| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| That the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to ESRES 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
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C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| Oh, you think this is just a community sensor? | ||
| No, it's way more than that. | ||
| Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lists so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Saturday, June 21st. | ||
| This week, President Trump announced he's weighing U.S. military involvement in the Israel-Israel-Iran war, saying he'll decide whether to strike Iran within two weeks. | ||
| Also, a U.S. appeals court ruled President Trump can keep control of National Guard troops he deployed to Los Angeles in response to protests against his immigration crackdown. | ||
| And President Trump signed an executive order to push TikTok sale deadline for the third time this year. | ||
| Those are just a few of the stories C-SPAN has been following. | ||
| And for the first hour of today's program, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Thank you for being with us this morning. | ||
| We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few moments, but wanted to start with one of those top stories. | ||
| That is the latest on the Israel and Iran war. | ||
| This from The Guardian this morning, it says, Iran and Israel exchanged fresh strikes early on Saturday after Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear program while under threat. | ||
| And Israel claimed its attacks had delayed Iran's potential to develop a nuclear weapon by at least two or three years. | ||
| It goes on to talk about the new attacks there, the new missile exchanges there. | ||
| It goes on to say that the war started when Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iran last Friday morning, and what it said was an operation aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Iran quickly responded with a barrage of missiles and drones, triggering a tit-for-tat cycle of bombing between the two countries. | ||
| It was yesterday on NBC News that Iran's foreign minister was asked about the possibility of a deal being reached. | ||
| Here is a clip from that interview. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can diplomacy produce a solution in two weeks? | |
| Well, I think it's up to, you know, Americans, the United States, I mean, to show their determination for going for a negotiate solution, or they have something else in their mind and they want to attack Iran anyway. | ||
| If they want diplomacy, we were in the middle of diplomacy when Israel attacked us. | ||
| And to be honest with you, we have come to the conclusion that negotiations by the U.S. was in fact a cover for what Israelis did. | ||
| So they had perhaps this plan in their mind and just they just needed negotiations perhaps to cover it up. | ||
| We don't know how we can trust them anymore. | ||
| What they did was in fact a betrayal to diplomacy. | ||
| Would Iran retaliate against U.S. targets and U.S. forces in the region or elsewhere? | ||
| When there is a war, both sides attack each other. | ||
| That's quite understandable. | ||
| And self-defense is a legitimate right of every country. | ||
| What we are doing right now is only exercising our right of self-defense. | ||
| The act of aggression is coming from the Israeli side. | ||
| They started this aggression, and we are only defending ourselves. | ||
| If the U.S. joins Israel in these attacks, we will do the same. | ||
| We actually retaliate as a form of self-defense. | ||
| I think if Americans are serious to go back to diplomacy, what it needs is only a telephone call from Washington to Tel Aviv to stop everything. | ||
| This is how we understand. | ||
| So they can stop this process very quickly. | ||
| And then we will consider diplomacy once again. | ||
| I cannot say 100% that we go back to negotiations because it doesn't, it's meaningless. | ||
| They've attacked us. | ||
| They have killed our more from the Associated Press. | ||
| It says U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing U.S. military involvement in the conflict with which Aragshi said Saturday would be very unfortunate. | ||
| It goes on to say that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli's military operation in Iran would continue for as long as it takes to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran's nuclear program and arsenal of ballistic missiles. | ||
| But Netanyahu's goal could be out of reach without U.S.'s help, barring a commander raid or even a nuclear strike. | ||
| Iran's underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility is considered to be out of reach to all but America's bunker-busting bombs. | ||
| That is just one of the top news stories that we have been following this week on C-SPAN. | ||
| For this first hour, we're asking you what your top news story is. | ||
| The lines Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8000 and 2. | ||
| We'll start with Sandy in Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sandy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for allowing me to speak. | ||
| My top news story is about immigration. | ||
| It is just driving me crazy that these ice agents, these cowardly snowflake ice agents, are masking. | ||
| Please stop scaring people by wearing these masks. | ||
| We are going out and protesting at senior citizens, women, children, other men, veterans without masks. | ||
| Please take off your masks. | ||
| I've been to Eastern Europe. | ||
| I know what happened in Germany. | ||
| Please take off your masks. | ||
| This is scaring people. | ||
| Be proud of what you're doing if you're doing your job. | ||
| Thank you for allowing me to speak. | ||
| That was Sandy in Florida. | ||
| John in Brooklyn, New York, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| I'm John Corner from Brooklyn. | ||
| I'm clergy, and I want to make a statement about the Babel. | ||
| And I usually watch this every morning. | ||
| And when somebody speaks about the Bible, they always cut them off short. | ||
| Now, I have about three or four short verses here that I want to. | ||
| John, I want to steer you into our top story of the week. | ||
| That's our topic for this first hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My top story is about Israel. | |
| Right? | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the way I want to talk about Israel and explain myself, I have about two or three minutes of time. | |
| No, I don't think I'm going to give you that much time, John, but go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm clergy. | |
| The Bible talks about Israel. | ||
| I don't know why the clergy preachers in these microchurches and small churches don't tell people to read these few verses. | ||
| And those few verses is Ezekiel 3.18, Matthew 10, 33, Galatians 3.18, Galatians 3.29, and Galatians 3.28. | ||
| If you read those few verses, you will understand these Jews today is not Jews. | ||
| They are so-called Jews. | ||
| Because Jesus said, anybody denied me before man, I would deny you before my father. | ||
| jews muslims and regular gentiles in america they don't know who the messiah is so the problem We'll go to Paul in Nampa, Idaho, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I think the top story of the week is pretty much obvious. | ||
| Everywhere you go, everywhere you talk to people, it's all about the conflict between Iran and Israel and the USA on standby and Russia and China and North Korea on standby for the other side. | ||
| It's kind of obvious. | ||
| It's very precocious right now what's going on. | ||
| I like the idea that Trump kept his head on and decided to take some time out and that other people could do the same. | ||
| And if they had to regroup, then that's what they had to do. | ||
| But we weren't going to do something that we would live to regret. | ||
| And so far, I'm really grateful that no nukes have been used, period. | ||
| That's not to say that Iran doesn't already have them or given to them. | ||
| They're not even made themselves. | ||
| So that's something that's bothered me. | ||
| Was that they can be used at any time if they've been given in that plane load from China that came in three days ago, or if they were flown before that and whatnot. | ||
| So I believe that they've already got the access to them between those three other countries that are their allies. | ||
| Right now, I don't see a lot, and I don't hear a lot from what's going on with NATO. | ||
| And I think that that's an area that's not being discussed. | ||
| I don't know for what reason, but you're talking about a global conflict. | ||
| If you got ballistic missiles that are tipped with nuclear warheads, sometimes as many as 10 for a warhead, that could do a lot of damage in a big hurry. | ||
| And life as we know it on this planet can disappear with just a couple of buttons being pushed. | ||
| That was Paul in Idaho. | ||
| Let's hear from Joe in Maine, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and good morning, Paul. | |
| Thank you for that. | ||
| Holy crap. | ||
| Well, it's obvious that we're at the brink of World War III and a global war. | ||
| Yes, hello. | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Joe. | ||
| We can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| And I just obviously were being lied to by our government. | ||
| We're being lied to by the Jewish and Israeli government. | ||
| Betanyahu has been saying Iran has the bomb since 2006. | ||
| So, I mean, it's ridiculous. | ||
| Trump is not going to help us. | ||
| It depends on, you know, a flip of a coin with him, what's going to happen. | ||
| He doesn't have a backbone. | ||
| Everyone has come into the White House, every country, and confronts them and calls them a liar. | ||
| Everyone, from the African guy to Solinsky, we are in NATO, and we're not protecting Ukraine. | ||
| Russia's bombing freely, killing civilians. | ||
| And Donald Poo-Poo Pants is saying he wants peace. | ||
| You know, when? | ||
| You know, Donald Poo-Poo Pants said COVID was going to cure itself. | ||
| Come name a holiday. | ||
| Do you people remember that? | ||
| And you're saying he's going to fix the economy when? | ||
| Two weeks? | ||
| This yesterday, two weeks, if anyone had half a brain would say, how many times can you say that on the world stage and do nothing, do absolutely nothing? | ||
| That was Joe in Maine. | ||
| And Joe mentioned NATO as well as our previous caller. | ||
| And just wanted to give you a heads up that the NATO summit in The Hague will start next week on the 24th. | ||
| You'll be able to watch coverage of that right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Let's hear from William in Baltimore, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| History does repeat itself. | ||
| The United States is on the verge of a third Gulf War. | ||
| And remember, there was no WMD when we went into Iran. | ||
| Now we claim Iran is weeks away from a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Netanyahu, who has been saying Iran is two weeks away from a nuclear bomb for 20 years. | ||
| Why do our political leaders continue to waste our assets and precious American soldiers and invade countries killing innocent people? | ||
| Finally, there will never be peace in the Middle East because the establishment of Israel in 1948 was done at the expense of exiling Palestinians and creating an apartheid system. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That was William in Maryland. | ||
| The Los Angeles Times reporting on yesterday's decision by a U.S. appeals court about the National Guard deployment, President Trump's National Guard deployment to Los Angeles. | ||
| It says the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday to leave troops in Los Angeles in the hands of the Trump administration while California's objections are litigated in federal court, finding the president has broad, though not unreviewable, authority to deploy the military in American cities. | ||
| It was yesterday, or it was earlier this week on the Senate floor that Senator Padilla, who was removed from a Christy Noam press conference last week, spoke about the incident. | ||
| Here is that clip: It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. | ||
| We all have a responsibility to speak up and to push back before it's too late. | ||
| So I do encourage people to keep peacefully protesting. | ||
| There's nothing more patriotic than to peacefully protest for your rights. | ||
| Because no one's going to liberate Los Angeles but Angelinos. | ||
| No one will redeem America but Americans. | ||
| No one is coming to save us but us. | ||
| And we know that the cameras are not on in every corner of the country. | ||
| But if this administration is this afraid of just one senator with a question, colleagues, imagine what the voices of tens of millions of Americans peacefully protesting can do. | ||
| I thank you all for being here to hear me. | ||
| And I thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| Back to the phones, hearing your top news story of the week. | ||
| Up next is John in Alabama, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Top news story seems like the constant news story, this war. | |
| It's really a bummer being about 60 years old, seeing people older than me that just can't wait to go to war again. | ||
| Seems like my whole life. | ||
| And it seems like since almost the early 90s, Netanyahu has been saying the same story over and over again, just like the last caller. | ||
| He got it right. | ||
| The history kind of doesn't allow for peace until I think that's reconciled, how the whole thing began over there. | ||
| And so how about America first? | ||
| How about being called an isolationist when that's not what it is, just not wanting to fight foreign wars? | ||
| Our ancestors didn't want to fight foreign wars. | ||
| Our true American spirit never wanted to go outside of these shores. | ||
| They wanted to focus on what's going on here, and it's so obvious. | ||
| Nothing could be more important than taking care of our own right now. | ||
| Just look at every city. | ||
| Look at every city. | ||
| They've got trillions of dollars to spend overseas, but nothing here. | ||
| So I'm noticing it. | ||
| I hope everybody else does. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That was John in Alabama. | ||
| Let's hear from Cliff in Tulsa, Oklahoma, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Cliff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I've got a proposal. | |
| I think we should make Israel the 51st state and take control of the whole region and give everybody the same rights. | ||
| The problem we're having is we just have these continuous wars. | ||
| Like James Simmons said, he was from Israel because, you know, in Los Angeles or Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, everybody live across the street from each other. | ||
| But over in Israel, it doesn't seem to work the same way. | ||
| And there's no reason why we couldn't take over the state of Israel, make it the 51st state, and take control of this whole mess and stop these endless wars because, you know, the industrial complex loves what's going on. | ||
| They're making billions and billions of dollars in 1948 because of Israel. | ||
| And I think taxpayers are getting a little tired of paying for it. | ||
| That was Cliff in Oklahoma. | ||
| Elizabeth in Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Elizabeth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| My top news story of the week is the release of Mahmoud Khalil from detention in Louisiana. | ||
| He's a brilliant Palestinian activist from Columbia University who was arrested and detained by Trump's ICE people in March for his political views and speaking out on Palestine and Port Gaza. | ||
| He was just released yesterday, and it shows us that we can fight against Trump and we can win. | ||
| It's a victory for everyone who believes in freedom, who believes in the right to speak, free speech, and who believes in peace. | ||
| It's a victory for everyone. | ||
| I just, that's all I want to talk about. | ||
| He's home with his family, and his lawyers won, the ACLU lawyers won in federal court. | ||
| We are going to be able to win against Trump. | ||
| I am a disabled senior. | ||
| I have lost my Medicaid and two-thirds of my food stands because Republicans. | ||
| I don't know how I'm going to survive, but I will survive. | ||
| There are many people worse off than me. | ||
| I will survive. | ||
| But we are going to fight against Trump, and we will win against Trump. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's all I want to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Elizabeth in Maryland. | ||
| David in North Carolina, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| It looks like I had the wrong line. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Big story every week to me is the upcoming crash of the federal budget. | ||
| And I'm going to speak to Democrats for a second. | ||
| Washington, D.C. is not a source of wealth. | ||
| It is not the government's responsibility to pay for your child care, your lunches, your food, what else? | ||
| All your medicine. | ||
| They cannot create wealth. | ||
| They can only transfer wealth from those who work and save and pay taxes to those who are not paying net taxes. | ||
| In other words, the IRS is a giant wealth transfer program. | ||
| And what's coming fairly soon is major, major spending cutbacks in federal programs. | ||
| And it's going to get really, really serious. | ||
| This was the big topic before we realized that 10 years after JCPOA, when we knew Iran would have enough material for a nuclear weapon, and that time has now come. | ||
| It's about 10 years since that deal from Biden. | ||
| And that's the big news now. | ||
| And Democrats probably be happy if Israel was bombed with a nuclear weapon. | ||
| But that's beside the point. | ||
| And that will become the major story, of course. | ||
| But it's not. | ||
| If we're able to succeed in preventing a nuclear weapon from Iran being launched, then the big story will go back to what it was a few weeks ago, which is the federal budget, the economy, and major cutbacks are coming. | ||
| And there will be riots in the streets. | ||
| It's going to get really, really bad when there are major cutbacks. | ||
| So you've got to think about it for a second that people have come to believe that Washington's, that everyone's right is to be cared for by Washington, but that's not the case. | ||
| And it's going to be a rude awakening with riots. | ||
| And of course, they'll blame Trump, but this crash and the upcoming debt problem has been around for a long time from both parties because, you know, a representative job is to get reelected, and they have to use other people's money to do that. | ||
| That's both parties, by the way. | ||
| But that's going to be the big problem in the year, two, or three years is going to be riots in the streets over federal cutbacks. | ||
| Got your point, David. | ||
| Well, let's hear from Frank in Savannah, Georgia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| As always, thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Universe, for C-SPAN. | ||
| That's the one essential news network about Iran. | ||
| I hope to God we don't get involved with it because nothing but grief will come from that. | ||
| It would turn the Middle East into a fireball. | ||
| We do not know where that will lead to. | ||
| Let the Israelis handle it. | ||
| I think Trump, he's the president now, unfortunately. | ||
| He should tell Irailis to take out the current Ayatollah and all the sub-Ayatollahs under him. | ||
| They can. | ||
| After that, we can negotiate with whoever's left. | ||
| They may be much more amenable to removing this new flag and these nuke bunkers. | ||
| And the reason I'm saying that, because I've been watching the news for years and years, and they have been kidnapping Americans and murdering Americans and others for years and years with impunity. | ||
| They've also incited murder against writers and artists, and they've killed people. | ||
| Iran is a big source of that. | ||
| But we have to stop. | ||
| We have to decapitate them and see what happens after that. | ||
| Got your point, Frank. | ||
| Let's hear from Lynn in Columbia, Missouri, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Lynn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's Columbia, Maryland. | |
| Apologies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My news item is something that no one out there in your very few of your listeners are paying any attention to. | |
| The new government in Syria is al-Qaeda. | ||
| The guy's name is Al-Shara. | ||
| And he's on mainstream media shaking hands with President Trump at the White House. | ||
| The new government of Syria is Al-Qaeda, folks. | ||
| And when you hear that wounded ISIS fighters are treated in Israeli hospitals, it pretty much confirms what 9-11 truthers have been saying for the last 20 years: that al-Qaeda, ISIS, these fake terrorist organizations are proxies for NATO and the United States, that 9-11 was a hoax, that these were controlled demolitions, and that most of you out there are just chunks and suckers who are falling for it. | ||
| Do you have anything to say? | ||
| That was Lynn in Maryland. | ||
| Let's hear from Ray, Tennessee, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Ray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I think, first of all, Joe in Maine needs to get a little help. | ||
| But basically, I'm going to get back to what the gentleman was talking about. | ||
| Everybody thinks Washington is supposed to take care of him. | ||
| Look, I'm 82 years old. | ||
| I've worked all my life. | ||
| I don't expect nothing from Washington. | ||
| I spent my time in the military, and I done that for my country. | ||
| But these people, I guarantee, and I see it day in and day out, they're wasteful in their, and then they wanted somebody to pick up their slack. | ||
| Stand on your own two feet. | ||
| You're living in the best country in the world. | ||
| You got all the work you could do if you want to do it. | ||
| It's you people that don't want to work and you want somebody to pick up your slack. | ||
| I'm saying, it's like John F. Kennedy said, ask what you can do for your country, not what your country can do for you. | ||
| Now get on your own two feet and quit expecting Washington to take care of you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Ray in Tennessee. | ||
| This headline from the Wall Street Journal this week, Fed holds rates steady and keeps door open to cuts. | ||
| It says that Federal Reserve officials left the door open to cutting interest rates in the second half of the year, but indicated that they were in no hurry to do so when they held rates steady Wednesday. | ||
| President Trump preemptively blasted the widely anticipated rate decision earlier in the day and called for much more dramatic cuts of between 1 and 2.5 percentage points. | ||
| The Fed's left its policy rate in a range between 4.25% and 4.5 percent. | ||
| It said to resume rate cuts that they started last year, Fed officials are likely to need to see either labor markets softened or stronger evidence that price increases triggered by tariffs will be relatively muted. | ||
| It was Wednesday after that Fed chair meeting or Fed meeting that the chair, Jerome Powell, spoke to reporters. | ||
| Here's a clip. | ||
| My colleagues and I remain squarely focused on achieving our dual mandate goals of maximum employment and stable prices for the benefit of the American people. | ||
| Despite elevated uncertainty, the economy is in a solid position. | ||
| The unemployment rate remains low, and the labor market is at or near maximum employment. | ||
| Inflation has come down a great deal, but has been running somewhat above our 2% longer run objective. | ||
| In support of our goals, today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave our policy interest rate unchanged. | ||
| We believe that the current stance of monetary policy leaves us well positioned to respond in a timely way to potential economic developments. | ||
| The Hill reporting yesterday that President Trump floated the possibility of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as part of his latest round of intense criticism of the leader of the central bank over its decision not to lower interest rates. | ||
| Trump, in a lengthy post on Truth Social, railed against Powell, labeling him a numskull, a dumb guy, and an obvious Trump hater. | ||
| Trump appointed Powell to the post in 2017. | ||
| Just about 30 minutes left in this first hour, today's Washington Journal asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Robin in Elm City, North Carolina, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Robin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to say that Trump has got to be the most gullible president we've ever had in our life because our own Tulsi Gabber told us there's two years. | ||
| Oh, Iran is two years away from developing the nuclear power needed for a nuclear bomb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And BB says, oh, that's not true. | |
| It's only two weeks. | ||
| And Trump believes him. | ||
| That was Robin in North Carolina. | ||
| Let's hear from Ched, Chicago, Illinois, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Ched. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, a couple of days. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| So a couple of days ago, I was at the ICE protest in L.A. My landlord, his name is Shmuly Soiberg. | ||
| He had kicked me and my girlfriend out of our apartment. | ||
| And so we just decided to go to the protest one day. | ||
| And it was an absolute gem of a protest, really. | ||
| My girlfriend is this hardcore Dutch nationalist, even though she's not really Dutch. | ||
| She supports Geerbuilders. | ||
| But we went to the ICE protest, and there was people throwing things everywhere. | ||
| There were cars getting jacked, cars getting burned down. | ||
| Again, real, real gem of a protest. | ||
| And one of the LAPD officers, I interviewed him on my YouTube channel. | ||
| His name is Officer Cobson. | ||
| He said that it was like a real travesty that this sort of thing happened. | ||
| It was like the largest scale protest he had seen since LA in 92 with the rooftop Koreans and all that. | ||
| But yeah, it was just like a wild, wild thing. | ||
| And, you know, people were getting raided. | ||
| ICE was throwing everything like around everywhere. | ||
| I don't really support one side or the other. | ||
| I just know like, wow, it was like certainly an experience. | ||
| And I think our government really needs to crack down on this thing. | ||
| But in all honesty, I think they're kind of too focused on Israel and what Israel's doing right now to really care about this ICE thing. | ||
| It's more like symbolic than I would expect. | ||
| But you got to do what you got to do. | ||
| Everything's just so soy now, you know. | ||
| Ched, you said that you interviewed a police officer for your YouTube channel. | ||
| What kind of channel do you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you know Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan? | |
| Are you aware of that? | ||
| Not familiar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's basically this man on the street interview. | |
| And I interviewed LAPD. | ||
| He's not the chief, but he's in close ties with the chief, LAPD officer Cobson. | ||
| And he gave a pretty lengthy statement on the protesters. | ||
| And he used some quite colorful language in describing these protesters. | ||
| I'm not going to say it on air, but the protesters definitely seemed like a nuisance on the part of the LAPD. | ||
| And again, he was part of the raid, so he just had to do what he had to do. | ||
| But again, I don't really pick either side. | ||
| It was all just kind of interesting to watch. | ||
| Ched, if people want to watch that interview, where can they find it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the video ended up getting taken down a couple of days ago because I forgot to cut out the colorful language, and I now have a strike on my channel. | |
| So I can't really state it, and I don't want to get my privacy revealed because I have had death threats come to me beforehand. | ||
| That was Ched in Illinois talking about his experience. | ||
| Let's talk with John in Connecticut line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, my biggest news story for this week has to be the Democrats going yesterday and impugning the reputation of a great American, Mr. Sergio Gore. | |
| Had Brian Kemp Krebs saying that he was Sergei Borayachev and was born in Russia and a deep spy who ascended to the highest levels of power. | ||
| And the Democrats were in a frenzy yesterday. | ||
| And then I wake up today and I find out yet again it was another Russia hoax. | ||
| That was John in Connecticut, Mary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| I just want to let the American people know that any time that we drop a bomb on any country, that's an automatic war. | ||
| And for anyone to say that they're going to keep our American troops for fighting or engaging in what's going on in Iran, this is ridiculous. | ||
| Use common sense. | ||
| I've been following these wars for decades. | ||
| And what I have been seeing, Netanyahu have been crying wolf for 30 years. | ||
| And they had protests in Israel where 60% of the Jewish people said that they are descendants of the original Jews and they will not fight in any wars that Netanyahu trying to engage them in. | ||
| That they would get rid of him first as their so-called leader. | ||
| And then what's going on in Ukraine? | ||
| We have been funding these wars for decades. | ||
| When Perchenko was the president of Ukraine, we have paid the bad taxes that the people owe to Putin in Ukraine. | ||
| Perchenko was listed under the Panama papers as one of the richest presidents in Ukraine based on not paying his taxes. | ||
| The Ukraine people and the American businesses that were in Ukraine had borrowed money, failed to pay their taxes to Putin, and we have been paying the taxes for them for decades. | ||
| Now they want us to engage in wars now. | ||
| When you look at countries annexing properties, that's because the people failed to pay what they were required to pay. | ||
| And I'm tired of fighting these wars for profit. | ||
| Every time we get into these wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, we train their military, and the first thing they said they wasn't trained properly and throw down their weapons. | ||
| We need to stop engaging in these wars where these other countries do not want to share their intelligence with the United States. | ||
| That's the first problem. | ||
| That was Mary in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Let's go to Joseph in Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I got two subjects. | ||
| One is Trump's announced that he's going to have a telephone available in August, made in America. | ||
| Absolute lie. | ||
| Absolutely could not happen unless the Trump family secretly built out a secure onshore or near shore fabrication operation over the years without anybody noticing. | ||
| It's simply not true. | ||
| The second thing why they're doing the phone is it's going to be a money grab. | ||
| It's going to link crypto in Bitcoin so the Trumps can make more money. | ||
| MAGA, wake up. | ||
| The second thing is this. | ||
| While I was listening, there was a gentleman, a Republican, who was against the government giving money for food and stamps to welfare. | ||
| And let me tell you, Mr. Republican, my mother was widowed at 34 years of age and left with five children. | ||
| And welfare put us on the right path. | ||
| All went to colleges, and there are thousands of families that were put in that situation. | ||
| So if that gentleman, who must be very privileged, can go to hell. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Joseph in Florida. | ||
| Joseph mentioning a story. | ||
| This is the headline in NBC News. | ||
| This phone is made in the U.S. and Trump's name isn't on it. | ||
| It says that President Donald Trump's family business is taking pre-orders for a gold-colored smartphone. | ||
| The T1, it says Trump Mobile, which launched Tuesday, says the device will be available in September, cost far less than Apple's and Samsung smartphones and be made in the United States, aligning with the president's America First Economic Ethos. | ||
| Says the industry experts and text journalists instantly cast doubt on those claims. | ||
| And if Carlsbad, California-based smartphone maker Purism is any example, it would take much more than two months for Trump Mobile to build an American-made smartphone from scratch. | ||
| It would also cost likely to be more expensive than T1's advertised price of $499. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Loretta in Cleveland, Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Loretta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, America. | |
| It's so many good topics, but this past week, it's like a smuggish board. | ||
| And I really don't know where to begin. | ||
| I think I'll begin with the Republican guy, too, that called in talking about get on. | ||
| Black people have got off their butt for 400 years and still haven't been paid. | ||
| No reparation. | ||
| No nothing. | ||
| Now, we now, I don't even know how to say this. | ||
| There were black natives, black Indians, and red Indians that lived here for thousands of years. | ||
| Before Christopher Columbus came over here, before the potato famine, you know, I'm sorry, but white people just don't think. | ||
| How did they get here? | ||
| How did they get here, Tammy? | ||
| They got here, they rolled up their boats to the shore, they got off the boat, and they started killing everybody. | ||
| Now, my family is a foundational black person. | ||
| My lineage goes back to the 1650s. | ||
| Now, research told me that. | ||
| The point that I'm trying to make is that America was created for immigrants. | ||
| Didn't say white people. | ||
| So y'all need to rethink y'all drink. | ||
| I don't know what y'all doing at this hour, but for people to be calling in and talking about what people need to do is a bit ridiculous. | ||
| And that was Loretta in Ohio. | ||
| George in Orchard Park, New York, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| I just wanted to mention what I hear a lot that Democrats made the threat to democracy. | ||
| This is always a phrase that they tend to use about the threat to democracy. | ||
| I just, you know, if there's anybody who displays a threat to democracy, well, you need to look in your old mirror, Democrats. | ||
| I mean, for four years under the Biden administration, they let so many undocumented people into our country, not caring who they were or not even checking to know where they're coming from. | ||
| And now ICE, for example, is trying to clean things up to protect our country, and they still pose a threat to democracy, Democrats. | ||
| Whether it was a congressman rushing in to the Christy Noam conference, not identifying himself properly with a badge, just pushing himself through thinking that he is above the law, which they always claim. | ||
| I think that you just have to kind of kick, set back, work together, and do what's good for America. | ||
| And you had a caller about on the Democrat line saying you shouldn't wear a mask, the ICE officials. | ||
| Well, they want protection. | ||
| They don't want people to know who they are so that they become a victim of the left's anger and destruction. | ||
| So just let's work together, move things forward. | ||
| Trump is our president. | ||
| Let's get behind him and grow together. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was George in New York. | ||
| This headline from this week on Axios says Trump extends TikTok's sale deadline. | ||
| Again, it says President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to push TikTok's sale deadline for the third time this year. | ||
| It says ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese-owned parent company, has failed to sell the app to a U.S. buyer as required by law. | ||
| Writers reported earlier this year a plan to spin off the app's American operation was put on hold after the U.S. imposed steep tariffs on China. | ||
| He has dangled a deal as a way to negotiate the tariffs. | ||
| Trump announced the expected deadline extension on Truth Social. | ||
| The new deadline is September 17th. | ||
| And it goes on to say that, note that a group of House Democrats wrote a letter to Trump earlier this month requesting that he stop extending the deadline. | ||
| It was on Wednesday on news that that extension could be signed that Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat of Washington State, who's the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, spoke on the Senate floor opposing that extension. | ||
| I'm also concerned that despite this clear and present danger, these extensions just continue to give China an ability to influence unduly American citizens. | ||
| The president needs to implement the law that Congress gave him, that the Supreme Court has upheld, and protect our military and our citizens against this foreign misinformation that is taking place. | ||
| Last week, I asked Secretary Bessett from the Treasury whether he had been discussing TikTok at meetings with Chinese officials in London. | ||
| He said they had not. | ||
| I'm concerned that these extensions of the TikTok deal are illegal. | ||
| Note that Congress passed this law and the president extending the deadline to allow them to continue to operate in the United States under the control of Byte Dance and the Chinese government is not what Congress intended. | ||
| Congress said in the law that any deal on the sale of TikTok must include a transfer of the ownership of TikTok source code, training data, and recommendation algorithms. | ||
| This may be for some people not really clear, but we would not let the Chinese government own ABC or NBC, and we shouldn't let them broadcast their content into the United States on ABC or NBC. | ||
| And we shouldn't allow them to do the same with TikTok. | ||
| The Supreme Court, as I said, unanimously upheld this law that Congress passed. | ||
| I'm concerned that each extension, though, of not getting a deal puts America and some of our leading tech companies at great financial risk. | ||
| Under the law, app stores that distribute and support TikTok are subject to severe penalties, up to $5,000 per user. | ||
| And that could amount to billions of dollars in damages. | ||
| And while the current administration has signaled that they won't enforce the law, the statute of limitations for that liability is five years, meaning future administrations could apply those penalties retroactively. | ||
| So simply put, we cannot continue to allow foreign adversaries to control technology that can fuel domestic and political polarization and civil unrest. | ||
| We need the president to follow the law that Congress passed, bringing TikTok under U.S. ownership. | ||
| Back to your calls, asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Angela in California, Line for Independence. | ||
| Hi, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing this morning? | |
| My top story is: what's happening right here in California? | ||
| My question is: Is the United States under a regime change? | ||
| Look like Donald Trump is hiring under the Republican Party, but look like we have a third party going on here. | ||
| And when the gentlemen say it's okay for mass guys to jump out of cars that ride in seven and eight cars deep, I was at Food Felix the other day. | ||
| I took my real ID and put it around my neck like I do my ID at work. | ||
| They bomb rushed me. | ||
| They had guns. | ||
| And all I could say is, what's going on? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| I was born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1960. | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| And they just passed me up and looked at me when I said that. | ||
| My family is law enforcement, ex-FBI. | ||
| And my brother-in-law said to me, Because you spoke perfect English, that's why they passed you up. | ||
| My second question is: how many illegal Asians are in the United States? | ||
| Do we have more illegal Asians in the United States? | ||
| Do we have American boots? | ||
| And why are we allowing all our kids to be sent to other nations to be killed? | ||
| Why are we over in messing with Israel? | ||
| We were over there for Iraq. | ||
| My nephew went over there. | ||
| He was a tanker. | ||
| He made it back. | ||
| But I don't have any kids, and I don't understand why America is so happy at having war and killing off your kids. | ||
| Better watch the movie Red Dawn. | ||
| That was Angela in California. | ||
| Let's hear from Jeff in Washington, D.C., line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So the story of this week, this year, the last 80 years since nuclear weapons were invented is our species has been extremely lucky, dumb luck, really, since 1945, amidst dozens of nuclear weapons accidents, near explosions of multi-megaton H-bombs by crash bombers, or an almost nuclear wars in the Cuban crisis, 62, Abel Archer NATO exercise in 83, Black Brand incident in 1995, almost nuclear war, India, | ||
| Pakistan in 1999, and India, Pakistan this year. | ||
| Like conventional deterrence, people say nuclear deterrence is robust. | ||
| It'll last forever. | ||
| We'll never have a nuclear war. | ||
| That's what the military among all the nine nuclear weapons countries say. | ||
| But like conventional deterrence or peace through strength has been in effect for thousands of years, and that has not prevented hundreds of devastating wars. | ||
| No matter how strong you are, it can still happen. | ||
| And because of, again, irrationality. | ||
| Nuclear deterrence depends on rationality, but irrationality, computer or human accidents, miscalculation, misperception, all these factors mean we need to push all our leaders of all the nine nuclear countries, including President Trump, to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and get started negotiating as soon as possible. | ||
| We should try to reach the multilateral negotiations. | ||
| Like Reagan said, don't trust, verify. | ||
| And so when we do that and all the nations rid the world of nuclear weapons by the year 2030, we've got other problems, but that'll be a great day. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That was Jeff in Washington, D.C. Tommy in Alabama, lined for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tommy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, ma'am. | |
| How are you doing this morning? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I just want to say one thing. | ||
| They need legal Trump wrong. | ||
| The reason we're in this obsession this war right now, Joe Biden and Comrie Harrison, she gave him a free meal ticket, and that's where all our money went. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's had to do all this. | |
| And that black lady got on there talking by, no, my buddy's a white person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to tell you right now, he was the guy business in Bestburg. | |
| They give her a black business business, but they wouldn't give him one. | ||
| He went bankrupt and lost his business because of that reason. | ||
| Now, you tell me you ain't messed up. | ||
| And that war over Israel, we shouldn't have nothing to do with that because Trump's asked him to quit farming weapons over there and they need to quit doing it. | ||
| They're getting their own self-killed. | ||
| And I tell you, all this racist stuff needs to stop. | ||
| And they need to listen to Trump. | ||
| Trump's the only ones trying to help us. | ||
| And that's all I've got to say about it, man. | ||
| I'm leaving it in God's hands. | ||
| And you have a very nice day, ma'am. | ||
| Now, God bless they all. | ||
| And all better pray to God about all this. | ||
| That was Tommy in Alabama. | ||
| It was this week that Senator Lindsey Graham was on Fox News talking about Iran's nuclear ambitions. | ||
| Here's a clip from that interview. | ||
| I talked to the president last night. | ||
| I just want to say this. | ||
| I'm so glad he is where he is at. | ||
| He's the right guy at the right time. | ||
| He's calm as he can be. | ||
| He's resolved. | ||
| He's steady. | ||
| I think he's done a marvelous job of handling this conflict. | ||
| And I believe the sun is about to set on the Iran nuclear ambitions. | ||
| They need our help, Israel does, to take out Ferdo. | ||
| They need help from us. | ||
| I'm hoping the president will provide Israel the help they need to finish the job of the last nuclear site underground. | ||
| And if we accomplish destroying the Iranian nuclear program, it will be historic for the region and historic for the world. | ||
| This is a religious Nazi regime bent on purifying Islam, destroying the Jewish state, and coming after us. | ||
| They're religious Nazis. | ||
| And this regime does not need, nor can they ever have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| And Donald Trump is about to put a period on that statement. | ||
| Just about five minutes left in this first portion of Washington Journal asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Frank in Aberdeen, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| The biggest story is the real reason Trump fled. | ||
| He said that, or I heard one pundit put it, the G6 plus one. | ||
| There were several leaders he was supposed to meet from India, Ukraine, and France that he couldn't face because he defended them. | ||
| The biggest thing was Canada's Prime Minister Kearney basically had to give him a time out as he was doing a prize press conference and he started going on one of his rages about how the Democrats were going to use immigrants to vote. | ||
| And he just came in and says, excuse me, I'm the chairman here. | ||
| And then to keep time going, I have to take the mic from him. | ||
| And he looked like he was a deer caught in the headlights. | ||
| He was too ashamed to face the other world leaders after that. | ||
| And so he fled. | ||
| And he's given us this excuse that he had to take care of the Iran crisis. | ||
| Well, it's no crisis. | ||
| Matter of fact, earlier today, you said that the Israelis have said that their bombing has put them back three years. | ||
| So how is Iran an imminent threat? | ||
| Have a blessed day, ma'am. | ||
| That was Frank in Maryland. | ||
| Mike, Rockford, Illinois, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| It's obvious Takodan has the smell of bananas lofting through our beautiful republic. | ||
| Two things and top stories, a U.S. deal and an Indian Nippon deal only went through if Trump was allowed to put in his name also. | ||
| He's got his name in that deal also. | ||
| The question is how much is he selling, extorting the country over getting his little deals on the site? | ||
| And another top story is the generals are now allowed to recruit without going through a recruiting office or basic training. | ||
| That's why the recruiting numbers are up. | ||
| People don't realize we flew over 124 Afghanistan telefighters and put them in 10 of our military installations. | ||
| And then also so that the generals can pull from that. | ||
| We released the prisoners from the prisons so the generals can cap from that. | ||
| And then we've imported all these gangbangers. | ||
| So these new, the smell of bananas is overwhelming in our beautiful republic. | ||
| That was Mike in Illinois. | ||
| Let's hear from Guy, Jacksonville, Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for the call. | ||
| I think both sides of the aisle are equally guilty for the last number of decades for not coming up with a program to create a work visa that actually works in the United States. | ||
| We need all the workers we can get. | ||
| Unfortunately, I have a teenage son that still doesn't want to do much. | ||
| We can't lose FEMA. | ||
| We're in Florida and obviously we're coming into hurricane season. | ||
| We need everybody that's willing to work to rebuild from the fires in California, the damage in Tennessee and West Virginia and North Carolina. | ||
| And if we ship them all out of this country, we're going to be really in a tough spot. | ||
| I'd like to see everybody that's not a citizen that's working in hotels, restaurants, and construction crews to walk off the job for a whole week and see the impact that it'll cause in the United States. | ||
| We can't afford this. | ||
| We've got to come to a realization that immigration is part of our society, and we've got to have a way to fix this once and for all. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Let's hope for the best. | ||
| That was Guy in Florida, Chris in Grand Rapids, Michigan, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, my problem is, biggest problem is people need to really do their homework and see to look up Ross Ultrich. | |
| Trump, pardon him. | ||
| He was one of the biggest fetan distributors. | ||
| But because he did Bitcoin and Bitcoin, people asked him to pardon him. | ||
| He pardoned him. | ||
| People need to look it up and see. | ||
| Trump is just lying and he's full of corruption. | ||
| And people need to wake up. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Chris in Michigan. | ||
| Our last call for this first hour of Washington Journal. | ||
| Later this morning, Rear Admiral, retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Foundation for Defense of Democracy Senior Fellow, will join us to discuss the Israel-Iran conflict and U.S. military capabilities. | ||
| But next, the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting is taking place in Tampa, Florida this weekend. | ||
| We'll talk with Vice President David Holt and U.S. Conference of Mayors second Vice President Todd Gloria about the event and top issues facing cities around the country. | ||
| 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 it's 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, 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
|
Claire Hoffman with her book, Sister Sinner, The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Amy Semple McPherson on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| The U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting is taking place this weekend in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the themes for that meeting as well as issues around in cities around the country is David Holt. | ||
| He is the U.S. Conference of Mayors Vice President as well as Mayor of Oklahoma City and Todd Gloria, the organization's second vice president and mayor of San Diego. | ||
| Mr. Mayors, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Mayor Holt, we'll start with just an overview of the group. | ||
| We know it's mayors, but tell us who's part of the organization, how many members there are, and your mission. | ||
| What do you focus on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| So the U.S. Conference of Mayors was actually formed 93 years ago. | ||
| You know, we think mayors are a really unique group of political leaders in our country. | ||
| And nearly a century ago, it was considered advantageous for the mayors, especially of larger cities, to get together and, you know, exercise collective action, advocate in Washington. | ||
| And we've had a lot of success through the years. | ||
| We also share best practices. | ||
| We obviously come together at these annual meetings to do that. | ||
| We hear from thought leaders and important national and international leaders. | ||
| I think it's a really unique organization. | ||
| I mean, if you look around at all elected officials across the country, there's many associations, right? | ||
| There's a governor's association, there are associations for legislators. | ||
| There's a similar association in our world that also involves city council members. | ||
| But there's something pretty unique about mayors, in my view. | ||
| There's also, I would argue, at this time, and you're looking at somebody who's a registered Republican and a registered Democrat, there's also something pretty unique in our organization that we've really retained our bipartisan, really kind of almost non-partisan character. | ||
| If you look at some of the other organizations, they've really lost that to some degree in this kind of polarized age. | ||
| But we come together for an annual meeting every June. | ||
| We then come together as well in January for a DC meeting. | ||
| And you asked how many members there are. | ||
| There's hundreds of members. | ||
| Of course, there's thousands of people who could be eligible, but we generally have a few hundred members who actually are participating in dues paying members. | ||
| And you have to be a city of 30,000 to be a member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. | ||
| And we get great participation really from that level all the way up, obviously, to cities of over a million people. | ||
| Our two cities are top 20 cities, but there are mayors here from all cities of all size. | ||
| And as I said, Republican, Democrats, and Independents, which I think is pretty special about our organization. | ||
| And Mayor Gloria, as your counterpart just noted, there are cities of various sizes. | ||
| They're being represented there by their mayors. | ||
| When you are coming together and talking about some of these topics, what are some of the most pressing issues or issues that are repeatedly talked about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Timmy, I think that's one of the things that's very interesting about the Conference of Mayors is that it doesn't matter Red State, Blue State, Big City, Rural Town. | |
| What you see is a real commonality on the issues that we all care about. | ||
| And so I think first and foremost is reducing the cost of living for our residents, specifically and very particularly around the issue of housing affordability. | ||
| I think it's quite shocking that it's not just cities like mine on coastal California that are dealing with the affordability crisis across the board, but particularly around housing. | ||
| That's true even in some of our smaller mayor cities where they really are struggling with making the rent or being able to see buying a home. | ||
| In addition, keeping cities safe, you know, the first and most important responsibility that we have as mayors is to keep our residents safe, our communities safe. | ||
| And we are mayors that are serving in a time of historic reductions in crime. | ||
| That isn't always played out in the media, and so this is a wonderful opportunity, as Mayor Holt was mentioning, to share best practices, find out what's going well in San Diego. | ||
| We're one of the safest big cities in America, the lowest homicide rate amongst the top 10 cities in this country. | ||
| So issues around affordability, around crime, and then obviously dealing with the issues of the day. | ||
| And there could be a host of stuff from immigration and tariffs to political violence to issues around health care and education. | ||
| So it's a very rewarding place to come together and figure out how to solve the problems. | ||
| People want mayors to solve problems and that's what this conference helps me do better for the people in San Diego. | ||
| C-SPAN has been covering the conference yesterday and we'll also have coverage of today's events. | ||
| As you just mentioned, there's a lot of topics that are very sizable. | ||
| They're very complicated and the panel discussions can be maybe 60 minutes, 90 minutes. | ||
| That's a pretty short period of time to talk about some big issues. | ||
| What's the approach? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think only on C-SPAN is 60 or 90 minutes short. | |
| I think we're used to a very fast-paced mayors. | ||
| It's potholes to homelessness to whatever. | ||
| But the approach is, as was mentioned, is to bring in some of the best experts in the country. | ||
| When you have, in this case, over 200 of America's mayors all in one location, we can bring in some of the most thoughtful people who have the access to the best information to help us figure out what's the best way forward. | ||
| And so it really isn't just these meetings. | ||
| You know, we gather in other parts of the year. | ||
| We also have virtual convenings where we're able to share information. | ||
| And I personally feel like, you know, San Diego is the eighth largest city in the country. | ||
| We have access to a lot of good information, but the conference really is the next level. | ||
| And it's the ability to synthesize that data with colleagues who are dealing with the same issue and figure out what's the best way forward. | ||
| And so when we issue resolutions, it's informed not just by those experts and that data, but by the considered wisdom of hundreds of America's mayors from all over this country saying this is the right way forward. | ||
| It's one of the things I find most valuable about the conference. | ||
| Our guests right now are Mayors David Holt. | ||
| He is the Mayor of Oklahoma City as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors Vice President and Todd Gloria, who is the U.S. Conference of Mayors second vice president and also the mayor of San Diego. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for either one of them, you can start calling in now the lines, Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Mayor Holt, I wanted to ask you, I'm showing a headline right now. | ||
| You can't see it, but it says, Memphis Mayor Attempted Kidnapping Suspect Makes No Plea. | ||
| Very remorseful family says, we have seen, it's been in the headlines, attacks on lawmaker safety. | ||
| What are you hearing from members of your organization and what's being done to ensure their safety? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, I mean, I think you've got to look at it from several angles. | |
| I mean, first of all, of course, it's just the macro view that we as a country have got to stop dehumanizing each other, stop talking in apocalyptic terms. | ||
| You know, we need to get back to, you know, serious discourse about serious issues. | ||
| But I live in and serve as mayor in a city that has got a scar in our downtown that reminds us of the evils of political violence and what happens when you take things to the extreme edge. | ||
| And the bombing in 1995 was sort of the natural outcome of creating that ecosystem where that sort of thing makes sense and it's absurd, just as kidnapping a mayor or assassinating a Minnesota legislator. | ||
| I mean, these things are absurd to us. | ||
| But again, when you're sort of in this ecosystem of social media and talk radio and all this just nonsense where people talk about every issue as if it's literally the end of the world and they dehumanize people, suddenly everybody becomes soldiers in a fantastical war. | ||
| And that's not real life, but that stuff intrudes into real life as we see. | ||
| So I think that's the first issue. | ||
| And I think mayors are very good at that. | ||
| I mean, we're serious people. | ||
| That's one thing I think that has historically set us apart, and especially in the current discourse, is like we talk about issues seriously. | ||
| We respect people of different viewpoints. | ||
| And we don't play this kind of professional wrestling game that so much of politics has become. | ||
| And I think that we're not contributing to what is happening. | ||
| So we certainly encourage people to sort of emulate our style and to kind of pull back from that precipice. | ||
| Now, more specifically, that's like how you create a better environment for political discourse. | ||
| But if you fail at that, you obviously have to have some guardrails in place. | ||
| And we're certainly talking a lot about the protection that may be necessary more and more for elected officials. | ||
| A country can't function if people don't feel safe serving. | ||
| And we see that, obviously, in other countries that don't have as functioning a democracy as ours. | ||
| And so if we want our democracy to survive, we have to have safety for those who serve. | ||
| And so we've definitely had a lot of conversations about that. | ||
| We have some mayors who have different levels of protection. | ||
| And we have a lot of mayors, just like a lot of elected officials in this country, that don't have anything during the day or 24-7, anything like that. | ||
| And so we're having those conversations. | ||
| And we're definitely, it's a shame, right, that we have to sit around and share best practices on how to ensure your own personal safety. | ||
| That's not the country any of us want to live in, but I think that's where we have to be right now as mayors and as all elected officials. | ||
| You have to be really situationally aware these days. | ||
| And I think more and more we'll have to turn to law enforcement to also protect those who serve. | ||
| That's just going to be vital for the sustainment of our democracy. | ||
| But we as Americans can all contribute to a better outcome, and that's by, you know, taking it down a notch. | ||
| And I think we've seen this escalation these last few years that we need to de-escalate. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We will start with Steve and Florida on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Two things I think affect the American cities, especially the larger cities. | ||
| First of all, shout out to Detroit. | ||
| I think it's great what they're doing. | ||
| The community gardens that they're building and they're striving to make themselves food independent. | ||
| The other thing I want to talk about is mass transit. | ||
| I think mass transit would be a good thing because lots of young people who are just starting their working careers might not be able to afford a car yet. | ||
| And they buy a car and it's a strain on their budget. | ||
| And it's bad from the start. | ||
| And not only that, but the obvious benefits, the environment, the traffic. | ||
| I lived in Nashville quite some time ago. | ||
| Nashville had a chance to get a really advanced light rail mass transit system, but the powerful oil interests intervened and put out a lot of propaganda and it eventually got voted down. | ||
| But I chose my two comments. | ||
| Number one, cities that are making themselves food independent. | ||
| Number two, I just think that mass transit is something we really need to pursue. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mayor Gloria, would you like to answer that one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I'd love to. | |
| I appreciate the passion around mass transit. | ||
| You know, I represent a very car-centric city in Southern California, but I would tell you, I had the opportunity to preside over the most recent expansion of our light rail system in San Diego, connecting our old town, the original birthplace of California, up to the University of California, San Diego. | ||
| What we've seen is blockbuster ridership. | ||
| And to the caller's point, the students of UC San Diego have voted to include in their student fees a universal transit pass. | ||
| And so the ridership is just off the charts and very, very popular. | ||
| And what that's allowing me to do as the mayor is to make the investments around the rail line in things like affordable housing so that we're addressing the affordability from all angles. | ||
| As the caller mentioned, you know, reduce costs for mobility, reduce costs for housing, allows those young people at UC San Diego to go get a high-quality world-class education. | ||
| And they're the future taxpayers of our city. | ||
| They're going to create some of the incredible innovations that we have in my city where we have a life sciences innovation cluster around the university doing big and bold things that are literally changing the world. | ||
| But you got to get in the classroom first. | ||
| And that light rail extension of the San Diego trolley, our iconic red trolley, is just going extremely well. | ||
| We would love to see more of that. | ||
| That particular project was 50% funded by our federal partners. | ||
| That's part of why we come together as U.S. Conference of Mayors to make sure that we're advocating with one voice in Washington, D.C. for a variety of issues, not the least of which is infrastructure that public transportation is. | ||
| Let's talk with Sonia, who is down in Tampa, Florida, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Sonia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Welcome to Hot Tampa, Florida. | ||
| My question is, with the new policies coming in with administration with ICE, how do you all see what is the mission of the mayors on dealing with ICE coming in and their community, their citizens being maybe possibly deported? | ||
| What do you see your role will be in dealing with the situation that's going on nationwide? | ||
| Mayor Holt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I will respond, but then I will encourage you to call on Mayor Gloria because he's a border community and this issue is really hot in California as well. | |
| But, you know, I think in Oklahoma City, we haven't necessarily seen the escalation that we've seen in other places. | ||
| But we have traditionally understood that, you know, our local law enforcement is there to protect all residents. | ||
| We've never been empowered or trained to enforce immigration laws at the local law enforcement level. | ||
| And I think what's really critical is that there be a lot of collaboration and communication and also respect for the reality that local law enforcement has to protect everybody. | ||
| You can't have, you know, one community that's sort of unprotected because they're so fearful of having any engagement with any type of government official or law enforcement officer. | ||
| That's a very dangerous situation ultimately for everybody. | ||
| So that's why historically, organizations like ICE, they do their thing, they enforce immigration laws. | ||
| Organizations like the Oklahoma City Police Department, we work to keep everybody safe. | ||
| Everybody stays in their lane, you know, and there's a lot of communication and collaboration about the different jurisdictions and the different roles that they play. | ||
| Obviously, right now, there's sort of an erosion in local control, a lot less collaboration, a lot less communication, and it's getting a little chaotic in some communities. | ||
| But maybe that's a good segue to Mayor Gloria, because we haven't had some of those incidents yet in Oklahoma City, but I know they have had some issues in San Diego that maybe he can speak to. | ||
| Mayor Gloria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Appreciate the chance. | |
| Yeah, Tammy, thank you. | ||
| And I appreciate the chance. | ||
| You know, as the mayor of the largest border city in the United States, you know, it's often on cable news that I see representations about what cities like mine are, that our proximity to the border may make us somehow lawless. | ||
| You've already heard me mention we're one of the safest big cities in America, the lowest homicide rate of our top 10 cities. | ||
| And so really this is a wonderful opportunity to share with your viewers that these things are not necessarily correlated in terms of immigration and crime. | ||
| And for the reasons that Mayor Holt was describing, where we've been able to navigate this issue with the San Diego Police Department, making sure that all of San Diego's residents feel comfortable in reporting crime and getting criminals into custody and allow our communities to stay safe. | ||
| In the context of immigration, I think a couple things are occurring. | ||
| As mentioned, the conflict that's coming now with the aggressive posture. | ||
| About three weeks ago in my city, we had an enforcement action at a very popular Italian restaurant during Friday night dinner service. | ||
| The result of that was the apprehension of essentially four busboys and waiters and dishwashers. | ||
| But 200 San Diegans surrounded the immigration officers that were performing that enforcement action, creating a very unstable situation. | ||
| And because of the lack of coordination and communication, we get a bunch of 911 calls about armed agents going into a restaurant. | ||
| You've got 911 calls about people in the streets protesting, and we have no situational awareness. | ||
| Created a very dangerous situation, not just for the civilians that were there, but for my police officers and for the federal agents that were doing their jobs. | ||
| I think that kind of thing is very worrisome to me. | ||
| We've seen obviously other escalations in Other American cities. | ||
| What the U.S. Conference of Mayors is calling for, and again, this is a bipartisan organization where we come from all different points of view, but we can agree that we understand that there is responsibility to enforce our nation's laws. | ||
| No mayor that I've ever met is okay with criminals walking about our community. | ||
| Violent criminals should be apprehended and put in custody. | ||
| That said, we want to call for a thoughtful, organized approach, not something where you have agents storming into a restaurant that is busy on a Friday night with families trying to enjoy the weekend, | ||
| but instead the targeted focus on very dangerous people who should be taken out of our cities and out of our country, not disrupting and going after dishwashers and resulting in a small-scale neighborhood uprising that resulted in the use of flashbangs and other sort of military-grade equipment in a residential neighborhood in the eighth largest city in the country. | ||
| I think we can all agree there's a better way to do this. | ||
| And I'm hopeful that we'll see some more thoughtfulness, organization, and a way to make sure that this is deconflicted and importantly, safe. | ||
| I mean, the end result of all this is the representation that this is going to make us safer. | ||
| I think what I'm currently seeing in my own city and other cities is actually quite the opposite. | ||
| It's making everyone less safe. | ||
| And I'd like to see that change quickly. | ||
| Public safety is a key issue that is usually discussed at these conferences. | ||
| I want to share a couple headlines. | ||
| Again, I know you can't see them, but I'll read them. | ||
| One says, Chicago City Council passes controversial curfew proposal. | ||
| Mayor Johnson will veto. | ||
| And in the Washington Post, the headline is: DC Mayor pushes youth curfew as council advances public safety bills. | ||
| What do those two headlines say about a one-size-fits-all approach to issues? | ||
| Mayor Holt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| I mean, I'm not familiar with those specific conversations in D.C. and Chicago. | ||
| I mean, you know, every city's got its own. | ||
| I mean, we just had a curfew passed in our city for food trucks in a certain entertainment district, right? | ||
| And I just use that as an example: like, every issue is very localized, you know, and these conversations are very specific to our communities. | ||
| But certainly, we have actually in Oklahoma City had a generalized youth curfew for decades. | ||
| So that's not unusual. | ||
| A lot of some of the most senseless crimes are often committed by young people because, as I often say, their brains are still literally forming, right? | ||
| And so a lot of the things that are most frustrating to us as residents that we read about the next day are often really stupid crimes, right? | ||
| And stupid arguments and disagreements that occurred between young people, which is why a lot of times mayors are working on so many youth initiatives, right? | ||
| Like we are investing in Oklahoma City. | ||
| Our voters in 2019 passed over $100 million to invest in four new youth centers in challenged areas, like in high crime areas, with the understanding that we're trying to get ahead of whatever issues I'm sure that these youth curfews being discussed are dealing with. | ||
| We understand that when young people have structure, whether it's youth sports, whether it's after-school programs, boys and girls clubs, that's actually the entity that will be running our new youth centers, that they tend to not get involved in the kinds of issues that would cause a city council to sit around and talk about a curfew. | ||
| And so that's really important for a community, especially big cities, to invest in their youth and to find outlets for them so that crime doesn't become as obvious an alternative. | ||
| And that's something we talk about a lot. | ||
| I think youth engagement is a lot of the work that we often are talking about here at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. | ||
| Mayor Gloria, do you have anything to add? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, like Mayor Holt, I'm not familiar with Chicago and D.C.'s initiatives, but I think what you may be seeing is the bespoke nature of the work that we do, where you have a context of a community that's all different. | |
| And I think the Conference of Mayors is an opportunity to hear how that's playing out in a particular community and see if it's a way to implement it in your own. | ||
| We have a motto around here that good mayors borrow, great mayors steal. | ||
| And I love to steal great ideas from Oklahoma City and other cities and bring them back to mind. | ||
| I will just sort of double down on that point about youth prevention. | ||
| One of the best things that I think the state of California has done in the last couple of years is the creation of a youth job corps program under Governor Gavin Newsome with the support of the legislature. | ||
| What that has meant is millions of dollars coming to my city. | ||
| And what we've been able to do is create a program of paid internships at the city of San Diego where we have young people working in all city departments, sort of matching their relative interests and engaging them in the work of public service. | ||
| As David was mentioning before, you know, I think there's a concern that the issue, the concerns and frustrations and criticism around government may encourage good people, particularly young people, to exit the conversation. | ||
| This program that we have at the Youth Job Corps is employing over a thousand young people at the city of San Diego in paid internships. | ||
| And what we've already seen is about 19% of them choose to actually stay and go to full-time employment with the city of San Diego. | ||
| So what I'm saying, Tammy, is that we're creating the next generation of public servants through this program. | ||
| And what I know for absolutely sure is that when they have a paying job and going to school, they are less likely to be idle, less likely to be getting into trouble. | ||
| And so the benefits just runneth over it. | ||
| We're building next generation public servants, but also reducing crime. | ||
| This is why I think that's one of the best things the state has done. | ||
| And my hope is that we can see more of that across our country. | ||
| Let's hear from Reck in Georgia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Reck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, thank you, and thank goodness for C-SPAN. | |
| It's a beautiful morning in Ackworth, Georgia. | ||
| I would like to ask both the mayors first. | ||
| I hope they would give a truthful answer, of course, but with the reconciliation bill in under whatever, I was wondering if they thought the American taxpayer should pay for Medicare for illegal aliens. | ||
| Question, thank you very much. | ||
| Mayor Holt, would you like to give your response and then we'll go to Mayor Gloria? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You know, I mean, I, as a mayor, I try to stay in my lane. | ||
| You know, like it's not that I don't, as a human being, have opinions on everything probably, but you know, I would never have a position on an issue like that. | ||
| You know, we are paying attention to the reconciliation bill, but it's because we're concerned about, as mayors, we're concerned about CDBG funding and other things that we've relied upon for a long time, and we want to make sure those things are preserved. | ||
| But speaking for myself and my city, we don't have a position on that issue. | ||
| I don't know if Mayor Gloria has something different to say, but that's my response. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I'd like to stay in my lane as well. | ||
| But my truthful answer is I think healthcare is all right. | ||
| And I believe that if anything, the pandemic taught us is that the health of the person sitting next to me is very much relevant to my health. | ||
| And so the more that we can make sure that people have access to high-quality, affordable health care, that's a good thing. | ||
| Always expanding that, I think, is beneficial. | ||
| In the context of the reconciliation bill, I want to be crystal clear, though. | ||
| Mayors are deeply concerned about this proposal and the reductions it would make, not just to health care, but to cities like ours. | ||
| You know, the elimination of key programs that have been around for decades, created by past Republican presidents, but now are on the chopping block in order to justify or pay for the tax cuts for the very wealthy in our country. | ||
| Bottom line is this: I'm a mayor that cares deeply, and I do this job to try and drive down the cost of living for my residents, but particularly around housing. | ||
| And when I see something that could add over $2 trillion to our nation's debt, what I know for sure is that's going to result in higher interest rates and making housing less affordable for people in San Diego and all across this country. | ||
| I think there are real challenges with this bill. | ||
| And what I hope is that Congress will really lean in and try and make sure that the good things in this bill, like the restoration and reform of the low-income housing tax credit program that has helped create millions of affordable homes across this country, continue. | ||
| And the bad things in this bill, like the elimination of these programs that are so critical for quality of life in cities, is taken out. | ||
| I'm again hopeful that Congress will step up and do its job and make sure that we get something that makes sense for all Americans, not just the wealthiest in our country. | ||
| Let's hear from Trent in Monroe, Louisiana, on the line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Trent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| When I saw Mayor Holt, I thought of something that I had met a fellow named Mark Nuttall, who was kind of a brilliant national strategist who I think lives in Norman. | ||
| And years ago, he and others sparked in my mind the idea of a city action council where you bring the pastors of the city together in council because they're on the ground, they see what's happening. | ||
| And then they would work with a council of Christian businessmen who are the can-do guys who know how to do stuff. | ||
| And then they would work with the public policy guys because they have a special understanding of things. | ||
| And then they would give the rest of the body of Christ, the Bride of Christ in the cities, goals. | ||
| But I've been praying about this. | ||
| It's been scratching around in my mind for decades. | ||
| I was just wondering how that's going, playing in red cities, blue cities, because the body of Christ, whether they're Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostals, or mainstream liberal Christians, we all have a hunger for our cities, and we're paralyzed many times by the national and international economic and foreign policy complexities. | ||
| It just gives us a real focus to serve because we understand the local issues better. | ||
| I just wondered how you guys have been working that out. | ||
| Thank you, guys. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| First of all, I know Mark. | ||
| I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear he was name-dropped on C-SPAN. | ||
| And he is still, as far as I know, in Norman and doing good things. | ||
| So, yeah, I think a mayor, I think any leader, a mayor, a governor, anyone who is charged with the welfare of a community should be pulling in everybody, you know, and certainly I've worked with faith leaders in Oklahoma City through the years across not just Christianity, but across all faith traditions. | ||
| I think mayors are uniquely pragmatic in that respect, and we really try to work with everybody, regardless of political party or faith background or ethnicity or part of the city that they live in, because that's often another source of division in cities, is geography. | ||
| So, yeah, but specifically with the faith community, I can think of any number of initiatives where we've worked together. | ||
| And I find that to be, yeah, the faith leaders in your city are generally pretty passionate about their city. | ||
| They're kind of like us, they're servants. | ||
| They're often working directly with their flock, but collectively, sometimes they organize and advocate and serve on a larger scale. | ||
| And certainly a smart mayor is tapping into that, and I often have done that. | ||
| Let's talk with Donna in Orlando, Florida, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Donna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN, and thank you for the Conference of Mayors. | ||
| I'm so glad to see a Republican and a Democrat sitting there together civilly. | ||
| I want to ask you, gentlemen, how you deal, however, with the present administration that pushes itself into your city, as in Los Angeles and the mayor there, when they are absolutely disrespecting the law and the rules and the norms and the people. | ||
| And I don't know how you can work with people who are unreasonable and going back to the safety issue when our leaders are the ones who are leading in the hot rhetoric and the dangerous actions. | ||
| How do you deal with that reasonably? | ||
| And I know you've mentioned staying in your lane, but you have to work with this administration when they insist on bringing the National Guard in because these deportations are out of control. | ||
| I am here in Orlando. | ||
| I'm 77 years old and I just attended my first protest, the No Kings. | ||
| And this is a serious problem coming from Washington. | ||
| So I just want to know how you are prepared to deal with that in your city, especially you, Mayor Gloria. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| Mayor Gloria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Donna, thank you for that question. | |
| Yeah, Donna, thanks for the question and good on you for being out in the streets last week. | ||
| And I will tell you, in San Diego, we had 60,000 San Diegans show up last Saturday and marched in downtown San Diego, one of the biggest in the country. | ||
| And I'm pleased to tell you that there were no arrests, there was no violence, there was no vandalism. | ||
| Syndical Police Department did a fantastic job making sure that everyone was able to exercise their constitutional rights safely. | ||
| And those folks made their point and then they went home. | ||
| And I couldn't be prouder of my fellow San Diegans for, I think, showing up the way that we'd want them to, which is not the exception. | ||
| I think it's the rule. | ||
| Across the country, that's what we've seen. | ||
| Whenever there's violence, whenever someone is trying to exploit these opportunities for protest to engage in criminal activity, they should absolutely be dealt with and dealt with swiftly. | ||
| But I don't believe that that necessitates the use of federal resources. | ||
| I think that was true in Los Angeles. | ||
| I think that is true in other places. | ||
| And to your question of how do we engage, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I'm active in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, because I know that individually, you know, we represent our cities and that's important, but collectively, there's strength in our numbers when we come together. | ||
| And we've been very clear in saying that we want a constructive relationship with our federal partners. | ||
| We were able to do that successfully in the previous administration, do big and bold things like the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| All of these had the fingerprints of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in resulting in benefits in communities like mine where we're rebuilding bridges that are falling apart or investing in expanding our port or our airport to create more jobs for San Diegans. | ||
| We want to see that same kind of relationship with the current administration. | ||
| It's been challenging, certainly, but I remain hopeful that at some point we can focus on what is the most urgent issues in our country right now, which is bringing down the cost of living for Americans, making sure people have access to good, high-quality jobs, and that there's really opportunities that are out there. | ||
| And I feel like so much of the conversation is about stuff that I don't hear when I'm at the grocery store, at the dry cleaner, at the car wash. | ||
| The issues that people talk to me as a mayor, where I'm very accessible, are the things I just mentioned. | ||
| Not many of the things that I've seen to hear or read about on social media coming out of the federal administration. | ||
| Mayor Holt, would you like to respond to Gloria's or to the caller as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I think as, well, first of all, mayors are very pragmatic. | ||
| We get things done. | ||
| And we often work with people in our communities that maybe we disagree with on some other issue. | ||
| I think you'll find that a lot of American mayors are often building coalitions of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents on issues of concern to our community. | ||
| So I say all that to say that when we talk collectively as a conference and we deal with the administration or with Congress, I think we have a pretty similarly pragmatic attitude. | ||
| And we try to take it day by day, you know, and issue by issue. | ||
| And, you know, maybe today we're saying, hey, we disagree with you. | ||
| We believe in local control. | ||
| We don't agree with this issue or this tactic. | ||
| But is there something else we can talk about? | ||
| You know, is there something else we can agree upon? | ||
| I mean, I think we still feel like there's fertile ground for us to work with the administration and Congress on housing and infrastructure, that that's sort of a bipartisan, those are bipartisan issues where there can be a lot of common ground and yet at the same time maybe disagree on other things. | ||
| I think the approach we're going to consistently take, I'm not, I wouldn't pretend to you that that's not complicated and messy sometimes and very challenging. | ||
| And certainly these are kind of challenging times for the federal-local relationship. | ||
| But I feel like the leadership of this organization has been pretty committed to the idea, you know, look, an election was held, we get it, you know, but we got to try to work together. | ||
| And, you know, when the next election comes, I'm sure many mayors will individually advocate for different outcomes. | ||
| But in the meantime, you know, there's a long time till the next election, and we got a lot of problems in our communities that we want to work with our federal partners on. | ||
| And so I think every day we try to do that. | ||
| And, you know, I think the caller said something like, how do you work with people who are unreasonable or whatever? | ||
| And I think that's the most important thing is to never give up on the idea that we can find some common ground. | ||
| And again, that's challenging for sure, but we are sort of endlessly optimistic and endlessly pragmatic. | ||
| I think that is a resource that mayors have almost an infinite supply. | ||
| Let's talk with Carlos, who is with you there in Tampa, Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Carlos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking this call. | ||
| The only beef I have when I watch TV and the local news is I see all the minority being targeted for deportation and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| But I've never seen ISIS going to white neighborhoods and deport nobody. | ||
| We have a lot of Russian, a lot of Croatian, Polish, Germany, Denmark, Sweden. | ||
| Matter of fact, I got five, live here for five years illegal. | ||
| Nobody bothers them. | ||
| So that's my concern: there's certain people being targeted and certain people is not targeted. | ||
| Like Topper Spring, Florida, it's a whole lot of Greeks. | ||
| They can't even speak English. | ||
| And all of them, they illegal, but ICIS is not going there. | ||
| They just are getting minority. | ||
| It's not fair. | ||
| If you do deport, go equal, everybody. | ||
| Mayor Holt, I know that you and Mayor Gloria already addressed ICE in your area. | ||
| Is there anything else that either of you would like to add? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't think I know enough about What he's perceiving to comment, but I am grateful that for his city's hospitality, he's the second caller from Tampa, so I'll thank him for that. | |
| And Mayor Castor, by the way, who's been an awesome host here in Tampa, sounds like she's got a lot of engaged citizens who are watching C-SPAN this morning. | ||
| So we're grateful to be in a city with that high level of civic interest. | ||
| We have one last caller for you. | ||
| It is Rose in Illinois on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, everyone. | |
| I want to address this to the mayor from San Diego. | ||
| Mayor, I'm in my 80s. | ||
| I don't belong to any group. | ||
| I'm not part of no partisan group. | ||
| I'm not any part of conservative groups. | ||
| But I do have my feelings about where my taxes should go to. | ||
| And you remind me of King George, where you think you can take taxes from us elderly or anybody else in the middle class to pay for universal health for anybody that comes into this country. | ||
| It's only a right of Americans where my money goes to. | ||
| And if a rich person wants to get tax breaks because they're providing more jobs for us, that's all right with me. | ||
| And they can use my money for their tax breaks, but they can't use my money to support illegals in this country or anywhere else in this world because my tax money, according to the Constitution, should only go for American citizens. | ||
| And all this globalist ideas you have, you shouldn't be sitting in the position you have because I would call you a tyrant and King George to take my money without my permission to pay for foreign aid. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, Tammy, Rose, actually, thank you for the comment. | ||
| You know, I disagree strongly, obviously. | ||
| And if we're going to have historical illusions, I would say that it sounds like you're supporting a piece of legislation that's the reverse Robin Hood, where you're taking from people like yourself and myself to give to the richest in our country. | ||
| And I think, generally speaking, what we're not seeing is actually investment back in communities. | ||
| What we're seeing is personal enrichment to the detriment of others. | ||
| You know, what I said before was that I believe that we're stronger when more people have access to health care. | ||
| And unfortunately, what I'm seeing from Washington, D.C. is a reduction not for folks who are here undocumented, but for average and everyday people who cannot afford health care. | ||
| So when trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has provided millions of Americans with health care that they would not otherwise have, rolling that back is not about taking it away from undocumented individuals. | ||
| It's taking it from hardworking, low-income Americans. | ||
| So I would just encourage you to look at the issue more closely because it is not about being a tyrant, but it's about making sure that we can collectively be more healthy. | ||
| And I think, really, again, think about the fact that the health of the individuals in our communities back in the pandemic, just five years ago, influenced how many people were either healthy or sick or died. | ||
| That's where my opinion comes from. | ||
| Much like we don't want law enforcement to ask people for their papers and whether or not we're going to prosecute or arrest someone who's done a crime. | ||
| We want to make sure that everyone has access to health care. | ||
| It's just, I think, common sense. | ||
| Our guest, Mayor David Holt of Oklahoma City, who is the vice president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and Mayor Todd Gloria of San Diego, who's the second vice president. | ||
| We thank you both for your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And you can find coverage of the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Next on Washington Journal, retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Foundation for Defense of Democracy Senior Fellow, joins us to discuss the Israel-Iran conflict and U.S. military capabilities. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session. | |
| The House will consider several bills aimed at reducing undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Members will also consider funding for military construction projects and the Veterans Affairs Department as the first of 12 federal spending bills for 2026. | ||
| The Senate continues to vote on President Trump's executive nominations and may consider Republicans' tax and spending cuts bill if it is ready for floor action. | ||
| C-SPAN continues live coverage of Cabinet Secretary's budget hearings. | ||
| On Monday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before a House Appropriations Subcommittee. | ||
| Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee. | ||
| Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will testify before two committee hearings on the Federal Reserve's semi-annual monetary policy report, first on Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee and then on Wednesday before the Senate Banking Committee. | ||
| Wednesday, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vogt, testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee on President Trump's $9.4 billion rescission package request. | ||
| Watch live next week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also head over to c-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's really the year that makes the 1960s the 60s. | |
| 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. | ||
| 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. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the Israel-Iran conflict and U.S. military capabilities is retired Rear Admiral and Foundation for Defense of Democracy Senior Fellow Mark Montgomery. | ||
| Mark, welcome back to the program. | ||
| Thank you for having me, Tammy. | ||
| Why don't we start by having you remind our audience about the Foundation for Defense of Democracies? | ||
| What's the mission? | ||
| Who do you work with? | ||
| Yeah, thanks. | ||
| So FDD is a nonpartisan think tank. | ||
| We fashion ourselves a do-tank. | ||
| We study issues, particularly only national security issues. | ||
| And we look very particularly at beleaguered democracies like Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, the Republic of Korea. | ||
| And we also study the four axis of aggressors, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and try to figure out how can we best support those democracies, combat the axis of aggressors, draw attention to that, whether it's legislative changes, executive branch changes, or how the public opinion sees those. | ||
| So we really do focus our research on those beleaguered democracies and trying to defend them. | ||
| So obviously this Iran-Israel dust-up is of interest to us because Iran is one of the principal members of the Axis of Aggressors. | ||
| They've supported Russia pretty heavily in the war on Ukraine and they've threatened Israel and the United States. | ||
| And the dust-up, as you put it, between Israel and Iran has now entered its second week. | ||
| What is your assessment of the current situation? | ||
| So at this point, I think Israel has struck most of their primary targets. | ||
| So they've hit the leadership, the generals and the scientists who developed and implement the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. | ||
| They've hit most of the accessible nuclear development sites, so Natans, Isfahan, and they've done as much damage as I think they can do with their type of weapons that they employ. | ||
| But they've also hit the ballistic missile production sites, the industrial sites that support missile and nuclear weapons development. | ||
| And I think they've hit launchers out in the field, particularly as those launchers are used to strike against Israel. | ||
| They've been doing that, and they've completely neutered the Iranian air defense system and the Iranian Air Force. | ||
| There have been assessments, hosts, and people who have said what we're seeing is it's the start of World War III, something you've disagreed with. | ||
| Explain. | ||
| Yeah, so I don't think it's the start of World War III. | ||
| I think this is a campaign being executed by Israel, much like their campaign against Hezbollah last fall. | ||
| And it's to remove one of the major threats. | ||
| I think Israel came to the conclusion that Iran is hell-bent on developing a nuclear weapon, that the negotiations weren't fruitful. | ||
| I think President Trump shared that assessment of the negotiations. | ||
| He'd given the negotiation period 60 days. | ||
| On 60 days and about eight hours, the Israelis struck. | ||
| I think most authoritarian states have come to believe that when democracies at deadlines, they don't mean anything. | ||
| I would put one caveat in that. | ||
| If one of the democracies involved is Israel, you better believe they mean something. | ||
| So I think this is a campaign. | ||
| I think it's to remove it. | ||
| I think they could stop today. | ||
| I don't think they will because I think they've probably set back the nuclear program months or a year or two, and they would like to set it back multiple years since they've taken this risk of knocking out the air defense systems. | ||
| I think they'd really like the United States to assist with that. | ||
| But I do think that this has a termination, and that termination is not that far away. | ||
| Our guest is former Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. | ||
| He's with us for the next 35 minutes or so talking about the Israel-Iran conflict and U.S. military capabilities. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Mark, I wanted to ask you about President Trump and the actions that he's taken. | ||
| He's said that he will decide on possible military, U.S. military intervention in the next two weeks. | ||
| When we're looking at that, what options could be on the table? | ||
| Yeah, thanks. | ||
| So I was disappointed. | ||
| He said that I think we have the information we need to make a decision now. | ||
| But as you look at it, the options are the table are to do nothing. | ||
| Allow Israel to just kind of work the fringes of what's left, which is the Ford plant is what most people are looking at. | ||
| That's the plant where the enriched, the uranium that's been enriched to 5% at Natan's and others is enriched to a weapons-grade state. | ||
| It's reportedly 3,000 centrifuges, very deeply underground and very reinforced. | ||
| So it's a tough target. | ||
| So the first one would be allow Israel to continue to work the margins of that. | ||
| I think that that will set the program back more months, but probably not years. | ||
| The second plan would be for the United States to strike Fordot. | ||
| And you do that with the B-2 stealth bomber dropping the massive ordnance penetrator, which is about a 30,000-pound weapon that, as it hits the ground, kind of has special casing that allows it to burrow in and then a secondary detonation, a fusing detonation that occurs. | ||
| If you go on FDD's website, we have a very nice graphic of this that kind of shows it. | ||
| And then you can put further weapons down that channel that's been burrowed by the first one. | ||
| So that's kind of how you get a very, very deeply buried target. | ||
| And it's really the only weapon like it in the world, a conventional weapon like it in the world. | ||
| So to me, that's the second effort. | ||
| Really, the president has that start thing. | ||
| Either you take action or you don't take action. | ||
| And I think if you take action, then you have to be prepared for an Iranian response. | ||
| And there's more things that follow from that. | ||
| But that's the challenge he faces in two weeks. | ||
| If he doesn't just kick it another two weeks, as we've seen him do in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. | ||
| You said that you were disappointed in President Trump's decision to put a two-week possible deadline on this. | ||
| Explain the pros and cons of waiting versus taking an immediate response. | ||
| And there are both. | ||
| It should be clear that good people can make either decision and be all right. | ||
| But if you did the attack now, I think you could bring this to termination. | ||
| Strike the Ford plant, flatten it, get some kind of battle damage assessment that says everything in there is destroyed, turn to the Israelis and say we're done. | ||
| And at that point, Israel, which is very dependent on the United States for munitions, they're using F-35s and F-15s procured from the United States. | ||
| The munitions are generally procured from the United States. | ||
| They would have to stop. | ||
| It ends it. | ||
| And I think that's good in terms of civilian casualties in both Iran and Israel. | ||
| And sometimes it's hard to understand that actually taking a military action can lead to less casualties. | ||
| But I think that's the truth in this case. | ||
| Now, if you wait two weeks, you get another type of savings, which is, I would assume, over these two weeks, the U.S. is completing its mandatory evacuation of dependence, military dependence from Bahrain, from Qatar, from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but there's quite a few in Bahrain. | ||
| They're all out. | ||
| American expatriates who don't want to be under a potential Iranian counter-strike, they leave. | ||
| And then we bring in more air defense systems for our troops who can't leave, who are in Iraq, in Bahrain, in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| So we do provide extra force protection for our forces in that two weeks. | ||
| And I'm confident the Pentagon is aggressively taking advantage of these two weeks to do that. | ||
| So that's kind of your trade space. | ||
| End it faster, probably less civilian casualties overall. | ||
| Give yourself two weeks so that you can have a better force protection for your military personnel and all the families out. | ||
| Although I think by now almost all are out. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Gabriel in Silver Spring, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Gabriel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you. | |
| I have a question for this Rear Admiral. | ||
| Sir, have you ever heard of the Gulf of Tonkin? | ||
| Have you ever heard of WMD in Iraq? | ||
| And all this turned out to be false. | ||
| Again, where is the proof that Netanyahu has about developing nine bombs in Iraq? | ||
| He's trying to suck in Trump, who is his greatest ally in America, and Trump is fighting for it. | ||
| Where is the proof that these people are going to bring in America into this war again? | ||
| Now, everything that has been said in previous times about war in other countries has turned out to be false. | ||
| And America needs to be very careful. | ||
| The way they listen to Netanyahu, who is a warmonger, he couldn't stop the killing of 1,700 Israelis by these terrorists in Gaza. | ||
| How come? | ||
| So Faye, I am aware of the Gulf of Tonkin, and I'm aware of the invasion of Iraq. | ||
| And I'm also aware of Hitler invading Poland, right? | ||
| So some things are true, some things are not true. | ||
| The IAE, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been tracking and reporting on Iranian compliance and more recently non-compliance with inspections. | ||
| Clearly, Iran has an interest in developing a nuclear weapon. | ||
| They developed the ballistic missiles to deliver that weapon. | ||
| They've threatened two countries principally, Little Satan, that's Israel. | ||
| Big Satan, that's the United States. | ||
| So I understand why both I think Israel particularly feels that if Iran were to get a weapon, they actually, the bar for usage by the Iranians against the Israeli, the Jewish state, is much lower than any other place in the world. | ||
| So Netanyahu is taking aggressive action, and the United States, President Trump, is correct to support Prime Minister Netanyahu in this attack. | ||
| So I think this is different than the Gulf of Tonkin. | ||
| It's different than the invasion of Iraq. | ||
| It's more akin to actions against Germany in 1941 than Vietnam in 1965. | ||
| You mentioned troop position in several countries there in the Middle East. | ||
| What does the current U.S. military presence look like in that area, the surrounding area? | ||
| And also, what has changed over the past week? | ||
| What has the U.S. done to possibly increase their presence there? | ||
| Yeah, that's a good question because there has been a plus-up. | ||
| So prior to this conflict starting, this phase of the campaign starting, we had an American aircraft carrier strike group. | ||
| I commanded one of those. | ||
| It's normally an aircraft carrier, four or five destroyers or cruisers, and most importantly, the air wing to the aircraft carrier. | ||
| One was here already to deal with the problems with the Houthis in the Red Sea. | ||
| The Vincent Carrier strike group was there. | ||
| And then there's other disassociated destroyers in the area of the Middle East and potentially submarines. | ||
| In addition, and then other services, the Air Force has squadrons in Al-Ud, F-35 squadrons, F-15 squadrons that have been plussed up over the last few months. | ||
| And we had some bomber forces in Diego Garcia. | ||
| That's kind of the laydown initially. | ||
| What's happened is we've plussed up forces. | ||
| The aircraft carrier strike group that was coming in to relieve the one on station, the USS Nimitz, its carrier strike group, was accelerated through the Pacific and is going to arrive on station to have two aircraft carrier strike groups at the same time. | ||
| The Army is pulling in more air defense assets, so they have THAD and Patriot assets spread throughout the Middle East, including a Thad system in Israel. | ||
| But the ones I'm talking about are coming more forward to where the U.S. forces are to defend them. | ||
| And then finally, we keep a small number of destroyers off in the eastern Mediterranean that could provide ballistic missile defense protection to Israeli cities. | ||
| They've now been pushed up against, you know, closer to the coast and they've been supplemented with additional destroyers so that we have a number of destroyers off the coast in the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Israel. | ||
| So that's a much, those are the defensive, mostly those are considered defensive assets at this point. | ||
| If you wanted to strike, you could turn the carrier strike group planes into, you know, they could do a strike mission. | ||
| The Air Force planes from Al-Udid and Qatar could do a strike mission. | ||
| But probably most importantly, you have B-2 bombers. | ||
| Now the B-2 bombers, those pilots could be sleeping in their beds in the Midwest of the United States the night before a strike, take off, conduct a 36-hour mission, probably a lot of no-does and five-hour energy, and conduct a mission and come back. | ||
| And we can rotate planes through that mission night after night after night. | ||
| So those don't have to be brought forward. | ||
| But everything else is kind of gets into the theater and executes it. | ||
| So the short answer is quite a bit more is in theater. | ||
| This is why I also think you need to end this. | ||
| This constant surging of forces into the Middle East over the last 25 years does have an impact on military readiness. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| We maintained two carrier strike groups in the early 2010s in the Middle East, and it broke Navy and Air Force readiness five or six years later when we couldn't generate forces. | ||
| So one of the reasons you want to end this problem, set back the Iranian nuclear program, is to stop this kind of build up to do nothing, you know, to actually go complete the execution of the mission. | ||
| Let's talk with Justin in Florida, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Justin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for your service, sir. | ||
| I want to pick up right where you just left off. | ||
| I have a three-part, I guess a three-part technical question. | ||
| Number one, if the mission is to take out these underground nuclear facilities, do you envision that being a single-night operation or is this a multi-day operation? | ||
| Question two is what do you assess the likelihood, regardless of the length, do you assess that the likelihood of that mission and specifically hitting these underground targets with the ordinances that we have to be reasonably likely to succeed? | ||
| And finally, how do we verify that in a time where propaganda is almost more important than fact, how do we verify the success of the operation and then fight back against the inevitable Iranian propaganda that the operation was not successful? | ||
| So I'll hang up, and again, thank you for your service. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| That's a great question. | ||
| You know, I'll try to take them in order. | ||
| The first part, I imagine it's multi-day. | ||
| I just think you'll want to do assessments in between several attacks. | ||
| And so I imagine that the plan will be for a multi-day attack. | ||
| Whether it ends up being a multi-day attack depends on the effectiveness of the first strike. | ||
| The second is what's the likelihood of success? | ||
| Look, anyone who tells you they know the answer to that is probably fibbing, right? | ||
| I mean, you know, you don't know these sorts of things. | ||
| I think we've done a lot of engineering, a lot of testing, but I also think the Iranians have done a lot. | ||
| They're a creative defender. | ||
| So they may have done some, created some perturbations in their defenses that make it harder to get through. | ||
| So I think it's more likely than not to succeed. | ||
| But anyone who says they know it will succeed or know it will fail, I think probably doesn't know what they're talking about. | ||
| And the third is that how do you assess it? | ||
| Well, look, we have a pretty good way of measuring seismic activity in that region. | ||
| We have good ways of, you know, we have very good overhead imagery. | ||
| We have signals intelligence. | ||
| The Israelis appear to have a very good human intelligence network. | ||
| So from my, between the two of us, I think we'll have a pretty good assessment of how it went and whether further campaigning is needed against it. | ||
| But my guess is several days with assessments and it will likely be successful. | ||
| Let's hear from Boyle in Chattanooga, Tennessee, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Boyle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Talking about just three things that I would like to hear from you. | ||
| Boyle, can you go ahead and turn your television down in the background? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's three things that I would like to know that I've been destroying. | |
| DDG. | ||
| And I would like to know that where's deterrence? | ||
| Who used to talk about deterrence? | ||
| If they get one nuclear weapon, they ain't going to use that one nuclear weapon. | ||
| Not only somebody else got five, got 100, got 400. | ||
| He's not a threat to nobody. | ||
| But I bet I only heard if Russia hit us, tear the United States completely up within 10 minutes, they're going to be destroyed. | ||
| So why should I use one weapon? | ||
| I ain't got but one, a two, three, and you got 200? | ||
| That don't make sense. | ||
| And they don't have a weapon. | ||
| One nuclear weapon couldn't do nothing to the United States. | ||
| Period. | ||
| So I don't want to see it. | ||
| What they're talking about. | ||
| Oh, we got to stop looking and have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| They said it about North Korea. | ||
| North Korea got a nuclear weapon. | ||
| What is they doing with it? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| But people think, oh, you get a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Boyle, we'll get a response from Mark. | ||
| Well, listen, that's a fair question to ask. | ||
| You know, where's deterrence in this? | ||
| And certainly, when you talk about two large nation states like Russia and the United States, there is a mutual assured deterrence strategy that prevents us from doing large-scale nuclear strikes on each other. | ||
| But Doyle had an interesting word in it. | ||
| He said, it doesn't make sense. | ||
| And I would say that's the concern. | ||
| The concern is that the Islamic Republic of Iran, they don't necessarily make sense in their decision-making. | ||
| This is a country that could be highly successful, 90 million people, incredible natural resources, a good university system, previously. | ||
| And they further this away by pursuing a nuclear weapon capability that puts them at odds with Israel. | ||
| They threaten the state of Israel with extinction on a routine basis. | ||
| So make sense is not something that we can apply to the thought process of Iranian leadership. | ||
| So we have to take them at their word that if they get a weapon, they would use it. | ||
| Therefore, we need to prevent them from getting a weapon. | ||
| Sometimes deterrence doesn't work. | ||
| And when deterrence doesn't work, you need to defeat your adversary. | ||
| And that's how Israel is approaching this. | ||
| Let's hear from Stephen in Dewey, Arizona, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| I'd like to get your your knowledge on this. | ||
| I mean, if October 7th didn't happen, I think Gaza would still be up and they wouldn't be in Iran. | ||
| So do they take orders, Hezbollah and Hamas, from Iran? | ||
| Iran, we know we fund both of those terrorist groups. | ||
| And I think the Iranian people should be aware that their government is causing havoc all over the Middle East. | ||
| And if October 7th didn't happen, Gaza would still be up and Iran wouldn't be attacked. | ||
| But I think it's on Iran that they're being attacked now. | ||
| How far it goes, we'll see. | ||
| But Israel does have the right, since that is the head of the snake. | ||
| And I think even Democrats believe that, that they're the cause of the terrorists in the region. | ||
| So I'd just like to know, does Iran give orders to these terrible terrorist groups? | ||
| That's a great question. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| I mean, Iran is the head of the snake. | ||
| They have given orders. | ||
| Now, the orders they give, their closest allies were Hezbollah, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC proxies in Syria and in Iraq, and then the Houthis in Yemen. | ||
| And they had financial, they had support relationships with Hamas. | ||
| So all these countries acted on orders from Iran. | ||
| Now, what's happened recently is that the Israelis have neutralized Hezbollah. | ||
| They're fully engaged with Hamas, and they've struck hard. | ||
| You know, the minute Assad fell, they destroyed the Syrian Air Force and air defense systems. | ||
| So they created the conditions where they could more easily get to Iran without Iran using its proxies to counter-strike. | ||
| That was the problem in previous negotiations with Iran. | ||
| We failed to deal with the fact that they were supporting all these terrorist groups and proxy groups that were attacking Israel. | ||
| And so now Israel's handled that problem, and Iran is much more cleanly the primary adversary and one against which they can campaign with some freedom. | ||
| And that's probably why you see this happen. | ||
| So I do think there's a direct lineage back to October 7th. | ||
| But again, you're absolutely right. | ||
| The caller's right that it's driven by Iranian support for this terrorist network over the last few decades that has culminated in the strikes on Iran. | ||
| So Iran's people should know that their own government caused this problem. | ||
| You mentioned the B-52 and the bunker busting bomb. | ||
| That's something that we've been hearing a lot about because it's something that Israel could need and only we have it. | ||
| Beyond that, what could U.S. military participation look like? | ||
| What should it look like? | ||
| What should we avoid? | ||
| So I hope we're constrained to just the B-2 stealth bomber and the massive ordnance penetrators. | ||
| But you're absolutely right. | ||
| There could be a response by the Iranians to that against U.S. forces. | ||
| And there could be a response. | ||
| Even without that strike, the Iranians could foolishly strike U.S. forces in a way to lash out. | ||
| I suspect they won't do that. | ||
| But they could, I think it is likely they'll respond against U.S. forces if we hit them with the B-2s. | ||
| Once that happens, now I think you bring in the carrier-based strike aircraft, the U.S. Air Force aircraft, strike aircraft that are in station throughout the Middle East. | ||
| And then we would begin to remove surface-to-surface missile capabilities, anti-ship cruise missile capabilities, The defense industrial base that's remaining inside Iran that supports that. | ||
| And so, you know, I think you would see the United States remove the threat to U.S. forces in the Middle East completely. | ||
| And as much as Israel has conducted a fairly comprehensive campaign, if the U.S. becomes involved, I think it would be a tripling of the strikes each day. | ||
| You know, there was two times as many from the United States as Israel is doing right now. | ||
| You'd see a very extensive one. | ||
| And we would bring our own refueling aircraft, which would make the Israelis more effective to use our refueling aircraft as well. | ||
| So, in general, you'd see a more comprehensive strike campaign that would completely eliminate the defense industrial base and the military of Iran. | ||
| Let's talk with Peter in Massachusetts line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We have two countries in the Middle East that are nuclear capable. | ||
| One of them spied on us, stole technology, developed atomic bombs in secret, and is called the only democracy in the Middle East, even though it has huge communist tendencies. | ||
| The other one, we overthrew their government in 1953 and installed the Shah, who was so bad that you had a popular uprising. | ||
| While the Shah was in power, we trained nuclear engineers for Iran. | ||
| When you start messing around with this stuff, you cannot predict the outcomes. | ||
| Hardware is great. | ||
| And looking back 2020 hindsight, we know everything about the hardware of World War II. | ||
| And someday they will look back on this and they'll know all about our technology and our bombs and things like that. | ||
| We don't want to get to that point. | ||
| We don't need to do this. | ||
| IAEA is allowed into Iran and has said they're not making a bomb. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard said until she got her come to meet in Jesus meeting, they're not making a bomb. | ||
| Israel has it and won't let IAEA come in and is ready to drop it with the Samsung option. | ||
| They even have a name for all their cute little things that they do. | ||
| We can't do this. | ||
| We can't afford another 20-year war. | ||
| The value of the dollar is going down. | ||
| We have had our current, our credit lowered by the credit ratings of the world. | ||
| We can't afford to do that. | ||
| We're not unlimited in our financial abilities. | ||
| And they've got 90 million people in Iran. | ||
| What are we going to do? | ||
| Try and knock a country a quarter the size of ours back into the Stone Age? | ||
| You can't. | ||
| So thanks. | ||
| I would take offense at the description of Israel not being a democracy. | ||
| Israel's a democracy. | ||
| I think if spying on friends make you not a democracy, then the United States would not be a democracy, so let's not go there. | ||
| You know, they're a country under siege. | ||
| They've been fighting, they would say, a seven or eight front war. | ||
| I would say it's really Iran and its proxies against them, but in any case, it comes from every angle. | ||
| So it's absolutely appropriate for them to be constantly searching for facts about the Iranian program. | ||
| I agree the United States' involvement in Iran since Hermit Roosevelt in 1953 has not been, you know, did not redound well on our reputation. | ||
| We handled that poorly. | ||
| That has nothing to do with: should we allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and the ballistic missile systems to deliver it to first Israel and then the United States? | ||
| The answer to that question is a solid no, and we shouldn't do it. | ||
| And finally, our credit rating, I don't know if it's tanking, but if America has bad credit, I don't believe it's over the Iran or Israel conflict. | ||
| It probably has a lot more to do with a future cease-band discussion of debt and deficit, not Iran and Israel. | ||
| Bill in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Am I on? | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Go ahead, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I just want to say I believe what this guest is saying is ludicrous. | ||
| To kind of follow up on a previous caller, we were going to go into Iraq and just take care of Saddam Hussein, and they were going to greet us with flowers. | ||
| And that never happened. | ||
| We left that country destroyed. | ||
| Afghanistan, oh, we were going to go in and take care of the Taliban. | ||
| 20 years later, many U.S. and Afghanistan ids. | ||
| How many billions, trillions of dollars? | ||
| Look who's in charge of Afghanistan, the Taliban. | ||
| Your guest makes it sound like, oh, we're going to go in and we're going to bomb the plant, the nuclear facility in Iran, and it's just going to take care of everything and we'll walk away. | ||
| No, we'll help create another generation of terrorists. | ||
| We will destroy another country. | ||
| We won't walk in and walk away. | ||
| It ain't going to work like that, sir. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| And certainly, that caller reflects what isolationists think, which is that if we, you know, that we shouldn't get involved in any of these issues overseas and just continue to operate in the United States. | ||
| Of course, the United States economy doesn't work that way. | ||
| The United States economy works on a world trade system that's led by the United States and follows our rules of transparency and the rule of law and open trading borders. | ||
| So we can't allow the Axis of aggressors to continue to push their version of both security, both military and economic security. | ||
| And the other thing I'd say is that we can't allow someone who, a country, if I were Israel, I would not allow a country who states very explicitly we are going to wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth. | ||
| You can't give them the weapon that allows them to wipe the Jewish state off of the earth, whether it's one, two, or three weapons. | ||
| That's enough to destroy Israel, which is a country smaller than the state of New Jersey. | ||
| And so I fully understand why Israel wants to do it. | ||
| I understand why President Trump would consider doing this. | ||
| I will say this about President Trump. | ||
| I don't agree with him on a lot of issues when it comes to the use of force. | ||
| He is very reticent to do it. | ||
| I think he will only do this when it's his personal assessment that it's the only way to stop Iran from getting the weapon. | ||
| Maybe after this two-week period of reflection, that's how he'll see things, and he'll use the weapon. | ||
| But you can say a lot of things about President Trump. | ||
| You cannot say he's a warmonger. | ||
| He has generally stepped back from peace. | ||
| And if you listened to him yesterday, the things he's most proud of are ending conflicts, whether it's India, Pakistan, Rwanda, and the Congo, Russia, and Ukraine. | ||
| He even gave 60 days for Iran and Israel. | ||
| And again, I don't agree with how each one of these has gone, but you can't be critical of his approach in terms and call him a warmonger. | ||
| Mark, I wanted to ask you about something else. | ||
| also serve as senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at FDD. | ||
| This headline was in the Hill this week. | ||
| Could U.S. involvement in Israel-Iran war spark cyber attack? | ||
| It notes that cyber attacks on Israel have increased 700% since the conflict began. | ||
| What do we know about these attacks? | ||
| How could they come back to the U.S.? | ||
| How could they impact the U.S.? | ||
| And what are you going to be watching in the coming days? | ||
| Yeah, thanks. | ||
| Thanks for bringing that up because that is an aspect of this, and it's an aspect that could impact our homeland. | ||
| Now, I will say that there's two types of attacks a foreign adversary like China, Russia, Iran can do in cyberspace. | ||
| One is malicious activity that has been reported to be increased 700% by Iran against Israel. | ||
| We saw that recently, about 16 months ago, FBI Director Written out that China had pre-positioned malicious cyber software malware or created accesses so they could get into our critical infrastructures in a crisis or wartime. | ||
| Certainly, China and Russia have the ability to do that. | ||
| Iran, a little less so, but they could do some damage. | ||
| That's your electrical power grid, your water, your rail systems. | ||
| But the other area and one where Iran is capable right now is influence operations. | ||
| That's where you get into social media, you create a false narrative. | ||
| My think TECH just published a paper last night by Max Lesser and Maria Riofro that points out we found Iranian influence operations where Iranians pose as Jewish Americans concerned or Jews in Israel concerned about attacks and it spreads fear. | ||
| You know, try to get kind of everyone feeling they're under stress and under attack even more so than they are, and that that kind of influence operations is intended to get a public to not support a government's campaign. | ||
| So cyber, malicious activity, influence operations we're going to see both of them from Iran, probably more the influence operations than the cyber activity which is more likely from like, a Russia or China and that kind of crisis. | ||
| Let's talk with Mickey in Auburn, Illinois line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi Mickey hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for the call. | ||
| I'm an old U.S ARMY combat medic and I I feel safe knowing that president Trump is in charge at this time because he's not going to just willy-nilly advance Lockheed Martin and Boeing and the WAR Complex in this country. | ||
| To call the situation in the Middle East the Hatfields and the Mccoys wouldn't be doing it justice. | ||
| Israel is. | ||
| Israel preaches that they're the quote chosen people. | ||
| I mean God said they're the chosen ones, and Iran says that if you're not a Muslim and convert to uh, to the Muslim belief. | ||
| You're an infidel and we're going to kill you. | ||
| You know this. | ||
| This is just no good um everywhere, everywhere we go, and I don't know who put us in charge of the world order and and all of this stuff, but I i'm thanking that president Trump is in charge and And the Israelis have caused tons of trouble. | ||
| The Iraqis and the Muslim states have caused tons of trouble. | ||
| And we're never going to be in the middle. | ||
| I hope we never get in the middle of it. | ||
| I hope we just, you know, this gentleman called it isolationism. | ||
| It's like every time since World War II we've gotten involved in something, there's been a failure. | ||
| And I just hope that no boots on the ground and stop Americans deciding who's going to be in charge of who's right and who's wrong. | ||
| The Koreans got a bomb. | ||
| The Israelis got a bomb. | ||
| Well, they're not supposed to. | ||
| So we pick and choose. | ||
| And I pray to God that no soldiers, no American lives, no American assets are involved in a war that's going to go on for another thousand years. | ||
| And being an old Army combat medic, I'm sorry for the Rear Admiral that he had to pull Marines around for a bunch of time. | ||
| But God bless us and thanks for C-SPAN. | ||
| Hope you have a great day. | ||
| Well, thanks, and thank you for your service as well. | ||
| So look, the problem with isolationism is we did, we practiced it fairly effectively in the early 1930s. | ||
| And while we practice isolationism, Europe and Asia turned into cauldrons that led to World War II. | ||
| And the reason we have the high-quality life we have in the United States is not because of trade between Kansas and Nebraska, right? | ||
| It's because of trade between the United States and the world. | ||
| We have to have access for our goods, for our services, for our currency around the world. | ||
| And so there is a reason why we maintain a Navy and build an Army, right? | ||
| It's in order to ensure that we have the military back and to do those things. | ||
| President Trump is not trying to get us into war. | ||
| As said to the last caller, I actually think he's almost overly prescriptive in trying to make sure we don't enter a conflict. | ||
| And there's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| I have a son in the military myself. | ||
| However, he has approved of what Israel is doing because he recognizes this is the best way to set back the Iranian nuclear program, which is an existential threat to Israel and a long-term threat to the United States. | ||
| Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| You can find his work online at fdd.org. | ||
| Mark, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| Thank you very much for having me, Tammy. | ||
| We are wrapping up today's Washington Journal with more of your calls in open form. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines there on your screen: Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| 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. | ||
| The clerk will report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| It's a story from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. | ||
| The book by Claire Hoffman is called Sister Center: 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
|
Claire Hoffman with her book, Sister Center: 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. | ||
| We are in open form for the duration of today's program. | ||
| You can give us a call, and we will start with Will in Tulsa, Oklahoma, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Will. | ||
| Oh, we lost Will. | ||
| We'll go to Jay in Utah, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Jay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, this guy, the guest previously, boy, I wish I could have talked to him, but he was talking about isolationists. | ||
| These think tanks, all they do is isolate us into war. | ||
| They never talk. | ||
| They never set up meetings. | ||
| There's no think tanks on what can make America better. | ||
| There's only think tanks on what gets us into war. | ||
| I was wondering who funds the guy. | ||
| But the isolationists are the ones that only want to drop bombs. | ||
| That's the corner they put us in every single time. | ||
| So anyway, thanks for listening. | ||
| Let's change this. | ||
| Isolate to talks. | ||
| We should talk. | ||
| We should set up meetings. | ||
| Has he ever been to Iran? | ||
| Has he ever walked the streets of Iran? | ||
| But he's sitting here promoting a bomb. | ||
| That's just a sick American thinking. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That was Jay in Utah. | ||
| Eric in Minnesota, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think it's worth recalling what Trump said after the Iraq episode. | ||
| Taid multiple times over multiple years, we should have taken their oil when we got out. | ||
| So if you look at current strategies that might be making him go into Iran, which has huge oil deposits, he may be thinking more about game than about nuclear bombs. | ||
| And secondarily, it's worth noting that Russia is conspicuously silent in this situation. | ||
| Russia has historically protected Iran, and now they don't lift a finger. | ||
| It's almost as if this Trump-Putin arrangement, Trump-Netanyahu arrangement, was predetermined and that they're following a script. | ||
| In any case, I just wanted to raise those points. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Eric in Minnesota. | ||
| Mark in Massachusetts, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was trying to get through to the prior guests, but just to piggyback on some of the other callers about the whole Iran conflict or whatever, is that, you know, Russia has a good relationship with Iran. | ||
| And, you know, a lot of these drones that Russia's been lobbying at Ukraine have been supplied by Iran. | ||
| So who's to say that Russia's not giving them some of their hypersonic missiles and other technologies? | ||
| And, you know, it could be a lot uglier than these hypersonic missiles can't be defended against. | ||
| That was Mark in Massachusetts. | ||
| Timothy in Temple, Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Timothy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, Timothy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm a Marine, and I was in the military for a long, long time. | ||
| And I wanted to let people know exactly what the Democrats are doing. | ||
| Now, this is not a political thing, but going back in history, Mr. Trump is a very good man. | ||
| This is my opinion. | ||
| I mean, there are things that he doesn't do, but there is also, he is bringing back America and the chaos in the lives of the Democrats, of people's history through the Democrats, and what they've done to people and to America. | ||
| They turn the flag upside down. | ||
| Obama under cleansed. | ||
| So here's my question to the public. | ||
| If you go back in your history and see what Mr. Trump is doing and what the Democrats have done, if the Democrats were so on board of what they're trying to say to people, why didn't they do this way before Mr. Trump got back into office? | ||
| The chaos and wars, the respect. | ||
| We have our allies that really care about us now. | ||
| We have our flag that means something now. | ||
| And, you know, he's trying his best. | ||
| He's the only president in history a lot of people don't know that's never collected a paycheck for Washington. | ||
| So he can't be all that bad. | ||
| But this is my opinion. | ||
| That was Timothy in Texas. | ||
| Gabe in West Orange, New Jersey, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Gabe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So I'm reaching out because I wanted to speak to the previous guest and ask him some questions about foreign policy regarding two defense pacts. | ||
| So I wanted to ask: would America, Britain, and Europe ever offer NATO-like membership to Israel, similar to South Korea's security arrangement as a way to move forward with the two-state solution and to deter enemies of Israel? | ||
| And also, similar to potentially the Marshall Plan, would Israel like to use the post-war strategy in Germany using multinational forces and democratic reform in a post-war Gaza to help achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Gabe in New Jersey. | ||
| And he mentioned NATO. | ||
| This is a headline from Politico. | ||
| Yesterday, Trump says U.S. doesn't have to meet NATO spending goal. | ||
| The article says that President Donald Trump on Friday said that the U.S. shouldn't have to abide by the same defense spending standards as the rest of NATO, potentially antagonizing leaders from the rest of the alliance days before he's to meet with them in the Netherlands. | ||
| It says Trump has long demanded NATO states spend 5% of their GDP on defense, but it has never said, but has never said if the U.S. should be included in that or not. | ||
| The U.S. is currently at 3.4%. | ||
| It goes on to say that the summit kicks off on Tuesday in The Hague with leaders of 32 member states coming together to plan spending goals and reaffirm NATO force structure and deployment plans. | ||
| It also notes that most NATO states spend just over 2% of their GDP on defense currently, with a growing number having outlined plans to get to around 3% over the next year or two. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Anthony in New York, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| It was so funny. | ||
| The gentleman just called, he said that Trump never collected a paycheck and he's all the way overseas in Saudi Arabia building hotels. | ||
| Well, anyway, your guest had made a comment was not true. | ||
| He said that Trump stopped the India and Pakistan war. | ||
| He did not do that. | ||
| Pakistan was losing that war. | ||
| So therefore, they stopped. | ||
| But their guest is trying to give Trump credit for stopping that war. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| That's all I just wanted to say: correct the guest. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Anthony in New York. | ||
| Judy in Highland Park, Illinois, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Judy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| It's a beautiful morning. | ||
| Hot. | ||
| I wanted to point out that Israel's Air Force took out the beginning of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in, I think it was 2003. | ||
| And yes, we did go into Iraq, and that was not good, but that nuclear reactor was taken out by Israel. | ||
| I also want to point out that Israel had to fly 1,000 miles to get to Tehran over countries that if they had wanted to try to take down the Air Force, they would have tried, but they didn't. | ||
| And so it's hard for them to come out and say, yeah, this could be a reset, but it actually could be a reset for that whole region. | ||
| And we need, as you're, I just caught the tail end of your guess, and we absolutely need international trade. | ||
| If you like to go to Costco or Walmart and buy some of the stuff that, regardless of tariffs, it's still there, then we need those waterways free and without the Houthis and everyone else trying to take us out. | ||
| So it's so complex, and I just wish that everyone would try to just understand that Iran is different from these other countries. | ||
| They've had a history of extreme creativity. | ||
| You know, they have a different goal for themselves, maybe. | ||
| And there's so many, you know, and the other countries want to catch up. | ||
| They want to be part of the world community. | ||
| So have a great weekend and try to read something, please. | ||
| That was Judy in Illinois. | ||
| Carl in Brunswick, Ohio, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| A couple quick questions. | ||
| Do you think we would be watching all of what's going on right now between Israel and Iran if Obama didn't give him all that money to fund everything? | ||
| And number two, he cannot have a nuke. | ||
| And people around this world need to read their history books about the Silk Road and the trading that we have to do with all 190 countries around the world. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a beautiful day. | ||
| That was Carl in Ohio. | ||
| This headline on Fox News, she's wrong. | ||
| Trump says Tulsi Gabbard incorrect about Iran not having nuclear weapon capabilities. | ||
| The article says that President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is wrong in her assessment that Iran is not close to building a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Says Trump's comments came after he departed Air Force One en route to his Bedminster, New York golf club, where he stepped aside to take a few questions from reporters. | ||
| Says that following Trump's comments, Gabbard took to social media and blasted the media for intentionally taking her March testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee out of context. | ||
| From yesterday, here is that interview, or here is that clip from President Trump. | ||
| 20 years ago, you were skeptical of a Republican administration that attacked the Middle East country on the idea of questionable intelligence of weapons of mass destruction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How is this moment different with Iran? | |
| Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction. | ||
| I never thought there were. | ||
| And that was somewhat pre-nuclear. | ||
| You know, there was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today. | ||
| And it looked like I'm right about the material that they've gathered already. | ||
| It's a tremendous amount of material. | ||
| And I think within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months, they're going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| We can't let that happen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was very much opposed to Iraq. | |
| I said it loud and clear, but I was a civilian, but I guess I got a lot of publicity. | ||
| But I was very much opposed to the Iraq war. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I actually did say, don't go in, don't go in, don't go in. | |
| But I said, if you're going to go in, keep the oil. | ||
| But they didn't do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? | |
| Your intelligence community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point. | ||
| Well, then my intelligence community is wrong. | ||
| Who in the intelligence community said that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. | |
| She's wrong. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard's full comments on X says the dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division. | ||
| America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months if they decide to finalize the assembly. | ||
| President Trump has been clear, excuse me, that it can't happen, and I agree. | ||
| She then posted a video of her full testimony. | ||
| C-SPAN covered that hearing, and you can find it online and watch it in full at c-span.org. | ||
| About 20 minutes left in this open form. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Ted, Minneapolis, Minnesota, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Ted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd just like to bring up the fact that that admiral was talking about we're going over and doing the best we can to get relief for Israel. | ||
| Well, the bottom line is our country truthfully is a warmonger. | ||
| We went to Vietnam, we lost that. | ||
| We went to Afghanistan. | ||
| We lost that. | ||
| We have been in every worst since World War II and lost every one of them, but to the cost of the American taxpayers of billions of hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| And as far as Donald Trump goes, that gentleman that called earlier stated that Trump doesn't take his annual salary. | ||
| He doesn't need to. | ||
| He's selling Teslas on the White House lawn. | ||
| He has gotten more stuff as far as the Bitcoin ever. | ||
| He's a multi-billionaire by using the office of the White House. | ||
| Let's not kid ourselves. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Ted in Minnesota. | ||
| Nick in Whitefish, Montana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm just thinking if you really wanted regime change in Iran, wouldn't it make more sense to infiltrate their state-run media? | ||
| Studies have shown that 80% of the Iranian population does not agree with the Islamist leadership of that country. | ||
| It would be a lot easier, and then you probably have a democracy that has one nuke. | ||
| Isn't that what Israel has? | ||
| Israel is a democracy that has 300 nukes. | ||
| Also, I'd like to tell my fellow Republicans to stop wearing those stupid red hats. | ||
| Just lowers your IQ, Bub. | ||
| That was Nick in Montana. | ||
| Lou, San Antonio, Texas, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, thank you for taking my call. | |
| Yeah, every decision is made every two weeks. | ||
| We're still waiting on that health care plan. | ||
| Anyway, just one quick comment. | ||
| Would we be in this situation if he didn't tear up the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama made? | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| That was Lou in Texas. | ||
| Michael in Island Park, New York, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My comment is more general about the whole thing than what everybody else is talking about. | ||
| All I can see, everybody having squabbles. | ||
| The Democrats want to squabble with the Republicans. | ||
| The Republicans want to squabble with the Democrats. | ||
| Nobody seems to have any sense in this matter at all. | ||
| Even the news. | ||
| I can't find the news program that tells me what the Iranians actually have. | ||
| Do they have tanks? | ||
| Do they have cannons? | ||
| What kind of an army do they have? | ||
| What are they going to be able to do if somebody goes over there or if there's a problem? | ||
| I see nothing but squabbles and not a single news program that gives us information that could tell us what the Iranian capabilities are. | ||
| That's all I have to comment on. | ||
| That was Michael in New York. | ||
| Let's hear from Vaughn in Warrensburg, Missouri, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Vaughn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate you taking my call. | ||
| To the last call, it ain't none of your business what they got. | ||
| But, you know, this is a pitiful country. | ||
| The Admiral, speaking as a military person myself, you know, I'm really embarrassed by him. | ||
| All right, the biggest story of the week, the biggest lie ever told is the biggest story of the week. | ||
| It started in 1848 when white supremacists invaded Palestine and changed the name to Israel, aided by the U.S., Britain, France, and the U.N. For more than 75 years, they occupied and oppressed the Palestinians by taking their land, corralling them up on reservations, and controlling every aspect of their lives. | ||
| When they stood up and rejected, they must be destroyed. | ||
| After all, they are the chosen people of God. | ||
| That's another lie. | ||
| That was Vaughan in Missouri. | ||
| Let's hear from Ray in Pittsburgh, line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how are you doing? | |
| A couple of points I want to make. | ||
| First, if Iran had wanted to have a bomb, they could have done so so easily. | ||
| You know, just like Tulsi Gabbard said, they have the capacity to put one together, and who knows whether they have or haven't put one together. | ||
| But that's beside the point. | ||
| I don't know if our military people are smart enough. | ||
| Certainly HagSeth isn't. | ||
| But Iran has to have a plan B for that facility they have under the mountain. | ||
| And you can bet that they were activating their plan B as soon as Israel dropped the first missile on their country. | ||
| So we have no idea where their centrifuges and where all that radioactive material has been taken to. | ||
| They've been working for years under that mountain. | ||
| Who knows what other tunnels they've dug and where else they are? | ||
| I don't care if we're watching them from above or not. | ||
| They're never going to know what they've been doing under that mountain for the last 10, 20 years. | ||
| And that's basically what my point is: that if they have a plan B, they're probably using it right now. | ||
| And we'll never know whether they got the stuff and where it is because they probably already have it shipped to a different spot or a different location. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| But anyway, thanks. | ||
| That was Ray in Pittsburgh. | ||
| David in Vancouver, Washington, line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| We are in a situation where we cannot afford to keep fighting somebody else's wars. | ||
| Nothing else has been saying. | ||
| That country is working on nuclear and next week they will have it. | ||
| In two months, they will have it. | ||
| He's been saying this for 20 years. | ||
| We are $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| We can't afford to keep fighting somebody else's wars. | ||
| And my point is: if they come to hurt us here, we should retaliate and do all of that. | ||
| But we cannot keep fighting somebody else's war. | ||
| And that's all I got. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was David in Washington State. | ||
| This headline from the Associated Post says Trump calls for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election, reviving long-standing grievance. | ||
| It says that President Donald Trump on Friday called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, repeating his baseless claims that the contest was marred by widespread fraud. | ||
| It says, quote, Biden was grossly incompetent and the 2020 election was a total fraud, Trump said in a social media post in which he also sought to favorably contrast his immigration enforcement approach with that of the former president. | ||
| It says the evidence of a massive and overwhelming, the evidence is massive and overwhelming. | ||
| A special prosecutor must be appointed. | ||
| This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America. | ||
| Let the work begin. | ||
| It also says that earlier this month, Trump directed his administration to investigate Biden's actions as president, alleging AIDS masked his predecessor's cognitive decline. | ||
| Biden has dismissed the investigation as a mere distraction. | ||
| The state of President Biden's cognitive fitness during his term Was the topic for a Senate hearing earlier this week? | ||
| Here is a clip from that where Senator Peter Welch, one of two Democrats who attended, spoke before walking out of the hearing and is followed by Republican Ted Cruz. | ||
| Sure, we can enjoy the pleasure of looking back at the Biden administration and then getting into the weeds about when and where and how the president was acting at any given moment. | ||
| But you know, I ask myself before I get into a debate and before I do anything, why am I doing it? | ||
| And if I do it, does it have the potential to make things better for the people I represent? | ||
| And if the answer is no, it doesn't have a chance, any opportunity to help the folks in Vermont, I shut up. | ||
| That's what I do because it won't help. | ||
| What we're doing right now won't help. | ||
| It will not help. | ||
| And I asked myself, why in the world are we doing it? | ||
| Not a single Democrat is here today because not a single one of them gives a damn about the fact that they lied to the American people for four years. | ||
| They knew, every one of them knew that Joe Biden was mentally not competent to do the job. | ||
| The White House press secretary, she knew when she stood in front of the American people and lied over and over and over again. | ||
| And they're not here because they can't defend themselves. | ||
| It wasn't a surprise. | ||
| For four years, the White House hid President Biden from Republican senators, would not let him meet with us. | ||
| He served 40 years in this body. | ||
| We all know him. | ||
| And they deliberately lied. | ||
| Just about 10 minutes left in this open form. | ||
| Let's hear from Bob in Tuckerman, Arkansas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to make a comment about Iran. | ||
| Iran has their policy has been to get rid of the United States and Israel. | ||
| The longer we wait in taking them out and taking the nuclear weapons away from them, it's in their favor. | ||
| The thing is, as a country, Iran is neutral and not offensive, then that would be fine in the world. | ||
| Russia criticized us as far as the way we're supporting Israel, and they're the ones that went into Ukraine. | ||
| The Chinese are waiting to take over Taiwan, and if they feel we're weak, they'll do that. | ||
| I'm 88 years old. | ||
| I don't have that much time. | ||
| I worry about the little birds and dogs and cats and other things that would be taken away with a nuclear war. | ||
| Not to say about the humans, but we're the custody of the world. | ||
| That's my comment. | ||
| That was Bob in Arkansas. | ||
| Maxine in Georgia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Maxine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead, Maxine. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Maxine, are you there? | ||
| Maxine, if we lost you, go ahead and give us the call back. | ||
| We'll go on to Michael in Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling to advocate for more representatives in the House of Representatives specifically. | ||
| I think a more appropriate number given our population would be 1776 representatives. | ||
| I think this would make more sense because it would give us a number such that we could have a minimum of three representatives for each state in the union. | ||
| And I think that it makes much more sense to have strictly more representatives than senators in every state, and this would do that. | ||
| It would also allow for one House member to have only one subcommittee assignment, which would allow them to spend to be more focused on their one subcommittee. | ||
| This would have several benefits. | ||
| First of all, because it would have smaller district, it would result in smaller district size. | ||
| Representatives would require much, would be far less dependent on fundraising in order to outreach to their constituents, as well as challengers to House seats would also require far less funding and could outreach to a much smaller district without being dependent on campaign money as well. | ||
| It would also allow representatives to focus their efforts and their time on two things, constituency services, being available to their constituents for whatever needs constituents have as far as the federal government, as well as, like I said, be more focused on their subcommittee. | ||
| Michael, I know you've called before talking about this. | ||
| Have you made any progress on these efforts to make this happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right now, I'm just trying to explain to your audience all of the benefits that this would afford the House. | |
| So another benefit would be it would help to equalize district size. | ||
| Right now, we have districts ranging in size from like Wyoming and Montana have 500,000 representatives roughly, whereas states like South Dakota and Delaware have more like a million. | ||
| So people in Delaware have half the representation that Wyoming and Montanans do. | ||
| I got your point, Michael. | ||
| We'll leave it there. | ||
| Let's go to Tom in Manchester, Kentucky, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, ma'am. | |
| I just got two quick questions, ma'am. | ||
| I'm just a res of your program, and I'm just wondering, what would you guys cover if it weren't for Trump? | ||
| And one other question, and I'll quit you. | ||
| I probably won't ever call again. | ||
| It's simply amusing and amazing to me that so many people got some different opinions at Dell. | ||
| But anyway, what would you guys do without Trump? | ||
| And the Democrats would have to whine and cry and carry on with the ignorance that they've got if it weren't for Trump. | ||
| I'm just wondering, Trump's the newsmaker, buddy. | ||
| Easy rating. | ||
| Leave him alone. | ||
| Tom, if we didn't have Trump as our president, we probably would be covering whoever was the president. | ||
| We will go to Hal in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Hal. | ||
| Hal, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hal, leave me here. | |
| Am I on? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Hal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just wanted to compliment the Admiral. | |
| Hal, can you go ahead and turn your television down in the background? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| Just a second. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Halloween in here. | |
| I just wanted to compliment the level-headedness of the Admiral and also to take exception to that caller who called in and said that Israel was founded by white supremacists. | ||
| I hardly think the people who came out of that concentration camp were supreme in anything. | ||
| Now, I don't like the way they're conducting the war in Gaza. | ||
| I think they're doing a terrible job. | ||
| I think that that's nothing Yahoo's fault. | ||
| It's the fault of the hierarchy. | ||
| But as far as the Israelis go, they're the only level-headed democracy in the whole band at least. | ||
| That was Hal in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Let's talk with Patsy in Massachusetts, Lynn for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Patsy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for being there. | ||
| I have one question. | ||
| A gentleman called a few minutes ago with the same question I've had for months now. | ||
| What happened to Obama's Iran bill? | ||
| And a man asked you a little bit earlier. | ||
| Trump brushed it aside because Obama did it. | ||
| And I'm just wondering, would we be in this situation without him canceling that? | ||
| That was Patsy in Massachusetts and Sharon in Illinois. | ||
| Line for Independence is our last caller for this morning's program. | ||
| Good morning, Sharon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wonder, you know, why are they keep the Republicans or Trump keep bringing up Biden? | |
| 2020 is a path. | ||
| He needs to start the beginning. | ||
| You know, he's never been my president. | ||
| Never, never, never. | ||
| I will never call him a president in my life. | ||
| I am on oxygen 24-7 because he tried to defunct Obamacare in 2016. | ||
| I can't even leave my house because I'm afraid to because of that idiot. | ||
| And then I get phone calls saying, can you do this? | ||
| Can you do that? | ||
| Can you support Trump? | ||
| I can't even breathe. | ||
| I wouldn't support that idiot ever. | ||
| And Joe Biden, he might not have been our best president, but he sure and hell hasn't had been our worst. | ||
| Trump has, twice now. | ||
| And all you guys are saying, you know, Trump, he fell up the steps of his plane. | ||
| Joe Biden stumbled. | ||
| And it's a whole big deal. | ||
| Trump does the same damn thing, and no one says a thing about it. | ||
| Equal. | ||
| Also, on the immigration, I'm for part of the immigration, not the way he's doing it. | ||
| But won't you watch, won't they check on their wives? | ||
| Vans has got an Indian wife, and he's got a Silvaka Silakian wife or whatever, because I can't ever understand a damn word she says. | ||
| But I have to go now because I can't breathe. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Sharon in Illinois, our last caller for today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning with another program at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific. | ||
| Until then, enjoy your Saturday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's what's ahead. | |
| Next, the United Nations Security Council looks at the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| Then, a number of former ambassadors and government officials discuss NATO strategy. | ||
| After that, remarks from former Trump Administration Attorney General Bill Barr. | ||
| And later, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell briefs reporters. | ||
| 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. |