| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Coming up on C-SPEN, Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood discusses budget deadlines and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. | ||
| And we'll talk about the future of foreign aid in the wake of cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development with Randy Chester, Vice President of the American Foreign Service Association. | ||
| Also, Nevada Democratic Congresswoman Dina Titus, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure and Foreign Affairs Committees on spending bills and congressional news of the day. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025. | ||
| The House and Senate both return at 10 a.m. Eastern, and we're with you for the next three hours on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We begin on the final workday for the House of Representatives before the August recess. | ||
| The House's work week was cut short yesterday as Speaker Mike Johnson sought to avoid having to hold votes to compel the Trump administration to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| This morning, we're getting a reaction on phone lines split as usual by political party. | ||
| Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you do, please include your name and where you're from. | ||
| Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook. | ||
| It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Wednesday morning to you. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| This is the headline from the lead story on the front page of today's Washington Times. | ||
| Republicans flee pressure to force open Epstein files. | ||
| The story noting that the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein has returned to haunt President Trump at the Republican Party. | ||
| The Trump administration was forced to reopen the Epstein case. | ||
| The House ground to a halt to avoid voting on Epstein bills, and Republican lawmakers made plans to subpoena Epstein's madam. | ||
| Found dead in his jail cell in 2019, the disgraced financier has nonetheless hijacked Washington's agenda. | ||
| The story from the Washington Times today, one of the loudest critics in the Republican Party of the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files, Thomas Massey, Republican from Kentucky. | ||
| This was Thomas Massey yesterday in the House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think this issue is going away over August. | |
| I think that was the admonition of our speaker in there was just sort of stick your head in the sand, let the administration maybe dissipate this by dribbling some stuff out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I'm heavily paraphrasing, but I think that's his strategy, and I don't think it's going to work. | |
| I mean, people have wanted these files for years. | ||
| And then, you know, the president's staff, administration, his own children, his vice president have promised that these files would come out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now we're being told it's a hoax. | |
| It just doesn't wash. | ||
| And whether it's Republican, Democrat, or Independent, across all those categories, it's only like 5 or 6% who don't want the files out. | ||
| That was Thomas Massey yesterday on what the administration is doing. | ||
| Here's the latest. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| On Tuesday, a senior Justice Department official that would be Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that he would seek to interview Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate, Ghelane Maxwell, who's serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted of sex trafficking. | ||
| A lawyer for Maxwell wrote in a post on X: I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghelane will always testify truthfully. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal reporting that President Trump was asked at the White House yesterday about what his administration is doing and about that meeting between his Deputy Attorney General and Ghelane Maxwell. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
From your perspective, who should the DOJ target as part of their investigation? | |
| What specific figures in the Obama administration? | ||
| Well, based on what I read, and I read pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. | ||
| He started it. | ||
| And Biden was there with him. | ||
| And Comey was there. | ||
| And Clapper, the whole group was there. | ||
| Brennan, they were all there in a room right here. | ||
| This is the room. | ||
| This is much more beautiful than it was then, but that's okay. | ||
| I have nice pictures up. | ||
| They came out of the vaults. | ||
| They were in there for 100 years. | ||
| This is much more beautiful. | ||
| We have the Declaration of Independence now in the room. | ||
| And that was President Trump yesterday talking about a separate Department of Justice investigation. | ||
| We'll show you the sat about the latest when it comes to Ghelane Maxwell and the meeting over the Epstein files. | ||
| But we're asking you this morning about the House adjourning early. | ||
| Today's going to be their last day of work before the August recess to avoid holding votes when it comes to the Epstein files. | ||
| Asking you to call in on phone lines, as usual, Democrats, 202-748-8000, Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll play you that clip in just a second as we hear from William in Baltimore, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Ceaseman. | |
| Mike Johnson adjourning the House early was obviously done to avoid voting on the Epstein files, the release of the Epstein files. | ||
| And Donald Trump is just a miserable failure. | ||
| He's the most corrupt president in the history of this country. | ||
| And I saw a clip yesterday where Mike Epstein took the fist when he was asked, Had Donald Trump ever been in his company with underage children or underage females? | ||
| And he refused to answer that question. | ||
| So it opens the thought that Donald Trump could be a pedophile among everything else that we know about him. | ||
| That's William and Maryland. | ||
| This is Woody in Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Woody, good morning. | ||
| Your thoughts on what's happening right now when it comes to the House of Representatives and this investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, unless I'm in another country or do something. | |
| I think Joe Biden and all them Democrats have been sitting in office the last four years. | ||
| Why in the hell they ain't worried about Epstein then? | ||
| But anything that can tie Donald Trump's name to it, they get to crying and whining and everything else. | ||
| But before there was ever Donald Trump, I heard it was Bill Canton's name on it. | ||
| But the Democrats, anything that President Trump tried to do, they should be talking about the great trade deal they made last night. | ||
| But instead, we're talking about some daggum Epstein. | ||
| Epstein dead. | ||
| He got murdered upon the Joe Biden and watches. | ||
| Anybody looking into that? | ||
| I know that man ain't hung himself in no federal prison. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| Let's get some real facts down there. | ||
| We're going to talk. | ||
| Tell the Democrats to investigate how he got killed in jail. | ||
| That's Woody in Georgia, Matthew in Warren, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are next good morning. | |
| This country and society as a whole is screwed up. | ||
| Donald Trump should have never been elected president in the first place. | ||
| And how odd did we wind up with the world that we live in? | ||
| And how did we not only get Donald Trump as president, but also people like Jeffrey Epstein and all the other 20s and pedophiles that have made their way into our government? | ||
| And how did society get to where it is the first place to elect people like Donald Trump? | ||
| That's Matthew in Michigan. | ||
| This morning, an abbreviated open question as we simply talk about the House schedule right now as the House is canceling votes for the rest of the week. | ||
| This is going to be the last work day ahead of the August recess. | ||
| Those votes being avoided included trying to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson saying that the Trump administration is always already working to do that, but the fur over this case continuing and now influencing the voting schedule for the House of Representatives. | ||
| The Senate still set to be in this week and next before the August recess, so there'll still be activity on Capitol Hill. | ||
| But it looks like House members will be headed to the exits today after the floor business that begins at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can, of course, watch here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Here's the headline from Politico, their news analysis about the Epstein files and what it's meant when it comes to the floor agenda in the House. | ||
| House Democrats find their mojo with the Epstein saga. | ||
| It's a column by Rachel Bade in Politico. | ||
| After months of the base complaining that Democratic leadership couldn't land a blow on Donald Trump, House Democrats have seized on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. | ||
| And again, Democrats trying to force votes on releasing the files, some Republicans joining them in that effort. | ||
| And that's where we are today. | ||
| This is Barbara in Knoxville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was just calling a comment on this. | ||
| I think that Mike Johnson is really not, I mean, he's smart about this, but he's not smart because the public really kind of knows what's going on. | ||
| I mean, if they don't, they can speculate real good. | ||
| I just, I'm kind of sad about the whole thing. | ||
| I really am. | ||
| I think they're just distracting us. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| That's Barbara in Tennessee. | ||
| Lupe is in California, Independent line as well. | ||
| Lupe, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| I just have one comment, but I'll ask, I'll answer what your questions are here about what I feel about this cancellation about the voting. | ||
| And it's another thing they're just trying to pull or whatever it is. | ||
| And I just feel sad for the people that aren't going to get to hear the truth. | ||
| And something I came across on TV the other day, and I snapped a shot. | ||
| They were showing Epstein and Trump when they were young, younger anyway. | ||
| And somebody came behind them a ways. | ||
| And then he looked to see what they were doing. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, you could see a figure that popped up. | ||
| And I said, oh, my God, that's Judge Gorges when he was younger. | ||
| And he hid immediately and went back around. | ||
| And on the way back, he covered himself. | ||
| And Lupe, where are you saying you saw this and read about this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't read about it. | |
| I saw it on TV, and I snapped a picture of it. | ||
| So this is your... | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I can't understand, pardon me, but what I can't, because I spoke to somebody yesterday, and they said, when you call in, call in 10 minutes, and, you know, let them know, and that was yesterday. | |
| So I called in today because I couldn't get back in yesterday. | ||
| But I saw that, and then I took a picture of the judge when they were showing him on TV. | ||
| The same hair, the pattern, because it had premature gray hair. | ||
| All right, that's Lupe's interpretation. | ||
| Here's that clip we tried to show you earlier: President Trump being asked about his Deputy Attorney General setting this meeting with Ghelaine Maxwell from the White House Oval Office yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, do you support the Justice Department seeking a new interview with Glenn Maxwell to George Attorney General to see what? | |
| I don't know anything about it. | ||
| They're going to what meet her? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're going to, your Deputy Attorney General has reached out to Ghelane Maxwell's attorney asking for a new interview. | |
| Yeah, I don't know about it, but I think it's something that would be, sounds appropriate to do you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have any concern that your Deputy Attorney General is your former attorney would be conducting the interview, given no, I have no concern. | |
| He's a very talented person. | ||
| He's very smart. | ||
| I didn't know that they were going to do it. | ||
| I don't really follow that too much. | ||
| It's sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt. | ||
| The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold, Tulsi Gabbard, what they did to this country in 2016, starting in 2016, but going up all the way going up to 2020 of the election. | ||
| They tried to rig the election, and they got caught. | ||
| And there should be very severe consequences for that. | ||
| You know, when we caught Hillary Clinton, I said, you know what? | ||
| Let's not go too far here. | ||
| It's the ex-wife of a president, and I thought it was sort of terrible. | ||
| And I let her off the hook, and I'm very happy I did. | ||
| But it's time to start after what they did to me. | ||
| And whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. | ||
| Obama's been caught directly. | ||
| So people say, oh, you know, a group. | ||
| It's not a group. | ||
| It's Obama. | ||
| His orders are on the paper. | ||
| The papers are signed. | ||
| The papers came right out of their office. | ||
| They sent everything to be highly classified. | ||
| Well, the highly classified has been released. | ||
| And what they did in 2016 and in 2020 is very criminal. | ||
| It's criminal at the highest level. | ||
| So that's really the things you should be talking about. | ||
| I know nothing about the other, but I think it's appropriate that they do go. | ||
| President Trump yesterday from the White House on that issue that he says you should be talking about. | ||
| This is also the story on it from today's Washington Times. | ||
| Donald Trump wants people targeted after that report, also, along with naming former President Barack Obama, former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, among the people that he says worked in a conspiracy to discredit his 2016 election victory, focusing on that issue yesterday when getting questions about this issue at the White House. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts on phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as usual. | ||
| This is Julian in Connecticut. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm doing well. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The thing that I keep thinking about is if President Trump's name was associated with this list, you know, the Democrats are looking under every rock for the last four, six years to put him there. | |
| So obviously he's not there. | ||
| But they're going to push this and push this and push this just to bring him down. | ||
| And C-SPAN is happy to do it every morning. | ||
| Why don't you talk about all the things that he's doing, all the great things that he's doing? | ||
| Instead, you keep talking about Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. | ||
| And like I said, you know they're looking under every rock to bring somebody out to associate President Trump with Epstein. | ||
| And they're not going to find anything, but they will find Bill Clinton thing there. | ||
| And I wonder if these Democrats want Bill Clinton's name to come out. | ||
| That's all I have to say, John. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| That's Julian in Connecticut, and this is Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday at his final news conference before the August recess with reporters taking questions on the House schedule and why the August recess is coming early. | ||
| I want to be clear about this. | ||
| There is a reason behind what we are doing here. | ||
| We have a responsibility, actually a dual responsibility here, okay? | ||
| I've been on record very clearly that I believe in maximum transparency. | ||
| I think every single House Republican will say the same thing. | ||
| In fact, they've told me that publicly and privately. | ||
| They talk about this. | ||
| We want maximum transparency. | ||
| We also understand the other part of that duty is that we have to protect innocent victims. | ||
| We have to do both things at the same time. | ||
| What do we mean by that? | ||
| Look, involved in the Epstein evil, okay, which is what it was, just call it what it was. | ||
| There are innocent victims of those unspeakable sex crimes. | ||
| Some of them were minors. | ||
| Some of them were not. | ||
| When the Epstein records are turned over to the public, which we must do as quickly as possible, we have to also be very judicious and careful about protecting the innocent. | ||
| I think everybody in the country should understand the necessity of that. | ||
| It is the standard. | ||
| I used to be a litigator. | ||
| It's the standard in the court of law and the courts. | ||
| It's the standard in law enforcement. | ||
| Anyone who's served in law enforcement understands the necessity of that. | ||
| It is the standard with government agencies. | ||
| We protect the innocent. | ||
| So we cannot be careless in an open release like that. | ||
| You have to be very careful. | ||
| The president himself has said that he wants maximum transparency and all credible evidence to be turned over to the American public so that everyone can make their own decisions. | ||
| We're owed that. | ||
| And we want any individual who's been involved in any way in the Epstein evils to be brought to justice as quickly as possible. | ||
| And the law should be brought down upon their head. | ||
| We're unequivocal about that, okay? | ||
| We have to make sure that the credible evidence is revealed, and we're doing that. | ||
| The president has made a request to the courts in the grand jury testimony and the file's there, for example. | ||
| And the court should turn that over. | ||
| And that will be a continuing and ongoing quest. | ||
| Now, what we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats' political games. | ||
| This is a serious matter. | ||
| We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram. | ||
| The Rules Committee became the ground for them to do that. | ||
| We're not going to allow them to engage in that charade anymore. | ||
| Why do I call it a charade? | ||
| Because the Democrats are trying to play gotcha politics right now when, as the leader just pointed out, they don't have any moral high ground on this at all. | ||
| They controlled the Department of Justice for the last four years. | ||
| Has anyone forgotten? | ||
| They had all these files the entire time. | ||
| They sat on everything Epstein related for four long years while President Biden was in office. | ||
| You could draw your own conclusions as to why, but we've been intellectually consistent the entire time. | ||
| I was Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday with reporters on Capitol Hill. | ||
| The House is in at 10 a.m. Eastern, and again, it will be the last workday before the August recess. | ||
| One of those members who's going to be at work today on Capitol Hill, Congressman Mike Flood. | ||
| He joins us now, Republican of Nebraska. | ||
| Congressman Flood, appreciate the time before this final day, before the August recess. | ||
| The Epstein files taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room last week and this week. | ||
| This is a headline from the Washington Times today. | ||
| Republicans flee the pressure to force open the Epstein files. | ||
| Is that a fair headline? | ||
| Is that an accurate headline from the Washington Times? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think so. | |
| Speaker Johnson said it very well. | ||
| Like, this has got your politics. | ||
| The Democrats ran the show for four years. | ||
| Nothing came of this. | ||
| You know, we're in the House of Representatives. | ||
| We have a process. | ||
| We're talking about a resolution. | ||
| The president has directed the Attorney General to release the grand jury testimony pursuant to a court signing off on it. | ||
| You know, we have victims in this situation. | ||
| We have sensitive investigative material. | ||
| Let this process play out. | ||
| It will be, you know, if it's up to me, political expediency, fine, you know, but I also don't know what's in the files. | ||
| And I want anybody that has broken the law to face the consequences, to face the full force of the justice system. | ||
| And I would have to think that Merrick Garland, who was the Attorney General, had he seen information in that investigation that charges should have been brought, would have brought those charges. | ||
| How much division is this causing inside the Republican conference? | ||
| We played the clip of Thomas Massey saying this isn't going away over the August recess. | ||
| There was a Republican-led resolution for a meeting with House members, with Jazae Maxwell. | ||
| How much is this dividing the conference? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say we have had the most productive six months that we could possibly have. | |
| We funded the government with the CR with the help of the Democrats and the minority leader. | ||
| We passed a reconciliation bill in a very narrow majority House. | ||
| We just passed the Genius Act and we got 100 votes from the Democrats on the Clarity Act. | ||
| We're going to be a digital asset leader. | ||
| Like we've had a very successful run. | ||
| I think if you ask every member of the Republican conference, it's time to go home and make sure that Americans know what was in the One Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| There's so much misinformation out there about what was in our reconciliation package. | ||
| I'm excited to go home and tell people in my home state how good the One Big Beautiful bill is and recharge, come back in September and fund the government. | ||
| So to your question, I think it's easy for the media to make a lot out of the Epstein files because it's tabloid attention-getting news. | ||
| But we've had an exceptionally good run, and it's time for the break, and then we'll come back in September. | ||
| And by the way, this will sort itself out during the month of August. | ||
| And if it doesn't, we'll deal with it. | ||
| The Oversight Committee is talking about bringing in Ms. Maxwell. | ||
| Go for it. | ||
| Like, let's get it out on the table. | ||
| You're a member of the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| You talk about coming back in September and funding the government. | ||
| What is the plan? | ||
| Is there enough time after the August recess to pass all the appropriations bills necessary? | ||
| Are we staring down another potential government shutdown or one of these long-term continuing resolutions that keeps the government funded at previous levels? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we're 60 days out from the end of the fiscal year. | |
| I think it's obnoxious to be talking about a continuing resolution. | ||
| The Appropriations Committee has been putting bills on the floor. | ||
| We've been passing bills. | ||
| Our chairman, Tom Cole, has been working in a bipartisan manner. | ||
| Leader Thune is talking about putting bills out. | ||
| Here's what I've learned. | ||
| I've only been here three years, but we may not have all 12 bills out from the Senate. | ||
| We may not have all 12 bills out by the House. | ||
| But if we get enough of these bills on the floor, there could be a conference where we can land this in regular order. | ||
| My biggest challenge, our biggest challenge, is that the Democrats are in no mood to work with us. | ||
| Look at what happened to Leader Schumer when he helped us fund the government in March, which was the right thing to do. | ||
| The next thing that happened to him was his popularity in New York went down by 12 points. | ||
| AOC starts talking about running against him for Senate, and Chris Murphy starts talking about taking him down as the minority leader. | ||
| That's where their base is. | ||
| And so two things have to happen. | ||
| One is Democrats have to come to the table, and Republicans have to recognize we're not in reconciliation anymore. | ||
| It's going to take 60 votes. | ||
| It's going to have to be bipartisan. | ||
| But the jury that's going to decide who's in power next year want to know that their government is functioning and working and passing a budget. | ||
| And that's what I want to do. | ||
| Congressman Mike Flood, Republican, Nebraska, kind enough to join us this morning, early this morning before members head out of town. | ||
| This is the final workday before the August recess. | ||
| If you want to join the conversation and chat with him, phone lines as usual: Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in for you, Congressman. | ||
| Just wanted to know: you were recently elected the chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus. | ||
| What is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we are, you know, in the 220-person House majority, there's basically five families, as Speaker McCarthy would say. | |
| The Main Street Caucus is the pragmatic governing wing, I like to say, of the Republican majority. | ||
| We have 83 members from states all over the United States, and we meet once a week to talk about how we can influence the direction of the House. | ||
| I like to think we're the conscience of the majority. | ||
| And we are pragmatic conservatives that want to see efficient government, lower taxes, make sure that you can create jobs in this country, unleash energy independence, protect the border. | ||
| We have a lot of our members are committee chairs or aspiring committee chairs. | ||
| When I got to Congress, I looked around and I said, where is the best place for me to fit? | ||
| And I gave it about six months. | ||
| And I saw Dusty Johnson from South Dakota and Stephanie Beiss from Oklahoma. | ||
| And I saw that in every single situation where big things were going down, they were right in the middle of it. | ||
| What do you mean by pragmatic? | ||
| Are you more willing to work across the aisle with Democrats to get bills passed? | ||
| Explain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So let's talk about continuing a resolution to fund the government. | |
| You know, there's some members on either side of the aisle that will vote no on something like that. | ||
| We don't see any value in shutting down the government. | ||
| We don't see any value in impeaching judges. | ||
| We don't see any value in performative politics that doesn't produce a result. | ||
| And so the Main Street Caucus, I think, exists to speak for the folks that are trying to create jobs around this country. | ||
| You know, I represent Nebraska, and we have members that come from California, members that come from Florida. | ||
| These are often people that came from legislatures that have been in the business of representing people, and they bring all that experience to the table. | ||
| We meet once a week. | ||
| We meet throughout the week, and we make sure that our House leadership knows where the pragmatic Main Street caucus is at. | ||
| We'll let you chat with some of the folks around the country. | ||
| We'll start in Crystal River, Florida, Israel Republican line. | ||
| You're on with Congressman Mike Flood. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I've been waiting for a long time to get on the line. | ||
| Thank you for getting me on. | ||
| What's your question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, my comment has to do with the Epstein file, but it also has to do with other topics. | |
| This Epstein file, he was the speaker that's on the phone was talking about that. | ||
| This seems not that necessary, and I beg to differ. | ||
| I beg to differ because the Epstein file, nonetheless, even though they're growing rampant about speaking about the Epstein file, that they shouldn't keep on speaking about it. | ||
| Yes, there is a lot to uncover because Trump's name is tied to it in a very big way. | ||
| And he wants to blotch out his name from it. | ||
| Even though he wants to present the files, he wants to blotch out his name. | ||
| Why would he want to blotch out his name from the file before presenting it to the public? | ||
| Congressman Flood, do you think that's what's going on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have to think that if President Trump was a meaningful part of that investigative file, that in our prior administration, it would have come out in a heartbeat. | |
| We saw a lot of lawfare under the Biden administration. | ||
| We saw a lot of gotcha politics. | ||
| I think Alan Dershowitz even said he's seen the files, and there's no current elected official in the files. | ||
| Now, I can't verify that. | ||
| That's hearsay. | ||
| I've not seen the files. | ||
| But, you know, this is a process. | ||
| And hopefully, all of this gets out there. | ||
| We have to protect the victims of pedophilia and everything that happened. | ||
| Obviously, we've got one that committed suicide in jail. | ||
| We've got another one in federal prison. | ||
| Sounds like hopefully House Republicans will get a chance to talk to her with our Democratic counterparts. | ||
| This is a process. | ||
| The speaker said it best. | ||
| We're working on a resolution. | ||
| Let's come back in September and settle this if it's not done. | ||
| My guess is something gets handled in August. | ||
| Lawfare. | ||
| Are we in an era of lawfare? | ||
| Do you see a disarmament at any point in the future when it comes to backing down from lawfare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It exists in our system. | |
| Like, I hate the idea that we're constantly looking in the past. | ||
| Like, we have to focus on the future. | ||
| Like, we have so many pressing issues going on. | ||
| That said, our laws have to be followed. | ||
| And we have juries, and we have judges, and we have courts, and we have prosecutors, and we have defense attorneys that live in that system. | ||
| And it should exist to present justice. | ||
| I am somebody that strongly believes in a co-equal three branches of government. | ||
| I want a strong court system. | ||
| I want an Article I Congress that exerts its authority. | ||
| And I want a president that does everything they're entitled to do in Article II. | ||
| Are we in the right balance right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think we, as Republicans, are the party of law and order. | |
| And I will tell you that it's very important to me that we protect the integrity of the court system. | ||
| I think the court system served us very well under President Biden. | ||
| And while I do agree that federal district courts shouldn't have the authority to strike down something nationwide, I think that is a, and I voted for a bill to amend that. | ||
| With the national injunctions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| But I do think that federal district courts should have teeth so that they can appropriately weigh in on the issues in their district. | ||
| And so I am a Republican that thinks this is something we should talk about. | ||
| We should be out front supporting the rule of law. | ||
| We should be out front supporting three co-equal branches of government. | ||
| Janice, in New York Line for Democrats, good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to talk to Mr. Mike Flood and ask him, why is this being blamed on the Democrats when Trump came into office and when he appointed Barney, the first thing she said was the file was on her desk and she was going to release it. | ||
| I mean, he campaigned on releasing his file. | ||
| Neither wanted this release. | ||
| It wasn't the Democrats. | ||
| So for him to say now this is a witch hunt, that's ridiculous. | ||
| And his previous statement, talking about this three levels of government, the Congress has not done anything since he came into office. | ||
| They let him just ram bills through, sign these executive actions. | ||
| So they're not working. | ||
| They turned around and now they're leaving early. | ||
| So we haven't seen three levels of government work or do anything since he came into office. | ||
| Give me a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll take the second question first. | |
| Show me a more productive Congress than what we've seen in the last six months. | ||
| Now, I understand that not everybody in America is going to agree on the policy decisions we arrived at, but we've not only funded the government with the help of the Democrats, which nobody thought could be done, we've passed a reconciliation bill. | ||
| We've dealt with the border, seriously dealt with the border, which is something that had to be done. | ||
| And then we just basically passed the framework for digital assets, making America, you know, putting America in a spot where we can lead the world and make sure that the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency. | ||
| I understand that not everybody in America agrees with that. | ||
| We did cut $1.6 trillion in mandatory spending. | ||
| That reconciliation bill is a game changer for America. | ||
| And with President Trump's work on tariffs, our country is poised for amazing growth. | ||
| Can I follow up on the border for a second? | ||
| What was supposed to happen? | ||
| What votes were supposed to take place when it came to immigration and the border last week and this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| That hasn't been on my radar. | ||
| You know, I can't imagine what more we could do before the August recess on the border when we have just doubled down on funding for Homeland Security. | ||
| Our border is the safest it's been in decades. | ||
| Americans, you know, even Bernie Sanders is saying that you've got to protect the border. | ||
| I think this was a huge lapse in judgment under the Democrats and certainly the Biden administration. | ||
| And if you're concerned about anything, the border security has been handled by the Trump administration far faster than I think anybody could have predicted. | ||
| When you go home for the August recess back to Nebraska, are you going to be holding town halls? | ||
| What questions are you expecting from the folks back home? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am going to hold a town hall. | |
| And I believe that town halls are important. | ||
| I believe, especially passing the one big beautiful bill, you need to stand in the town square and you need to explain to people what this is. | ||
| There's a lot of misinformation about health care. | ||
| The reality is that if you are able-bodied and you choose not to work, you shouldn't have free health care. | ||
| But if you're disabled, if you're mentally ill, if you are not able-bodied, you should have this health care. | ||
| And we are not taking it away. | ||
| In fact, we're protecting it for people. | ||
| And rural hospitals in Nebraska under the directed state payment system are going to see an additional up to $1 billion annually from the provider tax arrangement that's been in place for some time. | ||
| They are going to be okay. | ||
| I've been working with the Hospital Association. | ||
| I've been in touch with them the entire time. | ||
| I'm very confident that rural health care, urban health care, all that is getting taken care of. | ||
| This is Patricia in Minneapolis, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I have two points, and please don't try and interrupt me and redirect me, John. | |
| My first comment is about Medicare fraud. | ||
| In Minnesota, John Hinderocker at Powerline has a great article about how we have no checks and balances about double dipping. | ||
| People are getting Medicaid in multiple states. | ||
| The other point I want to make, John, is that you folks at C-SPAN claim to be fair and balanced and unbiased. | ||
| Well, if that were the case, you would have segments on every day about Obama and his treason and going after President Trump. | ||
| You just wrote, read a short little clip about it. | ||
| But if this were a Republican that was doing what Obama, Clinton, Comey, and all of them did, you would be talking about it every single day. | ||
| That's Patricia in Minnesota. | ||
| Mike Flood, what do you want to pick up on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the first part of your question, you referenced both Medicare and Medicaid. | |
| I just want to make this point. | ||
| There's a big difference between those two programs. | ||
| And I think one of the things that a lot of Americans confuse is when they hear Medicaid cuts, they think it's Medicare. | ||
| Medicare is for people over the age of 65. | ||
| And I think with all of the rhetoric around Medicare and Medicaid, there's a lot of really good people that rely on that Medicare coverage and they hear Medicaid cuts and they think it's the same thing. | ||
| And so I think as Republicans, we have to set the boundaries so that people understand the difference between these two programs. | ||
| When I was a state senator at 28, I didn't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| I was a long ways away from either one of those programs. | ||
| So I want to just point that out. | ||
| As it relates to waste, fraud, and abuse, absolutely. | ||
| That's what we've been talking about the entire time is that there is opportunity to reduce error rates and to do work requirements and to make sure that the people receiving this are actually the ones that deserve it. | ||
| Another term that often gets confused or conflated, debt and deficit. | ||
| And we heard a lot of discussion about debt and deficit and what the one big beautiful bill would do for both those things. | ||
| Can you just review that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So for the first time in 50 years, we made a major cut to mandatory spending, $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. | ||
| So that is obviously something that we're celebrating, the fact that we are reducing our spending. | ||
| Obviously, we extended the 2017 Trump tax cuts. | ||
| We made some other changes. | ||
| We did things for affordable housing. | ||
| We dealt with the federal estate tax exemption for farmers and ranchers, that matters. | ||
| You can't cut your way out of a $37 trillion deficit. | ||
| You have to cut and grow. | ||
| And so putting this country on a path to increase our GDP, to bring manufacturing back to the United States, to have a tax environment where people are creating jobs, that's the secret sauce that's going to get us on a path where that arc bends in our favor over the long term. | ||
| Maddie, Baltimore, Maryland, just about eight minutes left or so with Mike Flood. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| It would be nice if we could get away from this Jeffrey Epstein, but it's going to be impossible now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was watching yesterday on TV. | |
| Everybody look up this name, Luke Campbell from a group years ago called the Two Live Crew. | ||
| He told how him, Eddie Murphy, and Mike Tyson went to one of Donald Trump's parties in Florida. | ||
| He said they were going through those rooms, and he said he got to one room. | ||
| He said, some of those things. | ||
| And Maddie, where are you reading this? | ||
| And bring me to the public policy aspect of this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the policies, how are you going to get away from the ones, get two policies, and you can't get away from sexual assault, and it has something to do with the president of the United States. | |
| Think about that. | ||
| And I don't know why people anyway are fussing about Donald Trump, you knew you put a sexual assault in office. | ||
| So this is going to be an ongoing thing. | ||
| Mike Flood, any response? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have not heard the words two live crew since I was a high school senior in 1993. | |
| So I don't want to, I don't know what that's all about, but I will say. | ||
| We don't get a lot of that here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I can't imagine that comes up very often. | |
| We're talking about a situation where we have victims of pedophilia. | ||
| We have child victims. | ||
| We have people that have been charged. | ||
| We have one that committed suicide. | ||
| We have another one that is sitting in federal prison. | ||
| And to the extent there's any criminal wrongdoing, they should be charged. | ||
| Every American wants that, regardless of their party, Republican, Democrat, Independent. | ||
| If you abuse a child, you should go to jail. | ||
| If this comes down to a discharge petition in the House, signing on with some Democrats to release the full files, to force a vote on that, is that something that you would sign on to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are in a majority if we're signing discharge petitions. | |
| I don't sign discharge petitions because I'm a part of the majority that runs Congress. | ||
| And so, you know, as the chairman of the Main Street Caucus, I'm going to work with leadership to affect the change and the outcomes that I want. | ||
| Having been the former Speaker of the Nebraska legislature, the nation's only unicameral, you know, I understand that legislatures work best when those in the majority or those in the body follow the regular process. | ||
| So I'm not somebody that signs discharge petitions. | ||
| It has nothing to do with the issue here or there. | ||
| There's a lot of times that I agree with the underlying policy angle, but if I'm doing my job as a member of Congress, I can convince enough of my colleagues to go down that route without short-circuiting leadership. | ||
| As a former speaker back in your state, what should we know about being a speaker? | ||
| What don't people really understand about trying to lead a legislative body? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's kind of like herding cats on methamphetamine. | |
| I mean, if you really want to know what it is. | ||
| I used to say that running a legislature is like running a cemetery. | ||
| You're above everybody, but no one's listening. | ||
| So, you know, sometimes I go home on the weekend and I think about Mike Johnson's week, and I just have a lot of empathy for what he goes through in a given day and the number of times he has to cajole and to tweak. | ||
| I mean, he's got to be exhausted. | ||
| Do you think you have more empathy for him than most members of Congress, considering your background? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that anybody that served in a legislative environment recognizes that what he does is extremely difficult. | |
| It would be literally, and Tom Emmertu, Leader Scalise, it would be exhausting. | ||
| I mean, I'm in the room when he's dealing with some folks that sometimes can be irretractable. | ||
| And it's all I can do to maybe even contain myself. | ||
| And he handles it with such grace. | ||
| You know, he handles it, you know, when people are mad at you and you can look them in the face and you can say, you know what, we'll get through this and not let it affect you. | ||
| Like, that is the mark of a good legislative leader. | ||
| How do you think he compares to other Republican speakers of the past whose names you can go as far back as you want, but who would you compare him to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I've only really worked with two. | |
| Speaker McCarthy was exceptionally talented. | ||
| His political acumen was brilliant. | ||
| He was a longtime operator in the House. | ||
| He understanded its ways. | ||
| He understood its ways. | ||
| Mike Johnson, you know, by virtue of the fact that he didn't have any baggage, came into this with a much different perspective. | ||
| And he's performed exceptionally well. | ||
| Like I watch him deal with very difficult issues and the way he maintains his composure and turns the other cheek and always turns around. | ||
| My style as a speaker in the Nebraska Unicameral, a little bit different, maybe more authoritarian. | ||
| Speaker Johnson does a fantastic job of landing this plane every day. | ||
| And by the way, you can't muscle people into something when you can't lose a vote, right? | ||
| So he has to walk a very delicate line. | ||
| But I think at his core, he's a very good person. | ||
| He cares tremendously about the country, and he always wants to do the right thing. | ||
| Time for just one or two more phone calls with Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska, a member of the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| And this is Sandra out of Brooklyn Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Sandra, are you with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on with Congressman Mike Flood. | ||
| Just turn down your television so we can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| What's your question or comment, Sandra? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry, yes, thank you. | |
| Okay, first of all, I'd like to say this. | ||
| I live in New York, and I'm not sure how grand jury proceedings work in other states. | ||
| I do know it's very difficult to get grand jury proceedings here. | ||
| So therefore, I don't know why the DOJ would attempt to do that. | ||
| In good faith, she should be releasing the information that she can release without going through the courts in that manner. | ||
| Secondly, I would like to say also that I heard Trump talk about what President Obama did. | ||
| And if he's telling the truth about that, then by all means, he should be considered as a treasonist. | ||
| But if he's not telling the truth about it, then I think that President Obama should do the right thing and sue him for defamation of character. | ||
| Because to call a person a treasonist, that is very bad. | ||
| And the last thing I want to say is this: I don't know whether the Democrats or Republicans lied about what would happen with these new things that they implemented. | ||
| But if hospitals have to close down because of these things being passed, nursing homes have to close down and so the people have to come and live back with their family members, if Medicare and Medicaid is gutted, if people have to move in with family members because they do not and they're not able to afford the abilities that they've had done, then for those who created this process, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, | ||
| I believe that they will not be back in office in 2026 nor 2028 because people will not accept those kind of cuts to their lifestyles and reward them by putting them back in office. | ||
| So God help those who lied about it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Congressman, running short on time, give me the chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, important that we bring this up. | |
| Medicare was not touched. | ||
| So if you are over the age of 65, if you are on Medicare, there's no part of the One Big Beautiful Bill that touches anything in your program. | ||
| In fact, it's specifically prohibited under the reconciliation process. | ||
| If you are, if your doctor says you need to be in a nursing home and you don't have funds, you're going to get Medicaid. | ||
| You clearly can't work. | ||
| You are needing skilled nursing care. | ||
| That is going to be okay. | ||
| I think we have to dispel all of the bad information out there about what's happening with health care. | ||
| I think that's a very important point. | ||
| And that's what you plan to do over the August recess? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| Congressman Mike Flood, Republican Nebraska. | ||
| It's the first district of Nebraska, a member of the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| Appreciate your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much for having me. | |
| Coming up a little later today, another member of Congress, it will be Nevada Democrat Dina Titus joining us. | ||
| But before then, your phone calls. | ||
| Open forum after the break. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue you want to talk about, lines are yours to do so. | ||
| And we will get to those calls right after the break. | ||
| In a word, Evan Osnos' latest book focuses on the subject of money. | ||
| His book is titled The Haves and the Have Yachts, Dispatches on the Ultra-Rich. | ||
| There are 10 essays which originally appeared in his home publication, The New Yorker. | ||
| The oldest one, Survival of the Richest, ran in 2017. | ||
| The newest, titled Land of Make-Believe, was published in 2024. | ||
| In his introduction, Evan Osnos writes that, quote, reporting in the enclaves of the very rich, Monte Carlo, Palm Beach, Palo Alto, and Hollywood is complicated. | ||
| It's not a world that relishes scrutiny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Evan Osnos with his book, The Haves and the Have Yachts, Dispatches on the Ultra-Rich. | |
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus, with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| Book Notes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | |
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
| We are speaking to the country. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| It's open forum now on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's the time to call in. | ||
| Here's where we are on Capitol Hill today. | ||
| The House is in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can watch live here on C-SPAN Gavel to Gavel. | ||
| The Senate's in at 10 a.m. as well. | ||
| Also today on Capitol Hill, the FEMA Administrator David Richardson is set to testify at a hearing evaluating ways to improve the agency's effectiveness in responding to disasters. | ||
| That's at 10 a.m. on C-SPAN3, also C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPANNOW video app. | ||
| Also, this afternoon, it's 2 p.m. Eastern, the Inspector General of Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security, his name is Joseph Kafari. | ||
| He'll testify before a House subcommittee on ICE and children and detentions and unaccompanied minors. | ||
| Plenty of topics for that discussion. | ||
| That's happening on C-SPAN3, also C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPANNow video app. | ||
| Plenty going on. | ||
| Hope you stay with the C-SPAN networks all day long. | ||
| And now, your phone calls letting you lead the discussion here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| This is Debbie out of Williamsburg, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I really enjoyed the colors this morning and they made a lot of the points that I believe deep in my heart. | ||
| I feel though that when Trump ran, he ran under the Republicans and the MAGA, and that's why he was voted in. | ||
| And since then, he's got away from what he represented to the people, and therefore we consider it lies. | ||
| I mean, he lies about everything, and Congress is dancing around the issues because they're not sure how to control him anymore. | ||
| Debbie, did you vote for him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, God, no. | |
| I'm an independent. | ||
| I'm an American. | ||
| What do you think he's lied to his supporters on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When he ran, he was going to lower prices. | |
| He was going to end the wars. | ||
| He was going to stop all this stuff that was crazy. | ||
| We were going to be the one big, beautiful world leader of the world and stuff. | ||
| And nothing that he ran on, or very few things he ran on, he's actually following through with. | ||
| He presents his stuff to the people. | ||
| Then he gets in there and he has vendettas against everyone. | ||
| He has fixed the government so that it's stacked in his favor with all the appointees and things. | ||
| And he is abusing, Congress is letting him, they're dancing around what he's doing. | ||
| And because of that, we're not actually going by our own laws and constitution. | ||
| And that's what the people are getting mad about. | ||
| It's that you can't trust anything that these people, when I listen to anybody that talks, it's like, I don't know if I can believe anything that comes out of their mouth. | ||
| And they'll say, well, yes, I do this, but I've got to go by the vote. | ||
| Well, he is running. | ||
| He's blackmailing and coercing our representatives out of office. | ||
| And I want to know why Congress can't get together and actually do something because they know what's going on. | ||
| That's Debbie in Ohio. | ||
| This is Julie in Woodbridge, Virginia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| I want to piggyback on what that last caller just said about Congress and how they are really working from the top down rather than from the people who are electing them. | ||
| But I wondered if you could humor me for a minute and just let me ask a question to people because I do think there are a lot of smart people in this country. | ||
| And a lot of times there's this perception that Democrats think Republicans are stupid and not paying attention to stuff. | ||
| But I just think, I think I would love to ask people to just step back and imagine what they really do here and know about countries like North Korea or Russia or China, because I think they just don't understand how those kinds of countries operate. | ||
| And like, first of all, you have to be in charge of the messaging. | ||
| And I think we all know that those countries run their media literally, so that over time, the only information they hear is what the people in power want them to hear. | ||
| So that's like one of the first things. | ||
| The second thing is that those countries break down the trust that they have in government. | ||
| And the institutions that really run the country kind of get marginalized and minimized. | ||
| And again, like North Korea telling their people that everyone's doing well, and they're not. | ||
| So, Julie, you're talking about authoritarianism and how it's used. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And I think, you know, over time, little by little, if people really step back and don't get caught up in their Fox News and all that stuff, they would see what's going on and why there's this concern that, sure, you can agree with some of the policies, but like that last caller said, Trump's running the show. | ||
| So if he tells you this policy is good for you, you really have to ask yourself if it's good for you or is it good for like one of the other parts of an autocratic government is the oligarchs and people in power that have money are running the government. | ||
| And I feel like if people looked at what Donald Trump has to gain from some of the policies he's pushing and his friends, I mean, it's all about prioritizing. | ||
| Yes, we all want to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, and we all would like to assume that the government's working for the people, but it's prioritizing that money. | ||
| It's going to defense contracting gigs. | ||
| It's going to cryptocurrency. | ||
| Like, do most Americans really care that are we investing in crypto? | ||
| Donald Trump is. | ||
| So he just is getting all that stuff to better his family and friends. | ||
| And I don't want to disparage all Republicans. | ||
| I don't want to say anything negative about Republicans, but these are not Republican ideas. | ||
| You know, the things that are coming out now are Trump ideas. | ||
| Julie, got your point. | ||
| That's Julie in Virginia. | ||
| This is Kevin out of Plymouth, Indiana. | ||
| Republican, good morning to the Hoosier state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, John. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll keep this brief. | |
| I heard a news story coming out of California, and I don't want to make politics out of this political hay, but there was a FireAid concert where they took in and reported $100 million or close to it. | ||
| And then I'm hearing that the money has gone to several across the board, nonprofits, some of which maybe Democrat, I don't know. | ||
| But it's just, it just seems a shame that all these people are still waiting to rebuild, just get on with their lives. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| I just want to get your comment on that. | ||
| And I'm also hearing that to date, only seven homes have actually been rebuilt. | ||
| It's just a shame. | ||
| It's a shame that the money just can't get to the people that really need it. | ||
| And I'll end it right there. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| That's Kevin in Plymouth, Indiana. | ||
| This is Rand out of New Orleans. | ||
| Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me? | |
| I can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, this is my problem. | |
| Okay, Trump said that he could walk down and shoot somebody when he was president, and he's been acting like a king ever since and doing what he wants to do. | ||
| And I feel that they don't really release the F-seen file because he's mentioned in there. | ||
| And I also feel like what he's doing to the country is kind of like a political cartoon of a pedophile, you know. | ||
| And I don't think he's really helping anybody, but he's manipulating the side market so that he and his family could. | ||
| You think that they're not releasing it because he's mentioned in there? | ||
| What would you say to people like our previous guest, Mike Flood, who said that if he was mentioned in there, don't you think it would have been released at some point during the four years of the Biden administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I think that the politicians, there are people that work with each other to not do things. | |
| It's kind of like a whole nother world, a whole nother level that the average person don't understand. | ||
| But when you're a politician, you will make deals, even if it, even if it's like, I mean, like he said, he didn't understand the Constitution. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You the president, you, you, you, uh, how many times have the politicians did things? | |
| I mean, right now, he's breaking all these laws, and nobody is coming against him on it. | ||
| That's Ran out of New Orleans. | ||
| It's coming up on 8 a.m. on the East Coast. | ||
| It is open forum on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's your time to call in. | ||
| Democrats, Republicans, and Independents will put those numbers on the screen for you. | ||
| It was the previous caller before Ran that was talking about wildfires. | ||
| I don't have that story that he was referring to, but I do have this one on the price of the LA fires pegged at $65 billion. | ||
| This is the story from USA Today. | ||
| Until this year, the 2018 campfire stood as the only not only as the deadliest wildfire in California history, but also the nation's costliest, $13 billion in economic losses. | ||
| A new report says that each of the two major wildfires that devastated parts of Los Angeles County in January cost more than twice as much, adding up to some $65 billion. | ||
| The Palisades fire at $37 billion and the Eaton fire at $28 billion also became the most expensive wildfire events ever for the reinsurance industry, causing $40 billion total in covered damage, according to a new report. | ||
| The concurrent blazes killed 30 people, destroyed more than 16,000 buildings. | ||
| That compares with 85 people killed and close to 19,000 buildings for the Camp Inferno, which wiped out the Northern California town of Paradise, of course. | ||
| Going back to those stories and those fire events, those deadly events in California. | ||
| This is Larry in Tallahassee, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I watched the Congressman, Congressman Flood, and regarding Medicare, he was wrong on his definition. | ||
| Medicare not only covers individuals over 65, it covers individuals who are disabled for two years who are under 65. | ||
| I think that's very important. | ||
| The other matter that I want to address is Medicaid and Medicare fraud. | ||
| The discussion is generally about individuals who are committing that fraud. | ||
| I believe that the biggest fraud regarding Medicare and Medicaid is individual medical providers and corporate medical providers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The only thing you have to do is go on your web browser, put in Medicare, Medicaid fraud by individual and corporate medical care providers, and you will see the comparison. | |
| I don't know the numbers, but I'll be interested in knowing the comparison between individual fraud and Medicare, Medicaid fraud by individual Medicare providers and corporate medical care providers. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Larry. | ||
| This is William in the Buckeye State Independent. | ||
| Good morning, open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, how are you today? | |
| Doing well. | ||
| I'm here to say, you know, that Epstein thought it's got to be open now. | ||
| I mean, one is, is Shorty Johnson Trump, guys? | ||
| Is Shorty Johnson in the Congress stopping this investigation so to keep him out? | ||
| You know, back in 2000, everybody was young, Joe Biden was a paid if our wife we vote for him. | ||
| Joe Biden was a paid if our wife we vote for him. | ||
| I vote for him because Trump was an idiot his first time around. | ||
| And I'm just wondering, are they covering up for the federal chief of the country? | ||
| That's William in Ohio. | ||
| This issue of the Epstein files and releasing the Epstein files, causing the House to adjourn just a few days early for the August recess. | ||
| It's been a hot topic on Capitol Hill for the past two weeks, including yesterday. | ||
| It was Senator Corey Booker, Democrat from New Jersey, talking about this after the Senate lunches. | ||
| Look, I think it should be really apparent right now that the House of Representatives is running out of town. | ||
| They're running out of town because it clearly the Speaker believes that their membership in the Republican caucus over there is so fragile that they cannot withstand simple debate, discussion about the topic of Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| That this is so patently a hill of lies upon which the Justice Department and House Republicans are trying to hide behind that they can't stand to have debate and discussion about it. | ||
| So they're canceling their plans and running out for a summer recess. | ||
| That should tell voters something. | ||
| Senator Durbin said it plain that we are now in a nation where we had our highest law enforcement official say plainly that there is a client list and a truckload of evidence that they were going to release. | ||
| It's on my desk indicating that there was something substantive that was going to expose criminal behavior. | ||
| And now, months later, they're saying nothing to see there. | ||
| It is clear that one of those statements is not true. | ||
| And so therefore, someone has lied to the American people. | ||
| And what the House of Representatives seems to be so afraid of is to answer that question: when was the lie told? | ||
| And that somehow is so difficult to endure that question that they are running out of town. | ||
| Senator Corey Booker, yesterday on Capitol Hill, back to your phone calls in open forum. | ||
| This is Stu out of Seattle, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, this pertains to the caller that was putting down Trump there, like a lot of the lefties do. | ||
| If the masses of voters in America knew what Trump did from 2016 to 2020, if they had any brains at all, he would have got every vote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Abraham Accords. | |
| He ripped up NAFTA that Clinton put in, the worst agreement ever. | ||
| More money to black colleges than any president in history. | ||
| The embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. | ||
| And he saved us $300,000 on the construction. | ||
| I can go on and on. | ||
| There's 10 or 15 that I don't even know because I'm not an expert. | ||
| But you can check on those things. | ||
| So these Democrats are so full of crap. | ||
| Like most voters in every country, they don't know anything. | ||
| Stu, we're about six months into President Trump's second term. | ||
| What is the, if you had to point to one, what would you call his biggest success in his first six months? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what's going on now is it's errors because every president has passed a buck from whether it was the Clinton or the Bushes or 37 trillion in debt. | |
| See? | ||
| Because of inferior people running the country. | ||
| A country like ours should have people like Chuck Schwab and people who have accomplished something. | ||
| You got to sweat. | ||
| None of the Democrats have ever worked a day in their life. | ||
| Stu, do you think that the people that Donald Trump has appointed to head the various departments and agencies in the federal government, are those those people that you're referring to? | ||
| Are they the right people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, of course. | |
| They're good. | ||
| Damn good. | ||
| Better than what he's had. | ||
| There's nothing perfect, you know. | ||
| If people think they're going to spread the wealth around so everybody has an equal share, we'll be like Venezuela. | ||
| That's Stu. | ||
| This is Raylene out of California Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a few things I want to address. | ||
| The last caller, I just want to say you're showing your ignorance. | ||
| To say that no Democrats have ever worked a day in their lives just shows how ignorant you are. | ||
| Shame on you. | ||
| Secondly, we're all Americans, Democrats, Republicans. | ||
| It doesn't really matter. | ||
| We're all Americans, and we should be treating each other as such. | ||
| I hear the Republican Party constantly, this administration, constantly referring to our national debt and our deficit. | ||
| You know, oh, it's $36, $37 trillion. | ||
| Well, maybe it is $36, $37 trillion, but none of them are admitting that a quarter of that was put there by Trump in four years. | ||
| Biden was so terrible, he put $6 trillion in debt during the pandemic while he was dealing with Hamas and Israel and while he was dealing with Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| So Trump claims he doesn't want wars and he doesn't want people dying while he's sitting back and letting Russia kill all these Ukrainian people. | ||
| I'm going to give them 50 more days. | ||
| I'm going to give them 50 more days. | ||
| I'm not going to give any help to Ukraine to defend themselves. | ||
| And then Israel, he's allowing them to kill off all the Palestinians. | ||
| And, oh, they're our buddies. | ||
| You know, make up your mind. | ||
| Are you anti-war? | ||
| Do you not want people to die? | ||
| Or you want to just keep blowing hot air up people's skirts? | ||
| And as far as Obama committing treason, you know, you look at the definition, Flood got it right. | ||
| You know, he had a Freudian slip and referred to the Republican Party as authoritarian. | ||
| They are, by the way. | ||
| And secondly, I hate to say it, but sorry, lost my train. | ||
| Stop there for a minute. | ||
| Sorry, Raylena. | ||
| On the issue of President Trump referring to former President Obama and charges of conspiracy to discredit Mr. Trump's 2016 election victory, it was a topic that President Trump was appointing reporters towards yesterday at the White House. | ||
| It was during a meeting with the President of the Philippines as he was getting questions about the Epstein files. | ||
| This is one of those interactions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
From your perspective, who should the DOJ target as part of their investigation? | |
| What specific figures in the Obama administration? | ||
| Well, based on what I read, and I read pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. | ||
| He started it. | ||
| And Biden was there with him. | ||
| And Comey was there. | ||
| And Clapper, the whole group was there. | ||
| Brennan, they were all there in a room. | ||
| Right here. | ||
| This is the room. | ||
| This is much more beautiful than it was then, but that's okay. | ||
| I have nice pictures up. | ||
| They came out of the vaults. | ||
| They were in there for 100 years. | ||
| This is much more beautiful. | ||
| We have the Declaration of Independence now in the room, which wasn't here. | ||
| I guess people didn't feel too good about putting it here, but I do. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| If you look at those papers, they have them stone cold, and it was President Obama. | ||
| It wasn't lots of people all over the place. | ||
| It was them too. | ||
| But the leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. | ||
| Have you heard of him? | ||
| And except for the fact that he gets shielded by the press for his entire life, that's the one they look, he's guilty. | ||
| It's not a question, you know, I like to say, let's give it time. | ||
| It's there. | ||
| He's guilty. | ||
| This was treason. | ||
| This was every word you can think of. | ||
| They tried to steal the election. | ||
| They tried to obfuscate the election. | ||
| They did things that nobody's ever even imagined, even in other countries. | ||
| You've seen some pretty rough countries. | ||
| This man has seen some pretty rough countries, but you've never seen anything like that. | ||
| And we have all of the documents. | ||
| And from what Tulsi told me, she's got thousands of additional documents coming. | ||
| So President Obama, it was his concept, his idea, but he also got it from crooked Hillary Clinton. | ||
| Crooked is a $3 bill. | ||
| Hillary Clinton and her group, the Democrats, spent $12 million to Christopher Steele to write up a report that was a total fake report. | ||
| Took two years to figure that out, but it came out that it was a total fake report. | ||
| It was made-up fiction. | ||
| And they used that. | ||
| The one thing they weren't able to do was to, and probably the only thing I respect about the press in years is the press refused to write it before the election. | ||
| That's President Trump yesterday in the Oval Office when it comes to his comments about former President Barack Obama, the former president's spokesperson releasing a statement Tuesday in response. | ||
| It's reported in the Washington Times wrap-up of these allegations. | ||
| The spokesperson, Patrick Roden-Bush, said in a statement Tuesday that, quote, these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. | ||
| Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response, he said, quote, but these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. | ||
| A spokesperson for former President Barack Obama, that was yesterday. | ||
| And in today's Wall Street Journal, it's Holman Jenkins picking up the Russia gate story. | ||
| But he makes this point to those who might think that the charges of treason might warrant jail time or something else. | ||
| This is what Holman Jenkins writes. | ||
| No, President Obama won't be going to jail here. | ||
| He benefits from the same Supreme Court ordered immunity for official acts that President Trump does. | ||
| Directing U.S. intelligence efforts certainly qualifies as that, Holman Jenkins writes. | ||
| If you want to read his column, it's in today's Wall Street Journal. | ||
| This is LaWan in Jessup, Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing this morning, John? | |
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I really got a bone to peek with you. | |
| Last two days you had guests on there, and you pretty much took over the show and not allowed any guests to call in. | ||
| And I don't think that's fair to the audience if it's supposed to be the audience show. | ||
| I think we had 50-some callers on yesterday's show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not that. | |
| Not on the Republican man you had yesterday and not on Flood today. | ||
| You had about five on Flood. | ||
| And I would have liked for you to ask Mr. Flood. | ||
| He said he was going to have town halls. | ||
| Why wasn't he having town halls before? | ||
| You could not get a Republican to have a town hall behind the beautiful bill. | ||
| He failed. to tell the audience that he's taking $800 billion out of Medicaid. | ||
| And he also failed to tell the audience that they having to put up a supplementary to try to help these house sellers in these little pole towns in southern town to withstand the money lost from Medicare. | ||
| But if you'd have had enough cause then, maybe we'd have got some truthful answers out of this man instead of asking him about speakership and all that. | ||
| Who cares about his speakership or Mr. Jocelyn's speakership with his spineless self? | ||
| And the next thing I would love for Mr. President Trump to open the books and let's have a complete court hearing on Mr. Obama. | ||
| Allegedly, treason is an action so that the American people could find out about his son, Don Jr., his son-in-law taking a meeting with a Russian lady, Paul Manafort, his campaign manager, General Flynn, all of them tied up with Russia. | ||
| Please, please, please, let's open the books on Mr. Obama so we can get to the truth. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| That's the one out of Jessup, Georgia. | ||
| This is Tim, Charlotte, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, Tim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to try to make this as brief as possible. | |
| You had a guy from Nebraska call up yesterday. | ||
| I quit watching C-SPAN a long time ago. | ||
| I don't want to say anything about Brian Lamb because a long time ago, he probably was a decent guy. | ||
| But this is just, you're another Democratic MSNBC, CNN, all that other stuff. | ||
| But what I really want to talk about is Obama. | ||
| Let's throw out some names here. | ||
| Lois Lerner used the IRS to weaponize against the Republicans. | ||
| Eric Holder, contempt of court for Fast and Furious. | ||
| Hillary Clinton, she was shot down over Bosnia-Hertz and Govo. | ||
| Everybody knows that was a lie. | ||
| Bill Clinton took over $12 to $15 million from the Russians to do speeches over there. | ||
| I could go on and on. | ||
| These Democrats are so demented. | ||
| And I'm not saying the Republicans don't have their skeletons in their closet, but these people are demented. | ||
| You look at Mondavi. | ||
| I mean, this guy is a communist. | ||
| Do these people even know what a communist is? | ||
| Have they ever been to Russia? | ||
| My father went to Russia years ago. | ||
| He was in the Korean War. | ||
| These people are so demented and delusional about this. | ||
| Yes, Trump is. | ||
| He has his own way of doing things. | ||
| And believe me, could have got some other people in there besides him, but he's 10 times better than Biden. | ||
| Biden has been on the grit for 45 years with the federal government. | ||
| I mean, what do these people expect? | ||
| Do they think they're going to get? | ||
| Maxine Waters, she's stolen so much money. | ||
| Nancy Colossi, SEC investigation. | ||
| When are these people going to ever, ever learn that they're just as corrupt as everybody else? | ||
| But they sit up here and they have this derangement about Trump because he's a rich white man, especially black. | ||
| I mean, it's just unbelievable. | ||
| All right, that's Tim. | ||
| This is Joe in Michigan, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, John. | ||
| You do a great job. | ||
| You're a good host. | ||
| You're my favorite out of all of them. | ||
| I think people need to realize the difference between inflation, deflation, and disinflation. | ||
| They talk about how Trump is going to end inflation and they think prices are going to go down. | ||
| Ending inflation means prices stop going up. | ||
| If you have deflation, people will lose their jobs because if I can wait two months and buy a car for $3,000 cheaper, I'll wait. | ||
| And therefore, the people who build the cars will lose their jobs because there will be no sales. | ||
| What we need to see happen is prices go down because the cost of production goes down due to a reduction in insurance cost, a reduction in raw material cost, or a reduction in energy costs. | ||
| We don't want to see prices go down because you pay your helpless or people lose their jobs. | ||
| Deflation is exactly that. | ||
| Disinflation is a reduction in the rate of inflation. | ||
| So prices go up slower. | ||
| That's what we're seeing right now. | ||
| Or we're seeing a lack of inflation, meaning prices don't go up. | ||
| But it's very dangerous to have prices drop due to a lack of demand or people losing their jobs. | ||
| It's just you need to have prices go down for the right reason, because it costs you less money to produce a product without people losing their jobs. | ||
| Kind of like VCRs. | ||
| When they first came out, they were $2,000. | ||
| Now they're $35. | ||
| That's the way you want it to happen. | ||
| Joe, where do you find a VCR these days? | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| I mean, I use it as an example, okay? | ||
| It's kind of like... | ||
| I think it might be more expensive just because they're so rare, but I wouldn't know where to look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My first cell phone cost me about $4,000, and now, you know, they're for nothing. | |
| So... | ||
| Joe, got your point out of St. Clair, Michigan. | ||
| Donald's next out of Pennsylvania Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, to answer the VCR question, you can find them at thrift stores. | ||
| But the reason for my call today, John, is all suggestions for C-Spend. | ||
| And I'm going to start with number one. | ||
| And I've noticed when you list the information about your guest, they have made that a lot, lot smaller. | ||
| And for older folks like myself, those are hard to read. | ||
| You're talking about the graphic on the screen, the title, and the organization that they're a part of. | ||
| You want the font bigger? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're not representative, where they're from, and their districts and stuff like that. | |
| Donald, I appreciate the feedback, actually, because we just instituted this new graphic system. | ||
| So thank you for the feedback. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's very tiny now, and it's hard to read. | |
| Where before I had no problems reading it when it was back to its own format. | ||
| And also to that, I'd like to see maybe after that, in parentheses, a number. | ||
| And the number indicating how many terms that person is currently serving or has served. | ||
| So I would like to see that an addition to that. | ||
| Out of curiosity, Donald, if you just saw that number, would you trust somebody who has a one in that parentheses or somebody that has a 20 in that parentheses more? | ||
| Do you trust a freshman member more than you trust somebody who's been around here for 40 years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what, John? | |
| To me, it's not an issue of trust. | ||
| It's how long have I been paying his salary? | ||
| Do you think there should be a term limit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sometimes I feel I'm in favor of term limits, and other times I rethink it. | |
| So I'm half on a fence, half off the fence about term limits. | ||
| I haven't truly decided what my real feeling is about that. | ||
| Appreciate the feedback, Donald. | ||
| Was that all you wanted to get in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no, I got a couple more. | |
| Give me one more because I got a lot of folks waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, I'm going to say the next one I'd like to say is sometimes you guys ask for donations, and I'd be willing to make a donation, but I'd prefer to do my donation by mail than any other source, but they never give us an address to send a donation to. | |
| Donald, can you get online? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I can here, but I could if I go to my library. | |
| I don't have a computer at my home. | ||
| So c-span.org is where you can go whenever you do it. | ||
| If you go to the top right corner, there's a yellow button that says donate. | ||
| And if you click on the donate button, there's information there, not just to give online, but to give in other ways as well. | ||
| So you can try that. | ||
| And I guess I would say also thank you for thinking about doing that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, John, thank you. | |
| I had two other issues, but I know you go to other callers. | ||
| So I'll wait to my next 30 days and bring up the other two. | ||
| Let's talk about it in August, Donald. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Doug in Statesville, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's open for him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing, Dave? | |
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what gets me is everybody criticized Donald Trump. | |
| And Donald Trump isn't the best person in the world, but he's a heck of a lot better than what Obama and Biden was. | ||
| And I'm sorry. | ||
| I just don't understand how you people can think that getting the illegal immigrants that are murdering these people, just like the one, the coacher, he ain't no illegal immigrant. | ||
| He freaking murdered four people. | ||
| He should get the death penalty. | ||
| I don't understand why they're giving him freedom to, he murdered four people with a knife. | ||
| I mean, that is horrible. | ||
| I mean, they give it, and they're giving him life in prison that we pay for. | ||
| You know, every person you pay in prison is $30,000 a year that is coming out of our taxpayer money. | ||
| That's Doug in North Carolina. | ||
| This is David, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, John. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| There's so much going on, so much to unpack, but I wanted to focus on a few things that I've heard. | ||
| I love your show, and thanks to C-SPAN for offering it to public service. | ||
| People were at a couple of guys, the guy from Nebraska and other people have asked why previous administrations hadn't released the Epstein files. | ||
| Well, the reason for that is simple. | ||
| Both parties are implicated. | ||
| The Democrats have big donors that donate to the Democrats, and they don't want their donors outed, just like the Republicans don't want their donors out. | ||
| So there's, I think, implications on both sides, which is why it hasn't been released. | ||
| Another reason is because... | ||
| David, do you think it ever will be released? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that depends. | |
| That depends. | ||
| First of all, I don't know how many people know this. | ||
| I follow current events and I dig behind the scenes a little bit. | ||
| President Kennedy's brain disappeared from the archives from 1966. | ||
| Now, so I don't know how closely this stuff is guarded. | ||
| Now, the reason why that's significant is because an examination of the beam could have helped show clearly where the shots come from. | ||
| So I never believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin. | ||
| But I don't get into the weeds on that one. | ||
| But anyhow. | ||
| David, on conspiracy theories, you say you like to dig behind the scenes. | ||
| Where do you go? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's a place called the People's book called The People's Almanac. | |
| And also, you can do your research online, and you find a lot of statements that can be corroborated. | ||
| David, why do you trust things that you find online? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't. | |
| But if you can look online and see, you know, John, you have to use the smell test. | ||
| I mean, one individual can be the arbiter of total truth. | ||
| You just have to use the smell test. | ||
| Like for me, the Kennedy assassination didn't pass the smell test. | ||
| But back to the Epstein thing, though, here's something very important that I haven't heard mentioned. | ||
| Okay, Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend, Eslane Maxwell, they were connected with the Israeli secret service called Mossad. | ||
| And I'm pro-Jewish, but I'm not pro-Zionist. | ||
| I don't like the Netanyahu people. | ||
| I think they've been executing the Palestinians. | ||
| But you have to have a two-state solution. | ||
| You have peace where you recognize the human rights on both sides. | ||
| That's why I belong to a group called Jewish Voice for Peace. | ||
| And we promote an understanding and a peaceful coalition. | ||
| You can't have peace without justice. | ||
| Do you think we'll ever see a two-state solution when it comes to that conflict? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't. | |
| Well, things have gone so far. | ||
| I think that's what Einstein wanted. | ||
| Einstein wanted Jewish people to have to reclaim some of the holy land for their homeland, but they didn't want it to be a controlled Jewish state. | ||
| They wanted to be a two-state, peaceful coexistence. | ||
| Now, some people might say, oh, that's a pipe dream, but we did it hundreds of years ago. | ||
| But you need leadership to promote it. | ||
| You can't have hate. | ||
| You can't have hate on both sides. | ||
| I mean, as bad as the Holocaust was, the Holocaust was not done by the Palestinians. | ||
| The Holocaust was done by the Nazis and their collaborators. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's David in Ohio. | ||
| This is Kelly in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I have two things. | ||
| The first thing is I'm 62 years old, and I retired. | ||
| I have some medical issues, and instead of trying to get like SSI, I just worked till I was 62, and I'm claiming my social security. | ||
| And now I think I'm in that category where I'm not going to be able to get health insurance unless I work 20 hours a week. | ||
| If I would have known that, I never would have retired. | ||
| I mean, I think that's wrong. | ||
| I've actually been working since I was like 16 years, or I'm sorry, 12 years old. | ||
| And, you know, I mean, I'm tired of working. | ||
| And like I said, I have medical issues. | ||
| And now I'm going to be expected to work 20 hours a week just to get like my health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| I mean, if not, I'm going to pay $400, $800 a month for insurance, which there's no way I could ever afford that. | ||
| And I just think it's wrong how, you know, Trump is hurting people that truly should be able to get, you know, health insurance at a discount, like, you know, who's retired or whatever. | ||
| And the other thing I want to say, and this just grapes me, I hate how Trump just continues saying about how he hates the Democrats. | ||
| Every time I watch him with all his lies, it's just, it's terrible, but he keeps saying about how much he hates the Democrats. | ||
| I thought that the president took an oath to protect the American people. | ||
| I just feel like, you know, he hates us. | ||
| He wants the whole, you know, the whole world to hate us. | ||
| Democrats are not bad people. | ||
| And everything that Trump is saying that, you know, we do is exactly what he has done. | ||
| And I just don't understand it. | ||
| I mean, I know he didn't put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in. | ||
| But I still don't see how he can get away with saying about how he hates the American people. | ||
| And then, or the, I'm sorry, the Democrats. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Kelly in Pennsylvania. | ||
| It's coming up on 8:30 on the East Coast. | ||
| About a half an hour left here in open forum taking your phone calls onlines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. | ||
| Angela is an independent out of California. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I wanted to say that I was born in 1960 in Louisiana. | |
| My mother was born on a plantation. | ||
| She's 85. | ||
| We migrated to California in 1967. | ||
| I have a question. | ||
| I just turned 65. | ||
| I am still working a full-time job. | ||
| They made me take Medicare A and B, and I paid $185 because I don't get SSA because I'm going to continue to work. | ||
| Do Congress, do everybody in the United States of America, when you turn 65, do they make you go to Medicare? | ||
| Not Medicaid. | ||
| There's two different benefits. | ||
| My second point is, P. Diddley was just taken in by DOJ under court for reciteering and all the stuff that Epstein did. | ||
| He did not get convicted on that. | ||
| He got convicted on prostitution. | ||
| It's my understanding that that girl that's in that picture with Epstein that went to bed with Queen Elizabeth's son, she killed herself in April of this year. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| My third point is everyone keep hollering Democrat and Republican. | ||
| Donald Trump used to be a Democrat. | ||
| He was a part of that party until they wouldn't put him in office. | ||
| Then he switched over to the Republican. | ||
| I'm an independent, been one since I turned 18 because both parties act like gang members and they're supposed to be taking our tax money, IRR risk money, and helping us out. | ||
| But everybody that went in Congress are billionaires or millionaires. | ||
| That's not fair to the American people and they're living better than us. | ||
| King George is alive and well. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's Angela in California. | ||
| This is Beverly in Wyoming. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You are one of my favorite speakers, and I just want to say happy birthday to the world and keep up the fight, because that's all we learn in the government. | ||
| God bless my family and my loved ones, and have a good day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Beverly. | ||
| This is Ruth in Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| I just wonder if people remember Nancy Pelosi being up in front of the cameras declaring that they had changed the law and they could imprison Donald Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's all she talked about and said that when he got out of office, they were going to put him in prison. | |
| And now they're trying to say with what they're finding out about Obama, he can't be put in jail because he was the president of the United States. | ||
| Well, that goes back to the Supreme Court decision on the presidential immunity issue, Ruth. | ||
| It was a pretty big Supreme Court case. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what was going on whenever Obama was president? | |
| What was going on whenever Trump became president the first time, and she was up there screaming, this was this afterwards? | ||
| The Supreme Court took up this issue and decided this issue and gave the president broad immunity when it comes to official acts as president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So they can't imprison either one of them then, right? | ||
| When it comes to official acts as carrying out your duties as a president, that's what the Supreme Court decided. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Well, thank you. | ||
| That's all I wanted to know. | ||
| That's Ruth. | ||
| This is Harry, Norcross, Georgia, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Gee, I've been sitting here a while and listening to everybody. | ||
| I kind of going to piggyback off a few of these people. | ||
| But the first thing I wanted to say was there was a while back when a gentleman said something about something about what's his name there? | ||
| What's his name, Harry? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Friend who, you know, was put in jail for fooling with little girls. | |
| And you asked the guy, why do you think it didn't come out when Joe Biden was president? | ||
| And I just wanted to remind you that there is no equating Joe Biden with Donald Trump or the Department of Justice under Donald Trump to what it was under Joe Biden. | ||
| Now, I wanted to say something else again about you had a fellow on there that was talking about disinflation, deflation. | ||
| He was absolutely right. | ||
| You don't, when prices, when you have a big inflation, you don't want prices to go back down. | ||
| What you want is wages to come back, to come up to match those prices. | ||
| Because when you have disinflation, that's what you got that caused the Great Depression, which is what Donald Trump is seemingly trying to try to bring about again with his tariffs. | ||
| Harry, to your first point on the Department of Justice under Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, a story you actually might be interested in reading on this exact issue in today's Washington Post. | ||
| It's by Perry Stein. | ||
| Trump's norm-breaking closeness to the DOJ fueled the fur over the Epstein files. | ||
| This is the lead of it. | ||
| President Donald Trump made it clear from the first day of his second term, the traditional distance between the White House and the Justice Department that was intended to keep politics out of law enforcement would be no more. | ||
| Now, they write that carefully cultivated closeness is making it difficult for Trump to distance himself from the fur over the Justice Department's abrupt announcement that there is not evidence to investigate anyone else. | ||
| After all, seen by some on the right wing as a broken promise, legal experts say it could be a recurring political liability for a president who often makes grandiose accusations against foes that may be hard for his attorney general to assert in court. | ||
| The story goes on to note that past presidents have attempted to inoculate themselves from the Justice Department's most consequential and controversial investigations, telling the public that law enforcement decisions are independent from the president and that they're not involved in investigations. | ||
| They go to Joe Biden, who frequently attempted to distance himself from the most consequential legal battle of his presidency, the two federal indictments of Donald Trump, by saying that the Justice Department was independent from the White House and that he could not comment on ongoing investigations. | ||
| By the end of his administration, Perry Stein writes, Biden was reportedly furious with Attorney General Merrick Garland over his handling of the criminal investigation into his son, Hunter Biden. | ||
| But both Biden and Garland said that they never spoke about the case and that the president never meddled with the prosecution. | ||
| Biden pardoned his son in the waiting days of the presidency. | ||
| The story also takes a look at the Obama presidency as well and the history of this issue. | ||
| Again, on this topic that you bring up, that might be an article you'd be interested in. | ||
| This is Howard out of North Carolina. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, top of the morning to you and to America. | |
| You know, Donald Trump is, yeah, I'm talking about Donald Trump people because when Biden was in office, man, all they talked about was Hunter Biden laptop, the border, the eggs, the gas. | ||
| I mean, constantly bashing Biden for something that he has no control over. | ||
| The Republicans put the narration out there and they ran with it. | ||
| They absolutely broke the man down about his son. | ||
| Now we're talking about Trump. | ||
| They want to tell us the MAGA Republicans, which Trump called them stupid. | ||
| You know, he said he's some stupid people. | ||
| He's talking about his voters. | ||
| And now he wants to change the narrative off of him inside of this file, messing with kids. | ||
| I mean, I don't care who's in the file. | ||
| If you're caught messing with children in that manner of a way, you should be prosecuted. | ||
| I don't care if it was Biden, Barack, any of them. | ||
| I'm a Democrat, but if you're messing with children, man, then you expect for people to just let you brush this up under. | ||
| And one more thing. | ||
| If Biden would have released the information, every Republican would say this is weaponized. | ||
| Every Republican say he's doing it trying to stop people from winning the election. | ||
| But you must remember, in Georgia, he was under RICO violations. | ||
| In New York, he was under 34 felon accounts and also sexual harassment. | ||
| And then he threw his head in the ring. | ||
| So nobody could bring no files up against him. | ||
| So, people, y'all need to get ready because when this thing comes out, your president is a child molesta. | ||
| That's Howard in North Carolina. | ||
| This is James in Troy, Missouri, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| Open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I was wanting to comment also on the Epstein situation. | |
| I mean, like the gentleman just before me talking about that he believes that Donald Trump's in this pedophile ring or whatever you want to call it. | ||
| Again, they tried everything in their power to make sure that Donald Trump did not win the presidency. | ||
| And I do believe that if he was in this file, that the Democrats would have been so eager to release it, it would be unbelievable. | ||
| Anybody that thinks that they wouldn't have is crazy. | ||
| And there's just so many things that the Democrats have done. | ||
| And, you know, they said that they didn't, you know, that Merrick Garland didn't interfere with these prosecutions. | ||
| Why was Fannie Willis and I'm trying to remember the lady's name from New York going to the White House to meet with whoever she was meeting with? | ||
| Because that's all closed door stuff if they weren't all colluding. | ||
| And with Obama, he used to call his Attorney General his wingman. | ||
| So, I mean, when people say that these other people don't have their Attorney General, you know, that close to them and they're not interfering. | ||
| Anyone believes that Biden didn't interfere. | ||
| He was so mad at Merrick Garland that he didn't prosecute Trump that he couldn't, you know, he said out loud that he wanted him put in jail. | ||
| So this whole thing is ridiculous. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| That's James in Missouri. | ||
| This is Barbara, Chesapeake, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me on this morning. | ||
| I've been listening to all these people, and I don't know what's going on with our country, but this is ridiculous. | ||
| You have a man before he became president the first time, he was on that bus talking about how he grabbed women and he could do whatever he wanted to do to them. | ||
| And people start wearing shirts saying, you can, you know, grab my P if you want to. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Donald Trump said that he liked young girls as long as they're not under 12. | ||
| You know, he didn't try to change this story of the narrative in the news by everything. | ||
| So, Barbara, what would you say to that comment that President Trump has made that our guest earlier made that if there were something in the Epstein files, if Donald Trump's name was in it, it would have come out under the Biden administration. | ||
| What would you say to that response? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that I don't think that the Biden, it was so much stuff going on with the Bidens. | |
| But why did Donald Trump have some flag every time his name was mentioned in the Epstein files? | ||
| He has some flag every time his name is mentioned. | ||
| And what is he going to do with that? | ||
| Now he's trying to set up a meeting with Epstein's girlfriend while she's in jail to try to change that subject too. | ||
| You know, this is ridiculous. | ||
| People need to wake up. | ||
| He lied to the MAGA people. | ||
| And now the MAGA people are stupid and they're believing the hoax. | ||
| He thinks a hoax, but that's Barbara. | ||
| This is Linda, Vineland, New Jersey. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| It's open form. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| A couple things. | ||
| Everybody brings up poor Biden. | ||
| The difference between Biden and Trump is Biden had an administration surrounding him that were intelligent, experienced, and Biden was able to listen to them and make his own decisions, but he had an intelligent and qualified administration. | ||
| Trump has a cracker jack box full of bimbos. | ||
| The other thing is the people of the United States pay taxes to the United States of America, not Donald Trump. | ||
| Donald Trump's using taxpayer money like it's his to do what Linda to imprison immigrants. | ||
| Do you realize how much money he's spending to do that? | ||
| And fly himself to Mar-a-Lago? | ||
| Let him pay his own transportation. | ||
| It's not his money. | ||
| It's taxpayers' money to the United States of America for the citizens of the United States of America. | ||
| Linda, did you for their betterment, not to kill children to starve children, not to be cruel to senior citizens? | ||
| Linda, to your point about a president paying for his own transportation, did you feel that way about previous presidents? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All of them. | |
| They should all pay for their own transportation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the whole Congress. | |
| They should all be on Medicaid so they know what it's about and they should be paying for their own transportation. | ||
| If they want to stay overnight in Washington, D.C., pay for it. | ||
| Pay for it. | ||
| If anybody else with any kind of government job, if we had, I worked for the government. | ||
| I had to go to Newark and Trenton. | ||
| If I had to be there for early morning the next, nobody put me up. | ||
| The state didn't pay for me. | ||
| I paid for me. | ||
| So, Linda, for these members of Congress, they get a congressional office allowance that they can pay salaries and office needs out of, but they do, they don't get, they don't get money to stay in Washington, D.C. when they're here. | ||
| Some members in the past have slept. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They don't stay overnight. | |
| They get money to eat. | ||
| They get money, you know, they get paid enough. | ||
| And let alone the money they get on the side from just doing favors for people. | ||
| You think that happens? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know that happens. | |
| It happens in counties and cities. | ||
| It happens absolutely in the government, especially when you take out the inspector generals. | ||
| That's Linda, New Jersey. | ||
| Angie, Johnson City, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have to say, first of all, I'm quite shocked to listen to the comments. | ||
| I've been sitting here listening to this. | ||
| And it just is mind-blowing. | ||
| And I think that our bottom line is what we need to look at is mainstream media. | ||
| That's our first thing. | ||
| Because when I sit and hear these comments from these people and they spew this vial and this hate, it's unbelievable. | ||
| It's literally unbelievable. | ||
| And your last caller just sat and said something about Biden was surrounded by this fabulous administration. | ||
| Well, what about the guy Sam, the bald-headed guy that was a cross-dresser that was stealing luggage in the airports? | ||
| Or what about the head of the military who was a man, but he was a woman, but he was a man, but he was a woman. | ||
| He didn't even know what he was. | ||
| So you're telling me that Biden was surrounded by the best of the best. | ||
| It's just the most insane. | ||
| And then I hear this woman from California, and she's criticizing Trump. | ||
| She's criticizing this administration. | ||
| But yet, California burned down and they had no water. | ||
| Who was in charge? | ||
| A Democrat. | ||
| They took $10 billion plus of the taxpayers' money in California. | ||
| Not one rail laid for the train. | ||
| But yet the brainwashing that has gone on in this country is absolutely unbelievable. | ||
| Andrew, do you really? | ||
| Do you think Blanc? | ||
| Do you think Donald Trump surrounds himself with the best of the best? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't necessarily know that he surrounds himself with the best of the best. | |
| I think when he did his first term, I think that's when he found out exactly what swamp creatures were on both sides. | ||
| Because this is not just Democrat. | ||
| This is Republican as well. | ||
| So people need to understand that right there. | ||
| Do you think the cabinet is better? | ||
| Do you think the cabinet is better this time around than in the first term? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I sure do. | ||
| Number one, we have transparency. | ||
| Name one time, one time that Joe Biden and his cabinet went on TV and they sat and explained what was going on. | ||
| Not one time, did he? | ||
| Not one time did he sit and bring any of the leaders of the other countries and have any discussions. | ||
| He sat there and grinned at the cameras and made faces. | ||
| So I don't understand what news outlets these people are watching and where they're getting their information. | ||
| And, you know, you talk about Epstein. | ||
| Let's talk about that for a minute. | ||
| Joe Biden and the Democrats had four years, four years to dig in those files and pull everything out from underneath the dirt that they could on Trump. | ||
| And they didn't. | ||
| But here's what's funny. | ||
| And if everybody will stop and really pay attention, and if you pull one out, then I'll say I'm wrong. | ||
| But there wasn't one mainstream media outlet with the exception of Fox, which everybody will scream and lose their mind over that. | ||
| But you name one media outlet that pushed this Epstein. | ||
| You name one media outlet that said anything about the Epstein files. | ||
| Not one. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because the majority of some of these people are on the list. | ||
| So if you step back and you look at this, how smart do you have to be? | ||
| How much of a genius do you have to be to step back and go, okay, we won't deal with that anymore. | ||
| And the very people that didn't want to discuss Epstein are now the ones that want to talk about Epstein. | ||
| So I just find this ironic. | ||
| Truly, what we really need to do as American citizens, if anybody had any common sense, is we would band together and we would file a class action lawsuit against mainstream media and take our world back, take our news and media back. | ||
| There's not one journalist in any of that. | ||
| These are people who trickled down of administrations. | ||
| I got your point. | ||
| I would just point out, if you want to watch some of Joe Biden's cabinet meetings or his bilaterals, you can go to our C-SPAN website, c-span.org, go to the C-SPAN video archive. | ||
| Here's one from September of 2024. | ||
| But you can search all of that. | ||
| We make it all available. | ||
| You can also search Jeffrey Epstein and see all the times that Jeffrey Epstein's name has been mentioned over the years, whether on the House floor or in various segments that we've had on this program. | ||
| But we make all that available at our website at c-span.org if you want to take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When did MSNBC, when did NBC, when did CBS, when did ABC, when did all these other news outlets report on it? | |
| And we actually had a female, and I can't remember her name right off my head right now, but she actually worked, I believe it was for CBS, and she broke the story on Epstein, and CBS told her, do not report on it. | ||
| And I'm sure you could pull that up and you know her, but she was a longtime journalist for CBS. | ||
| All right, that's Angie. | ||
| This is Anne War with about five minutes or so left in open form here in Washington, D.C. Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I just have three points. | ||
| First is that the United States and the state of Israel are actually the two worst countries on this planet. | ||
| I don't believe that Americans, well, so-called Americans, actually have an idea of what's going on in Palestine and that they support it. | ||
| The fact that they want to support children being blown up coming to get food is an issue. | ||
| And it should kill everybody that Americans are allowing this to happen. | ||
| I want to know, did you have Al Green, did you actually play Al Green on the show yesterday while he was making his statement in front of Congress? | ||
| I mean, you don't have to answer it, but I was just... | ||
| You're talking about Al Green on the floor of the House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yesterday. | |
| So we air the House floor proceedings in their entirety every day. | ||
| So you would have seen that live if you had been watching C-SBAN when he spoke. | ||
| And you can also find out on our website. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was wondering, yeah, I understand. | |
| I was wondering if you played it today like you were playing Corey Booker. | ||
| Because I'm wondering if you are now, you know, under the, I guess, the pressure that the Jewish people are putting on us as far as our students not being, if you say anything in support of Palestine, you are now being called anti-Semitic. | ||
| And that's a problem. | ||
| Our children should be allowed to protest. | ||
| Our people should be allowed to say what's on their mind. | ||
| And that's authoritarianism to begin with. | ||
| And Martin, just you understand how it works. | ||
| We pick our clips every morning here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We've got folks who get here at 4 in the morning and start getting ready for this show. | ||
| And we try to find the clips that are relevant to the topics that we're talking about that day. | ||
| Open forums, a little bit harder to have clips available for because we allow you to bring up any topic that you want to talk about every day. | ||
| And we make sure to set aside time every day for you to do that. | ||
| So that's how it works here as we try to create this forum for viewers to call in and be able to talk about the topics that are important to them. | ||
| This is Jack in Ohio. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
| Just a few minutes left here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'd just like to say that, you know, Trump, when he first started to run before he even got the nomination for his first term, came out with a blatantly racist statement that all people coming across the southern border were either rapists or drug dealers, which, of course, any person with common sense would know is untrue. | ||
| But at that point in time, I said to myself, this guy is completely racist. | ||
| Now, I've never been crazy about Trump anyway. | ||
| He's got a track record as a con man and a lawyer and a failed businessman. | ||
| So I wouldn't vote for him. | ||
| I didn't vote for him either time. | ||
| What puzzles me is after his appalling performance in his first term, he was reelected for a second term. | ||
| Now, Trump is who he is, and I expect Trump to be who he is. | ||
| And I'm not surprised that he surrounded himself this time with a bunch of sycophants and people who are completely incompetent like Heg Seth and RFK Jr. | ||
| You know, I hold the American people, the majority of the American people, responsible for this. | ||
| They're the ones who elected them. | ||
| And they're responsible. | ||
| So for those people who voted for him and don't like what's going on now, well, you put them in there. | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sylvia, Kansas, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, you know, I've been sitting here listening for the last 10 minutes. | |
| And I know we ain't got much time here. | ||
| So I'm going to put it plain and simple. | ||
| I'm a MAGA. | ||
| I'm proud to be a MAGA. | ||
| And when I sat here for four years under Biden, I could have cried. | ||
| My income was down to notes. | ||
| So prices were high, gas was high. | ||
| You name it. | ||
| 14 people take the COVID shot, and a lot of people got sick. | ||
| And then to come find out that some of those shots were not that good. | ||
| So Sylvia, has your income gone up in the past six months? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Say what? | |
| No. | ||
| Has your income gone up in the past six months? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How much do you make now versus, if you don't mind saying, six months ago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Six months ago, we were bringing home $20 an hour and could barely pay the bill. | |
| And where are you today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're at $20 an hour still, and we got our bills paid. | |
| How do you do that? | ||
| How has that worked out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it worked out because the prices are going down. | |
| Now, I'm not saying they're going down everywhere. | ||
| In California, they got a stupid Democrat governor that has got that kind of place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But what I'm trying to get at is that these Democrats, and my daughter's a Democrat, that instead of calling MAGA stupid, Nazis, whatever else, maybe they should take a hard look at themselves first. | |
| Because I'm getting a little bit tired of it. | ||
| And as for the illegals, illegals are illegal. | ||
| They are not allowed to be here. | ||
| They have to come the right way. | ||
| So, what Trump is doing, and I agree with him, we need to get them out. | ||
| That's Sylvia in Kansas. | ||
| Last caller here in open forum. | ||
| Did want to note, though, one obituary today. | ||
| You probably heard that Ozzy Osborne died yesterday. | ||
| The pioneering singer, as the New York Times editorial, the obituary in the New York Times notes, the pioneer of two wildly popular entertainment genres, heavy metal music and reality television. | ||
| He was 76 years old. | ||
| They write: although Mr. Osborne repeatedly announced his retirement over the years, he called a series of live dates in 1992, the No More Tours tour, and a 2018 series, The No More Tours 2. | ||
| He did give his final concert this month, a festival in his hometown of Birmingham, England. | ||
| And he was seated on a black throne at the time, visibly moved by the enthusiasm of the crowd. | ||
| He closed out his career by returning the original lineup of his heavy metal group, Black Sabbath. | ||
| I want to show viewers in 2002 from the White House Correspondents Dinner the appearance of Ozzy Osborne at that event. | ||
| This is about a minute and a half. | ||
| What a fantastic audience we had tonight: Washington Power Brokers, celebrities, Hollywood stars, Ozzy Osborne. | ||
| Might have been a mistake. | ||
| Thing about Ozzy is he's made a lot of big-hit recordings. | ||
| Party with the animals. | ||
| Sabbath, bloody Sabbath. | ||
| Facing hell. | ||
| Black skies and bloodbath in paradise. | ||
| Ozzy Mom loves your stuff. | ||
| Ozzy Osborne and George W. Bush back in 2002. | ||
| That's going to do it for Open Forum, but stick around. | ||
| A lot more to talk about in this final hour of the Washington Journal today. | ||
| In about 30 minutes, we'll be joined by Nevada Democrat Deanette Titus. | ||
| But first, we're going to be joined by Randy Chester, Vice President of the American Foreign Services Association. | ||
| We'll talk about the future of U.S. foreign aid. | ||
| Stick around for that discussion. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV. | |
| Saturday is 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. | ||
| At 8 a.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, Ithaca College professor Michael Trotty on the escalating tensions between colonists and the British government before the American Revolution. | ||
| Then at 11 a.m. Eastern, we'll visit Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York for a Revolutionary War reenactment. | ||
| And later, historian Bruce Venter explores the significance of the May 1775 capture of Fort Ticonderoga by American Commander Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. | ||
| And at 1245 p.m. Eastern, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum's annual book festival in Hyde Park, New York, where historians discuss the history of the U.S. Navy, American spy craft, and the role of breweries in the New Deal. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and fund a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Honor the person who first showed you democracy in action and ignite America 250, C-SPAN's 18-month ad-free celebration of our nation's story. | ||
| Give $25 or more by August 31st at c-SPAN.org slash donate and add your Democracy Hero to our online wall to keep these vital stories alive for viewers and learners everywhere. | ||
| As our thanks, you'll receive an exclusive Democracy Unfiltered Decal. | ||
| Your gift helps make C-SPAN possible. | ||
| Visit c-span.org slash donate today and join us in keeping America's story alive. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| C-SPANShop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | ||
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at cspanshop.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| A focus now on the future of foreign aid and Americans working for the U.S. government overseas. | ||
| Randy Chester is our guest. | ||
| He's vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, an organization whose mission is what, Mr. Chester? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our mission is to support the Foreign Service of the United States of America. | |
| We, our membership, works at the Department of State, USAID, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the Foreign Commercial Service, and the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service. | ||
| We help represent the Foreign Service to management in those agencies. | ||
| And we also support the Foreign Service members and the Foreign Service in general while they're living overseas, while they're here in America, providing them services and access to resources, and doing what we can to help the U.S. government's foreign policy both here and abroad. | ||
| How long has the association been around? | ||
| When did it start? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We just celebrated our 100th anniversary last year. | |
| So we've been here pretty much since the dawn of the American Foreign Service, of the modern Foreign Service. | ||
| And we've been doing good work ever since then. | ||
| In the 60s, we became a union. | ||
| We were recognized as the union that represented the Foreign Service to the U.S. government. | ||
| And we're still doing that work today. | ||
| How many American Foreign Service officers are there today versus six months ago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So today, you know, it depends on how you count. | |
| So our membership, which is current active duty foreign service officers, is between 16 and 17,000. | ||
| And that's the way it was on January 19th. | ||
| Since January 19th, there's been a series of illegal firings of foreign service officers. | ||
| I'm sure you all know about the shutdown of USAID last week also. | ||
| Secretary Rubio thought it would be a good idea to summarily fire an additional 250 Foreign Service officers from the U.S. State Department. | ||
| So while the number of Foreign Service officers is down close to almost 3,000 since the start of January 20th, we've lost about 3,000 Foreign Service officers working for the U.S. government. | ||
| Our membership remains strong and that those Foreign Service officers are still members and we're still supporting and representing them. | ||
| Why do you call them illegal firings? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because there is no process. | |
| There is a process laid out in the Foreign Service Act and in the policies of the Department of State and at USAID for how you go about conducting what they call a reduction in force, which is removing people from the service. | ||
| Neither USAID or the Department of State followed that procedure, and we are challenging that in various courts of law here in the United States and will demonstrate through our legal challenges that what the USAID leadership did and what State Department leadership did did not follow the process and procedures and therefore was illegal. | ||
| And we will be hired back at the end of the day. | ||
| What's the status of those lawsuits and when do you expect those people to be hired back? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, the U.S. justice system is a great, is the best system of justice in the world. | |
| Unfortunately, it takes a long time. | ||
| So we currently have, I believe it's three, maybe four different lawsuits in federal different district courts challenging various aspects of the closure of USAID, the shuttering of USAGM, the Agency for Global Media, and some other issues. | ||
| And we will be, individual Foreign Service officers will be challenging their dismissal through what they call the Merit Systems Protection Board, which is where you go as a Foreign Service officer to challenge your illegal removal or your removal for improper cause. | ||
| It's difficult to say how long these things will take. | ||
| Normally, you would expect things to be settled in three to six months. | ||
| But given the state of our courts right now, we don't expect a quick turnaround. | ||
| And it may be one year, two years, or even three years before we have final justice in our cases. | ||
| But we do expect to prevail or we wouldn't be bringing them to trial. | ||
| How much money did the U.S. government spend on foreign aid or even just operating USAID in the previous fiscal year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So the budget for US aid generally is a little bit less than 1% of the total government budget. | ||
| So for US aid, that translates in any given year to between $25 million and say $25 billion and $35 billion a year in financing that pays salaries for staff, including the Foreign Service, civil servants, and other people who work here in DC and work overseas. | ||
| We have a very large contingent of national staff that live and work. | ||
| Like for instance, in Madagascar, where I was last, we hire Madagascar Malagasy's to work inside our missions, and that money pays for their salaries as well. | ||
| And then our program budget, which usually occupies anywhere from 20 to 25 billion. | ||
| So it's about, I'm going to estimate about two-thirds of our budget actually goes to providing assistance to people overseas. | ||
| So call it $50 to $60 billion. | ||
| What do you say to folks who say that that's a lot of money that we're spending overseas that could be used to help American taxpayers here at home? | ||
| What do you say to those folks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So the total budget saves for last year, I think, was $34 billion. | ||
| That includes staff costs and programming budgets. | ||
| So it's $34 billion. | ||
| And at less than 1%, that's less than what it costs to buy one fighter jet currently that the DOD is spending on money. | ||
| And what we do with that money has tremendous gains for us here at home. | ||
| We purchase every year close to over $2 billion worth of agricultural commodities. | ||
| That's products of farmers in Iowa, Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama. | ||
| We buy their produce to use in our food assistance programs. | ||
| We also provide over a billion dollars worth of contracts for services and supplies to small businesses here in American. | ||
| Let me get that just so you realize that's $1 billion going to small business owners here in America. | ||
| That's what we were spending every year. | ||
| That is now gone. | ||
| So those small businesses are now scrambling to find markets for their products because we're no longer purchasing. | ||
| The return on investment for every dollar we spend overseas is estimated at eight to one. | ||
| For every $1 we spend, $8 is generated in the U.S. economy. | ||
| I don't know about you, but if my 401k was giving me a return like that, I wouldn't have to work ever again. | ||
| So just looking at the numbers, what we invest overseas comes back to America eightfold. | ||
| That should give people a real good reason to want to spend money overseas, to want to provide assistance overseas. | ||
| And if I could, just for, let me give you a quote here, because I thought this is a really good quote. | ||
| Foreign aid is a very cost-effective way not only to export our values and our example, but to advance our security and economic interests. | ||
| The person who said that is currently the Secretary of State of the U.S. of the U.S. government. | ||
| Marco Rubio said that 10 years ago. | ||
| So even Marco Rubio, former senator and now Secretary of State, understands the value of foreign assistance and its impact on the U.S. economy. | ||
| So this was Marco Rubio on July the 1st, just earlier this month. | ||
| This is what he says. | ||
| Now, beyond creating, and this is about USAID, beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War. | ||
| Development objectives have rarely been met. | ||
| Instability has often worsened and anti-American sentiment has only grown. | ||
| On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate. | ||
| How do you explain that change of tune? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, I think it's unfortunate. | |
| You know, Secretary Rubio, former senator, as recently as 2022 supported funding for USAID to do our work overseas to the degree that he specifically asked USAID and tasked USAID to do certain things with that money. | ||
| So our money is congressionally mandated. | ||
| Close to 80 to 85 percent of our budget has specific mandates from Congress to do things on behalf of the U.S. government, on behalf of the President and the people of America. | ||
| USAID, and no Foreign Service officer at USAID would ever admit and would ever say that we're perfect. | ||
| We're not perfect. | ||
| We do things wrong, but we learn from our mistakes and we make things better. | ||
| And that's what we've been doing as an agency for over 60 years is making the world a better place. | ||
| Are there countries that don't do what we want when we give them aid? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But our goal is to increase the people in that country to make their lives better, to make them have a healthy life, to give them economic opportunities. | ||
| And over time, those people who receive our assistance become leaders of those countries, and we do see those countries change. | ||
| It's not something you can do. | ||
| You can't give someone a meal today and expect change tomorrow, but having a seat at the table lets you engage with those governments and enter into conversations and dialogue about larger changes for the country and the region that they may be in. | ||
| Our soft power as USAID helps the Department of State's soft power have discussions with governments when it comes to combating terrorism in the Sahel region or helping to establish global or regional response mechanisms in South Asia in response to cyclones and other natural disasters. | ||
| So our ability to help other wings of the government enter into dialogue with countries on larger policy issues is critically important to U.S. foreign policy and to the health and well-being of Americans and the world. | ||
| Randy Chester, our guest of the American Foreign Service Association, a vice president, they are taking your phone calls with us for about the next 15 minutes or so. | ||
| 202748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| And especially would like to hear from you if you have experience working in Foreign Service overseas. | ||
| Rosemary, up first out of Alabama. | ||
| Mine for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, my comment was that I think it was absolutely mean and cruel to take away so much funding from USAID and fire all of those people that were supporting poor countries. | |
| Those people could have used these food and supplies that we were providing, and now we have tons and tons of food sitting in warehouses that will have to be destroyed. | ||
| It can't even be used. | ||
| And we would rather do that than continue to support those countries that needed the support, needed the help. | ||
| And I think that is just cruel and just awful. | ||
| We've always been seen as a beacon in this world. | ||
| No longer, our light has dimmed. | ||
| It's awful. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| Randy Chester. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I mean, it's true. | ||
| You know, last week, I'm sure everyone saw in the media over 500 tons of food was destroyed here in America. | ||
| Those were nutritional biscuits made by an American company, I believe, in Georgia, that supplies USAID nutritional biscuits to give to starving children around the world. | ||
| And that food was destroyed because the Trump administration and the Rubio administration allowed it to expire, and therefore we could not provide that life-saving nutrition to children overseas. | ||
| Just since January 20th, it's been estimated that over 120,000 adults have died as a result of USAID assistance being cut. | ||
| Over a quarter million children have died as a result of U.S. assistance being cut. | ||
| That's only going to get worse as we retreat from this from the international stage and stop providing assistance. | ||
| Did you say 250,000 children since January? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the estimate from impactcounter.com. | |
| And we're at over 120,000 adults since January. | ||
| And those numbers are going to go up as food gets scarcer because we're not shipping that food overseas. | ||
| There are warehouses in the Gulf right now where we stage our food. | ||
| They're also getting ready to have to destroy food because it cannot be distributed because it's lived its shelf life. | ||
| What is that organization that's doing the counting and what countries is this happening in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's globally. | |
| It's impactcounter.com. | ||
| And who's that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You'd have to go search it yourself. | |
| They're a nonprofit. | ||
| I believe they sprung up recently and they've been tracking the reduction of aid since January 20th and how that's impacting lives overseas. | ||
| And, you know, Nick Christophe has documented this as well in his travels to the Sudan since January 20th, where he's gone to the camps and he's seen where food is no longer being distributed because it's not there anymore. | ||
| We know in Uganda, when the funding for health programs was pulled, that people were turned away from clinics where they would go to for their medicine and for checkups because they're living people living with AIDS or they have other ailments. | ||
| We know that those clinics had to shut down because there was no more funding to pay the doctors and nurses. | ||
| So people are dying as a result of shuttering aid, and people will continue to die as we move forward because we're retreating from a position of tremendous importance and tremendous goodwill and value overseas. | ||
| If you ever had the opportunity to travel overseas and go to see some of the relief work or other work that USAID has done and talk to the people who are the beneficiaries of that, the amount of support and love for America as a result of that help is worth every dollar that's been spent. | ||
| Keith is in Denver, Colorado. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, he's spot on. | |
| Your guest is spot on in terms of how we use soft power to influence and intervene. | ||
| USAID is an American, one of the best American institutions. | ||
| Let me take one example: Sesame Street in Iraq, right? | ||
| So that was being made fun of. | ||
| Well, we know, based on our long miserable history in Iraq and other places, that the way to fight radicalism in the Middle East is through early interventions. | ||
| Teaching tolerance, literacy, and values that are universally shared in that population was an answer to the madrasas that radicalized children throughout the Middle East at a very young age. | ||
| So rather than But out of fire, how about preventing a fire with early interventions like Sesame Street bought to kids and parents who may otherwise be radicalized? | ||
| Can you speak to that, please? | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| I think, you know, our education programs overseas do tremendous good. | ||
| We provide assistance or we provided assistance supporting increasing access for girls to go to school, to go to primary school, to be in charge of their lives going forward. | ||
| So, and now that's no longer possible. | ||
| Schools are shutting down as our education programs close. | ||
| And let's also remember this. | ||
| Ivanka Trump in the first administration came up with an idea that was called the Women's and Girls Economic Empowerment Program. | ||
| That program specifically targeted young girls to increase their access to schools, to increase their ability to become economically independent individuals where they live. | ||
| And empowering girls and women empowers families. | ||
| It empowers families to provide for their entire, for all of their children. | ||
| And giving them opportunities to do something good reduces opportunities that those children will do something bad in the future. | ||
| So spending money on education is probably, you know, along with healthcare, some of the best investments that as a country you can make in your own country here in America, we would do much better if we increased our spending on education. | ||
| But by helping people overseas get an education, we're helping ourselves by minimizing or reducing the potential bad actors coming in and doing something else or turning those children into bad actors in the future. | ||
| And that's been lost. | ||
| And I think also, you know, knowing that what we do as USAID, again, Congress tells us what to do. | ||
| They tell us how to spend our money. | ||
| So they told us to spend money on Ivanka Trump's program to empower women and girls. | ||
| And we did. | ||
| And we did it really well. | ||
| And we did it all the way through the Biden administration. | ||
| The Biden administration saw Ivanka Trump's program as a positive and wanted to continue it. | ||
| So we did. | ||
| Unfortunately, I can't tell you how great that program was because one of the first things Elon Musk did was shut down our entire website and remove the entire database of results for the last 60 years. | ||
| So I can't tell you how many more girls attended school as a result. | ||
| I can't tell you the increases in literacy rates for both boys and girls because of our education results because Elon Musk and his cronies deleted our database. | ||
| So we have no way of being able to show you how and what our impact was for the last 60 years. | ||
| And that's really tragic. | ||
| And I think the American people should demand access to that data so we can show you why it's important for America to be engaged on the foreign stage. | ||
| Long Beach, California, this is Helen, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the speaker, the person has a lot of superlatives, a lot of broad strokes, and he throws out a lot of slippery slope fallacies, such as if we don't send tax dollars overseas to people to educate them using cartoons, then the world will turn against us. | |
| There's a lot of people in the United States who need help, who can't feed themselves. | ||
| I live in a county where there's 100,000 homeless people sleeping on the street. | ||
| I'd rather have my tax dollars go and take care of them before being sent off to Madagascar or wherever else, Iraq. | ||
| And frankly, these types of these are this is just an excuse, it seems like, for the United States to go into another country and start meddling again in its government and its society. | ||
| I really doubt your claim. | ||
| I doubt this person's claims. | ||
| He says, well, Elon Musk destroyed all our data. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| How convenient. | ||
| Isn't that convenient? | ||
| And here's another thing. | ||
| Well, Helen, you bring up a lot of issues. | ||
| Let me let Randy Chester respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, as far as the data goes, you know, type in www.usaid.gov. | |
| There's nothing there. | ||
| That used to be where all our data was stored. | ||
| It's not, the website doesn't exist anymore because Elon Musk and his cronies shut it down. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| We in America should be doing a lot more for Americans here. | ||
| And that's not hard to do, but that takes a Congress willing to look at a budget and do the right thing for a budget. | ||
| You know, Congress just went into a six-week recess. | ||
| They're supposed to pass a budget in September. | ||
| It's kind of hard for me to understand how Congress is going to be able to do their job and get a budget passed by the end of September when they're on vacation right now for the next six weeks. | ||
| And they're ignoring the issues that are impacting people in America, like you and me, and they're not providing us with that assistance. | ||
| Our budget, our less than 1% of the federal budget, could may well provide some of that support, but it is not going to elevate all of America out of poverty unless Congress appropriates more money to those programs to help Americans who are struggling economically to improve our education system and to prove our health care system. | ||
| That's going to require Congress to do a whole lot more, and our little budget is not going to be that big of a drop in that bucket. | ||
| Time for one or two more calls here with Randy Chester, American Foreign Service Association, AFSA.org, if you want to check them out. | ||
| Go ahead, Tim, in Michigan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, sir. | |
| Hey, I was just going to go off of what this lady just said just a minute ago. | ||
| She was explaining the purpose of having aid in America. | ||
| We throw away a ton of food in America. | ||
| And when you ship stuff overseas, it's the same thing because they, even if they, we are injecting ourselves into their lives. | ||
| They come over here and they inject themselves into our lives over here as Americans, like legitimate Americans that were born and raised here. | ||
| We have to separate that somehow because just spending money and throwing money at things and food and all that stuff doesn't make things better for everybody because it just doesn't for a long time. | ||
| Mr. Chester. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You're right. | ||
| I mean, it's not, we don't throw money at problems. | ||
| We throw money at solutions. | ||
| And the way we operate overseas is as a government, as the U.S. government, U.S.AID is part of the embassy government overseas. | ||
| So we develop strategies with in cooperation and coordination with the State Department in that country. | ||
| So with the ambassador, the ambassador is intimately involved in what we're doing. | ||
| They know what we're doing. | ||
| They provide their input. | ||
| And all of that planning is called an integrated country strategy that is shaped by Washington, D.C., by the current president, and by the current Secretary of State. | ||
| They tell everybody overseas what you need to be focusing on, and you develop a strategy and a means to implement their goals and their objectives. | ||
| Part of that is in some countries giving food assistance. | ||
| Part of it in some countries is helping those national governments, whatever country it may be, enter into dialogue and negotiations with their U.S. government counterparts on trade deals, on energy deals. | ||
| So we provide assistance to help engage with foreign governments. | ||
| We provide assistance to help people in foreign countries understand what American values are and what we represent back to those countries is we want people to be inspired to be more like America, to be more welcoming and to be more open to different ideas and to different peoples. | ||
| That's part of what we're doing as a whole, U.S. government overseas in our embassies. | ||
| Last call is Chris, Springfield, Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with Randy Chester. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Randy. | |
| I just wanted to let you know that one of my first jobs in the federal government was at USAID. | ||
| And this is way back. | ||
| I worked there in, ooh, it's probably the late 80s. | ||
| And I was really impressed with the people that I worked with. | ||
| Most of these people had, you know, overseas experience. | ||
| Many of them were XP score. | ||
| The mission was really inspiring. | ||
| But that's been the whole thing with what's been going on this year in the U.S. government. | ||
| The USAID budget was tiny, minuscule. | ||
| And we can walk and shoe gum at the same time. | ||
| We can help our own people and still work on our soft power and help other people in the world, just as human beings. | ||
| I worked most recently at the Department of Education, so I'm also going to be RIFT as of August 1st. | ||
| And then the other thing is, I work in data. | ||
| I'm one of those data stewards and mathematical statisticians. | ||
| The loss of data will bite us in the long run. | ||
| If we don't keep these resources, the resources have already been paid for. | ||
| I do not understand the destruction of data. | ||
| So I really sympathize with your talk today. | ||
| And I really feel bad for what was done to USAID. | ||
| It's just tragic. | ||
| Chris in Virginia. | ||
| Mr. Chester, final 60 seconds here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I think I just want to leave you with this. | ||
| You know, American Foreign Service officers, what we are is Americans. | ||
| So we're Republicans, we're Independents, we're Democrats, we're Hispanics, we're African Americans, we're Asians, we're white, we're Caucasians as well. | ||
| We are Americans. | ||
| We are working to support America, both here at home and overseas. | ||
| We celebrate the 4th of July. | ||
| We're patriots. | ||
| And we love what we do because we love our country. | ||
| And I think that's important for your viewers to know about the Foreign Service: we are your representatives, and we do it because we love our country. | ||
| And engaging with the world only brings you positive results. | ||
| And I want to leave you with one last quote from Secretary Rubio for when he was a senator. | ||
| He said, we don't have to give foreign aid. | ||
| We do so because it furthers our national interests. | ||
| That's what we're losing with the clawback of the $8 billion last week with the destruction of USAID in general. | ||
| We are losing our ability to support our national interests. | ||
| And I hate to see that. | ||
| And I hope your viewers understand the lasting impact this is going to have on Americans, on America's ability to influence the world going forward. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| I appreciate your time. | ||
| Randy Chester is the Vice President of the American Foreign Service Association, AFSA.org. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Coming up in just a minute or so, it's Congresswoman Dina Titus, Democrat of Nevada, joining us at the last day, last workday for the House ahead of the August recess. | ||
| conversation right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| Book TV continues the celebration of America's 250th with author conversations on the American Revolution. | ||
| At 2 p.m. Eastern, contributors to the book Waging War in America, 1775 to 1783, discuss the operational challenges that American, British, French, and German military forces face during the conflict. | ||
| And at 6.45 p.m., U.S. Marine Corps Major General Jason Bohm explores the origins of the Marine Corps, including the formation of the Continental Marines during the American Revolution, in his book, Washington's Marines. | ||
| Then at 8 Eastern, Rick Atkinson shares his book, The Fate of the Day, examining the middle years of the Revolutionary War, from the 1777 capture of Fort Ticonderoga to the 1780 siege of Charleston. | ||
| Also this weekend, at 5.30 p.m., how did the like button become so ubiquitous? | ||
| Author Martin Reeves explores the origins of the thumbs-up symbol and how it changed the internet with his book, Like, The Button That Changed the World. | ||
| And at 10, Martha Blanding broke a color barrier at California's Disneyland, becoming the park's first black official tour guide in 1971. | ||
| She tells the story of her 50-year career with the Walt Disney Company and of social and cultural change in her book, Groundbreaking Magic. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Nevada Democrat Dina Titus joins us from Capitol Hill. | ||
| She serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. | ||
| Congresswoman, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for having me. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Joining us on the last day, workday before the House heads home for the August recess. | ||
| What is the message you're going to be bringing back to your constituents in Nevada this August recess? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm going to be all over the district. | |
| I'm not going off on any codels. | ||
| I'm going to be there at home, even though we're anticipating 120-degree temperatures in the desert there in Las Vegas. | ||
| But we're going to be having some town halls, meeting with different groups, just doing a couple of protests in front of Social Security offices, talking about what this big, beautiful BS bill is going to do to the people of my district. | ||
| And it's not going to be pretty. | ||
| What is the bill going to do to the people of your district? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it hurts us in a number of ways. | |
| One, cutting back on health insurance. | ||
| You know, Las Vegas is a big service economy. | ||
| A lot of people work two part-time jobs, don't have health insurance. | ||
| They depend on Medicaid or they depend on Obamacare. | ||
| So that cut back will put people in a situation where they won't be able to afford insurance. | ||
| And if you have it, your rates will go up. | ||
| Number of people in my district rely on food stamps and nourishment assistance. | ||
| That will be gone. | ||
| We've had the greatest investment in renewable energy solar in Nevada. | ||
| We're the sunniest state in the country. | ||
| All those provisions have been cut back and that created a lot of jobs. | ||
| So that's going to have an impact both on employment and in cost of electricity. | ||
| Plus all the things that have been going on have impacted our tourism economy. | ||
| Tourism is down, and of course, that's the big employer. | ||
| How much do the people of your district there in Nevada hear about Jeffrey Epstein? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, you know, Nevada loves a scandal, and so we hear a lot about that. | |
| We're waiting to see what the Las Vegas connection is going to be because there usually always is one, but those pictures haven't come out yet. | ||
| But also, Nevadans are pretty straightforward, regardless of what party you belong to. | ||
| They just want government to tell them like it is and get out of the way. | ||
| So, if they think you're hiding something or covering up something, they're not going to like it. | ||
| How much are you planning to talk about Jeffrey Epstein in the coming six weeks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we'll talk about it, but it's not going to be the number one theme. | |
| I mean, the number one theme is the economic impact of the recent policies that have been put forth by Trump and the Republicans in Congress. | ||
| James Carville, in the pages of today's New York Times, writes this about Democrats and messaging going into this August recess and ahead of the midterms. | ||
| This is what he writes: There's plenty of tantalizing political scandals surrounding the president right now, but issues of moral or ethical concern are almost always more powerful when they're self-inflicted. | ||
| Let President Trump rope a dope with MAGA on the Jeffrey Epstein case and don't get in the way. | ||
| Instead, the midterms will, like all elections, be decided largely based on issues that affect Americans' everyday lives. | ||
| He said, our midterm march starts with a simple phrase every candidate can blast on every screen and stage. | ||
| We demand a repeal. | ||
| A repeal of Mr. Trump's spending law is the one word that should define the midterms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's right, and that's what Democrats have been talking about. | |
| Every way that we can, we want to roll back those provisions. | ||
| Now, some of them don't go into effect until after the election, so people won't feel them immediately, but that gives us a little time to perhaps make some progress either through the appropriations process, through the amendment process, through the regulatory process, some way that we can undo some of the damage that has been done. | ||
| So, I think repeal is fine. | ||
| But I think the Democrats need to stop focusing on messaging. | ||
| We don't need to play the same game that the Republicans are playing. | ||
| We need to get back to what we do best and talk about solutions. | ||
| Congressman Dina Titus with us until the House comes in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| It's about 22 minutes from now, and we'll, of course, go there live for gabble-gabble coverage when they do come in. | ||
| You can join us with your phone calls on phone lines for Democrats: 202-748-8000, Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in, Congresswoman, I know you were listening in to the end of that last conversation on USAID and foreign service abroad. | ||
| What will be the impact of cuts to USAID from your perch on the Foreign Service Committee? | ||
| How do you see this impacting America's position abroad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's the most short-sighted thing that we could do because everywhere we pull back, China is ready to go in there in a second. | |
| And this is such a small investment. | ||
| Less than 1% of the budget goes into foreign aid, despite people thinking it's larger than that. | ||
| And we buy so much with so little in terms of goodwill, whether it's health programs in Africa, nutrition programs. | ||
| And you know, those nutrition programs help the people not only there with little children who are malnourished, but back here at home, because it's our farmers that grow the peanuts that go into making that high-protein substance that we are able to give to children. | ||
| And so, if we're not there to have some goodwill to be the leader of the world like we have been in the past, China will be only too ready to step in. | ||
| And we need some friends around the world, and we're losing them pretty fast. | ||
| Here's another foreign affairs news story. | ||
| This is from the Associated Press today. | ||
| The Trump administration announced yesterday that it will once again withdraw from the UN Cultural Agency, UNESCO, and move that the U.S. shows the U.S. further retreating from the international organization. | ||
| The State Department spokeswoman said in a statement that the withdrawal was linked to UNESCO's perceived agenda to advance diverse social and cultural causes. | ||
| She says, she goes on to say that UNESCO's decision in 2011 to admit the state of Palestine as a member state is highly problematic and contrary to U.S. policy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, this is so in keeping with Trump's agenda on many fronts. | |
| He did this when he was in office before, and then we got back in under President Biden's administration. | ||
| Preserving the historic sites around the world should just be a no-brainer. | ||
| Why would that become politicized? | ||
| And, you know, he's so anti-diversity that it fits. | ||
| He's so anti-culture. | ||
| He's erasing museums. | ||
| He's going after Smithsonian, going after the Kennedy Center, even going after the zoo because he thinks something about that. | ||
| Maybe the pandas, I don't know, don't fit with his agenda. | ||
| And Palestine is already an observer in the UN, so you're just going to pull out of the UN altogether. | ||
| Once again, it's just this kind of isolationist America first, but it's really America alone. | ||
| And it's not surprising, but I think it's a big mistake. | ||
| Let me let you chat with a few callers here. | ||
| Aileana is in Michigan, line for Democrats up first. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was listening to you earlier speak about in terms of pushing back on Trump's new policies that have been entering the House. | ||
| And a big issue that we've been seeing, especially for Democrats, is the fact that there's been a lot of messaging going on rather than, like you mentioned. | ||
| And I was wondering, like, what kind of solutions or like ideas do you have in mind to push back? | ||
| Well, we're doing everything that we can. | ||
| You know, we're in the minority in both houses. | ||
| He has the presidency and the administration controls the courts. | ||
| And many state legislatures are also falling in line with his agenda. | ||
| Universities are caving to his pressure. | ||
| Big churches, big corporations are pulling back from some of their longtime diversity policies. | ||
| So we're facing it on all fronts. | ||
| But we have introduced bills, we've introduced resolutions, we've signed on to amicus briefs, we've tried to get things brought to the floor for discharge petitions. | ||
| We have attended rallies. | ||
| We are holding town hall meetings in our own districts and in red districts where those Republicans won't face their voters because they know what they're going to hear. | ||
| And we're encouraging our constituents to write in, call in, keep the message going. | ||
| And I think that's being pretty successful. | ||
| But in the meantime, what we need to do in getting ready towards the next election, but we got a year and a half to work on this, is that we need an agenda. | ||
| You know, you had the old contract on America under Newt Gingrich. | ||
| Let's have a contract with America. | ||
| Let's come up with, say, five things that we'll do when we take back the keys of the House, whether it's insurance or whether it's renewable energy or whether it's better education. | ||
| Housing is a big problem. | ||
| Let's be real specific, lay those out there so people will know we got a plan. | ||
| We're not just anti-Trump. | ||
| This is Joseph in Laurel, Maryland Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with Dina Titus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Representative Titus. | |
| A question for you. | ||
| We have been supporting, or USAAID has been supporting sub-Saharan Africa for about seven years now. | ||
| I met a gentleman and a lady, one from Sierra Leone and one from Ghana, and they said that, yeah, when we were British colonies, things were good. | ||
| We had good roads, we had sanitation, we had drinking water that was pure. | ||
| Once they left and we now had dictators take over, all the money being funneled down to these countries have been staying in the coffers of the leaders, not getting to the people. | ||
| As a result, the people are living in stark poverty. | ||
| Roads are terrible. | ||
| It's not sanitary, etc. | ||
| There's a saying that says, if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. | ||
| If you teach a man how to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. | ||
| That money, 1%, is small. | ||
| Why not give it to Americans who are in need and use it wisely? | ||
| I wait your response. | ||
| Well, I think your evidence is anecdotal. | ||
| Talking to two people who wish back for the old colonial days probably is not a reflection of what most of the population in those countries feel. | ||
| I don't think they want to go back to colonial powers. | ||
| Second, you know, we have to be careful how we spend that money. | ||
| There's no question about it. | ||
| We need for it to be bottom-up. | ||
| We need to use NGOs. | ||
| We need to use leaders, have free press in these countries. | ||
| So it doesn't just go to dictators. | ||
| And we need to encourage those legislatures through democracy building to hold those dictators accountable, whether it's through elections or through more transparency. | ||
| But taking that 1% to help Americans, I think is a false equivalency. | ||
| There are lots of programs that do help Americans. | ||
| And by helping people around the world, you are helping Americans because it protects our national security. | ||
| And as I pointed out earlier, a lot of the medicine that we use is from the U.S. | ||
| A lot of the food products that go to these hungry children come from the U.S. | ||
| That money is spent in the U.S. for those products to go abroad. | ||
| So I think there's much more to that story than those two people you talked to. | ||
| Rogers, Minnesota, this is Terry Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| See, the problem is this. | ||
| They've been funded for 70 years. | ||
| They spent $68 billion last year. | ||
| And I'm just looking at the results. | ||
| They say, oh, this is effective. | ||
| I look at Africa. | ||
| I look at the world. | ||
| I look at terrorism. | ||
| I don't see that it's worked at all. | ||
| I mean, let's face it, you can't, you say, well, it helped their education system. | ||
| Our education system is a complete disaster right now. | ||
| I just, I don't understand the theory of giving away that much money with no results. | ||
| I mean, you say, oh, it's wonderful to do this. | ||
| Well, yeah, but it hasn't resulted in anything. | ||
| The outcome is not zero. | ||
| Dina Titus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't really see how you can say the outcome is zero if you look at some progress with democracy, you look at some economic progress, you look at some of our trade agreements where we have benefited here at home from their development that we have fostered. | |
| So it's not zero. | ||
| Now, if you want to take that money and invest it here, you tell me where you want to invest it. | ||
| Because the same people who are against spending the money on foreign aid don't want to invest it in schools at the federal level. | ||
| They say leave it to the states. | ||
| Or they don't want to invest it in health care. | ||
| You know, leave it to the individual to tough it out on their own. | ||
| So you got to make up your mind. | ||
| Do you want to invest it here? | ||
| Do you not want to invest it there? | ||
| Do you not want to invest it, period, and have anarchy? | ||
| You know, maybe that's the new Republican agenda, but it's not one that my constituents think is going to work. | ||
| About 10 minutes left with Dina Titus. | ||
| Coming in at 10 a.m. Eastern in the Senate, also in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can watch on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2, respectively. | ||
| Dina Titus, back to your constituents and the Las Vegas area. | ||
| What is the Fair Bet Act? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, this is a provision that I have introduced to return to the way it was for the past 50 years. | |
| You know, when the big, beautiful BS bill came out of the House, this provision wasn't in there, but it was put in in the Senate. | ||
| Now, here's how it works: if you bet $1,000 and you win $1,000, but you also keep on playing and you lose $1,000, right now it's a wash. | ||
| You got no income, so you don't have to pay any income tax. | ||
| The way the Senate changed it is if you win $1,000 and you lose $1,000, then you've got to pay income tax on $100 because you can only deduct 90%. | ||
| So you're going to pay income tax on money that you don't have because now you can only deduct 90%. | ||
| Well, that's not fair. | ||
| I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, taxing money that you don't have is just not fair. | ||
| And so what I want to do is go back to the way it was so it's a wash and you don't get taxed on this phantom income that you don't get. | ||
| If the legislation of the Big Beautiful Bill continues, what is it going to do to Las Vegas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that will have an impact because it's not just your high-end professional poker players who are concerned about that deduction. | |
| Think of how many people around the country bet on their phones now. | ||
| They bet on football games or they take one weekend and go to a casino and play slot machines. | ||
| People all across the country, all walks of life, like to play a little of some game of their choice. | ||
| So this has a big impact. | ||
| And it not only impacts the player, but it's going to impact the industry because if you go somewhere to bet and gamble and go to big football weekend or poker championship, you're going to spend a little money on a hotel room or a meal or go shopping. | ||
| And so that impacts the industry. | ||
| And it impacts the community because people aren't going to itemize and pay the tax. | ||
| They're just not going to declare it because why would they if they're going to be penalized? | ||
| So you're not going to get the tax revenue that they anticipate. | ||
| Plus, people will go to the black market or go gamble overseas. | ||
| They won't be playing with our companies or investing in our tax structure or our bricks and mortar. | ||
| And that means jobs. | ||
| Out of curiosity, do you gamble? | ||
| Do you have a game of choice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I like to shoot craps every now and then when a company comes to town and we go out on the strip. | |
| Sean is next out of California. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How's everyone doing? | ||
| And Miss Titus, I love you. | ||
| Vegas is my second home. | ||
| I'm only 165 miles from you and I've been coming to Vegas pretty much about 40 years now. | ||
| However, I didn't get it at the time with the USAID. | ||
| Americans, please listen up and listen up really well. | ||
| We have to help other countries because we're going to need that help one day. | ||
| Also, when there are diseases and things that are occurring in other countries, we are needing to make sure that we draw attention to that to suppress that before it starts getting over to opposite countries. | ||
| Now, I have a niece in Africa, and she's now getting ready to take her nurse practitioners, but she's done all of the groundwork, lived there, and helped her people. | ||
| So let's stop being selfish Americans and only thinking about ourselves. | ||
| Because I work two jobs. | ||
| I'm 60 years old. | ||
| I'm not probably planning on retiring for another probably 12 years. | ||
| And I know I paid money from California to help with a lot of our other states. | ||
| Also, USAID helps us for like in Texas. | ||
| When we were looking for all of those people, we should have had people down there on the ground to helping USAID need to always exist because America will need help just as well as other countries. | ||
| Finally, Mrs. Titus, I know that there was a fire recently in the Grand Canyon. | ||
| I know Harry Reed was a biggie on this. | ||
| He was born in Bay, Nevada. | ||
| So I'm really curious that there's not anything out there that can start fires besides humans or people that are trying to come and steal that land. | ||
| Please talk a little bit more about how we can help as people with USAID if our government won't help. | ||
| And also, how can we protect our Grand Canyon because we need that Colorado River? | ||
| Got your questions. | ||
| Congresswoman Titus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a lot to unwrap. | |
| But first, let me say I'm glad you come to my district and you're welcome anytime. | ||
| If you ever get in trouble there, call me and I'll try to come bail you out. | ||
| But you make such a good point about USAID and people needing help when you mentioned about diseases and we're going to need help too. | ||
| You know, diseases don't stop at the border. | ||
| They don't know borders. | ||
| They travel the worldwide. | ||
| We've seen that with COVID. | ||
| Weather doesn't stop at the border. | ||
| It doesn't know where the border is. | ||
| It travels worldwide. | ||
| We need coordination there. | ||
| Energy and pollution, another thing that we need to work with the rest of the world. | ||
| And you are so right, we need friends. | ||
| And we have been alienating our allies, even across Europe, our oldest allies going back to the French in the Revolutionary War. | ||
| So we're going to need those friends and we're going to need them now, not just in developing countries, but to stand up against the march of Putin across Europe from Ukraine. | ||
| So I completely agree with you on that. | ||
| Now, as far as the forest fires and the public lands, I'm very strongly in support of protecting our public lands for future generations, for the good of the planet, for the old petroglyphs and cultural aspects of Native American tribes that were there long before we were. | ||
| Now, there's been a big push by the Republicans to sell off public lands, sell them off to developers and let them come in, do logging, do suburbs, do any oil and gas drilling. | ||
| And so that's something that we're having to fight. | ||
| I know that some of the Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee are on my side on this, and they're looking into what happened with that fire and about our readiness. | ||
| But you know, if we strip back FEMA and we strip back the weather service and we strip back fire response EMTs, who's going to fight those fires? | ||
| And now that goes back to the Republican question of taking care of our own. | ||
| Who's going to be there when your house starts to catch on fire and you need to call somebody for help? | ||
| So we're on the same page on that. | ||
| So I'll see you. | ||
| I'll see you in Las Vegas. | ||
| How much of the state of Nevada is federal government land, be it National Park or BLM? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, outside of Alaska, we have the most federal land. | |
| It's about 86% of the state. | ||
| And that includes military bases, the Nevada test site, a national park, BLM, and Forest Service land. | ||
| So it's a big swath of land that's in trust by the federal government for future generations. | ||
| Does the government need to own 86% of the state of Nevada? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I support giving some of it up, and I have supported some lands bills, but you need to match the land that you free up for development with land you put in conservation, and that's often not the case. | |
| Also, the land that you give up needs to be around already settled areas, so you're not creating urban sprawl, stringing out infrastructure that somebody's going to have to pay for. | ||
| And remember, it's a desert, so if you give up that public land and create more development for more people, you're going to need more water. | ||
| And we already know the Colorado River is down. | ||
| Lake Mead is way down. | ||
| Where is that water going to come from? | ||
| Just a few minutes left before the House comes in. | ||
| Time for maybe one or two more phone calls. | ||
| This is Mike in North Carolina, Republican Line. | ||
| Mike, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My thing is illegal immigration. | ||
| You remember when Biden famously walks across the thing and he says, I can't do nothing with the border. | ||
| Give me legislation. | ||
| Well, Trump come in here. | ||
| He didn't need legislation. | ||
| He cut the border, shut it down. | ||
| Biden administration in New York has let over 11 million people, unvetted people, come in. | ||
| And they are doing crimes. | ||
| Look at what happened in New York in the two Dominican Republican. | ||
| Look at the one in Chicago beheaded a woman and stuck her in a dang tote in the backyard. | ||
| And the Biden administration is open borders. | ||
| And in my opinion, the census needs to be for American citizens because Democrats. | ||
| Got your point, Mike. | ||
| Tina Titus, want to give you a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yes, I don't think anybody disagrees that we need an immigration policy. | |
| We need to redo immigration, whether it's about at the border with more resources there, whether it's dealing with a revision of the visa process, whether it's helping people to become citizens who want to do the right thing and come here to escape economic or injustice or political violence for a better life for their families. | ||
| We're all immigrants at one point in our families' lives. | ||
| There is currently a bipartisan bill that's just been recently introduced to kind of address all those things. | ||
| And I support that. | ||
| I think we do need to move forward. | ||
| You know, Biden was, I mean, not Biden. | ||
| Trump was going to fix everything on day one. | ||
| He was going to end the war in Gaza, going to end the war in Ukraine, going to fix immigration in day one. | ||
| Well, that's not possible. | ||
| And of course, he hasn't done that. | ||
| Now, the numbers about immigration fly around. | ||
| All sides have different numbers and a lot of focus on the more extreme cases, which you could find in any criminal class. | ||
| But, you know, what we need to do is fix it so people who want to be citizens can do the right thing. | ||
| People who are criminals are put in the criminal process, whether it's here or where they came from. | ||
| And look at it from the big picture where you don't separate families. | ||
| Everybody's got a shot at the American dream. | ||
| And we do the right thing for the people who are already here and the people who may want to come here. | ||
| As we wait for the House to come in, it should be about a minute or so here. | ||
| Congresswoman, yesterday on this program, we asked a question to Democratic viewers only. | ||
| Sometimes we split up our questions that way. | ||
| And we asked Democrats, are you satisfied with the direction of the party right now? | ||
| How would you answer that question in this final 60 seconds or so? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the party needs to do some soul searching, but we can't spend all our time navel gazing, as I have said. | |
| We got to start thinking about the future. | ||
| The Biden administration is over. | ||
| A lot of people want to be the leader of this party. | ||
| We need to settle on someone to be our national spokesperson, and we need to talk about what we're going to do. | ||
| The divisions between the far left and the moderates, we've got to work that out. | ||
| the divisions between generations. |