| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Comments from President Trump. | |
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| 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 of 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 did 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 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 Wynne, 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. | ||
| Independence 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
|
I'm 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 you find out who had access to that file, to that videotape. | ||
| And I don't know why 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 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. | ||
| 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 that is a reason to show that there's clearly this is clearly opportunistic on Democrats' parts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I make a couple 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| You would think Donald Trump. | ||
| 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 MA 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, | ||
| 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 Israeli press and even herats 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 Mayor 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 Ghelan 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 it's a 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 were 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 paying 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've 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 Mom Donnie 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 on 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, 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 MAGA 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. Sergeant, what people want to see is when somebody takes action and when there's results of those actions. | ||
| 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 Florida. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| These are all run by Republicans. | ||
| Okay, so don't give me that cost of living effect problem. | ||
| That's not the reason. | ||
| 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 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| It'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
|
And 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. | ||
| But 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 Gangetano, 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. | ||
| Next, the United Nations Security Council debates the Israel-Hamas war, highlighting the state of humanitarian aid in Gaza and hostages still held by Hamas. | ||
| And then Democratic New York Representative Gregory Meeks, ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, talks about the Russia-Ukraine war, relations with Iran, and the state of U.S. foreign aid. | ||
| And later, House Democratic members who serve on the Homeland Security Committee hold a forum looking at treatment and practices by ICE agents against alleged undocumented immigrants being arrested and deported across the country. | ||
| Tonight, on C-SPAN's Q&A, progressive professor Cornel 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. |