike's in Massachusetts Independent Line. | ||
| Mike, you're on with our guest. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Mike in Plymouth, Massachusetts. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me? | |
| Yep. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, there we go. | |
| Is that better? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
| You're on with our guest. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I was here for Security Police K-9 Hammer. | ||
| And one of the things they taught us was about authority, what authority we had and what authority we didn't have as military police off base. | ||
| We had none. | ||
| We weren't allowed to do anything. | ||
| We had no power of arrest, no power of detention. | ||
| Our authority stopped at the end of the federal property. | ||
| So using the military like Trump is using them, I don't understand what authority they, even the National Guard, they're not security, they're not police officers, military police. | ||
| What authority do they have with civilians? | ||
| And no one's been able to answer that for me. | ||
| Hopefully you can. | ||
| Thank you, and I'll watch your answer on TV. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I think the caller is referring to the deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. | ||
| So federal forces have no authority to conduct police work or domestic law enforcement within the boundaries of the United States. | ||
| That is according to the Posse Comitatus Act, which was passed in the wake of the Civil War. | ||
| When the president federalizes the National Guard, it falls under federal statutes. | ||
| When it's operating under the governor's control, it actually has broader police authorities under Title 32. | ||
| But under Title 10, which is the U.S. code that federal forces operate under, it has to abide by the Posse Comitatus Act, which means you cannot engage in civilian law enforcement. | ||
| Now, there is an exception to this, and that is the Insurrection Act, which was passed in 1807, something dealing with Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. | ||
| I won't go into it, but if the president declares that a state or a region is in insurrection against the United States, then that enables federal law enforcement or federal troops and federalized National Guard forces to engage in domestic law enforcement. | ||
| That has not been done yet in the case of Los Angeles. | ||
| So the president really is relying on sort of a more fuzzy statute that allows federal forces to protect federal property. | ||
| And that's why a lot of the troops there are based in the federal courthouse in Los Angeles. | ||
| What they're doing when they accompany ICE officers around Los Angeles is a mystery to me because they should not have the authority to intervene in what's going on domestically. | ||
| And to that end, Professor, what's the possibility of a slippery slope happening between why they are supposed to be there and what they ultimately end up doing? | ||
|
unidentified
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So the slippery slope is that their presence causes confrontation and violence, and then the president invokes the Insurrection Act and deploys even more forces there. | |
| The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was 1992 during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, which was a massive riot that had torched great portions of the city. | ||
| And in that case, the governor, Pete Wilson, requested from President George H.W. Bush that federal forces intervene. | ||
| And so the 7th Infantry Division was deployed to Los Angeles and patrolled the streets along with some Marines as well. | ||
| And that did calm the situation and eventually they were withdrawn. | ||
| This is Carolyn and Carolyn is in Charlotte, North Carolina, our line for Democrats for our guest. | ||
| Carolyn, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My question is this. | ||
| The intelligence and the way that Israel has executed its situation in Iran was so precise that it's hard for me to believe that they did not know that the attack from Hamas in Israel was going to happen and they did not know where Hamas was in Palestine because they are too precise. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I'm wondering, is this just looks like a false thing to me? | |
| And I think my biggest question is if the United States, it seems like they're going to be drawn into it because it looks like it's a game of dominoes to do this and they're pushing them to the point where they will react. | ||
| And so, yes, the United States, I'm thinking, is going to be involved. | ||
| And where is the end game on that and where is the cost? | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| So Israel's intelligence failed dramatically on October 7th when Hamas attacked. | ||
| I think the difference between then and its attack against Iran is Israel has far more agents working for it in Iran. | ||
| There are clearly a lot of Iranians who are not happy with the regime and are more than willing to take money or to work for Israel for other purposes and feed it information. | ||
| That's why Israel was able to know where all the locations of all the senior leaders, the locations of all the facilities. | ||
| It was able to set up a secret drone base inside Iran. | ||
| And so the Mossad is actually much, much more effective in Iran than it is in Gaza. | ||
| In Gaza, the intelligence agency, Mossad, did not have enough penetration of the Hamas leadership to understand that they were planning this attack. | ||
| Now, I may be wrong. | ||
| The fact is that Israel has not yet conducted a full-scale inquiry into the intelligence failure of October 7th. | ||
| And until that's done, we really won't know the full truth. | ||
| And I don't think that will be done until the conflict with Hamas is wrapped up, whenever that may be. | ||
| Our guest, besides his current career, previously commanded the 1st Brigade, the 1st Armored Division from 2003 to 2005, including time in Iraq between July 2003 and 2004. | ||
| Also was the executive officer, General David Petraeus, the commanding general of multinational forces. | ||
| How do those experiences inform how you look at events today in the Middle East? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it's precisely that our time in Iraq has convinced me that things in the Middle East are not as easy as they appear. | |
| And what happens in the Middle East doesn't stay in the Middle East. | ||
| So we went in in 2003, 2004, seemingly victorious, and yet we saw the emergence of a very virulent insurgency that took years to get under control. | ||
| And we didn't have a very good understanding of it either. | ||
| It was only during the surge of 2007, 2008, which, as you noted, I worked with General Petraeus in helping to combat that insurgency in those years that we were able to get some sort of security reestablished and have actually a functioning government and democratic system in Iraq. | ||
| And that is still an ongoing process today. | ||
| So it's tough to make things happen in the Middle East. | ||
| It's tough to make things happen over the long term, or rather over the short term, and things move slowly. | ||
| It's a very embedded culture that is very different from ours, and we have to understand it. | ||
| Let's hear from Roger. | ||
| He's in Georgia, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| You're on, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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I wanted to ask him: the United States is already furnishing Israel with armament. | |
| Why don't they sell them the jet bomber with the two bombs? | ||
| Yeah, so Israel has fighter aircraft. | ||
| They don't have the kind of bombers that can carry the deep ordnance penetrators to the facility at, say, Fordow, which is buried underneath the mountain. | ||
| That would require a B-2 bomber. | ||
| And we only have a handful of those, maybe a couple dozen at most, stationed in Missouri. | ||
| And we don't sell those to other countries, even allies. | ||
| So the other option would be for Israel to put the deep ordnance penetrator on a large missile. | ||
| And that carries a risk of escalation that probably isn't in the cards just yet. | ||
| So, you know, I get the caller's point that we could have sold Israel the capability to destroy that facility, but for national security reasons, we decided to keep those assets for ourselves. | ||
| Colonel, in regard to escalation, what's the troop presence in the United States in the Mideast overall, and to what threat could they be under if things escalate? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, we have tens of thousands of troops in the region, some stationed in Iraq. | |
| Those are the ones most at risk. | ||
| They are helping the Iraqis to fight the remnants of ISIS. | ||
| We have troops in Ghatr, in other places in the region. | ||
| We have a large airbase in Ghatr, for instance. | ||
| We have naval forces that are in the Gulf. | ||
| All of these forces are at risk in one way or the other to Iranian retaliation. | ||
| We saw that after the assassination of Qasim Suleimani when the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, authorized an attack against the leader of the Quds force. | ||
| And the Quds force is that element in Iran that directs its proxy forces around the Middle East and have directed attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. | ||
| So President Trump authorized a strike to kill him, Qasim Suleimani, and he was killed. | ||
| And in retaliation, Iran launched ballistic missiles at our bases in Iraq and didn't kill anyone, but there were several dozen soldiers who ended up with post-traumatic stress disorder from the violence. | ||
| This is Ali in Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I was honestly just planning to listen to your guest. | ||
| I was very excited to have someone to speak about the region where I originally found. | ||
| But honestly, the moment you stated, sir, that Mossad infiltrates Iran more than does your lost me, sir. | ||
| And I believe you know more than that. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Actually, I don't know more than that. | ||
| But we'll see once the inquiry is, the Israeli inquiry is launched, the extent to which Israel knew what was going on inside Gaza before the attack of October 7th. | ||
| Professor, when that intelligence comes up, or the question of intelligence, does that also get provided by the U.S. in some part? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so intelligence from U.S. satellites is fed to Israel. | |
| I'm not sure to what extent, but clearly we have the capabilities for overhead imagery of the facilities in Iran that we share with interested parties, and Israel certainly is one of those. | ||
| Charles is up next, and Charles is from Troy, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Charles in New York, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question is, after the Iraq invasion, after we took Baghdad, our government had control, basically, and then they eliminated the Iraqi army. | |
| Is that true? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| There were two or three major decisions made only a few weeks after we took Baghdad that were really not well thought out. | ||
| One was to debathify Iraq, to basically say that anyone who had affiliation with the Baath Party was not eligible for employment by the state or for participation in the political process. | ||
| And this really alienated a lot of the Sunni Arab population of Iraq and established the political basis for the insurgency. | ||
| The other decision, as you noted, was to disband the Iraqi army. | ||
| This was an army that could have been put under new leadership because Iraqis needed jobs and security, engaging in security was a job. | ||
| And we could have used that army to help quell the violence that was ongoing in the aftermath of the conflict. | ||
| Instead, we cashiered every last soldier and officer. | ||
| The soldiers went home, but they took their weapons with them. | ||
| So that established the military basis for the insurgency, along with the officers who felt dishonored by our actions. | ||
| And they formed the leadership for the insurgency. | ||
| So to an unfortunate extent, we created the conditions for the insurgency through our own actions, which I write about in my book creatively entitled Surge. | ||
| The full title is Surge, My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of Iraq. | ||
| That's the book out in 2013. | ||
| Peter Mansoor with us, a retired colonel, a professor, chair of military history at Ohio State University. | ||
| Colonel, there is a viewer who asked from Massachusetts, this is Julian, Massachusetts, what's the view of other Middle East countries regarding what's going on between Israel and Iran? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, they're on the sidelines, clearly. | |
| There's no love lost between a lot of the Arab countries in the Middle East and Iran, but they don't want to necessarily get involved in the conflict. | ||
| And I think they're biding their time, seeing how the conflict is going to shape up in the weeks to come. | ||
| The real important one here is Saudi Arabia. | ||
| Saudi Arabia is a leader in the Arab world. | ||
| It was at one point close to joining the Abraham Accords and establishing relations with Israel. | ||
| The attack of October 7th Eliminated that possibility, at least for the near term. | ||
| But we'll see where Saudi leaders take their nation going forward, vis-a-vis Israel and vis-a-vis Iran, because they had also established relationships with Iran in the previous couple of years. | ||
| Bob is next. | ||
| Bob in Sterling, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with the guest. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have two comments to make. | |
| I noticed the professor mentioned that we'll have to wait for the Israeli intelligence agencies to analyze the situation in regards to the intelligence on the Gaza and the attack on October 7th. | ||
| That's pretty funny to think that they can objectively evaluate their intelligence failures and then make it public. | ||
| I'm sure the professor knows that that's not going to happen, just as they're not going to investigate their war crimes that they've said they're going to investigate in Gaza. | ||
| That's the first point. | ||
| Second point is Bernie Sanders has introduced some legislation that could pull us back from the brink of another disastrous foreign policy decision should Donald Trump decide to attack full-on Iran, which would be a horrifically terrible thing to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A population of 95 million people bombed relentlessly, as we did in Iraq, and then an immigration crisis, a refugee crisis. | |
| We cannot afford this. | ||
| The focus needs to be on legislation to get a handle on Donald Trump's power and force the make it so that only the Congress can authorize any kind of invasion or attacks on Iran on any kind of full-scale level. | ||
| This has to be done. | ||
| It has to be talked about. | ||
| Instead of talking to people like Jake Tapper, who are selling books, we need to be talking about ways to prevent a disastrous foreign policy nightmare. | ||
| Bob and Virginia, we'll let our guests respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so there already is legislation in effect. | |
| It's called the War Powers Act. | ||
| It was passed in the wake of the Vietnam conflict when President Lyndon Johnson used the Tonkin Gulf resolution to get the United States involved in the Vietnam War, seemingly without congressional sanction, which, according to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war. | ||
| But in practice, the president has a wide sway when it comes to the use of military forces. | ||
| He is the commander-in-chief, and he can use forces for a variety of reasons that do not necessarily reach full-scale war. | ||
| And most of the conflicts the United States has fought, have fought in our 250 years of history have been fought without necessarily a declaration of war. | ||
| There's only been a handful of those. | ||
| The War Powers Act says that if the President uses military force within 60 days, he has to withdraw the forces unless he reports to Congress and Congress approves the actions. | ||
| And then he has another 30 days beyond that to actually withdraw forces from conflict. | ||
| I know this isn't the kind of legislation that would prevent him from acting in the first place. | ||
| And I'm sure that's what maybe Senator Sanders is working on. | ||
| But that's the legislation under which the president operates today. | ||
| Colonel, the president coming into office says he's the president that doesn't want to start any more wars. | ||
| He wants to stop wars. | ||
| In effect, does that box him in when it comes to future decisions that have to be made, such as Israel and Iran? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It does not. | |
| I mean, it's clear that he wanted to be a peacemaker. | ||
| He attempted to make peace in Ukraine. | ||
| That failed. | ||
| He attempted to negotiate with Iran. | ||
| Iran would not agree to give up its enrichment program, thus encouraging Israel to strike with or without U.S. sanction. | ||
| We clearly knew about it. | ||
| But, you know, President Trump, I take him at his word. | ||
| He wants to be a peacemaker. | ||
| He doesn't want forever wars in the Middle East or elsewhere. | ||
| But he hasn't been very successful to date at actually making good on that promise. | ||
| And that's because making peace is hard. | ||
| It's not easy to get other nations to walk back their red lines and agree to things that they might not necessarily want to agree to in order to actually achieve a lasting settlement to disagreements with other nations. | ||
| We have another viewer. | ||
| This is Michael in Virginia. | ||
| And what he asked about in terms of the Iranian allies, he says, doesn't Russia have a security pact with Iran? | ||
| And also adds, isn't a portion of the Iranian missiles produced in China? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Iranian missile program does have help from Russia and China. | |
| In terms of the relationship with Russia, the pact does not require Russia to come to Iranian aid should Iran be attacked. | ||
| So Russia right now has offered its good offices to stop the conflict. | ||
| Of course, it doesn't want to see its ally in the Middle East defeated. | ||
| But so far, no parties have taken Vladimir Putin up on that offer. | ||
| In terms of the missile program, Iran has a very robust capability on its own to produce the weapons. | ||
| Most of them are produced, or all of them, are produced in Iran, but it does get technical assistance from Russia and China. | ||
| This is Mark joining us in a discussion with retired Colonel Peter Mansoor with Ohio State University. | ||
| He's the chair in military history. | ||
| Mark in New York, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm a former Navy veteran. | |
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I was in the Navy. | ||
| I wanted to ask the Colonel: it seems like the Colonel is totally pushing towards Gaza, the problems in Gaza, without admitting that the Gazians elected Hamas to be the government, which is obviously affected from Arafat that started a PLO, if he remembers the PLO. | ||
| Arafat started out a terrorist leader. | ||
| So I don't understand why you keep sticking up for Gaza when the Israelites have been under siege for centuries. | ||
| Why do you keep supporting the poor people of Gaza when a lot of them are Palestinians' PLO supporters? | ||
| I don't understand this, Colonel. | ||
| Could you explain this to me? | ||
| Well, I'm not sure I opined on the Gaza conflict, but to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians would require Israel to give some sort of political sovereignty to the Palestinian people, which it's been unwilling to do to date. | ||
| And on the Palestinian side, they have to recognize the state of Israel and cease their attacks. | ||
| Right now, neither side has been willing to budge on that. | ||
| The caller is correct in that Hamas was democratically elected back in 2006. | ||
| But in 19 years since, there have been no other elections, and it's unclear whether it would have that kind of support today if another election were held. | ||
| So, yes, it was democratically elected, but it's remained in power by force. | ||
| And unfortunately, it's led the Palestinian people down a path to nothing but death and destruction. | ||
| And Israel is clearly not blameless, although it was attacked. | ||
| Its response has been disproportionate, with 55,000 Palestinians killed to date. | ||
| And this is a conflict that cries out for diplomacy and a quick end to the hostilities, which unfortunately doesn't appear to be in the making. | ||
| Let's hear from Doris in Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I'm listening with great interest to all these historians and military men and all that, but they've missed the mark on getting the right intelligence. | ||
| And it comes directly from a centuries-old document called the Bible. | ||
| All the things that are happening right now were described as being signs of the last days fade to Armageddon. | ||
| Satan has control of all these governments and military people. | ||
| We're at the end, and God's about to clean the house. | ||
| Do you know how many angels he's got at his disposal? | ||
| Show you how Armageddon is not going to last very long, but it's going to be very intense. | ||
| Write down the word myriad and then pluralize it with an S. | ||
| The Bible says he created myriads of myriads. | ||
| And even though one-third of them chose to follow Satan and his rebellion, there's still two-thirds of those millions of angels waiting right now for the one command that our Creator is going to give. | ||
| The word is enough. | ||
| Okay, Doris, there in Georgia. | ||
| Colonel, when you hear the Bible used as a reference point, discussions of the Middle East, what goes to your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's just a reminder that the region is a confluence of religions. | |
| You have the Jewish people, you have Christianity, of course, and you've got Islam all conflating there in a very small area. | ||
| And it is a justification in some camps for action and for violence, unfortunately. | ||
| I would think the Bible, at least the New Testament, argues for mercy and justice. | ||
| But we'll leave it at that. | ||
| Colonel, back to the issues when it comes to the use of National Guard and similar troops in California and otherwise, we've been telling our viewers about an oral argument that takes place later today that follows up on a series of legal judgments when it comes to the use of National Guard. | ||
| Where do the courts fit in when it comes to a president's use of National Guard and other military? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The courts have routinely sided with the president. | |
| They have given the president broad leeway in determining how to employ military forces. | ||
| And in terms of the president declaring an insurrection, they've also given him a broad leeway in doing that as well. | ||
| There was a case back in 1821 or so that Adjudicated this very topic. | ||
| And the president was, the Supreme Court said, the president, they defer to the president in determining what actually is an insurrection because the law is not very clear on this. | ||
| What we got in this case is the fact that the governor did not want federal involvement. | ||
| He did not want the National Guard to be federalized. | ||
| And so he's pushing back. | ||
| The National Guard has been federalized in the past against the governor's wishes. | ||
| But this happened usually in civil rights in the civil rights era when the president Eisenhower, in this case, federalized the Arkansas National Guard, moved them away from Little Rock, and then employed the 101st Airborne Division to allow the Little Rock 9 to enter a white high school. | ||
| And then again, President Kennedy federalized the National Guard for similar reasons. | ||
| So the National Guard has been federalized against the wishes of state governors in the past, but really never in the case of insurrection, other than the very large case of the Civil War, which was a whole different issue. | ||
| And viewers, there are oral arguments scheduled later for today out of the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. | ||
| If you're interested in hearing that as this progresses, three o'clock this afternoon is where you can see that on our main channel, C-SPAN, our app, C-SPANNow, and c-span.org. | ||
| Let's hear from Mark, Mark in New York, Democrats Lying. | ||
| Thanks for calling. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am curious if the professor could give us any history on how a leader of a country will sustain a war to prevent an election where they can stay into power. | |
| Like Netanyahu, once he's out of power, I'm sure he has some questions he has to answer to to his country. | ||
| And same as Donald Trump, once he's going to be out of power, it will be the same. | ||
| So I'm assuming he's going to try to create some chaos to avoid elections in the future. | ||
| What is the history in that scenario? | ||
| Well, the history is 2020 when Donald Trump inspired his followers to invade the Capitol and attempt to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden as president of the United States. | ||
| This has happened in other nations as well when elected leaders don't want to voluntarily give up power. | ||
| And unfortunately, we've seen it in the United States, something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. | ||
| I know there are different views of what happened in 2021, January 2021, actually. | ||
| But in my view, it was an insurrection against the United States. | ||
| And unfortunately, we don't have a unanimity of views in the United States on that issue, which I think is troubling going forward. | ||
| A lot of time served in the Army, Colonel. | ||
| I was wondering what your impressions were of the 250th anniversary parade that took place here in Washington. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I know a lot of people were skeptical of it. | |
| You know, the conflation with President Trump's birthday and parades in Pyongyang and Moscow that trumpet the power of the state. | ||
| But I really like this parade. | ||
| The United States only turns to or the United States Army only turns 250 years old once. | ||
| Without the Army, there would not have been a nation. | ||
| It was actually formed a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed. | ||
| And had it not done its duty, then we never would have achieved our independence from Great Britain. | ||
| So I think it was really, really proper to showcase the Army, including the vehicles and the troops marching down, many in period uniform from different conflicts in the nation's past. | ||
| And, you know, to show the difference between North Korean and Russian troops, I don't think you would have seen tank crew members in those nations waving and flashing the heart sign to the crowd as they rolled on by. | ||
| This was clearly America's army on display. | ||
| And I think it acquitted itself very, very well. | ||
| One more call. | ||
| This will be from Benny. | ||
| Benny's in California, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Benny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Carl, I would like to ask you, the president left the G7 conference and he told Iran to evacuate. | ||
| Does that mean he's intending to bomb Iran? | ||
| I'll take you farms. | ||
| Benny, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so this is the question. | |
| You know, he would not have left the conference early if, you know, I think he wouldn't have left it early if military action were not being planned. | ||
| Whether it will be executed is a whole different story. | ||
| This could be part of armed diplomacy, if you will, threatening Iran with an attack in order to get it back to the negotiating table. | ||
| But no one knows except the president and those around him. | ||
| And I think we'll see how this plays out in the days ahead. | ||
| But I think for sure they're putting the capabilities in place to strike. | ||
| And it just requires the president's word to launch the attacks. | ||
| Retired Colonel Peter Mansoor, Mansoor of the U.S. Army and Ohio State University. | ||
| Thanks for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me on. | |
| We'll finish the program with Open Forum. | ||
| And if you want to participate, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| And Independence, 202748-8002. | ||
| take those calls when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Lisa in Mississippi, Independent Line on this open forum. | ||
| Your first up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I was not able to get through when you had the colonel on, but I would like to ask what some of your callers may think or what you may think regarding the small window that is perceived by Israel and President Trump prior to midterms to address this issue with Iran directly in this four-dose site. | ||
| And I will hang up and listen to your question is that again, there's a small window before campaigning starts for the midterms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Will people start stiffening on their positions and nothing can get done? | |
| So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that. | ||
| Well, let me get your thoughts. | ||
| Do you think that will happen, what you just said? | ||
| I do believe it will happen because I know that the Israelis giving their intelligence, I believe that they have, even if those of us in our country have not figured this out, is that they have a very small window of opportunity with our Congress, | ||
|
unidentified
|
knowing that maybe the population will be 80% behind them, but the politicians will not be, particularly with the House that so many of them are in districts that are right on a knife's edge going over red or blue or purple or what. | |
| I just think it's going to be too difficult for them to bring enough congressmen over to their side to not create gridlock. | ||
| Lisa, there in Mississippi, let's hear from Brittany in Texas, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello. | ||
| I think the Democrats should learn the way that Republicans think and that Republicans should learn the way that Democrats think instead of making incorrect assumptions because they don't have a clue of what it is the other side truly sees. | ||
| I've come to realize that the way I see people naturally is the way a Democrat sees people. | ||
| Now other people naturally see people the way a Republican sees people. | ||
| And some people naturally see people the way a Democrat does. | ||
| And we can never forget about human rights. | ||
| Why do people attack democracy just like Jesus? | ||
| What's best for people is attacked very badly. | ||
| Some people have their heart positioned in a way that they don't even know that it's closed. | ||
| And the Trump administration acts like everything that Joe Biden administration did has the cooties. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| From Tom, Tom and Leesburg, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hearing the word cooties takes me back to when I was in junior. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I'm sorry, I had to laugh. | ||
| I haven't heard the word in a while. | ||
| Hey, a couple of things that I think the press needs to visit. | ||
| One is we've heard three stories since 7 o'clock last night as to why the president was leaving Canada early. | ||
| First, he was having Tom, you're fading out a little bit. | ||
| You're going to have to. | ||
| I don't know if you're where your signal strength is, but you're fading out a little bit. | ||
| Repeat a bit of your last statement, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I just find it seems like we've had three different messages from the president on why he was coming home early. | |
| You know, what's the big rush to leave the G7 meeting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't get it. | |
| And I just think that we're really going the wrong direction with Trump. | ||
| That's Tom there. | ||
| Chad Pergram covers Congress for Fox News. | ||
| He put out a posting on X that California Senator Alex Padilla expected to speak about 12:30 this afternoon on the Senate floor about that incident involving him last week at the press conference of the Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noam. | ||
| So you can watch out for that on the Senate side. | ||
| You can also watch out as the Senate starts work and continues work in hopes of passing the House version of the reconciliation bill. | ||
| A story from the Wall Street Journal sees possible changes coming due to the Senate's influence. | ||
| One of them dealing with those SALT taxes, as they're known, state and local taxes, saying the House's $40,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction was crucial to getting a handful of blue state Republicans on board. | ||
| They have threatened to kill the bill if the Senate lowers that number, but there are no Senate Republicans from high-tax states where this is a major issue. | ||
| And then on the topic of Medicaid, saying that the Senate text that was released more aggressively takes aim at increasingly popular Medicaid taxes that states impose on hospitals and other providers as a way to increase federal matching contributions. | ||
| The Senate text would effectively cap so-called provider taxes at 3.5% for states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, down from the current 6%. | ||
| More than 35 states have provider taxes that would have ratcheted down, according to the nonprofit health research organization, KFF. | ||
| There's more there about what the Senate text looks like when it compares to the House. | ||
| Then you can watch that play out in the Senate. | ||
| Our Senate coverage is C-SPAN 2. | ||
| And if you want to stay close to that, we cover the Senate on that channel. | ||
| The House gets covered on our main channel, C-SPAN. | ||
| As always, you can watch the events in and around Washington on our app at C-SPAN now. | ||
| This is Open Forum. | ||
| Cheryl is next in Maine, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello. | ||
| I think Jake Tapper and the CNN and network of cheerleaders that promoted his book should be ashamed of themselves for undermining one of the best presidents we've had. | ||
| The her interview lasted, I think, like six hours, and that was just uncalled for and more like an interrogation. | ||
| And Biden was sick during the debate. | ||
| When I have the flu, I can't perform basic functions. | ||
| Kamala Harris cleaned Trump's clock during the debate. | ||
| And, you know, there was no need for a book to come out like Jake Tapper's. | ||
| It was useless. | ||
| And that's my comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Cheryl there in Maine. | ||
| And again, you can see that interview that we had with Mr. Tapper, the findings of his book. | ||
| You can watch that again on the website and the .org or our app. | ||
| I'm sorry, C-SBAN now, if you wish to do that. | ||
| In North Carolina, Democrats line Lewis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Top of the morning to you guys. | ||
| I had. | ||
| I just heard Trump ask a question to have you call Governor Wals as of yet. | ||
| And he stated it's just disgusting. | ||
| He stated that he is a whack job. | ||
| He has no need. | ||
| Now, I looked at that. | ||
| They showed no compassion. | ||
| I saw no love. or humanity in his heart. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, this white guy kills two black people for no reason whatsoever because they're Democrats. | ||
| Why is it that you got white people up here always saying that Mexicans, Hispanics, is murderers and killers? | ||
| I haven't heard nobody on C-SPAN say that this white man was a murderer, a killer. | ||
| So y'all need to stop that and trying to blame people because your white people is evil, pure evil. | ||
| And you have a blessed day. | ||
| That's Lewis there in North Carolina. | ||
| Here's the Washington Post this morning more about Vance Bolter from that shooting last week. | ||
| This is the headline. | ||
| Shooting suspect was well traveled, had interest in Christian evangelism, saying that the suspect's online presence indicated he was well-traveled and connected to several religious groups. | ||
| He's listed on federal tax forms as the president of a Minnesota-based nonprofit called You Give Them Something to Eat, an apparent reference to the biblical episode in which Jesus feeds a large crowd with two fish and five loaves of bread. | ||
| The organization's tax forms report no income or spending. | ||
| Tax records also appear to show that the suspect and his wife once led a nonprofit known as Revo Formation Ministries. | ||
| An archived version of the website calls the suspect Reverend and says he was ordained in 1993. | ||
| It was yesterday at a press conference in Minnesota that the acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson described in details those events that led up to the murder of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband by Vance Bolter. | ||
| Here's a portion of that from yesterday. | ||
| At approximately 3.30 a.m., Belter arrived at Representative Hortman's house in his black SUV with the police license plates. | ||
| He parked in the driveway and left the emergency lights on his SUV flashing as if he was a police officer. | ||
| Belter approached Representative Hortman's home, again dressed as a police officer, wearing the tactical vest and body armor and wearing that hyper-realistic mask. | ||
| He was armed and carrying a flashlight. | ||
| Before he entered the home, two Brooklyn Park police officers arrived at the scene. | ||
| They too had been dispatched to check on Senator and Representative Hortman after learning of the shooting of Senator Hoffman. | ||
| When they arrived at the scene, they saw Belter's black SUV parked in the driveway with the emergency lights flashing, and they saw Belter standing in front of the house several feet from the door. | ||
| When Belter saw the officers get out of the car, he drew his weapon and began firing. | ||
| He rushed into the house through the front door, firing into it. | ||
| He repeatedly fired into the house. | ||
| And when he entered, he murdered Representative Hortman and her husband, Mark. | ||
| From our independent line, this is a caller from Ohio. | ||
| This is Carl. | ||
| Carl, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First, let me say you guys have a really great show, and you can get through pretty quick, and I appreciate you. | |
| My comment is on being an independent. | ||
| My wife and I are here in Southern Ohio, is on Israel. | ||
| I don't understand people not supporting the actions that's going on now. | ||
| Israel is actually doing the whole world's dirty work here. | ||
| If these people ever do get a bomb, they will use it. | ||
| They've proved that time and time again. | ||
| And to give people a quick history lesson, I mean, the way I view it, Israel and Japan during World War II, we became friends with Japan. | ||
| And look at all the trade and everything we do there now. | ||
| Who would ever thought that after them attacking Pearl Harbor? | ||
| It's not the people in Iran. | ||
| It's the molest, it's the regime and the fanaticism of Islam. | ||
| And yeah, Israel needs to take care of the last reactor. | ||
| This country should support them. | ||
| If they don't have the right material to do it, then we should give it to them. | ||
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| Clay is next, and Clay is from Wisconsin. | ||
| Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| C-SPAN needs closed captioning. | ||
| Let me just first say that. | ||
| I don't care your politics, but no man of faith would do what was done in Minnesota. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I don't care your politics at all. | |
| But I want to speak to the president. | ||
| His aspirations of peace throughout the world are being shown. | ||
| His priorities are in the right place, peace through strength. | ||
| And I'm thankful that he's in the Oval Office. | ||
| We now have a secure border. | ||
| We're addressing illegal immigration. | ||
| I believe most Republicans and most Americans believe we should enter through a door and not a window. | ||
| We need to know who's in our country because there's a lot of evil that is working, and it's being portrayed little by little. | ||
| And if we want to see what a moment in time, just remember 9-11, because that's the damage that can be done through just not addressing what's been entering in our country. | ||
| I want people to come to America. | ||
| Certainly my ancestry way back did. | ||
| But there's a right way and a wrong way. | ||
| And that's the simple definition. | ||
| I want legal immigration. | ||
| So I appreciate you taking my call very much. | ||
| And thank God for President Trump. | ||
| Clay from Wisconsin on this open forum. | ||
| Again, if you want to participate, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, which Clay just called in on, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Independence 202-748-8002. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| A viewer from Ohio. | ||
| This is James. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, a couple things. | |
| First of all, let me go to Benjamin Nanyahu. | ||
| I think a black American. | ||
| Okay, Carla, you're going to, yeah, why don't you move that phone? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| Okay. | ||
| I said black Americans, we feel that it is not the people of Israel, but Benjamin Netanyahu is a racist. | ||
| And that affects the way we feel about the war there from the black side. | ||
| I listen to everybody as they call in and as they support Israel. | ||
| But we feel that the Palestinians are treated just as the black people were treated here many, many years ago during the slavery times. | ||
| And those things are translated right there. | ||
| And one other thing, I think that Kamala Harris, I don't think she could win anyway. had nothing to do with her views. | ||
| They had to do with her being a woman for one and a black woman for two. | ||
| And I think that wiped her out as far as her beating Trump. | ||
| I think he would have beat any woman that would have ran because of the way the country is set up. | ||
| Okay, Ohio is next. | ||
| That's where Horace is Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm wondering about all these protesters and they turned rioters and burning tires and looting out stores and everything. | |
| It goes back to 2020 in Minneapolis when the protesters turned rioters and they started looting buildings and burning tires and everything. | ||
| And then somebody got a building going burn and it ended up burning half of Minneapolis down while the other half were looting stores and everything. | ||
| And I just wondered if the protesters now are going to turn that into Minneapolis. | ||
| They're burning tires, but they're still on the police cars. | ||
| And they're still raiding buildings and looting stores. | ||
| So I just wondered, is it going to turn LA into a burning city or what? | ||
| The Washington Times this morning takes a look at the work of the House Doge Subcommittee and the topic recent there is of Planned Parenthood saying the Oversight Committee on Delivering Government Efficiency launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood's use of federal funding, noting that the number of abortions provided by the organization has increased while other health care services decline and federal funding continues to rise. | ||
| Planned Parenthood has also become a major player in the gender affirming care business, but a live action investigation last month found affiliates of two states indicating the patients as young as 16 may obtain same-day hormones via telehelp without showing proof of mental health therapy. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Greene, the panel's chairwoman, said it was, quote, troubling that Plan Perrot was eagerly providing gender-affirming care to minors with minimal medical supervision, possibly with the backing of federal funds. | ||
| The Washington Times has that story. | ||
| Avery is up next. | ||
| Avery in Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have some notes, but I'll be brief. | |
| I want to talk about a problem with the welfare cuts. | ||
| There are people who have disabilities that do not get diagnosed. | ||
| Some of their symptoms are low energy and low stress tolerance, which we either do not have a test for or the test is not commonly given. | ||
| Other things, the test is inadequate, like low comprehension or low cognitive load capacity. | ||
| For instance, someone could have average IQ but not know how to earn the average income. | ||
| What is needed is to judge people by economic standards while they are in school and on standardized tests. | ||
| We need to document struggles from grade to grade and the workload in and out of school. | ||
| We need to diagnose the struggles and the reason for the low workload without using motivation as an explanation for people with no way to support themselves in the future. | ||
| We need better testing methods and which will require more research funding. | ||
| We need biological tests to show what people are experiencing. | ||
| And lastly, I want to talk about what's missing from the work requirements. | ||
| They do not force businesses to hire people kicked off welfare. | ||
| They do not pay people kicked off welfare the average wage. | ||
| They do not provide work assistance for people with undiagnosed disabilities. | ||
| And Republicans give away low-skilled jobs that people who are work talents are most likely to be able to do to foreigners. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| In Georgia as well, in Columbus, Georgia, Democrats line, we will hear from Joanne. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Joanne in Columbus, Georgia? | ||
| One more time. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I would like to say that when you look at America and you look at all the different rural areas, especially throughout the United States, that have closed down, closed business down, because individuals have moved out. | ||
| I would like to say that Joanna, are you there? | ||
| Okay, let's go to Rick. | ||
| Rick in Nashville, Tennessee, Republican line. | ||
| Rick, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I just have a little satire and see what people think about it. | ||
| Is that okay? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I look at the Democrats and the Republicans like restaurants. | ||
| So on one side of the street is the chicken little chicken sandwich store for Democrats. | ||
| And in line, all stick figures, of course, people are yelling up at the sky and rioting and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| On the other side of the street is the mega burger store, the best, biggest hamburger you can get. | ||
| Anyway, in that line of stick people, people are laughing, talking on their cell phones, talking to all types of issues. | ||
| Anyway, I thought I'd throw that out there and see what you thought. | ||
| Rick there in Tennessee. | ||
| Let's hear from Anthony. | ||
| Anthony joins us from Charlottesville, Virginia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Anthony, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I would like to make a comment about the national parade just happened on Saturday. | |
| We spent so many millions of dollars into that parade. | ||
| However, Doge has fired so many American citizens who have no other choice but to work in this country or had a had no other way of living but work for the federal government. | ||
| And we fired so many people to host a one-day parade for millions of dollars. | ||
| How many jobs could have been saved? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| By the way, that parade is still available at our website at cspand.org and our other platforms. | ||
| If you want to watch the parade from last Saturday, when it comes to the callers, reference to federal workers, I believe he was talking about it. | ||
| Was Representative Yvette Clark, a Democrat from New York, one of the many holding town halls while home. | ||
| And one of the questions that came up was about federal workers and their future under the Trump administration. | ||
| Here's that exchange from that town hall that took place yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our next question is about protecting federal employees, and that's from Toshima Daniels. | |
| This administration has created dangerous and false narratives surrounding the work federal employees do. | ||
| With the protesting that is now going on and illegally disregarded CBAs, how can we feel safe coming into the office to work? | ||
| We see CBAs. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Listen, none of us can be comfortable doing anything right about now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm being honest with you. | |
| I'm being honest with you. | ||
| You know, I'm listening to folks, and this is not normal. | ||
| So when you feel anxiety when you wake up in the morning, it's because we're not living in normal times. | ||
| Our civil society has been violently disrupted. | ||
| Violently disrupted. | ||
| And it's only been six months, folks. | ||
| I was sworn in in January just to put things in context for you. | ||
| So we're all disoriented. | ||
| And people of goodwill will feel anxious during this time. | ||
| But that anxiety needs to be regenerated into power. | ||
| We're going to need a lot of momentum going into these next couple of years to arrest this situation, to stop it in its tracks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's called the midterm elections, everyone. | |
| Here is Marion from Washington State, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My comment is that Democrat or Republican, it doesn't matter. | |
| People who get in there should do the job and do it right. | ||
| And they should respect the president no matter who he is. | ||
| He's the highest office of the land. | ||
| What are we teaching children? | ||
| When they act like a bunch of nuts. | ||
| I worked 38 years in the mental institution, and my patients had better behavior. | ||
| All that slamming each other and bringing up dirt. | ||
| And President Trump now is trying to do a good job. | ||
| Give their opinion, but show some respect. | ||
| Teach children what that Constitution's all about. | ||
| Okay, let's hear from David in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| He'll be the last call. | ||
| David, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| President Biden is really a casualty and a symptom of the root causes responsible for the destruction of the Democratic Party. | ||
| Senator Tom Harkin, who would have made an outstanding president, outstanding, told President Biden not to run the first time. | ||
| And President Biden wouldn't listen because there were a lot of pressures on him. | ||
| But the root of the destruction of the Democratic Party is that President Obama jumped the line ahead of Hillary Clinton. | ||
| And it wasn't President Obama's fault either. | ||
| It was the foolishness of the DNC in being unable to control their impulsiveness and their irrational exuberance over a rising star, which Obama is and always will be. | ||
| But Hillary needed to go first, then President Obama after. | ||
| And we've never stopped suffering the results of that. | ||
| And I thank you very much for respecting. | ||
| A couple of things to watch out for on the networks today. | ||
| At 10.30 this morning, I hearing taking a look at the estimated military budget as officials from each bank testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, 10.30. | ||
| We'll be the start time on C-SPAN, C-SPANNOW, and c-SPAN.org. | ||
| 1 o'clock this afternoon, a discussion on the Trump administration's threat to freedom of speech. | ||
| That will feature former CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta and former Senator Doug Jones as they talk about that topic. | ||
| That's hosted by the Center for American Progress. | ||
| 1 o'clock on the various platforms there. | ||
| And then last year it was reported that 23 Chinese swimmers went unpunished after testing positive for a banned substance in 2021. | ||
| Later today, former Olympic swimmer Katie McLaughlin and others will testify of the effectiveness of the World Anti-Doping Agency. | ||
| That will be before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee. | ||
| You can see that on C-SPAN 3, as well as the app and the.org. | ||
| That's it for our program today. | ||
| Another edition of Washington Journal comes your way tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. | ||
| We'll see you then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Coming up here on C-SPAN, at 1030 Eastern, military officials are expected to testify before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the 2026 budget request for military construction and family housing. | |
| And then a discussion on free speech under the Trump administration. | ||
| That's set to begin at 1 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| After that, we'll take you to the State Department where spokesperson Tammy Bruce will speak to reporters about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. | ||
| And then at 3 p.m. Eastern, a federal court will hear oral argument on California Governor Gavin Newsom's challenge to President Trump's deployment of the National Guard to the state in response to the immigration protests. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2 today, the Senate is considering a series of President Trump's executive nominations and legislation aiming to create a federal framework to regulate the payment stablecoin cryptocurrency market. | ||
| On C-SPAN 3, this morning at 10.30 Eastern, Senate Judiciary Committee members will hold a hearing on transnational scam networks targeting older Americans. | ||
| Then at 2.30 p.m. Eastern, the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency will testify on enforcement efforts ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. | ||
| All live events and more are also available on our website, cspan.org, and our free mobile app, cspan.org. | ||
| This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue. | ||
| And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
| I love C-SPAN too. | ||
| That's why I'm here today. | ||
| Answer questions all day, every day. | ||
| Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | |
| I love this show. | ||
| This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about. | ||
| American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thank C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable, because it does bring people together, where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them. | |
| In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| In a town where partisan fighting prevails. | ||
| One table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. |