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unidentified
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| We welcome Mark Lauder back to the Washington Journal, currently a co-host on Wake Up America on Newsmax. | ||
| He previously worked on strategic communication for the Trump 2020 campaign. | ||
| Mr. Lauder, how would you answer that sort of Goldilocks question that we asked viewers at the beginning of our program today when it comes to the Trump administration's immigration and deportation policies? | ||
| Would you say they're too strict, not strict enough, or about right? | ||
| No, I think they're about right. | ||
| They're focusing on those criminal, illegal aliens. | ||
| They're showing that they're willing to go get them, especially when you're also dealing with many localities and states that refuse to offer their assistance. | ||
| But I think the American people spoke pretty loudly in 2024 that they wanted the criminal, illegal aliens out of our country. | ||
| They should not find safe harbor here. | ||
| And I think that's where their focus has clearly been. | ||
| Should it concern the Trump administration, just simply looking at the polling numbers when it comes to the Trump administration's deportation program specifically? | ||
| This is from the CBS poll that was in the field about a week and a half ago. | ||
| It's 49% of Americans who approve of the Trump administration's program to deport illegal immigrants. | ||
| That number was 59% back in February of this year. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising. | ||
| Obviously, you have many folks in the legacy media that are just choosing to focus on negative. | ||
| They're focusing on the protests. | ||
| I think that shapes general opinion. | ||
| But I think, again, Donald Trump made it very clear in 2024 what he was planning to do. | ||
| The American people overwhelmingly supported that by sending him back to the White House, and now they see it in action. | ||
| If the media focus too much on the negative, what can the administration do to focus on the positive and what is the positive? | ||
| Well, I think they just need to keep out there and highlighting some of the horrific records of some of the people that they are sweeping up in these raids and deporting. | ||
| And if they continue to do that, I think people at home will get the point that a lot of folks who are charged with very serious crimes and violent crimes, assault on women, assaults on children, are the ones that are being caught up in this. | ||
| This is not about just the folks that maybe some on the left would like to focus on. | ||
| Let's focus on the actual records of those who are being detained and deported. | ||
| When it comes to what the media chooses to focus on, let me switch topics then. | ||
| We noted that you worked on strategic communication for the Trump 2020 campaign. | ||
| What would be the strategic message that you would advise the Trump administration right now on to avoid having another week of the Epstein files dominating the news cycle? | ||
| Well, I'm not sure there's anything they can do that would change that narrative right now. | ||
| And I think, you know, what they have to continue to do, I think, is just continue to push out messages, highlight the positive things that are going on, whether it's with the economy, with immigration, trade deals, and such. | ||
| You know, when I look at the polling, I see that, you know, the president's approval is rock solid, has hardly changed at all amongst Republicans, even though some and many do have questions about the handling of the Epstein case. | ||
| Just continue, it's an issue that's important to them, but not the most important to them. | ||
| And so continue to focus on those things that are the most important, which is the economy, immigration, strong trade, and then obviously, you know, what we're dealing with in terms of national security, foreign relations, and the wars that are going on overseas. | ||
| And yet, when President Trump has been asked about this a couple of times, he has chosen to focus on, or at least try to point the media towards 2016, the 2016 campaign, accusing Barack Obama of treason when it comes to the 2016 campaign. | ||
| Is that the thing he should be focusing on? | ||
| Well, I think from a base standpoint, I think that's obviously something that they want to get out there. | ||
| They want to get that narrative out there. | ||
| I think it's important for history to tell that story correctly and for us to understand what's going on or what went on back there in the late days of 2016 and 2017. | ||
| The question is going to be: I don't think anything's going to change people's interest in, say, the Epstein case, much like they want to know more about the JFK assassination or MLK. | ||
| These are things that are just continuing. | ||
| They're always going to be of interest. | ||
| It's not a distraction. | ||
| It's just something else to put into that communications channel. | ||
| How big of an issue do you think this is going to be for congressional Republicans as they head home to the August recess and speak to their constituents back home? | ||
| I think they'll hear about it at home. | ||
| But, you know, I think there's a lot of things you're going to hear about when you do these things. | ||
| I think from the congressional Republicans, they're going to continue to call for answers. | ||
| They're going to continue to want more information out, but they're also going to talk about the historic tax cuts that were contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| They're going to talk about immigration. | ||
| They're going to talk about what we still need to do moving forward. | ||
| So it will just be one of those narratives. | ||
| I don't think it's the defining narrative that Republicans are going to have to deal with when they're home for the next month. | ||
| How much do you think most Americans know about the One Big Beautiful Bill, about what's actually in this piece of legislation? | ||
| Probably not a lot. | ||
| I mean, I think they know that it continues the Trump tax cuts. | ||
| It contains the promises that the president made on no tax on tips and Social Security and those kinds of things. | ||
| But once you get beyond most of those top lines, I don't think there's probably a lot of information out there. | ||
| And that's fine because I think most people just want to know: are my taxes going to go up? | ||
| No. | ||
| Are people who are on Social Security or receiving tips going to get a tax break? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Those kinds of things are very important, but it's also a challenge for Republicans because I was obviously there in 2017 in the White House and then moving over to the campaign when the original tax cuts and jobs acts were passed by Congress. | ||
| That cut people's taxes. | ||
| They lowered their withholding rates. | ||
| So people immediately saw more money in their paychecks and lower tax bills. | ||
| Continuing something that's already in existence is a lot more difficult to do just because people don't see the tangible benefit right away in their paychecks or in their taxes because you're convincing them they didn't go up rather than they are coming down. | ||
| Mark Lauder is our guest in this segment of the Washington Journal with us for about the next 35 minutes or so. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in with your questions, comments for him. | ||
| Democrats, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Mark Lauder is a co-host at Newsmax's Wake Up America. | ||
| What are you going to be talking about tomorrow on Wake Up America? | ||
| Well, I have a feeling we'll continue to talk about the president's trip over to Scotland. | ||
| He's meeting with the head of the EU this afternoon or tonight, our time. | ||
| And so we'll follow that. | ||
| Also, we've got the Senate working through the budget packages. | ||
| They hope to get at least three appropriations bills approved before they go out for their August recess. | ||
| So I think that will probably be a big focus as we head into tomorrow and in the new week. | ||
| What does the president need to do while he's overseas on this particular trip? | ||
| Well, I think obviously meeting with the head of the prime minister of the United Kingdom, with the head of the EU, continuing to nail down the details of those trade deals and what's coming up with tariffs, because that day is coming on August 1st, which is Friday of this week. | ||
| So I think you will see him really try to solidify the framework that they've already got agreed with the UK and then obviously push forward with more information about what can be done with the European Union. | ||
| Is it possible, or do you think, what would be the result of Donald Trump pushing off the tariff date once again? | ||
| And how big of an issue is it for the White House, this Taco Trump term that gets applied when it comes to tariffs, that he'll chicken out and boot the date down the road once again? | ||
| Well, I mean, I don't think that's just kind of politics the way it is these days. | ||
| Everybody has a nickname. | ||
| Everybody tries to give a nickname to somebody else. | ||
| I think ultimately what the president is hopeful for is getting new deals negotiated. | ||
| And so maybe, and I don't know this, but maybe he will delay tariffs on certain countries that we're working with and trying to get that finalized trade deal. | ||
| Or maybe he's done with them trying to string him along and he's going to let them go into place and see if that gets them to the table. | ||
| Ultimately, you know, all of my experiences with the president over the over the course of the last eight to 10 years, nearly, it's always about what can he do? | ||
| What steps can he take to give himself the maximum leverage in any negotiation? | ||
| And obviously, in this case, he wants the best deal for America. | ||
| So what does he think is going to bring the other side to the table and make them agree with his terms? | ||
| A few of the issues that are likely to come up this week, Mr. Lauder here to take your questions and your comments about them. | ||
| And as we said, he's with us for about another half hour. | ||
| This is James Upfirst out of Rome, Georgia on the phones, line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
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James, you're on with Mark Lauder. | |
| Yes, this immigration system basically, it's not an immigration system what you're doing, Deporton. | ||
| Basically what it is, it's a white supremacist system that you're implementing back again, this DEI and stuff. | ||
| White women were the biggest receivers of affirmative action in the United States. | ||
| And what is actually going on, you know, these visa overstays. | ||
| Most of these people from Europe, Russia, we have a lot of Russians here. | ||
| Israelis, we have a lot of actually Caucasian people here. | ||
| You're not deporting them. | ||
| You're not going in their communities and getting them just because their skin is white. | ||
| When they come over here, that privilege. | ||
| But when they're in Russia, Ukraine, and these different places, they're fighting and they're killing each other. | ||
| But when they come to the United States, this is the reason why you changed their race to white. | ||
| It's then because all you people group up, all you all look the same. | ||
| You're not profile. | ||
| It's over here illegal. | ||
| But people with dark skin, brown skin, or whatever, you can just look at them. | ||
| Black people, it was a time over here when we were citizens where we couldn't go in certain buildings, stores, communities. | ||
| Hey, James, I got your point. | ||
| You bring up a lot of issues. | ||
| Mark Lauder, let me let you jump in. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, first and foremost, I don't think the enforcement of the immigration policy is racist. | ||
| It's based on who is here illegally inside our country and then rounding up those violent criminal offenders and getting them out of the country first. | ||
| I know that they're also working on visa overstays, and that's something that they want to tackle and address. | ||
| But right now, the most critical need is to get the criminal illegal alien out of our population, and then we can have those broader talks. | ||
| And if they get those that are on visa overstays as well, they're rounding them up too. | ||
| So, if the priority is to get the violent criminal offenders out, what happens to the people who are not violent criminal offenders who get rounded up in some of these raids? | ||
| Should simply being in the country illegally be enough to get you deported and in this process. | ||
| Well, yes, simply put, yes, because if you do not round up, if you do not, if you allow anyone who comes into our country illegally to stay, you have created an incentive for people to come into our country illegally and stay. | ||
| So, providing that disincentive that if you are harboring a criminal illegal alien, if you are part of that group, when that person gets rounded up, you will go to, even if you are not a criminal illegal alien, it provides, again, a disincentive. | ||
| And I think that's one of the reasons why we have seen the illegal border crossings plummet to the lowest level in modern history under President Trump because people know that you can't just run up at the border like you could under Joe Biden, find a border customs official and turn yourself in, get a free plane ticket or bus ride into the U.S. in a court date 10 years from now that you're never going to go to, you're going to be sent back home immediately. | ||
| This is James in Perry Hall, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next with Mark Lauder. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Go ahead, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The gentleman just spoke on the fact that this immigration policy is having place. | ||
| It's more of a Gestapo policy than immigration. | ||
| They had plenty of opportunities over the years, especially this past administration, to get a bill. | ||
| But for some reason, Republicans want something to run on. | ||
| Donald Trump put a stop to it, and everybody listened. | ||
| Everybody fell in line. | ||
| The biggest problem with America is Donald Trump. | ||
| Another problem with America, it's a white supremacist mentality, but that we, as a country, consider to continue to push. | ||
| I mean, let's be honest. | ||
| The only problem for Republicans and certain Caucasian people in this country, they don't want to be the minority. | ||
| That's James Mark Lauder. | ||
| Well, obviously, I think, you know, one of the foundations of the America First policies, the principles that are espoused by the president and supported by so many else, is that everyone in America legally who is here gets equal opportunity to pursuing that American dream. | ||
| There's nothing in it about color. | ||
| There's nothing in it about gender. | ||
| It's we want everyone to have the opportunity to succeed and to achieve that American dream. | ||
| And, you know, I get it. | ||
| You know, Democrats have been running on racism for a very long time. | ||
| But I think when you look at the results of the 2024 election and you see the historic growth that Donald Trump and Republicans received from communities of color, from traditional Democrat communities, they realize that they want that equal opportunity. | ||
| And that's why I think so many people are gravitating to it because it's not a politics of grievance. | ||
| It's not a politics of going backwards in time. | ||
| It's what can we do to make the future great for everyone and give everyone that equal opportunity to succeed. | ||
| Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, this is Richard Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For Mark, he made a couple comments about the big beautiful bill. | |
| And I want to add a couple of things because I got a UBS press release. | ||
| I have funds with them about a couple more items. | ||
| And one of them, car loans interest will be deductible. | ||
| And so will a certain amount of charitable contributions in which you don't have to itemize. | ||
| So that might be additions to people's paycheck that they hadn't accounted for. | ||
| Also on illegal immigration, there's a Fox News story out there last night that the cartels are dropping fentanyl across the border and somebody's got to be there to receive it. | ||
| And that's even more incentives to, you know, get illegal immigrants out of the country. | ||
| And because they are not, you know, fentanyl is a big problem down here. | ||
| It may not be such a big problem in the Northeast, but it's a big problem down here. | ||
| That's Richard. | ||
| Mr. Lauder. | ||
| No, absolutely. | ||
| And I'll tell you, fentanyl is a big problem everywhere. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons why we've got to get serious about securing our southern border, but also getting tough with China because they are the main supplier of that. | ||
| They route it through Mexico through those cartels. | ||
| And I think that's one of the great benefits of the president's programs on immigration, on securing the border, is has nothing to do with immigration. | ||
| It has to do with protecting the lives of so many people. | ||
| I mean, I think there's probably very few people in America that don't know someone who's been directly affected or their family has been directly affected by the fentanyl crisis. | ||
| And great points about the one big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Those will definitely, especially on the auto loans for American-made automobiles. | ||
| That'll be something that will be very positive. | ||
| It might take a while for people to figure it out, but once they do, I think it's going to be great not only for, say, middle-class Americans, but also for the auto industry and all of the jobs that are related to not just the manufacture of the vehicle, but all the parts and components that go into it. | ||
| Let me say on fiscal policy for a second, a column in today's Washington Post by Ramesh Poneru, no liberal columnist, certainly. | ||
| His headline of his piece is the attacks on Jerome Powell make no sense. | ||
| He ends his piece by writing this. | ||
| If you were trying to force the Trump administration's line when it comes to Jerome Powell to make some kind of sense, it would be that it's trying to hedge its bets politically. | ||
| Take credit for a strong economy if it materializes, blame Powell if it doesn't. | ||
| But that's a difficult strategy to execute. | ||
| The message from Trump is instead just self-contradictory. | ||
| He's giving us a gangbusters economy that desperately needs stimulation by the Federal Reserve. | ||
| What are your thoughts on this Jerome Powell issue for Donald Trump. | ||
| And did you watch their interaction on that tour on Friday? | ||
| I did. | ||
| It was classic Donald Trump and very entertaining to watch. | ||
| I'm going to disagree with that post, the columnist, just because President Trump's not going to wait around. | ||
| And then if the economy is not going gangbusters next year and Republicans are on the ballot in the midterms and be able to say, well, it's not my fault. | ||
| It's Jerome Powell's fault. | ||
| By setting this narrative now that we need these rate cuts, putting pressure on the Fed and the Federal Reserve Chairman to lower rates, which is something that many economists believe needs to happen, by making that case now, you're obviously setting up that narrative if he doesn't do it, that you've got that person that you can point to come midterm time next year. | ||
| But also, if he is successful in getting the Fed to lower rates, maybe as early as this week when they next meet, then all of a sudden you start to realize that he's going to be able to talk about the fact that they're doing it at his urging, and it just reinforces that narrative from a political standpoint, particularly, that because of him, the economy is booming right now. | ||
| Do you think Jerome Powell needs to go? | ||
| I think he's missed the mark on almost everything. | ||
| And when he was cutting rates last fall, when inflation was much higher, it was clear he was trying to put his thumb on the electoral scales prior to that election. | ||
| His term is up in May. | ||
| I do believe the president, through his focus on the, as it's been referred to, the Taj Mahal on the mall, the Fed Reserve building and the cost overruns, he set up a case to fire the Fed chair for cause, which he's allowed to do. | ||
| It also removes a lot of the legal uncertainty around it. | ||
| But as the president has consistently said, he has no plans to do so right now. | ||
| We'll see if that holds true. | ||
| Let me give you another columnist, Jason Willick. | ||
| His column today focuses on a different Trump administration appointee, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi. | ||
| Time for Trump to tell Bondi that you're fired. | ||
| Jason Willick saying that in regards to her handling of the Epstein files, what are your thoughts on how she's handled the Epstein files? | ||
| Well, first off, as a disclaimer, obviously, I know Pam very well. | ||
| I've been friends with her for a very long time. | ||
| And I've been critical of the Department of Justice's handling of the Epstein files, even when it goes back as far as having the binders full of information that went to the White House and those kinds of things. | ||
| That's just feeding that narrative. | ||
| But I know that the president has full support for Pam Bondi. | ||
| He's voiced it over and over again. | ||
| She is a tenacious lawyer and will always do what she thinks is right by the law and what the requirements of the jobs are. | ||
| And everyone serves at the pleasure of the president. | ||
| And so as long as he has confidence in her, I have confidence in her to do that job as well. | ||
| Does somebody need to come out and say that we overpromised about what's in here? | ||
| And that's on us when it comes to what was said about the Epstein files on the campaign trail and where we are today. | ||
| Well, in traditional political times, I would agree with you and say yes. | ||
| But in Trump times, I would say no, because given what we currently face in terms of the opposition from the media and other things, any kind of act of contrition will be just used to try to sow division and chaos. | ||
| It's not Trump's way to ever say that something went badly or wrong. | ||
| So I would doubt that she would do that. | ||
| And if she did, all it would do is drive a week worth of headlines about how she's differing from President Trump or she admits a mistake. | ||
| I think that would probably be a bad strategic decision. | ||
| Is it fair to say, though, that this has gone badly and wrong at this point? | ||
| I don't think it's gone as well as they would have liked it to. | ||
| I don't think there's any question about that. | ||
| But again, I think as I look at those Republican support numbers and some of the polling, it's still right there, 90%, 92%, historic highs. | ||
| While, yes, the MAGA base and many people want more information, I think that they are happy with the other things that the president's doing in terms of the inflation, the economy, and immigration. | ||
| And so it's not affecting his support right now. | ||
| So I think it's just another one of those undercurrents in the news cycle that you have to live through when you're in the White House. | ||
| Julie is in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Mark, it's a pleasure to speak with you. | ||
| I watch you every morning on the news. | ||
| I wanted to say, thank you. | ||
| I wanted to say something. | ||
| You know, the Epstein thing, yes, it has to be investigated, but it's just a ploy. | ||
| This is being pushed by the left. | ||
| It's not being pushed by the Republicans, in my opinion. | ||
| I think that this Gabbard thing that came out with all of the crap that Obama and Joe and all those people on the left did to Trump is a disgrace to this country. | ||
| It's an absolute, utter disgrace. | ||
| And I am so peeved off about the whole thing. | ||
| That's why I voted for Trump the first time, the second time, and the third time. | ||
| And he's going to make this country better than it's ever been. | ||
| He already has. | ||
| He already has. | ||
| And I also remarked not that long back, you lost your father. | ||
| And I just recently lost my mother, and I know that feeling. | ||
| So God bless you, and God bless this country. | ||
| Thank you, Mark. | ||
| Mr. Lauder. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| Yeah, thank you for the kind wishes for my late father. | ||
| But I know he's with my mom now, so he's in a better place. | ||
| You know, when it comes to what the president has been doing, I agree. | ||
| Obviously, I think the Epstein files is something right now that Democrats and the left are seizing on because it's the only thing they have to seize on. | ||
| They're trying to sow that chaos. | ||
| When it comes to the release from Tulsi Gabber, the director of national intelligence, I was on the campaign in 2016. | ||
| I was in the White House in 2017 as a special assistant to the president. | ||
| That entire narrative consumed those early days of the Trump administration. | ||
| And to realize that this was information that was being basically pushed out, even though there was a lot of question marks around it in the intelligence community, low confidence in the intelligence community, is something that we should never allow to have happen, regardless of the politics of the president of the United States. | ||
| We can't have that kind of narrative. | ||
| But I will also say very clearly, and I've said it on the air many times before, I do not believe that Barack Obama can be criminally charged for any of this. | ||
| I actually believe the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity as it related to President Trump covers him. | ||
| And even if he did it for malicious reasons or for political reasons, him ordering a intelligence community assessment update, report, whatever, is still fully within the confines of the presidential powers. | ||
| And the one thing I think we have to remember, and this is really more for the MAGA Republican community, is that whenever we start getting into presidential motives, what was behind this, well, that's going to come back and haunt you later because when Democrats eventually, someday probably will get back into power again, they will do the exact same thing. | ||
| So we need to make sure that we, you know, if it's Clapper, if it's Brennan, if it's Comey, they don't have that immunity. | ||
| And if you can prove it, let them go to court. | ||
| But I do believe when it comes to President Obama, the Supreme Court would pretty much rule that that's within his authorities. | ||
| On whether you can prove it or what you can prove, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, writes this today. | ||
| Gabbard has a problem. | ||
| How can she discover new evidence that somehow eluded four previous investigations, a 2019 report released by special counsel Robert Mueller, a 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report, a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee issued in 2020 by a GOP-controlled Senate, and a 2023 report released by Special Counsel John Durham, appointed in Trump's first term. | ||
| All told, the previous reports add up to about 2,500 pages of dense prose compared with the, as he describes it, thin gruel of emails and meeting agendas released by Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| Well, I think first and foremost, you know, it's easy to write a report when you don't have all of the facts and whether they didn't look for them, whether they ignored them. | ||
| And the one thing I think is very important on a lot of these bipartisan things is that, you know, Republicans are going to have to negotiate with Democrats on what goes in, what goes out. | ||
| The classified sections of the Mueller report do contain a lot of references. | ||
| And, you know, it's much like we talk about with the legacy media. | ||
| They get to pick and choose the facts they want to include to come up with their own narrative. | ||
| And I think in many of these cases, you had the exact same thing going on. | ||
| And by putting this information out there, putting out the actual facts, the receipts, so to say, allows the American people to read it for themselves, see if they agree with that conclusion, disagree with that conclusion. | ||
| But the only way you can make that informed decision is to have that information out there. | ||
| Less than 15 minutes left with Mark Lauder, the co-host of Newsmax Wake Up America. | ||
| You'll be able to see him tomorrow morning on Wake Up America, and he's with you this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| This is John in Hillsboro, New Jersey. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| My question to you is, what exactly is this great, big, beautiful bill going to do for our national debt? | ||
| And the second question is, what exactly is it going to do to help the average person? | ||
| I mean, somebody, the average person, the person that's struggling making $80,000, $90,000 a year, which you're struggling now making that much. | ||
| All right, that's my question. | ||
| Well, your first question first, obviously, it depends on the national debt. | ||
| It depends on who you are believing. | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office, which is rarely right, has estimated that it would increase the national debt over the course of 10 years. | ||
| The administration, many other economists say, well, they don't fully take into account economic growth, and they have much lower growth projections than what the administration thinks is going to happen, and also what we saw after the original Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed back in 2017. | ||
| So they believe that the debt will actually become lower because of this bill. | ||
| And when it comes to what it does for the average American, well, first off, we have to remember it nearly doubled the standard deduction, which most people use at home, which is something that will continue. | ||
| It also increased, again, the child tax credit, which helps families with children to be able to save even more money. | ||
| And then when you look at some of the other, it continues the tax cuts, it keeps those going, doesn't let them expire, which would have amounted to be the largest tax increase in history. | ||
| And then when you look at some of the other elements like the auto loans that we mentioned earlier, some of the things that are also designed for small businesses, allowing them to depreciate investments they make in their country, that's going to be good not only for small businesses, it's going to allow them to hire more. | ||
| And when they are making those capital investments that they can now fully depreciate, it also means they're buying that material or that construction from someone else, which will help, again, further juice the economy through jobs and increased manufacturing. | ||
| Up to Maine, Sanford, Maine. | ||
| This is Debbie Independent. | ||
| Debbie, thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My representative is Susan Collins, Senator. | ||
| And I saw her in one of the meetings questioning Kash Patel. | ||
| And Maine is not the state that it was. | ||
| I mean, she was asking him for help. | ||
| We have, I mean, you can't believe the property that the Chinese nationalists have bought up, the sex trafficking. | ||
| And when you look at Epstein, I mean, he was a despicable, evil, evil man. | ||
| But when you look at what Biden did, opening up the border and losing 300,000 kids, and then he sets up a hotline and 65,000 of these little minors, these kids that are being trafficked, they're in cannabis farms, and nobody picked up to help these poor little helpless kids. | ||
| When you look at these Trump-deranged Democrats, it's pretty pathetic. | ||
| I mean, it's just, it's maddening on what this last administration did, opening up this border. | ||
| And if it wouldn't have happened, if he left everything in place, we wouldn't be talking about this. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That's Debbie. | ||
| Yeah, thank you, obviously. | ||
| You know, it's one of the untold success stories that needs to probably be told more is what they are doing to protect children and get them out of these sex trafficking networks, which is really one of the major drivers of the illegal immigration. | ||
| I keep going back. | ||
| I remember during the first term, you know, when the Democrats, when the left, when the media were all up in arms about so-called kids in cages, yet Joe Biden lost 320,000, I believe, children, lost communication with them over the course of his four years. | ||
| And I saw Tom Holman, we were talking to him earlier. | ||
| That's actually a focus. | ||
| And they are going back and finding a lot of these children, which were lost in the system under Joe Biden. | ||
| In some cases, it was just bad government reporting and that they are fine. | ||
| But in other cases, there were literally dozens, if not hundreds of kids all assigned to one address that doesn't even exist. | ||
| It's because they've actually been put into sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and it's just a horrific thing that needs to stop. | ||
| Out of Florida, this is Sandy, Lynn for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Trump's position on illegal immigration includes people overstaying and violating their visas like students and tourists and others. | ||
| I understand Melania Trump did that. | ||
| Can you comment on that and how should that be handled? | ||
| Well, I'm not so sure about the First Lady's response, although the one thing I will tell you is that the First Lady, you know, she reserves her comments for the president, and she's definitely very influential on so many things, especially as it relates to children and those kinds of things. | ||
| But it is something, it is a problem that has to be addressed when we have these visa overstays. | ||
| And it's something that I know the federal government is focused on. | ||
| Right now, their big focus is on the criminal illegal element. | ||
| But once we get there, and I think the message is getting out that if you're on a visa overstay and you somehow get into police custody or you need some sort of government assistance, ICE is going to be there to find out and what we can do to get you back home. | ||
| And as I understand it, Melania Trump received a green card, I think it was circa 2001, and became a U.S. citizen. | ||
| 2006, I believe, was the year that she became a citizen, just for the dates for that caller. | ||
| Any further thoughts on Melania Trump, or we can go to Eddie in Massachusetts. | ||
| The First Lady is obviously just such a hopeful role model. | ||
| She's so intelligent, so full of grace. | ||
| I think she's going to go down as one of the best First Ladies we've had because she embodies that strength of America. | ||
| She came here legally, and so she shows that we are a country that's welcoming of legal immigration, and we want everyone to succeed. | ||
| Eddie is in Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on with Mark Lauder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm glad that we can stop using the word racist. | ||
| My mother and sisters came to America in the 20s. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| We're listening to you, Eddie. | ||
| They came to America in the 20s. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And they got an apartment in New York. | ||
| They did housework. | ||
| My father also came from Europe in the 20s, did some farm work, then put his brothers, got an apartment in New York, did painting. | ||
| That's what immigrants do. | ||
| They're not racist. | ||
| They came with legal and they did manual work. | ||
| People calling races terrible. | ||
| But the biggest problem today is the housing. | ||
| How to house the 10, 20, 30 million people over the decades. | ||
| Nancy Pelosi started with the savings of loans. | ||
| That was a fiasco. | ||
| Building shiny houses out of the servers. | ||
| Immigrants don't have cause to get there. | ||
| And then the subprime, that costs us hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| That also was the problem. | ||
| So the problem is government. | ||
| And you had on a congressman this morning from California who was evicted from a news conference one time, arrested. | ||
| He said 10% are only criminals. | ||
| Well, because he's a lawyer, doesn't he know? | ||
| That coming here illegal is a crime. | ||
| 100% are illegals, are criminals. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Eddie in Massachusetts. | ||
| He references a clip from Senator Alex Padilla from a congressional hearing from last week, but not one that you would saw when we were playing with you, Mr. Lauder. | ||
| But go ahead. | ||
| No, I mean, obviously, you know, I think he mentioned a lot of things in there. | ||
| Obviously, we've talked about immigration a lot and enforcement, and we are a country of immigrants. | ||
| I remember, I think it was like last year or so at this time, I realized that, you know, when you look at what happened in the last four years, Joe Biden allowed more people into our country illegally than every person who came through Ellis Island during what was called the Great Migration, back in the late 1890s, 1880s, all the way through the early 1940s and 50s. | ||
| Everyone that came through signed the book. | ||
| That was legal immigration at the time. | ||
| And Joe Biden allowed more people into our country illegally during four years than what happened in more than 50 years legally. | ||
| And when you think about all of the great immigrant communities that came to America through that great migration through Ellis Island, you have to wonder now what's going to be the long-term impact decades from now of what Joe Biden did in just four years. | ||
| Time for just a couple more calls here with Mark Lauder. | ||
| This is Terry in Eugene, Oregon. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd like to start my comment. | ||
| I have two of them with a quote from James A. Baldwin. | ||
| I can't believe what you say because I see what you do. | ||
| You had made the comment at the beginning of this segment about The illegal, the rounding up of illegals. | ||
| And let me tell you something. | ||
| What I'm seeing in this country right now is not the America that I've grown up in and love so dearly. | ||
| You have masked, unidentified people grabbing legal citizens off the country and talking about their $30,000 bonus because somebody, you can endure the smell of the urine from the person that they're terrorizing. | ||
| This is not what the people signed up for. | ||
| Their whole administration runs on hatred, white nationalists, greed, lies, and this country has turned into divided hatred between those that want the principles and the incredible. | ||
| Well, Terry, I think we got your point. | ||
| Mark Lauder, let you jump in. | ||
| Well, I mean, obviously, you know, we live in a free country, and I think you have every right to be wrong because that's not what the America First policies are about. | ||
| It's not about hatred. | ||
| It's not about racism. | ||
| It's about providing a country that's built on those America First policies, which, yes, puts the needs of our country first and Americans, whether it's on the economy, whether it's on immigration, and in so many other ways, foreign policy. | ||
| I think that's what the American people largely voted for. | ||
| You know, when you saw the 24 campaign, you know, it was, and go back really the last 10 plus years, Republicans, Donald Trump, and others have been running on a policy platform where the Democrats have just been anti-Trump. | ||
| That's all they've run on for the last 10 years. | ||
| And I think that's why they find themselves with the lowest approval rating as a party in the last 30 plus years. | ||
| It's because people don't think they stand for anything except anti-Trump, and that's not going to get you elected and not make your life better. | ||
| I think this is what you're referring to. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal with this front page story yesterday on its polling, a new survey finding that 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, the highest share in journal polls dating to 1990 and 30 points higher than the 33% who hold a favorable view. | ||
| What does that mean for next November? | ||
| Well, I think it's going to be a question that Democrats, I think, are still struggling with. | ||
| You know, look, I remember the day, I remember, you know, obviously Bill Clinton running on policy, even Barack Obama running on a lot of policy. | ||
| I may not have agreed with it, but they did run on policy. | ||
| They put it out there and the American people voted for them. | ||
| What you're not seeing is you're just seeing anti-Trump, anti-immigration raids. | ||
| You see a lot of divisive rhetoric, but you don't see a lot of substance behind it. | ||
| And when you do see substance, like the socialist mayor nominee of New York City, Zoharon Mamdani, government-run grocery stores, I mean, these are the things that the Democrats now, that's where the energy of their party is. | ||
| It's not the party of working-class Americans any longer. | ||
| And I think that's one of the reasons why Donald Trump has been so successful in growing his support is because he's attracting new people. | ||
| And I don't think people are leaving the Democrat Party. | ||
| I think the Democrat Party is leaving the people. | ||
| Mark Lauder is a co-host of Newsmax's Wake Up America. | ||
| You can see him there tomorrow and throughout the week. | ||
| And we always appreciate you stopping by the Washington Journal. | ||
| Thanks for coming on a Sunday. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Coming up in about 30 minutes this morning, it's Greg Sargent, staff writer for The New Republic. | ||
| We'll talk about the Democratic agenda, what's in store for Democrats headed into the midterm elections. | ||
| But up next, it's our open forum. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's your time to call in. | ||
| Phone numbers are on your screen. | ||
| Go ahead and start dialing, and we will get to your calls right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Weekends bring you Book TV, featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Book TV continues the celebration of America's 250th with author conversations on the American Revolution. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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, 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. | ||
| 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 weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| In a town where partisan fighting prevails, one table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, Ceasefire, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| It's about 8:50 on the East Coast time for our open forum. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is the time when we let you lead this program. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| Republicans, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And we will get right to the calls. | ||
| Margot in the Hoosier State Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing, John? | |
| I'm doing well. | ||
| I had a comment for the last guest, which was I wanted to know how a convicted felon married to an immigrant with an anchor baby is going after criminals and immigrants and anchor babies. | ||
| And the other thing that I had to say was that I'm sorry, I missed my thought because I really had wanted to speak with him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I wanted to know how he obtained an Einstein visa. | |
| What was his wife's contribution to acquire an Einstein visa? | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| That's Margo in Indiana to the Lone Star State. | ||
| This is Danny in Port, Arkansas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it's actually Porta Ramsey, Texas. | |
| Porta Rances. | ||
| Sorry about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's okay. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I think our government, our ISIS and so forth is doing a wonderful job. | ||
| And, you know, when you do something illegal in this country, you get arrested for it. | ||
| And people who come legally, I welcome them. | ||
| We live close to the border, and people who don't live close to the border don't understand the amount of crime that it has brought. | ||
| And one day it is going to come back in hallness. | ||
| Biden let more people in this country in four years than the country did legally in 50 years. | ||
| Danny, are you okay with the amount of legal immigration we have in this country each year? | ||
| Is that something that you think we should take a look at or increase or decrease? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm fine with the legal immigration. | |
| If you come legally, both of my grandparents came legally. | ||
| Both of my parents who were born here taught us English, not the language that my grandparents came from. | ||
| You go to any other country, just about in the world, you don't have one for their language or one for your language and two for the other language. | ||
| Our immigration policy definitely needs to change. | ||
| And anchor babies, I disagree with that. | ||
| If they're born here, that's fine. | ||
| Take care of them. | ||
| Send them back to their country. | ||
| They're not a citizen. | ||
| We are the only country in the world that does that. | ||
| Immigration should be legally, and it should just be cut and dry. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| It's legal. | ||
| And if you come in legal and you work hard, we're the only country in the world that you can come here, not speak the language, and become a multi-millionaire. | ||
| It is not a give-me country. | ||
| It has turned into a good give-me country. | ||
| You need to work hard and be honest and come to this country legally. | ||
| That's Danny in Texas. | ||
| Centerville, Virginia is next. | ||
| Independence. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Is it Cindy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is Cindy. | |
| I guess my question is, you know, we talk about illegal immigrants coming into this country. | ||
| You know, all I see is brown people being arrested. | ||
| What about your Russians, your Italians, your Polish people? | ||
| Are they all legally here? | ||
| Or is it just brown people that are illegally here? | ||
| That's a question that I have. | ||
| And I just think that it's just so fair, unfair, what Americans are doing, including Donald Trump. | ||
| We all know he is a racist. | ||
| Thank you very much, John. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| Gigi is next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I wanted to address your MAGA callers who keep calling the so-called brown people lazy, people who depend on benefits. | ||
| And by the way, they are not brown people. | ||
| They are indigenous people. | ||
| And there are many indigenous people that come from Central and South America, but there's also many Caucasian people who come from those countries. | ||
| I wanted to address the fact that they're the people taking care of children, your children. | ||
| They are the people taking care of your parents in nursing homes. | ||
| They are the people who are working on rooftops. | ||
| They are the people who are working on roads. | ||
| Right now in Northern Virginia, look around. | ||
| There's not one Caucasian working on the roads, repairing the roads, building roads. | ||
| They are the people who are doing much of the work in restaurants, even in Asian restaurants or any kind of ethnic restaurant. | ||
| The people who are behind the back of the kitchen are the people are these people. | ||
| But if they are so lazy and so dependent upon benefits, which by the way, they cannot get, because you need a social security number in order to be able to get benefits. | ||
| Maybe their children who are born in the country could get benefits, but not the people who come in illegally. | ||
| They cannot get benefits. | ||
| And if they're so lazy, why are they standing by Home Depot all day long in the hot sun when it's 107 heat index outside, waiting for somebody to pick them up and give them work, physical work? | ||
| Or they're standing in areas where they gather in central areas throughout Northern Virginia, for example, and they just stand there waiting and they approach you even if you drive by. | ||
| Do you have any work for us? | ||
| But they're so lazy and they're so dependent upon benefits. | ||
| The racism that I hear every single day coming into this radio station is absolutely appalling to me. | ||
| As a Hispanic American, I can tell you there are many white people throughout Central and South America. | ||
| They come from Spain. | ||
| Spain is a European country. | ||
| But all the people that are going into this radio station, making those comments, are just extremely uneducated. | ||
| I'm sorry for the educational system of this country, uneducated about not only history but geography. | ||
| The only thing they know is what is happening in their tiny little community. | ||
| They've never been out of the country. | ||
| They don't even have an intellectual curiosity to find out about other countries. | ||
| There are beautiful countries in Central and South America with beautiful people. | ||
| And many people, many Americans are moving to those countries. | ||
| Look it up. | ||
| Look up how many, why don't you do that, John? | ||
| Look up how many Americans are leaving this country to go and live in those so-called horrible countries because they feel happier there. | ||
| And that's all I needed to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Gigi in Virginia. | ||
| This is Gail out of the Tarheel State. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, Mr. The guy that was just on from Newsmax, he lied, like Fox lies and Trump lies. | ||
| He said that, oh, they're going after all the criminals. | ||
| Well, every news station except for Fox and Newsmax said that over 70% of the people that they're detaining have no criminal records. | ||
| Now, immigration is just one little tiny piece of the destruction and puzzle of the horrificness of Donald Trump and his presidency, the felon. | ||
| That's the only thing I'm going to say about immigration: the people that come over here that look at the Statue of Liberty in New York, who is right now bowed with her hands over her face. | ||
| All these people that come over here that just want a better life, that build our houses, work in nursing homes, sweat, putting shingles on roofs, go out and pick our tomatoes. | ||
| All those immigrants, give them a path to citizenship if they don't have a criminal record. | ||
| They just want a better life, just like our ancestors did back in the early 1900s when they came over here to New York. | ||
| But the second thing that I want to talk about is the Epstein. | ||
| And he had the nerve to say that, oh, the left has just got to have something to talk about. | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| Why is his attorney going to talk to Miss Maxwell, who is the perpetrator of picking up girls at high schools, 14 years old, taking them to Epstein Island for Epstein to molest and rape? | ||
| Why is Trump's attorney going interviewing her so that she won't say that Trump did anything wrong? | ||
| But, oh, no, he's going to come back and say it was a Democrat. | ||
| But we know that all these girls at Epstein had Trump's best friend for 10 years. | ||
| We know that all these girls were very, very young, 14 middle school, high school kids. | ||
| They just had one on Aaron Burnett's show on CNN that said that the girls would go to Epstein and they would give him massages and he would molest them while they did that and other things that I'm not going to say on air. | ||
| And then he would pay them. | ||
| But then when they turned 18, he said he didn't need them anymore because they were, oh, they were too old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you've got Trump circumstantial evidence that he used to go to the beauty pageants and go inside the dressing room and he used to say, oh, I can do it. | |
| Girls would go in there and they'd feel uncomfortable because he'd be going in there looking at them. | ||
| Gail, it sounds like it sounds like you don't think this story is going away anytime soon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you think the Republican Party, the Fox News and Newsmax, and all the other people that try to support the felon Trump, all these people are trying to spin it. | |
| But when the actual facts come out, because you've got victims that are talking now, and you've got Epstein, who supposedly committed suicide, which now we know that Epstein's brother said that the original autopsy showed it looked like a homicide. | ||
| And they won't say that on Fox and Max News. | ||
| Gail, can I ask you how much? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a criminal justice background, okay? | |
| Can I ask you what Trump is doing to this country is he's terrorizing children, and I do not do well with terrorizing children. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| How much attention, how much interest did you pay to the Epstein files in the Epstein case before recent weeks and months? | ||
| Years ago, is this something that with your criminal justice background that you were looking into? | ||
| Or is it something that you have more recently come to and looked into? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was devastated when I heard about it, but I said, well, what do you know? | |
| Trump used to, he said he would date his own daughter if she's hot. | ||
| Oh, if she wasn't my daughter, I'd date her. | ||
| So, Gail, I guess what I'm asking. | ||
| Were you as interested in the Epstein files four years ago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but I knew that they would cover it up. | |
| And when he died in jail, there was nothing done about it. | ||
| And I said, you know, he didn't commit suicide. | ||
| I just said, you know, there's no way. | ||
| So do you think when Donald Trump was running in the 2024 election and was talking about Epstein saying that it needs to be uncovered, that's a place where you agreed with him in the 2024 election? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but he lies. | |
| And then when he, you know, just like you said, groceries were going to go down. | ||
| Groceries have gone up. | ||
| Everything he says is a lie. | ||
| And Fox News and Newsmax, they follow the lie. | ||
| It's like an alternate universe, alternate universe with Fox News and Newsmax in the right wing compared to the truth. | ||
| That's Gail this morning. | ||
| This is more on Epstein on the South Park episode on Donald Trump and the Epstein files. | ||
| Trump's South Park problem is the headline of the latest story in Politico magazine. | ||
| It's a rather lengthy piece, but here's the crux of it saying the fact that this aired is the latest sign that Donald Trump has lost control of the Epstein narrative and that the saga has broken Washington containment and it's permeated deep into popular culture now. | ||
| That makes it the worst kind of White House mess. | ||
| If you want to read more, Politico magazine with its look at this story. | ||
| This is Ray in Pleasantview, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Listen, first of all, there's a lot of paranoia in the Democratic Party. | ||
| I mean, it's rampant. | ||
| Just like that baby was just talking. | ||
| She doesn't know what she's talking about. | ||
| Nobody was talking about Bernstein or whatever his name is doing that until this all this come out about how Obama and his cronies tried to ruin Donald Trump's first try for the presidency. | ||
| Like you're saying, people were talking about that before Epstein? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They weren't talking about Epstein until when this story came out. | |
| Donald Trump has probably met the people in his life. | ||
| He doesn't know all the background of them people. | ||
| And everybody, everybody, you meet people like that and find out later there's something's wrong with them. | ||
| It's just things that happen. | ||
| So that maybe she needs to get them to help psychologically. | ||
| All right. | ||
| This is Odo out of Shirley, Massachusetts, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN Washington Journal, for taking my call. | ||
| I would like to start off by giving my condolences to the people of Texas with that terrible flooding and all those souls in Gaza that is being lifted for no reason, suffering. | ||
| Nobody should see their kids, loved ones starved, shot, or being bombed to death. | ||
| But that's not why I called in, John. | ||
| As a proud, law-abiding African-American freedom taxpayer citizen here in beautiful America, the judicial coup is way out of control. | ||
| That's the truth. | ||
| Now, it's disgusting to see how the fake news media and our so-called elected officials continue to try to take down this president who is doing a splendid job for this country. | ||
| Thank you, Donald Trump, for what he did to the stock market. | ||
| No other president would have had the gall to try to solve that problem. | ||
| And I'd rather pay a few million for a military parade that happened June 14th rather than paying a few billion with a capital B to a dictator for endless wars. | ||
| And can someone please tell me why the hell are we paying for another government building that we don't need in Washington who don't want to lower the rate for the Trump boom to get rid of whatever problem is going on in America? | ||
| We don't need Jerome Powell in there playing politics, and he needs to lower the rate so the Trump boom can happen. | ||
| And I would like to thank Donald Trump for the sexy, ultra MAGA, big, beautiful bill that he got passed. | ||
| What I don't agree with is Barack and Saint Hussein Obama teaming up with HBO for America's 250 and whatever series they're about to come out with before America's 250. | ||
| I have a very hard problem watching this show without throwing a bowling ball at the TV of everything that happens in America. | ||
| And I would like to thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Oh, and one more comment before I get off this wonderful air. | ||
| I want to know what's all the wheeling and mashing of teeth about Mr. 47 looking become Mr. 48. | ||
| He's doing a splendid job, and if he's continent enough to keep up with the job that he's doing, I'll be putting on my track shoes, my track pants, and my track gloves and running to the poll and casting my vote for Donald J. Trump for a third term. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That's Odo in Massachusetts. | ||
| Less than 10 minutes left here in open forum. | ||
| This is Nancy in Bowling Green, Kentucky. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| What is wrong with Tennessee and Massachusetts? | ||
| But anyway, I just want, I got my hair done yesterday. | ||
| And unfortunately, my girl that does it, she is a Trump supporter. | ||
| And well, anyway, I just said something about my Epstein. | ||
| Oh, my girl, the girl who just went cry cry on me. | ||
| But anyway, I just told her that I believed there was going to be a lot to come out. | ||
| And I don't know why everybody's always saying that if you don't agree with Donald Trump, you hate him. | ||
| I am a believer in the Lord. | ||
| So I'm not allowed to hate. | ||
| And I don't know why all these people want to say everything about Joe Biden. | ||
| Are they Joe Biden haters too? | ||
| Is this what we've came? | ||
| You know, is this what we came to now? | ||
| I mean, I can't even, my brother wouldn't even talk to me about religion because he thinks Donald Trump owns religion. | ||
| No, Lord, he does not. | ||
| We're all children of God, and we all believe in God, hopefully. | ||
| So nobody has the cap on anything. | ||
| And I'm just concerned about our world. | ||
| I mean, just how we look at everything. | ||
| I grew up in a time where we try to help one another and, you know, support one another. | ||
| And now we're as I don't even understand what is even going on on this earth. | ||
| Nancy, when was the last time you felt like we were in a time in America where we were trying to help each other and support each other? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to say probably in the 90s. | |
| Why the 90s? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why the 90s? | |
| I don't know why I believe that or what I feel that, but I believe it all shifted. | ||
| You know, everybody was so upset about the year 2000, you know, how we were going to, you know, how our clocks were going to work, how our bank systems were going to work, you know, you know, just things like that. | ||
| We were so, that's when I feel like it began. | ||
| You know, all this skepticism about everything, you know, just everything. | ||
| I think it all shifted somehow. | ||
| That's Nancy in the Bluegrass State. | ||
| This is Bob in the natural state in Tuckerman, Arkansas. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| If you criticize us, figure out who let the people in across the border. | ||
| I don't blame the people across the border. | ||
| Hell, if somebody gave me credit cards, hotels, and food, and everything else, you know, I might do that. | ||
| But the thing is, there's no free learners. | ||
| If you're getting into the sex thing with Trump and all that crap, Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Rowe. | ||
| Bill Clinton had a fair with Monica Lewinsky. | ||
| Normally, you know, a president that came under that, he would have resigned, but he didn't do it. | ||
| So, Bob, what's the point you're trying to make? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm trying to make the point is that there's nothing new. | |
| You're going to have people that do things and the fact that this president has done things? | ||
| And when you say things, what are you referring to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not saying that. | |
| I'm saying that if you look at the past and everything, you know, that's just the way it is. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Bob. | ||
| This is Len, Wilson, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I hope you give me the time like you did the other callers. | ||
| But what I want to, first thing is that I want to say, as far as the immigration, we have created most of those problems down there by installing people, our chosen dictators, south of the border. | ||
| We don't invest any money down there. | ||
| If we invested a fraction in south of, I mean, not south of our border, but in the countries that's close to us. | ||
| Take Haiti, for example. | ||
| And I'm surprised, these man, you're not showing this. | ||
| People are dying in Haiti. | ||
| It's getting like gossip. | ||
| And nobody, they are stopping U.S. aid in there now. | ||
| These countries are right. | ||
| These are our neighbors. | ||
| Yet we go 10,000 miles across the waters over here to give these people all kind of billions of dollars to do whatever they want to with. | ||
| Who are the people you're referring to, Len? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me? | |
| Who are the people you're referring to? | ||
| We're giving them tens of billions of dollars to do whatever they want. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Israel. | |
| These people have dropped thousands of bombs. | ||
| These bombs cost them millions of dollars apiece. | ||
| They have dropped bombs on just about every building in Israel at our expense. | ||
| So, you know, and look at Ukraine, all the money they put over there right away. | ||
| Yet the people of color right south of our border and around us, we do nothing about. | ||
| You should have a show. | ||
| That's what I'm telling you on what's happening in Haiti. | ||
| You don't want to show that. | ||
| The other thing I want to say is you need to have a show on anti-Semitism and racism. | ||
| I don't understand why anti-systemitism gets so much coverage. | ||
| And I've got a few friends that used to call in at C-SPAN. | ||
| And I talked to them and they said they don't call no more because every time they say something about Israel, this was way back. | ||
| You guys wouldn't even let you cut them off right away. | ||
| So, Cease Man, you was complicit. | ||
| Even though I like you and you're the best thing out now, it's a lot that you can do better. | ||
| And you're the only hope that we got left. | ||
| And I hope you really look into what I'm saying because our media is owned by foreign entities. | ||
| And anytime you let foreign entities own your meter, media, they can brainwash your people. | ||
| And Israel is the biggest one. | ||
| You got Russia, you got Iran, you got China. | ||
| They can put all the money they want in there. | ||
| They buy TV stations. | ||
| You wouldn't show nothing about Gaza. | ||
| I think you guys showed one little show. | ||
| Just like they're scared to do it. | ||
| But I'm just saying that's going to happen. | ||
| If you go back, you can see every segment that we've done. | ||
| And we've certainly done more than one show on this topic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've done many people for the amount of people that's dying, sir. | |
| And Len, always appreciate suggestions on segments and appreciate when viewers call in to do that. | ||
| That's Len in North Carolina. | ||
| This is Rick in Connecticut. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to say that you guys take a lot of punishment unjustly. | ||
| These people are so ignorant. | ||
| And on Trump, I think that Democrats should lower the emotions and think about the facts. | ||
| And as far as tariffs go, I think tariffs is an open and you face extortion. | ||
| The best tariff deals Trump's going to make is through the back door. | ||
| Jeffrey Epstein, he learned from Trump. | ||
| And another thing that baffles me, how did the Democrats let Trump get away? | ||
| COVID, a million Americans died. | ||
| How did they not hang that on his neck? | ||
| What I'd like somebody to do is count how many people are going to die under him this time. | ||
| He's going to kill people all around the world. | ||
| And the people that follow a rapist, criminal, womanizing child molester, and then they rant and rave about why are people mad at Trump. | ||
| That's Rick, our last caller in this open forum. | ||
| But stick around, plenty more to talk about today. | ||
| 45 minutes left. | ||
| In that time, we'll be joined by Greg Sargent, staff writer of the New Republic. | ||
| We'll talk about the Trump presidency and the Democratic agenda. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, progressive professor Cornell West and conservative professor Robert George talk about their decades-long friendship and teaching together at Princeton University. | |
| They also discuss their new book, Truth Matters, a dialogue between the two on such topics as American history, great books, faith, and free speech. | ||
| It's that intellectual humility that comes from the recognition that we are fallible that should lead us to be open to the challenges from other people, even to our most sacredly held views, the views that are absolutely sacred to us. | ||
| Cornell and I take the position in our seminars and in our lives that there is no view we hold, no matter how deeply we hold it, that we want to have immunized from critique. | ||
| We're fallible, therefore we ought to be humble, but it doesn't mean we're not tenacious in what convictions we do have. | ||
| And by tenacious, it means willing to sacrifice, willing to take a risk, willing to pay a cost, which means it will never be a question of just how much status or position or money we have determining what we think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Progressive Professor Cornell West and conservative professor Robert George tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts wherever you get your podcasts or on our free C-SPAN Now app. | |
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Greg Sargent joins us now via Zoom. | ||
| His articles can be found at The New Republic. | ||
| His weekday podcast is The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent joining us until the top of the hour at 10 a.m. | ||
| And Greg Sargent, I want to start with that poll that was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, a new survey finding that 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. | ||
| It's the highest share in journal polls dating back to 1990, 30 points higher than those who hold a favorable view. | ||
| What are your thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no question that the Democratic Party faces very steep challenges right now. | |
| The 2024 election saw them lose working class voters in numbers that I think very few Democrats anticipated. | ||
| And look, I would point out one thing, though. | ||
| There's the way politics works in America is that it swings back and forth. | ||
| And some of the polls that I've seen, and these are all public polls, actually show Democrats kind of a parody with Republicans, at least the Republican Party, minus Trump, on the question of who looks out best for people like me, who cares about people like me, and so forth. | ||
| So look, I think the Democrats have unquestionably a ton of work to do. | ||
| They really have to figure out a way to reach working class voters more effectively. | ||
| I think a big part of the problem is informational. | ||
| Donald Trump has really cracked the code on the new digital era in a way that Democrats have not, and they are very far left behind. | ||
| And those two things are related. | ||
| They're going to have to figure out how to communicate to working class voters better. | ||
| Do they have to figure out new leadership? | ||
| Is it time for new leadership in the Democratic Party? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I think that there are a lot of problems with the current leadership. | |
| I think that they're insufficiently aggressive. | ||
| They're a little bit fearful of saying what they actually think on many issues, such as immigration. | ||
| And I think that actually hurts them. | ||
| In my view, they're actually captive to a certain type of consultant class right now that's giving them bad advice. | ||
| And I think they need to shake that off. | ||
| And when you say they, who are we referring to? | ||
| Is it Jeffries and Schumer? | ||
| Who is it that is the leadership of the Democratic Party right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think Schumer is a little worse in this regard than Jeffries. | |
| I see evidence that Jeffries actually is starting to get more aggressive on a bunch of fronts. | ||
| Schumer strikes me as very hamstrung by bad consultant advice. | ||
| But more broadly, we're talking about a lot of different Democrats. | ||
| A lot of House Democrats and swing districts are really pretty scared to say what they think on important topics like immigration. | ||
| To a degree that I think is unfortunate, they believe everything always has to be reducible to how it affects people's kitchen tables. | ||
| And while, of course, kitchen table issues have to be front and center, Democrats need to be able to say what they think morally about important matters before the country, like for instance, immigration, which is creating a bit of a moral crisis in this country right now due to Trump's crackdowns, and Epstein. | ||
| Although I acknowledge that Democrats are acknowledging on Epstein, I acknowledge that Democrats are taking on the Epstein stuff more directly than they were. | ||
| On the Epstein files, do you see this as dominating the headlines for another week coming up? | ||
| Is there a fresh angle that you would take on this particular scandal? | ||
| We can call it a scandal at this point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's a little hard to tell. | |
| A lot has to turn on what emerges, and there's a very good chance more will emerge. | ||
| We're already seeing House Democrats talk about trying to get the Epstein 50th birthday photo album, which Trump reportedly contributed to. | ||
| He denies it in fairness. | ||
| I think Democrats should be signaling even more clearly that if they take the House, this is the investigative set of steps that they should follow. | ||
| I want to commend Senator Ron Wyden here. | ||
| He has actually laid out a blueprint, a roadmap, if you will, for investigators to follow when it comes to Epstein's financial transactions. | ||
| This is not a well-known thing, but it's out there that the Treasury Department has on file with it suspicious activity reports filed by banks. | ||
| These are reports that flagged suspicious transactions by Epstein involving his elite circles. | ||
| We're talking about a lot of transactions. | ||
| Wyden has called on the Justice Department to get Treasury to release those documents and has laid a roadmap out for what could be done to try and get to the bottom of them. | ||
| And by the way, this is something I would think Trump voters would be 100% for. | ||
| MAGA was out front in blowing the whistle about the Epstein files before a lot of us were. | ||
| And so I would think they would want things like that to happen. | ||
| If there are suspicious transactions on file with the Treasury Department, according to Senator Wyden, you'd think MAGA Republicans would want to look at those. | ||
| If Democrats are doing that and saying, if we get back in power, this will be the investigative steps we'll take. | ||
| How do they then answer the question, well, why didn't you do this the last time you were in power? | ||
| Why wasn't it important then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, it's a good question. | |
| But there is an answer to it. | ||
| Wyden has answered this question. | ||
| He has actually sought, he was seeking access to these Epstein files, at least the Treasury Department ones, during the Biden administration. | ||
| In fact, he actually got access. | ||
| His investigators sat down and viewed a lot of these suspicious activity reports on file with the Treasury Department in camera, which means privately and not for release. | ||
| And he actually was able to get access during the Biden years. | ||
| And at that time, again, with Biden as president, Senator Wyden told his office told us, and we reported this at TNR.com. | ||
| Please check it out. | ||
| It's in one of our stories. | ||
| Senator Wyden reached out to Republicans on the Finance Committee, where he's the ranking Dem now, and asked them to join him in subpoenaing the Treasury Department to release some of these documents, suspicious activity reports. | ||
| Again, this was during the Wyden, sorry, this was during the Biden presidency, and he asked Republicans to join him in subpoenaing them, and Republicans declined. | ||
| TNR.com leads you to the new republic. | ||
| Greg Sargent also is the host of the podcast, The Daily Blast, with Greg Sargent, and he's with us taking your phone calls. | ||
| Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Greg Sargent, as folks are calling in on focusing on Epstein versus the kitchen table issues and what Democrats should do. | ||
| This was James Carville recently writing in the New York Times. | ||
| He says 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 are self-inflicted. | ||
| Let President Trump ropodope with MAGA on the Jeffrey Epstein case and don't get in the way. | ||
| Instead, the midterms will, like all elections, he says, be decided largely based on issues that affect Americans' everyday lives. | ||
| This time around, we don't have to run with a shred of nuance when it comes to kitchen table issues. | ||
| Mr. Trump's big, beautiful domestic policy law is a big, steamy doggy nugget of epic proportion, contemptible to a vast majority of the nation. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I have great respect for James Carville. | |
| He's actually appeared on our podcast. | ||
| You can check that out as well. | ||
| It was a lively conversation, as conversations with James Carville often tend to be. | ||
| I think he gets this one a little wrong. | ||
| I think this whole concept of letting Trump and Republicans play Ropa Dope or playing Ropa Dope in order to get Trump and Republicans to hang themselves, it's a bit too clever by half. | ||
| I also don't think that Democrats have to choose between focusing on kitchen table issues and focusing on the Epstein matter. | ||
| They can actually relate the two to one another. | ||
| They can point out that if Trump refuses to release the Epstein files, he's keeping something covered up on behalf of wealthy elites, which is exactly what the big, beautiful bill also does in the sense that it actually helps wealthy elites, huge tax cut for the wealthy and cutting the safety net for the poor to pay for that and so forth. | ||
| And so I've never understood this false choice that a lot of Democrats seem to think they're stuck in. | ||
| Also, I would point out that Democrats could be doing a public service. | ||
| They are public servants. | ||
| Let's remember they are people in positions of leadership. | ||
| They should act like it and tell the public what they think about a matter like the Epstein scandal. | ||
| It's a hugely important issue. | ||
| Elite impunity is not a small thing. | ||
| It's not a distraction. | ||
| Democrats should say what they would do if they were in power to shed more light on this. | ||
| I don't understand why that's a distraction or a bad argument for Democrats. | ||
| Seems like a no-brainer to me. | ||
| Plenty of callers for you. | ||
| We'll start on the line for Democrats. | ||
| This is Robert Queens, New York. | ||
| You're on with Greg Sargent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Yeah, I just have a question. | ||
| On the videotape of Epstein cells, there are approximately two minutes and 53 missing seconds from that tape. | ||
| It's clearly been edited. | ||
| And I think we could find guilty parties if we find out who had access to that file, to that videotape. | ||
| And otherwise, no one's talking about it. | ||
| Okay, thank you so much. | ||
| Greg Sargent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, I appreciate your question. | |
| And Queens is a great borough. | ||
| I grew up in New York, and so I spent a lot of time in Queens in my youth. | ||
| I will say that I agree with you in the sense that more sunlight is absolutely essential here across the board. | ||
| Democrats should be saying, if we take power, here's what we will shed light on in terms of what's been released, how it was released, why it was insufficient, and so forth. | ||
| It's just, look, the country wants answers to this, and there's just no reason not to stand for full transparency. | ||
| The Trump/slash Republican Party position is deeply baffling. | ||
| It should be extremely troubling to a lot of MAGA Republicans. | ||
| And in fact, some MAGA influencers are troubled by it. | ||
| And so there's a lot of irregularities here. | ||
| It's almost too many to count, and we need transparency. | ||
| Are you inclined to believe that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered versus committed suicide? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not inclined to think he was murdered. | |
| No. | ||
| Rick is in Burns, Tennessee. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I just have a couple of things. | ||
| One, really, people really don't care about the Epstein thing. | ||
| More, the reporters care more. | ||
| The other one is, do they realize that the people back in the day with Epstein and Trump, they were all Democrats, every one of them. | ||
| And so that's all going to come out. | ||
| The third thing I have, and then I'll go, I'm listening to the Democrats say about the immigrants that they won't pick our cotton, won't care for our kids, won't clean the sewer. | ||
| You know, just these slave wage. | ||
| And of course, that's the argument they had back in the slave days when they were in Congress. | ||
| They were defending slavery almost the same way. | ||
| Greg Sargent, what do you want to pick up on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A couple things. | |
| I'll answer all three of those. | ||
| Thanks for your question, sir. | ||
| First, I think the polls are not really showing what you just said there. | ||
| What my reading of the polls is that there's a lot of concern out there. | ||
| But, you know, putting that aside, if it's true that these Epstein files are riddled with proof of Democratic pedophilia and so forth, then release them. | ||
| I would think that the Trump administration would be more eager to release the files if they would show that Democrats are the ones who are in there. | ||
| And look, we should have them out there and let the chips fall where they may. | ||
| We'll see who's in there. | ||
| And look, one other point I should make really briefly is that we don't really know exactly what the Epstein files are. | ||
| We're using this as a kind of shorthand for this enormous wealth of investigative and evidentiary material that was gathered in the course of investigating Epstein. | ||
| But whatever the Epstein files are, more disclosure would be more likely to show exactly what our caller just said was in there. | ||
| So I would think that Republicans would be for it, and yet they're not. | ||
| So I'd be curious what the explanation is for that. | ||
| How do you square those two things? | ||
| On the immigration front, I would point out that Donald Trump himself recently tweeted that his mass deportations are depriving farms and farmers of important labor, that good workers, right? | ||
| And he even suggested that Americans are not rushing in to fill those slots. | ||
| And so I think Trump is right about that. | ||
| When he says that immigrant labor, migrant labor, including undocumented, performs essential tasks for the country and that deportations are hurting the economy, then he's right. | ||
| And so if I were a Republican, I would look at that and say to myself, you know, well, if he's telling me that immigrant labor is essential, then maybe it is. | ||
| Just coming back to Epstein for one more minute, what do you say to conservatives, to Republicans who make the argument that this is opportunistic by Democrats? | ||
| If there really was something incriminating of Donald Trump in the Epstein files, Joe Biden was in the White House for four years. | ||
| His Justice Department would have come out with this. | ||
| It would have come out either during the election as a leak or some other way. | ||
| That is a reason to show that there's clearly this is clearly opportunistic on Democrats' parts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I make a couple of points in response to that. | |
| Look, I think it's absolutely fair to ask what happened during the Biden years with the Epstein files. | ||
| Again, using this as shorthand, we don't know what those are. | ||
| I'm 100% for full transparency that puts together a detailed timeline that fully includes the Biden years and implicates anybody who in any sense did anything nefarious or obfuscatory or whatever. | ||
| But again, if it's true that there's nothing in the Epstein files, then just release them, right? | ||
| Donald Trump keeps saying over and over that the Epstein files are a Democratic hoax, which is basically the same argument that you just cited conservatives making, and yet he won't release the Epstein files. | ||
| So if they would prove that there's nothing to the charges that he was involved in some way or that other elites were involved in some way, and if they would prove that Democrats are responsible for a hoax, then release them and show that. | ||
| And they'll say you can't just release them because there's innocent people's names in here, there's victims' names, that it's not as simple as just releasing all the files. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would point you back to what MAGA said for years, which is that you can release them and you can do it in a way that's responsible. | |
| I mean, I would think that the question that's being asked here should be directed at MAGA Republicans who previously were for releasing the Epstein files, don't you think? | ||
| John is in Bedford, Ohio. | ||
| Independent, good morning. | ||
| Yes, I really am beside myself over what Israel is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinian people. | ||
| And even the various Amnesty International Human Rights Watch, which are U.S. and NATO-based and have been criticized for being too captured by the Israeli lobby, | ||
| even they are saying that what Israel is doing in killing children by the thousands with 2,000 bombs, thousands of them, provided by the United States, along with billions of dollars to daily saturation bomb Palestinians in the most densely populated strip on earth, | ||
|
unidentified
|
like shooting fish in a barrel, is genocide. | |
| And I think we should realize that we're not getting the true story because even Amnesty International and Human Rights Wash have been saying that, | ||
| pointing out that israeli soldiers are telling the israeli press and even heros that they're being ordered to massacre starving civilians trying to obtain food aid from from uh uh aid centers countless doctors have been telling the world that israel snipers are routinely and deliberately shooting children in the head and the chest throughout the john got your point Greg Sargent, give you a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, this is a bipartisan failure of immense magnitude. | |
| It was my view during the Biden presidency that he should have exercised more leverage over the Israelis to hew to human rights metrics and so forth and human rights standards and to stop the atrocities. | ||
| I think the Democratic Party should be speaking loudly with one voice on exactly what you're talking about here, which is a horror is happening and it has to stop. | ||
| If I were a Democrat, meaning an elected Democrat, I would be saying, here's what we need to do very specifically with our leverage over Israel to ensure that this stops. | ||
| In terms of the voice of the Democratic Party and who is the voice of the Democratic Party, there's an article today in the Washington Post focusing on David Hogg and his organization leaders. | ||
| We deserve the headline, David Hogg wants to change the Democratic Party, but he's off to a slow start. | ||
| What are your feelings about David Hogg? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like David Hogg. | |
| I think he's generally a positive force. | ||
| He's been really, really important in shining the spotlight on gun violence and its related horrors as well. | ||
| Look, the Democratic Party is a big tent. | ||
| It's got a lot of different constituencies in it. | ||
| My general tendency is to be for more internal party debate rather than less. | ||
| I don't quite understand the voices that are saying that people like David Hogg should really muzzle. | ||
| That said, it can be destructive at times to pursue primaries for the sake of pursuing primaries. | ||
| And look, we're going to have tensions inside the party, but that's what happens in parties when they're debating big questions and debating important matters like how to proceed in the Trump era. | ||
| And what lessons should the party take as they have those debates from the loss in 2024? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, a couple things. | |
| First, I think that the economic agenda has to be made more populist than it is. | ||
| I think there's no question that there was a certain box-checking feeling to Kamala Harris's messaging on the economy. | ||
| I think that the Democratic Party has to be more robustly for a full-blown populist agenda than they have been traditionally, at least in recent years. | ||
| But critically, they have to figure out a way to solve the information problem, which I believe is really bedeviling them. | ||
| Again, Trump has cracked this. | ||
| Now, this is partly because Donald Trump is an immensely talented politician, which is not something a lot of Democrats tend to say aloud, but it's absolutely true. | ||
| He is probably the most talented and charismatic politician of our lifetimes, the second most behind Barack Obama. | ||
| And as a result, that plus his digital innovation has enabled him to reach a penetration in the culture that is really quite remarkable, and Democrats have to catch up on that front. | ||
| What is his talent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's immensely charismatic. | |
| He knows how to light up his parts of the country. | ||
| I had a Democratic strategist tell me that one of his daughters went to a Trump rally, and what struck him, and I've never forgotten this story, what struck him really powerfully was the degree to which people were sending pictures and videos to each other on their phones of this event. | ||
| He creates this sort of sense of excitement and the sense of being swept up in a movement that is, look, in its own perverse and twisted way, it's really quite impressive. | ||
| He's very good at it. | ||
| He lights up his parts of the country. | ||
| He knows how to say things and put on a show that gets immense digital penetration. | ||
| The fact that the fact that his rallies become events in their parts of the country for people in a way that continues to resonate on social media for days and days and days is not an easy thing to duplicate. | ||
| It's a special talent. | ||
| And I think we're seeing some of that with Mamdani right now, which is also pretty impressive. | ||
| I should say, Zorhan Mamdani, the winner of the Democratic Maryland primary in New York, he's starting to replicate some of this. | ||
| But this is something Democrats have to figure out. | ||
| Just about 20 minutes left with Greg Sargent, again, staff writer with the New Republic and host of The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent. | ||
| That's his podcast weekday podcast. | ||
| Who are you going to have on the podcast this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we have a lawyer tomorrow discussing the Epstein and Ghelane Maxwell matter. | |
| It's very good. | ||
| He's a writer for the Bulwark as well. | ||
| His name is Philip Rotner. | ||
| As for the rest of the week, we figure it out on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| So we'll let you know. | ||
| And you can check in and listen on a day-to-day basis, The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent. | ||
| Meanwhile, your phone calls here till 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| This is Albert in Chicago, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, guys. | |
| Listen, I want to address this narrative and this media narrative that Democrats have turned their back on the working class and that they don't know how to talk to the working class. | ||
| Because if you put a narrative out there enough, perception becomes reality among the voters. | ||
| Now, in the 2024 election, you had Kamala Harris. | ||
| She ran for 107 days and she held rally after rally. | ||
| And at each rally, she ran on a $6,000 child tax credit to help with the first year of a child's life for new parents. | ||
| She ran on making insulin tax and insulin at $35, not just for seniors, but for everybody. | ||
| She also ran on adding 1 million homes to the housing stock to help bring down housing costs. | ||
| She also ran on a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers to help them get their new homes for down payment. | ||
| She ran on a $50,000 tax credit to help with small businesses getting off the ground. | ||
| So, Albert, why didn't it work? | ||
| Because voters weren't paying attention enough to even know that she was trying to be reached Democrats before even trying to reach them with the message. | ||
| That's why it didn't work. | ||
| Why weren't voters paying attention in 2024, or at least Kamala Harris voters? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not saying Kamala Harris voters weren't paying attention. | |
| We showed up. | ||
| We voted for it. | ||
| Voters overall lost and enough attention, which is why the day after the election, the number one Google search was, what is a tariff? | ||
| And then second, top Google search is, how can I change my vote? | ||
| You got to pay attention. | ||
| This is your country. | ||
| You live in here. | ||
| And it's not the Democrats' responsibility to get grown people to care enough about what's going on in the place where they have to live to educate themselves and be informed. | ||
| And the problem that these politicians have is that they won't lay the blame where it lies with the voters. | ||
| They won't come out and be honest with these voters. | ||
| They're the ones that screwed up this last election. | ||
| Because they sat on it behind and doing every other thing other than paying attention to what was really at stake and what was going on. | ||
| Greg Sargent, how do you think a strategy of laying the blame at the voters' feet would play? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think he's making a more nuanced point than that, honestly. | |
| And there's a lot to what he's saying there. | ||
| It is true that Kamala Harris did run on a fairly good economic agenda. | ||
| And by the way, we should note that a lot of money was spent to try to communicate this to voters. | ||
| We were able to establish at the end of the election that around $250 million had been spent by the Harris campaign and related Democratic groups on economic messaging. | ||
| Look, I still think there was a bit of a box-checking quality to that agenda, that Democrats can be more sort of robustly populist, but I will grant this caller's point that a lot of this stuff just didn't make its way to voters. | ||
| Again, though, I think what that sheds light on is the communication problem that Democrats are having right now. | ||
| And by the way, it should be pointed out that a lot of incumbent governments around the world went down because of the global cost of living crisis. | ||
| So it's not that surprising that Trump was able to win. | ||
| And again, this was a historically narrow victory. | ||
| There's a reason Donald Trump keeps saying it was an enormous blowout and an enormous mandate because he knows that how narrow it was shows that he doesn't actually have a mandate. | ||
| He was able to squeak through because of the cost of living crisis and because voters had had it with incumbents. | ||
| Those aren't the only reasons. | ||
| Like I said, I think that there's more Harris could have done. | ||
| But look, big, big factors were at play here. | ||
| And again, I'm just going to repeat this. | ||
| Democrats have to solve the communication problem. | ||
| They have to figure out a way to get their agenda through to voters more successfully. | ||
| And what does that mean? | ||
| More podcasts, more social media creating these viral moments? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, it's interesting that you ask it that way. | |
| It's kind of an all-of-the-above thing, but I think ultimately what we're seeing with the Mamdani campaign is that authenticity is the secret sauce. | ||
| And I'm going to say something praiseworthy for Trump here again. | ||
| He is able to convey the impression of authenticity extremely well. | ||
| And I think it works in terms of viral breakthrough. | ||
| Look, it's a combination of things. | ||
| Democrats need their own network of podcasters that rivals the Joe Rogans. | ||
| Although I don't want to say that we need a Joe Rogan of the left. | ||
| That's not exactly what we actually need. | ||
| But Democrats absolutely do need a more robust media ecosystem that rivals the one on the right right now. | ||
| But there's only so much you can actually bring into existence. | ||
| Authentic candidates speaking their mind and saying what they think is ultimately the answer. | ||
| And again, this is why I find the whole kitchen table/slash let them play robo-dope strategy advice to be so puzzling. | ||
| Democrats need to tell voters what they think about things. | ||
| Where are their values? | ||
| What do they think is right and wrong? | ||
| No more carefully manufactured messaging designed to always circle back to the kitchen table at all costs. | ||
| Speak. | ||
| You mentioned Joe Rogan. | ||
| The beginning of our program today, we asked a question to our viewers, and it was, are the Trump immigration and deportation policies too strict, not strict enough, or about right? | ||
| And Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, obviously going on Joe Rogan's show, getting a lot of attention for that. | ||
| Joe Rogan has recently been talking about the issue of immigration and how far Donald Trump has gone. | ||
| This is about 30 seconds from his show from earlier this month on July the 2nd. | ||
| We were told there would be no, well, there's two things that are insane. | ||
| One is the targeting of migrant workers, not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers, just construction workers showing up in construction sites and raiding them. | ||
| Gardeners. | ||
| Like, really? | ||
| Greg Sargent, what was your reaction to that, him sort of having this realization about how far these immigration and deportation policies are going? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, a couple of things. | |
| One is that this stirred a lot of mockery online with a lot of people pointing to the Republican National Convention at which they held up signs saying mass deportations now, which is a pretty clear indication that that's exactly what they ran on. | ||
| And over and over again, Donald Trump himself and Stephen Miller said, not always exactly directly, but the basic message was they all have to go. | ||
| Now, it gets complicated here because at the same time as Trump and Miller were saying they all have to go, which was a message to their base, they were also saying, not exactly clearly, that all migrants in this country illegally are criminals. | ||
| This is why they keep using the phrase criminal, undocumented immigrant, or some variant of that. | ||
| They continue putting the word criminal before undocumented migrant in order to sort of blur things in that way. | ||
| So I understand why a lot of Trump voters probably didn't think what Trump meant was that he was going to deport day laborers and grandmothers and carpenters, the people you see at Home Depot every day. | ||
| And to Rogan's point, what I think Rogan is actually getting at there on a deeper level is that a lot of people in the center and a lot on the right are actually appalled to find out what it actually means to remove people from their own communities. | ||
| We've actually seen a number of instances now where Trumpy communities are up in arms about a migrant being removed from their midst. | ||
| There was one in Missouri. | ||
| You probably heard about the case of Carol, whose real name is Ming Li. | ||
| She lived in a Missouri town for 20 years. | ||
| And when she was picked up, the whole town went nuts. | ||
| They were really angry about that. | ||
| Nick Christoph of the New York Times reported something very similar happening in a very MA area of Oregon. | ||
| And so when Trump voters discover that mass deportations means removing people who have become woven into their own communities and into their own lives, they're actually shocked and appalled, as they should be. | ||
| This is DJ waiting in Brock, Texas. | ||
| Republican line, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| It seems we have a variety of subjects here on display. | ||
| We're talking about the focus on the Democratic Party and who's leading them and what they look like. | ||
| We're also talking about the immigration and we're talking about Epstein. | ||
| I've got a little something to say about all three things. | ||
| Hopefully you let me say that. | ||
| But starting with the Democratic Party, you know, we want a party that just doesn't talk, Mr. Sargent. | ||
| Mr. Sargent, what people want to see is when somebody takes action and when there's results of those actions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not somebody that just wants to talk, somebody that has a charisma. | |
| You see, you pointed out that Donald Trump has a charisma, and then compared him to this guy that's running for mayor that's a commie. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| He doesn't have just charisma, sir. | ||
| This man can, he is a deal closer. | ||
| He is one of the best closers ever to exist in the history of man. | ||
| And you just say, oh, he has charisma. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| If we talk about the Democratic Party, let's look at the conditions in all the cities and the states they run. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| They're appalling. | ||
| They can't even meet a budget. | ||
| Okay, you talk about the reason is cost of living. | ||
| It's not the reason. | ||
| Go look in other states. | ||
| They can maintain a budget. | ||
| Look at North Dakota, South Dakota. | ||
| Look at Texas. | ||
| They can maintain a budget. | ||
| Look at Two. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| These are all run by Republicans. | ||
| Okay, so don't give me that cost of living effect problem. | ||
| Well, GJ, let me give Greg Sargent a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's more focus on this Democratic Party when it comes to spending money. | |
| Look at the DNC, okay, and how they're while they were campaigning, they went bankrupt. | ||
| They never paid anybody. | ||
| Look at Kama Harris. | ||
| She didn't even pay her hairdresser. | ||
| Okay, she owes that poor lady money. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| Greg Sargent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a lot there, sir. | |
| Thank you for your passion and thank you for your questions. | ||
| I'll try to answer some of them. | ||
| Just to start at the end there, I would point out that Trump and Republicans just passed a bill that'll add trillions of dollars to the deficit. | ||
| I remember Republicans saying that they cared a lot about the deficit under Democratic presidents. | ||
| I'd be interested to know what they think about that explosion of the deficit that's coming. | ||
| I think there's a pretty long documented record of Donald Trump ripping off people that he did business with over many decades. | ||
| That's all out there. | ||
| It's not me saying it. | ||
| It's been reported 50,000 times. | ||
| I'm not sure what else was in there. | ||
| Look, I agree with the caller in one respect, in one important respect, which is that Democrats have to prove that they're better at governance. | ||
| However, and it's an actual thing that progressive government governance has in some ways failed in major cities and so forth. | ||
| And I 100% agree with the caller that that should be a factor in everybody's understanding of this moment. | ||
| However, I think it was a bit of an oversimplified picture presented there. | ||
| I'd encourage people to look at the actual relative crime rates comparing blue and red states. | ||
| It's not a simple story. | ||
| You find some cities and red states that have pretty high crime as well. | ||
| But overall, the crime rate in red states is pretty bad in many cases. | ||
| And so I don't quite understand the approach of signaling or singling out just blue areas and their crime rate doesn't seem to tell us much if you're just not even going to look at all at the crime rate in red states. | ||
| This is Joseph in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Just about five minutes left here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to say that this whole thing with immigration goes back all the way to the know-nothings in the 1850s. | ||
| We passed all kinds of laws to keep people out of this country. | ||
| And Lyndon Banks Johnson in the 60s relaxed the immigration laws. | ||
| How come Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush didn't put more stuff on stopping immigration? | ||
| How come Congress has never addressed all of the stuff the government has done since the 1850s to restrict immigration? | ||
| And now, under Trump, which I think, because he's a master politician and has taken over the country, he is giving billions of dollars to private prisons to lock people up. | ||
| And the Constitution says if you're locked in prison, they can use you like a slave. | ||
| It never got rid of slavery for people in prison. | ||
| And right now, you could go out and murder somebody in the street and get six years, and you'd be lucky if you live because they can send you to any place they want to anymore. | ||
| They never used to send people to El Salvador and South Sudan and Uganda and Swaziland and all these other places. | ||
| So this is my problem. | ||
| Nobody's looking at that. | ||
| Nobody's looking at the government is taking out historical markers at national parks and any place else that they control because Donald Trump doesn't like the historical market. | ||
| Greg Sargent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the caller gets at a really important, deeper point here, which is that support for immigration to this country has historically been bipartisan. | |
| The 1965 Act had bipartisan support, obviously. | ||
| And as the caller mentioned, Reagan and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were all relatively pro-immigration compared to Donald Trump. | ||
| Look, I don't really know what we can say beyond that other than it's clear that the Republican Party as a whole has rebelled against that position. | ||
| And the rise of Donald Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party shows that the Republicans who used to be pro-immigration have had to, you know, to put it politely, bottle up their views and just, you know, forget about having sane immigration policy at this point. | ||
| I would point out one thing, though, that I think is of interest. | ||
| Some Republican governors have actually come out recently and said that they want more migrants sent to their states. | ||
| So, and the reason for that is because migrants fill labor shortages, which I would again point out. | ||
| Donald Trump himself confirmed on Twitter. | ||
| You can go look it up. | ||
| It was an important moment. | ||
| I strongly encourage more people to look at it. | ||
| On the point of about private prisons, I'd add something that I think personally is really important. | ||
| We have learned through reporting that Stephen Miller has redirected enormous amounts of law enforcement resources, federal law enforcement resources, away from serious crimes and towards padding out the deportation numbers. | ||
| Now, he wants to hit a certain quota of deportation that's been reported at like 3,000 a day or a million a year. | ||
| But this is an essential point. | ||
| If you're going to get those numbers up, you must go after nonviolent migrants and nonviolent immigrants who live here. | ||
| There aren't enough serious criminals to get the numbers that Stephen Miller wants. | ||
| And that's precisely why he's shifting resources away from things like drug trafficking and child trafficking and toward deportations of people who are not threats. | ||
| And I would ask your Republican listeners the following question. | ||
| Do you really think it's a good idea to transfer law enforcement resources away from fighting extremely serious crimes, violent crimes, ones that claim real victims, and toward boosting deportation numbers, which of necessity targets people who are nonviolent and are just living their lives in American communities? | ||
| I think very few Republicans would actually support that if they really understood what was happening. | ||
| We'll have to leave it there for now. | ||
| But for much more from Greg Sargent, you can tune into his podcast. | ||
| It's The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, available weekdays. | ||
| You can also check out his writing at The New Republic. | ||
| Mr. Sargent, thank you so much for the time on a Sunday morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to say thanks to all your Republican callers for their questions, too. | |
| And that's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We will, of course, be back here tomorrow morning. | ||
| It is 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific. | ||
| In the meantime, have a great Sunday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | |
| Coming up Monday morning, we'll talk with Ankush Kardouri, senior writer at Politico magazine, about President Trump's lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files. | ||
| Then Alex Gangitano, White House reporter for The Hill, on the week ahead at the White House and News of the Day. | ||
| And author and presidential historian Talmadge Boston discusses how former President Biden's post-presidency so far differs from previous presidents. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
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| Book TV continues the celebration of America's 250th with author conversations on the American Revolution. | ||
| Contributors to the book Waging War in America, 1775 to 1783, discuss the operational challenges that American, British, French, and German military forces faced during the conflict. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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, 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. |