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giving you a front row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then National Interest Editor-at-Large Steve Clemens discusses the Israel-Iran conflict, the upcoming NATO summit, and political news of the day. | ||
| And National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yoon discusses the state of the nation's housing market. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. | ||
| That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today. | ||
| President Trump is giving diplomacy a chance. | ||
| The White House announcing yesterday, Iran now has two weeks to reach a diplomatic deal on its nuclear program or face a military strike from the United States. | ||
| Your reaction this morning to the latest from President Trump on Iran. | ||
| Here is how you can join the conversation. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text us, include your first name, city and state, to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Or post on Facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
| Your reaction to President Trump now saying Iran has two weeks before he will decide to go, as you just heard from the White House press secretary. | ||
| Washington Post front page headline this morning, Trump dials back war talk, sees more time for diplomacy. | ||
| Take a look at what the president has said over the past week on Iran, and it ends with the White House statement yesterday. | ||
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What have you heard? | |
| What have you heard from the Iranians? | ||
| They'd like to talk, but they should have done that before. | ||
| I had 60 days and they had 60 days. | ||
| And on the 61st day, I said, we don't have a deal. | ||
| They have to make a deal. | ||
| And it's painful for both parties, but I'd say Iran is not winning this war. | ||
| And they should talk, and they should talk immediately before it's too late. | ||
| 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 weapon. | ||
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What was the thinking on the call for Tehran to evacuate? | |
| Is there a threat or is there an incoming evacuation? | ||
| I want people to be safe. | ||
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What specifically is better than a ceasefire? | |
| What are you looking for here? | ||
| to have a hostile country have a nuclear weapon that could destroy 25 miles but much more than that could destroy other nations just by the breeze blowing the dust You know, that dust blows to other nations and they get decimated. | ||
| This is just not a threat you can have. | ||
| And we've been threatened by Iran for many years. | ||
| You know, if you go back and look at my history, if you go back 15 years, I was saying we cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. | ||
| I've been saying it for a long time. | ||
| I mean it more now than I ever meant to. | ||
| I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven't made a final. | ||
| I like to make the final decision one second before it's due, you know, because things change. | ||
| I mean, especially with war. | ||
| Things change with war. | ||
| It can go from one extreme to the other. | ||
| War is very bad. | ||
| I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved. | ||
| In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president. | ||
| And I quote: Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. | ||
| That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today. | ||
| The president, over the week on Iran, we're getting your reaction this morning to the White House announcing yesterday that he has now decided to give Iran an additional two weeks to come to the table and make a deal on their nuclear program. | ||
| Take a look at recent polls on this issue. | ||
| This is from Axios' reporting. | ||
| They've gathered the two polls. | ||
| Americans largely disapprove of U.S. involvement in Israel and Iran. | ||
| From an Economist YouGov poll, 60% of the 1,512 polled Americans think the U.S. military should not get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. | ||
| Only 16% support U.S. military action. | ||
| 24% are unsure. | ||
| That largely holds up across party lines, with 65% of Democrats, 61% of Independents, and 53% of Republicans opposing U.S. military intervention in Iran. | ||
| About as many people see Iran's nuclear program as a threat as those who oppose military intervention in the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| 61% of Americans view Iran's nuclear program as either an immediate and serious or somewhat serious threat to the United States. | ||
| Similarly, most Americans think the U.S. should engage in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. | ||
| That's true across 58% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans. | ||
| In a second poll of 1,008 adults released Thursday by the Washington Post, 7 in 10 Americans believe Iran's nuclear program poses an immediate and serious or somewhat serious threat to the United States. | ||
| Where do all of you fall? | ||
| How would you answer these poll questions? | ||
| And what do you think the president should do? | ||
| Do you agree with his decision to give Iran another two weeks? | ||
| Right now, happening in Geneva, European leaders are meeting with Iranian officials to come up with some sort of diplomatic solution. | ||
| This is NPR's headline. | ||
| That is happening right now in Geneva. | ||
| There are not U.S. officials there. | ||
| Let's get to calls. | ||
| JJ in Hollister, California, Republican, you are up first. | ||
| What do you think about the announcement from the White House yesterday? | ||
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I think that's the right decision. | |
| Wait two weeks and see if they want to come to the table. | ||
| If they don't want to come to the table, we all know that Iran is behind all those attacks with the Houthis, the Hamas, and all them. | ||
| They're the head of the snake. | ||
| So in two weeks, if they don't come to the table, that we should go ahead. | ||
| And the reason why is this. | ||
| At this moment, we have air superiority. | ||
| The second thing to consider is that Iran has the money to carry out whatever they need. | ||
| But I think that they don't have the intelligence to build an atom bomb because they don't, if they don't have, if they have the money, why didn't they use the money to stop our missile attack on them? | ||
| Not ours, but other people, Israel's attack on them. | ||
| So I think they don't have the intelligence to build a thing, but at the end, they're going to attack and they want to do away with America. | ||
| All right, so JJ, you're in support of a military action by the United States after these two weeks. | ||
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Correct. | |
| Were you in support of that yesterday? | ||
| Were you in support of military action yesterday if the president had decided it was a go? | ||
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Yes, because this is the only opportunity. | |
| We all know that they're behind all these attacks on America or China and depth to America. | ||
| That's their chance. | ||
| Now's the time to do it. | ||
| Otherwise, they will just carry on and carry on because they won't stop. | ||
| All right. | ||
| JJ there in California, a Republican with his opinion on this. | ||
| Front page of the New York Times this morning, after 46 years, a regime is backed into a corner. | ||
| The New York Times by Roger Cohen reports that Israel has killed at least 11 of the regime's top generals and several nuclear scientists, bombed oil and energy facilities, taken complete control of Iranian airspace, and sent tens of thousands of people into flight from Tehran. | ||
| At least 224 people had been killed across Iran as of Sunday, a majority of them civilians. | ||
| That is the situation on the ground, according to the New York Times reporting this morning. | ||
| Robert in Greenville, Texas Independent. | ||
| Robert, what do you say to the president here? | ||
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Well, I'm not going to go by the polls or anything like that. | |
| I think, you know, whatever the Democrats, Republicans say and everything, they've kind of abdicated their duty to the president. | ||
| You know, we have a constitutional provision that only Congress can declare war. | ||
| I think the president's getting way out ahead of his skis here. | ||
| He needs to make the case before Congress before he takes any action. | ||
| So this threat of, you know, premature strikes or United States doing a preemptive before declaring war, I think the American people ought to be dead set against it. | ||
| Robert, have you called your member of Congress to say that they need to sign on to a resolution? | ||
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I have tried so many times to call my senators and my congressmen. | |
| You know, politicians, they're really not responsive to their constituents anymore, which is a real shame. | ||
| They kind of buckle to the lobbyists and they buckle to Trump. | ||
| And, you know, I'm kind of a lifelong Republican up until about eight, ten years ago. | ||
| And I got to tell you, you know, it's not just the Republicans, it's the Democrats. | ||
| It's a whole lot. | ||
| Nobody wants to take responsibility like the good old days when people actually sat down and they hashed out the issues. | ||
| And, you know, even if they could only come up with 75% of what they were, you know, looking for, they took the things that they both could agree on and they, you know, they discussed it. | ||
| They got it done. | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| Well, let's go back up to Capitol. | ||
| Let's go up to Capitol Hill on Tuesday because Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, offered a resolution that would require congressional approval for any military action in Iran. | ||
| There is a similar resolution in the House. | ||
| This is the argument he made on the Senate floor. | ||
| And I told myself when I came to the Senate that if I ever had the chance to stop this nation from getting into an unnecessary war, I would do everything I could to stop us from getting into an unnecessary war. | ||
| I happen to believe that the United States engaging in a war against Iran, a third war in the Middle East since 2001, would be a catastrophic blunder for this country. | ||
| I think there are some in this body who have a different point of view than me on that point, but I think we should all be able to agree that the fundamental constitutional principle that says we shouldn't be in a war if Congress doesn't have the guts to debate it and vote on it, | ||
| we should all, having taken an oath to the Constitution, at least support the principle that war is something that should be for Congress to declare. | ||
| Mr. President, just recently, right before I walked to the floor, the New York Times published this article, and I'm just going to read this to demonstrate the imminence of the threat that this country faces. | ||
| The article New York Times dated today, Iran is preparing missiles for possible retaliatory strikes on U.S. bases, officials say. | ||
| And I'll just read the first few paragraphs. | ||
| Iran has prepared missiles and other military equipment for strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East should the United States join Israel's war against the country, according to American officials who have reviewed intelligence reports. | ||
| Fears of a wider war are growing among American officials as Israel presses the White House to intervene in its conflict with Iran. | ||
| If the United States joins the Israeli campaign and strikes Fordo, a key Iranian nuclear facility, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia will almost certainly resume striking ships in the Red Sea, the officials said. | ||
| They added that pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria would probably try to attack U.S. bases there. | ||
| Other officials said in the inventive attack, Iran would begin to mine the Straits of Hormuz, attacking Mentipen American warships in the Persian Gulf. | ||
| Commanders put American troops on high alert at military bases throughout the region, including in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. | ||
| The United States has more than 40,000 troops deployed in the Middle East. | ||
| Senator Tim Kaine on Tuesday on the floor talking about his resolution that would require the president to seek congressional approval for any military action in Iran. | ||
| CNN reporting earlier this morning, it has no co-sponsors. | ||
| This morning, the president, yesterday, the president said from the White House Press Secretary's podium that he is now giving Iran two more weeks to come to a nuclear deal. | ||
| That is our conversation with you this morning. | ||
| We want to hear from you. | ||
| Terrell in Owing Mills, Maryland, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Terrell. | ||
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Hey, look, Rex Tillerson, back in Donald Trump's first administration, told Donald Trump, Mr. Trump, do not get out of this deal, okay? | |
| Hey, look, I don't know why they don't bring Mr. Rex Tillerson up on your show or anybody else's show and ask him, because we're not going to get anything from Donald Trump. | ||
| He's giving us two weeks. | ||
| He's too weak. | ||
| He's a too weak daddy. | ||
| So we're not going to get anything from him because I think people are afraid to ask Donald Trump. | ||
| Donald Trump, what do you want to do? | ||
| We all knew what he wants to, he wants to, he wanted to kill Obama's Iran deal because B.B. Netanyahu wanted to kill the deal, and that's what Donald Trump wanted to do. | ||
| So intentionally, it was all about trying to kill Obama's accomplishments. | ||
| That's what it was all about. | ||
| But now he has to make a decision, huh? | ||
| I've talked to experts on your show and asked those experts, is this Iran deal a good deal? | ||
| And you know what they told me? | ||
| Go ahead, we're listening. | ||
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Oh, they told me that this was to get two out of three of the experts that was on your show told me that this was a good deal. | |
| So I don't know. | ||
| And plus, on top of that, Iran has told Donald Trump numerous of time that we're not going to talk to you because he does not honor his word. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And he don't. | ||
| And this is, and Iran told him this back in when he first got out the deal. | ||
| As a matter of fact, they told him that the other day when he said, when he got on TV and lied and said that they were going to be talking that Sunday or whatever. | ||
| And Iran said that was not true. | ||
| Why does Donald Trump keep on? | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I'm going to leave it there. | ||
| And on talks, as we said, right now happening in Geneva, European leaders are meeting with Iranian leaders to talk about a way forward, a diplomatic path. | ||
| From the Washington Post reporting, Caroline Levitt declined to say whether any plans are underway for Iranians to visit the White House, a possibility Trump speculated about Wednesday. | ||
| For now, the next step in the diplomatic process will be this meeting today in Geneva between foreign ministers from the UK, France, and Germany and the European Union and Iranian foreign minister and the Iranian foreign minister. | ||
| The meeting is being coordinated with Washington according to four officials familiar with their planning. | ||
| British Foreign Secretary David Lamy was scheduled to meet with Witkoff and Secretary of State Marko Rubio on Thursday in Washington before going to Geneva for those talks. | ||
| The Europeans are seeking to de-escalate this conflict that had spiraled since Israel launched military strikes against Iran a week ago. | ||
| Friday's talks are expected to try to persuade Tehran to give guarantees that its nuclear activities would be restricted only for civilian purposes. | ||
| The president has made a total surrender of Iran's enrichment capability, his central demand. | ||
| Tehran has previously rejected that idea, insisting that under international treaties, it has the right to enrich nuclear fuel for civilian use. | ||
| We're getting your reaction to the White House saying now Iran has two more weeks to strike a deal. | ||
| Ed in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, independent. | ||
| Let's hear from you, Ed. | ||
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Yeah, good morning. | |
| Who is assisting the Palestinians right now over in the Middle East? | ||
| There's only one country, and that's Iran. | ||
| I'd like to remind people that in March, I think it was March of this year, where Netanyahu, who, by the way, happens to be from Poland, he addressed the U.S. Congress, and he got, I think, 55, 56, 57 standing ovations. | ||
| This impending attack on Iran is really all about regime change. | ||
| Western imperialism, the settler colonial state of Israel, is really about dominating the Middle East. | ||
| It's about the balkanization of the Middle East. | ||
| It's about Western control of the resources in the Middle East. | ||
| And I would advise people to go back about 107 years to the Balfour Declaration, where Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, decided it was appropriate to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. | ||
| But he specifically said not at the expense of the people who live there. | ||
| But that was just a ruse. | ||
| All right, Ed, hang on the line because I want to read this for you and others and have you react. | ||
| This is the Washington Post. | ||
| The U.S. helped oust Iran's government in 1953. | ||
| Here's what happened: the U.S. has not publicly called for regime change in the current conflict, but over 70 years ago, it played a key role in ousting Tehran's government, although the historical circumstances were very different. | ||
| This was when, against the backdrop of the Cold War and Britain's frustration over its lost access to oil, the CIA coordinated a clandestine operation in 1953 with the British that toppled the country's democratically elected prime minister. | ||
| Ed? | ||
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I'm saying that the Western states are all going broke. | |
| It's pretty obvious. | ||
| The British, the Western Europeans, the United States, were going broke. | ||
| So, what do you do in that case? | ||
| You start robbing from other countries. | ||
| We've been doing that for a long time. | ||
| Remember, the United States, we're a settler colonial country, and we killed off the Indians, the people and the occupiers, the settler colonials over in Palestine, they're killing off the indigenous people. | ||
| This is not about the Iranians, don't have nuclear weapons. | ||
| The IAEA has just released that. | ||
| People start thinking, turn the TV off and start reading. | ||
| All right, Ed there in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Another story to share with you: a front page of the Wall Street Journal: Iran's allied militias choose to lie low in the Israel conflict. | ||
| Lebanon's Hezbollah, once seen as the most powerful, Iran's access of resistance, hasn't fired a single missile since Israel attacked Iran. | ||
| Its military capabilities and leadership have been decimated by Israeli forces during the past year. | ||
| Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is a shadow of itself after 20 months of war with Israel that has been seen its leaders killed and Gaza destroyed. | ||
| In Iraq, Iranian-backed Shiite militias haven't targeted U.S. military bases as they have in the past. | ||
| And Yemen's Houthi militia fired several missiles at Israel on Sunday, but have remained silent since. | ||
| We'll go to Israel in Crystal River, Florida, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| What do you think about the White House decision to give Iran two more weeks? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, hi. | |
| I'm calling because there's a lot of things going on, a lot of peace is moving. | ||
| And there's this troublesome movement going on, which we're talking about the war in Iran and Israel, which is all prophetic things that are going on and how the United States is involved. | ||
| But there's also World War III here that we're not talking about how the extermination of immigrants, extermination of laws, the dome, a lot of stuff. | ||
| And instead of people inviting the things of God, a revival, a true revival, and Pentecost. | ||
| So we can free this nation from World War III here because this land needs healing. | ||
| All right, Caller. | ||
| So do you think that this, the Iran conflict, the Israel-Iran conflict, is a distraction then? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, this is all a distraction because when it's all said and done, all our focus is all on natural things of war and things of that nature. | |
| But there's no emphasis on the world healing, bringing the Holy Spirit into the world. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Tony, San Antonio, Democratic caller, you're next. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Israel, I mean, Israel, they kicked a sleeping dog. | ||
| Israel is the biggest problem we have in that part of the world. | ||
| They have been a problem for the last nineteen since the 80s. | ||
| Let me see. | ||
| Right now, what's happening over there is they committed genocide in Palestine. | ||
| Now they're trying to take away the oil out of Iran. | ||
| That's what it's about, the money. | ||
| It's about the money. | ||
| And I'm concerned with here in the nation here because what Trump is doing with his deportation, he's going to create a guerrilla warfare around him because he's really making people mad. | ||
| He's making a lot of people mad because, I mean, he's treating people like they did in Palestine, like the Jews were treated in 1939. | ||
| That's what he's doing. | ||
| Exactly the same thing. | ||
| All right, Tony in San Antonio with his thoughts this morning. | ||
| More from the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| Israelis are shooting down missiles before they launch. | ||
| These are the number of ballistic missiles that Iran has fired at Israel. | ||
| Starting with Saturday, you can see the number at 200. | ||
| You can see how they've declined over time. | ||
| On Sunday, about half that amount. | ||
| And then on Monday, even less. | ||
| And Tuesday, even less than 50. | ||
| There's also this from the Wall Street Journal this morning about Israel on track to spend billions on war. | ||
| The high cost puts pressure on leaders to quickly wrap up this conflict with Tehran. | ||
| Billions spent by Israel is the headline in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Ed in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Ed. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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A little history. | |
| We negotiated with Japan. | ||
| They bombed us while we were negotiating with them. | ||
| We negotiated with Hitler. | ||
| He invaded Poland the very next day. | ||
| When you negotiate with people, you set up the time. | ||
| It's do your business and get off the pot or else. | ||
| Everybody cusses Israel. | ||
| All you got to remember is what Iran and all these places say: Israel does not have the right to exist. | ||
| You'll have to make up your mind whether they have the right to exist. | ||
| Thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| Crystal in West Palm Beach, Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
| Crystal, what do you say? | ||
| What is your reaction to the president's latest from the White House on Iran? | ||
|
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I believe that the two weeks is just a ruse. | |
| It's part of a diplomatic process, obviously, that Israel has been undermining from the very beginning for years now. | ||
| It seems that with the Geneva conference going on right now, Israel as the main player, they're not attending. | ||
| And they're not being dragged. | ||
| Why are they not being dragged in to participate in the negotiations? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because they're not interested in negotiating. | ||
| They're leading the effort to dominate the region. | ||
| And I think that people need to remember that Israel is still using missiles to bomb the hungry people as they gather to try to get food in Gaza. | ||
| All right, Crystal, there in West Palm Beach, Florida. | ||
| Some breaking news from you in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Israel kills another scientist in Tehran. | ||
| Israel carried out the targeted killing of a scientist in Tehran. | ||
| Today, using a drone, the scientist who specialized in weaponry was being kept in a hidden hiding spot outside of his home. | ||
| The scientist is at least the 10th expert related to Iran's nuclear weapons programs to have been killed by Israel since the start of the current conflict with Iran. | ||
| Let's go back to the White House yesterday. | ||
| During the briefing, Caroline Levitt was asked by reporters about President Trump's decision-making over the next two weeks. | ||
| Here's what she had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
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Just to clarify the president's statement just now, when he says that he'll make a decision in the next two weeks, is he saying that if Iran does not come back to the negotiating table within the next two weeks, that the president will strike? | |
| The president is saying that he will make a decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. | ||
| It's very clear and direct. | ||
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unidentified
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And is he seeing any signs of progress? | |
| He obviously is holding out hope for negotiations, but is he seeing any inklings of progress that give him that hope that talks are still possible? | ||
| Well, that's why he said in the statement that I just read for all of you, based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, he will make that decision within the next two weeks. | ||
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unidentified
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What makes him think there's still a substantial chance is my question. | |
| I'm not going to get into the reasoning and the rationale. | ||
| The president believes that, but that's his position, and he will make a decision within the next two weeks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks, Caroline. | |
| President Trump has said previously in regard to Russia, he's used this phrase about two weeks several times in terms of like we expect like a two-week deadline and then you give another two-week deadline. | ||
| How can we be sure that he's going to stick to this one on making a decision on Iran? | ||
| Well, in those deadlines, as you've seen in respect to Russia-Ukraine, might I add, these are two very different, complicated global conflicts, as you know, that the president inherited from our previous incompetent president in the weakness of the previous administration. | ||
| And the president has spent a tremendous amount of time and effort cleaning up these crises that were caused by the last administration's just complete dereliction of duty on the world stage and American weakness. | ||
| Now we have American strength again. | ||
| With respect to Russia and Ukraine, because of that American strength and the president's leadership, we have seen these two sides engage in direct negotiations. | ||
| And the last time the president said two weeks, you saw Russia and Ukraine have direct negotiations for the first time in years. | ||
| And so the president is always interested in a diplomatic solution to the problems and the global conflicts in this world. | ||
| Again, he is a peacemaker in chief. | ||
| He is the peace through strength president. | ||
| And so if there's a chance for diplomacy, the president's always going to grab it. | ||
| But he's not afraid to use strength as well, I will add. | ||
| Francesca. | ||
| Thanks, Caroline. | ||
|
unidentified
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What exactly would a deal with Iran need to entail? | |
| No enrichment of a uranium, and it would absolutely not, Iran is absolutely not able to achieve a nuclear weapon. | ||
| The president has been very clear about that. | ||
| The White House press secretary Caroline Levitt with what the president wants to see in any sort of deal happening right now in Geneva. | ||
| European leaders are meeting with Iranian officials to try to de-escalate the situation between Israel and Iran. | ||
| Your reaction to the latest from the White House on this situation. | ||
| Kenny in Staten Island, New York, a Republican. | ||
| Do you think it was a good decision for the President to give Iran two more weeks? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, no. | |
| It's just a ploy. | ||
| The whole thing is a ploy. | ||
| And this is what I'm saying. | ||
| Where's the declaration of war? | ||
| Number one, people are losing sight of the overreach of this president in many, many areas. | ||
| But here is a critical area that people are just overlooking and just not even questioning. | ||
| Number one, where's the declaration of war? | ||
| Refresh. | ||
| Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution required even a resolution to start war. | ||
| To bomb another country is an act of war. | ||
| To join Israel in that offensive, which is an offensive action. | ||
| It wasn't, they attacked first. | ||
| They weren't attacked. | ||
| So we have an obligation to be a defensive obligation to Israel. | ||
| We do not have an oscillative obligation. | ||
| Netanyahu's been trying to have America attack Iran for over 12 years already. | ||
| It's well documented. | ||
| America's problem is they have political amnesia. | ||
| They've forgotten when Obama was president when we had the Iran nuclear deal where we allowed inspectors to inspect any site in Iran within 24 hours. | ||
| Safeguards and everything. | ||
| Netanyahu, under the invitation of our party, I am a Kensinger trading republic and not a MAGA. | ||
| There's a difference. | ||
| Went before the joint session Congress to advocate for us to attack Iran and came up with the same pictures and documents and arguments. | ||
| Iran is six months away from a nuclear bomb and all of a sudden Netanyahu joins America. | ||
| America is threatened. | ||
| Well, I have to point out that Iran, Israel, and that whole area is a regional conflict, not ours. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Kenny, I'm going to leave it at that point. | ||
| Thank you very much for your calling in this morning. | ||
| For those of you that have called in on the Iran-Israel conflict, continue to hang on the line. | ||
| We're just going to take a short break and when we come back, we're going to go into open forum. | ||
| You can talk about this conflict, but other public policy debates as well. | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to SRES 259. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The clerk will report. | |
| Senate Resolution 259, recognizing June 2nd, 2025, as the 39th anniversary of C-SPAN chronicling democracy in the Senate. | ||
| By a unanimous vote, the United States Senate passed a resolution honoring C-SPAN's four decades covering the Senate. | ||
| The resolution thanked cable and satellite operators for providing C-SPAN as a public service to the country. | ||
| C-SPAN does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars, is funded primarily from satellite and cable providers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And called on all television providers, including streaming services, to deliver C-SPAN as well. | |
| We're at a different stage in our history, and a lot of people are seeing their news this way, so we need to expand it and make sure we're on all of those platforms, as well as the ones we already are on. | ||
| So thank you again to Senator Grassley for working with me to highlight C-SPAN's critical role. | ||
| And thanks to everyone who has had a hand in C-SPAN's success. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| We are back in open forum here for the next 30 minutes. | ||
| Lots of news to share with you this morning. | ||
| You can continue talking about the Israel-Iran conflict as well as other public policy debates happening here in Washington and around the country. | ||
| Let's start with the Washington Post headline on that lawsuit triggered by California Governor Gavin Newsom against the president for deploying the National Guard. | ||
| An appeals court ruling yesterday, the president can keep the National Guard in Los Angeles for now from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. | ||
| That was their ruling. | ||
| The president's reaction on Truth Social yesterday, he had a lengthy statement saying it was a big win in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the president's core power to call on the National Guard. | ||
| The judges obviously realize that Gavin Newsom is incompetent and ill-prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin because all over the United States, if our cities and our people need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should state and local police be unable for whatever reason to get the job done. | ||
| This is a great decision for our country, and we will continue to protect and defend law-abiding Americans. | ||
| Now, look at Gavin Newsom's post on X. | ||
| This morning at around 12:20 a.m. | ||
| Donald Trump is not a king and not above the law. | ||
| Tonight, the court rightly rejected Trump's claim that he can do whatever he wants with the National Guard and not have to explain himself to a court. | ||
| We will not let this authoritarian use of military soldiers against citizens, he writes on his post in X. | ||
| So more to come possibly if the California governor decides to appeal this decision by the Ninth Circuit Court. | ||
| That is on the table for discussion here in open forum along with other public policy debates as well. | ||
| Carl in Chicago, Democratic caller. | ||
| Carl, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how are you doing this morning, Greta? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Well, we see that President Tonko is at it again. | ||
| Two weeks. | ||
| We've heard all of that before. | ||
| What are you waiting for? | ||
| It's this. | ||
| He talks all this talk without a clue. | ||
| He doesn't dispose it out of his ear. | ||
| And basically, he's just hoping that, oh, something that happened on somebody can help fix a problem that he created, and then he'll take the credit for it. | ||
| This is typical of Tonko. | ||
| That's all he's doing. | ||
| And as far as like, I have been supportive of Israel, but you know what? | ||
| I can't support when you're wrong. | ||
| Preemptive attack is not a defense. | ||
| That is just like the Japanese. | ||
| We didn't say that, well, they were justified in preemptively attacking us at Pearl Harbor. | ||
| And America, we've got to stop looking at these only from our point of view. | ||
| I mean, right now, many of us only amnesting things as right makes right. | ||
| Well, right doesn't make right all the time. | ||
| All right, Carl. | ||
| Carl, with his thoughts in Chicago. | ||
| Michael in Gambrols, Maryland, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Michael. | |
| Yeah, hi. | ||
| How's it going? | ||
| Thank you very much for having me. | ||
| Morning, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I want to make a few points. | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I've been holding on since the last segment, which was about Donald Trump, or, you know, America attacking Iran. | ||
| And I don't think that that's a good idea. | ||
| And I'm going to say, you know, right off the bat, I don't trust Israel. | ||
| They, you know, they lie. | ||
| They've been trying to coax us into a war to go and fight their battles for them for years. | ||
| And fighting Iran, you know, especially after what we did in 1979 to the Ayatollah, that just isn't right. | ||
| Of course, they have a right to hate us, but the second we attack them, where are we going to have? | ||
| A bunch of refugees from Iran flooding America and Europe? | ||
| I mean, that's not, you know, that's not a good plan. | ||
| And Israel will be happy to do that. | ||
| Michael, did you vote for President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I did. | |
| I did vote for President Trump. | ||
| I mean, obviously, I didn't vote for a war in Iran, but all of our presidents, all of our leaders, they're subservient to Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And, you know, it's kind of clear with the money that they take from AIPAC. | |
| And, you know, that's just the situation our country's in. | ||
| And we need to break those chains of subservience to Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I don't understand why our leaders. | |
| Sorry. | ||
| Yeah, can I ask you another question? | ||
| Wondering about Steve Bannon's remarks earlier this week where he said the MA movement will support Trump if he decides to strike Iran. | ||
| Would you agree? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I personally won't. | |
| I would consider myself a Make America Great American, but I would not support that. | ||
| I don't support any kind of move against that. | ||
| They say that because they want to, you know, Steve Bannon might also be, you know, I don't know if the Zionist is the right term for it, but he's opposed to a conflict. | ||
| He's opposed to it. | ||
| He's saying, though, that he's opposed to it. | ||
| There are many people in the Make America Great movement who are opposed to it, but ultimately he says he thinks they will get behind the president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I wouldn't support the president on that, on that front. | |
| And there's a lot of hawks inside of the American Republican Party that want a war with everybody, especially when it comes to Israel. | ||
| Everybody feels like they're beholden to Israel because they think that Israel is somehow written in the Bible that we need to protect them at all costs. | ||
| But those people aren't God's chosen people. | ||
| Christians are God's chosen people. | ||
| That's how I think that it actually goes. | ||
| So that's my take on it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| What do you mean by chosen people? | ||
| Why is one, well, we won't find out. | ||
| This is, we're in open forum, and I want to share another headline with you this morning. | ||
| This is from the Washington Post. | ||
| A poll found that GOP budget bill, this is the one big beautiful bill, as the president calls it, the GOP tax and spending cuts bill, faces nearly two to one opposition, with many voters unaware. | ||
| They said that overall, 42% of Americans oppose the budget bill, changing tax and spending and Medicaid policies compared with 23% who support the bill and 34% who say they have no opinion. | ||
| Support for the bill is higher among Republicans, with 49% voicing support compared with 13% who oppose and 38% who say they have no opinion. | ||
| Democrats strongly oppose the bill with about three-quarters of them against it. | ||
| And Independents oppose it 40% to 17%, while 4 in 10 have no opinion. | ||
| Here's a question, one of the questions that they ask. | ||
| Do you support or oppose the budget bill changing tax spending and Medicaid policies? | ||
| There are the numbers on your screen. | ||
| The House has passed its version. | ||
| The Senate has just released its version of this so-called one big beautiful bill with changes that they made to the House version. | ||
| Here are some of those changes according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| It would make more permanent business tax breaks, deeper cuts to Medicaid than what the House did, slower phase-outs for clean energy tax credits, lower the cap on the state and local tax deduction. | ||
| Those are the changes, higher and permanent child tax credit as well, and higher debt ceiling increase of $5 trillion, up from $4 trillion in the House bill. | ||
| The Senate is preparing to take up these changes on the Senate floor next week. | ||
| Polling shows it's not popular on Medicaid and the debt and other proposals in it. | ||
| Now, there are some proposals that are popular with the American people. | ||
| At the White House yesterday, Press Secretary Caroline Lovitt was asked about the deeper cuts to Medicaid proposed in the Senate version. | ||
| Here's what she had to say. | ||
| Medicaid Carolina Senate put forward Medicaid provisions, particularly a lower cap on state provider taxes that hospitals have said would lead to mass closures, particularly in rural communities. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is the president willing to sign a bill that includes those provisions that Republican senators like Josh Hawley say will lead to hospital closures? | |
| Out of respect for the ongoing discussions that the White House is very much actively involved in with our friends in the United States Senate, I won't comment on that specific provision. | ||
| Look, the bill hasn't been sent to the president's desk yet. | ||
| There's more room for change. | ||
| The president, for one, I will reiterate, has been very clear on his priorities with respect to Medicaid. | ||
| He wants to see waste, fraud, and abuse ridden from the system to protect it for taxpaying citizens who deserve those much-needed benefits. | ||
| He wants to prioritize the sick, the needy, the poor in this country who deserve those benefits, not the 1.4 million illegal aliens who are receiving them. | ||
| And he wants to make sure this one Big Beautiful bill kicks those illegal aliens off of this program to preserve it and protect it and strengthen it for the American people. | ||
| And the President has been very clear in that message to his friends in the Senate. | ||
| The White House yesterday on Medicaid changes in the reconciliation bill, also called the Big Beautiful Bill by the President, Punch Bowl News yesterday with internal party polling. | ||
| They reported that the DCCC pulled the popularity of a bill that cuts food stamps, Medicaid, and tax credits for clean energy while increasing border security, extending the 2017 tax cuts, and temporarily eliminating taxes on tips and overtime. | ||
| This internal survey reported here for the first time had 61% of respondents opposing the bill while 39% support it. | ||
| Those numbers got even worse after Democrats branded the bill as a devastating scheme that takes health care and food away from everyday Americans while giving huge tax breaks to billionaire donors. | ||
| After hearing that Democratic framing, 66% opposed the bill while 34% support it. | ||
| Now, trying for a turnaround. | ||
| The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee are practically begging their rank and file to go out and sell the popular provisions of the BBB package. | ||
| A recent poll of competitive seats showed that removing undocumented immigrants from Medicaid polled at 82 percent. | ||
| Taking dead people off Medicaid rolls polled at 86 percent. | ||
| And the Republicans' new Medicaid work requirements polls at 72 percent. | ||
| The so-called big beautiful bill also on the table for your uh for comment this morning here in open forum, Paul and Plymouth, Connecticut Independent. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the question remains: the $23 billion that we gave Israel over the last year, does that make us complicit in war? | |
| If we fund and then we turn around and the government and the Trump administration lies to the American people and say that and tells them we're not in the war just because we don't have boots on the ground. | ||
| The split in the GOP is evident. | ||
| They can't go on ruling under contradiction. | ||
| And the contradiction is that they are in war with Israel. | ||
| They were complicit in the genocide. | ||
| They did refuse to get aid into the Gazans. | ||
| They failed in many ways. | ||
| They are failing us by not telling us the risks. | ||
| And what are the biggest risks in bombing Iran? | ||
| It's not on moral grounds, but it is the curtailment of that bombing is based on the price at the pump here. | ||
| Trump is more concerned about cheaper fuel than he is the moral basis for killing and propping up Israel once again. | ||
| We are going to. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Paul's comments there in Connecticut on the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| And the Washington Post says several U.S. bases could attack Iran and be targets. | ||
| So that caller talking about risks to the United States, there are military risks pointed out here in the Washington Post. | ||
| Elbert in Hollandale, Florida, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you. | |
| I wanted to go back to the gentleman that said that Israel was like, Christians were like God's people and Israel was this or that. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And so, yeah, I think the element of that like what he was referring to was a Christian American evangelistic group, and they believe in a doctrine that was established during the Enlightenment period, about 1830s. | ||
| And it isn't a mainstream concept in Christianity because it's not a founding basis of Christianity. | ||
| But what it is, is it's the same concept that some of the Jewish people hold that refer to Zionism or Messianic Jews. | ||
| So when you put guys like Ted Cruz in the mix that believes in this, you put a couple of the Israeli ministers that believe in the Jewish version of this, and then you put in all the main base of maybe MAGA is probably full of these people. | ||
| And they have this, I was raised in this, so I understand this. | ||
| And so people believe that Israel's going to have like a God. | ||
| God is going to be there. | ||
| And it's this concept that came into existence because what the founder of this belief did was they took, and a lot of people recognize this if they think about it. | ||
| Being raised up in the church myself, when you open the Bible, in the middle, there was a study guide that explained what the scriptures you're reading if you were studying it. | ||
| And what it did was it embedded this doctrinal idea of how to interpret the scriptures. | ||
| And this didn't exist for 1800 years or better in the Christian church. | ||
| And so what we have today is a group of Christians that have spent most of their time thinking about the end times and Jesus coming. | ||
| And I believe Jesus will come the minute you take your last breath. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Elvin, I have to jump in because we have other people waiting to participate in open forum. | ||
| Also, a discussion point for Open Forum, the politics section of the Washington Times, the president's reaction to the Fed's decision to keep interest rates steady, unchanged. | ||
| This week, Trump calls Powell dumb, and destructive after the Fed decision. | ||
| Judith in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Judith, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'd like to talk about what's going on in Israel. | |
| It breaks my heart. | ||
| I mean, I listen to some of the people that come on the show, and it sounds like they really have a disdain for Israel. | ||
| Now, people don't remember what happened on December 7th, October 7th. | ||
| I mean, that's what their 9-11 is. | ||
| They're defending themselves. | ||
| And the gentleman that said about we're like, because we're giving money to Israel, we're funding a war. | ||
| We also gave money to Ukraine to help with their war. | ||
| So there's no, I just see, I hear a lot of hatred, a lot of hatred towards Israel. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's very disturbing to me. | ||
| It's disturbing. | ||
| Maybe people should read more about what happened during the Holocaust. | ||
| And they talk about Nazis. | ||
| They call President Trump a Nazi. | ||
| He's not a Nazi. | ||
| Look what Hitler, you know, they use that comparison so easily with such ease, and they don't realize what Nazis did, how they treated the Jews. | ||
| Do you agree with what Israel is doing in Gaza? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the IDF tries to reserve hitting targets where there's innocent people. | |
| I mean, that's their motto. | ||
| I think they have a right to defend themselves, and Hamas is embedded in Gaza. | ||
| They use their people as human shields. | ||
| So how do you expect them to defend themselves? | ||
| They were given that land because they couldn't settle anywhere else. | ||
| I just don't understand people. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| It's heartbreaking. | ||
| It's absolutely heartbreaking. | ||
| Even in America, when you see death to Israel, I mean, come on. | ||
| I mean, people forget, or they have selective memory. | ||
| I think it's the selective memory. | ||
| And the president is trying to find peace. | ||
| This has been, the Middle East is very complicated. | ||
| And I hear all these people, you know, the Bible, this, the Bible, that. | ||
| It's very complicated. | ||
| So if it takes them two weeks more, if we have a good outcome, what's the big deal? | ||
| You can't. | ||
| All right, Judith, heard your point. | ||
| We'll go on to David in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| David, in open forum, what do you want to talk about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I want to talk about the Israeli-Iranian situation and to some extent the Gazan situation. | ||
| Okay, I belong to Jewish Voice for Peace, and I'm a member. | ||
| I'm not a spokesman for the group, but I'm a member. | ||
| And what I like about, they reflect my views. | ||
| I'm not anti-Semitic. | ||
| I have Jewish people in my family, but the JVP does not support Zionism. | ||
| Now, Zionism is being carried out by the right-wing government of Israel, and it's basically a colonial, a colonial policy toward the Palestinians. | ||
| And I think I could help maybe that South Carolina want to understand a few things if we quickly review history. | ||
| Now, as most Americans know, the Holocaust was a terrible, the most horrible example of inhumanity demand that I know in history. | ||
| And it was 1945. | ||
| It came to an end. | ||
| And as most people know, that was carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators, not the Palestinians. | ||
| Now, in 1948, after the refugee crisis from World War II and the Holocaust, you had the Nakba. | ||
| And I just found out about the Nakba not long ago. | ||
| The Nakba is the Arabic word for Holocaust. | ||
| And that was what the Palestinians described when they got kicked off their land. | ||
| There were 750,000 people that were evicted from the land. | ||
| And that was their Holocaust. | ||
| So people forget about that. | ||
| That was jointly inhabited. | ||
| And the shame of it is in the old days, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslims would live in peace. | ||
| So hopefully we could return to that someday. | ||
| But the answer is not to bomb Palestinians with the women and children trying to feed their families. | ||
| And we have to also remember that Benjamin Netanyahu, before the October 7th attacks by Hamas, he was under indictment. | ||
| So he has a vested interest, sadly, political interest, to keep everything going. | ||
| I don't believe that he and his government want peace. | ||
| So the Netanyahu government does not speak for the Jewish people. | ||
| So there's many JVP people that stood in solidarity with the Palestinians for Palestinian rights. | ||
| We believe in Israel's right to exist, but we don't believe that the Palestinians have any less of a right to exist as well. | ||
| All right, David. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll leave it at that point. | ||
| An update for you from the New York Times on the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| The Iranian president in a post on X gave no indications that he was prepared to stop the conflict with Israel, writing, We have always sought peace and tranquility, but in the current circumstances, the only way to end the imposed war is to unconditionally stop the enemy's aggression and to definitively guarantee the end of the adventures of the Zionist terrorists forever. | ||
| Otherwise, our responses to the enemy will be harsher and more regrettable. | ||
| That from the Iranian president on X. David in Auburn, New York, Republican. | ||
| David, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| A lot of thoughts here. | ||
| I'll just kind of make this as brief as I can. | ||
| The world is full of bad actors, Iran being one of them. | ||
| We know that one thing they all understand, and that is strength. | ||
| The weakness of the last administration has brought us to where we are today. | ||
| This is the latest offer by President Trump. | ||
| I'll give you two weeks to think about it. | ||
| You know, you think about it, and then we'll see check and raise or whatever you want to do. | ||
| But you have hard choices right now. | ||
| These are desperate times, in case people don't realize that. | ||
| You don't have a lot of choices. | ||
| So I think the strength that we are showing now may be the only answer until somebody comes negotiations with liars like Iran or Russia or China. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That doesn't work. | |
| They understand one thing only, strength. | ||
| We are showing strength now, and I think that's, we'll see how it plays out. | ||
| And this is a good strategy. | ||
| Give them two weeks to think about it, and let's see what next card they're going to play. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Chris in Portage, Michigan, independent caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Hi, thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First, I mean, it seems like there's a lot of stuff that is kind of prophecy that's going on. | |
| And geez, I can't even think of it. | ||
| Jerusalem. | ||
| And then there's just so much going on in the world everywhere, especially in the United States with our Congress and everything. | ||
| You know, all this started with Obamacare. | ||
| It messed up all of our health care. | ||
| It's never been fixed. | ||
| Now Trump's doing stuff with Palantir, and they're spying on all the Americans. | ||
| I mean, and that's in his new bill. | ||
| And I can't think of the congressman that was talking about it, but the Democrats sitting in there, they look like they're bought and paid for. | ||
| They don't answer questions, everything that's asked for. | ||
| And the Republicans have done it too. | ||
| But this stuff needs to come to an end. | ||
| If they're not going to answer questions, they need to be taken out of Congress. | ||
| It's just ridiculous, you know. | ||
| They sold the border wall. | ||
| There's chemtrails going all over the world. | ||
| And we know there's bad stuff in it, and they're doing nothing about it. | ||
| Our food's messed up. | ||
| They're not feeding the people in Palestine. | ||
| I mean, these things are horrible. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| We'll go to Omar in Los Angeles, Democratic caller. | ||
| Omar, open forum. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| Well, what I'm saying is retaliation toward my vote and all this disrespect, calling my elected officials stupid, ignorant. | ||
| That's not right. | ||
| You know, my mother taught me don't respect, don't disrespect people. | ||
| Treat them like you want to be treated. | ||
| And he's trying to retaliate against the election with troops, which is what he said he was going to do, but it's not right. | ||
| And as far as the Bible, I believe the Bible's a living thing. | ||
| It's living and breathing. | ||
| And if it tells the future, it's still here. | ||
| And I don't think with all the privacy, like the last gentleman was saying, with Notadamus and other people that have said things that relate to our future, | ||
| if we disrespect that and don't have a feeling of respect toward our elected officials, you know, he's retaliating against the election and saying, my vote doesn't count. | ||
| I want my vote to count, and I got faith in these people. | ||
| All right, Omar. | ||
| We are going to take a short break. | ||
| And later on in the program, we're going to take a look at the nation's housing market and prices with Lawrence Yoon. | ||
| He's the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. | ||
| But first, after this break, Steve Clemens, editor-at-large at the National Interest, joins us to discuss the latest in the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| conversation continues after this short break. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent that the committee on the judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to SRES 259. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The clerk will report. | |
| Senate Resolution 259, recognizing June 2nd, 2025, as the 39th anniversary of C-SPAN chronicling democracy in the Senate. | ||
| By a unanimous vote, the United States Senate passed a resolution honoring C-SPAN's four decades covering the Senate. | ||
| The resolution thanked cable and satellite operators for providing C-SPAN as a public service to the country. | ||
| C-SPAN does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars. | ||
| It's funded primarily from satellite and cable providers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And called on all television providers, including streaming services, to deliver C-SPAN as well. | |
| We're at a different stage in our history, and a lot of people are seeing their news this way. | ||
| So we need to expand it and make sure we're on all of those platforms, as well as the ones we already are on. | ||
| So thank you again to Senator Grassley for working with me to highlight C-SPAN's critical role. | ||
| And thanks to everyone who has had a hand in C-SPAN's success. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, at 3.15 p.m. Eastern, Professors Douglas Irwin, Sharon Ann Murphy, and Eric Rauschway discuss how the federal government historically has implemented tariffs and how they've impacted domestic and global economies. | ||
| And then at 4.15 p.m. Eastern, Edward Dalnick, author of Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, talks about the early 19th century paleontologists who discovered fossils and huge bones and coined the term dinosaur. | ||
| And this Juneteenth weekend at 5.45 p.m. Eastern, we'll focus on African American history with a discussion of the history of Juneteenth with Linda Sally, executive director of the African American Museum of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Also, the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture celebrates its founding 100 years ago in 1925. | ||
| And Martha Blanding tells a story of how she broke a color barrier at California's Disneyland, becoming the park's first black tour guide in 1971. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule in your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Back at our table this morning, Steve Clemens, he's the editor-at-large at the National Interest here to talk about the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| Let's begin with this breaking news. | ||
| New York Times is reporting that the Iranian president on X posted these comments. | ||
| We have always sought peace and tranquility, but in the current circumstances, the only way to end the imposed war is to unconditionally stop the enemy's aggression and to definitively guarantee the end of the adventures of the Zionist terrorists forever. | ||
| Otherwise, our responses to the enemy will be harsher and more regrettable, New York Times saying, giving no indication that they are prepared to stop the conflict with Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's a lot of use of the word unconditional by all parties, by President Trump, by the leaders in Iran. | |
| And right now we have a real mess. | ||
| We have a situation in which Iran was clearly not just in the peace game. | ||
| Iran was basically building its centrifuge capacity, its refinement capacity of nuclear materials and the potential to create a nuclear bomb, even though the U.S. intelligence community, it's very important, said that they believe that Iran had not moved towards a bomb. | ||
| The dimensions of it in many ways, the capacity was there. | ||
| And we saw this same potential conflict in the crosshairs when President Obama was in office. | ||
| And that was one of the reasons why the joint, the JCPOA, the Joint Committee for Plan of Action, I forget exactly what the initials were. | ||
| It's become JCPOA. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, JCPOA. | |
| Their joint comprehensive plan of action was initiated because President Obama came out and said, we have a choice essentially between negotiating a deal that will restrain and keep Iran from a nuclear weapons course, or we will have conflict. | ||
| And I think that JCPOA got written up, you know, torn up. | ||
| President Trump has come in and tried to renegotiate a separate deal. | ||
| And by all accounts, I think we were pretty close, but maybe not fully. | ||
| And in that, the moment there was a sense of failure or stall, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, you know, took action and began to bomb those nuclear facilities because I think in some ways Israel would not have been satisfied with any deal between Iran. | ||
| So we have a real situation and this is the kind of hot conflict that many have been warning against for decades. | ||
| How consequential is the president's decision here? | ||
| He has now said Iran has two more weeks. | ||
| How consequential is this decision for his presidency? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it's defining for his presidency. | |
| In the next two weeks, if he's lucky and if we're all lucky, and if the pressure of Israel's attacks have indeed mattered and created any wobbliness on the Iran side, And we do see European negotiators and even Steve Witcoff, the president's negotiator, connecting with the Iranians, if this opens up the possibility of creating a new diplomatic track, then this will have been a moment that worked and that came together. | ||
| If it doesn't, and the president engages directly, dropping a major bunker buster bomb on the Fordo nuclear facility, engaging U.S. military forces directly against Iran, it opens up the potential for a cataclysm of the sort. | ||
| Iran's 92 million people. | ||
| It is a major, major force in the world. | ||
| And of course, we have had horrible experiences with Iran where we tried to engage in the conditions of what appeared to be regime change. | ||
| And we have to admit, the Republican Party right now, which is in control, is divided over that. | ||
| Some want regime change. | ||
| John Bolton, not a great fan of President Trump, but nonetheless very much a fan of the direction that the Prime Minister of Israel is going and that President Trump himself may be going. | ||
| President Trump has been actually pretty much implicitly threatening Supreme Leader Khomeini, saying, hey, we know where you are and we can basically take you out whenever we want. | ||
| That's a huge statement from the President of the United States. | ||
| But there are a lot of others. | ||
| And we've seen a lot of attention to Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, and her own concerns about a kind of war machine. | ||
| But beyond her, Steve Bannon, many other voices around Tucker Carlson particularly, but many other, even side the administration, a real reticence of not wanting to trigger something that will get us back into a set of new forever wars. | ||
| And that is what really led to President Trump's victory in many senses is that he was telling Americans they matter more than these other wars and conflicts abroad. | ||
| So if there is a flip and President Trump has opened up that possibility, it could be dangerous for him politically and very complicated for the United States from a national security perspective for a very long time. | ||
| Let's listen to the president over this past week and what he has said Iran, starting on Iran, starting with Monday, ending with the White House statement from the podium yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
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What have you heard? | |
| What have you heard from the Iranians? | ||
| They'd like to talk, but they should have done that before. | ||
| I had 60 days and they had 60 days and on the 61st day I said, we don't have a deal. | ||
| They have to make a deal. | ||
| And it's painful for both parties, but I'd say Iran is not winning this war. | ||
| And they should talk and they should talk immediately before it's too late. | ||
| Remember, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| It's very simple. | ||
| We don't have to go too deep into it. | ||
| They just can't have a nuclear weapon. | ||
|
unidentified
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What was the thinking on the call for Tehran to evacuate? | |
| Is there a threat or is there an incoming evacuation? | ||
| I want people to be safe. | ||
|
unidentified
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What specifically is better than a ceasefire? | |
| What are you looking for here? | ||
| To have a hostile country have a nuclear weapon that could destroy 25 miles, but much more than that, could destroy other nations just by the breeze blowing the dust. | ||
| You know, that dust blows to other nations and they get decimated. | ||
| This is just not a threat you can have. | ||
| And we've been threatened by Iran for many years. | ||
| You know, if you go back and look at my history, if you go back 15 years, I was saying we cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. | ||
| I've been saying it for a long time. | ||
| I mean it more now than I ever meant to. | ||
| I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven't made a final. | ||
| like to make the final decision one second before it's due, you know, because things change. | ||
| I mean, especially with war. | ||
| Things change with war. | ||
| It can go from one extreme to the other. | ||
| War is war is very bad. | ||
| I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved. | ||
| In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. | ||
| That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today. | ||
| Steve Clemens, what we didn't show there was what he had said on Truth Social throughout the week as well. | ||
| What do you make of those comments and throughout the week where they land now at the White House, which is, okay, we're giving them two more weeks? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it shows that there is no consensus yet on which direction to go with Iran. | |
| And we have to remember a little bit of the history, is President Trump very publicly chided and tried to distance himself from any actions that Israel would unilaterally take on Iran. | ||
| He didn't stop them, but he says he did not want them to take that course, that it was not good. | ||
| And then after the strikes had happened, Donald Trump was basically owning it and almost acting as if he had ordered this action. | ||
| That was a very, very big change, whiplash for many of his own supporters. | ||
| His political base is going, what just happened? | ||
| Steve Bannon is screaming. | ||
| And so when you kind of look at that change, now the president very clearly is in alignment with Israel, in alignment with Prime Minister Netanyahu about what's going on and now beginning to look at, okay, what leverage does that give him with these negotiations? | ||
| Remember that the breakdown, you know, the negotiations broke down over reprocessing. | ||
| The president wants zero reprocessing. | ||
| The Iranians said they will not give that up, that that's a sovereign state right. | ||
| Now they may end up negotiating degrees of that. | ||
| And near the end of the negotiation process, near the end of those 60 days, it had appeared that the White House had signed off on a limited reprocessing arrangement with Iran that somehow came undone. | ||
| And that led to these circumstances where we have now, Israel in a surprise attack did a very effective job. | ||
| And we also have to admit, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been on a bit of a roll from blowing up pagers in Hezbollah, from knocking out major leaders and assassinating leaders of Hamas inside Iran. | ||
| And again, just like we just saw recently with what Ukraine did inside Russia with embedded drones inside, you know, really highly successful intelligence operation, Israel was able to penetrate Iran in much the same way, basically embed capacity and military capacity inside Iran, which must make the Iranian leadership shaking in their boots over this. | ||
| And what is Israel's capacity to move forward or not? | ||
| And so in this situation, when you listen to President Trump on those videos, he sounds just like Joe Biden. | ||
| He sounds just like Barack Obama. | ||
| They're saying the same thing. | ||
| They don't want Iran to have a nuclear bomb. | ||
| And I can go back to President George W. Bush, who said the same thing. | ||
| But what is as true about President George W. Bush's then director of national intelligence as it is with Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump's Director of National Intelligence, all have said that they have no, and they've got much more classified information than we do, saying we have not seen Iran yet take the steps to move towards a bomb. | ||
| So the president in this case is actualizing and sort of metaphorically talking about a bomb in a much more concrete way that Iran might have than some of his predecessors. | ||
| What do you make of European leaders meeting right now in Geneva with Iranian officials? | ||
| There is no U.S. presence and no Israeli presence at these talks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Look, I think Europe is at a crossroads on major global events on whether it's going to weigh in and matter or not. | |
| Is it going to be able to create a, you know, pull a rabbit out of the hat with the Iranians and to try to get them to accept some form of deal that might be in line with what President Trump wanted? | ||
| Or is this a kabuki act showing that they're talking, but yet, you know, Israel will continue with its campaign. | ||
| Donald Trump may end up supporting that campaign and dropping a 30,000-pound bomb or a series of bombs on the Ford nuclear facility, which Macron and others don't want to see happen because they see once that happens, that the close relationship between the transatlantic relationship, even though it's stressed, it will put Europe in the crosshairs for what Iran is good at. | ||
| Iran turns to be good at asymmetric warfare. | ||
| Iran may not, you know, they're raining missiles down on Israel right now and they're creating damage, but it's terror damage. | ||
| Iran is good at terrorism. | ||
| And that is, I think, the fear. | ||
| Iran is not going to be able to survive a full frontal assault of military. | ||
| It can shut down oil pathways. | ||
| It can shut down the energy markets in many ways or create huge damage. | ||
| But it's also good at penetrating societies and looking at this. | ||
| And I'll mention one thing, Thomas Wright, who was in President Biden's National Security Council, has an article that just came out today in the Atlantic that looks at America's own vulnerability to the kind of intelligence and drone attacks that Israel just deployed against Iran, that the Ukrainians just deployed against Russia. | ||
| That kind of thing could happen in the United States because we have much more porous borders. | ||
| It's a very sobering article that I would recommend to people. | ||
| We'll go to calls. | ||
| Joseph is up first in Silver Spring, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| You're talking to Steve Clemens. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Morning. | |
| I want to point out that a lot of I see politicians and media pundits mentioned that Iran has been the center of terrorism since 1979, but they never mentioned the fact that the United States and Great Britain were involved in the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran that wanted to nationalize the oil industry and installed the Shah, | ||
| inflicting pain and misery on the Iranian people for 26 years until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. | ||
| And since then, the Iranians don't seem to have made it clear they will never again accept the Western powers standing with their foot on the Iranians' neck, forcing them to do whatever they are told to do. | ||
| They are seeking independence on their own, and I appreciate that. | ||
| I mean, the United States is a country that did the same thing, that threw off the foreigners who ran the country or ran the country at the time. | ||
| Now, the United States wants, it's not the first time that the United States has imposed its will on other countries, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba. | ||
| And it goes on, the list goes on and on. | ||
| All right, Joseph, let me jump in and let's take your point about what happened in the 50s. | ||
|
unidentified
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1953. | |
| Yep, go ahead. | ||
| Take it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, 1953, 72 years ago, Kermit Roosevelt, then the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, led a CIA effort to undermine and create a popular revolt against Mohamed Mossedegh was the leader. | |
| I talk about it all the time, in fact. | ||
| And it was, in fact, a very big shock to Iran's sovereignty. | ||
| It helped drive and create conditions that led in part when we helped support the Shah come in. | ||
| There was a lot of unbelievable ill will and toxicity that was in people's minds about that. | ||
| I would say that there are other as important, if not more important, moments in Iranian history that show their resolve less about Mossadegh, but more about their war with Iraq, the gassing of their people. | ||
| Basically, Iran sees itself as a great empire of thousands of years that isn't going to be pushed one way or another, and they seem to be willing to sustain significant economic and human costs for their security. | ||
| That doesn't make them right. | ||
| It does mean that they are a formidable opponent and a formidable player in these discussions, whether it be it with Israel or President Trump. | ||
| And what I mentioned when we started this conversation was how quickly each side is jumping to extremist positions, whether it's Trump wanting Iran's unconditional surrender or whether it's the Iranian president demanding an unconditional end to what's going on. | ||
| Both sides are trying to pump themselves up as having all the cards and trying to speed up this process. | ||
| What's probably not going to happen is this is probably not going to be a process that is resolved quickly. | ||
| Leo Sands in the New York Times, the U.S., or excuse me, Washington Post, the U.S. helped oust Iran's government in 1953. | ||
| Here's what happened. | ||
| And he writes this, quoting an Iranian official, said the coup, the 1953 coup, remains a, quote, a touchstone of modern Iranian nationalism. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I think that is true, and I think that many still remember it, even though it is a lifetime away for many people. | |
| That intervention in Iranian leadership created the conditions in a way that both resented foreign intervention in the country, but it also created the conditions for the rise of an Islamic autocracy that had come in, because they did have, in fact, a democratically elected leader who was not the head, who was not an Islamic leader of that sort. | ||
| And I think like Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini is today, or the Ayatollah Khomeini was. | ||
| So in that particular case, you had a very different form of government. | ||
| People look back and lament the loss of that moment, what the costs were, not because of just of U.S. and also British intervention, I should say, but it was also the issue that now would have created a conditions is where the Iranian people themselves are essentially victims of their own government. | ||
| We'll go to Billy in Claremont, California, Independent. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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You doing? | |
| Morning, Billy. | ||
| Question or comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is my question. | |
| Why can't blame be placed where it really needs to be blamed? | ||
| And what I mean by that is blamed on Israel's leader, Netanyahu. | ||
| He is the problem. | ||
| This guy should never have been in any leadership position. | ||
| He's a thug and he's a killer. | ||
| So we need to remove this guy. | ||
| This guy is going to be responsible for America entering World War III. | ||
| Take my word for it. | ||
| So look, I'm not a politician, but I'm a guy who is sent from the heavens of God. | ||
| And I'm letting you know what I'm saying is true. | ||
| This is nothing more than a smokescreen for America and the colonial white man to go into the Middle East and steal all the oil and control all of the natural resources of Iran. | ||
| Iran is innocent. | ||
| All right, Billy, we'll pick up on your point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So in this case, it is interesting. | |
| I am not a great fan of Prime Minister Netanyahu. | ||
| I find his pugnaciousness in global affairs is something that is changing speedily. | ||
| But let's give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. | ||
| When you look at Israeli security and you look at the threats, Iran's and Iran's leadership has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the map, when you look at various attacks that they've had in the past and the concern that an ongoing advancing nuclear program represents a potential existential threat to Israel. | ||
| Even though, and we need to put on the table, Israel itself is a regional nuclear superpower. | ||
| It's not discussed. | ||
| You know, it's classified, but there have been government officials that have, in fact, acknowledged Israel's nuclear weapons. | ||
| So Israel has an incredible deterrence capability in its own nuclear weapons. | ||
| But that said, say what you will, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been succeeding in removing and neutralizing many of the major threats in the region to it. | ||
| His actions with Hezbollah and with Hamas, and also U.S. intervention with the Houthis, have created conditions that have rolled back many of Iran's proxy forces. | ||
| And you also had assassinations of leaders inside Iran. | ||
| So the impression of Iran's power in the world are that it is much, much weaker than it has been. | ||
| It has been much more compliant. | ||
| The strikes back and forth between Israel and Iran in the past, I would call them polite strikes. | ||
| They were not designed to create massive damage or terror, and both sides were able to quickly get on with the relationship. | ||
| We are not in that situation now. | ||
| Both sides are trying to deeply harm each other. | ||
| We've had leading military leaders and nuclear scientists killed in the Israeli strikes. | ||
| And we've had hospitals bombed and hit by Iran inside Israel and others, also in addition to military targets. | ||
| So this is now a campaign where both sides are trying to inflict trauma, fear, damage, and to create a sense in the public of real vulnerability that both sides have. | ||
| So that situation is one. | ||
| Now, is, to the caller's point, is Bibi Netanyahu trying to create a strategic choice for the United States? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| People know that the United States and Israel are tied together. | ||
| Donald Trump tried to put a distance between that. | ||
| You have to remember, Donald Trump's first real internet, besides the Pope's funeral, was to the Middle East. | ||
| He went to the UAE, to Qatar, to Saudi Arabia, and skipped going to Israel. | ||
| And many people were very critical of that. | ||
| How could you go to the Middle East without Israel? | ||
| Donald Trump was trying to basically decompart, you know, compartmentalize America's relationship with the region. | ||
| And to a certain degree, this action by Netanyahu, which originally Donald Trump did not want to own, has rejoined America deeply into the hip of Israel's actions in the region. | ||
| And by Netanyahu doing something that the President of the United States asked him not to do publicly, maybe privately, it was something else, but other presidents keeping Israel from doing this, it is creating a strategic vector for the United States that it may be hard for the U.S. to extract itself from. | ||
| Front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iran's allied militias choose to lie low in the Israel conflict. | ||
| They point out Lebanon's Hezbollah, one seen as the most powerful in Iran's access of resistance, hasn't fired a single missile since Israel attacked Iran. | ||
| Its military capabilities and leadership have been decimated by Israeli forces during the past year. | ||
| Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is a shadow of itself after 20 months of war. | ||
| In Iraq, the Iranian-backed Shiite militias haven't targeted U.S. military bases as they have in the past. | ||
| And Yemen's Houthi militia fired several missiles at Israel on Sunday, but have remained silent since. | ||
|
unidentified
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So the axis of resistance, as they call themselves, has become kind of, you know, gone to sleep. | |
| I mean, this was a coalition of the willing, you know, supported by Iran to essentially fight and keep pressure on Israel from different corners. | ||
| They've been decimated. | ||
| They've been hit hard. | ||
| And what was really interesting, and I've done a lot of reporting on this myself, when Hezbollah was knocked out, when Hamas's leaders were killed, many people were expecting Iran to ride to the rescue of them in various ways. | ||
| Iran stayed complacent, stayed back, and did not come back to them. | ||
| There's not great mutual love and good feeling between some of the leadership of Hezbollah, Hamas, and others with Iran. | ||
| And so now when Iran is having its dark days and moments, they are not ratcheting up their pressure in support of Iran. | ||
| We'll go to Tiny in Brookshire, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Brookshire, Texas, Republican caller, it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I don't want the president to get involved in the war, but I do want them to constantly supply Israel with the weapons and everything that they need. | ||
|
unidentified
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If they need that bomb to go over there to blow up that mountain, I want my president to give it to them. | |
| And Iran want to annihilate Israel. | ||
| I don't understand how people can say that Netanyahu is wrong for what he is doing. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Color. | ||
| Steve Clemens, she's talking about the big bomb. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's about the big bomb. | |
| The problem is that's not possible. | ||
| I mean, there's no possibility of giving Israel both access to that bunker bust or they don't have the delivery mechanisms. | ||
| We have to understand that the Fordo nuclear facility is the equivalent of about 22 stories of a New York skyscraper beneath the ground. | ||
| It's very specialized weaponry. | ||
| And what we have, you know, when you're going to be able to penetrate the ground, it depends upon the concrete formations that are around it, the defensive mechanisms that are around it, of which there must be some. | ||
| And so, you know, the efficacy of that bomb is going to be in question. | ||
| But bottom line is Israel cannot deliver that. | ||
| And I think, secondly, any leaders, there are a lot of leaders around the world. | ||
| And I don't want to give Iran a break on this because Iran's leadership in the past has done this. | ||
| They do see Israel as the antithesis of threat there. | ||
| But we also have to realize that Iran is a rational power, a superpower in its region, and it has dialed up and dialed down its pressures on Israel in the past. | ||
| And so that, you know, I used to think that when Richard Nixon went to China, you know, biggest anti-communist in American politics, went to China, normalized relationship with China, that Donald Trump really wanted to be the Nixon went to China guy with Iran. | ||
| He wanted to normalize with Iran. | ||
| He wanted a deal with Iran. | ||
| And there was likely to be a deal with Iran if Iran had been able to come around. | ||
| And that is the world that Donald Trump wanted. | ||
| I think he saw it as a pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| We have to understand that this is not just a binary world of black hats and white hats. | ||
| Donald Trump wanted to bring Iran around, wanted to negotiate this deal, and by all accounts got pretty close. | ||
| That may still happen down the road despite the hell everyone is in right now. | ||
| But it just shows that even President Trump is not working in any way in a binary world on whether Iran is a good player with Israel or a bad player. | ||
| And Donald Trump would also, if he were on the show, be the first to say, it's not all about Israel. | ||
| It's about America's interests one way or the other. | ||
| And he's been reading those interests differently. | ||
| When he says, or when the White House press secretary says yesterday from the podium, giving them two weeks before he makes a decision about going, what does going mean, the go? | ||
| Is it the B-2 bomber? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Do we want to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's very clearly the B-2 bomber because the next element in this conflict that has knocked out so many of Iran's nuclear programs right now. | |
| But you have to remember that not all of Israel's targets have been nuclear programs. | ||
| They've also hit civilian infrastructure. | ||
| They've hit a news station. | ||
| They're hitting other parts that would be classically outside of military targeting. | ||
| And that is what has a lot of people concerned, that when you listen to Netanyahu, what Netanyahu wants is regime change. | ||
| And those are words that are highly consequential. | ||
| Netanyahu sees himself as a deliverer of a whole new order and of trying to ally himself with frustrated Iranian citizens who want a different leadership and want to get rid of this. | ||
| That is not the goal of Donald Trump as best we know it. | ||
| It has not yet been defined that. | ||
| Now, certain people around him, or who used to be around him, like John Bolton, want that. | ||
| But that's been a very, very minute, very small group of people who want that. | ||
| Others are those that want to proceed much more cautiously around American interests, around this, and have not committed themselves to a regime change direction with Iran. | ||
| So going after, and I think the scariest thing, honestly, from Trump, which then puts this out there, is his comments to the Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini saying, hey, we know exactly where he is. | ||
| There's no safe house that can save him. | ||
| He's threatening the leader, the religious leader, the supreme leader of Iran very directly with his physical safety. | ||
| And that is an unusual thing we've never seen from a president before. | ||
| Linda in Southgate, Michigan, Democratic caller, your question or comment on the Israeli-Iran conflict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I have for my comment, first of all, it is absolutely appalling that we are going to let one man and an unstable man at that decide the fate of the United States. | |
| I think we need a congressional vote, absolutely. | ||
| And even with Iraq, which was a debacle, we had at least a vote. | ||
| It was at least presented to Congress. | ||
| I think that that has to be in play for one man to say, I don't know what I'm going to do. | ||
| I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do whatever I want. | ||
| And it'll probably be a minute before I decide to do it. | ||
| That's what it's saying. | ||
| All right, Linda. | ||
| Linda, then we've talked about this. | ||
| Tim Kaine, the Democratic senator from Virginia, has a resolution that would require congressional approval. | ||
| There's a similar resolution in the House. | ||
| What's his chances of getting a floor vote? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not high, but I mean, I would say the point that I understand the point the caller is making. | |
| I happened to interview Senator Chris Van Hollen, who's also part of that resolution this week. | ||
| A lot of resolutions. | ||
| And, you know, as I mentioned him, I said, you know, okay, this is about Iran. | ||
| But I remember Senator Kaine's resolution about actions with Iraq, actions elsewhere around the world, the Iraq War resolution that led to the expansion, the global war on terror. | ||
| These are still pending resolutions that have not done anything to curtail decisions by the chief executive and the commander-in-chief to take military action. | ||
| So the legacy of these, so I understand where it's coming from. | ||
| I can even read the Constitution. | ||
| We have a discussion about who has what powers. | ||
| But the Congress thus far has been completely impotent in curtailing the power of the presidency in these moments. | ||
| So in my view, it's a bit of a kabuki act. | ||
| People want to show which side they're on in this conflict. | ||
| None of it will have a constraint that's real on the actions that Donald Trump takes or not, because we live in a system of checks and balances where it's one where it's not a kumbaya sport. | ||
| It's one on checks and balances. | ||
| If the president is taking this power, Congress must either take it back or confront it in a compelling way. | ||
| Right now, they're engaged in sound and fury that's signifying nothing thus far on the process of it. | ||
| So it's just not, in my book, it's not real until you have the votes. | ||
| We'll go to Minneapolis. | ||
| Corey is watching there, Independent. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just calling in because it was a caller I called in earlier and had mentioned a disdain for Israel. | |
| Not a disdain for Israel. | ||
| It's a disdain for fighting war after war after war in the Middle East, showing little results, spending lots of money while people in America struggle. | ||
| We have issues here in this country that we need to solve. | ||
| And these wars in the Middle East, they are not helping us solve our issues here. | ||
| Corey, did you vote for President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| All right, Corey in Minneapolis. | ||
| One second, Corey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What the caller is saying is really, really important, is that there is a fatigue about the forever wars, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan war, sort of low-yield wars that we got involved in and were unable to extract ourselves from. | |
| And there was a sense that I think was out in the world that America's role playing security guarantor in the world somehow benefited the American middle class. | ||
| Now they see, hey, America went and fought the Cold War and somehow China came out on top. | ||
| So in that impulse, in that world, there is a lot of, you know, to what the caller said, views that we've spent over trillions of dollars on these other wars that did not go into schools, infrastructure, other important needs in the United States, and a sense that somehow we become easily hijacked. | ||
| Even in Jeffrey Goldberg's article called The Obama Doctrine with the Atlantic many years ago, in that article, Barack Obama says the biggest threat to America is we have all this sprawling military capacity around the world that's constantly hijacked by others for their use or purpose without us really having a consciousness or decision about it. | ||
| And it was a very important revelation by the commander-in-chief that we don't really control every dimension of American power in the world. | ||
| It's easily hijackable. | ||
| And that's created a ripe moment. | ||
| So I think Democrats that felt what the caller was feeling, Republicans had felt that independence that were feeling that, feeling, what is the payoff to the United States by being involved in this? | ||
| And the answer is, for many of them, not great. | ||
| Now, that is what has fueled Steve Bannon, a lot of the MAGA crowd to say, why, President Trump, are you even flirting with the idea of getting us back into that type of conflict again? | ||
| That is the tension for Republican interparty leadership right now. | ||
| What did you make of Steve Bannon's comments at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast earlier this week where he said what you just said, he disagrees with the president. | ||
| He does not want the president to make a decision to go to war. | ||
| But he said his supporters will follow him, even if he makes that decision to strike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think that either Steve Bannon is saying he wants to stay on the Christmas card list of the White House, or Steve is saying that the president has become a kind of leader where policy and direction don't matter. | |
| And the truth is that both can be true. | ||
| There are a lot of Americans who I think will be dismayed and deeply upset if the president gets us directly involved in another major conflict, global conflict in the world. | ||
| There are a lot of people that just love Donald Trump. | ||
| They love his muscularity. | ||
| They love his decision-making and impact, and they're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and move with him. | ||
| Both of those impulses exist within the MAGA base. | ||
| Google, we'll go to Goodyear Arizona. | ||
| Susan, welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Republican caller. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The reason I'm calling is multifold, but I'll try and keep it brief. | ||
| We must remember in America that the press, the major press that's out there, is in the pocket of the Democrats and the Democrats' policies and their past use and definitely are anti-Trump all the way. | ||
| And if there are people who only watch those stations, then they are going to be affected by the information they're getting, even though a lot of it is slanted and false. | ||
| Number two, there were 41 of 47 Americans who were either killed or taken captive by the October 2023 raids in Israel by proxies of Iran and did the horrible torture, murder, and murdering of women, children, infants, and men. | ||
| And so there is blood that has shed, American blood that has been shed that they need to be held accountable for. | ||
| So Susan, that justifies trying to do that. | ||
| Susan, that justifies U.S. military action against Iran, in your opinion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because that leads up to this. | |
| My third point is because the source of all of this terrorism is from Iran. | ||
| And Iran has five or six of these proxy countries that are continuing to do this. | ||
| And there have been about 20 million people led into this country in the last administration that were never vetted. | ||
| So there might be many terrorists here in our country that will directly affect America if we do not completely eliminate the current regime in Iran that is back in the 700s and barbaric. | ||
| And if we do not completely get rid of any capability of them having nuclear pressure. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Steve Clements. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So look, I respectfully disagree with some of the points that the caller made. | |
| I disagree about the media. | ||
| There's a lot of media that plays on all sides of this. | ||
| And I think, you know, a media is designed to try to create an objective foil to what they see power doing. | ||
| And right now, you see a lot of divides, even among conservative media, over what the president is doing. | ||
| So it's not a stacked deck. | ||
| Let's just be clear about that. | ||
| I think secondly, around the October 7th terror attacks, which were led by Hamas, horrible, horrible day, initiated really the decimation of Gaza. | ||
| And I just want to, you know, you put on the table that, yes, going after Hamas, completely legitimate in the eyes of what happened. | ||
| Dealing with tens of thousands of deaths of innocent people is something that is also part of that equation. | ||
| It's hard for a lot of people to stomach in that process. | ||
| That has led to, I would argue, the success of Prime Minister Netanyahu being legitimate in terms of taking on Hezbollah, taking on Hamas, engaging in transnational executions and killings, assassinations abroad. | ||
| And he's been very, very successful at decimating many of the opposition to Israel. | ||
| That led to the change in regime in Syria and to the fall of Bashar al-Assad. | ||
| And now you have the question of, okay, now Iran is in the target. | ||
| Is that too much or is that going to be part of the Churchillian-like success, if you will, of B.B. Netanyahu? | ||
| We don't know how it will come out. | ||
| But I would also say when it comes to regime change, and it's very, very important to remember the United States is not good at regime change. | ||
| We have had very bad examples, whether it's in Libya, whether it's in Iraq, of incredible blowback that has come back and cost trillions of dollars. | ||
| So the things that created the conditions that created the forever wars and the ongoing American engagement were exactly the kinds of things the caller was asking for the President of the United States to do and execute. | ||
| And there are a lot of people around him who came to office and who won the presidency because of the perception that Biden was weak and bland on these issues. | ||
| And Donald Trump had clarity and definitive reasons not to put the United States back in that track. | ||
| That is what we're talking about today and why this is such a big issue, not only in Tehran or Tel Aviv, but in Washington, D.C. What about our Middle East allies, the UAE, Jordan, et cetera? | ||
| How do they see the threat of Iran? | ||
| So they're holding their breath to see what happens. | ||
| But just this past week, I interviewed the diplomatic advisor to the ruler, the president of the UAE, Anwar Gargash. | ||
| And Gargash, just months before when I had seen him, along with Tulsi Gabbard and others in India, had put out an olive branch to Iran. | ||
| And you could feel that the region was coming on to realize, wow, we're going to be moving in a different direction with Iran. | ||
| We had a normalization between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which the Chinese helped to broker. | ||
| There was a kind of new acceptance that there were new possibilities with Iran, and the UAE could help play a bridge in that, or Qatar, or even the Saudis. | ||
| And so in this situation, there was a calming that was going on. | ||
| When I interviewed Anwar Gargash last week, he strongly condemned the actions of Netanyahu and the bombing. | ||
| said nothing can be achieved that we need to have achieved from this kind of action there. | ||
| We have to have, you know, basically saying diplomacy matters, but also saying you can go to such a point that you radicalize the Iranians in a situation where it completely changes the climate and we're back again to a fragmented, balkanized, highly toxic, unstable, and unpredictable Middle East. | ||
| That is the potential consequence of right now. | ||
| And we're at a crossroads. | ||
| And so the president putting a calming on for two weeks, probably good, but it could still be a bad story. | ||
| Or it may be something where everyone says, where do we need to go? | ||
| Now, the big question is, will Israel accept, even if the president were not to proceed, will Israel acquiesce to that condition? | ||
| Or will they see themselves as the only one who can lead in the region at this time and continue to say cut the head off the snake to engage in regime change? | ||
| I don't see Prime Minister Netanyahu backing off at all at this moment, even though President Trump has called for a calming. | ||
| Ogden, Utah. | ||
| Linda, good morning to you, an independent caller. | ||
| You're on the air with Steve Clemens. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question are three points. | ||
| How much, and we are, if we do go to war with Iran, and it will be a war, not a one-o-day two things, how much is it going to cost? | ||
| How many soldiers' lives we could get to today? | ||
| Because that whole region, in my feelings, is not worth one American soldier's life. | ||
| And what caused my soldiers' labor is this war going to cost us? | ||
| And how can the big, beautiful bill cost if we're going to war with Iran? | ||
| And which countries supposedly support the U.S.? | ||
| All right, Linda, we'll take your questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a really great question, Linda. | |
| I mean, costs matter. | ||
| What can't you do? | ||
| Because there may be a war. | ||
| Donald Trump will define it as a war of necessity if we do go to war. | ||
| That war of necessity could preempt what President Wunsch was, a pivot to Asia, a de-emphasis on Europe, a movement of American resources and money and spending, developing a bigger navy, developing other military components. | ||
| All of that could be put on hold or delayed significantly because of the very high. | ||
| Now, we also have to realize that there's also been a big effort to cut back the size of the Pentagon, to reduce programs. | ||
| You know, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has come in and say, slash budgets up to 50% more significantly in some places within the Pentagon. | ||
| So the Pentagon in some ways, I won't say they're reeling, but they're trying to recast the way they get their hands around national security threats and how they meet those challenges. | ||
| And one can assert at the leadership, oh, America can meet any challenge anywhere, anytime with the resources we have, and I'm sure that will be said. | ||
| But the truth is, beneath that surface, there are hard choices about money, spending, and how you deploy troops. | ||
| I mean, and so in that equation, it creates a vulnerability for the administration that wanted to reduce debt, that wanted to reprioritize assets. | ||
| And wars, as the President of the United States has said over and over again, are really bad for business. | ||
| This gets in the way of the big mutual investment climate that the President wanted to have in the Middle East. | ||
| The trillions of dollars the President wanted to attract from the Middle East into the United States. | ||
| A lot of that will be suspended or delayed if, in fact, there's a war with Iran. | ||
| Where can our viewers go to find the reporting by you and your colleagues? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They can go to the nationalinterest.org. | |
| We have a very huge website in foreign policy and politics. | ||
| And so nationalinterest.org. | ||
| They can go to the Washington Note where I publish a lot, and I also put a lot out on social media. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And also, I should say, Al Jazeera is the bottom line where I just, in fact, interviewed Senator Chris Van Hollen. | |
| All right. | ||
| Steve Clemens, thank you much for the conversation. | ||
| As always, we appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| Up next, we'll take a look at the nation's housing market and prices with Lawrence Yoon, Chief Economist at the National Association of Realtors. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 1.15 p.m. Eastern, University of Richmond School of Law professor Karina Lane, with her book, Secrets of the Killing State, takes a critical look at the use of lethal injection as a method of capital punishment and argues that it's more brutal than is widely understood. | ||
| Then at 4.15 p.m. Eastern, Book TV's coverage of the 2025 Gold Coast Book Fair from Oyster Bay, Long Island. | ||
| Authors discuss Long Island history, American myths, the creation of New York City, and World War II spies. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Chef Jose Andres with his book, Change the Recipe, on the life lessons he's learned through the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit he founded in 2010 to feed people in conflict and disaster zones. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule in your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, University of Texas at Austin history professor Peniel Joseph shares his book Freedom Season and talks about the pivotal events of 1963 that impacted the civil rights movement in America. | ||
| That year marked the centenary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Mississippi civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four little girls. | ||
| 1963, I think, is the most pivotal year of the 1960s. | ||
| It's the year that gives us both triumphs and tragedies. | ||
| And it's really the year that makes the 1960s the 60s. | ||
|
unidentified
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So it's civil rights insurgency. | |
| It's the Kennedy administration going back and forth with activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and others about what to do next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We see a right-wing insurgency. | |
| George Wallace becomes one of the pivotal figures of the year. | ||
| And people like William F. Buckley in the National Review are engaged in a war of ideas with people like James Baldwin, who becomes the best-selling author and really perhaps the most pivotal figure in the entire year. | ||
| So it's really an extraordinary year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Penil Joseph with his book, Freedom Season, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | |
| 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. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon is back at our table this morning. | ||
| He's the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors here to talk about the state of the U.S. housing market. | ||
| Mr. Yoon, let's begin with the Federal Reserve and their decision to keep interest rates unchanged. | ||
| What does that mean for the housing market? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not good because mortgage rates or broad interest rate environment today, it is very, very high by historical standards, certainly highest in 25 years. | |
| And that has really hindered the potential buyers. | ||
| So there's still eagerness when we take survey of renters. | ||
| Do you want to buy a home? | ||
| Do you desire to be homeowners? | ||
| And overwhelming majority wants to be homeowner at some point in their life. | ||
| But the financial capacity is extremely difficult at this high interest rate environment. | ||
| And consequently, we are seeing historically low home sales activity. | ||
| But in the meantime, homeowners are all smiling. | ||
| They are seeing very high home prices, record high wealth gain over the past five years. | ||
| So it's a mixed picture in the housing market, but high interest rate is clearly hurting potential buyers. | ||
| What is the interest rate right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The average mortgage rate is roughly 7%. | |
| And I would say that if it was to go to 6%, and the Federal Reserve, in my view, could possibly broaden their horizon in terms of the factors that could lead to some calming inflationary pressure. | ||
| I know that Chairman Jay Powell has constantly mentioned about uncertainty related to tariffs, rightly so. | ||
| But there are other disinflationary pressure, such as the rent cost, which is a very big component of the inflation, that is coming down. | ||
| There's a temporary oversupply in the apartment sector. | ||
| Rents are coming down. | ||
| So I think just looking at the broad factors, we'll see that inflation is moving in the right direction and one could cut interest rates sooner rather than later. | ||
| Here's the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, on Wednesday when he was asked about whether he's concerned about cracks in employment and housing. | ||
| I think if you look at the overall picture, you know, what you're seeing is 4.2% unemployment and an economy that's growing at a rate hard to know given the unusual flows in the first quarter, but it appears to be 1.5%, 2%, maybe a little better than that. | ||
| Sentiment has come up off of its very low levels. | ||
| It's still depressed. | ||
| So you can point to things. | ||
| The housing market is a longer-run problem and also a short-run problem. | ||
| I don't think it's indicative of, I mean, basically the situation is we have a longer run shortage of housing and we also have high rates right now. | ||
| I think the best thing we can do for the housing market is to restore price stability in a sustainable way and create a strong labor market. | ||
| And that's the best thing we can do for the housing market. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon, did he just say he wants housing prices to come down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm not sure that was his remark. | |
| Right now, at the moment, home prices are rising roughly 1%, 2% nationwide, which means that possibly, you know, half of the country may be seeing some price declines currently, modest, modest, after a 50% run-up in home prices. | ||
| So this is nothing, you know, it's not anything like correction. | ||
| It's just that home prices have risen so much. | ||
| But now that the incomes are rising, people's wage growth rising at 4%. | ||
| So people are gaining some ground on the housing affordability. | ||
| But the big impact to the housing market will be changes in mortgage rates. | ||
| If the mortgage rate comes down, it will be quite sizable rush of buyers going into the market. | ||
| And as Jay Powell, Chairman Powell mentioned, right now, job market is still cranking out jobs, new jobs. | ||
| In fact, we have 7 million more jobs today compared to pre-COVID, yet home sales are much lower. | ||
| So there's a misalignment, and that misalignment is essentially due to high interest rates. | ||
| We are going to divide the lines this morning by homeowners, renters, and all others. | ||
| So if you're a homeowner, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Renters, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8001. | ||
| And all others, your line this morning, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Remember, you can text as well, include your first name, city, and state, to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon, during the pandemic, we saw 50% appreciation on homes. | ||
| You just said that we could see appreciation at 1-2%. | ||
| Is that flat? | ||
| Is that going to beat inflation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, certainly you look at all the local market variations. | |
| So like the state of Maine actually had the top price appreciating condition over the past five years, 75% price appreciation. | ||
| And then you have like West Virginia or Louisiana, where the price appreciation was more modest, 30%, very respectable, very good news for homeowners across the country. | ||
| But at the moment, we are seeing roughly flat prices while people's incomes are rising much faster. | ||
| Consumer price inflation, the latest reading is showing 2.4%, maybe 2.3%. | ||
| That's almost calm normal inflation. | ||
| With a normal inflation, if we were to go back to normal interest rate environment, one is looking at possibly six rounds of rate cut. | ||
| So when that begins, maybe it's later this year. | ||
| But once the Federal Reserve begins to cut interest rate, one is looking at possibly five, six rounds of rate cuts all the way through next year. | ||
| To get to normal, what is normal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Normal. | |
| One looks at the historically average Fed funds rate, the interest rate the Federal Reserve directly control. | ||
| In the past 20 years, it has averaged roughly 2.5%. | ||
| One looks at longer time horizon, you know, it would average maybe 3.3%. | ||
| Currently, it is 4.3% on the Fed funds rate. | ||
| Now, for consumers, it's about mortgage rate or auto loan rate or credit card rate, which is all pretty much based off the Fed funds rate. | ||
| But right now, high interest rate is really hurting the housing market, home buying activity. | ||
| The housing market slump is getting worse. | ||
| That's a headline from Axios. | ||
| And inside, they're reporting a long time slump in the new housing sector is getting worse. | ||
| Why it matters? | ||
| The broader economy held up during a rolling recession that hit the housing industry in recent years. | ||
| That might not be the case this time if other sectors slow. | ||
| Concurrently, the issuance of building permits, an indicator of the appetite to build homes, also hit a five-year low. | ||
| Sentiment among home builders dropped to the lowest level since 2022 in June. | ||
| And Lennar, one of the nation's biggest home builders, reported weaker than expected quarterly earnings, citing a soft housing market. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All this slump immediately goes away if the mortgage rates was to come down. | |
| And even modestly, one is not looking at, say, under first term President Trump, it averaged 4% to 5% mortgage rate. | ||
| Today it is 7%. | ||
| I don't expect we are going to go to 4% mortgage rate, but even coming down to, say, 6.5% or even 6%, given that there are some people on the fence who wanted to go to the market, they're just trying to qualify for a mortgage. | ||
| One sees some early indicator for potential homebuyers, mortgage application to buy a home. | ||
| So this is not an approval, but the desire to go into the market. | ||
| Right now, we're running about 20% higher compared to one year ago. | ||
| Just a high interest rate is preventing that mortgage application from becoming a reality. | ||
| Are we in a buyer's market? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say in some markets like Florida and Texas where there is a temporary oversupply, I use the adjective temporary because interestingly, the places where home prices are declining, Texas, Florida, Arizona, these are the market with the strongest job gains. | |
| So anytime there's a job gain, these are potential homebuyers that cannot go in because of high mortgage rate, but the potential is there. | ||
| And just one other example is Idaho had a huge run-up in home prices, and they actually experienced price decline last year. | ||
| But when the prices fell 5%, 8%, well, people rushed in because job market was good. | ||
| So as long as there is a local job market creation, whether it is improvement in affordability due to some price decline, temporary price decline, or lower mortgage rate, people immediately go in. | ||
| And in Boise, now their home prices are rising again. | ||
| So you see all these dynamics at play. | ||
| But one good thing about this current housing market is we don't have those risky subprime loans in the market. | ||
| Consequently, historically low mortgage default rate, low foreclosure rate. | ||
| This is keeping the housing home prices pretty much very stable. | ||
| You gave Boise, Idaho as an example. | ||
| So in Boise, you said that you're seeing the prices rise again. | ||
| Does it have to do with the semiconductor chip company, Micron, saying that they're going to spend $2 billion on investing in manufacturing, and they are based in Boise? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yes. | |
| The Idaho Realtors are very excited about Micron expanding the production activity there. | ||
| The realtors in Columbus, Ohio, Intel, computer chip manufacturer, they're expanding. | ||
| And the housing market, they are seeing some very interesting development. | ||
| The buyer interests, so you see where the job market is strong, immediate demand arises, even though mortgage rate still remains unfavorable. | ||
| We'll go to calls. | ||
| Kevin in Florescent, Missouri, a renter. | ||
| Kevin, what is your situation in Missouri? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The situation in Missouri is you have a lot of madness with the financial thing. | |
| You have people that are red line discriminated against for loans. | ||
| Now, my question is, what is the alternative to the Federal Reserve? | ||
| And I believe that BlackRock and Blackstone are the cause of the housing trouble. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, very good question. | |
| Because in some markets, like St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas City, along with Memphis, some degree, Dallas, Jacksonville, Florida, Atlanta, this is where many institutional investors like BlackRock has really gone in buying up single-family properties to turn it into rental properties. | ||
| And consequently, any potential first-time buyer is essentially saying you don't have a chance. | ||
| So one has to look at what kind of advantage do they have that ordinary buyers do not. | ||
| For example, right now we are finding that many consumers, they like the fact that mortgage interest deduction is available, but they don't utilize that because of a larger standard deduction. | ||
| But BlackRock, they are able to immediately deduct that large borrowing they did. | ||
| So that's putting at a disadvantage in terms of how the first-time buyers can compete with these institutional Wall Street investors. | ||
| So I want us to look at that in terms of possible policy arena. | ||
| And also regarding some of the discrimination, I mean, something certainly is difficult for many, many people to get mortgage at a high interest rate. | ||
| Lower interest rate will open up more opportunity for minority buyers to come into the market. | ||
| But I found it very interesting that in the state of Washington, they passed a legislation to address some of the past discrimination pre-1965 to say there's some down payment assistance program, but it's only available for those individual families who can trace their roots back to the 1960s. | ||
| So it would not be available for, say, recent immigrants, minorities who are just coming into the country, but for people who actually experience some discrimination and some down payment assistance would be available in the state of Washington. | ||
| What are some other tax benefits that these large investor groups are taking advantage of, bonus depreciation, others, that give them a leg up and why they want to be in the real estate market in the first place? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we have a housing shortage. | |
| So in some markets, temporarily, it may look like it's a surplus. | ||
| And the surplus is only temporary because of high mortgage rate. | ||
| Mortgage rate goes down. | ||
| We have a rush of buyers coming in. | ||
| But if one looks at the population growth, the job growth that has occurred in the country, people need some place to live. | ||
| And by that metrics, we're looking at maybe 4 million housing unit shortage. | ||
| And the Wall Street is looking at that and say, oh, if there's a housing shortage, we're going to gobble it up, knowing that we can make that shortage even more intense. | ||
| And at a later point, they can try to release those property onto the market. | ||
| Now, some are really concerned also about possible market manipulation. | ||
| You look at, again, like Memphis, Atlanta, they come in and they go, and it makes the home prices much more volatile than otherwise. | ||
| So you have to look at other tax benefit you mentioned that the Wall Street investors are getting that ordinary home buyers are not getting. | ||
| And what are they? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, things like the bonus depreciation, certainly all the interest borrowing to purchase this property, they can deduct immediately. | |
| While the homebuyers, they're not deducting mortgage interest deductions. | ||
| Bonus depreciation, how does it work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, you just buy a property and then you said, well, how long will the property last? | |
| And then essentially they said, well, if it's going to last for a certain number of years, one tried to account for some of the maintenance costs, how the property will depreciate over time, but you take that depreciation cost immediately, so it shows up as lower profit for these Wall Street investors, so they don't have to pay so much taxes. | ||
| They're taking the depreciation from all those years that they say the property will last and they're taking it all at once. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know the very specifics. | |
| So bonus depreciation would accelerate whether it shortens a lifespan from say normal 30-year schedule to 20 years, but certainly things like interest deduction along with bonus depreciation. | ||
| But the reality is that ordinary consumer like the caller from Missouri, hard to compete against Wall Street investors. | ||
| We'll go to Michigan. | ||
| Tim is there, homeowner. | ||
| Tim, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I have a question about home equity. | ||
| The Federal Reserve puts on like a 4.5% interest rate, or I believe it might be 5% or something. | ||
| But then my bank turns around and adds like 2% on top of that. | ||
| So it's 7%. | ||
| Now, who makes all that money back? | ||
| How does that so if the Fed creates that 5% and then the bank takes 2%, then how does that money? | ||
| So let's break it down, Lawrence, you can break it down for Tim and others. | ||
| How does this, the interest rate work? | ||
| Who's getting what from this interest rate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the Federal Reserve, they said Fed funds rate, which is around 4.3% currently. | |
| That is not for you and me or for the consumers. | ||
| That is for the banking system. | ||
| It's a temporary borrowing rate among the banking system, which the Federal Reserve said. | ||
| Now, if they cannot borrow from each other, they can go to the Federal Reserve to borrow from it. | ||
| Now, the mortgage rate is a longer-term interest rate, not short-term interest rate, and would generally follow the bond market, like a 10-year treasury, 10-year treasury is currently at around maybe 4.4%, and the mortgage rate would be maybe two percentage points above that. | ||
| So, in a sense, you know, banks are in the business of our soul earning money, but as long as there's competition, we want competition, so the competition means excessive profit disappear. | ||
| So, whatever they are able to borrow, they can charge a little more to gain profit. | ||
| But as long as there is competition, one would assume those excess profit would go away and provide competitive interest rates for the consumers. | ||
| But, credit card interest rate above 20%, auto-loan interest rate, you know, 12-13%, mortgage rate currently at around 7% on average. | ||
| Richard in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | ||
| Hi, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I have a question. | ||
| This is on taxes. | ||
| My house has been paid for, but last year my house taxes went up just over $500, and I have done nothing to improve it for that year. | ||
| The city raised it up $500 and land taxes. | ||
| I have a relative that has 40 acres of land up north, and his taxes jumped up, and it's just land. | ||
| There's nothing on it except he only goes hunting on it. | ||
| Well, Richard, Richard, if that is just appreciation, that's just the normal rate of appreciation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know, but if you don't do anything with it, why does the city raise it up $500? | |
| Well, let's take that point. | ||
| Does your property or your land appreciate even if you haven't added value to it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, so home prices have risen roughly 50%. | |
| So, one can assume that the land values could have risen similarly. | ||
| But I think the key point here is that Americans need to be involved at the local level. | ||
| Sometimes local government collects taxes based on static information. | ||
| That is to say, they apply a certain percentage based on property values. | ||
| Well, property values have risen, but they are applying the same percentage. | ||
| Maybe they don't need to. | ||
| Maybe they can lower the percentage. | ||
| If the government service is the same now as five years ago, then why do the government automatically, local government need to automatically bring in additional revenue just because property taxes went up? | ||
| So, it's very important for property values went up, which is very important for citizens to be engaged at all levels of government. | ||
| All right, Richard, back to you. | ||
| Your next thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got a question on workers. | |
| I know a good half a dozen people of workers that were laid off from manufacturing companies. | ||
| Now they're having a hard time trying to find jobs. | ||
| So, I don't know where he sees people are going to work more. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think it's in different pockets of the country. | ||
| He's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | ||
| What do you know about the Milwaukee economy and specifically the housing market there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, you know, when the federal government releases the job numbers, they say a certain number of jobs have been created. | |
| For example, in the past month, I believe it was close to 150,000 jobs. | ||
| That is a net figure. | ||
| The reality is that maybe 2 million jobs were created and 1.9 million jobs were lost, but the net was slight gain in the process. | ||
| So, some areas are seeing better job market conditions, as mentioned in the Idaho market. | ||
| But Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa, very sluggish job gains in the past five years. | ||
| So, it's certainly without a doubt, there's always dynamism in the market. | ||
| Some people lose jobs, other people find jobs. | ||
| We just want to assure there's more job gains, more job openings compared to people who are losing jobs. | ||
| So naturally, people who don't have jobs is going to depress the housing demand. | ||
| We're taking your questions and your comments this morning about the housing market. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon, who's the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, our guest this morning, if you're a homeowner, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're a renter, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And all others this morning, 202-748-8002. | ||
| What is the condition of the DC, the Virginia, Maryland markets after federal workers were cut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the federal employment has fallen roughly 40,000 in the official data. | |
| People anticipate more job-cutting numbers in the upcoming months to account for what has happened. | ||
| And what we are seeing is very interesting. | ||
| We are seeing more supply in the greater DC area, but we are also seeing more supply across the country. | ||
| So it's not necessarily the say Doge job cut impact that's showing up, but we are essentially seeing life-changing events. | ||
| You know, every year there are people who pass away or families who have additional children, they need to trade up. | ||
| They found a new job at different locations. | ||
| So there is always people moving around. | ||
| So I think initially we had the lock-in effect. | ||
| Lock-in effect is where homeowners got that 3% mortgage rate and said, Yahoo, I don't want to move. | ||
| I never want to give that up. | ||
| But then life-changing events occur, and now some people are listing those property. | ||
| So we are getting more. | ||
| But in the DC area, the home prices are still very stable. | ||
| We are seeing more inventory, but unlike what we are seeing in the rest of the country, so no special impact showing up in the DC area, even with the federal government employee job cuts that have been happening. | ||
| We'll go to Staten Island, New York. | ||
| June is a homeowner there. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| I'm selling my house in Staten Island. | ||
| I want to know how long you keep it on the market before you drop more money. | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| Thanks, June. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I have staff running all various numbers and they see that days on the market. | |
| I see LinkedIn, it requires a price cut to get the deals done. | ||
| So from original listing to the closing. | ||
| Now, Staten Island market or just the Northeastern market in New Jersey, one finds that there is still a lack of supply. | ||
| So price drops, even if it's occurring, it is being still sold above one year ago. | ||
| So we see a lot of stories of price drops, price drops. | ||
| But at the end of the day, the closing price is still above one year ago in many, many markets. | ||
| But if home is sitting on the market for, say, longer than three weeks, once you consider lowering the prices, if it's sitting on the market for 90 days, we are finding it may require even 15% price cut to draw the buyers. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Larry in Houston, Texas. | ||
| You're a renter there. | ||
| Larry, how much do you pay for rent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm paying $1,300 right now. | |
| For one-bedroom, two-bedroom? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A one-bedroom. | |
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, that's high. | |
| That's high. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He keeps talking about all these jobs and stuff. | |
| I didn't see so many people lose their homes the last couple of years with that fluctuating markets going up and down. | ||
| I mean, a bunch of people. | ||
| And the thing, they keep saying the jobs is going up and the pay is higher. | ||
| I know people that's been on their job 25 years and not even making $50,000 a year. | ||
| And this is in Houston. | ||
| And Larry, what do you, Larry? | ||
| What do you do for a living? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I drive trucks and I'm a disabled combat veteran. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I was going to buy a home, but the prices is kind of normalizing now. | |
| But this been going on. | ||
| And I guess it's because all these corporations buying up all these homes and driving up the cost. | ||
| And like he said, the property value went up so high. | ||
| Now, what you're paying for the property, your property taxes, especially here in Houston, where we don't have state taxes. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| So, Larry, have you looked into how much you would pay per month with a mortgage taxes insurance for a home? | ||
| And how does that compare to your rent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Altogether, right now, I would be paying depending because mostly everything I look at is you're looking at about $210,000 to $250,000. | |
| So you're figuring now when you're paying $2,100 to $2,500 a month. | ||
| So, and you're paying $1,300 in rent, you're looking at having to pay $2,100, $2,200 for a mortgage taxes and insurance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, and I mean, and this is talking about this prices just went up so high so fast. | |
| You used to get a one-bedroom in a pretty decent area for at least $800,000, about $800,000, $900,000 period, like say in the Memorial City area. | ||
| You know, but now, and it's steady going up. | ||
| It's steady going up. | ||
| But that's what I can't understand that these people are always hollering. | ||
| To me, the biggest problem here in Houston is the cost, the wages never kept up with the cost of living. | ||
| All right, Larry. | ||
| Let's take that point. | ||
| Lawrence Yun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, Texas, they don't have state income tax. | |
| So in order to generate revenue, they rely more on property tax compared to other states. | ||
| So what was discussed certainly reflects what's happening on the ground. | ||
| The prices, whether it's rent or home prices, Houston has also seen quite sizable growth over the years, just like the rest of the country. | ||
| But Houston, or say Dallas, rest of Texas, they've been very active in building. | ||
| So at least that provided the growth in rent or growth in home prices to be more manageable compared to areas where they don't build so much home. | ||
| Like in California, very difficult to build. | ||
| So what you are creating if you don't build sufficient amount of housing is divided population. | ||
| In San Francisco, if one is a homeowner, they're essentially a millionaire. | ||
| But there are so many people who are not homeowners and they're struggling to get by. | ||
| But in the middle of the country, generally it's more accessible to become homeowners because home prices, even though it is high, it is much affordable compared to say the coastal markets. | ||
| And of course, one needs to have a better paying jobs come into the economy. | ||
| And right now, we are short in terms of the economy on some of the trade skills. | ||
| People in construction, people working in auto mechanic. | ||
| So for youngsters, maybe they're not interested in reading books. | ||
| Well, there's a great job opportunity in some of the trade skill. | ||
| So maybe we could focus more on people going into trade skill, learning welding, and other trade skill because jobs are available in those fields. | ||
| We'll go to Deborah, New Haven, Connecticut. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What I wanted to do was bringing back a little bit in history towards the crash of 2008. | ||
| I had just purchased my home in 2006. | ||
| And I was working with a mortgage broker at that time, originating mortgages. | ||
| And on a Wednesday, you know, you had all these mortgages going. | ||
| And then on Thursday, everybody was packing up. | ||
| And so during that time, a lot of people were losing their homes because they just couldn't afford it. | ||
| They were losing the jobs. | ||
| The money was gone. | ||
| But what happened was a little did people know that Obama had put in place something where he was offering the banks a little bit of money if they would reevaluate the homes and reset the mortgages. | ||
| Well, I do a lot. | ||
| I like to do research, so I took that deal and my $225,000 home went down to $106,000. | ||
| So my mortgage went from $2,200, $2,300 down to $900 plus. | ||
| And it has been going up ever since. | ||
| Not the mortgage per se, but like the gentleman said before on the call, it's the property taxes that keep going up. | ||
| So even though it's been a minute, my mortgage has gone from, say, $964 with the property taxes that have gone up, it's now almost $13,000. | ||
| But still, for a four-bedroom house, it's still perfect. | ||
| And I would say to anybody who's having a problem with that, just a little tidbit, roommates, get roommates, traveling professionals, because everybody's got to do that now. | ||
| I'm a senior now, so income has changed due to sickness. | ||
| You know, everything has changed. | ||
| So you have to think of other ways now. | ||
| We have to think of other ways to purchase these homes. | ||
| Are you renting out rooms in your house? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I have roommates. | |
| You have roommates. | ||
| So you're renting them out. | ||
| So co-living. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, you have to do that. | |
| You can do that with seniors. | ||
| You can do that with traveling professionals. | ||
| It helps pick up the slack. | ||
| There's no other way to do it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Laurentian, co-living, is that the, are we seeing an increase in that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have seen an increase in co-living. | |
| We have seen increased desire for multi-generational home purchase. | ||
| That is to say, people are mentioned, not to show off, but essentially to bring in their parents who are elderly into the house. | ||
| So maybe there's three generation family living in the same home. | ||
| So we are seeing an increased desire for more co-habitation, larger size home where maybe people could rent it out or if it's a family member essentially living together to save on some of the housing costs. | ||
| But I'm glad to hear from the caller that she was able to work out that mortgages at that time. | ||
| Very smart decision because we saw a huge rise in foreclosure at that point. | ||
| Many people lost their home. | ||
| Banks foreclosed on the property. | ||
| But good that today we don't have those funny, risky mortgages in place. | ||
| Of course, there's always some degree of foreclosure, even in a good economy. | ||
| So right now, the foreclosure rate, as we are tracking, is roughly 2% of all transactions, which were very low by historical standards. | ||
| We'll go to San Diego. | ||
| Hector, good morning to you, a renter there. | ||
| What are you paying rent in San Diego, Hector? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Almost $1,000 for a studio. | |
| Almost $1,000 for a studio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| The only thing I want to know, you know, who's controlling the owners for the rent, because sometimes they raise their rent last year and the erased rent again this year, like a month ago. | ||
| No, a lot, you know, like $30 more or whatever, you know. | ||
| But still, I guess I'm a retired too. | ||
| I'm more dependable for the Social Security, too. | ||
| You know, I will control who's controlling. | ||
| Who's controlling rents? | ||
| Lawrence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, it's the market. | ||
| That is to say that, you know, people who want to rent out the property, they're testing the market. | ||
| They want to get as much rent as possible. | ||
| So they're just looking at the market condition. | ||
| So what we are finding is that in California, due to the restriction in housing supply, rents are rising, home prices are rising. | ||
| But in places like Austin or say Nashville, where there's active apartment construction, rents are actually falling in this area. | ||
| Rents are falling in Charlotte. | ||
| So, a way to help more affordable conditions is to build more housing, simple supply and demand. | ||
| I know in some areas they're looking at rent control measures, but as just about every economist would say, it may provide short-term relief for some of the renters, but it is the worst economic policy. | ||
| It provides no housing supply in the future. | ||
| It will intensify housing shortage. | ||
| So, the rent control is not the solution, but more supply, as we have seen, what's occurring in, say, Atlanta, Jacksonville, more apartment supply, rents are actually falling. | ||
| What is happening, though, in other parts of Florida where there's a glut? | ||
| The builders have built these new homes, they're not selling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes, so I think the builders were looking at the job market and says, Oh, people are moving into Florida, maybe in anticipation of that. | |
| Let's build more property. | ||
| But Florida was hit with one unique special case that is very unique to Florida, which is the condominium reserve maintenance requirement. | ||
| So, buildings, older condominiums, which predates, say, 1970, they need to do a thorough maintenance. | ||
| And that requires anecdotally, what I'm hearing is that some senior citizen on fixed income needed to cut a check for $30,000 to help on some of the maintenance issues that was delayed. | ||
| So, those are quite substantial. | ||
| And, of course, we know some people don't have that type of money in the bank. | ||
| So, they're essentially putting the home on the market. | ||
| Now, thank goodness for home prices that have risen so much in Florida. | ||
| At least there is a profit that people are getting from selling the property from the time that they have purchased. | ||
| We'll go to Wake Forest, North Carolina. | ||
| Eddie, Eddie, you're a renter there. | ||
| How much do you pay in rent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm paying $18.55 a month for a one-bedroom, two-bedroom? | |
| It's a three-bedroom, small home. | ||
| And my wife and I, we're retired, we own fixed income. | ||
| My question is: because we were living in an apartment before we moved here, and here in this area, you know, the income here is not as high as it's living in New York or California, all those places, because here, you know, one minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. | ||
| And people choose to pay that, but they can't live off of that. | ||
| You know, the government is not going to allow them to, they won't force them to pay any more than that because that is the law there in this area. | ||
| But my question is: why don't they have rent control laws? | ||
| So, you know, going to addressing the rent control, why economists dislike it is that once you put rent control, it certainly benefits the tenants immediately, but it disincentivizes for the developers or even the current property owners to provide maintenance. | ||
| So, any place there was a rent control, you see the buildings subtly deteriorate over time. | ||
| I mean, because of the physical structure, it does not deteriorate in a single year. | ||
| But in places where there was a rent control for a prolonged period, just to paraphrase one Swedish economy, there is two ways to destroy a city. | ||
| One is bombing, and second one is you put a rent control and you wait 30 years, and the city will be essentially destroyed. | ||
| Ernest Struboak, New York, you're a homeowner there. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Two questions. | ||
| The first one is: how do I know when my real estate agent is telling me that my house is worth what she says or he says is worth? | ||
| How do I know that that's true? | ||
| Well, we'll take that. | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| Hold on, Ernest. | ||
| Let's take that question. | ||
| We'll come back to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, given so much information that is out there in the internet arena, you know, one can just type in, for example, realtor.com, our sister organization, you know, you will provide rough estimates. | |
| Those are just initial estimates. | ||
| Sometimes it could be off. | ||
| So at least that's the starting point of the values. | ||
| And then one would trying to work with a realtor. | ||
| Not all realtors are equal, which is the reason why people are saying the realtor that I want to work with is someone I can trust. | ||
| And consumers are finding those trusted, trustworthy realtors. | ||
| So we are finding that 80%, 90% of the consumers are saying, oh, I love my realtor. | ||
| I trust their judgment. | ||
| So if you have a trust level with your realtors, I'm sure they are doing the market analysis. | ||
| But if it's more like a stranger realtor, maybe you want to interview several or talk with other past consumers to see who provided the good service. | ||
| But good thing about the real estate industry, there's so much competition. | ||
| Some offer, you know, different commission level, different business model, different evaluation. | ||
| So given the competitiveness of the industry, it's great for American consumers. | ||
| We'll go back to the caller. | ||
| Your second question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if I do sell my home, is now a good time to move back to Manhattan, to the city? | |
| Is now a good time to sell and go back to the city? | ||
| Well, I cannot provide personal recommendation for personal circumstance, but certainly Manhattan is very expensive. | ||
| We have seen that Manhattan or just generally the New York City, Northeast New England region, prices are rising faster compared to other parts of the country. | ||
| So you are essentially buying at a point where the home prices are strengthening quite strongly in the Manhattan market. | ||
| You said that realtors can set their own commissions. | ||
| Why are they allowed to do that and what is the range? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, you see on the television advertisement, you see on various advertisements, some realtors will say, look, work with me and I will offer you my service at X percent. | |
| While other realtors will say, look, work with me. | ||
| I can negotiate on what works best for you. | ||
| So it's a great, so realtors, any business owners, you go to a restaurant, you see a menu prices. | ||
| You know, realtors will say, look, you know, I can provide certain level of service, full service, discount service. | ||
| But given the wide range of choices for consumers, including the choice of do it yourself, one do not have to work with a professional. | ||
| If one wants to do it by themselves, they could do so. | ||
| But what we are finding is that over 90% of Americans want to work with professionals. | ||
| Well, what is the range? | ||
| What is the range of what they're charging? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, one thing that our organization does not do is we don't collect commission information. | |
| We say let the market compete, let the market do it, because we don't collect that information because somehow the Department of Justice think that we are a monopoly, even though one can see there's so much competition. | ||
| And if we were to do a study, somehow that provides a signal for some realtors to say, oh, should I offer what the NAR is saying or not? | ||
| So for that reason, we don't collect that information. | ||
| We just want the market to be competitive. | ||
| And thank goodness, there's so much competition out there. | ||
| Bemidji, Minnesota, David owns a home there. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And thank Lawrence for his concise explanations. | ||
| My question is whether or not the News Association has considered the evidence that the anthropological harm of mortgage stress puts on populations. | ||
| The evidence is that longevity is reduced, that people are under a continual subtle stress worrying about their mortgages and their jobs. | ||
| And another question, as a lobbying group, why doesn't the association ask for, you know, we have all these disparities in interest rates between credit cards and mortgages. | ||
| For first-time homebuyers, why don't we have a federal policy that young people can get a low interest rate when they buy their first home? | ||
| All right, we'll take that. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, certainly some housing agency at the state level, local level, they do provide some down payment assistance or interest rate buy-down. | |
| So as a consumer, one wants to always shop around or better, talk with a realtor who specializes in those grant activity part. | ||
| And related to some stress that may be induced from having a mortgage, what we are finding is the following. | ||
| Homeowners have substantially larger wealth over a lifetime compared to renters. | ||
| Typical renters may have around $10,000 in net worth. | ||
| Homeowners, $430,000 in net worth. | ||
| That is a colossal difference, which is implying that to be successful in America, one has to own part of America. | ||
| One has to be a property owner at some point in order to get there. | ||
| And the realtors are there to make America successful. | ||
| More people turning to renters into homeowners. | ||
| But given that so many realtors have different business models, so much competition, so much choices for consumers. | ||
| So one has to consider home ownership is not a free lunch. | ||
| It goes with responsibility, responsibility of paying the mortgage, taking on a mortgage, but over time, substantial wealth gains. | ||
| First-time buyers can put how much down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Typically, first-time buyers can enter the market even with 3.5% down payment. | |
| If one is a veteran or in the military service, they can get a Veterans Affairs mortgage for 0% down payment. | ||
| And we are finding that even with 0% down payment via loan product, the default rates are very, very low as long as consumers do not overstretch their budget. | ||
| Don in Potter Springs, Georgia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| We're listening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Question or comment? | |
| I just have making a comment in regard to renting property. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, so I'm in Aram in Northwest Atlanta, and the apartment complex are more than the mortgage. | ||
| So one bedroom runs about $2,100 and two bedroom about $2,200, $2,300. | ||
| So they're more than the mortgage. | ||
| So my question is, what happened when you cannot rent to an individual who can afford the apartment? | ||
| Do they reduce the price or they remain the same? | ||
| Well, it's all about supply and demand. | ||
| So in Atlanta, there is a, right now, oversupply of apartments. | ||
| So much new construction that occurred a few years ago. | ||
| Those units are finally being completed now. | ||
| So it's hitting the market. | ||
| And they're hitting the market with all these vacant properties at a time where rents are actually falling because of oversupply. | ||
| So again, one wants to address rent. | ||
| You do not have to put rent control, but bring more supply onto the market. | ||
| And for people evaluating buying or renting, you know, those are major decisions. | ||
| But at least one of the metrics to consider is the mortgage payment on a typical similar property. | ||
| And if the mortgage payment is cheaper than the rent, well, certainly the data shows that ownership provides that wealth growth potential. | ||
| Lawrence Yoon, Chief Economist with the National Association of Realtors, thank you for talking to the viewers this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We'll wrap up today's Washington Journal with open forum right after this short break. | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue that's on your mind, start dialing in now. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to SRES 259. | ||
|
unidentified
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The clerk will report. | |
| Senate Resolution 259, recognizing June 2nd, 2025, as the 39th anniversary of C-SPAN chronicling democracy in the Senate. | ||
| By a unanimous vote, the United States Senate passed a resolution honoring C-SPAN's four decades covering the Senate. | ||
| The resolution thanked cable and satellite operators for providing C-SPAN as a public service to the country. | ||
| C-SPAN does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars, is funded primarily from satellite and cable providers. | ||
|
unidentified
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And called on all television providers, including streaming services, to deliver C-SPAN as well. | |
| We're at a different stage in our history and a lot of people are seeing their news this way, so we need to expand it and make sure we're on all of those platforms, as well as the ones we already are on. | ||
| So thank you again to Senator Grassley for working with me to highlight C-SPAN's critical role. | ||
| And thanks to everyone who has had a hand in C-SPAN's success. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 1.15 p.m. Eastern, University of Richmond School of Law professor Karina Lane with her book, Secrets of the Killing State, takes a critical look at the use of lethal injection as a method of capital punishment and argues that it's more brutal than is widely understood. | ||
| Then at 4.15 p.m. Eastern, Book TV's coverage of the 2025 Gold Coast Book Fair from Oyster Bay, Long Island. | ||
| Authors discuss Long Island history, American myths, the creation of New York City, and World War II spies. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Chef Jose Andres with his book, Change the Recipe, on the life lessons he's learned through the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit he founded in 2010 to feed people in conflict and disaster zones. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule in your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're in open forum. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue can be discussed here in the last half an hour of today's program. | ||
| I'm going to start with some news out of Congress, and this is from a headline with Cleveland.com. | ||
| U.S. Representative Max Miller says a pro-Palestinian supporter drove him off the road and threatened him. | ||
|
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Here's a video that he posted on X. Let's make something abundantly clear to anyone who needs to see this, which apparently is a lot of people. | |
| If you have an issue with a legislator, your city councilman, your mayor, anyone like that, the appropriate thing to do is to reach out to them for a phone call to set up a meeting at one of our district offices. | ||
| What is not okay is to assault anyone, whether you're a member of Congress or anybody else within our district, while you are driving to work. | ||
| Ohio 7, this morning, as I was driving to work, some unhinged, deranged man decided to lay on his horn and run me off the road when he couldn't get my attention to show me a Palestinian flag. | ||
| Not to mention death to Israel, death to me that he wanted to kill me and my family. | ||
| Thank God my daughter was not in my vehicle or anybody else at the time. | ||
| We know exactly who you are. | ||
| I have gone about my day. | ||
| I have carried on my meetings and we will not hide. | ||
| And I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and all other forms of hate. | ||
| You have an issue? | ||
| Take it to our office. | ||
| You want to run me off the road? | ||
| That's a different story. | ||
| We know who you are, young man, and the police are going to be paying you a visit. | ||
| And I hope what you did this morning is worth it to you and anyone else who plans on doing this to anybody within our district, state, or country. | ||
| Let's make something. | ||
| Representative Max Miller, Ohio Republican, says a pro-Palestinian supporter drove him off the road and threatened him. | ||
| Statement by Democratic leadership in the House, quote, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack on Congressman Max Miller and his family and are thankful they are safe. | ||
| The rise in political violence in this country is unacceptable. | ||
| This is a moment, they say. | ||
| This is from the House Democratic leaders, Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar. | ||
| We are in open forum this morning. | ||
| You can talk about any public policy debate, including President Trump's announcement from the White House press secretary yesterday that he has now decided to give Iran two additional weeks to strike a nuclear deal or face a U.S. military strike. | ||
| That's the front pages of the newspapers this morning. | ||
| There's also this headline to share with you that can be discussed. | ||
| It's front page of the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| One million illegals exit the U.S. under the president. | ||
| President Trump has not only stopped but also reversed the Biden border surge according to early Census Bureau data that suggests hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants have dropped out of the U.S. workforce and departed the country. | ||
| Preliminary calculations by the Center for Immigration Studies using the Census Bureau's monthly survey show that the number of immigrants in the labor force dropped by about 600,000 from January through May and the overall number of immigrants to the U.S. fell by 957,000. | ||
| Of course, you can also talk about the so-called Big Beautiful Bill as the President talks about it. | ||
| The Senate is taking up that legislation next week. | ||
| The House has already approved it. | ||
| They have changes to that legislation and we can discuss that debate here in open forum. | ||
| Lester in Washington, D.C., Democratic caller, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, a couple of things. | |
| Whatever happened to the discussion of a two-state solution in the Middle East? | ||
| You know, you had President Carter that did a book On Israel, and it was titled Israel Apartheid and Palestine, you know, the Palestinian struggle. | ||
| I think we reached a point in this country now where we can legitimately talk about, you know, the struggle of the Arab and Palestinian people without being called anti-Semite or anti-Semitic. | ||
| You know, I think anytime there's any discussion as it relates to a solution to the Middle East, you have extreme right-wingers who want to call you an anti-Semite. | ||
| But whatever happened to that discussion of a two-state solution, the recognition of Israel, nobody's saying Israel should not exist. | ||
| But what we are saying is that Israel, the existence of Israel, seemed to be one of expansionism at all costs. | ||
| And now we have a crisis. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, does the president really have authority to carry out a unilateral attack without going through Congress and carrying out a declaration of war? | ||
| I mean, I really wonder if that's the case. | ||
| I mean, I know he's the commander-in-chief and he has authority over foreign policy. | ||
| I also think that there's something called the War Powers Act. | ||
| Those two, the War Powers Act and by way of the declaration, that needs to be discussed. | ||
| All right, Leicester and Senator Tim Kaine, Democratic Virginia, has offered up a resolution that would require the president to seek congressional approval for any military action in Iran. | ||
| Don in New Orleans, Independent. | ||
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unidentified
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Don, good morning. | |
| It's a very good morning to you. | ||
| Two observations. | ||
| We celebrate Juneteenth yesterday and a couple of weeks 4th of July, Independence Day. | ||
| But Juneteenth was commemorated two years after the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln, as you very well know, 1865, 1867, two years later. | ||
| But in 1829, Vicente Guerrero, an Afro-Matizo, second president of Mexico, they abolished slavery in Mexico, our southern neighbor, to the United States. | ||
| And so just to pose that question, how did those two monumental events coincide or coexist with each other when we celebrate emancipation signed by Abraham Lincoln, but we don't sign the emancipation sign by Vicente Guerrero when many blacks try to go to Mexico in that time frame. | ||
| But another observation quickly is the NCAA settlement with the name, image, and likeness for mainly these big, the main beneficiary will be the Big Ten schools and the SEC schools at the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten Conference because they're the powerhouse conferences in college football, which will get the lion's share of this settlement. | ||
| But these Southeastern Conference schools and even some of the Big Ten schools are in states where they have land grant, 1890 land grant, HBCUs, which has been reported that state legislatures in these states where you have these SEC school LSU and Southern University, the HBCU 1890, LSU is an 1862 land grant, | ||
| Morrow Act University, and Southern University is an 1890 second Morrill Act University land grant. | ||
| But yet, the state legislators in these states with these big football powerhouses are underfunding HBCU 1890 land grant institution. | ||
| And they did a study to the tune of about $13 billion. | ||
| All right, Don, you got to get to your point. | ||
| Other people are waiting. | ||
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unidentified
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Excuse me? | |
| You got to get to your point. | ||
| Other people are waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, my hope is that they can reach it. | |
| If they reach a settlement with the NCAA for name, members, and likeness, they can reach a settlement on this $13 billion that has been underfunded to land grant HBCUs. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Don. | ||
| Edward in Landisburg, Pennsylvania, Democratic caller. | ||
| Edward, what's on your mind? | ||
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Yeah, I was wondering if anybody could tell me how when Trump's going after all these migrants in the farm fields and in the hospitality sector, how many migrants or immigrants work for Trump in his hotels and his golf courses and his winery and at Mar-a-Lago? | |
| I wonder if anyone has ever looked into that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| John in New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| John, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Go ahead, John. | ||
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Yes, I just want to say about the migrants that came over. | |
| They came over on the false pretenses that they crossed the border and they broke the law. | ||
| The only thing that Trump is doing is following in the law. | ||
| All right. | ||
| John in New Jersey with immigration on his mind this morning. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue you can call in and talk about. | ||
| Program note for all of you. | ||
| Live today at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, the U.N. Security Council is going to take up the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| They will be debating that. | ||
| We will have coverage right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app are online, on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| Then at 11:45 a.m. Eastern Time, the U.S. Conference of Mayors will be joined by a delegation of Ukrainian mayors to look at how global events can impact U.S. cities and what lessons can be learned. | ||
| Watch the discussion live from Tampa, Florida at 11:45 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 2 or C-SPAN Now, that free video mobile app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Back to calls. | ||
| Roger, Lakeland, Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
| Roger, what's on your mind? | ||
|
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Yes, I would like to commend C-SPAN specifically on the good successes that you all have had over the past couple months. | |
| When I was in Arizona and I called the first week of December of last year when Representative Pete Sessions was a guest and you were in the chair, Greta, and you did a wonderful job. | ||
| We have been tracking specifically just the field hearings and the hearings that have been done on accountability and government efficiency. | ||
| Now, just real quick, there have been over 10 of them combined for that. | ||
| And many of the members of Congress have been doing teletown halls and town halls, and C-SPAN has been carrying them as well. | ||
| But the other thing that I wanted to mention is that there was a caller that was saying that the politicians or the public officials haven't been responsive. | ||
| I would disagree. | ||
| It's because of C-SPAN that they are responsive. | ||
| And it just really depends upon how you pose the question and how you actually address them. | ||
| Now, just one more thing. | ||
| Fellowships seem to have been going up and up and up with those kinds of opportunities because our nonprofit sector as well as our private sector has been stepping up in that area. | ||
| Not as much as all this different kind of activities have been going on, but I don't think they were in the position to have the bigger increases that we need with regards to jobs, even though the job numbers say what they are. | ||
| Finally, I want to thank Molly Connors, development manager for C-SPAN. | ||
| Because of all this and the access, I did provide a little contribution, and she's been communicating with me very well. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| Yeah, Molly does a great job for us. | ||
| And thank you for the contribution and watching C-SPAN so closely. | ||
| We appreciate that. | ||
| Front page of the New York Times this morning, a headline to share with you about the Supreme Court muted response from Democrats on the trans ruling. | ||
| A party is in retreat, it says concerned liberals' words don't reflect the average voters' views. | ||
| They're talking about the decision by the Supreme Court to side with Tennessee's ban on transgender minor care. | ||
| Also, in the papers on that decision is inside the New York Times. | ||
| Supreme Court leaves states to decide on transgender care for youth. | ||
| These are the states that have bans on trans treatments for minors. | ||
| Those states in colored in, shaded in, are the states with bans. | ||
| Also, if you're interested in the papers this morning, in the opinion section of the papers is one of the moms at the center of that Tennessee case. | ||
| This is in the New York Times opinion page, Samantha Williams. | ||
| Our child was at the center of the Tennessee case on trans care. | ||
| Our hearts are broken, if you're interested in reading that. | ||
| We are waiting more decisions by the Supreme Court from this term. | ||
| They have the birthright citizenship case that we have not heard a decision on yet. | ||
| That could come today. | ||
| They also have the age verification for pornography, a Texas law that was challenged at the Supreme Court. | ||
| And then also another big decision, among others, is the LGBTQ books case as well. | ||
| You can find our coverage of the Supreme Court and their oral arguments if you go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Jack in Charlotte, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
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unidentified
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Jack, good morning. | |
| I was just wondering. | ||
| So, I mean, how much immigrants are being run out of the United States and basically, you know, I mean, I know that. | ||
| All right, Jack, it's difficult to hear you. | ||
| You got to mute your television when you call in. | ||
| Rodney in Louisiana, Democratic Color. | ||
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Yeah, my concern is the deportations that Trump has got going on now. | |
| He wants to deport two separate groups. | ||
| He wants to keep certain workers in certain areas, and he wants to deport people at the same time. | ||
| Is that possible? | ||
| He's playing both sides. | ||
| And Rodney, what's your concern with that approach? | ||
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unidentified
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How can they, if you're illegal, you're illegal? | |
| You can't keep workers that are illegal and the same group at the same time. | ||
| That's impossible. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Kathy in Trenton, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Kathy, good morning to you. | ||
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I live in West Tennessee, and I'd like to speak up for the Tennesseans. | |
| Our governor is crooked. | ||
| These kids and all the LGBT and everything, our president is an idiot. | ||
| I'm trying not to cuss. | ||
| He's an idiot. | ||
| He's a P-U-S-S-Y. | ||
| All the people. | ||
| He opened up the screen door on Washington and let all them idiots in. | ||
| I can't believe the way our country's going. | ||
| And I'm going to tell you something. | ||
| If people don't quit drinking the darn Republican grape juice, we're going to all go to hell. | ||
|
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I'm ready for the damn Supreme Court to put that bastard in jail. | |
| If I got cooked, Kathy, give me some policy. | ||
| Give me some policy that you disagree with instead of the name of the world. | ||
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unidentified
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I disagree with all of it. | |
| I'm going to tell you something. | ||
| Policy number one. | ||
| You shouldn't be above the law. | ||
| If I got caught in the state of Tennessee with one joint, I could do 1129. | ||
| Trump has got felonies on him. | ||
| He's a pervert. | ||
| He's a. | ||
| All right, Kathy. | ||
| We'll go on to Mark, who's in St. Thomas, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Mark, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Hey, morning to you. | |
| Listen, what's going on in the world right now? | ||
| I mean, is that on grounding, on blacking of the wall, on enlivening people that look like me? | ||
| I mean, the Constitution stops off in Article 1, Section 2, Class 3, talking about the people that look like me that are dark innovative men. | ||
| But when I look around the wall and they're attacking all of these Arab countries, what are they doing? | ||
| How, and don't get offended, but how does Israel get away with all the stuff they're doing around the wall? | ||
| They say the biggest threat in the wall is a young black male. | ||
| We haven't done anything to them. | ||
| They used to own slaves. | ||
| Is the United States run by Israel, the Republican and the Democrat Party to AIPAC? | ||
| Because as far as I can see right now, these people can do anything with unaliving people around the world, and nothing happens to them. | ||
| In the name of a book, in the name of, and you may get offended, but in the name of a book called the Bible that I don't translate to, is a new book that was written. | ||
| These people are basically colonizing the whole world. | ||
| All right, Mark's thoughts there in St. Thomas, Virginia. | ||
| Kevin's in Forest Grove, Oregon. | ||
| Democratic Caller, we'll hear from you, Kevin. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, I'd just like to bring up the deportation of the undocumented workers. | |
| I mean, our country was based on immigrants. | ||
| And now to deport anyone who doesn't, who's undocumented, and they've been here for 10, 20 years, and they've been working, supporting their families here, and then to take the sweep, and then to sweep up their families as well. | ||
| I don't understand what the president is trying to do. | ||
| Yeah, and then especially the ones trying to get documented in the courts, in the federal buildings, and then ICE going in and arresting them and then detaining politicians. | ||
| That's just so unfair. | ||
| I don't know what he is thinking. | ||
| And then to have the military, you don't think we're going to be heightened awareness? | ||
| It's going to cause disruption. | ||
| I just can't believe what the president's doing. | ||
| I get emotional in speaking about it. | ||
| All right, Kevin, Barbara's a Republican, McDonough, Georgia. | ||
| Good morning to you, Barbara. | ||
| Your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Greta. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I was calling on a couple of things. | ||
| The number one was the transgender surgeries. | ||
| I've never understood why those were paid for. | ||
| It's an elective surgery. | ||
| You know, I have mental issues because maybe I don't have big boobs or something, and the government is not going to pay for that surgery. | ||
| So that was just my thought. | ||
| And then as far as the immigrants, I do think it's gotten out of hand, and I still support Trump. | ||
| However, there's a difference in an immigrant and one that is here illegal. | ||
| And you think about it, if you think about it, these people that's been here 10 or 20 years, you cannot tell me they couldn't have gotten their citizenship by then. | ||
| The children that were brought over when they were two and now they're graduating in college, we had someone arrested here in Georgia, and I really don't think they should have done that. | ||
| However, she wasn't she's been here since she's two years old, but she hasn't become a citizen. | ||
| And she's been in our school system with plenty of help to get that done. | ||
| So, my concern is anybody can sponsor someone to come over here and work. | ||
| But you don't see any farmers or any businesses willing to sponsor a group to come over here and work so we know where they are and what they're doing. | ||
| All right, Barbara. | ||
| Let me get in two more calls here. | ||
| Sewan is in East St. Louis, Illinois. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning, Greta. | |
| I'm just upset about this. | ||
| Two weeks, every time ask them anything, it's supposed to be two weeks. | ||
| He's supposed to have this conference with Russia, President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| It's still eight weeks ago. | ||
| He never did say anything about that. | ||
| He said that was two weeks with the confidence in Russia of President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| I'm just tired. | ||
| Every time you look up, it's next two weeks. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Caller. | ||
| We'll go to Cheryl next, who's in Daytona Beach, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Cheryl, open forum. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey. | |
| Well, as soon as that foulmouth woman started, even though she was spelling nasty words, you should have cut her off. | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| C-SPAN is such a great platform. | ||
| Are you hanging up on me? | ||
| No, we're listening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Because you love to hang up on anybody who disagrees with your platform or Biden's administration or anything else. | ||
| Trump is the president. | ||
| A lot of people voted for him. | ||
| And every day it's bash Trump, bash Trump. | ||
| He's just trying to do his job. | ||
| And because of all the lawsuits and all the pushback, it just makes it more ugly and more divisive. | ||
| This country's got to stop this. | ||
| We're on the brink of World War III. | ||
| This is serious stuff that he's having to deal with every single day. | ||
| Biden was a horrible president, but he didn't cause everything that got dumped in President Trump's lap. | ||
| This has been going on for decades. | ||
| And somebody, somebody needs to stop it and bring us back together. | ||
| This division in this country is the worst thing that can happen. | ||
| It's what's going to take us down. | ||
| Not Iran, not China, our own people. | ||
| All right, Cheryl, I'm going to try to get in one more call here. | ||
| Maria, who's in Brick, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I've been watching C-SPAN for a long time. | |
| Now, this problem with immigration, this falls on Joe Biden and his administration. | ||
| They left those borders wide open for years. | ||
| In fact, I remember like it was yesterday. | ||
| Joe Biden was down by the border and there were people trying to come in. | ||
| He kept saying, that's all right. | ||
| You can all come in now. | ||
| You have a new president. | ||
| And they came in like herds, like herds. | ||
| And the Democrats were falling over themselves trying to give them places to live. | ||
| Some in the best hotels. | ||
| They got food. | ||
| They got shelter. | ||
| They got free health care. | ||
| They got debit cards, transportation. | ||
| I never saw this. | ||
| And, Maria, where did you see all this? | ||
| Where did you learn of all this? | ||
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unidentified
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Where did I learn on C-SPAN? |