| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Now we go to Netflix and don't even realize that that was the same streaming. | |
| That's what's going to happen with AI and all these things. | ||
| Don't look at it the way it is today. | ||
| Just open the door for your people to act as entrepreneurs inside your state and go with it. | ||
| It is such an amazing tool. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Cuban. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We appreciate you. | ||
| This morning, America 250 Commission Chair Rosie Rios and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser discussed the launch of a new national project in advance of America's 250th birthday celebration, known as Our American Story, to share personal stories from across the country. | ||
| Watch our coverage of the America 250 event live at 11 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| In this half hour, we turn the phones over to you. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is your time to do that. | ||
| This is Giovanni in Missouri, St. Louis, a Republican. | ||
| You're up first in Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing this morning? | |
| Doing well. | ||
| I am calling. | ||
| I wanted to talk to the other guy and ask him a question. | ||
| And since you have your computer right in front of you, in 2005 and 2007, the Epstein files were sealed by an appointed Democrat judge. | ||
| Again, Rosenberg, an appointed by Obama, has also sealed the files to the indictments for the indictments. | ||
| So my question is this, and this is what I wanted to ask that guy. | ||
| You say about Trump wants to hide everything, but these are two Democrat judges that were put in a position by presidents, two Democrat presidents. | ||
| Why? | ||
| I don't understand why nobody's talking about this. | ||
| Why isn't this being written that these two Democrat judges will not release the indictments? | ||
| And so my question is to all of America. | ||
| You want to say Trump is trying to hide something, but if Rosenberg, the judge, just sealed the Epstein files, if he was to release the indictments, we would know who's in the files. | ||
| That's Giovanni in Missouri. | ||
| This is Sarah in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hi, thanks for taking my call. | ||
| First time caller here. | ||
| Love C-SPAN. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| Thanks for everybody. | ||
| But I just want to follow up on the question that opened up about whether billionaires are a good thing. | ||
| I think it's kind of absurd. | ||
| Billionaires obviously have an outsized power on politics. | ||
| They manipulate society. | ||
| They are not the only individuals or the elite group that can organize, that can pool resources, that can invent, that can invest, that can create essential services. | ||
| People, individuals, communities, collectively, they deserve wealth. | ||
| They deserve to have a share in the power so that they can collectively pool their resources and do the labor that they find meaningful and create products and services and goods that the public actually wants and actually needs instead of us having to be constantly beholden to people like Elon Musk, who wants to push on us products and things like, you know, that we don't actually need tons of electric vehicles. | ||
| You know, his vision is not the only important vision. | ||
| Same with Meta, any kind of, you know, Jeff Bezos. | ||
| They make their money off the back of these workers. | ||
| And it's time that we need to distribute that wealth to the workers who are actually making that wealth happen in the first place so that they can have a say democratically in how to structure society and what kind of working conditions and living conditions they get. | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That's Sarah in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | ||
| Let me head to Turnbury in Scotland. | ||
| President Trump here, Starmer, just started their news conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Including images of starvation. | |
| And I think both of us know that we have to get to that ceasefire and we have to increase humanitarian aid in. | ||
| And thank you for what you've already been doing, are doing, and are committed to, because without you, this would not be capable of resolution. | ||
| And I think that if we can work not just on the pressing issues of the ceasefire, but also on this issue of getting humanitarian aid in at volume, at speed, and then we've discussed a plan for what then happens afterwards, I think we can do our very best to alleviate what is an awful situation at the moment. | ||
| So thank you very much for the discussion we've had so far and the discussion we're about to continue on that really important issue. | ||
| But it's fantastic to be here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for your hospitality and to see this amazing golf course. | |
| I'll invite you to a football ground at some stage and we can exchange sports. | ||
| It's been great being with you and thank you very much Mr. Prime Minister and you've done a fantastic job with regard to the trade deal. | ||
| You know they wanted a trade deal here for years, many years, through many different terms of different people and you got it done so I want to congratulate you on that and it's a great deal for both. | ||
| It brings unity. | ||
| We didn't need unity but we it brings us even closer together I think it's good for both parties. | ||
| We also discussed obviously Gaza and I think before we get to phase two which is you know what's going to happen afterwards we want to get the children fed. | ||
| We made a contribution a week ago of $60 million all going into food. | ||
| We only hope the food goes to the people that need it because so much as you know when you do something there it gets taken by Hamas or somebody but it gets taken. | ||
| And we're prepared to help. | ||
| We want to help. | ||
| It's a terrible situation. | ||
| The whole thing is terrible. | ||
| It's been bad for many years but it's great to hear you feel the same way that I do. | ||
| We have to help on a humanitarian basis before we do anything. | ||
| We have to get the kids fed. | ||
| So we've been sending in a lot of food. | ||
| A lot of the food that's been going there has been sent by the United States. | ||
| I spoke yesterday with the President of the European Union, Ursula, who was terrific also on the subject, and she's going to play a big role also in helping us. | ||
| So we have a good group of countries that are going to help with the humanitarian needs, which is food, sanitation, and some other things. | ||
| It's very difficult to deal with Hamas. | ||
| As I said, you know, we got a tremendous amount of hostages out, but it would take place in drips and drabs. | ||
| You'd get 10, you'd get five, you'd get two, you'd get ten, twelve, we'd get twelve one time. | ||
| Many of them would come to the White House and they were so thankful. | ||
| But I always said when you get down to the final 10 or 20, you're not going to be able to make a deal with these people because they use them as a shield. | ||
| And when they give them up, they no longer have a shield. | ||
| And the people of Israel feel so strongly about the hostages. | ||
| Some people would take a different view, but they feel so strongly about the hostages. | ||
| So that's an ongoing process. | ||
| Hamas has become very difficult to deal with in the last couple of days because they don't want to give up these last 20 because they think as long as we have them, they have them, they have protection. | ||
| But I don't think it can work that way. | ||
| So I'm speaking to PB and Etan Yahoo, and we are coming up with various plans. | ||
| We're going to say it's a very difficult situation. | ||
| If they didn't have President Trump speaking at Turnbury in Scotland, if you want to continue to watch that live, you can see it over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| We're going to continue our discussion here in open forum as we hear from you and let you lead the discussion on the public policy and political issues that you want to talk about. | ||
| Again, phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in open forum. | ||
| And again, you can watch President Trump live over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| Hope you come back here after he's finished if you do do that. | ||
| This is Kelly in Denison, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, John. | |
| Hey, are you still there? | ||
| I'm here, Kelly. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, hey, I too remember October 7th is when I started calling back into you because I knew Trump was going to win the election. | |
| I've called several times and I've been right every time. | ||
| And I want to tell you, John, there's a big story going on between Obama and Biden that's not being covered. | ||
| I watch the NBC News at night. | ||
| And for the last two nights on ABC and NBC both, there's not been one mention of Obama and what the President of the United States and the Director of National Intelligence has charged him with. | ||
| They're not even covering it, John. | ||
| That makes them compliant to the story. | ||
| And I'm afraid you're kind of getting in on that situation too. | ||
| We should be talking about these things. | ||
| So, Kelly, when you say they've charged him with, you're not talking formal charges. | ||
| You're talking about the report that Tulsi Gabbard released and President Trump pointing to this report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| That's big news, John. | ||
| And how can somebody like the President of the United States and the Director of National Intelligence accuse without evidence, John? | ||
| Answer me that. | ||
| That's Kelly in Ohio. | ||
| This is Tony in North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thank you very much for having me on C-SPAN, which I really enjoyed the show. | ||
| I'd just like to say, you know, this thing trial and everything, that went over like six years ago. | ||
| Six years, nobody asked any questions. | ||
| Nobody wanted to drop all the cases and the videos and whatever, the files and everything. | ||
| It seems like the only thing I've seen is it was on FaceTime. | ||
| It was on State of the Union. | ||
| It was on all the networks, everything is talking about this because there's nothing else that the Democrat side can talk about. | ||
| They have fell drastically on every platform. | ||
| And the only thing they're wanting is hopefully that there's something that ties Trump to some of this scandalous actions. | ||
| Nobody's asking for the Bill Cosby files to be released or anything. | ||
| Nobody's asking for the PD files to be released. | ||
| No, this is the only one everybody's asking about. | ||
| And there's a whole lot more going on in the United States than focusing on something like this. | ||
| And thank you very much for your time. | ||
| That's Tony in North Carolina. | ||
| More of your phone calls in just a few minutes. | ||
| But we want to spend some time now looking at President Trump's trip to Scotland and the week ahead at the White House. | ||
| To do that, we're joined on a hot morning here in Washington, D.C. from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by Alex Gangitano of the Hill newspaper. | ||
| Ms. Gangitano, on President Trump's visit to Scotland, obviously that bilateral discussion going on now, what are you watching for as the president wraps up this five-day visit overseas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so we know yesterday he was able to strike that trade deal with the European Union. | |
| That was a success that we know this White House will be touting a lot over the next week ahead of the August 1st deadline on Friday. | ||
| That sets 15% tariffs on the EU. | ||
| also brought in $750 billion in investments for the U.S., something that the president said was the biggest trade deal he thinks he's ever seen. | ||
| So that was yesterday. | ||
| Now today with UK Prime Minister Starmer, a lot of the conversation is geared away from trade. | ||
| I think the White House wishes they were talking a little bit more about the economy and the president's tariff plan and not as much about the humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza. | ||
| That's a lot of the questions that we're seeing reporters have for the president is how are you responding to the images of Gaza and is there any daylight? | ||
| I think that's a lot of what we're looking for between the president and Israeli Prime Minister Nanyahu, between the president and Starmer or French President Macron, some of the European leaders over his handling of the situation in Gaza. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's been interesting to watch. | |
| It seems like the president just moments ago was saying food needs to get in. | ||
| What we're seeing there is terrible. | ||
| But you know, everyone's hanging on every word of how he will maybe put some pressure on Nanyahu. | ||
| A press conference in real time taking place on C-SPAN 2 for viewers. | ||
| Alex Gonchitano, you mentioned the trade deadline on Friday. | ||
| Should we expect more trade deals this week? | ||
| Are there other countries trying to rush to make a deal to beat that deadline? | ||
| Yeah, we know the major ones was Japan that the president was getting pretty impatient with and saying, I don't think we're going to be able to strike a deal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That came out late last week, setting 15% there. | |
| EU was another one that we were really watching at. | ||
| I mean, the fact that they were able to strike that deal really stops a trade war from happening with us and our European friends. | ||
| So that was a huge one. | ||
| Otherwise, a lot of the other Asian nations, some of the smaller ones, the president has been able to strike deals with the likes of Cambodia, Indonesia. | ||
| I think we're still watching to see what else he could do with some of the Asian countries. | ||
| Otherwise, they're in fairly good shape ahead of this deadline. | ||
| I mean, it was weeks, months in the making since April that a lot of people were pretty concerned if any trade deals would be struck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it seems like over the last 10 days or so, they really moved into pretty quick gear to get them done. | |
| Of course, the big question is, will they stick to that August 1st deadline? | ||
| The administration has moved that deadline many times. | ||
| I mentioned that the first one was in April. | ||
| So we'll see. | ||
| But it seems like so far, and we heard from the president yesterday saying August 1st is set. | ||
| You mentioned that the White House would likely rather be talking about trade deals in this press conference that's happening. | ||
| One topic that the president has been less interested in talking about, the Epstein files. | ||
| What are you hearing from the White House this week on what the White House is doing, what the President will do to keep this story from dominating the headlines for yet another week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, just yesterday, the president was actually asked about Epstein again, right when he was announcing the EU trade deal. | |
| And he said, expressed his frustration that that's what people were asking about. | ||
| But people are still asking about it. | ||
| Of course, your callers are bringing it up. | ||
| I think the White House, of course, is in kind of distraction mode. | ||
| They tried with the files related to the 2016 election that DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard put out to see if people would focus on that instead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course, these trade deals, they want people to focus on, see them as a success for this administration ahead of the Friday deadline. | |
| And we'll see what else they put out to try to get the news cycle to move past Epstein, move past Maxwell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We know on Friday there was another meeting with top DOJ official Todd Blanche and Maxwell to talk about what she knows. | |
| We'll see if the White House wants to reveal anything from that meeting or if they're hoping that just the fact that there was a meeting will appease people and hope that we all can move on from this narrative. | ||
| But so far, and I'm sure you're seeing it from your viewers, that people are not ready to move on from this and still have a lot of questions. | ||
| Well, what else are you watching for this week ahead at the White House? | ||
| What else is on the president's schedule once he gets back from Scotland? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so we know these are some big international focused meetings. | |
| So the president will have to turn back to the domestic agenda here when he gets back. | ||
| We're going to have a meeting. | ||
| Powell will be speaking on Wednesday, I think, so we can see if how maybe some of the pressure that he put on him from last week when he tore that Fed renovation, how that could impact what we're seeing over in the Fed if interest rates would move at all, but also if he seems open to moving it earlier than the end of the year or so. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's a pretty big economic week here at the White House. | |
| And so they want to, you know, stay focused on news like that and see how positive they can move ahead ahead of these tariff deadlines with markets shaky after all of this and what they can do to stabilize that. | ||
| Alex Gangitano and her colleagues at The Hill cover it all at thehill.com. | ||
| I'll let you get back to that press conference. | ||
| They just started questions from reporters. | ||
| Viewers can watch that over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| And we thank you for joining us on Hot Morning from the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Back to your phone calls. | ||
| This is Candace in Maine. | ||
| It's Auburn, Maine, Republican. | ||
| Candace, thanks for waiting. | ||
| Open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| My husband and I always love when you host. | ||
| I haven't called in over a year. | ||
| I've just been in listening mode, I guess. | ||
| But the guest this morning really just kind of made me want to chime in when he swerved to the last question and wouldn't respond about media bias. | ||
| And he made it about Epstein again. | ||
| I think we're seeing a lot of that. | ||
| It's always going back to Epstein. | ||
| And Epstein is a big story. | ||
| We need to get to the bottom of it, but I don't think it's what's impacting most of America. | ||
| I think media bias actually is a bigger story because it diminishes trust in the American people. | ||
| And it's, you know, it increases cynicism, apathy, and it's just really eroding away. | ||
| And it's hurting the Democrat Party, which we've seen with what, 33%, the Wall Street Journal says, support the Democrat Party now. | ||
| And talking about the poll that came out this weekend. | ||
| Candace, do you think that the books that have focused on campaign 2024, the Jake Tapper book, put a focus on that, saying that the media missed the story about Joe Biden's cognitive abilities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it did. | |
| It certainly put a spotlight and it forced the media to confront it. | ||
| But I also think because it was so little, so late, or at least so late, that it just fed into this cynicism of, okay, now they're going to get, you know, now they talk about it after Biden's out and make money. | ||
| So, you know, so the American electorate becomes more and more cynical and just fractured. | ||
| And I just think that's our biggest problem is how fractured we are. | ||
| And the media bias is just fading into that. | ||
| And now this Epstein, Epstein, Epstein all the time is kind of the new Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| I think we're seeing that. | ||
| And especially with your last guest, you know, he couldn't confront, he didn't know how to confront the media bias. | ||
| What do you say when you say, yeah, you know, the media didn't say anything about Biden for four years? | ||
| And we need to confront these hard truths and then maybe heal. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know if we can heal. | ||
| Candace, I don't know if we can. | ||
| Do you think that's a fair statement that the media didn't say anything about Biden for four years? | ||
| Because I imagine if I had a national political reporter, they would very much disagree with that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I hear what you're saying. | |
| I think some reporters did, like Alex Thompson, right? | ||
| He did, and he took a lot of heat because he did. | ||
| He actually said when he won his award at the White House correspondents dinner, and he was getting the award for his coverage of the White House, he said we missed this story, that we as a media missed that story. | ||
| He put himself among the group that missed the story. | ||
| Again, he was talking about Joe Biden's cognitive abilities at the end of his presidency. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I saw that. | |
| I watched that. | ||
| I watched the whole thing. | ||
| And I think I'm glad you brought that up because the correspondence dinner is a great indication of how, I mean, it was a shell of its former self. | ||
| They didn't have the comedian. | ||
| The president wasn't there. | ||
| You know, it's just, it was just like the media is not what it used to be. | ||
| And did they, and I know Alex Thompson says they missed it. | ||
| They didn't miss it. | ||
| They intentionally didn't cover what we all saw, including them. | ||
| We all saw what was going on. | ||
| And I probably overstated, maybe used a little hyperbole, saying nobody covered it for four years. | ||
| Yeah, that's an overstatement. | ||
| However, the general beating drum of the media was not on it. | ||
| Candace, I got your point. | ||
| And I've got other folks waiting. | ||
| Candace, you can call once a month, not once a year, if you want to call once a month. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm back on it. | |
| Thanks, Connie. | ||
| Good to talk to you. | ||
| Karen in the Badger State in Franklin, Independent, you are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I just want to mention a song, The Immigrant, by Neil Sadaka, Art Imitating Life. | ||
| If people could just listen to that simple song, it didn't get much airplay in the 70s, The Immigrant. | ||
| And the second thing I would like to bring up is I think that people want the Epstein files, the names of the adult men and women who may be on adjudicated pedophiles, because society in America wants pedophiles to be on registries. | ||
| They want them to not live within a certain foot distance from elementary schools or schools. | ||
| They don't want them participating in Halloween. | ||
| Society, American society has, I think, generally agreed extra restrictions need to be placed on people who are known pedophiles. | ||
| I think people want the list just to maybe know who is not known at this point, who may still be a risk to American society. | ||
| I just wonder I think that's why people want the information. |