| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Your calls and comments live. | |
| Then a discussion about the state of the Israel-Iran ceasefire and what's next for the region and relations with the U.S. | ||
| The Middle East Institute senior fellow Alex Vitenka is our guest. | ||
| And congressional reaction to the U.S. military strikes against Iran and Senate action on the president's big beautiful bill. | ||
| Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett will join us, followed by Virginia Democrat Suha Subramanyam. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| This is the Washington Journal for June 25th. | ||
| Earlier this morning from the NATO summit in the Netherlands, President Trump addressed the leaked report suggesting less damage was done to Iran's nuclear facilities as previously thought as quote inconclusive. | ||
| He also described the U.S. effort to bomb those nuclear sites in Iran as quote an obliteration. | ||
| This comes as a new poll shows large disapproval of the Iran strikes by the U.S. | ||
| And that's where we'll start our program this morning and the days following the strikes. | ||
| Did you approve or disapprove of the president's decision to strike Iran? | ||
| Here's how you can let us know. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you want to tell us if you agree or disagree of the president's decision to strike Iran and you want to do that in text, 202-748-8003 is how you do that. | ||
| You can always post on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And you can always post on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Several stories this morning with stories coming out yesterday from the Defense Intelligence Agency report. | ||
| A report leaked about those impacts in Iran after the U.S. strikes. | ||
| This is the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| U.S. strikes found to cause Tehran a few months on nuclear program. | ||
| From the Wall Street Journal says the initial findings written by the Defense Intelligence Agency relied on military damage assessments following the bombings, the people said, adding that the assessment could change as more intelligence is collected. | ||
| U.S. intelligence agencies frequently produce classified reports that are later revised, sometimes substantially as more information is collected. | ||
| Such reports don't necessarily reflect the view of other spy agencies and disagreement among the agencies isn't uncommon. | ||
| It was earlier this morning that the president, while at the NATO summit, was asked about the release of this report, its findings, and what he thought of that. | ||
| Here is President Trump from earlier today. | ||
| Actually, the report said it could have been very, they don't know. | ||
| I mean, they did a report. | ||
| I could have Pete talk to it because his department did the report. | ||
| They really don't know. | ||
| I think Israel is going to be telling us very soon because BB is going to have people involved in that whole situation. | ||
| We hear it was obliteration. | ||
| It was a virtual obliteration. | ||
| When you take a look at the ground above, don't forget the flame is all underground. | ||
| But everything above, if you look at the before and the after picture, everything above is burned black, the trees, everything. | ||
| There's one building, but that's a building that sunk substantially into the granite so that, you know, the fire goes right over it. | ||
| It was, I believe it was total obliteration. | ||
| I believe they didn't have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast. | ||
| If it would have taken two weeks, maybe, but it's very hard to remove that kind of material. | ||
| Very hard and very dangerous for them to remove it. | ||
| Plus, they knew we were coming. | ||
| And if they know we're coming, they're not going to be down there. | ||
| There aren't too many people that are going to be down there. | ||
| That's the president from earlier today, CBS, putting out a poll yesterday when it comes to people's opinions on the airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities on the broad spectrum. | ||
| When it comes to those who approve of that, only 13% of Democrats, 36% of Independents, and 85% of Republicans approving of the measure. | ||
| Those who disapprove, 87% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, 15% of Republicans over all of those polled, 44% approving of it, 56% disapproving of the airstrikes. | ||
| And then when it comes to just amongst Republicans, among all Republicans, 85% approving of that, 95% who describe themselves as MAGA Republicans, 94%, 15% of all Republicans disapproving, 6% of those MAGA Republicans disapproving. | ||
| So if you agree or disagree with the airstrikes in Iran, 202748-8001 for Republicans, Democrats 202748-8000, and Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| You can text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003. | ||
| JJ from California starts us off on our Republican line on this idea of agreeing or disagreeing with the decision by the president to strike Iran. | ||
| JJ, your first stop. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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I agree with what we did because I feel that Iran is a heart head of the snake. | |
| All of these processes trying to do bad things to America, their mantra, Iran is death to America. | ||
| And I believe in peace through strength. | ||
| Number one, with Trump, and I believe there is divine intervention with God when they tried to assassinate him. | ||
| He missed it by an ear. | ||
| And I think that now that we have air superiority and it's the weakest time is the time to do it now because if we let it go any longer, the end result's going to be death to America. | ||
| And the Ayatollah, you know, he wants to leave a legacy. | ||
| He doesn't care. | ||
| He's 86 years old. | ||
| He wants to wipe out Israel and wipe out America. | ||
| And let's not forget Iran prior to all this, their mantra is death to America. | ||
| But do you remember a while back? | ||
| They drove our pilot through the streets. | ||
| They burned our flag. | ||
| I feel you burn our flag, you're going to see stars. | ||
| Okay, JJ in California, this is Andrew in Virginia. | ||
| Democrats line agreeing or disagree with the president's decision to strike Iran. | ||
| Hello, Andrew. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I totally disagree with what this moron-in-chief has done. | ||
| He's basically going to destabilize the entire Middle East. | ||
| Once again, with this decision to go after Iran like this, this is further going to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. | ||
| Countless American soldiers will be sent over there and they will die. | ||
| The national debt in this country will rise even more. | ||
| Do most people realize that most of our national debt is attributed to these stupid, ignorant wars that are started by Republican presidents. | ||
| The 37 trillion that we have in debt right now, most of it has been accured because of these senseless, stupid, underfunded wars. | ||
| We continue to go down this path. | ||
| We will have a nuclear war. | ||
| What Trump did was probably one of the stupidest, most irresponsible decisions ever made by a president. | ||
| But then again, you have to consider what we're working with here. | ||
| Okay, that's Andrew in Virginia, the CBS News poll that was done in conjunction with YouGov. | ||
| Here's the question they asked: concerned that U.S. airstrikes could lead to a wider war. | ||
| 44% of those responded and said they were very concerned about that. | ||
| 35% saying they were somewhat concerned, only 21% saying they were not too or at all concerned about a wider war occurring. | ||
| You heard the president from earlier this morning, by the way, later on on C-SPAN 2, about 9 o'clock this morning at the president participating in a news conference at the NATO summit in the Netherlands, maybe talking more about the strikes and other things related to NATO. | ||
| C-SPAN 2 is where you can see that. | ||
| You can follow along at C-SPANNOW, our app at c-span.org. | ||
| If you're interested in the president's comments from earlier this morning, you can also go to those platforms or the app and the .org and see more of that. | ||
| Barbara in Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, you're next. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry, this is Elizabeth. | ||
| Elizabeth in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I agree with the President's move to actually do what he did. | ||
| I feel that in the last 30, 40 years that I've been involved in general following through, this has been a joke itself. | ||
| You can't have it both ways. | ||
| You're either, you know, pro or not, but Death to America does not fly itself. | ||
| But, anyways, I do agree, and I appreciate your call. | ||
| Elizabeth, should it be a one-time occurrence, or do you think follow-up attacks of a similar nature might be necessary? | ||
| And would you be on board with that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Absolutely. | |
| If it's necessary, we have to take care of the problem. | ||
| This has been going on for the longest time, over and over and over. | ||
| And so, if the world thinks that in reality they should not have it, it poses a threat to the Middle East itself. | ||
| Their neighbors are not happy about it, then why continue this whole issue? | ||
| We have quite a bit of soldiers in that area, so obviously it does affect. | ||
| But when you're actually chanting Death to America and we are over there in that particular area doing a particular mission or whatever, but again, I think that if it's necessary, you know, it's unfortunate. | ||
| Nobody wants war, but you're going to have to at least do it the best way possible to have less casualties and just take care of the problem. | ||
| Barbara is next, and Barbara is from New Jersey, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I did not vote for President Trump, but I am so glad he did what he did. | ||
| People forget about the fact that Iran circled Israel with their proxies to continuously attack, and they were trying to exterminate Israel. | ||
| That was Hamas's expressed goal. | ||
| That was Hezbollah's expressed goal. | ||
| And they were all funded and trained by Iran. | ||
| And then Iran attacked Israel with missiles twice last year. | ||
| So it's not that Israel started this war. | ||
| And nobody thinks about the fact that the JCPOA was ridiculous to begin with because we knew that we were not allowed to really have inspections and they were allowed to lie and conceal. | ||
| And so I really felt that we had to put a stop to this. | ||
| It's not necessarily going to be immediate, but I think that at least we've turned the corner. | ||
| That is Elizabeth. | ||
| Sorry, that's Barbara there in New Jersey giving us her thoughts, also making thoughts on the matter known. | ||
| Anthony Blinken, the former Secretary of State under President Joe Biden, in an opinion piece in the New York Times this morning, saying in many points, but he makes this point saying, first, it never should have come to this. | ||
| In 2015, the Obama administration, together with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the EU, reached agreement with Tehran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA. | ||
| The nuclear deal effectively put Iran's program to make fissile material for fuel for a nuclear weapon in a lockbox with stringent procedures for monitoring the program. | ||
| The deal pushed, quote, breakout, the amount of time it would take Iran to produce enough weapons, grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon to at least a year. | ||
| If Iran reneged on the agreement or refused to extend it when certain provisions expired after 15 years, we would know it and have plenty of time to respond, including, if necessary, militarily. | ||
| More thoughts there from the former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. | ||
| Let's go to John next. | ||
| John's in New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| John in New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| Yeah, I was launching the summit out with NATO, with all the world leaders out there, in the East Western Western leaders at the NATO summit. | ||
| And they all thanked Donald Trump, and they said they appreciated what he did because it made them all feel a lot safer. | ||
| And then the other thing was they had an interview with, they had Pete Hatchet there, and he says, the Department of Defense has not come up with any conclusive evidence as to what actually, how this, what damage was done to these, you know, to the nuclear facilities there. | ||
| But this information that you're feeding to your audience was leaked through the Defense Department. | ||
| They don't know who leaked it, but they assume it was somebody that was trying to sabotage the Trump administration. | ||
| And the FBI is looking into it to try to track down who would leak this kind of crap without any kind of information. | ||
| And you're feeding it to your audience, misinformation, inconclusive information about what took place at this with the Trump and saying, did you approve of this? | ||
| Did you approve it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Any conclusive evidence? | |
| Well, the President directly remarked on those reports. | ||
| Again, we've showed you those remarks. | ||
| The caller is right, Pete Hegzif also talking about it. | ||
| And if you want to see more of those full extended remarks from NATO earlier this morning, go to the website and the app from the thoughts of the president, the thoughts of the Defense Secretary himself, one of the people expressing thoughts, the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. | ||
| The House and the Senate were expected to get briefings on the strikes yesterday. | ||
| The Hill reporting that those briefings were postponed. | ||
| That Senate briefing now expected to take place Thursday. | ||
| Mike Johnson saying the House briefing will take place Friday. | ||
| But the Senate Minority Leader talking about those postponed briefings yesterday. | ||
| Senators deserve full transparency. | ||
| There is a legal obligation for the administration to inform Congress about precisely what is happening. | ||
| What are they afraid of? | ||
| Why won't they engage Congress in the critical details? | ||
| The results of the recent strike, the scope and trajectory of the conflict, the administration's long-term strategy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the potential risks facing American citizens and our service members, who we all have an obligation to protect. | ||
| To be abundantly clear, neither Pete Heckseth nor Marco Rubio were scheduled to attend this hearing. | ||
| If Rubio and Heckseth want to come up, I don't think they'll be informing us of very much compared to the people who will be there today. | ||
| But if they want to come up on Thursday, in addition, not in replacement of this hearing, that's okay. | ||
| But the obstruction of this administration on a crucial issue like this, where American lives and particularly the lives of American service members are at stake, is their obligation. | ||
| And it undermines the very principles of accountability and oversight that safeguard our democracy. | ||
| Online from Illinois, John is next. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| And I absolutely agree with the strike that was ordered by President Trump. | ||
| This is a difficult decision, but what's been happening is that the Iranians have been playing us for years. | ||
| They're using their proxies to wage a proxy war against us and the rest of the Middle East for years. | ||
|
unidentified
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And this is equivalent to a cancer that's been growing. | |
| And we've been trying to placate this. | ||
| And we had the opportunity to deal a strike to show them that they need to back off. | ||
| They need to stop attacking us through their proxies, attacking the rest of the Midwest, and attacking Israel. | ||
| And they got the message. | ||
| Thank you for bringing up Anthony Blinken's comments. | ||
| I'm so glad that we have Marco Rubio in. | ||
| He is a real effective leader who seriously understands what's going on. | ||
| And the likes of Anthony Blinken, he's a wet dishcloth that couldn't fight a fly if he wanted to. | ||
| And he doesn't understand that the Iranians have been playing us in the rest of the world for years. | ||
| So thank you, President Trump. | ||
| Thank you, Marco Rubio, for standing up and being strong and helping us and the rest of the world. | ||
| John in Illinois, there, Politico, reporting that it's the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in an interview with Politico from The Hague of the Netherlands, saying that Iran, quote, is much further away from a nuclear weapon amid those intelligence assessments that a U.S. strike did not destroy three of the country's nuclear sites. | ||
| Rubio, in that interview on the sidelines of the summit, offered a more measured assessment than President Trump, who has insisted that Iran's site at Fort Onatanza and Ifshan had been, quote, completely destroyed. | ||
| Quote, the bottom line is they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action. | ||
| That's the most important thing to understand. | ||
| Significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we're just learning more about it. | ||
| Again, that interview from the NATO summit, we've been showing you a little bit from that summit you can continue to watch for, including that press conference by the president from the summit nine o'clock today. | ||
| Monitor that on C-SPAN2, the app and the.org. | ||
| Texas is next. | ||
| Independent line, this is Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I 1,000% back up Donald Trump and Israel about hitting Iran. | |
| And I'm sure they damage Fordham and the nuclear sites tremendously. | ||
| But hey, if you think you need to tap them again, just go over and drop a couple more eggs on them. | ||
| You know, they can't stop you. | ||
| They can't stop you. | ||
| So just do it again and just totally obliterate the line. | ||
| I'm sure you've done serious damage to them. | ||
| Or you could wait a few months and let them spend, let Iran spend billions and billions of dollars trying to get it all straightened up again. | ||
| Wait till they spend a lot of money on it and then go over there and blow it up again. | ||
| That's how you do that. | ||
| And all these Democrats and these fake news polls, you know, coming out. | ||
| Now, these are the same polls, the same one that said Harris was going to win the election by a landslide. | ||
| Clinton was going to win by a landslide. | ||
| Biden was going to win by landslide. | ||
| That's where all these fake news polls are coming from. | ||
| The same ones that said that they was going to be able to do it's going to win the election. | ||
| These are the same people, the crane corrupt Democrat polls, the same corrupt people are putting out all this fake, fake stuff. | ||
| They're against America. | ||
| They hate America. | ||
| They'll do anything to try to destroy. | ||
| They tried to assassinate him. | ||
| They tried to indict him. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Billed in Texas there. | ||
| The CBS poll, one of the questions asked, the confidence overall in the Trump administration's handling of Iran. | ||
| 49% saying that at that point when the poll was taken, 49% of those saying a lot or some confidence in that handling, and 51% saying not much or no confidence in the handling of Iran. | ||
| Let's go to Matt. | ||
| Matt is in Maryland, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello. | ||
| You know, I don't understand why this question is being packaged this way. | ||
| I mean, the only people that are addressing this are foreign news sources that I'm finding. | ||
| And the issue is this was an illegal attack. | ||
| This is barbaric. | ||
| It's a war crime. | ||
| I do not know why C-SPAN is packaging this as though it was a winning situation for us or whatever, because it was a crime, and that's the issue. | ||
| And it's really disgusting to hear how many American citizens look at this. | ||
| It's just another thing. | ||
| What do you think about your fellow Republicans agreeing largely with the president's decision? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not a Republican. | |
| Okay, then I'll stop you there and ask all of you to call in the line that best represents you. | ||
| And let me give you the phone lines one more time. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Two large rules that we ask you when you call in. | ||
| If you've called in the last 30 days, if you can hold off from doing so today and pick the line that best represents you as far as your political party affiliation is concerned. | ||
| Let's hear from Wayne. | ||
| Wayne is in Arkansas, Independent line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I totally agree with what he did. | ||
| And I just, it just makes me boggles my mind that the Democrat Party cannot see the reason why that whole region was already being threatened by Iran and its nuclear weapons. | ||
| And the whole region there, I'm sure, is pretty happy that we went over and done that and set them behind. | ||
| But I totally agree with it. | ||
| And I think the majority of Americans should agree with it. | ||
| The Democrat Party is not even the Democrat Party no more. | ||
| They've done gone so far left that it's the perverted party. | ||
| Bertha in Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, Democrats lying. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I am against Trump. | ||
| And that fellow that just spoke, talk about the Democrats, the Republicans has gone so far right, they don't even can't even think for themselves. | ||
| I say Trump is a, he's definitely a bully. | ||
| He's trying to act like Putin. | ||
| So Bertha, to the specific idea of if you agree or disagree with the strikes in Iran, tell us what you think about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I disagree with the strike. | |
| Because first of all, it was not okay to the Congress. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| How did he figure that he can go and do as he wish, but everybody else has to follow law? | ||
| He didn't follow anything. | ||
| Okay, Bertha there in Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| One of the things that the one of the stories coming out as far as reaction to the strikes from the Wall Street Journal this morning, this is Thomas Grove and others writing under the headline, Moscow fails to back Tehran, saying that when Vladimir Putin met with Iran's top diplomat Monday, the Kremlin leader gave a stony-faced assessment of the U.S. strikes. | ||
| He called the attacks unjustified and unprovoked, and he said Russia wanted to help the Iranian people. | ||
| But the Kremlin leader made no mention of military support in his public remarks ahead of the talks. | ||
| Instead, he suggested they discuss an exit ramp out of the conflict. | ||
| Quote, this gives us a chance to think together about how it would be possible to get out of this situation. | ||
| That statement attributed to Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Jim joins us from Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Pedro. | |
| You know, I think one of the things that has come out of what happened over the weekend with Trump is that the rest of the world, like China and Russia, have seen that we finally have a president who is not going to put up with any of the other bullies. | ||
| You know, go back in history. | ||
| There was a gentleman this morning that called from Virginia that talked about all Republicans get us in wars. | ||
| The Vietnam War was started, and we got into it by John Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. | ||
| The one that got us out of it was Nixon. | ||
| So get your facts straight before you start doing that. | ||
| I just want to say, I'm listening. | ||
| I watch your show constantly. | ||
| I love this show. | ||
| You get a lot of good information on, and then people call in and they just bold-faced lie about things, and nobody stops them. | ||
| The IEA, it was put right on your show a couple of days ago, the IEA has stated that Iran has enriched uranium to 60% and sometimes up to 87%. | ||
| What are they trying to do? | ||
| Light a 25-watt light bulb brighter? | ||
| It's for weaponization. | ||
| They have long-range missiles. | ||
| Your show said it. | ||
| They have short-range missiles. | ||
| Those missiles could have a nuclear weapon put on them and hit strikes all around the world. | ||
| So, you know, I'm 74 years old. | ||
| I've lived through Vietnam. | ||
| I've lived through Afghanistan. | ||
| I've lived through all of these places. | ||
| The one thing that the United States has done since the Second World War is that when we go in and we fight a war, we fight it defensively. | ||
| We went into Korea and we stopped at the 38th parallel. | ||
| We didn't go past the DMZ in Vietnam. | ||
| When we fought, every time we go to war, we fight to defend rather than to attack. | ||
| And we finally have a president that knows that defending gets you nowhere. | ||
| Before Trump was in and Biden was in, he was giving weapons to Ukraine, but telling them not to fire them into Russia. | ||
| When you're fighting the war in your country, what is the other country losing? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| You have to fight into their country and bring them to their knees and get them to understand that you are not going to let them bully you. | ||
| Okay, Jim there in Florida. | ||
| Let's hear from Brad. | ||
| Brad's in Pennsylvania, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I completely disagree with me with the strikes that happened. | |
| It seems to me it was in response to Israel making their strikes, and then, of course, then Trump then making his strikes afterward. | ||
| And this is completely diverting attention from the genocide that's happening in Gaza. | ||
| No one's talking about that anymore. | ||
| They're not talking about it in Israel. | ||
| They're not talking about it in the states. | ||
| And that's thousands and thousands of people that are starving and dying. | ||
| And people didn't watch his parade. | ||
| So, you know, he's got to switch the narrative somehow because the protests were happening and, you know, things. | ||
| And it all seems to be of just ridiculous because Netanyahu has been saying, oh, they're months away from getting the bomb since 95. | ||
| He's been saying the same thing all the time. | ||
| And we never remember that he's been saying this over and over and over again. | ||
| And they haven't done anything. | ||
| Like, and then you expect them to not respond in any way after they get bombed, like multiple times. | ||
| They weren't the ones that originally did these strikes. | ||
| Anyway, that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Joe is up next in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro, from a sunny, hot day in Ohio. | |
| Pedro, I support Donald Trump 100%. | ||
| The mission was successful, and it was absolutely brilliant what he did, and the military. | ||
| Military Air Force, and the entire military is just awesome. | ||
| They pulled off the greatest Roper dope next to Muhammad Ali. | ||
| They totally confused and fooled the media. | ||
| Instead of striking from the West, they strike from the East, and it was beautiful what they did. | ||
| And the corrupt media have to have a narrative. | ||
| They got to sell their little fast toilet papers because their little commercials because CNN comes out and they have a source that says that nothing was damaged at the nuclear sites. | ||
| My, my, my. | ||
| So what does that tell China and all of our enemies that you can land four, five, ten bunker busters and they're ineffective? | ||
| Boy, that gives your enemy the upper hand now, doesn't it? | ||
| So whatever the facts, I listened to that guy with it, is it IEA or whatever that guy is? | ||
| The leader says that the bombing was a successful mission. | ||
| And so, and by the way, Bill Clinton, Obama, George Bush, and Joe Biden said, quote unquote, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| And by God, Donald Trump did it. | ||
| Okay, one more call. | ||
| This will be from Randy in Michigan, Democrats line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| I'd like to start by thanking you and all the other men and women it takes to bring us this program. | ||
| You're doing a great service for the nation. | ||
| I have to agree with Donald Trump on this decision to strike Iran. | ||
| I do believe they cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Now, that might be one of the very few things I agree with Donald Trump on, but I will give him credit for following through and doing the strike on Iran. | ||
| I hope it actually did the damage he claims. | ||
| I do worry when you keep ignoring your own intelligence agencies and think you know more than absolutely everybody. | ||
| You know a lot more than a lot of us, but we have intelligence agencies that are awfully good, just as good as our military. | ||
| So I thank them for keeping an eye on them. | ||
| I appreciate what the military did. | ||
| They did a great job. | ||
| Thank you very much to the men and women that are in the military. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| And you have a great day, Pedro. | ||
| Randy there in Michigan, finishing off this question of ours to start the show. | ||
| Thanks for all who participated. | ||
| Topics of Iran and other things will be a running theme for the program today. | ||
| Later on in the program, we're going to hear from Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett on the U.S. role in Iran internationally, also domestically, efforts to pass the president's tax and immigration policy bill. | ||
| Coming up next, the Middle East Institute's Alice Vitanka, who specializes in national security affairs with a specialty in Iran. | ||
| We'll discuss the current ceasefire, the role the U.S. plays going forward. | ||
| That conversation coming up on Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Our first guest of the morning is Alex Vitanka of the Middle East Institute. | ||
| He serves as a senior fellow here to talk about all things that are going on between the U.S.-Israel and Iran. | ||
| Mr. Vitanka, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| Your specialty is in regional security. | ||
| So let's start with what happens now regionally and what are the things that the United States has to watch out for when it comes to Iran. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, obviously, the obvious thing to watch out for and try and shape is Iran's next move. | |
| Obviously, the Iranians didn't think anything like this could be happening to them just a few weeks ago. | ||
| They were getting ready for more diplomatic talks. | ||
| From the Trump administration's point of view, those talks weren't going anywhere. | ||
| They were moving too slow. | ||
| And the Trump administration made the strategic bet basically that it was better off taking Iran's nuclear sites out as opposed to continuing the diplomatic track. | ||
| The region, Pedro, if I could say this, is a very anxious place. | ||
| Obviously, Iran's retaliation involved another country, the country of Qatar. | ||
| There are 40 to 45,000 American troops and about 19 bases from Turkey all the way down, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman. | ||
| So plenty of targets. | ||
| What the Iranians clearly decided to do was to, to the extent they could retaliate against the U.S. attack over the weekend on their nuclear sites and then look for a de-escalation. | ||
| That's exactly what they got. | ||
| So what we're hearing from sources in the region is that a number of U.S. Arab allies like Oman and Qatar played a role here trying to get Trump administration and the Iranians to agree to a ceasefire. | ||
| And then President Trump picked up the phone and told Bibi Netanyahu of Israel that was the course of action going forward. | ||
| So that's where we are right now. | ||
| As of right now, I don't see a clear roadmap for what comes next. | ||
| The ceasefire could last. | ||
| It could break down. | ||
| But yeah, let me stop there, Pedro. | ||
| You talked about the ceasefire breaking down and add to that what we heard from the president yesterday and others concerning this report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the possibility that a pushback of Iran's nuclear program, maybe just a couple of months, if initial reports are believed. | ||
| How does that factor into shaping things, as you say, not only from Iran, but from the United States side? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, Pedro, I started covering the Iranian nuclear program pretty much when I started off after college. | |
| So it's been with us for about 25 years. | ||
| So the idea that one military mission is going to end Iran's nuclear program, again, it's a strategic bet that the Trump administration made. | ||
| I don't even think President Trump thinks that was the end of it. | ||
| But I think he's hoping is that that shook the Iranians to their core and will change their cost-benefit analysis. | ||
| And they will agree to do the sort of things the president has been asking for. | ||
| Look, you can have your nuclear program, but if you get close to a weaponization capacity, then we have a problem. | ||
| That's the president's position. | ||
| Will the Iranians at this point, having been essentially lost some of their nuclear capabilities, would they come back to the table and negotiate? | ||
| There are some signs that they might be willing to. | ||
| But if they decide the opposite is the best way forward, that's where the president's strategic bet would have failed, which is they have the capacity. | ||
| They can weaponize. | ||
| They can probably hide it. | ||
| Yes, the Iranian skies right now are open to the Israeli Air Force, which is probably how the ceasefire will break. | ||
| So if there is an intelligence on the part of the Israelis, the Americans, that the Iranians very quickly are going to try not weaponize because they feel that's their best way to survive this or protect themselves going forward, then you can see this probably the U.S.-Israeli Air Force taking out more action. | ||
| But we're not there yet because that depends on what Iran's next move will be. | ||
| Will they, as I said, dash for that bomb? | ||
| Or would they say, you know what, what we just went through the last 12 days of war has now taught us diplomacy not to need to sort of take the front seat here. | ||
| I don't know which decision the Iranian leaders will take. | ||
| That's for their call, but that's the most important one looking out for. | ||
| You've written a book called The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran, the United States Foreign Policy and Political Rivalry. | ||
| As far as the Ayatollahs are concerned, or the Ayatollah is concerned, how much is he involved in shaping next steps? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would argue, frankly, that this disaster that just happened to Iran is his fault, his worldview. | |
| I mean, he's been the supreme leader since 1989. | ||
| For 36 years, he's had opportunities to change course. | ||
| And, you know, instead, he has sort of gambled on essentially what he wants to be a leader of the Islamic world and sort of pursued his policy of opposing the United States in the Middle East and opposing Israel's right to exist. | ||
| A huge gamble on his part. | ||
| Again, about four decades of investing in this. | ||
| It's an ideological mission that he's been on. | ||
| Again, I think everybody would agree that Iran and Israel do not need to be at war with each other. | ||
| These are two countries that don't really have any conflict of any kind. | ||
| There's no land conflict. | ||
| There's no historical conflict. | ||
| Geographically, they're over a thousand miles apart. | ||
| So the conflict essentially, in many ways, is Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader's call in terms of what he wanted to do. | ||
| Going forward, it becomes really interesting to see if the regime, as in its totality, decides, you know what, it's time to sideline Ali Khameneib and his worldview because he brought this disaster on Iran. | ||
| And going forward, we shouldn't listen to him. | ||
| That could be one course of action. | ||
| The other course of action is his worldview gets more supporters, that the only way forward is to resist the United States and so forth, which is a very dark place. | ||
| I hope they don't go there, but it could be a scenario to watch out for. | ||
| This is Alex Vitanka joining us. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about the current events between the United States, Israel, and Iran, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000. | ||
| Democrats, Independence, 202748-8002. | ||
| You can text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Mr. Vitanka, a little bit about the Middle East Institute and the point of view it takes in these kinds of situations. | ||
| Also, how is the Institute financially supported? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we don't take a point of view. | |
| I mean, our role historically, and we've been around since 1946. | ||
| We're the oldest think tank in the United States with a focus on educating the American people about the Middle East and why it's important to know what's going on in that part of the world with some, you know, huge countries from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and so on. | ||
| So that's what we do. | ||
| In terms of funding, we get support from the U.S. government. | ||
| Sometimes we get funding from foreign governments, lots of different foundations and individuals support our work. | ||
| Again, we've been around for a long time since 1946, started by American diplomats who came back from the Second World War and basically kind of realized that the U.S. needs to know more about the Middle East because it's going to be a critical part of the world going forward. | ||
| They made that decision that long time ago, years ago, and we're still here some 80 years later. | ||
| And the Middle East still matters as much today as it did back then. | ||
| As far as the funding from the government, is that from the government's diplomatic side? | ||
| It's State Department. | ||
| Is it from the Defense Department? | ||
| Or generally, where does it come from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, all that is available on our website. | |
| I'll urge people to go on MEI.edu. | ||
| You can see the entire annual reports. | ||
| Every single donation will be documented for. | ||
| But we get from, like you said, State Department, other agencies. | ||
| We have close cooperation with CENTCOM Central Command. | ||
| We get foreign governments in the Gulf states, elsewhere, the Europeans, Asian countries that have an interest in trying to bring people together. | ||
| They've all supported us over the years. | ||
| But again, every single year of donations can be seen on our website. | ||
| Let's start with Moses in Ohio. | ||
| Democrats line your own with Alex Vitanka of the Middle East Institute. | ||
| Moses, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro, and thanks for taking my call. | |
| Mr. Vat, sir, the caller here, to get your guest, Pedro. | ||
| I want him to explain to some of these callers who have called in supporting our president and his decision. | ||
| I want them to be reminded that under the Obama administration, there was a deal with the Iranians. | ||
| I repeat, it wasn't perfect, but it was a deal. | ||
| What did our president do? | ||
| He came in, he tore it up. | ||
| He did the same thing with a bipartisan immigration bill. | ||
| Now, the last thing I want to point out is this, Pedro. | ||
| Has anybody in the world ever seen a human being jump over their shadow? | ||
| No. | ||
| Our president is who he is, and we have to live with it. | ||
| But I just want those callers who are enamored with his spinning and taking credit for something before it even ends. | ||
| Okay, that's Moses there in Ohio, Mr. Vitanka. | ||
| He referenced that JCPOA. | ||
| Maybe start there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I know. | |
| Look, JCPOA, as the caller, as Moses just pointed out, was working out. | ||
| It was not a perfect, it wasn't a perfect agreement because it was centered on the nuclear issue, how many centrifuges Iran can have, how much they can enrich uranium to, and so forth. | ||
| But at the heart of this conflict, going back to 79, it's a political conflict. | ||
| Without political trust, all these agreements that deal with specific issues like ballistic missiles or Iran's nuclear program, they're all going to be on thin ice, if you will. | ||
| So if President Trump comes in in 2018 and decides to walk away from the 2015 deal, he campaigned on it. | ||
| Frankly, the president, again, made another strategic bet back then, that by walking away from the deal that Obama had signed, that the Iranians would rush to him and cut a better deal with him, if you will. | ||
| They never did. | ||
| They sort of essentially stayed the course. | ||
| They took on the sanctions that the U.S. imposed on them. | ||
| They've suffered plenty. | ||
| They've suffered hundreds of billions of dollars and so on. | ||
| But I guess from their point of view, they're talking about national pride and the United States can't force them into that direction. | ||
| But I also want to say this. | ||
| Again, if you had the right political calculations on the part of the Iranians, you know, for example, direct diplomacy with the Trump administration, which I think is right now needed more now than ever before, it's the sort of thing you need to create the roadmap, that political conversation. | ||
| Obama administration had a deal with them, true, Moses. | ||
| But, you know, at the same time, Iran's policies in the region didn't change. | ||
| So from a political point of view, if you were sitting in Israel or some of the other U.S. allies, the fact that Iran didn't politically, or ideologically, I should say, change course, that was always a concern. | ||
| And because there were some sunset, you know, the nuclear agreement was coming to an end eventually. | ||
| In fact, it will come to an end October of this year. | ||
| So people will say, we're in borrowed time. | ||
| Let's have a fix for this problem that is permanent. | ||
| And we've just never made it. | ||
| Maybe President Trump will find something more permanent. | ||
| But as I said, he's taking a strategic bet here. | ||
| We don't know where Iran's going to go. | ||
| His first bet in 2018 didn't work out. | ||
| Maybe hopefully this one will work out. | ||
| From Maryland, this is Bill, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| My question is, why is it taking Iran so long to develop? | ||
| I've been paying attention to this for probably 25 years. | ||
| And I can remember 25 years ago pundits saying, oh, they're on the verge. | ||
| It's six months. | ||
| It's four months. | ||
| And here we are 25 years later. | ||
| And then you look at North Korea. | ||
| It didn't take North Korea that long to develop. | ||
| And then so that was the first question. | ||
| The second question is, I read a report that right after the bombing that Russia was talking about supplying Iran with the nuclear weapons. | ||
| And I had always thought, well, why don't they just buy it from another country? | ||
| And of course, I think that Russia, China, nobody wants to see them with nuclear weapons because they all recognize that they are an existential threat to the entire world. | ||
| So those were my two questions. | ||
| Bill there in Maryland, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, I mean, on the first part, why didn't Iran weaponize earlier if it wanted to? | |
| It's had plenty of time. | ||
| It's a great question. | ||
| But fundamentally, my view, and this depends on who you speak to, my view is watching this day in, day out for a quarter of a century, is that they haven't made the decision to weaponize. | ||
| Certainly not since 2003. | ||
| That's when the U.S. intelligence community has come to conclude the Iranians stopped the weaponizations effort to the extent that they know. | ||
| Why do they just have a nuclear program and provoke the rest of the world enriched to higher levels? | ||
| All I, my best estimation there is that's the only thing they have in terms of leverage. | ||
| So when they come to negotiations, they can say, you know what, for us to go from 60 to 3% or whatever it is in rich uranium, we want A and B and C in terms of sanctions relief, in terms of other concessions they want. | ||
| Fundamentally, they haven't, it seems to me, made the decision that weaponizing the nuclear program is the best thing for them. | ||
| That seems to be the case. | ||
| Again, that could now change going forward. | ||
| You know, some people would point to the two examples we all have heard is that look at Gaddafi's Libya. | ||
| When he gave up its nuclear program, he was quickly toppled, which is an exaggeration. | ||
| He wasn't toppled just because of that. | ||
| But that's what people point to. | ||
| The other one is North Korea. | ||
| They weaponize and nobody touches North Korea anymore. | ||
| Why doesn't Iran do that and weaponize? | ||
| The cost-benefit analysis always was against weaponization, it seems. | ||
| But, you know, going forward, I don't know. | ||
| In terms of the international community and whether Iran, I mean, the caller is pointing to something that was just in the news a few days ago. | ||
| The former president of Russian Federation, President Mit Viedev, he said, you know, he was so upset with the American decision to attack Iran. | ||
| He said, you know what? | ||
| There are countries that are willing to give Iran nuclear warheads. | ||
| Yeah, big question mark. | ||
| Big question mark, whether they would or not. | ||
| Probably if Iran wanted and wanted to spend big bucks buying a nuclear warhead, I'm sure a country like North Korea with economy and shadows would be willing to consider that. | ||
| But overall, countries that have nuclear weapons are not in the business of handing them out for free. | ||
| But that's not the only factor. | ||
| You are talking about a new world, essentially, where the United States and China are competing for global influence. | ||
| And in Iran that falls apart as a country, it's not necessarily good news for Russia or China. | ||
| They might have incentive to keep this Iranian regime alive. | ||
| And maybe if it requires giving him more capabilities, I doubt it will go as far as nuclear weapons, but military capabilities so they don't fall apart. | ||
| That might be exactly what the Russians, the Chinese decide to do going forward. | ||
| Mr. Vitanka, there were several questions to the president about the source of intelligence leading up to the strikes. | ||
| There's been public disagreements with his director of national intelligence. | ||
| How clear-cut is it to gain intelligence like what's currently going on in Iran to base these decisions upon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Obviously, one side of the story here, what you just described, is the politics of it. | |
| I mean, Tulsi Gavard, just a few months ago, was saying there's no evidence that the Iranians are weaponizing. | ||
| That was a consensus of all the intelligence community in the United States. | ||
| And then suddenly over the last two weeks, that changed. | ||
| So that seemed to have been politically kind of shaped as a new conclusion, as opposed to reflecting facts on the ground. | ||
| As far as facts on the ground are concerned, Iran, we have to assume, is entirely penetrated by foreign intelligence services. | ||
| Certainly, the Israelis can do anything they like. | ||
| I mean, assassinating a bunch of their senior leadership in one go, that requires a pretty extensive network of agents, Iranians that are working with the Israelis. | ||
| And the United States obviously has had its eyes on Iran for decades. | ||
| So we know that this intelligence capacity isn't just about collection. | ||
| Human agents, Iranians that are working with the CIAs, with the Mossads of this world and other agencies, there are plenty of them. | ||
| And I'm sure that access and that insight reaches to the highest, most sensitive levels of what Iran is doing in the nuclear program. | ||
| Or at least that was true up until recently. | ||
| Going forward, it's anybody's guess because these attacks obviously we have to assume will now fundamentally change how the Iranians operate in the nuclear field. | ||
| Alex Batanka of the Middle East Institute joining us for this discussion. | ||
| Deandra from Maryland Republican line. | ||
| Hi, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And thank you for the guests for being here to provide this insight to us. | ||
| So I have a couple of questions. | ||
| I'll try to be succinct as I can. | ||
| And thank you for mentioning that. | ||
| I'll just add on to that. | ||
| There was alleged, you know, it's reported 700 agents have been arrested and there's been a crackdown on these essentially terrorists and people who are like from India, from Israel and are in cahoots with each other to take out the regime on behalf of Israel and America and its allies. | ||
| Now, my main thing is, if you could briefly explain to us how the fall of Bashar al-Assad being ousted, how that kind of put Iran in a harder place, made it vulnerable to be attacked in the first place. | ||
| And also, going forward, I feel like the war is inevitable, right? | ||
| If America and Israel do make the do essentially go make this coalition to go to war with Iran, who are like UAE and Saudi Arabia, what do you think they will do? | ||
| Will they just be part of the Western Israeli Sunni alliance against Iran and this Shi'i crescent? | ||
| Or do you think they'll actually stay out of it or try to establish some diplomacy? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| DeAndre from Maryland. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I will just sort of focus on two parts of that question. | |
| And thank you for that. | ||
| Look, on the issue of the 700 or so Iranians that have been arrested in the last few days, as allegedly, it's important to underscore allegedly for working with foreign intelligence services. | ||
| I mean, that's true. | ||
| That doesn't surprise me at all. | ||
| But I also have to say the Iranian regime has a horrendous track record when it comes to human rights. | ||
| So maybe they're looking at this as an opportunity to round up people that they otherwise just politically wanted to sort of, you know, pick off the streets and put away. | ||
| But fundamentally, the question is also this. | ||
| Why are so many Iranians willing to work with foreign intelligence services? | ||
| It surely isn't just about cash. | ||
| And I think I want to just point out something that's really important. | ||
| And we saw that come out so strongly over the last few weeks here. | ||
| This is a regime that long time ago lost its own people. | ||
| So you can imagine right now how difficult it is for outsiders to watch Israel attack Iran or United States attack Iran, two nuclear-armed countries attacking a non-nuclear country. | ||
| And yet, where is the majority Iranian population? | ||
| Certainly the one in diaspora is thinking, you know what? | ||
| If that's what it takes to remove the regime, maybe it's not a bad thing. | ||
| And for people to come to that conclusion just shows you how the regime has lost its own people. | ||
| And they know they can't go to war and stay the course of a war when they don't have their own people behind them. | ||
| This is a fundamental problem the regime has created for itself. | ||
| It didn't do it overnight. | ||
| It's 46 years of repression on Iranian people that has created the conditions where, you know, Mossad can go in and just recruit agents as they wish. | ||
| In terms of the potential war, and God forbid, we're not there yet. | ||
| We have to be careful. | ||
| We don't assume this war is inevitable because it could be avoided. | ||
| Iran and Israel and the United States all have so much at stake here. | ||
| This is not going to be like Afghanistan and Iraq. | ||
| This is going to be something we haven't seen before. | ||
| So we have to hope that diplomacy will prevail in a way that we can avoid war. | ||
| Gulf states, not just Gulf states, Turkey, others in the region all want to avoid this war. | ||
| Just a few months ago, or actually just a few weeks ago, the region was starting to talk about, you know, going forward, investments in economics. | ||
| We all remember President Trump made a trip to the Gulf region. | ||
| Hundreds of billions of dollars of contracts and agreements being signed between American companies and companies in that part of the world. | ||
| You need political stability. | ||
| You need physical stability for operating if that's what you want to do, economic development. | ||
| In the case of war breaking out, who's going to invest? | ||
| I mean, we've just seen in the last few weeks, as soon as Israel and Iran started hitting one another, guess what? | ||
| Major American energy companies and others started packing up, sending their staff home because they were at risk. | ||
| So war is bad for business. | ||
| It's not just a tragedy on a human level. | ||
| It's actually bad for business. | ||
| And the region had hoped they could avoid this war. | ||
| The Gulf states, if war becomes inevitable, which I hope isn't the case, but if war is what we get, they will do what they can to stay out of it. | ||
| That's the best they can do because they are so close and they're so exposed to Iranian retaliation that they might have American bases on their soil, but they're going to be begging to President Trump to say, please do not launch attacks from our soil because if you do from an American base on our soil, guess what? | ||
| The Iranians are not going to be able to reach America. | ||
| They don't have the capacity, but they have an ability to reach us and hurt us. | ||
| And please, we don't want that. | ||
| So those are the types of conversations that will happen in the event, God forbid, of war in the Middle East. | ||
| The information that we have saying that you were born in Tehran, if that's the case, what do you think about this idea by some about change from within, from its people, pressure upon the leadership, especially amongst the younger Iranians? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, absolutely. | |
| That I think would be the best course of action because again, I have no doubt whatsoever. | ||
| The regime of Ali Khamenei Ayatollah and the regime that he's been overseeing is totally detested by, I would say, 90% of Iranians. | ||
| And people like me, the millions who have left over the last almost half a century now, we're evidence of why the regime is not doing well to its own people. | ||
| Because if things were so great, why would you leave your own homeland, right? | ||
| So the regime long time ago repressed its way to a point where it lost the youth. | ||
| And again, I want to remind everybody, 75% of Iranians were born after 1979. | ||
| So of that 90 million people, 75 million, I'm sorry, 75% had no say in what happened in 1979. | ||
| And they've lived in a system that represses them, that doesn't listen to them, that engages in very dangerous, in the view of most Iranians, foreign policy actions, like, for example, this enmity that they've shown towards the United States and Israel. | ||
| Now, people will say to me, oh, you're exaggerating. | ||
| What about the American side? | ||
| What about the Israeli side? | ||
| What about all the things they've done to Iran, including attacking Iran unprovoked? | ||
| Those are valid points to make. | ||
| But I want to just go back. | ||
| I want to go back and put the context. | ||
| In 1979, nobody said to the Ayatollahs, go out there and burn American flags and pick anti-Americanism as your cause. | ||
| Nobody in Washington, Jimmy Carter, didn't ask them to do it. | ||
| They chose to do it for ideological reasons. | ||
| It was a wrong bet on their part. | ||
| And today, we're still hoping if this regime survives, you know, if it can, that they can change course. | ||
| But that's why so many folks in Iran are hoping that the regime falls from within because of its incompetence, you know, that something else, something much better will come about. | ||
| But at the same time, we have to also be realistic. | ||
| Nobody expects regime change to happen just because a foreign power or few foreign powers starts dropping bomb on them from above. | ||
| That's not enough. | ||
| You need something from within to happen, which is, as I said, the best scenario one could wish for. | ||
| Let's hear from Ira in Florida, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My take on the conflict that's going on in the Middle East is I'm against what Trump did invading Iran, because that's not going to prove stop anything. | ||
| We got two people in that region, which is Jewish people and Palestinian people. | ||
| There are two people. | ||
| What they should have done in 1948, when they set up that mess, they dismantled Palestine and set up the Israeli state. | ||
| That was wrong. | ||
| What they have to do now is two states, borderline, two states, Palestinian country and the Israeli country, the Jewish nation of Israel and Palestine. | ||
| Until they do that, all this mess that they're doing now, it doesn't mean anything because it's going to continue. | ||
| The Palestinian people are not going to live under oppression under the Jewish situation that the United States and the Europeans sit up in 1948. | ||
| That's not going to, it's not going to work. | ||
| It didn't work with the black people in America. | ||
| It didn't work with the black people in South Africa. | ||
| It didn't work with the people in India under British control. | ||
| It's not going to work until you get equality in that region. | ||
| Okay, that's Ira there in Florida. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, my answer. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| Quickly, Pedro, my answer is I agree. | ||
| I mean, I'm somebody who thinks two-state solution is the most realistic one. | ||
| And then, you know, the sooner we get, the better. | ||
| But I also want to just throw in what the Iranian position has been. | ||
| The Iranians have for a long time believed that you cannot have a political dialogue with the state of Israel, that the Israelis only understand force. | ||
| What do they do? | ||
| The Iranians then start arming the likes of Hamas and other groups in the region to fight like Hezbollah against Israel. | ||
| For a while, it worked out. | ||
| October 7 changes Israeli calculations. | ||
| They decide to take the fight to Iran. | ||
| That's exactly what they've done in the last couple of weeks. | ||
| So now, for the first time, the Iranian people are feeling the impact of their government's policies on the question of Israel because Israel is now suddenly bombing Tehran, something the Iranians had never seen before. | ||
| This raises questions. | ||
| What is the best way for Iran and the rest of the region to help the Palestinian people? | ||
| And I would argue the best way forward is a political dialogue. | ||
| Obviously, it requires Netanyahu and whoever it is in power in Israel to also take that seriously. | ||
| Unfortunately, Israeli society today is not in that place. | ||
| My understanding is majority of Israelis don't believe in a two-state solution. | ||
| That has to change. | ||
| That's really the only way forward. | ||
| I mean, the alternative is all these five million Palestinians pack up their bags and move out, which is unrealistic. | ||
| Nobody's going to take him. | ||
| I mean, what are they going to move? | ||
| Five million Palestinians. | ||
| So you need a two-state solution. | ||
| It will be a very difficult job. | ||
| I mean, as someone like myself who's traveled in Israel many times and seen the difficulties in dividing the two peoples up, but it has to be done. | ||
| And, you know, again, the hopeful part in me says that maybe that's one of the things that we will look forward to going forward. | ||
| But I just want to point out the idea of armed resistance that Iran for so long believed in has proven to be not working. | ||
| And now the people of Iran are actually seeing that because they're being bombed because the Israelis said, now we're taking the fight to you. | ||
| And we're not going to sit back and just wait for you to support groups like Hamas and so on to sort of attack us the way they did October 7th. | ||
| Our guest book is titled The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran, the United States Foreign Policy and Political Rivalry Since 1979. | ||
| Alice Vitanka of the Middle East Institute, MEI.edu, the website. | ||
| Mr. Vitanka, thanks for your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you, Pedro. | ||
| During the course of this morning, we're expected to hear from the president from NATO in a couple of different situations. | ||
| We'll keep you posted about when those take place and where you can monitor that on our networks. | ||
| Later on in the program, we'll get a congressional take not only on matters of Iran, but also when it comes to domestic policy and efforts to pass the president's bill, the policy bill. | ||
| Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, will be part of the conversation as we go on. | ||
| First, open forum for the next hour if you want to participate. | ||
| 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| Start calling now. | ||
| Open Forum will take place when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
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| Whether you want to talk about Iran, the efforts of Congress, passing the president's one big beautiful bill, or other efforts politically, you can do that in Open Forum 202748-8001 for Republicans, Democrats 202748-8000, and Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| The latest from the president's travels in NATO, this is from the New York Times, saying that the president was meeting with leaders today where discussions about military spending in light of Russia's assault on Ukraine were at risk of being overshadowed by the ceasefire between Israel and Iran. | ||
| Mr. Trump has demanded that NATO members meeting in The Hague raise their share of the economic output that they devote to military spending to 5%, up from 2%. | ||
| Still, he focused on the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and the main topic of the recent NATO summits seem to fall on the list of priorities despite Russia's continued assault at the edge of the alliance's territory. | ||
| One of the things addressed by the Defense Secretary, also traveling in NATO, was the leak of that report talking about the impact and the results of those nuclear strikes in Iran by the United States. | ||
| Here's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. | ||
| They landed precisely where they were supposed to. | ||
| So it was a flawless mission. | ||
| Flowers. | ||
| Right down where we knew they needed to enter. | ||
| And given the 30,000 pounds of explosives and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Ford. | ||
| And the amount of munitions, six per location, any assessment that tells you it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives. | ||
| And we know that because when you actually look at the report, by the way, it was a top-secret report. | ||
| It was preliminary. | ||
| It was low confidence. | ||
| All right, so this isn't. | ||
| You make assessments based on what you know. | ||
| And you said it could be very devastating, very soon. | ||
| Moderate to severe, and we believe far more likely severe and obliterated. | ||
| So this is a political motive here. | ||
| Is there a leak investigation? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| We're doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments, and CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success. | ||
| Again, that took place earlier. | ||
| And if you want to see more of that, go to our website and our app to see the latest. | ||
| The president expected to participate in a news conference later on, as well as allegedly or at least reportedly meeting with the Ukrainian president. | ||
| So as those happen and we know about them, we will keep you informed. | ||
| Stay close to our networks and the social media and the digital sites to find out more. | ||
| Eddie in Massachusetts, Republican line, you're first up on this open forum. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yes, the ceasefire is very important. | ||
| The Ayatollah now knows that Donald Trump will get into the war, will get into action. | ||
| You see, the Ayatollah is a zealot, a jihadist, jihadist meeting holy war, an atomic bomb, since they have 60 to 80 percent-grade weaponry. | ||
| It's not holy to drop it on a city, killing women, children, the elderly, while the young men are at the board is trying to protect themselves. | ||
| That's the important thing. | ||
| It's overdue because the Ayatollah has been supplying Putin, the devil, with munitions to kill innocent women and children in Ukraine. | ||
| The Ayatollah is consequently at fault for this inaction. | ||
| So, what he wants to do is just drive the Christian Jews from the Jordan River into the sea. | ||
| He's saying that it's their land. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| Mohammed loved Jews and Christians. | ||
| He learned from them. | ||
| He said, get the infidelity, the dictators, the idol worshipers. | ||
| He didn't mean Christians and Jews. | ||
| We must get along. | ||
| The Ayatollah must understand that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Eddie in Massachusetts from Florida, Democrats Line. | ||
| Steve is next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My name is Steve. | ||
| I live in Lake Placid, Florida. | ||
| I believe this whole bombing thing was set up a long, long time ago. | ||
| I believe that he made a deal with Netanyahu to take care of the Hezbollah, and the United States was going to take care of the Houdis. | ||
| And then Israel was going to attack the air defense systems in Iran. | ||
| And then Trump was going to come in with the big bombs, which cost, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars each bomb, but to come in and wipe out their nuclear establishments. | ||
| I'm not in favor of Donald Trump at all. | ||
| However, Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. | ||
| I do believe that they are a dangerous country, but I believe that this thing was set up a long, long time ago. | ||
| Thank you for letting me share. | ||
| From Wisconsin, Independent Line, this is Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Pedro. | |
| With all this stuff going on in the Mid East, I just have to tell people, and I would urge all the Republicans in the Senate to take all the student loan language out of that big, beautiful bill. | ||
| That bill is not beautiful. | ||
| There's nothing conservative about what it's doing with student loans. | ||
| You know, they say that they're reigning in the colleges, rein in Department of Education, reining in lending, but that's not true. | ||
| If you read this bill, you will, it increases the borrowing for undergraduates by nearly $20,000 a piece. | ||
| So that would be the largest increase in student lending by the government that we've ever seen in this country before. | ||
| It would add something like $200 billion onto the debt tab of the incoming undergraduate class of 2026 and every class thereafter. | ||
| And not only that, Pedro, this big, not beautiful bill increases administrative funding for the Department of Education by a billion dollars over two years. | ||
| So the Republicans say they want to eliminate their Department of Education, but this bill just flies in the face of all of that. | ||
| Alan, there in Wisconsin, Political reporting that the White House is stepping up efforts to sell the Republican mega bill ahead of an impending Senate vote. | ||
| The legislation is far from finalized, but the Council of Economic Advisors is sending its first analysis of the Senate bill to Congress Wednesday. | ||
| The report obtained by Politico is based on the Senate Finance Committee draft that was released last week. | ||
| The analysis contrasts the economic and fiscal impacts of the party's signature domestic policy legislation with letting President Trump's 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of the year, a cliff that Senate Republican leaders and the White House are leaning into as they try to sway their holdouts. | ||
| Quote, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will establish a strong foundation for economic prosperity by increasing investment, crazing the gross domestic product, and boosting resources for American families in form of higher wages and a lower tax burden, the CEA wrote in its analysis, and expected or hoped for July 4th, the deadline when it comes to this bill. | ||
| So stay close to the Senate as it considers it this weekend ongoing. | ||
| You can closely monitor that on our Senate channel, C-SPAN 2. | ||
| From Buffalo, New York, Bill is next. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd like to talk about the 15 to 20 million undocumented aliens in the United States. | ||
| Very briefly, honestly, I'm sick and tired of all the political nonsense that's going on back and forth. | ||
| ICE has a very small, limited number, and to really think they can put a dent into that number of undocumented aliens in the United States is nonsensical. | ||
| It's just not going to happen. | ||
| We're a smart country, a lot of smart people here, but we're not really addressing the problem. | ||
| I've come up with what I believe is a solution to it, and it's kind of a censorous approach to the number of aliens. | ||
| And I'll grant you, I'm firmly of the belief that criminal aliens do not belong in this country and should be removed. | ||
| But the extreme, overwhelming majority, probably 95% or greater, are good, law-abiding individuals in the country. | ||
| I propose that we create a law called the lawfully admitted guest worker, which would allow individuals in the country who have pending cases before the court. | ||
| Probably the majority of them are not going to have their cases resolved within 10 years. | ||
| This lawfully admitted guest worker would allow persons to apply for four years in good status to allow them to remain in the country in a lawful status. | ||
| And after that, period of time, assuming they're in the country for that period of time, lawfully, would allow them to adjust their status to a lawfully admitted permanent resident. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's go to Richard. | ||
| Richard is in Arkansas. | ||
| Arkansas line for independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So there's just so many topics to discuss. | ||
| It's hard to get them all in. | ||
| But I would just like a lot of people to understand what is really behind all of this chaos that is happening in this country. | ||
| When I was born in 1963, the population in America is roughly around, I don't know, 170, 190 million. | ||
| And America was predominantly Caucasian. | ||
| Today, it's well over 300 and some odd 40 million, how many illegals there are. | ||
| And you consider that this country was founded by men who wrote the Constitution. | ||
| And you look at who wrote the Constitution. | ||
| Then you look at the almanac. | ||
| If you go to an almanac, any current year, 24, 25, whatever, even going back 20 or 30 years, go to the section where it says inventions and look at all the inventions that have been created over the last 1,000, go even back 2,000 years. | ||
| Caucasian men. | ||
| Without Caucasian men, nothing works in this planet. | ||
| We all live in a straw hut and Chuck Spears. | ||
| From Joe in North Carolina Democrats line, you're next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning, Pedro. | ||
| Thank you for having me this morning. | ||
| I just wanted to talk a little bit about what's going on in this country today. | ||
| Our president has really become a master of controlling the headlines. | ||
| The big headlines today and has been for the last few days has been the Iran, Israel, Iran, and the U.S. involved in destroying the depot over there, the nuclear depot in Iran. | ||
| And with that said, all the talk has been talked about that. | ||
| So everything else has been disregarded as far as the big beautiful bill. | ||
| They don't talk about that that much. | ||
| You may see a little bit of it. | ||
| You may see a little bit about the riots over in L.A. You don't hardly hear anything about that anymore. | ||
| So that's why I say President Trump has become a master of controlling this. | ||
| He has been doing, he did it the first, well, he didn't do it that well, the first Trump 1.0, but in Trump 2.0, he controls the headlines. | ||
| You turn to CNN. | ||
| You can turn to MSNBC. | ||
| And, you know, of course, Fox News, they're all over his, whatever he does. | ||
| You really haven't heard much about him over there at NATO. | ||
| And he's walking around like he's a superhero over there with a hood on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Joe in North Carolina. | ||
| Again, we've been telling you about the president's appearances at NATO. | ||
| Showed you a couple from earlier this morning that took place. | ||
| You can still monitor what goes on during the NATO summit on our various channels and sites. | ||
| Stay close to C-SPAN for that. | ||
| Here on Washington, D.C., one of the things taking place was a recent hearing featuring the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, a story from Stat News saying that a key Senate health leader calling for this week's meeting of the panel of vaccine advisors that was handpicked by Secretary Kennedy. | ||
| He's calling it to be delayed, citing a lack of experience and potential bias against some vaccines. | ||
| Quote, although the appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices have scientific credentials, many do not have a significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology, or immunology. | ||
| In particular, some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines and may even have a preconceived bias against them. | ||
| That was Secretary Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana. | ||
| He posted that on X on Monday evening. | ||
| It was yesterday that Secretary Kennedy appeared before the House, Energy, and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on a hearing that came to a brief halt Tuesday, according to the Hill, as the chair asked the Secretary to retract his accusations that a Democratic member's stance on vaccines was influenced by campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies. | ||
| That exchange took place yesterday. | ||
| Here's that portion. | ||
| 15 years ago, you and I met. | ||
| You were at that time a champion for people who had suffered injuries from vaccines. | ||
| You were very adamant about it. | ||
| You were the leading member of Congress on that issue. | ||
| Since then, you've accepted $2 million from pharmaceutical companies in contribution, more than any other member of this committee. | ||
| And your enthusiasm for supporting the old ACIP committee, which was completely rife and pervasive with pharmaceutical conflicts, seems to be an outcome of those contributions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, point of order. | |
| Point of order. | ||
| Point of order. | ||
| The gentleman is impugning the reputation of a member of Congress. | ||
| Mr. Pallone. | ||
| Please remember. | ||
| Stop the clock. | ||
| Stop the cloud for a second. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you state the point of order? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He was impugning Mr. Pallon's report. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I didn't hear it. | ||
| Did the judge? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, you weren't paying attention. | |
| That's why. | ||
| Well, you know, it's hard to pay attention here when we're not getting any response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| My understanding now is that the Secretary says something about me taking money from pharmaceuticals. | ||
| Is that what he says? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why he's not fighting for the vaccine? | |
| The Secretary implied that Mr. Pallone would not fight for vaccine victims because he took money from the pharmaceutical industry. | ||
| You know, again, he needs to take back those words. | ||
| Okay, here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here we go. | |
| Here we go. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, this is a valid point of order, I'm told. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'd ask you if you would please take back those words. | |
| They retract it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| That took place yesterday. | ||
| That full hearing is still available if you want to watch it on our various platforms. | ||
| Let's hear from Steve on this open forum, Republican Line. | ||
| He's in Florida. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| A couple comments on Mr. Vatanka. | ||
| I'm sure he's an expert on the Middle East, but he failed to mention that in the JCPOA there was a fatal flaw in that there was no anytime anywhere inspection. | ||
| The other problem in the JCPOA was that in the final section of it, it said that any country that attacked Iran, any of the signatories to that agreement, were required to defend Iran. | ||
| He also mentioned that he favored a two-state solution. | ||
| Well, so did Israel. | ||
| Four times they voted, they agreed to a two-state solution, 1937, 1947, 2000, and 2008. | ||
| Each time it was rejected by the Palestinians because they only wanted a one-state solution. | ||
| In other words, from the river to the sea. | ||
| That's Steve in Florida. | ||
| Gary is in Sterling, Virginia, Republican line as well. | ||
| Gary, you're next up. | ||
| Hello, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Everybody's dealing with a lot of heat right now. | ||
| When I was a child, I learned the way I learned to deal with the heat from this half-breed going to Indian. | ||
| Okay, let's go to Phil in Maryland. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I call to dispute what Ecolo had said just a few minutes ago. | |
| He said that during the last 1,000 years, all the discoveries that were made were made by Caucasians. | ||
| It's a lie. | ||
| It is a lie. | ||
| For instance, the number zero was discovered by an Indian. | ||
| The last time I looked, the particular Indian who did that was not a white man. | ||
| So the guy has told a lie. | ||
| I would like to also say that some of the things that are being said by these callers need to be checked. | ||
| Jesus Christ was not white. | ||
| You know, did he have blue eyes? | ||
| No, he wasn't. | ||
| So they made a discovery, if he's going to say that, they may a discovery that was wrong. | ||
| So that's the point that I would like to make, that all the discoveries were made by Caucasians. | ||
| It's a lie. | ||
| African Americans make discoveries in the USA, and they must be credited for having done what they did throughout their years of being in this great country. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Phil there in Maryland, the Wall Street Journal, following up on the story, taking a look at Iran's nuclear program and its current state after the bombings. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal's headline saying a week into Iran remains lethal, saying that it was the country's two known uranium enrichment sites that were hit hard. | ||
| Damage assessments still following at the Fordo facility by the U.S. struck with bunker buster bombs to reach Deep Under a Mountain. | ||
| The Atomic Energy Agency chief, Rafael Grossi, said Monday he suspects it was seriously damaged. | ||
| Yet the attacks likely left Iran in control of the main ingredients for a bomb. | ||
| U.S. officials have signaled Iran it still has control of about 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium it has produced since 2021. | ||
| The whereabouts of the stockpile aren't known. | ||
| Grossi said it could have been moved from a facility in Isfan before it was bombed. | ||
| Kurt joins us from California Independent Line on this open forum. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just wanted to say that Iran has not only every right, but every obligation to have the bomb. | ||
| If you take a look at how we've behaved since we've had the bomb, it's insane. | ||
| We've gone into so many countries, bombed so many different people, and it's all for no good reason. | ||
| It's just we really, really do need to look at how innocent Iran is. | ||
| It's just defending itself. | ||
| And the U.S. has been belligerent ever since it's at its bomb. | ||
| So, you know, that's just really all I wanted to say. | ||
| Roger in Virginia, Democrats line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Roger Gross. | |
| Hey, I want to say a couple of things. | ||
| I'm a fiscal Democrat. | ||
| I worked for the government 42 years in police work and security. | ||
| And I've served the Republicans and I've served Democrats. | ||
| We serve the office of the president. | ||
| Now, my point I make is one, I agree with some of Trump's things, and I disagree. | ||
| The fact is, illegal criminal aliens should not be in the country. | ||
| They should be apprehended and deported. | ||
| People who would like to stay in the country, who have caused no problem, let them register officially in some context. | ||
| Let them pay a tax, have their cases go through the court system, and if they attain citizenship, then they continue to pay X amount of money for services that the government has rendered to them. | ||
| The last point I would like to make is that we should stop paying all these countries that wind up voting against us in the United Nations. | ||
| We fund so much for foreign governments, and yet most of them do not vote in our agreement or to help the world come together more. | ||
| They're more aggressive. | ||
| They cut money from the top of the funds donated, and we need to have that stopped. | ||
| Again, that's Roger in Virginia joining us on this open forum. | ||
| You can participate as well. | ||
| 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| In our last hour of the show this morning, before the House comes in, we'll hear from two legislators not only talking about issues of Iran, but also domestic issues as well, especially the future of the president's tax and immigration bill. | ||
| It was on Capitol Hill yesterday in relation to events concerning Iran. | ||
| It was the House Speaker talking about efforts by some in Congress to pass what's known as a War Powers Act. | ||
| That would be a Nixon-era limited law of presidential power to universally or unilaterally wage war. | ||
| Speaker Johnson gave his thoughts on the matter yesterday on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Now we're hearing some talk about the War Powers Resolution. | ||
| What is that exactly? | ||
| Congress passed that legislation in 1973 under President Richard Nixon. | ||
| It bars the use of armed forces in conflict beyond 60 days without congressional authorization or a formal declaration of war. | ||
| A 30-day withdrawal period follows thereafter under the statute. | ||
| It also requires that the president inform Congress within 48 hours of use of military force. | ||
| Obviously, President Trump did that. | ||
| Obviously, in the modern era with the 24-hour news cycle in social media, nothing goes by unnoticed. | ||
| This might have made some sense in 1973, but I'm not even sure it was constitutional, and I'll tell you about that as well. | ||
| Many respected constitutional experts argue that the War Powers Act is itself unconstitutional. | ||
| I'm persuaded by that argument. | ||
| They think it's a violation of the Article II powers of the Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| I think that's right. | ||
| If you look back at the founders' intent, you read the Federalist Papers, you read the records of the Constitutional Convention, I think that is right. | ||
| And many more scholars believe the President is correct. | ||
| He uses his executive authority in exactly the manner that he did over the weekend. | ||
| I am a jealous guardian of Congress's Article I authority. | ||
| We are the defenders of it here, and we take it seriously, and I always will be. | ||
| But exercising the authority to declare war isn't something we've done since World War II. | ||
| And everybody in this room knows since then we've had more than 125 military operations from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| They have occurred without a declaration of war by Congress. | ||
| Presidents of both parties have exercised that authority frequently. | ||
| A few recent examples. | ||
| President Biden ordered strikes on Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. | ||
| President Obama launched an eight-month-long bombing campaign in Libya to Al-Saddafi. | ||
| President Clinton initiated air patrols and airstrikes in Bosnia and a bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. | ||
| Every one of those actions were taken unilaterally and without prior authorization from Congress. | ||
| The bottom line is the commander-in-chief is the president. | ||
| The military reports to the president. | ||
| And the person empowered to act on the nation's behalf is the president. | ||
| We will hear from Al in Georgia, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Listen, I'm worried that the mess that Biden and administration did to this country that I don't know if Donald Trump can fix it. | |
| It's just, I would like to know who was behind all this auto pen and all the stuff that went on, his advisors or whoever it was. | ||
| Lord help us. | ||
| Okay, that's Al there in Georgia. | ||
| The Washington Examiner, by the way, has a story taking a look at a closed hearing that took place on Capitol Hill. | ||
| It was featured. | ||
| One of the witnesses was one of President Biden's aides at the time, Mira Tandon, telling the Auto Oversight Committee that she was authorized to use the Auto Pen. | ||
| The examiner reporting that a former aide saying that President Joe Biden, she testified behind closed doors as part of the House Oversights Committee's investigation to his mental fitness to serve and his White House use of an auto pen, confirming she was authorized to use the automatic signature device while pushing back on concerns about alleged manipulation or malfeasance. | ||
| Miratandon, who served as the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, explained in her opening remarks Tuesday that she was giving the authority to wield the auto pen. | ||
| She said that she, quote, was responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president and was authorized to direct auto pen use from October 2021 to May of 2023 while she was serving as staff secretary and senior advisor to President Biden more there in that Washington Examiner piece. | ||
| Michael in Nevada, Democrats line, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Just a couple of quick issues. | ||
| What kind of president do we have in this country when he's constantly using foul language, calling the Washington Post scum, CNN scum, Washington Post scum? | ||
| Another issue with this big, beautiful bill. | ||
| People that earn money through getting tips, those tips should be taxed because people that earn their money when they tip someone, why in the world would they pay taxes on their money and then end up saying to themselves, why should I give some of my money to them when I have to pay taxes on the tips that I earn? | ||
| It's a level playing ground. | ||
| Tips are taxable income. | ||
| They need to take that out of the bill and make everybody pay their fair share. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mike in Nevada, giving us a call, telling us what he thinks during this open forum. | ||
| A chance for you to do the same again, pick the phone lines that best represent you. | ||
| If you're calling in, please continue to do so. | ||
| If you are on hold, if you could wait for a few minutes, we would appreciate it. | ||
| Only because to take a few minutes to talk about New York City, the Democratic mayorial primary that took place yesterday and the results there. | ||
| And joining us for that conversation, Spectrum News is Bob Hart. | ||
| He's the New York State Political Director joining us via Zoom. | ||
| Mr. Hart, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| For those who are not following closely, tell us about the end result of the Democratic mayorial primary in New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the first thing I should say is that the Democratic incumbent, Eric Adams, decided to skip the Democratic primary altogether and is running in the general election as an independent. | |
| That opened things up for nine major candidates, including former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned after a sexual harassment scandal in 2021. | ||
| But the big surprise is a political, a relative newcomer, a rookie, Zorhan Mamdani, who's only been in the state assembly for less than five years, was the big winner last night. | ||
| In almost every poll, Cuomo was the frontrunner except for a final poll. | ||
| And lo and behold, Mamdani, with a lot of youth support and talking, I would say, to the left. | ||
| wing of the Democratic Party emerged the winner last night and really was a David Slaying Goliath moment in New York City politics. | ||
| What's the way to best understand Mr. Momdani's personal politics? | ||
| Where does he come in? | ||
| What kind of position does he come in from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So he is advocating for some basically government-sponsored grocery stores. | |
| He's a Democratic socialist. | ||
| He very much is following in the footsteps of Alexandrio, excuse me, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who won in an upset in a Democratic congressional primary in New York a few years ago and became a national political celebrity in the Democratic Party. | ||
| But that's just one congressional district. | ||
| This is a citywide victory. | ||
| And I think some of it is a reaction to Donald Trump's victory. | ||
| Trump only got about 30% of the vote in New York City last year. | ||
| And I think there was an appetite for new political blood. | ||
| And Andrew Cuomo, even though he was a household name, because he left under a cloud of those sexual harassment allegations in 2021, plus he would have been the oldest mayor in New York City history if he won and was inaugurated. | ||
| So I think there was a youth movement and a movement to the left in the Democratic Party that propelled Momdani to this surprising victory last night. | ||
| How would you characterize the message that Mr. Mamdani gave to his potential supporters? | ||
| What kind of things did he campaign upon? | ||
| You mentioned some, but overall, what's the theme? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there was a kind of a hope that you see in the rhetoric of some of the Democratic Mavericks going to Howard Dean, going to Bernie Sanders. | |
| And he literally walked from one end of Manhattan to the other on the Friday before the final weekend of campaigning. | ||
| So I think he brought a vigor, a charisma. | ||
| And the other thing I should mention is the mastering of social media. | ||
| And there was a lot of speculation among the political class, do TikTok clicks produce votes? | ||
| And in this case, the answer is resoundingly yes. | ||
| Now that this was decided, what are the next steps? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a great question because Andrew Cuomo is still on an independent line in November. | |
| Mayor Adams is on an independent line in November. | ||
| Curtis Sliwa, who's known as the founder of the Guardian Angels in New York City, I think some people probably have seen them. | ||
| They're the guys with the red berets usually in Times Square. | ||
| He's almost definitely the Republican nominee. | ||
| So you have this complicated, potentially crowded general election in November. | ||
| The problem is for Cuomo, he won, he lost at a substantial margin. | ||
| He didn't really sound like he had the stomach to continue on in November, even though he has that ballot line. | ||
| There's a lot of the New York City elite, the business class, spent a lot of money helping Andrew Cuomo with an independent PAC. | ||
| The question is, where does that money go? | ||
| Where does their support go? | ||
| But I think the Momdani momentum is so strong that even if they decide we're going to go with Mayor Adams and push him, because of Mayor Adams' close ties now with President Trump, it's going to be an uphill battle trying to beat Momdani in November. | ||
| What kind of money is entering into this race? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So New York City has a campaign finance program that is pretty strict. | |
| So you can spend roughly $8 million in a primary, $8 million in a general election. | ||
| And that's what all the candidates are enrolled in. | ||
| But an independent expenditure committee, an IEC, can be created on behalf of a candidate. | ||
| And that's what happened with Andrew Cuomo, where Cuomo's budget basically doubled. | ||
| Now, Cuomo did not have any direct ties to that PAC, but the PAC was doing his dirty work, so to speak, by relentlessly attacking Zorhan Mamdani, and yet those attacks fell far short. | ||
| Any sense of whether he'll get any support from Governor Hochul? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's also a very good question because Mamdani is to the left of Hochul. | |
| However, he has the Democratic line. | ||
| And does the Democratic governor of New York State want to deny giving support to one of her fellow party members? | ||
| The other thing is Hochul was no friend at all of Andrew Cuomo's. | ||
| She was his lieutenant governor, but they barely were speaking by the time Cuomo resigned. | ||
| So I think part of Hochul is thrilled that she will not have to deal with Andrew Cuomo in the future. | ||
| On the other hand, to your point, she has to politically triangulate, which is probably saying something like, I accept the voters' decisions in the Democratic Party, but she doesn't necessarily have to endorse all of Mamdani's policies, which include raising taxes on the rich. | ||
| Hochul is up for re-election next year, and the state as a body statewide is more conservative than New York City. | ||
| Mr. Hart, give us the timeline of things to watch out for between the now when New York City residents have to make this decision. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we really need to listen to what Andrew Cuomo has to say for the next couple of days. | |
| Like I said previously, I don't think he has the stomach for this race. | ||
| And we have to look, where does the big money go? | ||
| Grubhub gave a million dollars to Andrew Cuomo's PAC. | ||
| Where does that money go? | ||
| Because there is an intense dislike of Zorhan Mamdani by the city's elites. | ||
| But as we saw in the Democratic primary results, that ultimately didn't matter. | ||
| Bob Hart is with Spectrum News. | ||
| He is their New York State political director joining us for this conversation. | ||
| Where can people find your work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On New York One, you can go to our website on New York One News. | |
| And I'm on almost every morning starting at 6.30 a.m. from this kitchen where you're watching me right now. | ||
| Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Hart. | ||
| We really do appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much. | |
| Thank you to all of you who have been holding on. | ||
| Let's go to Rush in Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Thank you for waiting. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Pedro. | |
| You've always been one of my favorites. | ||
| I'm 73 years old. | ||
| I go back to the Brian Lamb days. | ||
| And you've been on a while. | ||
| But hey, you just, that last fellow there just blew the wind out of my sales. | ||
| You guys had a New York mayoral debate on C-SPAN, I don't know, a month or so ago, and there were like eight of them up there. | ||
| Now, is he saying that Mandani beat Cuomo in a runoff or whatever here? | ||
| So he's going to be running? | ||
| That's what it looks like. | ||
| There are a couple of decisions that still will withhold the future, but that's where it stands. | ||
| You can see the report, his reporting, but yeah, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's pretty interesting. | |
| I'm going to be following up on that. | ||
| But, geese. | ||
| Well, I was going to say a few things with the Iran thing. | ||
| I don't watch any mainstream media anymore, but I saw an interesting thing. | ||
| On a podcast, I watched The Young Turks, and they played a little snippet of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. | ||
| In other words, they had Hannity, Van Jones, and Yeah, the guy that's on a joe on the mornings of MSNBC. | ||
| And they were all saying the same thing. | ||
| Van Jones, whom I respect highly, even though I'm an Independent, but I was a Bobby Kennedy fan. | ||
| I've been a Republican and Democrat. | ||
| I'm a retired steel worker and stuff. | ||
| But at any rate, he, what Van Jones said, even us progressives have to be behind this strike, the president just did. | ||
| And I'm thinking, geez, oh man, that's why I did vote for Trump when Kennedy dropped out. | ||
| In fact, went with Trump. | ||
| And I bet I voted for Trump because he was supposed to be stopping wars and stuff. | ||
| And I don't know what's going on with this thing, but it isn't over yet. | ||
| He's doing these ceasefires, this, that, and the other. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Rush, got your point. | ||
| Let's hear from Cynthia. | ||
| Cynthia's in Ohio, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I guess my concern is that all politics is local. | ||
| I worked my way through college, a state college. | ||
| I'm 73 years old. | ||
| My husband served in the Air Force during Vietnam, came home, got a job as an electrician in a steel mill. | ||
| He's now passed away. | ||
| I come home from my volunteer job, and my neighbor, who's an avowed Republican, loves Trump, wore her Regan t-shirt, came out in our driveway, starts screaming at me, calling me a liberal, calling me a socialist, telling me that people like me have ruined the country. | ||
| Now, I live in Ohio, which used to be the heart of it all. | ||
| We have Governor DeWine, we have JD Vance, who says this isn't a war on Sunday, yet we killed how many Iranian people, how many Palestinian children were murdered this week. | ||
| And my state, people are flocking out of. | ||
| We had the biggest scandal in our state history involving Mr. Householder and DeWine and JD Vance. | ||
| So the protests you see are mostly we gray-haired old baby boomers who want love and peace and want to live in a country we can be proud of. | ||
| And young people, thank goodness for New York, I have some hope. | ||
| But I also know that our president talks about getting rid of any cities where people have an ability to think freely. | ||
| So thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Sure, Cynthia, there in Ohio. | ||
| Of course, we talk a lot about a lot of things in this open forum, including international politics. | ||
| Currently at The Hague at the NATO Summit, Secretary Rute taking questions from reporters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's dip into a little bit of that. | |
| And I think it's also important that the American president is very much now working to get the ceasefire not only today and yesterday, but to have that ongoing over the coming weeks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I see FT in the halfway back. | ||
| She has to hold it. | ||
| Secretary General Henry Foy, Financial Times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| The floor. | ||
| Donald Trump has said the U.S. won't agree with the 5%. | ||
| That's for all of us to do, but not him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that fair in an alliance that's built on sharing and unity? | |
| And secondly, what will you do if he comes back next year and asks for more than five? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, when it comes to the 5%, there are two elements. | ||
| One is the 3.5% core defense spending. | ||
| The U.S. is more or less there. | ||
| And when it comes to the 1.5% defense-related spending, we can safely assume that the U.S. is doing that. | ||
| When you look at their enormous capacity when it comes to cyber-fighting, cybercrime, hybrid threats, when it comes to their infrastructure investments, when it comes to developing the defense industry base, I think we can safely assume that the U.S. is more or less at that 5% away. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next, I think we'll go over to the left side again, about halfway back. | |
| Washington Post. | ||
| Again, that's a little bit from the NATO press conference with the Secretary General talking a little bit about NATO commitments that the President is seeking for. | ||
| You can see more of that on our various platforms. | ||
| The President expected to participate in a news conference later on in the morning at NATO. | ||
| Also expected to talk with the Ukrainian president. | ||
| So pay attention to all those things happening. | ||
| You can monitor our not only website at c-span.org, our app at C-SPANNOW, but our various channels as we bring you live coverage of events of NATO domestically. | ||
| Several things to tell you about happening today on Capitol Hill at 10 o'clock this morning. | ||
| The Attorney General Pam Bondi testifying on the President's 2026 budget request for the Justice Department. | ||
| Also to expect to take questions about the LA protest, the recent strike in Iran, the legality of those things. | ||
| C-SPAN 2 is where you can see that, C-SPANNOW and C-SPAN.org at 10 o'clock. | ||
| Also at 10, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Capitol Hill. | ||
| That's a second day of testimony for him on monetary policy. | ||
| C-SPAN 3 is where you can see that, as well as the app and the .org. | ||
| And then the President's budget director, Russ Vogt, talking about the 2026 budget proposal, the administration's request for Congress to cancel various debts and things, various funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid, all those topics up for discussion at 2.30 this afternoon on C-SPAN 3, C-SPANNOW, and C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Our independent line, this is from Louisiana. | ||
| Lawrence, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| Morning, go ahead. | ||
| Good to talk. | ||
| I watch all the C-SPAN channels. | ||
| Try to. | ||
| And one of the comments I'd like to make is simply if they would start compromising, cooperating with each other, that could accomplish a whole lot more. | ||
| Unfortunately, we may run out of money in the next eight years, so they say. | ||
| So if they don't start passing constructive bills, that will help the country move on. | ||
| And who knows where we'll be. | ||
| So God willing, we'll get there soon enough when they all back off and agree we can't get it, all get it our way, but we can get enough done to get the goals we need done for this country to move forward. | ||
| This is Marlon from Oregon, Republican Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Pedro. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, at least the last guy that spoke was optimistic. | |
| I'm not so optimistic. | ||
| This country is so divided. | ||
| When they start voting in socialists and try to make this country a socialist and a communist country, we have socialists and communists in our Congress with those AOC and Omar. | ||
| The only hope that we have, they ought to put in Curtis as a guardian angel and the Republican for New York. | ||
| And the only hope we have for New York is Elise Safonik winning Hochul's job and firing this socialist if he gets in there. | ||
| We have to stop this division in this country with these socialists and communist situation, or we're going to have a revolution in this country. | ||
| There's no other way with it. | ||
| We can't be this divided and survive. | ||
| Thank you, Pedro. | ||
| Chevy Chase, Maryland is where Mark is. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hey, I represent a strange peacenick Democrat, and I normally vote on peace, and that's why it was for Kamala. | ||
| I thought we needed a woman to get peace maybe restored in this country and peace in the Middle East. | ||
| And this is going to be a shocker. | ||
| It sort of goes to the last call talking about revolution or polarization. | ||
| If this peace holds in the Middle East, if we get the hostages removed back to Israel, if we get peace and a rebuild in Gaza, I think that Donald Trump should get the Nobel Priest Prize, which I'm shocked to say. | ||
| But I think that year one would be good for Donald Trump if he gets peace in the Middle East. | ||
| And I would be happy for a more peaceful world because I know peace brings us justice eventually. | ||
| So, Donald, if you're listening, please amnesty this population and stop these raids. | ||
| And hopefully, we'll get you the Noble in the Middle East. | ||
| The New York Post reporting this morning when it comes to the Nobel Peace Prize, that it was in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee that Representative Buddy Carter, Republican of Georgia, recommended the president for the prestigious prize, quote, in recognition of his extraordinary and historic role in brokering an end to the armed conflict between Israel and Iran and preventing the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet. | ||
| Going on to say President Trump's influence was instrumental in forging a swift agreement that many believe to be impossible at a representative Carter, who represents Georgia's Savannah-based First District, doing that since 2015. | ||
| Judy, up next. | ||
| Judy in Mississippi, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yeah, I was wanting to comment about the guy that said something about Alex Jones. | ||
| I don't know why people keep listening to him. | ||
| He told in Sandy Hook the families lost their children, and he tried to tell them that your children weren't dead. | ||
| And all that garbage and everything. | ||
| You can't believe anything he says. | ||
| Or Steve Bannon, which he took all the money from Web the Wall. | ||
| He collected all that money, and I guess he got a pardon from Trump by doing that. | ||
| Also, on the Iran thing, somebody said something about if he had a deal of eliminating cancer, somebody would have a problem with it. | ||
| Well, he's not eliminating cancer. | ||
| He's eliminating cancer research. | ||
| So for me, it's not just one item. | ||
| It's a lot of items that he's doing. | ||
| And we better hold on to our seats because I don't think it's going to get any better. | ||
| And because he just constantly lies. | ||
| So I guess that's all I have to say. | ||
| Democrats line from Utah. | ||
| We will hear from Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'd like to talk about this big, beautiful bill for billionaires. | ||
| And all of our senators just about spend most of their time trying to raise money. | ||
| And, you know, right now they're talking that big, beautiful bill. | ||
| They want to sell off our public lands. | ||
| You know, I wonder if China could buy some of that. | ||
| I know the billionaires could buy some of that. | ||
| You know, that's what makes the West and most of this very unwanted. | ||
| I'm getting confused. | ||
| But anyway, you know, that's what makes our state south West great. | ||
| And I'd just like to see that stop. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| The senator out of Utah is the one that put that in. | ||
| I won't say his name. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| From Gene in the Missouri Democrats line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to say, why can't anybody do anything about Trump? | |
| Do people not see what this man is and what he has done? | ||
| And those people up there in Washington are so afraid of him that they do nothing. | ||
| I just don't understand it. | ||
| And I loved when everybody went and protested that day. | ||
| But where were all these people when it was time to vote? | ||
| I just don't understand it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Gene in Missouri, Line for Democrats. | ||
| The House is coming in at 10 o'clock in our last hour, hearing from two members of Congress on various topics. | ||
| We're hearing from you right now on this open forum, Bernie in Kentucky. | ||
| Bernie joins us on our Line for Democrats. | ||
| Bernie, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Is this what this is all about, the Nobel Peace Prize? | ||
| I mean, this is kind of a hefty price to pay, you know, for a first-place ribbon. | ||
| And I'm not belittling the prize or anything, but is that what he just wants as a Nobel Prize? | ||
| Anyway, that's not even the reason I called. | ||
| I called because this morning on the Hill, I was just reading this. | ||
| I'm trying to keep up with this thing with him and Tom Massey. | ||
| I live here in Kentucky. | ||
| I don't live in his area, but I have been keeping track of him. | ||
| He says here, the good news is we have a wonderful American patriot running against him in the Republican primary, and he'll be out campaigning real hard. | ||
| You have any idea who that is? | ||
| You can tell us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I was wondering if there's any, I mean, we live in, I'm in Kentucky. | ||
| I haven't heard any name come up. | ||
| So if anybody out there knows who this person is, I would love to hear it. | ||
| But that was the reason why I called. | ||
| And the thing about the Nobel Prize, this is not, I think this is a really bad way of trying to win one. | ||
| But that's just my opinion. | ||
| Okay, that's Bernie in Kentucky, the white, Weiji Zhang of CBS, posting this on her ex-feed saying the White House says the Israeli assessment is that the U.S. strike on Fordo, quote, destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. | ||
| A full statement coming from a senior White House official, the president himself, before meeting with the Dutch prime minister this morning in NATO at the summit there at the Netherlands, spoke about and pushed back against that leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report, which we talked about earlier, particularly what it said about the result in Iran. | ||
| Here's the president from earlier. | ||
| Some great statements just came out from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission and from Iran, as you know, that it was complete, total destruction. | ||
| And CNN turned out to be fake news, as always. | ||
| That's why they have no credibility. | ||
| That's why they have no viewers. | ||
| But we're going to read it to you if you haven't seen it. | ||
| Have you seen it, Jeff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Have you seen it? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Pretty good. | ||
| Very unfair to the pilots that risk their lives for our country. | ||
| And then they get fake news. | ||
| New York Times and CNN make up a phony story to get some hits. | ||
| It's the only reason I cared about it because those pilots were so brave. | ||
| I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| They flew into the hornet's nest and then they got hurt so badly by what the fake news wrote. | ||
| And it was CNN, it was the New York Times, and they're both disgusting, disgusting, really horrible groups of people. | ||
| The pilots did an unbelievable job like nobody's ever seen. | ||
| They hit pay dirt. | ||
| You see where the, I guess you probably look, they caught the wound. | ||
| You see where the wound is on the earth and three of them right next to each other. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| And they should be admired and respected for what they did. | ||
| And the fake news, in order to try and hit me, the fake news made them look bad, but now they look really good again. | ||
| So that was the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. | ||
| And it was also about the High Commission of Iran. | ||
| Just said it was totally demolished. | ||
| But we're going to have a news conference in a couple of minutes, and we'll see you. | ||
| Again, as the president said there, he's expected to participate in that news conference from the NATO summit. | ||
| Stay close to our various networks, our website and the app to find out and hear more from the president while he's at the NATO summit there. | ||
| We are talking to members of Congress in this last hour later on the program. | ||
| We will hear from Virginia Democrat Suhas Subramanian about congressional reaction to the Iran strikes, also in Capitol Hill, the future of the One Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| But first up, those same topics up for discussion with Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett, who joins us when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity. | |
| This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| In a town where partisan fighting prevails. | ||
| One table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, Ceasefire, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue. | ||
| And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
| I love C-SPAN too. | ||
| That's why I'm here today. | ||
| Answer questions all day, every day. | ||
| Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | ||
| C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | ||
| I love this show. | ||
| This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about. | ||
| American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thank C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
| It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| This is Tim Burchett. | ||
| He is a Republican from Tennessee, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, also a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee. | ||
| Representative Burchett, thanks for your time. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| As a Foreign Affairs Committee member, what questions are going through your mind these days and your colleagues in the committee when it comes to the events in Iran? | ||
| Well, I can't speak for any of the members, but myself. | ||
| I'm curious about the containment of the nuclear waste. | ||
| If there is any, I worry about our friends like in Bahrain who have been faithful to us and been a good ally, making sure that there is not any nuclear cloud or anything that gets into the sea right there that could flow right down to them. | ||
| They're 90 miles from one of those nuclear installations. | ||
| So I guess my questions were just a little different than everybody else's. | ||
| A lot of people asking the question of whether it was appropriate or not to do the strikes in the first place. | ||
| Where do you fall on that? | ||
| I think it was appropriate. | ||
| Everybody can agree that Iran should not have any nuclear capabilities. | ||
| To say that this is for nuclear energy is just a joke. | ||
| They're raising it up to 60%. | ||
| There's no nuclear reactors in the world that operate on that. | ||
| I believe they operate about 4% to 6% uranium. | ||
| So I think that what you're going to see is that most people around the world agree that the strikes were done appropriately and they were needed. | ||
| Nobody wants to go to war, except the lobbyists and the people that are invested in war, that their stock portfolios are in our implement programs. | ||
| But overall, I think it was a very big success for the president. | ||
| To what degree do you think there's disagreement within the Republican Party itself, even members on Capitol Hill, whether that action should take place or not? | ||
| It's very limited at all. | ||
| There's just one or two maybe that disagree with that. | ||
| Again, you're not going to, you're trying to do something honorable with the dishonorable people. | ||
| And Iran is definitely dishonorable. | ||
| Their leadership. | ||
| And the fight is not with the people. | ||
| It's with their leadership. | ||
| And they've continuously sponsored terrorism around the world. | ||
| We know when we pulled out of Iraq, I mean, excuse me, out of Afghanistan that they were being armed, and they've armed terrorist organizations around the world. | ||
| And they've taken quite a few shots at this country over the past decade or so. | ||
| And this, I think, settles that score, but it also shows American superiority in our military and our intelligence. | ||
| And also, the Israeli intelligence, you know, when they started their initial bombing, they took out their top three people. | ||
| And, you know, and I'm caution folks about regime change in the Second World War. | ||
| The beginning of that war, everybody wanted to take out Hitler. | ||
| But towards the end of the war, intelligence realized that Hitler was a pretty pitiful leader, militarily speaking, that is. | ||
| And they didn't want to take him out because we were winning the war and they were afraid the number two could have been much worse. | ||
| Now we've got to worry about the number four or if we depose the Ayatollah or if he's taken out at some point, who is the number two and could that be worse for the world? | ||
| And so those are the kind of things I think we need to be contemplating. | ||
| Is there a slippery slope that you may be concerned about concerning the actions we've taken so far and what could come next? | ||
| Yes, I don't want to see American boys and girls on the ground. | ||
| I have an 18-year-old daughter. | ||
| She shares her birthday with the president, oddly enough. | ||
| And I dare say that I don't want to see this Congress or any other Congress voting for war in Iran. | ||
| It's a country most of the members probably couldn't even find on the dot gum globe. | ||
| So I would have a lot of consternation about us going to war and putting American boys and girls on the ground over there. | ||
| Speaker Johnson talked about this effort to pass a war powers act that would limit the president's ability to declare or participate in military actions. | ||
| What do you think about that effort? | ||
| I think that any effort to do something like that really weakens our president in the eyes of our enemies around the world. | ||
| I think there's time to do that. | ||
| We can put a bill up in the next day if we have to declare war or enact the War Powers Act or whatever. | ||
| So I think right now doing that would be a little bit, I think it would have a negative impact on America and our fighting forces around the world. | ||
| Representative Tip Burchett is our guest. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions, the lines will be on the screen with us until 9.30. | ||
| Again, we're expecting to hear from the president perhaps soon. | ||
| Stay close to the networks and those digital media sites for that. | ||
| Michael in Georgia, Republican line, you're on with Representative Burchett. | ||
| Hello, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Congressman. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quick question. | |
| All the fake news going on. | ||
| Why isn't the FBI's involvement with the Chinese fake driver's license story not a major story? | ||
| Christopher Wray went before Congress and said there was no foreign intervention in the election, but they covered the whole thing up. | ||
| And we as Americans are sitting here going, when are these people going to be held accountable? | ||
| Christopher Wray is a criminal. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think we're completely compromised by the communist Chinese. | ||
| If you look at the lobbyist and America, what we're doing, turn over any article of clothing you have and look at where it's made. | ||
| Look at where our computer chips are made that are on some of our military apparatus, which we've been told that the communist Chinese could have the possibility of turning some of these aircraft literally off mid-air. | ||
| So I think, and also we have communist Chinese merchants that actually run commissaries in our military installations. | ||
| We have communist Chinese buying farm property, which controls our commodities. | ||
| We have communist Chinese buying property near our military installations. | ||
| And this body, either party, will not stop them. | ||
| And the reason they don't is because the lobbyists are in our pockets. | ||
| We talk about all the horrors going on in Ukraine and all that. | ||
| Well, what about China? | ||
| The reason we don't do anything to China is because the money. | ||
| Follow the money, folks. | ||
| And we are in bed with the Communist Chinese. | ||
| And the lobbyists on K-Street know it, and they laugh about it. | ||
| And they're just getting fat. | ||
| And we're going to sell our country down the road if we're not careful because they are in our, as I stated, our military institutions, but they're also in our colleges and universities of higher learning, our research institutes. | ||
| They've completely infiltrated those. | ||
| And all we're doing is chasing money. | ||
| We have Communist Chinese students in our country because they pay a higher rate. | ||
| And every one of those that's in our country that's going to school is taking the place of an American. | ||
| And Chinese goods are flooding our markets continuously because we are gutless and don't have the willpower to do anything. | ||
| If you remember recent history, when Harley Davidson was about to go out of business, they're about to do it again, unfortunately. | ||
| But they before, because the Japanese were dumping thousand CC motorcycles and above, and Ronald Reagan put a tariff on them. | ||
| And Trump, that's why Trump put a tariff, started talking about putting a tariff on the Chinese, because he knows Congress. | ||
| They'll write a tough letter or something, and they'll bow up and put a letter out to their chambers of commerce about all they're doing. | ||
| But that's a joke because we are totally in bed with the Chinese and we need to clean up our act. | ||
| Let's go to Maryland. | ||
| This is Jack, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, good morning, guys. | ||
| I wanted to ask the congressman, like, how did he reconcile the 2017 tax cut and its impacts to the deficit? | ||
| If you're honest, and if you recall, when Trump left office, the first time he left with almost $8 trillion increase in our national debt. | ||
| And now we're hearing the same talking points with this reconciliation bill, which you guys are saying, oh, well, we'll grow our way out of it. | ||
| You know, we won't see deficits, deficit neutral. | ||
| It's just not true. | ||
| The math just doesn't add up. | ||
| So I'm wondering, how do you reconcile that? | ||
| I mean, you are, you say you are a physical conservative. | ||
| You care about the debt. | ||
| You care about the deficit. | ||
| But yet we keep passing these bills that increases our debt, and we never grow our way out of it. | ||
| So how do you reconcile that? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And that's because we're in such a small majority. | ||
| We have a three-person majority. | ||
| I think the Republicans do. | ||
| We're, as I like to say, one flu season away from not being in the majority anymore. | ||
| And so the president, if you look under Joe Biden the last four years, he was every hundred days we added a trillion dollars. | ||
| And now the Democrats are pitching a fit about over the next 10 years, we're going to raise the deficit $3 trillion. | ||
| Well, if you look at that, we've incredibly slowed the rate of growth down. | ||
| If you look at just the math of that, and you know, we have this train of debt running at us. | ||
| We're at 36, almost, we're about at 37 trillion dollars right now. | ||
| And you've got to stop it at some point, and then you've got to turn it in the other direction. | ||
| And this budget and this big beautiful bill, if you will, is going a long ways towards that. | ||
| Does it do enough? | ||
| Heck no. | ||
| I would cut the Pentagon. | ||
| I would cut a lot of these other programs, U.S.AID, all this stuff, get it out of there. | ||
| But the will is not there in either party. | ||
| Again, because members of both parties are compromised, let's just be honest. | ||
| They've got a wife and or a girlfriend that works for some of these agencies, and they don't have the guts to do it or the political wherewithal to make those tough votes. | ||
| And that makes me very unpopular up here when I say that. | ||
| But, Dad, Gummett, it's the truth. | ||
| Representative Birch at the Senate has telegraphed that changes to the version you sent from the House are forthcoming. | ||
| What does that mean for you when it goes back to the House? | ||
| It doesn't mean a whole lot until I read that final version. | ||
| They float a lot of different things. | ||
| Reporters were asking me yesterday, what if, what if, what if. | ||
| And I just don't devote any brain power to any of that until I see the final version because that's exactly what they're doing. | ||
| They're floating out trial balloons. | ||
| And a lot of times they'll float out something that's just horrendous and then everybody freaks out. | ||
| And then they bring it down to another level that normally would be horrendous, but compared to their first version is not. | ||
| So I just don't get too hung up on it. | ||
| I'm hoping for some real savings. | ||
| I'm hoping for some deficit reduction. | ||
| But my belief is that we'll probably be going right back down that same path if we're not careful. | ||
| And we've got to have some restraint. | ||
| Let me rephrase it a little bit. | ||
| What would you be comfortable with? | ||
| What would you not be comfortable with, whatever comes back from the Senate? | ||
| I would hope that we'd look at Medicaid and the fraud, waste, abuse there. | ||
| I think that if you're an able-bodied American and can work, and I'm not talking about a single mom who's got a couple of kids at home, that's off the table, but we all know it. | ||
| We've seen it. | ||
| We've been in line at the grocery store and seen folks get in line and load up on the food stamps or whatever you want to call it, and the ability to do that. | ||
| Things like buying soft drinks with food stamps. | ||
| I'd like to see those stuff like that eliminated. | ||
| Just common sense stuff that shows America that we're serious about this and that we're just not a total fraud. | ||
| From New York Republican line, this is Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Congressman. | |
| I'm glad to see you on C-SPAN. | ||
| You are one of my favorite congressmen because I believe you're an honest and ethical and moral man and who's trying to really do the right thing for the country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Prior to the last election, President Trump and Republicans were talking constantly about ending chain migration and making E-Verify permanently. | ||
| I know you guys in the House last year passed a bill addressing that issue, but ever since the election, I haven't heard a word on that. | ||
| And I don't know where they're going with that because we all know that by the time the term ends for President Trump, if the Democrat is elected, we could go right back to where we were before. | ||
| And so hopefully something is in the works, but I haven't heard a word about it. | ||
| And I don't know if it was possible to put any of that legislation in the reconciliation bill. | ||
| I'm assuming not, but you know better than I do. | ||
| So can you please speak to that? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, the Senate has different rules. | ||
| I just wish we'd have single-issue spending bills and single-issue. | ||
| That's what we do in Tennessee. | ||
| It's called a caption bill. | ||
| You can't have a dog catcher's bill and give you a pay raise. | ||
| I actually had a long conversation with my friend, Senator Marsha Blackman from Tennessee, who has been a stalwart fighter in the trenches on that very issue. | ||
| She knows she's forgotten more about that issue than probably most of us will ever know. | ||
| And she agrees with everything you're saying that we do need to get that forward. | ||
| And we need to pass that because that is that chain migration thing. | ||
| We have these tourists that come over here and have kids, and then they fly back to their home countries. | ||
| And then when they're 18, they come back, and then all of a sudden they're getting all these benefits. | ||
| And that is just wrong. | ||
| They are gaming the system. | ||
| That is not what the founders intended. | ||
| And we've got to straighten that thing up. | ||
| And I wish we could just put a single issue bill on that and put it on the floor and make people vote. | ||
| I'm sick of the studies. | ||
| I'm sick of the committee meetings. | ||
| I'm sick of us writing strong letters to somebody, which is gutless. | ||
| And the lobbyists just laugh because they get paid to get up here and get us to write these strong letters on these issues just like that. | ||
| And then everybody goes home thinking they've done something. | ||
| They haven't done a dadgum thing. | ||
| And it's pretty worthless to me. | ||
| And I'm getting kind of sick of it myself. | ||
| And I know America is. | ||
| So I hope we have the guts to do something about that in the future because America is tired of that stuff. | ||
| This is James in Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Trump ran up $8 trillion worth of dollars in four years. | |
| You Republicans will along with it. | ||
| You're big spenders. | ||
| You just say you're for debt when Democrats get in office. | ||
| That's just how you get with them. | ||
| But this one thing you need to remember. | ||
| Everything that you're agreeing with with Trump, that you Republicans are doing when the Democrats get in office, they can do it right back to you. | ||
| You know, this is what you need to realize, that when your king, we're going to have a king. | ||
| Do you understand that? | ||
| You're letting Trump do anything. | ||
| You're running rough. | ||
| You don't care nothing about the Constitution or none of that. | ||
| And so when we get back to the office. | ||
| Tell me what part of the Constitution that he's violating. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me finish. | |
| When the Democrats get back in office, just remember that. | ||
| All those arguments you got. | ||
| You're killing your own argument. | ||
| Okay, James. | ||
| What part of the Constitution is he violating, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a white supremacist. | |
| James in Georgia, he's asking you a question to answer. | ||
| Let the congressman ask you a question. | ||
| Representative, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, what part of the Constitution is he violating, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, is that going to be all right, everything Trump doing when a Democrat get back in office? | |
| Okay, James in Georgia. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, I don't agree with all that. | ||
| I think if you look at my record, if you look at anybody in the Republican Party, I have more friends across the aisle than anybody. | ||
| One of my dearest friends is Jonathan Jackson, who's Jesse Jackson's son. | ||
| We're in a bipartisan prayer group. | ||
| We worked on legislation this week together. | ||
| You know, the press likes to throw out all this stuff about it, but they never focus on the things we agree on. | ||
| And so, am I going to agree with everything that everybody says? | ||
| No. | ||
| I represent a very conservative area. | ||
| As a matter of fact, I wouldn't tell President Trump this, but I actually did one point better than he did in my district. | ||
| And if he were here, I'd say that he carried me. | ||
| But the truth is, is that I represent a very conservative area. | ||
| But I always say I'm conservative. | ||
| I'm just not bitter about it. | ||
| And I'm sorry you're angry, sir. | ||
| But I wish you'd call my office and we could have a conversation. | ||
| Representative Birchip, being a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, there's a debate going on today as far as the impact, the extent of the damage done in Iran, the leak of this defense report. | ||
| Has anybody, including yourself on the committee, seen any information about the level of destruction that was done in Iran due to the bombings? | ||
| Yeah, we've seen some, but we'll have a confidential briefing on Friday. | ||
| And I'm sure five minutes afterwards, it'll be leaked to the press what was in that meeting. | ||
| I caution folks sometimes about going to these confidential briefings because you're not allowed to speak on what they talked about, even if you already knew what they were talking about. | ||
| So we're going to get some answers, and there'll never be all the answers, and people will be angry, and they will immediately come out and tell exactly what was told in that confidential briefing, which is unfortunate. | ||
| But we'll know by the end of the week, pretty much. | ||
| But I think we realize that this is what's bringing Iran to the table, and we need Israel to back off a little bit, like President Trump said, and let peace work a little bit. | ||
| The president says obliteration, he uses that term. | ||
| The Defense Intelligence Agency says limited. | ||
| Who's more correct then, if I may ask? | ||
| Well, I guess by civilian terms, obliteration. | ||
| You know, if you saw a B-1 bomber dropping one of those bunker busters on you, you'd probably wet your pants if you lived. | ||
| So it's a little different than a military explanation, but I think it did its job. | ||
| It did what we needed it to do. | ||
| I don't see nuclear waste out in the creeks and streams and in the air. | ||
| And I see Iran at the table wanting peace. | ||
| And I was just in the gym this morning with several Democrats, and they were, although guarded, were very positive about what the president said. | ||
| And that's why yesterday when Al Green brought his bill to the floor to impeach Trump, that you only had about 70 Democrats that voted for it. | ||
| And I think that's a big change. | ||
| That shows that it is working, that America sees it, and their polling data is showing it. | ||
| So everybody's kind of backing off of Trump right now, which I think is a pretty smart idea. | ||
| Kevin in D.C., Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I have a question about the Chinese industrial accident in Wuhan that has been covered up by the echo chambers. | ||
| There's a Ukrainian, Brit, American, Israeli scientist, Peter Dasak, who lied to Congress, and Congresspeople said they would hold him accountable. | ||
| And they never had. | ||
| He is the one who contracted with the bat lady in China. | ||
| And Fauci wasn't the middleman. | ||
| It was Dasek. | ||
| So why do they keep talking about Fauci and they don't talk about Peter Dasak from Echo Health Alliance? | ||
| Please tell me when people are going to be held accountable. | ||
| Even the James Vaughn movie, they changed the thing in the, they changed it from a computer virus. | ||
| No, they changed it to a computer virus from a genetic virus because they're afraid of pissing off China. | ||
| Okay, Kevin in D.C. | ||
| Okay, I'm not quite familiar with that. | ||
| All I can say is, though, that we are, once again, compromised by China, and you're not going to see a lot of people do a lot of strong things against China because we want their economic dollars, and we've sold the working men and women out in this country because of that. | ||
| After the Wuhan incident, we should have shut everything down with China, and America should have bit the bullet. | ||
| And then when Trump immediately, when he took office, wanted to put tariffs on China, you saw people from both sides of the aisle pitching a fit. | ||
| And all he's trying to do is preserve American jobs. | ||
| And it's going to cause a little bit of pain. | ||
| But that game, we need to start making that stuff here and quit relying on an enemy, especially. | ||
| I had some medicine the other day, and I looked at the label and it said made in China. | ||
| Those are the kind of things we should be very scared of as Americans, that China is controlling major components of our pharmaceutical industry, and it needs to be made here, and it needs to be done right now. | ||
| Representative, you serve on the House Oversight Committee yesterday, a closed-door hearing, and you heard from Neera Tandon, who worked for the president, the larger issues of President Biden's mental acuity. | ||
| What's the purpose of this hearing, and how much do you support it? | ||
| I think it's just America's demanding it. | ||
| I think they saw a president that was mentally, his mental capabilities were lacking, and you saw a complete cover-up by a lot of the national media to the point some now are even writing books about it, even in the media. | ||
| So I think that America is really just demanding it. | ||
| And it's an unfortunate chapter in our history, but it's the truth. | ||
| And the Democrat Party needed to clean their act up. | ||
| I mean, they're imploding. | ||
| You saw the vote yesterday, couldn't get 70 votes to impeach Trump. | ||
| And now you're seeing what's happened in New York City where you're electing literally a communist is going to be the Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City. | ||
| And that's a, to me, that's a scary proposition because all those folks are going to leave there. | ||
| They're going to lose their tax base and you're going to see New York fall into further decay. | ||
| Why a closed-door hearing and what did you learn from it? | ||
| You do a closed-door hearing because you mainly so you don't see all the fighting back and forth. | ||
| You know, you'll see the left and the right pontificating for the press. | ||
| It just gets to the point. | ||
| And there's not a lot of I've been in closed door meetings with Hunter Biden and others. | ||
| And you don't see the end fighting and the posturing for the press. | ||
| And that's the way it is. | ||
| That's just human nature. | ||
| That's not my decision, though, brother. | ||
| I'm kind of one of those that likes it out in the open. | ||
| Florida's next. | ||
| Tony, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wanted to make a couple of suggestions that I think will help improve things. | |
| Number one, build that wall, get it done, build it from one side to the other. | ||
| No excuses. | ||
| You could find $25 billion. | ||
| I mean, when you spend $8.7 trillion and you don't find $25 billion for the wall, when you promise it over and over again, it's pretty sad. | ||
| Number two, defund Obamacare. | ||
| It's not working. | ||
| Most of the people on it are getting Medicaid anyway. | ||
| Just defund it and get it out of here. | ||
| It's been a failure. | ||
| And the $800 billion that was taken out of Medicare to help hold up Obamacare, see if you could put that back in. | ||
| Number three, I don't know what it is. | ||
| I go to the store. | ||
| All I see is food stamps, SNAP program, all this stuff, which causes inflation. | ||
| It allows the grocery stores to charge the people that are paying for it more money. | ||
| And the same thing with this rental. | ||
| If the government would just stay out of it and let people do their own thing, and if they can't survive, they'll find ways to survive, maybe have less children, maybe less illegal aliens will want to come to the country because the benefits aren't there. | ||
| I think those would be three things that would really help this country. | ||
| And another thing, too, is I felt we really missed the boat. | ||
| I really thought DeSantis would have been a great president. | ||
| That's Tony in Florida. | ||
| And Representative, to the Caller's second point, when it comes to Obamacare, the Washington Post this morning, their editorial says the one big beautiful bill would make significant changes to the ACA, one of them about enrollment, one of them about eligibility. | ||
| What do you think about those potential changes overall, what it would do for the Affordable Care Act? | ||
| I think if we make sure that people that are on there are legitimately in need, that's a great thing. | ||
| I think that takes care of the least amongst us, which is what those programs are supposed to be done. | ||
| We've seen them gained. | ||
| All sides have seen it. | ||
| People are abusing those systems. | ||
| We see it every time we go to the store, we go to the doctor's office, you talk to doctors, you talk to merchants, you see it all the time. | ||
| And the systems being gained and anything we can do to tighten up that thing and make sure that these, because what's going to happen is it's going to implode. | ||
| And the poor people that are in our inner cities that are really hurting are going to lose everything. | ||
| They're going to lose every bit of coverage they have if we're not careful. | ||
| So I don't see the reason for defending people that are fraudulently getting these programs. | ||
| This is Alejandro in Wisconsin, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Congressman, I was just wondering what you thought of the president's really reckless decision to bomb Iran. | |
| There's been inconclusive reports as to if it was successful or not. | ||
| We don't even know. | ||
| It really could have been, he's really gambling at that. | ||
| It could have been the start of another endless war in Iran. | ||
| I don't know what the end benefit there for the United States was. | ||
| Our own DNI has said that we were nowhere near close to Iran having a nuclear weapon. | ||
| And then I also just wanted to ask you what you thought of the War Powers Act, which I think some Democratic senators, representatives were trying to get passed. | ||
| And I just wanted to know what you thought of that, of Congress being able to further check the president's ability to start a war or strike a foreign country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, the War Powers Act, of course, is in place for us to reign the president in. | ||
| And right now, I don't think that needs to be done. | ||
| I think that sends a wrong message. | ||
| We've done the bombing and we stop. | ||
| And there's no reason to have the heavy water. | ||
| There's technical names for it, but there's two or three different things. | ||
| And all that is used for is to make nuclear weapons. | ||
| It's not for nuclear energy. | ||
| And they know they were doing it. | ||
| And the world knows they were doing it. | ||
| And the people that are even Iran's allies know they were doing it. | ||
| So I think it was the correct move by the president. | ||
| Representative, we saw some of the Doge recommendations take place in that rescissions package that was considered. | ||
| What further should be done when it comes to recommendations from Doge and putting them into law? | ||
| Well, I have myself put 24 or 25 of those Doge recommendations forward, some of them because of Senate rules. | ||
| Senate rules are kind of a crazy thing. | ||
| It's kind of voodoo, I think. | ||
| You kind of look at it from one way, it says one thing. | ||
| You look at it from another, it says another. | ||
| So the Senate, they're going to have to do their thing. | ||
| There's going to be several that are in the big beautiful bill, but we need to push forward. | ||
| America needs to get rid of waste, abuse, and fraud. | ||
| I mean, we're spending $10 million on circumcisions in other countries. | ||
| And the reality, I mean, just constantly down the line, LGBTQ parades, Sesame Street for other countries that we're pretty sure aren't even, a lot of these things aren't even going there. | ||
| And the reality is the money is coming right back to this country. | ||
| This country is, these politicians, some of them are crooked as a dog's leg. | ||
| The money's coming back in form of dark money and campaigns, and some of it's coming right back to their pockets. | ||
| And I would be very happy to see somebody in either party walked out of this building in handcuffs if they could catch them doing that because they're stealing money. | ||
| This is money. | ||
| Remember, every dollar we send to Ukraine is borrowed. | ||
| We are borrowing money from our great-grandchildren, folks. | ||
| We are broke. | ||
| We've got to stop this. | ||
| And these paid protesters that are out picketing all these things. | ||
| It's nonsense. | ||
| Americans paying too much taxes. | ||
| We're paying too much for this nonsense overseas. | ||
| And all we're doing is feathering the pockets of politicians and wealthy elites. | ||
| Representative, between now and the break, what does the Congress have to consider? | ||
| What's on the radar? | ||
| Well, hopefully we'll work more than 30 minutes a day and get this big, beautiful bill into some position so we can vote on it. | ||
| I hope the Senate works over the weekend. | ||
| I hope they continue. | ||
| The problem with, you know, they'll say we got to do something by the 4th of July. | ||
| They'll run it up to the 3rd of July at 12 midnight and then pass something out. | ||
| And then you're forced to vote on something you've only seen in 30 minutes. | ||
| And that's by design, actually, so they can load it up with a bunch of garbage. | ||
| And I think America needs to start paying attention. | ||
| I don't care if it's the 4th of July or the 40th of July. | ||
| I don't care when it is. | ||
| I just think America needs to be able to consume this bill and look at it and see what's in it. | ||
| I don't like rushing things. | ||
| I like to get it out there and let people see what's in it. | ||
| And that government, America is tired of the nonsense. | ||
| Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee joining us this morning talk about domestic and foreign issues. | ||
| Representative, thanks for your time this morning. | ||
| It's always a pleasure. | ||
| Thank you all for having me. | ||
| We'll consider the same topics with Virginia Democrat Suhas Subramanian, who will join us next from Capitol Hill to talk about the events in RON, what's happening in domestic policy here, all that when Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
unidentified
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Representative Suhas Subramanian joins us from Capitol Hill, Democrat from Virginia, a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, and also a member of the Space Science and Technology Committee. | ||
| Representative, thank you for your time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| What has been your reaction to not only what occurred in Iran over the weekend by the United States, but what happens after that? | ||
| Yeah, a couple of things. | ||
| One, I think Congress should be a part of the decision-making process, and we should be consulting with Congress when it comes to declaring war and bombing nations like Iran. | ||
| Second, you know, we still haven't gotten a full intelligence briefing. | ||
| There's been a lot of conflicting information coming from the administration as to both the impetus for those attacks as well as the results of those attacks. | ||
| I mean, we saw reporting that it wasn't as effective as the president said. | ||
| And so we don't know what to trust anymore. | ||
| This feels a lot like the Iraq war in some ways when there was conflicting and sometimes intelligence that wasn't accurate. | ||
| And so we'd like to see the truth and we want that transparency to be afforded to the American people. | ||
| The House briefing on Iran that you referenced is happening later in the week. | ||
| What were you specifically told about why it didn't happen yesterday? | ||
| I was told nothing about why it didn't happen yesterday. | ||
| And a lot of us were speculating that it didn't happen because the administration wanted to get its ducks in a row because they had an inconsistent message. | ||
| I have a lot of questions about both why they decided to do this, when they did it, and the results of it. | ||
| Because again, they've given us conflicting information. | ||
| And I'm a member of Congress. | ||
| And I think every person in our community and our country deserves to know, not just me. | ||
| So I'm looking forward to at least getting a straight answer from this administration. | ||
| Your House Speaker yesterday pushed back on this idea of a passage or an effort by some to pass a War Powers Act, putting more requirements on the president when he comes to military action. | ||
| To what degree do you support that? | ||
| And what do you think? | ||
| What do you think about the effort to pass such a thing? | ||
| I'm supportive of it because if it's such an urgent thing that will have the buy-in of the country, then come to Congress. | ||
| Make us come back early. | ||
| I don't mind coming in on a weekend or on an off week or a district work period and voting on it. | ||
| If it's an emergency, we'll vote on it same day. | ||
| But what shouldn't happen is the president deciding on a whim to do things without actionable intelligence. | ||
| And if he does have actionable intelligence, he needs to share that with Congress. | ||
| And so we've already seen this president infringe upon Congress's powers when it comes to the power of the purse. | ||
| And now we're seeing when it comes to war powers, him doing the same thing. | ||
| And again, this is not the right separation of powers. | ||
| It's not good for the American people. | ||
| It's not good when it comes to transparency and accountability to the American people. | ||
| There was an effort yesterday to offer impeachment articles against the president because of the acts in Iran. | ||
| Did you support that? | ||
| I didn't support that because I felt like that process, that should be a process that goes through the Congress. | ||
| And something like this, you know, I certainly believe that this was not legal and I have real concerns, constitutional concerns about this. | ||
| But I think that we have to pick our battles as a party when it comes to impeachment. | ||
| This impeachment would never have gotten the votes to pass anyway. | ||
| And so this is a political process at this point. | ||
| And we need to make sure that we're not just trying to impeach the president every week for everything he does instead of picking our battles when it comes to that. | ||
| But I do think we need to hold this president accountable. | ||
| And as the ranking member on military and foreign affairs, I do plan to do that. | ||
| Our guest will be with us just shortly before the top of the hour. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| You can text us your questions or comments at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Representative, your specialty or one of your specialties is that of cybersecurity. | ||
| As far as a reaction from Iran, people think militarily, but is cybersecurity an option for Iran? | ||
| And to what degree are you concerned about that? | ||
| Yeah, you know, one of the concerns I've had is that we're having a lot of people in our federal workforce get fired who were probationary and had technology expertise. | ||
| We have a lot of cybersecurity experts at the Department of Defense who left because they were chased out by an administration that wants to traumatize our federal workforce. | ||
| So what does that mean when it comes to warfare? | ||
| It makes us less safe because Iran has top cybersecurity experts. | ||
| They have a great drone program. | ||
| They have a lot of military capabilities. | ||
| And we, you know, a lot of these wars now are not going to be fought with just tanks and guns. | ||
| They're going to be fought when it comes to cyberspace, when it comes to AI, and when it comes to infiltrating other countries. | ||
| And so the way we have to do this is have our top technology experts be ready for Iran attacks. | ||
| And I think this is going to continue. | ||
| Whether it's China, Iran, or any of our other adversaries, we have to be ready when it comes to cyber attacks. | ||
| And I want us to be more ready. | ||
| I'm not sure if we're as ready as we need to be. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that, especially in the nature of asymmetrical warfare? | ||
| Is it manpower? | ||
| Is it technological power? | ||
| Where are we deficient? | ||
| It's all of the above. | ||
| Right now, we need more technology talent in the federal government. | ||
| A lot of the talent in Silicon Valley or Northern Virginia where I live is ready and willing to serve our country. | ||
| But again, we're setting up a system in the federal government that's chasing out technology talent. | ||
| And so a lot of the best people that we recruited over the past four years who were listed as probationary were actually fired. | ||
| So that's bad for our country. | ||
| And so then when you have Iran, who sometimes even forces top technologists to work for them and help their military, when you have them as an adversary, we're at a disadvantage. | ||
| And so yes, it's people and it's the technology that they can build. | ||
| It's also the cybersecurity systems that we build. | ||
| We need to make sure that we're modernizing our cybersecurity and IT systems to be ready for attacks on them. | ||
| Let's hear from John in Virginia and Democrats line for our guests. | ||
|
unidentified
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John, go ahead. | |
| Thank you for taking my call, Pierre. | ||
| I just want to ask the Congressman. | ||
| Congressman, I don't respect the Democrat that we sent to make us law in Virginia. | ||
| We feel like we are not getting what we vote for. | ||
| When you're running the election, you're telling us one thing. | ||
| When we elect the Democrats, they do different things. | ||
| Republicans, they believe something. | ||
| Whatever they believe, they want to make sure they pass their bills. | ||
| Why can we have Democrats who stand out what we believe and saying that this is not what my constituents send me here? | ||
| We don't need fight. | ||
| We don't need argument. | ||
| We need to compromise. | ||
| You can't be the only one who compromises every issue. | ||
| You need to stand up for the democratic values. | ||
| And I'm sure that you're talking about technology. | ||
| Some of these congressmen, they're not well trained for the technology today. | ||
| They don't even know how to use their phone, let alone anything else. | ||
| But what I'm saying to you is when the Republican proposed a bill, don't you just say, okay, give us a 60%, 40% we agree with you. | ||
| If the bill is not pushed for the current Medicaid, current Social Security, how you compromise something like that to the American people? | ||
| Okay, John, John in Virginia, thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I think, you know, obviously, like, you'll see sometimes that we have to compromise on certain things, but we should never compromise our values. | ||
| I think that's what the caller is saying, and I agree with that. | ||
| Certainly, there's times where you want to push things forward and you have to make incremental change, and it's frustrating because I don't like to make incremental change. | ||
| I like to make big changes. | ||
| But the caller is right that sometimes we also have to stand up for our values. | ||
| And if something is not where it needs to be, we have to vote against the bill. | ||
| And so that's why I voted against the big, ugly bill and the reconciliation is because any cuts to Medicaid are bad for a community. | ||
| And so we shouldn't be trying to say, oh, let's cut Medicaid for a lot of people, but not for others. | ||
| And we'll vote for the bill. | ||
| No, that's not how we're going to do this. | ||
| What we're going to do is stand up for our values. | ||
| And he's right. | ||
| We need more technology expertise in government. | ||
| We are trying to have more hearings right now and get technology experts to Congress to help inform our processes here as well as how we can make the government and our military ready for the 21st century. | ||
| Randy in Arizona, Republican line, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I would like to say that the congressman just said that, or the representative just said that he's getting conflicting information about the attack on Iran from the White House. | |
| And I don't believe that's true. | ||
| I believe the conflicting information is coming from the liberal media who is trying to spin it. | ||
| And I think it's a shame we have a representative that is also trying to spin that in front of the American people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's not true. | ||
| I mean, the president said that he totally bombed and completely destroyed Iran's program at a specific base. | ||
| And then we got reports that CNN reported that it was actually only a small portion of it. | ||
| We only set back Iran's nuclear capabilities by a few months when the president had implied years. | ||
| And so we are getting conflicting information, even the impetus for the bombings, that we've got conflicting information. | ||
| So yeah, you know, if there was a straight story, it'd be easier. | ||
| And, you know, I'd be able to weigh in one way or another. | ||
| But I'd like to know, and if there was no conflicting information, why would they cancel our briefing yesterday? | ||
| Why don't they go to the podium in the White House and just tell us exactly what happened? | ||
| And the Intel community backed that up. | ||
| But clearly, that's not happening, which is why we have concerns. | ||
| In New Jersey, Independent Line, Lewis. | ||
| Hello, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Congressman. | ||
| Jelly conflicting is CNN that is so you can't believe them at all. | ||
| I mean, you know, the laptop, the Russian gate, all this stuff. | ||
| They're the only ones that are in the conflict that it is. | ||
| And this administration is the most transparent administration since I've been alive. | ||
| Trump talks to you guys every day, talks to the press every day. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| Good day, sir. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I mean, I appreciate Trump talking every day on Twitter and on the press podium. | ||
| But, you know, one of the things that I've noticed is that when he talks, it's not often true. | ||
| And so just because he's talking every day doesn't mean he's being transparent, but he's being truthful. | ||
| And I haven't seen either of those things from this administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I respectfully disagree. | |
| From Oregon, this is Bruce, Democrats line for our guest, Representative Suhas Subramanian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Congressman. | |
| Basically, a quick question for you is, okay, so if this big, ugly bill gets passed and the people are actually doing what they're supposed to do, okay, and then all of a sudden they're doing all the requirements, they're doing where they're supposed to go. | ||
| If they have to go to the Social Security, wherever they have to go, and they do everything, and they come to find out maybe a week later, maybe a month later, they're cut off. | ||
| What are you guys going to do? | ||
| Because I'm on Medicaid and I take insulin and it costs thousands of dollars. | ||
| So if they cut that, I will not be able to afford to pay that. | ||
| So thank you, sir. | ||
| Have a great and wonderful day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, right now, we have to vote against this bill and we have to explain to the American people why they should demand that Republicans vote against it as well, because more and more people are going to lose Medicaid and they're going to lose their access to care. | ||
| Kids are going to lose their access to school lunches and snap. | ||
| It's going to be a disaster for our country and for so many people in our country. | ||
| And so we have to explain that now. | ||
| And then if the bill passes, like you mentioned, and people like you are having to be impacted by these cuts, we have to explain to the American people why that happened. | ||
| And that sounds like an obvious thing to do, but sometimes, whether it's this administration or other media outlets, they will spin it so that it's not the fault of this bill, but it's the fault of immigrants or other people, right? | ||
| And so I want to make sure that what's happening in D.C., all the bad things that are happening, impacting people like you at home, that we make it very clear why that happened. | ||
| And if we do that, I think, you know, people are going to get upset about this bill. | ||
| But we have to first try to kill this bill, and then we have to explain to people, if it does pass, all the bad things about this bill and how it's affecting people at home. | ||
| Several House Republicans have already said that if the Senate makes significant changes, brings it back to the House, they won't vote against it. | ||
| What are the chances that the bill, Republicans may do in the bill by themselves? | ||
| Yeah, you know, Republicans in the House have showed zero spine when it comes to standing up to this president. | ||
| Sounds like all he has to do is call them and threaten a primary, and then they'll get in line, even if it's things that are bad for their district or bad for our country. | ||
| And so, you know, I don't believe them. | ||
| I think that they'll get in line no matter what. | ||
| Our job is to help explain to them that they'll lose their jobs if they vote for this bill and stick with this president as much as they have already. | ||
| From Arizona, this is from Stephen. | ||
| Stephen, joining us on our Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Stephen. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I'm calling in regards to when Obama was president. | |
| They called him the deporter-in-chief. | ||
| And he was on the same pace Trump's on for deporting. | ||
| He didn't have to deal with 12 million, 20 million people. | ||
| When I was working in 2010, I worked at a car lot. | ||
| They came in and deported a guy who was there for five years. | ||
| So you guys are hanging your head that, oh, he's going after people that have been here for 20 years. | ||
| No, he's going after. | ||
| And you know, Obama didn't even say I'm going after the worst of the worst. | ||
| He went after regular people who broke the law. | ||
| You can look it up on YouTube. | ||
| He gave a great speech that if you come in this country illegally, you have to go. | ||
| And the second thing, Clinton and Gore, they fired 400,000 federal workers to balance the budget, and that was okay. | ||
| Now you guys are against waste, and that's why it's hard to hang our head on anything that your party says. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Stephen, Arizona, thank you. | ||
| Yeah, you know, two things. | ||
| I was in the Obama administration. | ||
| I was there in the second term. | ||
| First, when it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse, we cut far more waste, fraud, and abuse than this administration's cutting. | ||
| What this administration did is they fired the very people in charge of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse and replaced them with people who have a background in history of fraud. | ||
| And then they've created more waste and more abuse in this administration already. | ||
| And, you know, the Secretary of Homeland Security wants a $50 million private plane. | ||
| Isn't that waste fraud and abuse? | ||
| They're doing $200 million in commercials. | ||
| This is just one agency, right? | ||
| And so look at all the agencies. | ||
| There's tons of waste, fraud, and abuse now. | ||
| I don't buy that Doge as anything but creating more waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| And I've done work to actually fix it. | ||
| This can be bipartisan. | ||
| It's not just a Democrat or Republican initiative. | ||
| And on deportations, yes, Obama, I was there. | ||
| We did deport a lot of people. | ||
| I'll say this, though, that we didn't have mass people going around to people that disagreed with the president and kidnapping them essentially and detaining them for what they said, right? | ||
| This administration, this administration is going after people who are here legally, right? | ||
| We had one resident in Manassas, Virginia, who was a Trump voter who got detained because he was Hispanic, basically. | ||
| They thought that he wasn't a citizen. | ||
| And so that's what's happening. | ||
| This administration has been incompetent when it comes to immigration enforcement. | ||
| Before we let you go, it was yesterday that Representative Robert Garcia of California now became the ranking member of the Oversight Committee. | ||
| What do you think of that move? | ||
| Robert Garcia, I know him well, and he's going to do a great job. | ||
| And the Oversight Committee is going to have real oversight over this president when we're back in the majority and Robert Garcia is the chair. | ||
| Were you part of the near-attended hearing yesterday? | ||
| And what did you think about that effort? | ||
| I was not part of the hearing. | ||
| I've only heard reports about it. | ||
| So I'm looking forward to hearing more because I know we have more interviews coming up with former Biden administration officials. | ||
| Representative Suhas Subramanian, a Democrat from Virginia, a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Science, Space, and Technology Committees. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Hope you come back for a longer visit with us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll keep on taking your calls just to let you know what's happening at the NATO summit. | ||
| The president is expected to come out for a press conference. | ||
| That's some of the room that you'll see currently from reports in a closed meeting with the Ukrainian president talking about issues. | ||
| We are expecting the president to come out to participate in that press conference. | ||
| If it happens before the House comes in, we'll show you a bit of it, but we'll continue taking your calls up until that. | ||
| And then you can still call on the lines 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Bonnie in Georgia is calling on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Our guest has left us, but Bonnie, you're still on. | ||
| Go ahead with your comment or a question. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I just wanted to make a comment. | |
| We hear all the time about our bank accounts, our accounts on Google being hacked and getting passports and all our information. | ||
| What I'd like to know is why is it when Trump took office, they allowed Elon Musk to sneak his little Berry Mand of hackers into the United States Treasury, trying to get into the Social Security offices, all of our government offices that have all of our personal information, banking information and everything else. | ||
| They're allowed to get into all that, go through all of our information. | ||
| Now they want to sell our information to Palantir with some kind of a joke about trying to track illegal aliens. | ||
| I mean, how much of this crap are we supposed to have to put up with? | ||
| This is our federal government. | ||
| Why are they buying into seeing how much they can support corruption? | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| Do you want to save some money? | ||
| How about cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse that Elon Musk and his quote Doge team has put out here? | ||
| Okay, Bonnie Verin, Georgia. | ||
| By the way, there's a story in the New York Times this morning and others that one of those key members of the Doge team has resigned from government. | ||
| That's Edward Korstein, the 19-year-old who was hired by Mr. Musk to help slash that government bureaucracy. | ||
| More there if you want to look it up for yourself. | ||
| Kevin in Massachusetts, Independent Line, you're next. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Sorry, the congressman left, but I have a very basic question. | ||
| Hopefully you can answer it. | ||
| In layman's terms, can you explain why 23rd, 1913, creation of the Federal Reserve, how come whether or not we have Republican or a Democrat in charge, Congress, it doesn't matter, that that always goes up. | ||
| And then a second question would be his personal beliefs or your personal beliefs, if you can, about do you even believe in, do you have faith in the dollar? | ||
| Because it's backed by faith and credit. | ||
| That's the two words, faith. | ||
| Faith that everyone will get up to and go to work. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then does the big beautiful bill have any effect whatsoever on the powers of the Federal Reserve? | ||
| Is there anything going on there? | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| Thank you all. | ||
| We'll listen to your answers. | ||
| Kevin, I won't answer those directly, but I will point you out to a hearing that we're taking today because you have so many questions about monetary policy. | ||
| And Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, expected for a second day of hearings talking about questions along the lines of what you asked, monetary policy. | ||
| C-SPAN 3 is where you can monitor that hearing starting in just a few minutes from now. | ||
| Also, the app at C-SPANNOW and C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Sam is next. | ||
| Sam in Massachusetts, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes. | ||
| My question was going to be for the congressman, but President Trump gave a two-week notice to Iran that they were going to bomb those nuclear sites. | ||
| Shouldn't a Congress voted on that if they could have voted on that in that time, but I noticed they did not. | ||
| Now they're complaining. | ||
| I mean, that's my thoughts. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sam in Massachusetts. | ||
| We will hear next from Laura in Washington State, Spokane, Washington, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My comment is that I feel they were talking about the Democrat values and how they're not living up to them. | ||
| Aren't because they don't work for this country, is what we found the Democratic Party has a basic problem with: is that they have these things that are so unworkable in our country that they want to push forward. | ||
| And the hate-mongering and the fear-mongering that constantly goes on over what this president is doing. | ||
| And so far, he's done quite well. | ||
| And we have revenue coming into our country for the first time in decades. | ||
| And a lot of other things, but mostly I wanted that gentleman to know that was on prior that it is the values of the Democratic Party that makes them that has put them in the lower bunk, you know, I mean, way down there in most of the country's eyes. | ||
| I mean, their popularity at this point is 21%, you know, because and his is somewhere in the ballpark of 54%. | ||
| You know, it's just their whole agenda is not, does not work for this country. | ||
| We don't want boys and girls' sports. | ||
| We don't want a bunch of money sent somewhere. | ||
| And we have to find out what's going on and why it is we're spending so damn much money and we're not getting anything for it. | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| In Michigan, this is from Line for Democrats. | ||
| David, hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Pedro. | |
| You do a great job. | ||
| I really like the way you handle it and make people stay on their correct lines. | ||
| The other hosts sometimes let them slide. | ||
| But anyway, I want to say I'm worried about the Medicaid cut that the Republicans are doing. | ||
| They're going to lie. | ||
| They're lying to the country saying they're not going to cut it, but that's their number one goal. | ||
| And my godson that moved from Flint to Dallas, he's a type one diabetic. | ||
| I'm worried about a healthy mindset. | ||
| Leave you there. | ||
| We take you to the President of the United States from NATO. | ||
| It was a fairly long trip, but worth it. | ||
| Tremendous things have been accomplished, as you probably noticed. | ||
| Listen to a lot of wonderful speeches from the heads of a lot of wonderful countries. | ||
| But I want to thank you for joining us at the conclusion of a highly productive NATO summit in the Netherlands. | ||
| I want to thank them for the royal treatment they've given us. | ||
| Couldn't have been nicer. | ||
| And it's a beautiful country. | ||
| Really a beautiful country. | ||
| Coming in, I saw the most beautiful trees. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In fact, I want to bring some back with me. | |
| I want to also thank, I had breakfast this morning with the king and queen and their incredible people. | ||
| I called, I said, you're central casting. | ||
| Beautiful people, great people, big, beautiful heart. | ||
| And I enjoyed that. | ||
| And also, NATO Secretary General Mark Rota, who's been terrific. | ||
| He's been a friend of mine. | ||
| He used to be right here running this wonderful country. | ||
| Now, is the NATO Secretary General? | ||
| He's doing a fantastic job. | ||
| And the Prime Minister, we appreciate everything you've done. | ||
| And as you know, last weekend, the United States successfully carried out a massive precision strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. | ||
| And it was very, very successful. | ||
| It was called obliteration. | ||
| No other military on earth could have done it. |