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No protection. | |
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MediaCom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then Tyler Pager of the New York Times and The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf discuss their new book on how Democrats lost the election to Donald Trump. | ||
| And Harrison Pittman of the National Agriculture Law Center at the University of Arkansas explains foreign investment in U.S. farmland and the Trump administration's agriculture security plan. | ||
| Also, James Barragon of Spectrum News talks about President Trump's visit to the site of the recent floods in Texas. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| On this Friday, July 11th, and welcome to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll begin this morning with severe weather. | ||
| We're in hurricane season and following up on the deadly flash flooding in Texas. | ||
| We want to hear from you this morning about your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| Here's how you join the conversation this morning. | ||
| If you live in the eastern central part of the country, call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain Pacific, your line this morning is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Texas residents, you can call in this morning and share your story at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Remember, you can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state, or post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Before we get to your calls this morning, let's begin with a Wednesday briefing by Texas officials on that flooding in Kerrville, Texas. | ||
| They've been facing questions over their actions surrounding preparedness in the hours and years before the Texas floods. | ||
| Here's an exchange from Wednesday between reporters and the Kerrville Mayor. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yesterday, Governor Greg Abbott said two days prior to the disaster, he had provided the town with more than enough resources to respond to the disaster. | |
| Where are those resources here at Lola Costello Estate? | ||
| They didn't see anyone until hours after the disaster. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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What resources did you guys have of why we send very new response? | |
| Okay. | ||
| I didn't see the governor's remarks. | ||
| I haven't seen the governor's remarks. | ||
| Last night we had a city council meeting, and I was required to be there. | ||
| And so I can't, I'm sorry, I don't know what resources TDEM had in place at that time. | ||
| I know when I arrived at the Emergency Operations Center on the morning of July 4th, there were TDEM personnel there. | ||
| But what assets they were able to use that morning, I'm sorry, I do not know. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. Mayor, listen, people are yelling. | |
| And I didn't really want to tell you. | ||
|
unidentified
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If you offer only three questions, then you're going to have to. | |
| And guess what? | ||
| You're in Kerrville and we're going to do it my way. | ||
|
unidentified
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I understand that. | |
| Morgan Chesky, please. | ||
| Mr. Mayor, records show that the concept of flood warnings have been discussed at least two dozen times by the county. | ||
| What's the biggest reason that these systems have not gone into place at this point? | ||
| You know, Morgan, you and I grew up here. | ||
| And I wasn't in office during those discussions. | ||
| And frankly, I'm more focused on the future than the past, as you know. | ||
| What I can say is the governor, the lieutenant governor, the Speaker of the Texas House have all provided us support and they have all said this is a priority for the upcoming special legislative session. | ||
| As mayor of Kerrville, as someone who grew up here, I'm grateful for their support and I look forward to what they propose during the special session. | ||
| From Wednesday's briefing with the Kerrville mayor talking about preparedness for that flash flooding, the deadly flash flooding with folks still missing as the response, the rescue and response continues down in Texas. | ||
| This morning we want to talk about your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| The local, state, and federal response. | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| You heard the mayor talking about or asked about the Governor Abbott. | ||
| Here's a Fox News headline. | ||
| Governor Abbott demands comprehensive overhaul of Texas flood warning system as the death toll rises. | ||
| We have a line this morning for Texas residents. | ||
| We'd like to hear from you about your experience with the flooding and your state's overall response to it. | ||
| From the Associated Press this morning, the U.S. faces more frequent extreme weather events across the country, but attitudes and actions aren't keeping up. | ||
| From the Associated Press reporting, the 10-year summer average of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Extreme Index, which tracks hurricanes, heavy rain, droughts, high and low temperatures, is 58% higher than it was in the 1980s. | ||
| Despite this grim trajectory, society isn't acting with enough alarm. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| What is it like where you live? | ||
| We want to hear from you this morning. | ||
| It's your turn to tell Washington what it's like for you, how it's been during severe weather incidents, and what it was like for the government response. | ||
| We've had wildfires in California, mudslides in California, Texas and Florida and southern states and along the eastern coast, hurricanes as well. | ||
| If you live in North Carolina, we want to know what it was like for you during the most recent hurricane and the government's response to it. | ||
| I also want to share with you the Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noam, and what she said about the responsibility for leading on emergency management. | ||
| Here's a portion of her remarks earlier this week before the FEMA Review Council. | ||
| That's a presidential council tasked with overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency. | ||
| You know, when President Trump first established this review council, the goal was very simple. | ||
| It was to provide recommendations on how to streamline and to right-size the federal government, especially in its role in disaster management. | ||
| Now, I was in Texas this weekend and was there dealing and working with the individuals who are experiencing this heartbreaking tragedy and saw firsthand the devastated families, the reeling community, the leaders that are there on the ground responding. | ||
| We certainly supported that immediately on search and recover efforts and partnered with the state and local governments to get Americans all of the resources that they need. | ||
| Working together, state officials like NimKid and the governor and his team, along with all the other agencies involved, have coordinated efforts that have rescued over 850 people. | ||
| We now currently have an ongoing flooding situation going on in New Mexico as well, which we are in communication with the governor on and continuing to work there. | ||
| And what President Trump has empowered us to do is to let these states and local emergency management officials run and make decisions that best respond to their communities, and we be a support that comes in and comes alongside them when they need us. | ||
| Federal emergency management should be state and locally led rather than how it has operated for decades. | ||
| It has been slow to respond at the federal level. | ||
| It's even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis. | ||
| And that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency. | ||
| We owe it to all the American people to deliver the most efficient and the most effective disaster response. | ||
| In fact, some of how we've responded to Texas is exactly how President Trump imagined that this agency would operate, immediately making decisions, getting them resources and dollars that they need so that they can conduct the response that they need to do on the ground. | ||
| This job of remaking this agency is not nearly as simple as it should be because we're up against decades of gross mismanagement and negligence. | ||
| The list of FEMA's failures is staggering. | ||
| The scale of those failures is matched only by their longevity. | ||
| Christy Noam recently at a FEMA review council, she's the Homeland Security Secretary, talking about whose responsibility is it? | ||
| You can respond to the Homeland Security Secretary as well in our first hour of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Ron Lipp on Facebook says, How much responsibility should state and local governments bear? | ||
| Unless it is severe, this should be a function of state and local level. | ||
| So many times, the lower levels of government rely too heavily on the federal government to take care of the response. | ||
| We want to hear from you this morning your experience with severe weather and what was the response from local and state officials. | ||
| Do you think they relied too heavily on the federal government? | ||
| Related to FEMA this morning, front page of the Washington Post, constraints hampered FEMA in Texas. | ||
| Budget limits at the Homeland Security Department delayed FEMA's Texas deployment, according to officials. | ||
| Two days before torrential rains turned the Guadalupe River into a raging flood, a veteran official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency told the Washington Post that one of the main concerns for this disaster season was the agency's ability to quickly deploy specialized search and rescue teams. | ||
| The Trump administration's new rules mean disaster specialists can no longer make decisions on their own. | ||
| The official then watched it happen in real time in Texas. | ||
| Deployments of critical resources such as tactical and specialized search and rescue teams were delayed as a result of a budget restriction requiring that the Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noam, approve every purchase, contract, and grant over $100,000, according to dozen and current former FEMA employees. | ||
| First call this morning goes to John in Eastern Pennsylvania. | ||
| John, what has been your experience with weather and the government response to it? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I live, I called earlier a long time ago. | |
| I lived out on the Delaware River, okay? | ||
| And in the mid-90s, we had two major floods. | ||
| In one year, in six months, there were two major floods. | ||
| FEMA fixed my heating system and everything downstairs in the basement. | ||
| No charge. | ||
| Second flood. | ||
| I had to take out a low interest loan through FEMA to do it again, to fix it again in their six-month period. | ||
| They were fabulous. | ||
| I mean, if Trump doesn't want to take care of the people that are here, then they should set up zoning. | ||
| Just because a stream is two feet wide and barely has water in it doesn't mean it's not going to flood. | ||
| So, John, you live in a flood. | ||
| You live in a flood zone, it sounds like. | ||
| So, what do you mean by set up zoning? | ||
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unidentified
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See, I live on the river. | |
| Okay, I have 90 feet of river frontage, okay? | ||
| And then I have a highway, 611, that runs between my property. | ||
| So, I'm on the other side of the highway, not the riverside, the other side, mountainside. | ||
| And it's just my basement's at road level. | ||
| Technically, I don't have to carry flood insurance because the highway is the border between the flood zone. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So, so that does, but the highway doesn't protect you. | ||
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unidentified
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Riverside, you have to carry flood insurance, and that's expensive. | |
| Okay, I was lucky, but not everybody's going to be that lucky. | ||
| What I'm saying is zoning in states like Texas, New Mexico, and they think they got a bill way out in the country. | ||
| They want the freedom, they want to see the stars, and they don't want to smell the smog. | ||
| But there's no thinking of where they're putting these houses. | ||
| All right, John in Eastern Pennsylvania. | ||
| Sounds like he had a good experience with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. | ||
| Sorry, John. | ||
| Yeah, we heard your point. | ||
| But also calling for zoning. | ||
| Do you agree, disagree with John? | ||
| Mike, Indianapolis, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I blame Trump, Elon, and Doge for all these cuts to the NOAA. | |
| They got a lot of blood on their hands. | ||
| I mean, the exact same thing happened in 87. | ||
| They knew something like this was going to happen, but they chose to do nothing, and it's on them. | ||
| What do you mean they chose to do nothing? | ||
| Why is it on them? | ||
|
unidentified
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I read online where they said they didn't want any help, that they wanted to succeed a couple years ago, that they didn't want federal help. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Are you talking about Texas? | ||
| They don't want federal help for what? | ||
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unidentified
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For stuff like this, for the NOAA. | |
| And I mean, why did Doge get rid of that? | ||
| That's something people need to save lives. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mike, there in Indianapolis, this morning, we're asking you your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| Have you had a good experience or a bad one? | ||
| And which agency, at what level of government, was it local, state, or federal? | ||
| You heard that caller, Mike, in Indianapolis talk about the NOAA. | ||
| That's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. | ||
| At a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Neil Jacobs, the President's nominee to lead this agency, defended proposed budget cuts as he was asked about impacts on weather readiness. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
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Dr. Jacobs, the Trump administration wants to cut NOAA's budget by 27%. | |
| No climate, weather, sea grant, ocean labs, many other programs exempted. | ||
| Dr. Jacobs, yes or no. | ||
| Do you support these cuts? | ||
| Yes, I support the president's budget. | ||
| Dr. Jacobs, do these cuts improve the weather readiness of our country? | ||
| The cuts I believe you're referring to, a lot of that work is being transitioned from the research side to the operations side. | ||
| So the National Weather Service, the National Ocean Service, their mission, essential functions will continue. | ||
| I have a disagreement with you. | ||
| A 27% cut is going to have an impact because there's a definite ripple effect that occurs when that kind of funding is slashed because weather readiness without funding is an hallucination. | ||
| You can't cut something by 27%, even as the storms are enhanced as each year goes by without having that additional capacity. | ||
| So I do not agree with you on that issue. | ||
| From Wednesday's confirmation hearing with the president's nominee to head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. | ||
| If you missed that hearing, you want to learn more, go to our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Headline to share with you from Ipsos' recent poll. | ||
| Most Americans expect extreme weather events to become more frequent in the near future. | ||
| Do you agree with that polling that was done by Ipsos? | ||
| And also this from USA Today in their newspaper this morning. | ||
| Will a hurricane impact your state in 2025? | ||
| The odds get an update. | ||
| And there's some good news here. | ||
| Instead of nine hurricanes forming in the Atlantic basis in 2025, the new forecast calls for eight. | ||
| An average season sees seven. | ||
| Now, it breaks it down by state in USA today, so we can share that information with you. | ||
| What are the odds where you live? | ||
| We'll go to Jim in Grand Forks, North Dakota. | ||
| Jim, what severe weather have you experienced? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Greta. | |
| Are you reading me? | ||
| I am talking to you, Jim. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Great. | ||
| Nice to see you today. | ||
| I'm in the land of climate change. | ||
| That's what I call it. | ||
| That should be on the license plates. | ||
| I mean, right now I'll go out to work. | ||
| It's a little bit of an hour earlier here. | ||
| So when I head out in about a half hour, the sun will just burn me up today when I'm out in the field. | ||
| And then a lot many trees, not much shade as Pennsylvania, where I grew up. | ||
| And then about six months from now, it'll be 40 below zero. | ||
| So I call it the land of climate change. | ||
| Grand Forks, North Dakota is a city I never even knew existed. | ||
| I know we all know about Fargo and Bismarck. | ||
| It's a city of about 50,000. | ||
| This is a great example. | ||
| This city was basically destroyed by a flood. | ||
| And I wasn't here yet. | ||
| I was five years away from coming here, but it was destroyed. | ||
| Basically, incredible. | ||
| I see the pictures. | ||
| I've talked to so many survivors of it and how they dealt with it. | ||
| Bill Clinton came here to the Air Force Base. | ||
| And my girlfriend now was there at the Air Force Base and saw him come. | ||
| And what they did, they built these, they built these, we're on the northern Red River. | ||
| And I've been through a few floods here. | ||
| One in 2018, the entire park is flooded. | ||
| But they built some levees and they built a new park system with some great parks and bike trails. | ||
| And they have a giant levee there. | ||
| They did a pretty good job, I think, in the stories I hear about how they dealt with it. | ||
| What's typical of the Norwegians here, their stoic toughness and their basic, no, seriously, and the basic nature of who they are. | ||
| And when it comes to the, I've been hearing this for 25 years, Greta, about Every year, when there's a storm and we talk, we blame climate change. | ||
| And of course, there's nobody ever tells me the mechanics of how we're going to stop it. | ||
| I mean, fighting climate is like a blind man in a fistfight in a barroom. | ||
| You don't fight climate. | ||
| You cope with climate. | ||
| Of course, it's warming. | ||
| No Republican doesn't, we don't deny climate change. | ||
| We just deny that we're powerful enough to bend the Earth's temperature to our collective will. | ||
| We can't do that. | ||
| All right, so Jim, how do you think politicians, the decision makers, should respond to it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, or prepare for it. | |
| For it. | ||
| Well, I really don't have a bunch of answers for that. | ||
| First of all, I remember in the 70s when I was a kid, up and through the 80s, In Search of NOVA, my science teacher, we all discussed the coming ice age, Greta. | ||
| That was supposed to be here by the 90s. | ||
| 1996 was supposed to be a great drop in temperature worldwide, and glaciers were supposed to be as far south as North Carolina by 1996. | ||
| Climate, we are contributing to it. | ||
| But the idea that we can alter it is we simply have to, you know, we simply have to, you might have to migrate. | ||
| You might not have to build that house right by that river. | ||
| I don't know what to say. | ||
| But you can't fight Mother Nature and the climate. | ||
| We had the last little ice age from 1200 AD to about 1700. | ||
| When I look at the history of the 1400s and 1500s, there were about 6 million people that died because of climate change, starvation, because of the little ice age. | ||
| There was massive amounts of migration. | ||
| There was wars. | ||
| There were these endless rains in England and Europe and Asia, disease. | ||
| And so climate always kills us as humans. | ||
| We've been fighting it for 10,000 years, and we will continue to fight it and cope with it. | ||
| All right, Jim, let me ask you something. | ||
| So what do you do? | ||
| Because you said you're going to go out in the field today. | ||
| So what do you do for a living? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I work in a mill, so I'm going to be going out doing some fence work today at a neighboring farm, but I work at a mill also. | |
| And what I mean is all these fields I'm in and with no shade. | ||
| There's very little trees out here, except for along the rivers. | ||
| And so I just kind of burn up out here, but it's incredibly hot and it'll be incredibly cold again. | ||
| Yeah, understood. | ||
| Let me ask you about Bill Clinton visiting Grand Forks in North Dakota when that flood happened. | ||
| What did it mean for the residents there that a president came to visit and tour the destruction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think he went up in a helicopter. | |
| I heard from my girlfriend, she was at the Air Force Base and she saw him. | ||
| She was within a few feet of him. | ||
| She said how handsome he was, of course. | ||
| And I hear so many stories about it. | ||
| You go down to the river and see these, they have pictures, like little displays about what happened. | ||
| They have a monument that shows how high it got, which is amazing. | ||
| But of course, it's been flooding here forever. | ||
| It may flood again, even with the levees here. | ||
| It could, but with a little bit less snow. | ||
| So anyway, hey, I don't want to talk for North Dakota people, Greta, but maybe climate change might be beneficial to North Dakota. | ||
| Longer growing seasons and less 40 below zero. | ||
| I'm sure it sounds like, Jim, you would appreciate that. | ||
| Jim and Graham Force Missouri, I'm going to leave it there because we have other calls waiting. | ||
| And I want to use your example of Bill Clinton visiting North Dakota to note that President Trump today will head to Texas and with the First Lady. | ||
| The two of them will be there and they'll participate in a roundtable with first responders and local officials at 2.10 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| That's 2.10 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| He'll depart the White House with the First Lady around 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| And if he stops and talks to reporters at that departure, we'll bring you that live here during the Washington Journal. | ||
| Let's go on to Fred in Arkansas. | ||
| Fred, your experience with disasters, weather disasters, and how did the government respond? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you for having me. | |
| Yes, I'm, by the way, just I was in the Marine Corps, but I happen to be a liberal and I'm from Arkansas who Bill Clinton, I've met him several times. | ||
| He's a good man. | ||
| I think he was, he had a problem with some other stuff. | ||
| Now, my problem is very simple. | ||
| I think here in Arkansas, it would be very stupid to think that the government could take care of all of our problems here as far as weather is concerned. | ||
| I've been through two tornadoes myself, very close to them. | ||
| I'll talk about that if you'd like me to, but that's not important. | ||
| When we talk about the weather, it has to be localized. | ||
| Now, to me, Mr. Trump did what he needed. | ||
| He did the best thing he's ever done, as far as I'm concerned, because he doesn't do much, as far as I'm concerned, that would pass. | ||
| But if you turn the main responsibility for the weather over to the state, they know what's going on right then. | ||
| Then you go to the government and say, hey, we need $10 million here or else we're going to go under. | ||
| That's how we help the government. | ||
| I'm from D.C. originally. | ||
| My dad was government worker. | ||
| But anyway, all I want to say is we can take care of this locally, but we also have to have the backing of the federal government. | ||
| All right, Fred, so let me take on that argument because Randy Sherry on Facebook is saying what you're saying. | ||
| Local immediate response is most important. | ||
| FEMA is a post-response. | ||
| Listen to this article written, this piece written today in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal by a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California. | ||
| A flash flood of failures in Texas. | ||
| And this is what he writes: that the failure has been predictable and polarizing. | ||
| Some have argued that the National Weather Service did its job, while others blame federal budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. | ||
| But the blame falls not on either national party, but on state and local officials. | ||
| Local leaders debated installing siren systems for decades, but never built them because of costs and noise concerns. | ||
| So, Fred, if it's the local officials' responsibility and they fail in this case, is what this professor is arguing, then what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's where I come into it. | |
| I'm a citizen of Arkansas, and I better get on those people and say, get your, excuse me, get up and get off and get out there and help those people right now. | ||
| And you get out there too as a volunteer. | ||
| But the government can't do everything. | ||
| But I will say this: that's the first time I have said a good thing about Mr. Trump, President Trump. | ||
| Understood, Fred. | ||
| Let me go on to Jim, who's in Lawrenceville, Virginia. | ||
| Jim, your turn. | ||
| What's it like in Lawrenceville, Virginia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the river is, you know, within its banks. | |
| You know, we don't have a lot of flooding down here. | ||
| But I experienced, I think it was Katrina, and I experienced a snow blizzard in D.C. in about, I think it was 98 or something like that. | ||
| And the last call you hit on a word that rings in me, local. | ||
| And the corporate, I'm a 40-year broadcaster myself, radio. | ||
| And corporate America, the big businesses have bought up mom and pop. | ||
| See, there is no little guy no more. | ||
| One outfit will own 15 and 20. | ||
| Different. | ||
| I mean, it's like I said, well, that goes back to Ronald Reagan with deregulation of AFCC and FAA, but we need more local. | ||
| And it looks like they will not put the money out. | ||
| I work Katrina along with another guy, and we work like 12 hours apiece for days. | ||
| I was in D.C. | ||
| The radio station there had about 15 people, but only two could make it in. | ||
| So he would do 14, I do 10, I do 14, he do 10. | ||
| And we went on, and they called the other guy the radio bunny, the energizer bunny. | ||
| You know, how did we do it? | ||
| But, you know, being dedicated to broadcasting, we need local. | ||
| And they don't pay. | ||
| I worked my life in danger with a computer. | ||
| I mean, a generator, and we stayed on the air. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if you look at, I think it was Ford just last year, he don't even want, they didn't want to put AM radios in the car. | |
| All right. | ||
| Jim in Lawrenceville, Virginia, with his point that it comes down to local broadcasting to help with these situations of emergencies in your local communities. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts this morning on your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| Whose responsibility is it? | ||
| And what has it been like for you in the past? | ||
| We'll get to more of your calls coming up here. | ||
| But in other news, I want to share with you, President Trump sits down in an interview with NBC. | ||
| And the headline this morning is Trump Ready's blanket tariffs as he brushes off inflation worries. | ||
| In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, Trump talked about tariffs, sending Patriot missiles to NATO for Ukraine and how he'll sell his recently passed Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| That's the headlines coming out of that interview with NBC. | ||
| And then related to that is the Washington Times front page story about tariffs. | ||
| It says Trump bullish on keeping tariffs in place. | ||
| Treasury reports $98 billion in revenue from levies and inflation has stayed in check. | ||
| The Treasury Secretary said this week that tariff revenues could increase, exceed $300 billion by the end of the calendar year. | ||
| And if Mr. Besson's prediction proves true, that would mean tariff income would blow past the $200 billion estimate forecasted by the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget. | ||
| So that's in the Washington Times this morning on that. | ||
| And then there is also this headline this morning in the Washington Post front page. | ||
| It's in many of the newspapers this morning. | ||
| The president's order is blocked again. | ||
| Birthright ban in a class action suit. | ||
| A federal judge in New Hampshire on Thursday placed a new nationwide block on President Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship, a decision that came two weeks after the Supreme Court opened a path for the administration to begin enforcing the order. | ||
| The decision represents a fresh setback for the Trump administration in its efforts to begin implementing the president's executive order that would deny automatic citizenship to the children born in the United States. | ||
| So that's the front page of the Washington Post this morning in that news. | ||
| Speaking of the Supreme Court, Justice Jackson says the state of our democracy is what keeps her up at night. | ||
| Here she is in a conversation at a bar association event in Indiana yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What keeps you up at night? | |
| would say the state of our democracy. | ||
| I would say that I am I am really very interested in getting people to focus and to invest and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government. | ||
| Supreme Court Justice Katania Brown Jackson there in a conversation with the Association Bar in Indiana. | ||
| You can watch our coverage of that in her entire remarks. | ||
| If you've got our website, cspan.org. | ||
| One more headline to share with you in other news this morning. | ||
| The president says that he'll have a big announcement. | ||
| He said this in the NBC interview on Monday about Russia. | ||
| News analysis from the New York Times thinks that Trump seems to be warming to a call for new Russia sanctions. | ||
| So perhaps that is what he announces on Monday. | ||
| He teased that announcement in his interview with NBC News. | ||
| Back to our conversation with all of you. | ||
| We're talking about your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| John, let's hear from you in Wisconsin. | ||
| John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Granna. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'm fortunate enough living in Wisconsin that the only severe weather we have here that does very major damage is a tornado. | ||
| There have been floods before, like the biggest one I can remember was when the shoreline broke in the Wisconsin Dells and the Wisconsin River and drained Lake Jones. | ||
| I think that, in my opinion, same thing with hurricanes and the coastline. | ||
| I have a relative that lives in the center part of lower Panhandle of Florida. | ||
| And, you know, he's never, he's been down there for decades and never really had a bad experience with a hurricane where he had major damage. | ||
| I think that, you know, I mean, rivers, towns were built on rivers back in the early days of our country's founding because they were used for navigational purposes and they used the flow of the water for power and generation and other things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think nowadays with, you know, the travel ending, you should be a quarter of a mile off of a riverbank or at least a quarter of a mile inland from a shoreline where a hurricane could hit to help prevent the catastrophic damage we see. | |
| I mean, this is just, my heart goes out to those people in Texas. | ||
| It's just, it's terrible. | ||
| It's absolutely terrible. | ||
| And one other thing is NOAA radios. | ||
| You know, like around here in Wisconsin, they always have a weather radio because they'll go off in the middle of the night, but then they get kind of annoying. | ||
| You know, well, there's a tornado warning in the county adjacent to me. | ||
| Well, tornadoes are typically anywhere from 100 yards wide to a major one, would be make, you know, half a mile wide or a mile wide, a big, huge one. | ||
| But that's a county away from me is 40 miles away. | ||
| And they get to the point where it's constantly going off and they get to be an annoyance. | ||
| But I think it relies on state and local government. | ||
| I think the federal government should have limited access, like some of your previous callers have said. | ||
| I totally agree with them. | ||
| They should come in and help out with monetary and whatever they can do after the fact, and they can flood, you know, help people out. | ||
| But it's been basically, it should be a local and state issue at first because that's when our country was founded on was on self-reliance and people take care of each other, church organizations, volunteers get together, come together, people come together. | ||
| We'll come together as a nation for responses for things like this. | ||
| All right. | ||
| John in Wisconsin with his thoughts. | ||
| Steven, Anaheim, California, let's turn to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Marty, good to have them spoken to you in a week of Sundays. | |
| You know, before I go on here, I want to appreciate you having the lawyer Ron to explain why when the United Nations make a ruling that the other countries don't abide by. | ||
| That was like six months ago you had him on there. | ||
| Really appreciate that segment. | ||
| Okay, I want to answer the question to the guy in North Dakota. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Out here, the last time I called, we were having fires, which destroyed Downey, Laguna, and other rich communities. | ||
| Now, I would like to remind you that that was in the middle of winter that we had these fires. | ||
| Okay, now we have more fires out or that are burning out of control. | ||
| And Trump decided that we're not going to get any money from the federal government to help put out these fires because he doesn't like nuisance. | ||
| Okay, now we have cars or engines that will run on water. | ||
| We have batteries that you can put in your house that will run your house for 40 years. | ||
| We know if we take hydrogen and mix it with carbon from the air, taking carbon out of the air, that we can create jet fuel. | ||
| All these wonderful ideas have already been developed out here, yet they don't get implemented because we get stuck with people who do not believe in climate change. | ||
| They think we just can keep burning fossil fuels and nothing will happen. | ||
| You know, this goes on and on and on. | ||
| But that's about it. | ||
| I don't want to go rambling on too far here, Brett. | ||
| All right, Steve. | ||
| I'll leave it at that and share with you and others up on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Wildfire response and preparedness was a topic of discussion at yesterday's Senate hearing with U.S. Forest Chief Tom Schultz. | ||
| California Senator Alex Padilla asked him about the capabilities of wildfire prevention programs and expected budget cuts. | ||
| Past fires in California, including Santa Rosa years ago, Los Angeles more recently. | ||
| These are the types of programs that we should be supporting. | ||
| I asked you about the FY25 numbers. | ||
| Do you know what the FY26 numbers? | ||
| My understanding is the president's proposed budget zeroes out this program. | ||
| How does that make any sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, Senator, I think what the intent of that program in 26 is to transfer that responsibility to the states. | |
| That's the intent of that. | ||
| And then giving the state some heads up that that's coming. | ||
| Look, guys, every state that I'm aware of is having a tougher budget picture to face. | ||
| The threat of fires is real. | ||
| The threat of fires is growing. | ||
| How does it make sense for the federal government to zero out these programs that you said are so critical? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, we would still be partnering with the states in dialogue and discussions, but the transfer- But you're zeroing out the resources. | |
| How does that make any sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's sharing that responsibility and pushing that to the states. | |
| You're pushing it to the states that have less resources to work with. | ||
| How does that make any sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In a sense, it makes sense because it's putting that responsibility on the states to make those decisions locally. | |
| Look, it may be residents of California or Utah or other states in between. | ||
| These are all Americans. | ||
| Communities in the United States of America that are at increased risk because of the actions of this administration which contradict the supposed goals and objectives. | ||
| Once again, you hear the debate there at that hearing happening yesterday on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Is it the federal government's response or is it state and local? | ||
| And you can hear a theme there from the Trump administration that they want to push the responsibility to the local and state officials. | ||
| Do you agree with that or disagree with that because of the experience you've had in your community with severe weather? | ||
| All of that part of the conversation this morning in our first hour of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Here is one Kevin who texts us this: the floods we had in the state of Connecticut. | ||
| FEMA was in the state before the floods hit. | ||
| The state and the local government were warning the people days before the rain came. | ||
| Getting rid of FEMA is not the answer, Kevin says. | ||
| Ted in Raymond, New Hampshire. | ||
| Ted, good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead and share your story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I've been a public works employee for 30 years. | ||
| I've been on national emergencies in the state. | ||
| And a lot of the problems I see is the lack of communication between departments. | ||
| Like, for one thing, if you have major burnoffs and the soil can't retain the system and you get these heavy rains, it's going to wash everything down, just like ash. | ||
| And also trees and everything. | ||
| You're going to have dams. | ||
| A lot of towns look to federal funding because in the long run, it comes down to the burden of the taxpayers, property owners. | ||
| They can't afford it. | ||
| That's why they look at the bigger pot for the federal government, state, and counties all pitching in. | ||
| And far as a lot of these catastrophes I've seen in experience, the ones that were built years ago near the river never had the climate like we have now. | ||
| The worst one here was in 1938, the big flood. | ||
| But build-in permits is a local problem. | ||
| A lot of people get permits that shouldn't have them and shouldn't have got them back then. | ||
| The flood zone, common sense says if you're in a flat, low area and there's a ridge line where the hills or higher ground starts, don't build below that high ground. | ||
| That doesn't make sense. | ||
| Water will always seek its level and will take out anything in its way. | ||
| And if you have the perfect storm like the 100-year flood we had here, any soil, any tree, anything in its way, water has a force beyond anything that we can comprehend. | ||
| I blame a lot on local permits. | ||
| I blame a lot on people getting the facts like the government and ignoring it until you have a disaster and then react and say, oh, gee, what happened? | ||
| They know the potential. | ||
| These are the people that process everything. | ||
| You know, your universities tell them, be careful, beware. | ||
| Some are taking dams out, make a stronger flow. | ||
| These are things I have seen. | ||
| I've been almost killed myself in Hurricane Gloria. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Ted, I'll leave it there to go on to Gilbert, who's in Birmingham, Alabama. | ||
| Gilbert, your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Thanks for C-Stan. | ||
| My prayers go out to the people in Texas. | ||
| The previous caller made so many excellent points. | ||
| I experienced a hurricane here in Birmingham back in 2001. | ||
| And what most people don't realize is that when you get the FEMA assistant, it's a matching fund. | ||
| The states have to put up 20%, and the federal government put up 80%. | ||
| Now, during the time, Bob Rod, who just happened to be a Republican, he was one of the best governors in Alabama when it came to storms. | ||
| But when you think about the fires in California, the storms that have happened in Japan, Missouri, and Hurricane Sandy, this country has as much to do with FEMA being a safety net for the people who are not in shooting. | ||
| And then you take FEMA away from America. | ||
| Could you imagine all these hundred-year storms and once-in-a-lifetime storms, all this destitution across the night? | ||
| What are the Corps of Engineers? | ||
| Who's going to help the people get back on their feet? | ||
| After all, there's a taxpayer's money anyway. | ||
| All right, Gilbert. | ||
| And let me go back to the USA Today article in the newspaper this morning. | ||
| Will a hurricane impact your state in 2025? | ||
| For the state of Alabama, there's a 64% storm chance and a 32% hurricane chance. | ||
| There's also a 10% chance of a major hurricane tracking within 50 miles of Alabama. | ||
| Your states, several states listed here, and the percentage chance of a hurricane. | ||
| You can find it in USA Today, this morning. | ||
| Debbie in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning to you, Debbie. | ||
| Do you have a short story to share with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I mean, in our town, we're right next door to Hershey, and I've been here almost 30 years. | ||
| And whenever there's torrential rain, it always floods in our town in different spots. | ||
| And due to money from the state and city, they never really had enough money to rebuild our town so that there wouldn't be floods. | ||
| And then people are talking about Noah. | ||
| Well, nobody's saying what Noah did two days before the Texas storm. | ||
| Noah went up and planted seeds in a cloud northwest of Texas, and they also dropped liquid iodine. | ||
| Where did you learn about that, Debbie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was on the news, actually, Wednesday night with Trace Gallagher from Fox News in California. | |
| And it was on the 11 o'clock segment at my time. | ||
| And the guy from NOAA admitted that they did that two days before the storm hit in Texas. | ||
| And they said that they, because of the drought, that they planted the seeds and the liquid iodine. | ||
| And Trace Gallagher said to him, well, don't you think you're playing God? | ||
| And he said, well, he goes, I'm a man of faith, and I think we're helping God. | ||
| And so they said that they do seeds in a cloud. | ||
| They do solar radiation manipulation and chemical manipulations to make it rain. | ||
| And honestly, I think part of the floods had to do with that cloud that came over from the northwest to Texas. | ||
| And they already knew two days before that there was potential floods that could happen in Texas. | ||
| And I think they should have canceled all events to protect everybody, and this would have prevented all these deaths. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Debbie there in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Daniel in Marble Falls, Texas. | ||
| Daniel, where is Marble Falls, Texas? | ||
| Are you close to the flooding? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So Marble Falls is off the Colorado River in the Hill Country. | ||
| That's in Williamson, Travis, and Kerr County in that area. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what was it like for you? | |
| So I just wanted to say that, you know, they keep calling it a 100-year flood, but I mean, I've lived there in the last, you know, 20 years or so. | ||
| And we've had three hundred-year floods in the last 15 years. | ||
| And that whole LCRA, you know, Lower Colorado River Authority, and they manage the power plants and all the things along there. | ||
| And supposedly it was all engineered by the Army Corps of Engineers. | ||
| And they keep calling it a 100-year flood. | ||
| But in the last 15 years, we've had three of those. | ||
| And then one of them was a 500-year flood. | ||
| So I completely agree with getting rid of the federal regulation around FEMA because obviously if they're not getting the job done, then you have to put that pressure on the state. | ||
| But you also have to give them the resources to be able to act and do that. | ||
| And so I just think the whole process or everything in general needs to be rethought because a hundred-year flood, three times in 15 years, like the math seems a bit off to me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Daniel, Marble Falls, Texas, there. | ||
| Chris Herman on Facebook says, I believe it's a mistake to downsize FEMA. | ||
| Making systems more efficient surely can be done, but there's absolutely nothing cost-effective when responding to major weather-related incidents. | ||
| The scale of these events precludes a local municipality or state commonwealth from responding in a rapid manner with enough assets to make an immediate impact. | ||
| Sam in Ashburn, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning to you, Sam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes, I'm here. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Talk about otherwise, I'm sorry for what happened in Texas, but I don't think that should happen. | ||
| Remember, back in 1993, Great Flood in the U.S. | ||
| I remember somebody called that too. | ||
| I was a student at Kansas State in my house in Klantas. | ||
| At that time, police, there was no contact, right? | ||
| No telephone, nothing. | ||
| Police just are only staring around the neighborhood out to the shelter. | ||
| I thought. | ||
| I think that we rely too much on technology inside of the human sector. | ||
| People are not doing a good job, but communication is broken. | ||
| So that's my concern. | ||
| It shouldn't happen at all. | ||
| All right, Sam. | ||
| Robin, Cleveland, Tennessee. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to say, has anybody realized that we never had a problem with FEMA until Donald Trump came on the scene? | ||
| FEMA was doing everything that they needed to do until Donald Trump started complaining about FEMA and convincing people that they didn't need it. | ||
| Robin, do you remember Hurricane Katrina and the fallout and the backlash against FEMA then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but I think they worked to fix that. | |
| Kyle Fugett, that was the FEMA administrator during that time, is from my hometown in Edelwild, Tennessee. | ||
| So, I mean, what we got to do is supposed to coordinate together. | ||
| Everything's supposed to coordinate together with the federal government being on the ground helping reinforce the state and the local governments. | ||
| We never had issues about defunding FEMA until this liar came into office. | ||
| So he told the people they didn't need FEMA. | ||
| So all these people that are in hurricane zone, flood zones, and now y'all know we need FEMA. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Robin. | ||
| Cindy, Hampton, New Hampshire. | ||
| Cindy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| Yeah, I live in Hampton, but I live on the beach, and I live on the beach between the beach and the marsh. | ||
| And Seedbrook Nuclear Power Plant is right next door, like not even five miles away. | ||
| So they have an assessment, the power plant does, of the evacuation zones. | ||
| And the last one that was done, they found that in an emergency, especially a flood, and I live in a flood zone too, where even the emergency people, because we only have Route 1A, which is right along the ocean, we have Route 1, which is on the other side of the marsh, and that's where the nuclear power plant, like the main road, is, and then 95, | ||
| which is even further inland. | ||
| But my thing is for the future, like if something happens catastrophically about the power plant, well, even the power plant said we can't even get our officials in if something happens, wickety split, | ||
| because of the situation of the routes that come into, you know, the Hampton Beach area, all along this seaboard, right here in the seacoast in New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts seacoast. | ||
| So it's like what they should like how they said about Texas with the emergency warning system. | ||
| We have a pretty good one here, but I think we haven't had to use it. | ||
| So, but we do have like an annual or two times a year testing of the system. | ||
| But it's still like not adequate. | ||
| Like there's the evacuation zones haven't really been updated or whatever. | ||
| And it's only like a one-way street in or out. | ||
| Either way you go, Route 1 or Route 1A or even 95. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Cindy, you might be interested in this Wall Street Journal article, you and others. | ||
| U.S. struggles to get disaster alerts right despite technological gains. | ||
| And they write that technological advances in this country's, the country's patchwork of digital and physical emergency alert tools is often a step behind Mother Nature with deadly consequences. | ||
| There were repeated flash flooding warnings in Kerr County, Texas as rain moved in and the Guadalupe River surged at the start of the July 4th holiday weekend. | ||
| Those alerts never reached some of the campers and residents who lacked cell phone service, silenced notifications, or didn't have phones with them. | ||
| And outdoor sirens were considered, but never built. | ||
| More than 100 people died. | ||
| And as we told you, that professor wrote a piece in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning saying they weren't, they weren't ever, those siren systems were never built because of costs and noise concerns. | ||
| Bruce in Athens, Tennessee, good morning to you, Bruce. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I was in Arkansas about 10 years ago. | ||
| My house was moved off the foundation 17 feet. | ||
| It's me and my two dogs. | ||
| Internet. | ||
| A tornado then tore up two chicken houses across the road and scattered 38,000 chickens all through the bushes and two houses were just gone. | ||
| That also damaged the house people lived in. | ||
| Bruce, is that why you're now in Athens, Tennessee? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, I'm in Athens, Tennessee. | |
| My daughter's place, granddaughter's place, because I'm 90. | ||
| My wife's 92, and she has dementia. | ||
| So I'm in Tennessee because my granddaughter's helping me with her. | ||
| But, okay. | ||
| Oh, I've got my. | ||
| You were talking about your experience and the tornado ripped up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now in Arkansas, I didn't have to talk to nobody. | |
| I called a house mover, moved my house back on the foundation. | ||
| It was a modular. | ||
| I had it moved in. | ||
| I chained the two steel frames together. | ||
| I didn't even have a broken window. | ||
| The back door was sucked off, and my dogs were there to suck them out. | ||
| I laid them up in another house I have about 3,000 feet away, and it wasn't touched. | ||
| My dogs were the little one was like a mudball, but neither one of them was hurt. | ||
| Nobody was hurt. | ||
| None of my neighbors were hurt. | ||
| There's a lot of trees down. | ||
| And to look out, I was looking out the back door as it was going on. | ||
| And tin and trees, I mean, just turn this sorely. | ||
| And it tore up the neighbor's house really bad. | ||
| Fortunately, he was up having coffee at the cafe when it happened. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Bruce's story there from a tornado experience in Arkansas. | ||
| Roland, Ellicott City, Maryland. | ||
| Roland, Ellicott City had a major flood not too long ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it was not so bad because, you know, everybody here, you know, we, you know, we definitely believe in science and we I wouldn't really like to talk about you know the Texas situation, you know, because nobody has ever, you know, nobody has raised the issue of the city's police departments. | |
| You mean no patrols anywhere near those campgrounds? | ||
| The city collapsed. | ||
| You mean the camp itself did not have security patrol for those keys? | ||
| They were just like seating docks. | ||
| Anybody could have just driven into this, to the campgrounds and just picked up keys. | ||
| I mean, I'm just wondering, what about the security situation around the campground itself? | ||
| Okay, Roland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| We'll go to Ryan, Clearwater, Florida. | ||
| Ryan, good morning to you. | ||
| Your experience with severe weather and the government's response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I went directly through Hurricane Irma. | |
| I mean, I literally went through the whole thing, went through the eye, rode it out in a packing house out in the farm because all the shelters allowed animals, and I'm highly allergic to animals. | ||
| So first of all, I'd like to see the counties quit allowing animals into the shelters when there's people that need to be in the shelters and can't be. | ||
| Secondly, I went through, I lost everything in Hurricane Ian. | ||
| In both instances, I can tell you that FEMA nor any government agency helped us whatsoever. | ||
| If I wouldn't have prepared ahead of time with water and food, I would have died. | ||
| My wife and I would have died out there because FEMA is useless and always has been. | ||
| The answer is people need to prepare for themselves. | ||
| The old Boy Scout motto, which is be prepared, is literally a lifesaver. | ||
| People need to go out. | ||
| They need to always have food and water supplies ahead of time. | ||
| If people would prepare, we would not have disasters. | ||
| In Florida, we have so many tourists that go down there and think it's a paradise. | ||
| And then when a hurricane happens, they're not prepared. | ||
| And that's why we run out every time we run out of food and gas. | ||
| The governor needs to put a ration on gas. | ||
| If the governors would put rations on food, I mean, on water and gas, we wouldn't have a crisis. | ||
| But people go down there from New York and California, never experiencing a hurricane, and they buy every single ounce of gas. | ||
| So you have a crisis before a hurricane ever even hits. | ||
| All right, Ryan. | ||
| Let me go on to Rachel in Houston, Texas. | ||
| Rachel, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with extreme weather. | ||
| I was in the Memorial Bay flood in 2015. | ||
| Flooded. | ||
| That was the first time I ever flooded. | ||
| That was terrifying. | ||
| You know, fortunately, FEMA came and did help me with assistance with that flood. | ||
| Following that, there was Hurricane Harvey. | ||
| We almost flooded. | ||
| However, I would say that when they called to make evacuation plans, I was told that they weren't servicing our area, that they weren't servicing our zip code, which was a little strange to me because our neighbor had called and had asked for an evacuation. | ||
| So then there was extreme weather in 21 with a freeze that caused our house to flood. | ||
| And then last year, we had Hurricane Beryl. | ||
| And for the longest time, we were told we don't need to worry about Beryl. | ||
| It wasn't going to come here. | ||
| Well, sure enough, I have a family member who uses an oxygen compressor, and the alarm started going off. | ||
| We lost power. | ||
| I called the CenterPoint, the energy company, about that. | ||
| At that time, I was told that they didn't have any reports of outages. | ||
| Well, unbelievably, we had no power for nine days. | ||
| And, you know, that was just unacceptable. | ||
| So, yeah, I've been through a lot. | ||
| My family's been through a lot. | ||
| Well, Rachel, thank you to you and others for sharing your experiences this morning here in the first hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're going to take a break later on in the Washington Journal. | ||
| The Trump administration rolled out a plan this week to crack down on foreign ownership of U.S. farmland. | ||
| We'll talk about that plan and the national security implications with Harrison Pittman from the National Agricultural Law Center. | ||
| Coming up next after the break, a conversation with Tyler Pager of the New York Times and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post about their new book, 2024, How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| At 6.45 p.m. Eastern, Financial Times San Francisco correspondent Patrick McGee shares his book, Apple in China, that looks at Apple's relationship with China and the impact of locating so many factories there. | ||
| Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, Joseph Churidian talks about his biography of Chinese President Xi Jinping's father, Zhi Xiangzhun, a leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party, in his book, The Party's Interests Come First. | ||
| And at 9.15 p.m. Eastern from this year's Freedom Fest, Ludlow Institute founder and president Naomi Brockwell, author of Beginner's Introduction to Privacy, talks about the lack of privacy in the digital age and recommends ways for people to preserve it. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| We want to welcome to our table this morning Tyler Page. | ||
| He's co-author of the new book, 2024, How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. | ||
| He's a reporter with the New York Times and White House correspondent. | ||
| Joining him is his co-author, Isaac Arnsdorf. | ||
| And Isaac Arnsdorf is a Washington Post senior White House correspondent. | ||
| Your third co-author is Josh Dossi of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Thank you both for being here. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Let's just start overall, Tyler. | ||
| There's many books that have been written about 2024 and the campaign. | ||
| How is yours different? | ||
| Yeah, so we set out to write the comprehensive and definitive story of the 2024 election. | ||
| And there's a lot of material out there. | ||
| There's a lot to be read. | ||
| But we think that this book is the one to read because it takes you through the entire two-year election cycle. | ||
| It doesn't just start with the fateful debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. | ||
| It starts with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago to retrieve classified documents. | ||
| And it starts before the 2022 midterms, where there are Democrats eager and plotting to run for president, believing Joe Biden will not. | ||
| And so it takes you from those two critical juncture points through the inauguration of Donald Trump. | ||
| And it's important to understand all of what's happening much before the debate to really understand what happened that night and how the election turned out as it did. | ||
| Yeah, Isaac, let's start then with the beginning of the book. | ||
| I just want to read a little bit from the book jacket before we do that. | ||
| On November 5th, 2024, Trump was elected the nation's 47th president and would return to power vindicated, emboldened, unrestrained, and burning for revenge. | ||
| I want to start with those adjectives, vindicated. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, Trump ran this election his way, and he won. | |
| For him to have campaigned openly on pardoning January 6th defendants, imposing tariffs, deporting millions of people, he views that, and to win the popular vote for the first time, which eluded him the first time, he views that as a license to govern even more aggressively than in the first term and take care of a lot of unfinished business and address a lot of things that he and his advisors regret from the first time around. | ||
| And we've absolutely seen that play out in the first six months. | ||
| Tyler, emboldened. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, one of the things that is a theme throughout the book, we start the book with Trump meeting with his lawyers on a separate criminal case. | ||
| And much of his last two years before taking office were consumed by legal challenges. | ||
| He, as we well know, spent much of those two years, you know, ragging against those criminal charges, saying they were bogus, unfair. | ||
| You know, the Justice Department was weaponized. | ||
| And he says, you know, our co-author Josh Dossi did an interview with him at Mar-Lago 10 days before the inauguration. | ||
| And he said to Josh, you know, if I had not won, my life would be very unpleasant. | ||
| So he is, you know, he saw the best path to freedom as winning the presidential election. | ||
| And so his ability to no longer have to deal with those criminal charges and his feeling that the American people sent him to the White House with a mandate, he feels that he's unburdened by some of the restraints he felt, as Isaac said, during the first term. | ||
| And particularly from that period in his post-presidency when he was a pariah. | ||
| I mean, one of the interesting scenes in the book is his presidential launch when he couldn't even get any senator, very few members of Congress to come. | ||
| And he went from that to having the whole world sort of sitting there at the inauguration celebrating his second term. | ||
| So Isaac, what would you add to unrestrained? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, part of the book looks at how he transformed the institutional Republican Party, clearing the way for his regaining the nomination, which was not at all a done deal if you think about how weak he was after the 2022 midterms. | |
| And that control over the party is how he's governing now as well, with the congressional majorities and the ability, even with a very small majority in the House, but a larger one in the Senate, to keep his Republicans in line. | ||
| And if you look at the Tom Tillis news, it seems like in every cycle there's one of those retiring Republicans who is using that opportunity to assert some independence from Trump, but keeps moving right because of how the party has transformed. | ||
| I mean, Tillis is not a corker. | ||
| Sticking with you, Isaac, burning for revenge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, Trump was very explicit about that in the campaign, and meaning it both in terms of himself personally, the people who he blames for the prosecutions, wanting to turn the heat back around on them. | |
| But he also talks about it in terms of a way that his supporters can identify the wrongs that they feel like the previous administration committed against them and wanting to turn that on its head and have the other side feel the pain. | ||
| And again, that's very, that's the way that he has approached the first six months. | ||
| Tyler, you mentioned the Mar-a-Lago raid. | ||
| How consequential was that for the president? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think it was hugely consequential. | ||
| We have reporting in the book about multiple Republican allies, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who told us that Trump was not dead set on running for a third time. | ||
| This was not something where it was automatically the day after he left office he was set on running. | ||
| He was thinking about it, contemplating it, and then the FBI search on Mar-a-Lago really was a critical juncture point where he saw the best path to his freedom as winning again. | ||
| And so definitely a determining factor in that decision. | ||
| Let me read from the book. | ||
| Finally, the Mar-a-Lago search forced Trump's hand. | ||
| It made me more resolute, he would later say in an interview for this book. | ||
| He wanted to get ahead of any possible indictments by officially declaring his candidacy, which he thought would help portray the charges as politicized. | ||
| Quote, he was not going to run until the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, said Doug Deason, a Republican donor close to the Trump family. | ||
| He was pissed. | ||
| He was stunned. | ||
| He then was going to run, and he was going to clean house at the DOJ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that focus, the realization of the personal stakes for Trump, kept him focused throughout the last campaign in a way that he lacked in his previous ones. | |
| And we're not saying that Trump was a disciplined candidate. | ||
| There are lots of times in the book where his aides are saying, talk about the economy, talk about the economy. | ||
| And he says, I don't want to talk about the economy. | ||
| That's boring. | ||
| He's not a disciplined candidate. | ||
| But there are other moments in the book where behind the scenes, when he's not performing for the cameras, he does demonstrate for himself, sometimes even more than his advisors, an ability to either let things slide or keep his eye on the ball because nothing quite focused the mind like the reality that if he lost, he might go to jail. | ||
| Like the Larry Hogan example. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there was a moment when we knew there was a verdict in the New York case, but before we knew what the verdict was, Larry Hogan, who was the former Republican governor of Maryland, who was running for Senate, not an easy Senate seat for the Republicans to win. | |
| So he came out and said, we should all respect the verdict. | ||
| And one of Trump's top advisors, Chris LaSavita, attacked him for that. | ||
| And when Chris saw Trump later, Trump said, lay off, Larry, we need the vote. | ||
| So actually it was Trump telling Chris, one of his advisors, We need to keep in mind the political strategy here. | ||
| And I think we're seeing that play out right now, right? | ||
| The congressman from Pennsylvania who voted against his one big beautiful bill. | ||
| Trump has spent a lot of time attacking Thomas Massey, but we have not seen that same sort of attack on the congressman from Pennsylvania. | ||
| In part, aides have told me because that congressman's district, Kamala Harris, won. | ||
| He's one of the few Republican congressmen who is in a seat that Kamala Harris won. | ||
| And so there's still, you know, Trump is, as Isaac said, not the most disciplined candidate, but he has become somewhat more strategic in his politics. | ||
| All right, we want to invite our viewers to join us in this conversation this morning. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Remember, you can text us if you'd like. | ||
| Include your first name, city and state, to 202-748-8003. | ||
| We've got the two co-authors of this new book, 2024, How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. | ||
| Beyond the president's decision to run for office again in 2024, the book also details the choice by former President Joe Biden to run for re-election, as well as the role that Vice President Kamala Harris played in the administration and her short campaign for the presidency. | ||
| Your questions, we'll take them this morning on all of that about this new book. | ||
| We'll go to Mike in Akron, Ohio, an independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mike, good morning to you. | |
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| Thank you for a C-SPAN. | ||
| I have a couple of points to make. | ||
| I had an epiphany on August 9th, 1974, the day that Nixon resigned. | ||
| I was just a month or two away from 2021 at that time. | ||
| And all the hate I had towards that man simply disappeared. | ||
| So I never hated Donald Trump. | ||
| I will never hate anybody again since that time. | ||
| And I am an independent. | ||
| But I do have a question about what happened right after January the 6th. | ||
| Of course, Trump was impeached by the Democrats. | ||
| And I was yelling at my TV, don't impeach him a second time. | ||
| Don't. | ||
| It is senseless because he'll be out of office in two weeks anyway. | ||
| And if you do that, he'll be back in office four years from now. | ||
| And that was proven right. | ||
| What you should have done instead is say nobody can ever run for president without revealing your tax returns. | ||
| Trump said he would back in 2016 before Hillary Clinton, before he beat her, said I would reveal them after the election. | ||
| He never has, and I feel like he never will. | ||
| Okay, Mike, I want to pick up on what you're talking about. | ||
| After January 6th, he loses the election because our two co-authors here, you write about his mental state, his emotional state after he lost the re-election. | ||
| Describe what he's doing down in Mar-a-Lago and the scene around him. | ||
| Yeah, he's sort of soaking and sad and dispirited and lost, basically, right? | ||
| He has left the White House out of power. | ||
| He's basically become a pariah in the Republican Party. | ||
| Republicans voted to impeach him because of that. | ||
| Liz Cheney, obviously, basically, you know, left or was pushed out of Republican leadership because of her criticism of him. | ||
| So he is a man without staff really around him, and he doesn't know really what's happening. | ||
| And this is a really critical time period where he reconnects with Susie Wiles, now the White House chief of staff. | ||
| She's commuting from a different part of Florida every week to sort of help him through this morass, this really challenging period in his life where he doesn't have anyone around him who he trusts. | ||
| And she's trying to walk him through why he lost the presidential election, who's grifting off him, how to get his inner circle back in shape to potentially run again. | ||
| As Isaac likes to say, it's like a coach training a prize fighter to get back into the ring and prepare for a presidential election. | ||
| And Trump really grows to trust Susie Wiles. | ||
| There's a lot of scenes in the book where people are asking him for different things, and he says, ask Susie, ask Susie. | ||
| I mean, that partnership has proved to be one of the most faithful partnerships in recent political history. | ||
| Now, Susie Wiles is the White House Chief of Staff, and Donald Trump is back in the Oval Office. | ||
| Isaac Arnsdorf, what is she telling the president about the 2020 election, though? | ||
| Because that's important, what you write in the book. | ||
| What is she saying to him about the loss? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one of the biggest messages that she was trying to get through to him was that he did not do himself and the Republicans any favors by criticizing mail voting and voting early. | |
| And, you know, whatever he thought about whether you could rely on, and we should say, there's no evidence that there's anything wrong with voting that way. | ||
| But in Trump's mind, that's what he was blaming for losing. | ||
| And she was taking him through the mechanics of the laws in different states and the operations. | ||
| You know, why, from the campaign's perspective, it's important for voters to be able to encourage voters to do that. | ||
| Finally, years later, they do manage to get him to stop attacking them and actually encourage it. | ||
| And there's a great moment where he says to someone privately, I still hate it, but I'm going to say whatever I need to say. | ||
| Well, they come up with a phrase that he likes, which is what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Swamp the vote. | |
| So this idea that, again, according to him, we know there's no evidence of this. | ||
| We know they're going to cheat. | ||
| And what we need to do is just turn out in such great numbers that you can overwhelm the cheating. | ||
| So that it's too big to rig. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then as soon as Election Day comes, he goes, he visits his headquarters and goes right back to attacking mail voting and early voting now that it's too late. | |
| We'll go to Lauren, Alexandria, Minnesota. | ||
| Republican, you're up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| January 6th thing, they put the wrong ones in jail. | ||
| Nancy Pelosig, the Democrats, and the FBI should have gone to jail. | ||
| They're the ones that staged that that's why she didn't want the National Guard there. | ||
| They thought that was one good way they were going to get rid of Trump. | ||
| All right. | ||
| John in Plainfield, New Jersey. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
| Good morning, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, one of the things I noticed is how the Democrats ran their campaigns. | |
| Because one of the things I don't think they've dealt with is the issue of black males. | ||
| I think one of the problems I saw in the campaign was she didn't go to Joe Rogan or other broadcasters. | ||
| And I think that was part of the problem, even with some of the staff. | ||
| And I think there was a lot of issues where she was handcuffed from the Democratic Party. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, John, you've touched on a lot of things that you guys wrote about. | ||
| So, Tyler, go ahead, take it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Rogan in particular has gotten a lot of attention because of the platform and the reach that he has. | ||
| We recount in great detail the sort of debate between Kamala Harris and her aid or Kamala Harris's aides about whether or not she should go on Joe Rogan. | ||
| They can't decide. | ||
| Some people say they're worried about it. | ||
| Ultimately, they agree that it's a good idea for her to do it. | ||
| But then there's like sort of scheduling snafu and it doesn't work out. | ||
| But I think the caller is exactly right. | ||
| There is great concern that Democrats have not done enough to reach voters outside of traditional media. | ||
| There's, you know, there is one of the things that I think we found in the book that's really interesting is a lot of Trump's success in the podcast were on not necessarily political podcasts, but more cultural lifestyle podcasts. | ||
| And those were sort of in the manosphere, you know, reaching men, young men, men of color. | ||
| But those same sort of podcasts on the left that are not explicitly political wouldn't exactly take Kamala Harris. | ||
| So if you think of Hot Ones or the Kelsey Brothers, those podcasts that they thought they could reach softer, maybe Democratic voters, independent voters, particularly men, there just wasn't that same sort of ecosystem for Kamala Harris to penetrate. | ||
| And that ultimately was a huge problem for her as it relates to the gender gap and her ability to reach men. | ||
| Tyler, you also, the three of you, write about the lack of media appearances by Kamala Harris and her indecision to talk to the media and what that led to. | ||
| Yeah, it was a source of concern for Democratic strategists and voters around the country who felt that they just didn't know Kamala Harris. | ||
| One of the things that the campaign said is, oh, she's doing a lot. | ||
| She's doing these big rallies. | ||
| There's a lot of energy and enthusiasm behind her ticket. | ||
| We don't want to curtail that with an interview where she says the wrong thing or sort of halt that momentum. | ||
| But for voters, the question was, well, what is she hiding? | ||
| And the Trump campaign really tried to exploit that by suggesting there was something that she was hiding. | ||
| And then we saw her go on the view and make that flub when she'd been running what Shadow just thought was a pretty flawless campaign. | ||
| Then she goes on the view and the one sort of question she really screws up is they say, what would you do differently than Joe Biden? | ||
| And she says, well, I can't really think of anything. | ||
| And the reason that's such a disaster for her is because Joe Biden is not popular with Democratic voters or the majority of voters around the country. | ||
| And so there was this effort to try to delicately separate herself from him. | ||
| And she really just stepped in it there. | ||
| And the shadow, the president's shadow essentially followed her. | ||
| Yeah, it loomed incredibly large. | ||
| And there was this ongoing debate about how and when to separate herself. | ||
| And there was two issues there. | ||
| One is Joe Biden, in particular, made it more difficult for her. | ||
| We have this really remarkable scene in the book, the day of the debate between Trump and Harris. | ||
| Biden calls Kamala Harris, ostensibly to wish her good luck. | ||
| And during that call, he also says, you know, I'm hearing from some friends that the way that you're campaigning maybe is a little disloyal to me and you should be careful, framing it as political advice, that if you criticize me, voters in Pennsylvania, where I'm very popular, are not going to like that. | ||
| Now, polling suggests that is not true. | ||
| Part of the reason Joe Biden was no longer on the ticket at that point was because he was not popular. | ||
| The other thing that Harris in her age struggled with was this issue of authenticity. | ||
| She had been framed as the second most important person in the White House in every decision, in every meeting, last person in the room. | ||
| That wasn't exactly true, but that's what the public narrative was. | ||
| And so the campaign struggled to figure out, well, if Harris was in the room supporting and making all those decisions, what do you say publicly that you disagreed with? | ||
| And how do you maintain that image of right-hand man to Joe Biden and now you're trying to run away from him just because now you're at the top of the ticket? | ||
| Isaac, another thing that Collar talked about was black and Latino voters. | ||
| You write about that issue in the book. | ||
| What did you find out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it was something that Harris was very concerned about and was convening meetings about before she took over the ticket because it was a problem. | |
| It was something that the Trump campaign was making a lot of noise about and a lot of Democrats weren't taking seriously. | ||
| But she was. | ||
| Her brother-in-law was when he was traveling around the country and saying, not only is the enthusiasm not there, but the organizations that turn out those communities need money. | ||
| They're underfunded. | ||
| They can't do the work. | ||
| And, you know, there was good reason to be skeptical of the Trump campaign strategy. | ||
| And obviously, you know, they did not win a majority of black men, but they absolutely made a difference. | ||
| And, you know, between between black men, Latinos, and young voters just made it, not only got Trump over the finish line, but set the coalition that the Democrats have been counting on for decades so off base that you see the Democrats in the situation that they're in now, they don't really know who they are or what they stand for. | ||
| We'll go to Kenny in Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Your turn, Kenny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey. | |
| Yeah, I was going to ask your two guests. | ||
| I mean, have they wrote any books about Joe Biden and about all his files that he had in his little Corvette and want to know about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, they want to harp on everything about Toronto Trump. | |
| And it's just unbelievable. | ||
| All right, Kenny. | ||
| Well, they did. | ||
| They talked about the classified documents that were found in the president's garage. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very extensively. | |
| Actually, one of the huge findings in the book, which hasn't been previously reported, is how, you know, the thing that everyone remembers from the Biden classified documents investigation is that line in the report that he seemed like a well-meaning older gentleman with a poor memory. | ||
| But what that actually distracted from was how close the special counsel came to charging Biden and his ghostwriter. | ||
| He had the evidence that the ghostwriter had hidden, had covered up, had destroyed the evidence, and that Biden had knowledgeably misplaced the documents. | ||
| And that was the only explanation for why he didn't think that he could get a conviction at trial, but not that he didn't think that a crime was committed. | ||
| Let's stick with the Her report, Tyler, and how does it come to light? | ||
| And does the White House know that it is going to be made public? | ||
| Describe that scene in the book. | ||
| Yeah, in terms of the discovery of the documents themselves. | ||
| No, actually the Her report and the mention of the president's memory. | ||
| Yeah, so there's a lot in the book. | ||
| And Kenny, I hope you buy a copy because you will see that we cover it quite extensively from the beginning to the end. | ||
| It is a through line throughout the entire campaign. | ||
| But so the report is going to be released and the White House is given by Robert Hearst's team four days to review the report to see if there's any mentions of executive privilege. | ||
| And they immediately see the line that Isaac mentioned where Robert Hurr describes Joe Biden as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| And they freak out. | ||
| They try to do everything in their power to get some of that removed. | ||
| They think the line they use at the time is that it's gratuitous. | ||
| It's beyond the remit of Robert Hurr and the special counsel to be describing Joe Biden's memory. | ||
| And there's a lot of back and forth between the lawyers at the White House, Joe Biden's personal attorneys, the Justice Department. | ||
| They try to go above Robert Hurr's head complaining to their attorney general. | ||
| And all of those requests are rejected. | ||
| But I think what's important is that Robert Hurr's reason for including that line, as Isaac said, is that is the reason he did not recommend charges. | ||
| And of course, the Department of Justice guidance is that you can't prosecute a sitting president. | ||
| So it would have had to be after he left office. | ||
| But he just felt like he had a case to make, but he was worried he couldn't secure a conviction because of that, that Joe Biden on the stand would present as a well-meaningly elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| And so even as the White House is melting down over the inclusion, that is her entire case is built around that idea, and that is crucial to this whole case. | ||
| Back to calls. | ||
| Jane and Clemson, South Carolina, Democratic Caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I just need to clear up a couple things once again. | ||
| The activity at Mar-a-Lago was not a raid. | ||
| It was the execution of a legal warrant. | ||
| And secondly, Donald Trump is an unrepentant, convicted criminal. | ||
| And we need not forget that, even if we don't like it, it's true. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Tyler? | ||
| Yeah, the use of the word raid is something that Donald Trump uses, and we're very careful to describe it, as I did earlier in the program, as a search. | ||
| And yes, I don't think any of that in terms of Donald Trump's criminal record is we're disputing. | ||
| It's actually a lot of the book talks about his criminal trials and New York. | ||
| Isaac was in New York for much of that case, covering the trial day in and day out, and is a huge part of the campaign. | ||
| And I think one of the interesting findings in the book, and this is something that Trump told our co-author, Josh Dossi, when he met with him at Mar-a-Lago, is even Trump was surprised at how many Republicans came to his defense after he was indicted during the criminal trial. | ||
| Those scenes of Republican lawmakers coming in and out of the courthouse, holding press conferences. | ||
| That is, I think, a critical juncture point. | ||
| And one of the interesting scenes in the book is when Ron DeSantis' team is looking at media coverage and saying they can't break through because all of the coverage is about Trump. | ||
| And they joke, maybe we should have Governor DeSantis arrested because that would be a helpful way to sort of get attention to the governor. | ||
| Anything to add to that since you were up in New York? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one of the amazing things that comes through in the book, we didn't know this at the time, is, you know, while Trump is on trial, he's stuck in New York. | |
| He can't campaign like he ordinarily would. | ||
| And the campaign takes advantage of that to what do candidates usually do when they go to New York? | ||
| They do fundraising. | ||
| And so while Trump is on trial for charges arising from basically the allegations are campaign finance violations, he's out raising money. | ||
| And we've got him on tape talking about how he's asking people for millions and millions of dollars. | ||
| You know, campaign finance rules, there's a lot that you used to not be able to do that you can do now. | ||
| One of the few things that you're still not allowed to do, technically, is a federal candidate cannot solicit contributions in excess of federal limits, which are, depending on the way they configure it, you can get almost up to a million dollars. | ||
| And Trump's on the tape actually saying, I know I can only ask you for a million dollars, but that's stupid. | ||
| I don't like that, and I want more. | ||
| You're richer, you can afford it. | ||
| And does he get it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, I mean, Trump, this is another change from the previous campaigns, the audacity of Trump's fundraisers. | ||
| I mean, some people at these dinners describe them. | ||
| It's not just him bragging on tape, actually, because we also have sources who have been to these meetings and talk about the, you know, kind of a shakedown. | ||
| You come in here, you offer me $5 million. | ||
| I think it should be $50 million. | ||
| We end the night with $25 million. | ||
| Meanwhile, what is the fundraising efforts like for Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, kick that back to Tyler. | |
| I mean, one of the reasons that they did the early debate was they were in real trouble with the money. | ||
| Yeah, one of the things I think is fascinating in the book is we have documentation of Joe Biden's campaign's financial struggles. | ||
| And so it has not been previously reported, but we have these documents that show they kept cutting their, they would set these fundraising targets and they kept cutting them back because they were not reaching their goals. | ||
| And as Isaac said, we have this memo in the book where his senior advisors make the case to the president that he should do an early debate in part because they were so worried about the financial you know, the financial situation on the campaign. | ||
| And another thing is there's the famous fundraiser that he does with George Clooney in Los Angeles that has gotten a lot of attention because a lot of the guests, including Clooney, were concerned about his appearance during that fundraiser. | ||
| In retrospect, many of Joe Biden's senior aides were racking their brain. | ||
| Why did we have him go twice to Europe, go to Wilmington as his son was on trial, and then fly right to LA for this star-studded fundraiser. | ||
| And they just said it was the only date that George Clooney and Julia Roberts could do together with the president. | ||
| And the campaign was in such dire financial straits that they had to raise that money. | ||
| We'll go to Johnny in Dearborn, Michigan, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was wondering what kind of role you think the Gaza-Israel issue played in the campaign. | ||
| And well, I would say here in Dearborn, it played a big role. | ||
| And we actually had a third party candidate, Jill Stein, show up quite a few times to the city. | ||
| And, you know, there was two groups in the Democrat or the Gaza issue. | ||
| One was called Uncommitted, and another was called Abandoned Harris. | ||
| And, you know, Uncommitted wanted to whine on the floor of the DNC. | ||
| But Abandoned Harris, they went with the third party. | ||
| And some reason, Uncommitted gets all the credit for what Abandon Harris did. | ||
| But what do you think about that? | ||
| All right, Johnny, thank you for that question. | ||
| Isaac, do you want to take it first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, one of the amazing, there's a, we're in New Hampshire with the Trump campaign, so he's wrapping up the primary and starting to look at the general. | |
| And they're looking at the, they're telling us they're looking at the Israel God, how that's ripping the Democratic coalition apart and just licking their lips. | ||
| We haven't even started pouring fuel on that fire yet. | ||
| And one of the things that Trump did was he would stand up at rallies or go to donors and say, anyone who protests Israel students on college campuses is going to revoke their student visas and kick them out of the country. | ||
| Look what he's done as president, by the way. | ||
| But at the same time, he's going to Dearborn. | ||
| He's going to Muslim American communities and saying, I'm the peace candidate. | ||
| I'm your vote to stop the war. | ||
| He's saying completely different things to completely different audiences, and he gets away with it. | ||
| And on the Democratic side, it was a hugely important issue. | ||
| I mean, I don't think you can underestimate what it did to the Democratic coalition, but also the impact it had on campaigning. | ||
| So it was both a political issue, but also an operational issue. | ||
| We write about in the book a number of examples. | ||
| Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, tells Joe Biden that this is going to be your Vietnam moment. | ||
| We also have General Malle Dillon, the campaign manager, saying that the war was hurting the campaign operations because a lot of presidential campaigns, a lot of political campaigns in general, are staffed by young people. | ||
| They require long hours, low pay, and often moving around the country. | ||
| And Joe Biden was not the most inspiring candidate for young people, but then the war in Gaza made that even worse. | ||
| And so it was hard for the campaign to recruit people to work on the staff. | ||
| And another thing I think is interesting is that this is the, as we were talking about earlier, Kamala Harris trying to break from Joe Biden. | ||
| This is one issue where Kamala Harris really disagreed with Joe Biden. | ||
| She thought he was too soft when it came to dealing with when it came with Netanyahu. | ||
| And she wanted to take a tougher stance, I mean, a more empathetic stance toward the suffering of Palestinians. | ||
| But she was told by national security officials that if she separated from Biden on this, it could make the hostage negotiations more difficult, that they had to present a united front publicly because the U.S. was engaged in a lot of diplomatic efforts to try to secure the release of hostages. | ||
| So as much, just to wrap up, yeah, as much as she wanted to break with him on this one issue, it proved to be quite difficult because of the diplomatic efforts underway. | ||
| We read at the beginning in the book sector talking about the president being unrestrained. | ||
| Conversely, Kamala Harris, from what you've written, what you're talking about today, is restrained in so many ways. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, you know, the six meetings about whether to go on Rogan is such a good example of that. | |
| But there are others in that period of the book where kind of I think a lot of people thought the vibes were great and the campaign was going well. | ||
| But it's kind of behind the scenes, they're paralyzed. | ||
| I mean, some of the other examples we have are how are they going to respond to people might remember the ad that the Trump campaign was running constantly about Harris's position on trans rights. | ||
| How are they going to respond to that? | ||
| Trying to come up with a response. | ||
| In the end, they don't. | ||
| They don't run any ads. | ||
| She does address it in a Fox News interview, but they don't run any ads on it. | ||
| She had an answer prepared in the debate. | ||
| They never asked about it in the debate. | ||
| She never got to give one. | ||
| Another great example, Trump was hitting her on her time at McDonald's. | ||
| The campaign is agonizing. | ||
| How do we handle that? | ||
| How do we respond? | ||
| Do we set up a feature story and give them great access? | ||
| It takes weeks and weeks and weeks. | ||
| They eventually put out like a four-sentence statement and hope it goes away. | ||
| Analysis paralysis, sounds like. | ||
| All right, Joanna, Germantown, Maryland, Democratic caller. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, I think that the number one bottom line, real reason that Trump won and the Democrats lost is because Trump is a master at playing on people's fears. | ||
| You know, the Mexicans are coming, the Mexicans are coming. | ||
| Bar the door, Katie. | ||
| And transgenders are targeting your children and going to turn them into hermaphrodites. | ||
| He's really good at going after the shiny objects and then playing on people's fears. | ||
| And I think, bottom line, that's what put him over the finish line. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's start with Tyler. | ||
| You want to take that one first? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, this is something that we have long seen in political campaigns about running to people's fears and appealing to them. | ||
| I think that is definitely a huge part of that. | ||
| I think another thing that Democrats struggled with in this election is presenting a vision for the future. | ||
| I think one of the things as you look at Joe Biden's campaign, a lot of it was sort of resting on the laurels of what they thought was success. | ||
| And we write in the book this sort of exchange between Ron Klain, Joe Biden's former chief of staff, and the president in which Ron is encouraging the president to lay out an agenda for the future. | ||
| And Biden says, well, I don't want to promise something I can't deliver. | ||
| And I've done all this. | ||
| I can tout the infrastructure law, the CHIPS Act, sort of the legislative successes he's had in the first two years. | ||
| And Ron is saying, you know, you need to present something for the future. | ||
| And I think that's something else that Kamala Harris struggled with was what was her message. | ||
| Obviously, Trump really honed in on the economy and immigration. | ||
| And to the caller's point, really trying to animate the fears of voters. | ||
| And that's definitely a part of political campaigning and painting your opponent as a danger, as Trump often does. | ||
| But I think Democrats also struggled with their own message, too. | ||
| And you write in the book how the president, President Biden, thought what you all just mentioned was good enough. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| I mean, he thought that what he should, you know, one of the things that I think is really remarkable is in all these interviews and conversations I had, many of Biden's closest A's would point to historians and say, look at this new ranking of modern presidents. | ||
| Joe Biden is in, you know, number 14 of the best presidents the country has ever had. | ||
| Voters weren't really looking at historical rankings. | ||
| They were looking at their bank accounts and the cost of gas and the cost of groceries. | ||
| And that's what they were voting on. | ||
| And so I think there was a little bit of, well, historians think we're doing a good job. | ||
| That should be enough. | ||
| And let me just read a little bit more from the book on this point that you're talking about. | ||
| There was a view popular among some political insiders that this election had been over before it started. | ||
| The overwhelming majority of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track. | ||
| They were fed up with inflation, immigration, and overseas conflicts. | ||
| And they blamed the sitting president and his vice president for their feelings of economic and global insecurity. | ||
| But the true story of the 2024 campaign is not so impersonal, and the outcome was not so predetermined. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, the Democrats recognized that they needed to have a winning message on the economy. | |
| And there's another great moment of the Harris campaign indecision where in her debate prep, they're going through, you know, what are the major issues and what are her key points going to be. | ||
| They get to the economy, let's come back to it. | ||
| Come back to it, let's come back to it. | ||
| And they never come up with anything, ultimately. | ||
| And it was that inability to articulate what she was running for on the number one issue that voters cared about, whereas everyone knew what they were getting with Trump. | ||
| Nate in Irvington, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you guys doing? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Great book. | ||
| I can't wait to purchase it. | ||
| I think there were two also pain points that America was filling that Democrats didn't really cover or even try to reach out to the people. | ||
| I think one thing that the Democrats, they always message as, hey, we're not the elite group. | ||
| We're not the elite party. | ||
| We're anti-elite. | ||
| But I do a lot of grassroots work with a lot of organizations, and they never reach and talk to the grassroots communities. | ||
| I think that the Democrats have morphed into an elitist kind of party, and they don't have people that are really doing the work on the ground and talking to the people at the table, making decisions, helping out the Democrats kind of frame their messaging. | ||
| Like workforce development, the economy, things that affect the housing, things that affect young kids and young voters they don't talk to, they don't reach out to. | ||
| Okay, Nate, I want to take your point. | ||
| You're both nodding your heads. | ||
| Yeah, I think this is something that Democrats have long struggled with, and we're seeing the sort of fissures in the party explode because of this. | ||
| And I think, you know, just yesterday, my colleague in The Times wrote about this new group, majority Democrats, that are trying to move the party beyond this sort of elite label. | ||
| I think one of the challenges that Democrats have had and have today is this idea that they are the party of just old people, right? | ||
| I think we saw in the New York City mayor's race the success of Zoran Mandani, that sort of young, youthful energy is something a lot of Democrats are looking for. | ||
| And I also think one of the things that Trump did quite well that we talk about in the book quite extensively is his outreach to people that are not regular consumers of media, that are not regular voters, expanding the electorate in the way that a lot of politicians talk about. | ||
| And in the way that Bernie Sanders often talked about when he was running for president, I covered his campaign in 2019 and 2020. | ||
| And he said, you know, we have to reimagine the electorate and bring people into the fold that are not traditional Democrats and are not regular voters. | ||
| And that's something Trump did quite well. | ||
| Isaac, when you look at Democrats typically over the past couple of campaigns for presidential, they'll hold these big rallies with these Hollywood stars. | ||
| And they do, I mean, Hillary Clinton did it, and then, you know, Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris did it with Beyoncé, et cetera. | ||
| There are conventions, Hollywood stars. | ||
| Does it work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there were some instances, particularly in this campaign, that were sort of head scratchers. | |
| Maybe the best example is they brought Bruce Springsteen to a town in Georgia that is prized for its diversity. | ||
| And Bruce Springsteen has an overwhelmingly white fan base. | ||
| I mean, the press corps, really, really into it. | ||
| The people attending the rally, a little less. | ||
| I think Jovi was another one. | ||
| There was a little bit of a mismatch between the celebrities who the staff thought were cool and who the voters wanted to see. | ||
| Yeah, I was actually at that rally in Clarkston, Georgia, where they brought Bruce Springsteen. | ||
| And Bruce Springsteen's identity is very tied into New Jersey. | ||
| And maybe he would be a great fit for Pennsylvania, a battleground state, but Georgia was one where I was there and it was remarkable to see people just not that interested in hearing him. | ||
| Bon Jovi performed in Detroit the night before the election. | ||
| There's now this ongoing sort of misery among Democrats about Lady Gaga. | ||
| She has done this rally the night before the election multiple times. | ||
| She did it for Hillary Clinton. | ||
| She did it for Kamala Harris. | ||
| And we know how both those elections turned out. | ||
| So you're right, the celebrities are a huge part of the Democratic Party brand. | ||
| But to the caller's point, that may be saturating for a certain market, but they may not do as well to help the party's brand moving forward. | ||
| Let's go back into the campaign previously in the June 27th CNN debate. | ||
| You write in the book this. | ||
| The president signed off on an early debate, and they quickly struck a date with the Trump campaign in CNN for June 27th. | ||
| The senior advisors highlighted this potential date as ideal because it would come almost two weeks after his final overseas trip before the November election. | ||
| To start preparing well ahead of time, the advisors recommended he start weekly prep sessions with Bruce Reed, as well as practicing through press and radio interviews and a network town hall. | ||
| The town hall never happened. | ||
| We'll get to that point as to why that never happened. | ||
| But I want to go to the debate, one point in the debate, where the president is talking about immigration. | ||
| We significantly increased the number of asylum officers. | ||
| Significantly, by the way, the Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position. | ||
| In addition to that, we found ourselves in a situation where when he was president, he was taking, separating babies from their mothers, putting them in cages, making sure the families were separated. | ||
| That's not the right way to go. | ||
| What I've done since I've changed the law, what's happened? | ||
| I've changed it in a way that now you're in a situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally. | ||
| That's better than when he left office. | ||
| And I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers. | ||
| President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I really don't know what he said at the end of this, and I don't think he knows what he said either. | |
| Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country. | ||
| All he had to do was leave it. | ||
| All he had to do was leave it. | ||
| He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum. | ||
| Isaac Ardenster, talk about what you learned about the president's preparation for that debate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we should talk about what Joe Biden is doing with his face there, which was advice that came from Steven Spielberg, the Academy Award-winning director, who also coached him on the 2024 State of the Union, which the Democrats thought went really, really well. | |
| So they brought him back to help with the debate. | ||
| And he was telling Biden that, you know, you're on screen the whole time. | ||
| So even when you're not talking, you know, make use of that time to express your reaction, to communicate nonverbally. | ||
| And Biden, in the debate prep, really gravitated to that advice. | ||
| Someone said he clung to it like a life raft. | ||
| Some other aides were concerned, though. | ||
| They said, you know, that might not work the way that you think. | ||
| They were concerned about how that he would look confused or lost. | ||
| And I think that's the way ultimately that most Americans watching it saw. | ||
| Tyler. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, this debate was just a disaster. | ||
| And it's remarkable to rewatch it. | ||
| You know, more than a year, more than a year later, I was actually at that debate. | ||
| I was the print pool reporter traveling with the president on Air Force One. | ||
| And that four days from Thursday to Sunday where he has the debate, does some fundraising, and then ends at Camp David was just this really unbelievable period where it's the party is falling apart and it's as if nothing is wrong there. | ||
| But I think one of the critical things that has gotten some attention from the book is this memo that you were reading from. | ||
| This is a memo that was written to Joe Biden by his senior advisors encouraging him to do an early debate. | ||
| And I think what is interesting about that is there's a lot of conversation about how his aides tried to hide him and keep him away from the public. | ||
| But they are the ones telling him, you should go out and do a debate. | ||
| They're realizing that he's not, he's behind in raising money, he's behind in the polls, and they need to do something to shake up the race. | ||
| And they think the best thing to do is to have him go out in the debate. | ||
| Mike Donlin, his closest advisor, says he has to debate. | ||
| There are some people outside that inner circle who think it's a really bad idea, that he should not debate. | ||
| He's not up for it. | ||
| It's not going to go well. | ||
| But the people closest to him didn't really consider that. | ||
| There was sort of universal agreement he needed to do it and they decided to do it early. | ||
| Isaac, as the Trump campaign is watching this debate, what are they saying and thinking? | ||
| And then what does President Trump say when he leaves the stage? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So to set the scene for you, so we're all watching in like a big arena and then the campaigns have their own private rooms. | |
| So when the debate starts in the Trump campaign private room, they start freaking out because they can't hear Biden and they think the TV is malfunctioning. | ||
| Like what a time for the TV to stop working. | ||
| And only then do they realize that it is not a problem with the TV. | ||
| At that point, I mean, they're just amazed, this thing that they kind of dreamed of, that it was beyond what they possibly could have hoped for. | ||
| And then pretty soon that turns into, you know what, tear up the talking points. | ||
| We need to have a new message here. | ||
| And that message has to be the Democrats are stuck with Biden because they already realize that Trump might have done so well that it could backfire on him. | ||
| Now, as for Trump, when he walks off that stage, the word he uses the most is sad, actually. | ||
| That the way he was kind of making fun of Biden, twisting the knife a little bit on the stage in private afterward, he seemed actually like to relate a little bit more to the difficulty of what he just witnessed. | ||
| And maybe 70-something year-old to 70-something-year-old, the word he used most often was sad. | ||
| Back to the book, you write, when Obama spoke with Biden in the days after the debate, he offered Biden his support as a sounding board and private counselor to help navigate the turbulence of the debate aftermath. | ||
| Quote, you need to think about what's best here, Obama told Biden. | ||
| According to a Biden aide briefed on the conversation, Obama never told Biden to drop out, but he emphasized the serious problem he was facing. | ||
| It was the only time they spoke. | ||
| I mean, there's a lot in the book about the Biden-Obama relationship, and it's fascinating, and I have covered it for years and remain endlessly fascinated by it. | ||
| And I think the important context to understand in that moment is a few things. | ||
| One, Obama did not want him to run in 2015. | ||
| Obama did not want him to run in 2019. | ||
| Obama did not want him to run again in 2024. | ||
| So Obama has never thought all that highly of Joe Biden's political skills. | ||
| And Biden knows that and treats that in kind and doesn't, you know, likes Obama, they have a good relationship, but understands that he is not his biggest political fan and think he, Obama did not think he could win. | ||
| So Obama had to try carefully. | ||
| We write in the book that Obama tried to warn Joe Biden about his campaign and also Trump's campaign and the lack of, you know, the lack of, he had, Obama had so many issues with Biden and his campaign, but he could never directly say, you know, to him, you shouldn't run because Biden would not take that kindly. | ||
| So Obama had to sort of navigate that in that moment. | ||
| Yeah, you note in the book that Biden and his team, they felt like for decades they were treated like the B team. | ||
| Let's go to Bruce in Illinois, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How you doing? | |
| I just, you know, I'm always curious. | ||
| I'm kind of a Republican, but I listen to all sides, excuse all sides of arguments. | ||
| And I always feel in the sake of transparency that people who have opinions either on other people or issues should kind of tell the public how they voted in the last election. | ||
| And I just think it would kind of add veracity to what you're saying. | ||
| And we all know that there's a lot of times a vent to people's opinions. | ||
| And I just think it'd help if people would say, well, I voted Republican, I voted Democrat, I voted for Biden, I voted for Trump, before they criticize or express opinion. | ||
| Okay, Bruce, I'll take that suggestion. | ||
| Let me go to Tony, who's in Chantilly, Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I just got a comment. | ||
| I think the book is interesting. | ||
| It's nice that it was followed that well that you can get input on what everybody was saying and thinking. | ||
| Though my opinion is Kamara Harris was never ready to run and she shouldn't have never been thrown in and that's why the Democrats lost. | ||
| She was unprepared. | ||
| They were unprepared. | ||
| It was a half-baked mess. | ||
| But the reason Donald Trump won, the reason I made this call is for those who really, really understand AI and computers and where we are in society with our electronics today, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, with help of Elon Musk's world's largest AI computer, is the reason Donald Trump is president of the United States. | ||
| And if anybody doesn't believe it, hey, they got a right to believe what they believe, but I know what I know. | ||
| All right, Tony. | ||
| So, Isaac, do you write about Elon Musk in the book? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| And one of the interesting things is his evolution. | ||
| When he starts out, you know, he agrees with Trump on immigration. | ||
| That's really the issue that is animating him. | ||
| But he does not trust Trump's team, and he does not really like Trump personally. | ||
| And so he is starting to spend money to support Trump, but he won't give it to Trump's campaign. | ||
| He's creating his own organization that's going to spend it, and he's telling other donors that they should do the same. | ||
| They don't want that money going to pay for Trump's legal fees. | ||
| And that only changes with the assassination attempt, actually, when Musk actually comes out and endorses Trump and becomes a full-throated supporter. | ||
| The front page of USA Today, how the path of a single bullet changed everything. | ||
| We are coming up on the anniversary of that attempted assassination. | ||
| What did you learn about what happened in Butler that day? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Isaac is the one to take that question. | ||
| He was in Butler that day and has done a lot of great reporting from the scene and in the aftermath. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have some scenes that have never been reported before from Trump in the hospital afterward in a moment of really rare human vulnerability for him. | |
| And one of the things that I found the most interesting or striking is, you know, everyone remembers how Trump responded in that moment, and you never really know what's going to happen until it happens. | ||
| And when our co-author Josh Dossi interviewed him about it, he said they wanted me to take a stretcher into the hospital and I refused because I didn't want the visual. | ||
| So even in that moment where he's bleeding from the face, they don't know how injured he is, he's thinking about how's it going to look politically. | ||
| Optics. | ||
| And also just to add on, he says in that same interview with Josh, he's like, would I have won if not for that day, that assassination attempt? | ||
| He goes, I think I would, but I'm not sure. | ||
| I mean, even he understands the political power of that photograph, of that moment. | ||
| Jeff Bezos, other sort of, you know, barons of society call him and compliment him for his composure at that moment. | ||
| It sort of is this transition point, not just for Elon Musk, but a lot of people to start developing relationships with Trump. | ||
| And describe the scene at the hospital when he's going to be released from the hospital. | ||
| And Melania has a role here in where he goes next. | ||
| And then also talk about Susie Wiles and the scene that you write about there and her reaction to what just happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Melania was insistent that Trump come to Bedminster because that's where she was, which sets off this scramble to clear out the Trump because the president wasn't going to be there. | |
| And now the security obviously is through the roof. | ||
| And the club manager is like, what are you talking about? | ||
| People are having dinner. | ||
| And Susie Wilde is like, no, no, no, you're not listening to me. | ||
| Like, everybody has got to get out now. | ||
| And so they end up having to wait a really long time before they can leave while they re-sweep the plane and they get Bedminster ready. | ||
| And so there's this surreal moment where the campaign is like sitting in the airplane hangar. | ||
| They've got pizza delivered and the screens are just replaying that moment over and over and over. | ||
| And what about his bloody suit and the hat that he was wearing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the hat was retrieved by one of his aides who actually was the last person getting in the motorcade to evacuate because he went back to pick up the hat and give it to Trump. | |
| The suit, he wanted to wear it out and they finally convinced, they went out and got him a clean set, a clean shirt to change into. | ||
| And you can't wear that bloody suit. | ||
| So they finally convinced him to change. | ||
| But he insisted on keeping the suit and he got it dry and cleaned and he still wears it. | ||
| And Susie Wiles has an emotional moment after that incident. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things to keep in mind was that the security threats to Donald Trump extended far beyond that day in Butler. | ||
| We write extensively about the concerns related to Iran and how Iran had, you know, the FBI had briefed the Trump campaign that Iran had killed teams in the United States. | ||
| Iran came very close as we report for the first time to assassinating Mike Pompeo when he was in a European hotel. | ||
| And there were just many times throughout the campaign where they had to change security procedures, take decoy planes, take different routes to the airport because they were so afraid of threats to Trump and to the people around him. | ||
| And I think Susie Wiles was navigating a lot of that in charge of that. | ||
| So this moment is quite emotional as Trump is, you know, they don't exactly know right away what happens. | ||
| Obviously, the president turned out to be okay. | ||
| But I think we just sort of capture in the book the emotional, the emotion of that moment. | ||
| A lot of details in the book about the 2024 campaign. | ||
| 2024 is the name, how Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. | ||
| Josh Dossi, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Ornstoff, thank you gentlemen both for being here this morning. | ||
| We appreciate the conversation. | ||
| Thanks for having us. | ||
| After the break, a conversation with Harrison Pittman from the National Agricultural Law Center about Trump administration plans to crack down on foreign ownership of U.S. farmland. | ||
| We'll talk about the plan and the national security implications coming up next on The Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, as the nation prepares to celebrate its semi-quincentennial, American History TV begins a year-long series, America 250, on the American Revolution and its impact on the country. | ||
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| Watch as the Virginia 250 Commission commemorates the speech with tributes and a reenactment at the original site. | ||
| Then at 2 p.m. Eastern on the Civil War, Anderson Carmen and Andrew Fialca, co-authors of A Civil War History in Graphic Novel Form, talk about guerrilla violence in Kansas and Missouri. | ||
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| And at 9.15 p.m. Eastern from this year's Freedom Fest, Ludlow Institute founder and president Naomi Brockwell, author of Beginner's Introduction to Privacy, talks about the lack of privacy in the digital age and recommends ways for people to preserve it. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Harrison Pittman from the University of Arkansas. | ||
| He's the director of the National Agriculture Law Center here to talk about foreign investment in U.S. farmland. | ||
| What is the mission of the National Agriculture Law Center? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| So the National Agricultural Law Center, our mission is to serve as the nation's leading source for agricultural and food law research and information. | ||
| So we're an educational information outreach to the really to the public, but obviously focused on the ag industry. | ||
| We are a nonpartisan and an objective resource for that community. | ||
| We were created by Congress in 1987 for that purpose and continue that through today. | ||
| The Trump administration announced this week a multi-agency effort to crack down on foreign and owned farmland in the United States. | ||
| Your group has studied this issue. | ||
| How much land in the United States is owned by foreign investors? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's a great question. | |
| So in terms of agricultural land, privately held agricultural land, there's an issue to the side that we really won't get into about public land. | ||
| But on privately held agricultural land, it comes out to about 3.5% as reported through, there's a federal statute called the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978. | ||
| So you could express that as 3.5% is in some type of foreign investment, or you could say roughly 96.5% of U.S. agricultural land is not in some form of foreign ownership. | ||
| So is it a problem then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's in the eye of the beholder. | |
| You know, and if you break down the numbers, I guess, you know, it depends on what a person is viewing as a problem. | ||
| So when we say, for example, 3.5% and it's foreign held, we're talking spread over more than 100 countries. | ||
| But frankly, about five countries make up about two-thirds of all foreign investment. | ||
| And the number one investor in U.S. agriculture is Canada. | ||
| And they always have been since we started keeping data in the late 1970s, early 1980s. | ||
| They're about one-third. | ||
| And then you've got the Netherlands comes in next at around 10 to 12%. | ||
| And you have Italy, United Kingdom, and Germany. | ||
| And they make up the majority, pretty much a supermajority. | ||
| Within that, roughly half of foreign-owned agricultural land or foreign investment is in the forestry industry. | ||
| And that's been a trend that's been true since we started keeping the data. | ||
| It's usually about 50% in forestry, about 25% in cropland, and about 25% in pasture land. | ||
| And then within that, what constitutes foreign investment? | ||
| Maybe we can get that, you know, and if people have questions when they call in, we can go into more detail. | ||
| But it's important to point out it includes long-term leases, and long-term leases is defined as leases of 10 years or more. | ||
| And so a lot, you have some land that's reported as foreign-owned. | ||
| It actually can be owned by a U.S. landowner, an American citizen. | ||
| But it may have a solar lease. | ||
| It may have development rights of some kind that has a foreign component in it. | ||
| Additionally, and this is something that will be, I think, informative to your viewers. | ||
| There are U.S.-owned companies that, at times, under the federal act that I mentioned, they're required to report as a foreign investor. | ||
| So there are some nuances within those numbers. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's break it down a little bit more from the USDA Farm Service Agency. | ||
| The types of land purchased, you touched on this: forest land, 48%, cropland, 28%, pasture and other agricultural land, 21%. | ||
| Texas, Maine, Colorado have the largest amount of foreign-held U.S. agricultural land. | ||
| Canadian investors own the largest amount of reported foreign-held agricultural and non-agricultural land. | ||
| Why Canada? | ||
| What do they own? | ||
| Why do they own it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So a lot of that's in the forestry sector. | |
| And I mean, if you go back and you really want to kind of nerd out and get into the data, you'll see that there was a large increase during the basically it coincided with the housing crisis and Great Recession, whatever you want to call that, in the 07 to 09 time period, which also coincided with some pest outbreaks in the timber industry in Canada. | ||
| And so I think there's probably a correlation there in that regard. | ||
| Let's talk about that. | ||
| I mean, you're on C-SPAN, so we're going to nerd out Harrison Pittman. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| When you look at the state of Maine, which is one of the states mentioned on this map, I'm showing our viewers, and the brown indicates the largest concentration. | ||
| So what's happening up in Maine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, okay, so I can't see your maps, but I'm going to just imagine what it looks like. | |
| So a lot of that is investment from Canada and the Netherlands. | ||
| There's a large timber component, but also berries, I think, particularly blueberries. | ||
| And that's a large part of it. | ||
| And Maine is an interesting state to point out because when we look at the overall foreign ownership picture in the United States, when you've listed out like Texas being number one and Maine being number two, and you think about the comparison in just geography between those two states, Maine makes up roughly 10% of all foreign ownership. | ||
| And within the state of Maine, about 21% of its land, privately held ag land, is in some type of foreign ownership or investment. | ||
| And is it likely Canada? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'd say Canada and the Netherlands is going to be the predominant feature there. | |
| All right. | ||
| Well, sticking with this map, let's talk about Colorado and Texas. | ||
| So what is going on there? | ||
| Is it Canada and those incidents as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I have to just speculate that it is, just given that Canada makes up such a large volume. | |
| I don't know offhand the countries of origin within those two states. | ||
| Well, let's talk about what country is not on the list when we talk about the percentages, and that is China. | ||
| Why is China not listed as one of the top countries? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because the data doesn't put them there. | |
| So, to take one quick step back, when we talk about the data, that was the federal statute that I mentioned, the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, which was the first time in our nation's history that Congress weighed in on this issue of foreign ownership of agricultural land. | ||
| And not technically completely accurate, but practically speaking, it's basically the only time Congress has really weighed in. | ||
| Now, so it doesn't prohibit foreign ownership or restrict it. | ||
| It's a reporting and a monitoring statute. | ||
| And so, the data we have is from people that and foreign persons who report through the Farm Service Agency, which was an agency within USDA. | ||
| So, with that background, that's the data we have. | ||
| And for China, you know, we're talking, so overall foreign-owned acres is around 45 million, okay, of foreign-owned ag land, 45 million acres nationwide. | ||
| And again, that's as we talked about about 3.5%. | ||
| China is less than 1% of that overall number. | ||
| And in terms of just actual acreage, according to the latest AFIDA or AFIDA, that's the acronym, however you want to pronounce it, data, it goes through December 31st, 2023, and it clocks in at 227,000 acres and maybe just a few more than that, but roughly 227,000 acres, which is a decrease actually from the previous reporting year data of more than 100,000 acres. | ||
| So why are people concerned about China owning foreign land in the United States? | ||
| Do they own some and where? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so my experience with the issue is that it chronologically originates with the purchase of some farmland or some agricultural land and land around a military base in Texas. | |
| And that dates back to around 2020, 2021, somewhere in there. | ||
| And that generated a lot of interest and a lot of focus on this issue, which has just spread as sort of a legislative prairie fire, if you will, across the 50 states. | ||
| And to give you, to kind of put that question of yours in some context here, on December 31st, 2021, a majority, a super majority of states in the United States affirmatively allowed for foreign ownership of agricultural land without distinction to country of origin. | ||
| And predominantly, those states were in the Midwest. | ||
| And that has a lot to do with our country's history as the country moved westward, both in time and geography. | ||
| And that was, think back to the Territorial Expansion Act of 1887. | ||
| And those were the historical underpinnings there. | ||
| And we've had different time periods, a handful of them, where this issue's kind of come to the top. | ||
| But in today's environment, that particular transaction that I mentioned near the military base generated a lot of interest. | ||
| And you just have a lot of sort of domestic and geopolitical interest in China. | ||
| You can't discount that a lot of this debate, as it was really getting started, it also is overlapped by the Chinese spy balloon that came across the United States. | ||
| And that fueled a lot of political activity, particularly at the state level. | ||
| And so that distinction between December 31st, 2021, and where we are now, now more than half the states have some type of restriction on foreign ownership. | ||
| And the laws that have been enacted in the last couple of years predominantly focus on China or what I often refer to as the big four: China, North Korea, Russia, or Iran. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Harrison Pittman is our guest here this morning. | ||
| He can take your questions or your comments about foreign investment in U.S. farmland. | ||
| If you're a Democrat, join the conversation at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And if you work in the agricultural sector, dial in at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Here's the Trump administration this week: the announcement that they made on a multi-agency effort to crack down on foreign-owned farmland in the United States. | ||
| Here's the Ag Secretary, Brooke Collins, from earlier this week. | ||
| Perhaps the most important, the first of the seven, is securing and protecting American farmland ownership, actively engaging at every level of government to take swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries, standing on the shoulders of great governors, three of whom are standing behind me, who have already been leading the way on this issue. | ||
| And at the federal government level, working to do everything within our ability, including presidential authorities, to claw back what has already been purchased by China and other foreign adversaries. | ||
| Additionally, working with the Treasury of the Secretary of the Treasury, along with our Defense Department on memorandums to ensure that moving forward, there is a much more intentional look at who is buying what in this country and from where they are in the world. | ||
| Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins from earlier this week. | ||
| And we'll go to calls now. | ||
| John is in Ashland, Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| So thank you, Harrison, for joining this program. | ||
| It found it interesting. | ||
| I understand farming. | ||
| I've got a side business with goats. | ||
| And I sell goats for pet or meat. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| If the money's green, I don't ask too many questions. | ||
| And so I get anxious when the government's asking questions about farmland purchases. | ||
| But one of the questions I had is: is there a way under current federal laws to prevent foreign farmland investments when land purchases are typically regulated under state law? | ||
| All right, Mr. Pittman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so I was focused on the goat part of that, and then he took a detour with a question. | |
| He said, he talked about can it be regulated on a federal level, the selling of farmland to a foreign entity when that is a local regulation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and I think that that's an excellent question. | |
| That underpins the entire debate that's occurred so far in our country. | ||
| That when Congress enacted the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, that was the effective sort of political compromise that was reached. | ||
| That at the federal level, there would be reporting, but it would be left to the states to dictate that, whether there's going to be a prohibition or not. | ||
| And so that's the way it's been. | ||
| And now, we've had some changes. | ||
| You know, in 1978, we hadn't yet conceived of NAFTA and these other trade agreements that we've entered into. | ||
| The idea of economic policy is national security and things like that weren't as robust as they are now. | ||
| And so maybe those lines are getting a little bit blurred, but there is some federal regulation. | ||
| For example, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, otherwise often referred to by its acronym as CIFIAS, and which some transactions can be reviewed at that level. | ||
| And there's been some things what I would kind of describe as around the edges, enactments by Congress through Appropriations Acts that are trying to maybe move the needle in terms of reporting and transparency requirements under FIO. | ||
| We'll go to Nkroombe, who's in Charlotte, North Carolina, independent. | ||
| You're up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Good morning, C-SPAN. | ||
| Good morning, Gretchen. | ||
| Good morning, everybody. | ||
| The thing is that when you've got a situation like it is in Arizona right now, right? | ||
| Arizona got these water laws because it's basically a shortage of water out there. | ||
| And we allow our country, we allow these congressmen to allow a country like Saudi Arabia to come into the United States because of these laws. | ||
| The law said they got certain things about water, but I'm saying it's not when it comes to how deep you get the water from, the laws change. | ||
| So now you got Saudi Arabian farms and water-restricted counties in Arizona and outwest, period, where the people who live in the state, Americans who live in these states, can't even get the water. | ||
| They got to call and pay for private water services. | ||
| Color. | ||
| Can I ask you, are you referring to water rights and the ranchers having rights to the water in Arizona over the residents? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| I'm saying just regular residents, regular residents who live in the state. | ||
| Foreign countries like Saudi Arabia is allowed to go there and get this way more water than they can get because I'm saying the way the law is designed is that if you dig deep enough, the law is going to affect you. | ||
| So Saudi Arabia was allowed to come in and dig wells deep into Arizona. | ||
| So they bypass all the laws that were on the books. | ||
| Okay, understood. | ||
| Harrison Pittman, are you familiar with this situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am. | |
| So, you know, sort of first big overlay is water scarcity is an issue, and that's true pretty much across the country. | ||
| It's just more pronounced in some areas than others. | ||
| Out west, in the western states like Arizona, that's even more true. | ||
| And it's been more of a long-standing and chronically evolving problem. | ||
| So you have issues that we don't really get into with the Colorado River Basin and so forth, and a competition over surface and groundwater resources, which occurs, you know, for urban areas, as well as increasing these data centers that are increasingly popping up, as well as agriculture, particularly irrigated agriculture. | ||
| And specifically there, what you have is really Saudi Arabia leasing farmland. | ||
| And effectively, the way I would probably describe it slightly differently than the caller is, you know, in effect, we're kind of exporting water, growing things like alfalfa in Arizona that's then used in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| And why? | ||
| Why are they exporting alfalfa into Saudi Arabia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know that for certain. | |
| My understanding, or my, I shouldn't just say my understanding, my speculation is it relates to the equine industry, but I don't know that for sure. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's go to Brian, who's in East Sandwich, Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for letting me speak. | ||
| I'd like to know if Mr. Pittman could explain if there is any Relationship between the ownership of cropland to the commodity being produced, such as rice or honey or almonds or swine or poultry. | ||
| And does ownership of these agricultural operations have anything to do with something like, say, to avoid milk support programs or tax benefits for the foreign country that owns the agricultural operation. | ||
| All right, so Brian, there's a couple questions there because first you're wondering if the ownership of the land dictates has anything to do with the price of the goods, whatever they're producing. | ||
| And then the second question there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Harrison Pittman? | |
| Yeah, and you may have to help me with that second question in a moment. | ||
| But the first price. | ||
| Brian's hanging on the line, so we'll go back to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In terms of price, spoiler alert, in general, prices are pretty bad right now. | |
| And being foreign-owned or not isn't really helping. | ||
| It doesn't make a distinction in the marketplace, particularly for your commodity crops, major row crops, livestock, and the like. | ||
| So, no, there's really, to my knowledge, no market price benefit distinction between whether it's domestically or owned or has some element of foreign ownership in it. | ||
| All right, Brian, second question. | ||
| Is there a tax benefit involved in ownership for these countries to pay United States taxes, or does that have nothing to do with it? | ||
| That's a great, that's actually a pretty good question there. | ||
| Potentially, under what's known as a REIT, R-E-I-T real estate investment tax. | ||
| I think I got that correct from the acronym. | ||
| And I would encourage you to read more about that because that potentially is a mechanism that does have, it's basically an investment technique that foreign parties can participate in that I presume has tax, certain tax implications, potentially just tax benefits with it. | ||
| So that'd be my answer there. | ||
| Okay, we'll go to Ty Valley, Oregon, Collet, Democratic Color. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I noticed when you put the map up of Oregon that there was a lot of foreign-owned land around the Hanford nuclear area. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| And what countries? | ||
| Harrison Pittman, do you know off the top of your head, specifically Oregon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know off the top of my head. | |
| However, I can tell you how to quickly get the answer. | ||
| The data that we're talking about, if you went to Google and just typed in AFIDA, A-F-I-D-A, F-S-A reports, something close to that, hit enter, and you'll go to the AFIDA page. | ||
| These reports are digitized there. | ||
| Go to your most recent one, click on it, and then Control-F becomes your best friend at that moment. | ||
| And you can go straight even to that county and type in that county name, and there will be part of that data collected that tells you the country of origin, not only for the state as a whole, but even down to that county level. | ||
| And so that would give you some pretty good indication as to certainly the country of origin at that county level, which I presume would be pretty informative for a specific granular question you have there. | ||
| Say that search again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go to Google, something like FSA, AFIDA, reports, foreign ownership reporting, anything like that. | |
| But it's the USDA Farm Service Agency website, but that would just do a Google search, get you there a little quicker. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You could also visit our Ag Law Center website, by the way. | |
| And if you go to the homepage, there is a frequently asked questions. | ||
| And that resource would have a ton of other information, but within that information on accessing the FIDA data. | ||
| All right. | ||
| The Law Center's website is nationalaglawcenter.org. | ||
| Bill Howard, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
| Hey, Bill, you've got to mute your television. | ||
| Are you ready to ask your question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| All right. | ||
| Go for it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, good morning. | ||
| Well, my question is, we have a farm and we are constantly, at least once every week, we get a letter in the mail offering a pretty good price for our farm, | ||
| usually from places in America individuals that offer to buy our farm and pay cash and close immediately. | ||
| But every one of them will say at the bottom that we reserve the right to assign this contract to another party without notifying the seller of who they're assigning it to. | ||
| I just wondered if there's any information on people because we never had that 10 or 15 years ago, we never got one of them letters. | ||
| I just wondered about that, if this guy could answer that question. | ||
| And I'd like to thank you. | ||
| All right, Bill. | ||
| Harrison Pittman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was Bill from North Carolina? | |
| Howard, Ohio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Howard, Ohio. | |
| The reason I asked that is that in some of these state statutes that have been enacted, there's some provisions that deal with chain of title in real estate and potential legal liability extending to parties in the transaction. | ||
| I do not know if Ohio is one of those states. | ||
| Offhand, I don't know that, but that could be a reason that that is showing up in that. | ||
| It could be some other legal reason for doing it. | ||
| But so, you know, earlier, tying two questions here, Greta, you asked about why are people purchasing, you know, farmland in the United States and Agland. | ||
| And I failed to really mention there, and I think it applies to Bill's question here. | ||
| It's been a pretty strong investment, you know, and there's been periods in the last two decades where in last decade as well, it would outperform the stock market. | ||
| And it's been a safe investment overall. | ||
| And, you know, sometimes in the United States, we look at each other and think that our neighbor's crazy and we're crazy, but we're the best thing going on the planet. | ||
| We have a rule of law. | ||
| We have a predictable economic system and political system that is stable, particularly compared to other parts of the world. | ||
| We innovate. | ||
| And so it's a sound investment. | ||
| And when it comes to land, as the old saying goes, they're not making any more of it. | ||
| And where Bill lives, I would guess, and I'm guessing, he probably lives in an area of line of growth. | ||
| And, you know, there's competition for land, rural lands, you know, it's not just to keep it in agriculture. | ||
| It can be for other things too, everything from solar development to residential or commercial growth as well. | ||
| So that could very well be some reasons that are precipitating Bill getting letters like that. | ||
| And then that provision about assigning, that might relate to, might be a reaction to something that's in state law that's relatively new there in Ohio. | ||
| All right, Laura in Baltimore, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for C-STAN. | |
| I wanted to make a comment about the pistachio farms in California that are basically a cash crop, again, for the Saudi. | ||
| And I mean, I think underlying all of this is the sense that our country is being plundered by foreign countries. | ||
| And, you know, we're not really standing up in the way. | ||
| And I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with this gentleman that's speaking, but you really seem like you're telling the line for the foreign investors. | ||
| And we're just sick of it. | ||
| I mean, that's why we elected Trump. | ||
| So Laura, can I ask you, because we showed you the data from the USDA Farm Service Agency, that the foreign investment is about 43 million acres. | ||
| Canada, 32% of that, Netherlands, 12%. | ||
| Italy, 6%, UK, 6, Germany, 5. | ||
| China, Saudi Arabia, other countries, they make up the last 38% of that. | ||
| So Laura, you just don't believe those numbers? | ||
| You think it's more than that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't, I'm listening on the radio, so I can't see your chart, but I would say let's look at it from the amount of money instead of the percentage. | |
| It seems like a way to obscure the data. | ||
| And let's look how much money is leaving our country. | ||
| And we can't replace those fossil aquifers that they're draining. | ||
| This is our water going. | ||
| I mean, it's symbolic of the lifeblood of this country. | ||
| And we better stand up and protect ourselves. | ||
| And that's my comment. | ||
| Thank you again. | ||
| I'll listen off the air. | ||
| Okay, Laura. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Harrison Pittman, what's your response? | |
| Well, there's a lot to unpack there. | ||
| But there was a part where she talked about, I think it was a reference to purchasing farms to collect data. | ||
| I think that was the reference. | ||
| And that, now there is a broader discussion to be had there. | ||
| You know, and, you know, of course, there's all types of foreign investment. | ||
| We're focusing increasingly, you know, most on China. | ||
| I think that that's a, like a lot of these laws that we're enacting and proposing and then enacting, the concern over theft of particularly ag data by foreign actors, including specifically including China, is prevalent in these debates and state legislatures around the country. | ||
| And, you know, one thing to compare against is like there have been, there are absolutely examples that they have been caught, they've been indicted, they've been tried in U.S. courts and convicted. | ||
| Individuals stealing effectively, I mean, not just effectively, they're just taking seeds from the field and putting them in their pocket or secreting them out of the country to then be able to reverse engineer the technology. | ||
| And that's a real problem, but it's also one that doesn't require you to own the land to do. | ||
| And then you have, you know, it's more governmental policy out of China to actually acquire, legally purchase certain technologies. | ||
| And so that's actually a fairly interesting conundrum for the United States to deal with. | ||
| And I would love to talk to that caller more because it's a fascinating area that I often wondered, like some of the laws we're passing, to what degree are they actually impacting some very legitimate national security concerns. | ||
| And, you know, we live in an environment where we debate the First Amendment. | ||
| We have one. | ||
| And that open speech, it breeds. | ||
| It's part of our fabric of being able to innovate. | ||
| And when you deal with a massive economy, more than nearly 1.5 billion or so people in China, a massive player in the world economy, it's a communist government. | ||
| It's not equipped to innovate the way we do. | ||
| But you either innovate or you perish. | ||
| And so I think this transfer of technology through whatever means, there's a gravitational pull that you have a communist form of government that's as big as it is. | ||
| It needs innovation to survive. | ||
| And the question is, where does it come from and how do they get it? | ||
| So that part of what she had to say, I think there's some other things that warrant talking about there too. | ||
| But that's a pretty interesting point. | ||
| And I appreciate her calling in. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Harrison Pittman, our viewers can learn more if they go to nationalaglawcenter.org. | ||
| Thank you for the conversation this morning. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're welcome. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| We'll take a break when we come back. | ||
| Return to our conversation that we had with all of you at the beginning of today's Washington Journal: your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| We'll also preview the president's trip to Texas later today to tour the devastating flash flooding that happened over the July 4th holiday. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We will pick up where we left off earlier this morning, and that is your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| We are in hurricane season and following up on those deadly floods in Texas, as well as wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, any severe weather that you've experienced in your community. | ||
| What was it like? | ||
| And what was the government's response to it on a state, local, and federal level? | ||
| Catherine's in Ohio, a Democratic caller up first. | ||
| Good morning to you, Catherine. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I was in the tornado of 1973 here in the Cincinnati area. | ||
| But my major reason for calling is if the federal government chooses no longer to be responsible for us, then maybe we should start withholding our taxes from the federal government and maybe we'll have enough money to take care of ourselves. | ||
| We won't need them anymore. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Catherine there with her point. | ||
| Paul, Boston, good morning to you, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| First of all, I'd like to keep my thoughts and prayers of the Texas floods and suggest people keep them in their prayers and thoughts. | ||
| And it's overwhelming the amount of severe weather that we're getting. | ||
| I don't know how the government could keep on top of it. | ||
| I mean, I live in Boston and we've kind of been blessed with not having anything yet, you know, yet, meaning, you know, you're eligible to. | ||
| But I think that implementing like the Coast Guard and the National Guard would be a thing that the president in this administration may want to do. | ||
| They probably already are. | ||
| I just don't see much of it in the media. | ||
| But I just, you know, I don't know much more what the government can do. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Paul, speaking of Texas, the president is headed that way. | ||
| This morning, we expect him to be departing the White House shortly and around 2.10 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| He and the First Lady will be meeting with first responders down in Texas. | ||
| There's a look at the Air Force One there on your screen. | ||
| He's coming to Texas as Governor Abbott is demanding a comprehensive overhaul of the Texas flood warning systems as the death toll has risen in that state. | ||
| There's also reporting this morning that local officials debated creating a siren warning system in the communities of Kerrville and around there, but decided not to do it because of the cost and noise concerns. | ||
| We'll go to Pat in Austin, Texas. | ||
| Good morning to you, Pat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you hear me okay? | ||
| Yeah, we can. | ||
| We're listening. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, yes. | |
| I was and my husband were victims of a flood here in Austin, Texas in 2013. | ||
| Happened, and that was October the 31st. | ||
| We had no warnings, and the only reason we got up was because the neighbors had gone out, and she came back and was trying to warn us. | ||
| Well, by the time we got out and was able to get somewhere, the water was just rising too fast. | ||
| Wound up killing my husband. | ||
| I think he was, we went two different vehicles trying to get to higher ground. | ||
| And he drowned in the floods, and I survived. | ||
| But there were no warnings. | ||
| We were in a floodplain where houses shouldn't have been built in the first place. | ||
| I understand that perhaps our governor is making that one of his items for this special session. | ||
| And I think that we can certainly do a whole lot better because two years later, my same neighbors were out there because it flooded again. | ||
| They finally have not let anyone live out there except those folks that want to. | ||
| But our system for this is terrible. | ||
| And I just wanted to say that. | ||
| Pat, I'm sorry for your loss. | ||
| You may be interested in this front page story of the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| Constraints hampered FEMA in Texas. | ||
| Two days before torrential rains turned the Guadalupe River into a raging flood, a veteran official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency told the Washington Post that one of the main concerns for this disaster season was the agency's ability to quickly deploy specialized search and rescue teams. | ||
| The Trump administration's new rules mean disaster specialists can no longer make decisions on their own. | ||
| The official then watched as it happened in real time in Texas. | ||
| Deployment of critical resources such as tactical and specialized search and rescue teams were delayed as a result of a budget restriction requiring Homeland Security Secretary Christine Noam to approve every purchase, contract, and grant over $100,000. | ||
| This according to a dozen and former FEMA employees who spoke to the Washington Post. | ||
| Robin in Boulder, Colorado. | ||
| Robin, good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| What's been your experience with severe weather? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was part of, the lady before me talked about 2013, and that's when Boulder had a big flood. | |
| Also, I was affected by that. | ||
| And I just want to give a shout out to FEMA. | ||
| I don't know exactly, you know, before that, I didn't know exactly what they did, but they ended up paying for things that you don't even think about. | ||
| We were able to take all of our trash to the all of the soaked carpeting and everything out of the basements and houses to the trash company. | ||
| FEMA paid for all of that kind of thing. | ||
| It may seem small, but all that rolls of carpeting and furniture and that out on the curbs and that would be a health disaster if it wasn't taken care of. | ||
| And also, the big helicopters, I don't know if they're the Chinook ones or what, but they were hauling, you know, rescuing people. | ||
| And I just want to give a shout out to FEMA because I don't think, you know, I don't think they're getting the credits that they deserve. | ||
| All right, Robin, and we'll take more calls this morning from you. | ||
| So continue to call in this morning with your experience with severe weather and government responses. | ||
| Those that have called in, hang on the line here. | ||
| We're going to go to James Barragon, who's Spectrum News One Texas political anchor, to talk about the president's trip down there. | ||
| You're in Austin, James Barragon. | ||
| So what do we expect the president to do when he arrives in Texas today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we expect the president to come here and meet with first responders, probably some of the families, some of those affected by the flooding, and of course, speak to Governor Greg Abbott, speak to some of the local officials there about what has happened, what could have been done to handle this differently, perhaps prevent deaths, and what the federal government can do to help in the future. | |
| Those are the topics that we expect him to talk about. | ||
| And like I said, of course, to be that consoler in chief and to speak to some of the families who have been most affected by this. | ||
| What will he learn about the local and state response on the ground versus the federal response to this deadly flooding? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think one of the most pressing things is what could have been done differently. | |
| And we've seen throughout reporting that at least at the local level, there were local and state officials who knew that there was a need for more emergency management updates to their systems for better communications. | ||
| You know, this is a part of Texas that is a rural area. | ||
| And there's a question about whether the cell service was adequate for some of those warnings that were coming in overnight. | ||
| Of course, this happened overnight in the early hours of the morning, but still some local officials are saying that they did not receive some of these cell phone warnings. | ||
| And so that's one question. | ||
| Could that have been done differently or could that have that been handled differently? | ||
| And also, our lieutenant governor has spoken about this potential for warning sirens like we have in North Texas for Tornado Alley. | ||
| When there's a tornado, the sirens go off. | ||
| He's saying that maybe that could have been a response that would have been different here. | ||
| We do not have that kind of funding in this area of Texas, which is known as Flash Flood Alley. | ||
| So perhaps those are some of the things that he'll be hearing about and seeing if the federal government can help. | ||
| What is Governor Abbott calling for? | ||
| We read the headline earlier about an overhaul to a warning system. | ||
| So will he call for a special session? | ||
| What's on the agenda? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, interestingly enough, we already had a special session on the books for later this month. | |
| It starts in about two weeks. | ||
| And after the events of this weekend's flooding, of course, that is now top of mind. | ||
| Governor Abbott has said that's going to be at the top of his agenda. | ||
| What he has called for is funding for Hill Country flood relief, of course, but also upgrades to the emergency management systems and to communication systems and also to disaster preparedness. | ||
| So those are broad topics. | ||
| I think he's going to leave it up to lawmakers to figure out how exactly to do that, what kind of funding to allocate. | ||
| But those are the broad topics of what Governor Abbott wants done. | ||
| And again, he has said this is at the top of the agenda now. | ||
| Does Texas have the money on their own or will they be asking the federal government for assistance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is one of the big, big questions going on right now. | |
| Of course, we've had budget surpluses in our budget for the last 10 years. | ||
| We've had really good years. | ||
| How has that money been used, however, is now the question. | ||
| And could it have been used to make some of these upgrades that we know that local officials were asking for? | ||
| The thing with this is, again, this is a rural part of Texas. | ||
| Local taxpayers don't want to spend the kind of money that it takes to make these upgrades. | ||
| And there had been requests by local officials to state officials to make some of these upgrades. | ||
| Those had not been heeded. | ||
| And so the question now is, where is that money going to come from? | ||
| Again, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick talked about those sirens. | ||
| And he says, if the cities can't pay for it, the state should be making those payments. | ||
| So now it seems that state leaders are saying, yes, the money will be there. | ||
| But the question is, could that have been prevented before and saved so many lives? | ||
| James Barragon, political anchor with Spectrum News One in Texas. | ||
| We thank you for that this morning. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Back to calls with all of you, your experience with severe weather and the government's response to it. | ||
| Frank, Davenport, Florida. | ||
| Good morning to you, Frank. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call, but I'm calling from Virginia. | |
| My heart goes out to those in Texas who are suffering from the flood damage and control. | ||
| And sorry for the leaders who don't plan ahead. | ||
| And it's terrible to have a leader that is willing to put on a show instead of doing things that will help the people of the state and world. | ||
| Thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| All right, Frank. | ||
| Rhonda, Napa, California. | ||
| Rhonda, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm from Napa, California, where we experienced all of the fires. | ||
| They started up in 2016. | ||
| They didn't stop until 2021. | ||
| I'm one of the fire victims. | ||
| It burnt through our entire neighborhood, and we live right next to the water at the lake. | ||
| My biggest problem was trying to recover and rebuild. | ||
| I did not take or ask for any government money. | ||
| We jumped in. | ||
| I'm married to my builder. | ||
| And as a family, we jumped right in. | ||
| But the problem was the government trying to stop everybody from building, which was really odd because we were all just trying to survive. | ||
| Out of 220 houses out here at Lake Barriosa, only two people, three people in my neighborhood were able to rebuild. | ||
| So we're trying to recover. | ||
| The problem I see out here, and I live out on top of a mountain and I've lived out here for 25 years, is this global warming that everybody seems to ignore. | ||
| The weather patterns have certainly changed. | ||
| It's huge water when the rains come. | ||
| It's huge fires when the fires come. | ||
| And for some reason, the whole outer rim of the Napa Valley basically was burned to the ground. | ||
| Rhonda, did you watch the forest chief, the president's forest chief testifying up here in Washington this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did not. | |
| All right. | ||
| Well, let me show you and others because you may be interested in it because your senator, Alex Badiet, asking the Forest Service Chief, Tom Schultz, about the capabilities of wild fire prevention programs amid expected budget cuts. | ||
| From past fires in California, including Santa Rosa years ago, Los Angeles more recently, these are the types of programs that we should be supporting. | ||
| I asked you about the FY25 numbers. | ||
| Do you know what the FY26 numbers? | ||
| My understanding is the president's proposed budget zeroes out this program. | ||
| How does that make any sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, Senator, I think what the intent of that program in 26 is to transfer that responsibility to the states. | |
| That's the intent of that. | ||
| And then giving the other states some heads up that that's coming. | ||
| Look, guys, every state that I'm aware of is having a tougher budget picture to face. | ||
| The threat of fires is real. | ||
| The threat of fires is growing. | ||
| How does it make sense for the federal government to zero out these programs that you said are so critical? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, we would still be partnering with the states in dialogue and discussions, but the transfer of- But you're zeroing out the resources. | |
| How does that make any sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's correct. | |
| Well, it's sharing that responsibility and pushing that to the states. | ||
| And pushing it to the states that have less resources to work with. | ||
| How does that make any sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In a sense, it makes sense because it's putting that responsibility on the states to make those decisions locally. | |
| Look, it may be residents of California or Utah or other states in between. | ||
| These are all Americans. | ||
| Communities in the United States of America that are at increased risk because of the actions of this administration, which contradict the supposed goals and objectives. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras were in the room for that hearing on Capitol Hill this week. | ||
| If you missed it and you want to learn more from the President's Forest Chief, go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| You can find the hearing in its entirety there. | ||
| Anthony in Port St. Lucie, Florida. | ||
| Anthony, what's been your experience with severe weather? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, good morning, Gritt. | |
| I call you the queen of awesomeness. | ||
| Good to see you again, talk to you again. | ||
| Well, my wife and I, last year, Milton came through, we call it Tracy Cove, Port St. Lucie. | ||
| Our power went out for four or five days. | ||
| It was damaged to our roof, damage to our garage, damage to my wife's car. | ||
| And I went to this place, the auditorium saying center. | ||
| Eight hours I had to wait in order to talk to a FEMA representative. | ||
| They had to come home after that and then go on the online and put my account just to find out I was denied before I even got on to a proven account the car insurance. | ||
| It was $600 worth of damage to my wife's car. | ||
| They only get $35.38 to get the car fixed. | ||
| And FEMA denied me. | ||
| I applied, reappealed, denied again. | ||
| You know, the garage got fixed. | ||
| My roof, I was at issue. | ||
| So I was, you know, I was very disappointed, you know. | ||
| And but our experience wasn't that great. | ||
| And it was what also bothers me, even with Texas. | ||
| See, they sent the military to deal with the immigrants, but they should be sending the military to help recover those bodies and get them back to their family or help survivors in Texas. | ||
| So we just need a better focus. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Anthony. | ||
| I'm going to go to Lita, who's in Albuquerque, New Mexico. | ||
| Lita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to say, I live, I'm a Republican and I live in New Mexico, in Albuquerque. | ||
| My phone is still an 831 number because I lived in California previously until the end of 2010, actually. | ||
| And I lived in Santa Cruz Mountains, and we had a major event there in the early 80s where our One Road Canyon, One Road Inn, the only way out would be by four-wheel drive or walking. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Yeah, we're listening, Lita. | ||
| Four-wheel drive or walking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we had already left to go to work, my husband and I, because we commuted together over from Lompico, Felton, the city of Felton in California, Santa Cruz Mountain. | |
| And we went over the hill over into the area, the Pitt, as we called it in those days, the Bay Area where we both worked. | ||
| And found out when we got to work that our road was closed. | ||
| It had avalanched, and the road was closed. | ||
| And it was closed for I don't know how long. | ||
| I can't hear you. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Well, Lita, you were listening to you. | ||
| That's why. | ||
| You can't hear us. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm trying to read it on the TV too. | |
| Yeah, don't look at the TV. | ||
| Just keep talking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you so much. | |
| Anyway, we ended up staying with family in the Bay Area, except on the weekends when we were to park our car down below on Ziani Road and walk home and carry, you know, our stuff in and our stuff back out. | ||
| And that was my natural disaster there. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And praying for all the families that are impacted by fires and floods. | ||
| Our great niece in Las Vegas, New Mexico. | ||
| Okay, Lita, well, thank you for the call from New Mexico today. | ||
| We'll go to John, who's in New York. | ||
| John, it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I am. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| I've been watching the news media coverage of this thing, and lately it seems they've turned to finding somebody to blame. | ||
| And their chief target right now with the far-left media is to blame the Trump administration. | ||
| And I don't think there was anything they could have done. | ||
| He's only been in office, what, nine months now? | ||
| The other thing was they had this horrible hurricane that went up into Tennessee and North South Carolina and did all that damage there. | ||
| And that was under the Biden administration. | ||
| I don't think his administration could have done much to prevent that. | ||
| And that was brushed under the rug pretty quickly. | ||
| And then the fires in Los Angeles County, and the mayor there, she was over there vacationing in Africa or whatever she was doing. | ||
| I guess she was on some sort of political thing. | ||
| And she was given ample warnings, and they knew the fire hydrants were dysfunctional long before the fire started. | ||
| But I don't think that would have stopped this fire because of the weather and the wind, and that was out of control. | ||
| So I didn't think anybody should be blamed for that. | ||
| But I think it's not fair to what's going on there to the people in the suffering that's going on to try to dig and dig and try to find somebody to blame for political, your own selfish political ideology. | ||
| But that's my opinion on this. | ||
| I just, I just, I don't think you'll get ever, you'll only hear the left-wing side of this thing, and then the Republics or the right side will try to respond and go back and forth. | ||
| And the people that are suffering the most are being totally overlooked, and they deserve our attention. | ||
| They deserve our support. | ||
| And that's where we should be focused on as American people in the media is really feeling the American people so bad. | ||
| But thanks for the opportunity to express that opinion. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Sorry, New York. | ||
| Elise in Portland, Oregon. | ||
| Elise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I live in Portland now, but I survived Hurricane Michael in Florida Panhandle in 2018. | |
| It was the last Cat Five hurricane that came to the country, but it was underreported. | ||
| And most locals did not evacuate. | ||
| They thought that it would miss them. | ||
| Well, it was a direct hit at Mexico Beach, and I lived an hour away. | ||
| So FEMA came in within a few days. | ||
| However, most homeowners, they're still rebuilding. | ||
| Well, not most, but it took six, nine months for homeowners to get assistance. | ||
| And then government started six to nine months because it was held up in Congress because of the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico. |