| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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And then at 2 p.m., President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss Russia's war with Ukraine. | |
| We'll have coverage of their arrivals and any comments to reporters. | ||
| Also, Cannon Institute Deputy Director Jennifer Wistrand will join us in studio for analysis of the summit as it unfolds. | ||
| You can also watch live coverage of these events on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
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| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then Brad Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies will preview the Alaska summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| And then we'll talk about the constitutional authority presidents have in deploying the National Guard and the role of armed forces in domestic situations with the Brookings Institution's Scott Anderson. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| I think that President Putin would like to see a deal. | ||
| I think if I weren't president, he would take over all of Ukraine. | ||
| it's a war that should have never happened good morning everyone Welcome to the Washington Journal on this Friday, August 15th. | ||
| This morning, President Trump is preparing to head to Alaska for that face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| The meeting will be taking place on American soil, and we expect to hear from the presidents, both presidents, later this afternoon. | ||
| This morning, though, on the Washington Journal, we want to get your thoughts on this Trump-Putin summit in Alaska today. | ||
| If you're a Republican, dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state, or post on Facebook.com slash slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Let's start with the president in the Oval Office yesterday. | ||
| He was marking the 90th anniversary of Social Security. | ||
| And when he was asked about this summit with the Russian president, here's what he had to say. | ||
| We're going to see what happens with our meeting. | ||
| We have a big meeting, and it's going to be, I think, very important for Russia, and it's going to be very important for us, and important for us only that we're going to save a lot of lives. | ||
| Look, we have, you know, we're not paying any money, as you know, to Ukraine. | ||
| We're supplying equipment. | ||
| We're being paid 100% plus for that equipment by NATO. | ||
| And I got NATO up from 2% to 5% of GDP. | ||
| They now have billions of dollars. | ||
| NATO is a very rich group of countries, and we make the best military equipment anywhere in the world by far. | ||
| And they're buying our equipment, and they're paying 100% for the equipment, 100%. | ||
| In fact, they owe us about $2 billion now. | ||
| They're going to send the check. | ||
| Another one was sent recently for a billion dollars. | ||
| So we're not spending any money anymore. | ||
| Biden gave $350 billion, got nothing for it. | ||
| And if you look, and by the way, we also signed a rare earth deal where we get, you know, years of rare earth to get our money back, the money we spent. | ||
| But what I'm really doing this for is to save thousands of soldiers a week. | ||
| You have Russian soldiers, you have Ukrainian soldiers, and then you'll have missiles dropped into various cities and towns in Ukraine. | ||
| And they're losing seven, last week they lost 7,251 people, mostly soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. | ||
| I'm doing it for that reason. | ||
| We have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow. | ||
| I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. | ||
| We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not. | ||
| I don't know that it's going to be very important. | ||
| We're going to see what happens. | ||
| And I think President Putin will make peace. | ||
| I think President Zelensky will make peace. | ||
| We'll see if they can get along. | ||
| And if they can, it'll be great. | ||
| You know, I've solved six wars in the last six months, a little more than six months now, and I'm very proud of it. | ||
| I thought the easiest one would be this one. | ||
| It's actually the most difficult. | ||
| President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday talking about this summit with Russia today in Alaska at the White House. | ||
| The President is preparing to leave Washington, D.C. for that seven-hour flight to Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| You can see on your screen there, Air Force One is fueled up and ready to go at Joint Base Andrews. | ||
| We expect to see the President boarding the Air Force One as he makes his way to meet the Russian President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| This morning, we want your thoughts on this summit. | ||
| We'll begin with Harriet in Germantown, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Harriet, go ahead. | |
| Harriet, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi, Harriet. | ||
| What do you think of the summit between President Trump and President Putin? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm hoping it will be a positive summit. | |
| There will be results so this war can stop and Putin will listen to whatever President Trump has to say about stopping this war. | ||
| I mean, so many people have died on both sides, and I'm just tired of war. | ||
| And I just hope it's a positive summit and Putin can go back and just end this madness. | ||
| Harriet, do you think that the President should put pressure on Ukraine to give up the territory that Russia now controls? | ||
| Do you think that should be something the President influences or leave that entirely up to Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it should be entirely up to Ukraine. | |
| They've lost so much. | ||
| I just don't see any benefit from them ceding territory to Putin. | ||
| It would just be wrong in my eyes. | ||
| I don't think they should have to do that. | ||
| I think they should put pressure on Putin to just stop and not accept, you know, them taking any more territory. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The BBC has put together this map. | ||
| These are the areas of Russia military control in Ukraine. | ||
| You can take a look at here at this BBC map. | ||
| And the red areas are the areas where Russia has invaded Ukraine and now controls, including the territory of Crimea, where what they took over before this 2022 invasion that has resulted in this years-long war between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| Yesterday in Moscow, at a meeting with top Russian leadership at the Kremlin, the Russian president praised Mr. Trump's peace efforts and signaled a possible U.S.-Russia nuclear deal. | ||
| These were his first public comments since the Alaska summit was announced. | ||
| Here's a portion of what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
To tell you about the stage we are at with the current American administration, which as everyone knows is making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis, and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict in order to create long-term conditions of peace between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole. | |
| The Russian president's comments there yesterday. | ||
| Gwen in Knoxville, Tennessee, Democratic caller. | ||
| Gwen, let's hear from me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you think of this summit? | |
| Well, I don't think it's anything but a PR thing because Ukraine has been sort of manipulated and whatever by Trump since his first term in office. | ||
| I know that there's a lot of talk about whether Trump was involved with the Russians or not. | ||
| I'm not going to go into that. | ||
| But before this war started, they took the Crimea with no reason. | ||
| And then they jammed up this thing about Ukrainians are supposed to be Nazis and they have to protect themselves. | ||
| And President Trump even made the misstep of saying that Ukraine started it. | ||
| If someone came into my country, into the United States of America, and took land and said that somebody tried to straighten this out and bring peace, and they say all we have to do is give up Delaware, would we? | ||
| I know we all right. | ||
| Gwen's thoughts there in Tennessee. | ||
| Democratic caller Carter is an independent in Roody, Arkansas. | ||
| Carter, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I kind of disagree with the last caller. | |
| I think that the summit's going to be working out well. | ||
| Zelensky is the type of guy that really needs to be sit down and told a different set of things, and Putin needs to get involved, and there needs to be some peace there so the war can just get out of the way. | ||
| I think most of the issues that they have could be solved if they could just face to face with leaders is better than getting on TV and blasting the enemies or whatever you want to call them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we've had a lot of war in Russia and Ukraine. | |
| Ukraine, I don't think, can survive without all the help from all the world like it's been going on. | ||
| Yeah, Raymond, so what do you think about not inviting the Ukrainian president, Mr. Zelensky? | ||
| Is that a mistake, that he is not going to be at this summit in Anchorage, Alaska today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe to start with, he was invited, but he refused. | |
| And so why then have the Russian president on American soil? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've got to have it somewhere. | |
| All right. | ||
| Raymond's thoughts there in Pensacola, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Let's hear from the Ukrainian president earlier this week. | ||
| This is what he had to say about the summit happening today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I told President Trump and all our European allies, Putin is bluffing. | |
| He's trying to push before the Alaska meeting on all directions of frontline. | ||
| Russia wants to occupy the whole of Ukraine. | ||
| This was his wish. | ||
| And Putin is bluffing. | ||
| That sanctions is nothing and they don't work. | ||
| In fact, sanctions are hitting Russian war economy hard. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Russia has a lot of weapons many times over than we have. | ||
| Let's say for three times more, but they're sustaining three times more losses. | ||
| And I said about it to our European friends, to President Trump, that Putin definitely does not want peace. | ||
| He wants to occupy Ukraine. | ||
| And we all understand that Putin cannot fool anyone. | ||
| We need future and further pressure and European and American sanctions against Russia. | ||
| And together, Union of Partners can stop war with Putin's. | ||
| We spoke about the Alaska summit. | ||
| We hope that the central topic will be the ceasefire, immediate ceasefire. | ||
| President Trump was mentioning it many times. | ||
| He suggested that after the Alaska meeting, we'll have a contact and we'll discuss all the results if there will be results. | ||
| And we'll decide next steps. | ||
| The Ukrainian president, there, courtesy of CNN, his thoughts earlier this week ahead of that summit in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| Now, what has the Ukrainian president been up to? | ||
| This is the front page of the New York Times this morning. | ||
| A frantic week of diplomacy for Zelensky. | ||
| And the Ukrainian leader posted on his ex-account video of all of the leadership meetings that he has been having. | ||
| He says with over 30 different leaders leading up to this summit today to try and make sure that the allies of Ukraine are all on the same page when it comes to this Trump-Putin summit. | ||
| William in Miami'sburg, Ohio Democratic Caller. | ||
| What do you make of it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, Greta. | |
| Morning. | ||
| I think it's just a big farce. | ||
| He's trying to pull his usual big bully tactics. | ||
| I used to live in West Palm Beach. | ||
| I had enough of him when I lived there. | ||
| My wife lived there from 53 till 88. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's just a shame. | |
| He's nothing but a big bully. | ||
| And he thinks that he is the greatest thing since toilet paper. | ||
| Well, he sure is nothing to me. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, William, the president is saying he thinks that the Russian president would make a deal. | ||
| He has said that this week. | ||
| The White House and the State Department have said that this meeting is just a feeling out meeting, that they are just wanting to listen to the Russian president. | ||
| And then Politico's headline this morning, based off what the president said in the Oval, which we shared with you at the top this morning, the one thing Trump wants out of this meeting with Putin, the president, lowering expectations, suggests he'll deem this summit a success if it leads to a second one. | ||
| Do all of you agree with that? | ||
| Bob in Glenside, Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Bob, we want to hear from you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm a huge fan of peace. | ||
| So I'm excited for Trump and Putin to sit down and talk. | ||
| I know that the weapon manufacturers will be very disappointed in America because they'll want to sell those arms. | ||
| I think that the military-industrial complex will also be very disappointed. | ||
| They seem to love war, war, war. | ||
| That being said, you know, peace is a good thing. | ||
| I don't think Russia started this conflict. | ||
| NATO expanded into their territory. | ||
| When Russia thought about putting missiles in Cuba, we basically said that was a red line. | ||
| I think Russia's done the same. | ||
| This war should have never happened. | ||
| NATO should have never went in. | ||
| And then I hope Trump will also stop the war in Israel. | ||
| And it's not really a war. | ||
| It's just funding a genocide. | ||
| I think I'd like when Trump is America first. | ||
| And hopefully Trump can get the Epstein tapes back from Bibi Yahoo so he just stops being blackmailed into giving them money. | ||
| All right, Bob, we're going to stick to the Trump Putin summit this morning. | ||
| The president headed that way. | ||
| It's a seven-hour flight for him, eight-hour flight for the Russian president for the two of them to meet at a military base in Anchorage. | ||
| From the New York Times reporting, what does Putin want from a summit? | ||
| They report that on a larger scale, the summit corresponds to Mr. Putin's worldview that great powers should determine their own spheres of influence, much as Stalin met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain in Yalta in 1945 to carve up post-war Europe. | ||
| Mr. Putin believes that Russia's vast nuclear arsenal still makes it a world power, even though Russia produces very little that the rest of the world wants apart from energy. | ||
| When it comes to nuclear arsenals, these numbers from the Arms Control Association. | ||
| The U.S. total stands at 5,225. | ||
| Deployed is 1,419. | ||
| The Russia total is 5,580. | ||
| And deployed, 1,549. | ||
| Again, that's from the Arms Control Association. | ||
| Peggy, Centralia, Washington, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Peggy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is not a peace summit. | |
| This is just a plan to carve up Ukraine. | ||
| You've got the head of the Russian Investment Fund going to be at that meeting. | ||
| You've got the finance minister going to be at that. | ||
| Russian finance minister going to be at that meeting. | ||
| Sanctions do work. | ||
| And right now, Russia's economy is floundering. | ||
| So this is, it's just a joke. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Peggy. | ||
| Robert, Greenville, Texas, Independent. | ||
| Morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm just going to kind of keep it real simple. | ||
| I think that both the people that are going to be there in Alaska trying to negotiate on behalf of a third party, they're both dictators, or they're both, you know, want to be dictators. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of them wants to be. | |
| And I don't think they have any business. | ||
| Trump has been very unreliable in his policies. | ||
| He's up to up to, well, he's threatened to pull out of NATO. | ||
| You know, he's done a lot of things damaging U.S. credibility around the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the number one enemy that we've had for the last 75 years has been Russia. | |
| Now, people worry about how much money we spend on supporting Ukraine and the like. | ||
| We've been basically at war for 75 years with Russia and probably spent in excess of $10 trillion, $10 trillion in nuclear arm race and a military strategy that makes us dominant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And yet, we could have probably solved the whole Ukraine thing in one year if we would have gone all in. | |
| All right. | ||
| Robert, following up on the top of your comments about what the president wants here, what's at stake for Trump, the New York Times writes in the newspaper this morning. | ||
| One of Mr. Trump's campaign promises was to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours after taking office for the second time. | ||
| More than 200 days have passed, but he still considers himself a supreme deal maker. | ||
| He has also made it no secret of winning a Nobel Peace Prize and has linked his deserving of the prize to his efforts in Ukraine, among other conflicts. | ||
| The previous caller before Robert mentioned Putin's motivations here, wanting to carve up Ukraine and take it back under Russia. | ||
| The note today that in Anchorage, the Russian foreign minister Lavrov, has already arrived there. | ||
| And the Wall Street Journal's foreign correspondent notes that there's the video of him arriving in Anchorage. | ||
| You can see he's casually dressed here. | ||
| And the Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent notes that that sweatshirt he's wearing is a USSR sweatshirt. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent says, very reassuring to at least 14 of Russia's neighbors. | ||
| Let's go to Rich in Marion, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Rich. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, boy. | |
| What an interesting conversation here. | ||
| Do you realize we're trying to deal with world peace and eliminate wars? | ||
| We have to deal with some really bad countries like North Korea, China, and they're working together. | ||
| One time you had a Trojan horse, one Trojan horse coming in. | ||
| We have 20 Trojan horses coming in from China. | ||
| Virus is just one, the COVID. | ||
| And they're working together. | ||
| We both want legacies, legacies for peace. | ||
| We all want that. | ||
| So, Rich, you agree with the president then in holding this summit in Alaska? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's better to talk than not talk. | |
| And we're getting confused with information coming on our newspapers from China and Russia. | ||
| If you put a picture, a line down each country, are they for the United States or not? | ||
| Are they trying to help solve this big problem, a gigantic problem to get peace? | ||
| And to get this, everyone wants a legacy. | ||
| Our president wants a legacy for peace. | ||
| That's horrible. | ||
| Russia wants a legacy for territory trying to deal with these things. | ||
| The other problem we have is the mouse at ward. | ||
| In order to get an atomic weapon, a small country suddenly gets money from the United States because of atomic weapons. | ||
| We have big countries with atomic weapons, and somehow we got more than one country with atomic weapons. | ||
| They want peace too. | ||
| Rich, let me bounce this off of you. | ||
| This is Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and he writes this about the summit. | ||
| This meeting essentially accepts Russia back into the club of legitimate major nations. | ||
| And that's unacceptable because Putin is committing war crimes in Ukraine, purposely murdering innocent people and kidnapping young children. | ||
| The photo op alone is a disaster for peace. | ||
| Rich, respond to the senator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree. | |
| I agree that it's very important that we don't give them extra room. | ||
| And we call Russia anyone that is doing these horrible things with the weapons and causing problems and using that. | ||
| I don't think we should call a spade a spade. | ||
| They're evil people. | ||
| That's what Reagan did. | ||
| And wouldn't let them get up from it. | ||
| You're evil people doing this. | ||
| Not to put them, not to make some point, but to get a hard-to-thing that we both want peace. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We all get into wars to get peace, but we'd like to just skip that step. | |
| You know, in the space race, we had a Cold War with Russia. | ||
| Hardly anyone died, but we got a lot of good things done with that Cold War. | ||
| All right, Rich, I'll jump in and just read more from Chris Murphy because it's a thread today on X. | ||
| And he says: if this meeting passes with no deal, no tough sanctions, and no new major military support for Ukraine, then President Trump has essentially made this his war. | ||
| He has assured it will continue and likely slowly but methodically go Putin's way. | ||
| A huge moral and strategic loss for America. | ||
| That is what Senator Chris Murphy argues this morning. | ||
| Do you agree with him? | ||
| We're getting your reaction to the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska today. | ||
| The president will be touching down around 2 p.m. Eastern Time in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| There will be a bilateral meeting and cameras allowed for the top of that shortly after that. | ||
| And then the two of them will go behind closed doors. | ||
| There's also reports this morning, Wall Street Journal, that there will be a news conference as well this evening around 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Again, these times remain fluid, obviously. | ||
| But we will have coverage of this summit this afternoon, starting around 2 p.m. Eastern Time, right here on C-SPAN, as well as C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Joining us for a conversation about this Russia-U.S. summit will be Kennan Institute Deputy Director Jennifer Wistrand. | ||
| She'll be joining us with her analysis of this summit. | ||
| We are talking this morning as well ahead of the president's trip to Alaska to get your thoughts. | ||
| What would you tell the White House about this summit in Alaska today? | ||
| Doris in Atlanta, Georgia, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Doris, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I don't think the president is serious, but I don't know if this is rumor or just a joke. | ||
| But the Russians and Putin have mentioned that they would like to take Alaska back and that perhaps Alaska is going to be a part of the deal. | ||
| I wonder if that's just a rumor or is that for real? | ||
| A possible invasion of Alaska by Putin? | ||
| If Putin can invade Ukraine, what would keep him from invading Alaska and attempting to have Alaska as one of its states? | ||
| All right, Doris, CNN was reporting that this morning that there are Russians who I taking back Alaska sold to the United States in 1867. | ||
| CNN reporting this morning for $7 million. | ||
| That was from CNN this morning, Doris echoing that reporting. | ||
| Robin in Oklahoma City, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Robin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I believe it was on, good morning. | ||
| I believe it was on C-SPAN in 2017-18 that I watched an interview with some guy, I have no idea who he was, but he was in a coupon that was claiming they wanted five nations and seven religions. | ||
| Well, I believe we're going in that direction. | ||
| This meeting is a joke to get all the talk of the Epstein deal. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Robin thinks this is a distraction from the debate over the Epstein files. | ||
| Many of you mentioned aid to Ukraine. | ||
| We heard the president talk about 350 billion that Biden, quote, gave to Ukraine. | ||
| Here is from the Council on Foreign Relations. | ||
| The amount of money that has been given to Ukraine from the United States since that February 2022 invasion, it totals $195 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. | ||
| In March of 2022, it was $14 billion, followed by May of 2022, $41 billion. | ||
| Then in October of 2022, $12 billion. | ||
| And in January of 2023, the largest amount, $47 billion given to Ukraine from the United States. | ||
| That money going to the Ukrainian government and weapons as well to support their efforts in defending themselves against Russia. | ||
| Dmitry, Ashburn, Virginia, Republican, your turn, Dmitry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| We forget the main issue that in 2014 it was a military coup in Ukraine that removed the legal president Yanukovych from power. | ||
| And people of eastern Ukraine, they were not agree with that, but nobody cared about their opinion. | ||
| That's why this was started. | ||
| And USA supported this coup. | ||
| So it's the responsibility of USA to stop it. | ||
| DIMITRI, WHERE ARE YOU FROM ORIGINALLY? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I AM ORIGINALLY FROM UKRAINE. | |
| BUT FROM THE EASTERN. | ||
| WELL, IT DOES NOT MATTER. | ||
| I just don't agree with ideology that in Ukraine right now they don't allow like Russian language in schools and things like that. | ||
| So I'm not agreeing with what. | ||
| So you are pro-Russia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm from Ukraine originally. | |
| But it was one state. | ||
| It was called Soviet Union. | ||
| It was no different where you live in Ukraine or in Russia. | ||
| You can move in any place. | ||
| Do you want it to go back to the Soviet Union? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't want to go back to the Soviet Union. | |
| I just want to stop this war. | ||
| And I just tell you how this was started because it was a military coup that it was not a surround by Eastern European people. | ||
| What responsibility does the Russian president have here then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He has responsibility too. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Like both of them, Trump and Putin, they have to come down and make an agreement and stop this war. | ||
| I don't think they have to listen to Zelensky because he just puppet. | ||
| He will be listening to Great Britain, to Germany. | ||
| So the war will not stop, never, if we continue listening to Zelensky. | ||
| It should be just between Trump and Putin and it should stop. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Dimitri's thoughts there in Ashburn, Virginia, Republican caller. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts this morning ahead of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska today. | ||
| There are the phone lines on your screen. | ||
| Keep dialing in this morning for our conversation. | ||
| The president is headed to a military base in Anchorage to meet with the Russian President. | ||
| They will touch down around 2 p.m. Eastern time, and then the meetings will take place. | ||
| There's reports this morning that there should be a news conference that follows, and then the president will return to Washington, D.C. later in the evening. | ||
| Before we get back to your calls, here are some of President Trump's previous remarks about the Russia-Ukraine war and President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| It begins with the 2024 campaign trail all the way up to this week. | ||
| Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled. | ||
| I'll get that done within 24 hours. | ||
| Everyone says, oh, no, you can. | ||
| Absolutely I can. | ||
| Absolutely I can. | ||
| I want to get the war settled. | ||
| I know Zelensky very well, and I know Putin very well. | ||
| I have a good relationship, and they respect your president. | ||
| Okay, they respect me. | ||
| They don't respect Biden. | ||
| I don't want to say that, but we are having very serious discussions about we are. | ||
| Well, I just don't want to say that. | ||
| We're having very serious discussions about that war, trying to get it ended. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President, are you disappointed in the level of the delegation that the Russians send to Turkey? | |
| I don't know anything about it. | ||
| I'm not disappointed in anything. | ||
| Who are you from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
BBC News. | |
| I'm not disappointed. | ||
| Why would I be disappointed? | ||
| We just took him $4 trillion and he says, are you disappointed about a delegation? | ||
| I know nothing about a delegation. | ||
| I haven't even checked. | ||
| Look, nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together, okay? | ||
| We're not happy with Putin. | ||
| I'm not happy with Putin. | ||
| I can tell you that much right now, because he's killing a lot of people. | ||
| We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth. | ||
| He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. | ||
| Europe has announced sanctions. | ||
| But I am very disappointed with President Putin. | ||
| I thought he was somebody that meant what he said, and he'll talk so beautifully, and then he'll bomb people at night. | ||
| We don't like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Does Russia face any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war after your meeting on Friday? | |
| Yes, they will. | ||
| What will the consequences? | ||
| There will be consequences. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sanctions, tariffs? | |
| There will be, I don't have to say there will be very severe consequences, yes? | ||
| President Trump, they're a montage of what he has said since the campaign trail in 2024, promising to end this war and ending with this week saying there will be consequences if the war does not stop after this meeting today in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| Take a look at a recent poll that was done by Quinnipiak University that shows 34% of Americans approve of the president's handling of the Russia-Ukraine war, while 57% disapprove. | ||
| 9% were not sure. | ||
| According to the White House pool reporter, they are still waiting for the president to depart the White House this morning. | ||
| He will leave the White House and then make his way over to Joint Base Andrews and board Air Force One for that seven-hour flight to Anchorage. | ||
| Ahead of that, though, this morning here, just around 7 a.m. Eastern Time, he posted this on Truth Social. | ||
| High stakes. | ||
| All capital letters, three explanation points. | ||
| High stakes. | ||
| This morning, we're getting your thoughts. | ||
| Do you think it's high stakes in Alaska today? | ||
| Now, why Alaska? | ||
| Take a look at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. | ||
| It's located just north of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. | ||
| It's the headquarters for Alaska Command, Alaska-NORAD Region, Joint Task Force, Alaska, the 11th Air Force and more. | ||
| 3,376 miles from Washington, D.C., 4,343 miles from Moscow. | ||
| If you take a look at a map of Alaska while we go to this next call, you can see how close the Russia territory, the islands are with the Alaska border as well. | ||
| And there is the Joint Base Almendorf-Richardson military base there on your screen as well. | ||
| La Monica, Boiling Springs, South Carolina, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| As far as the summit goes, I feel as though this is possibly a farce. | ||
| These two have talked once before and didn't seem to get anywhere. | ||
| One says Putin's telling Trump what he wants to hear and then does what he wants to do. | ||
| Trump, we don't know what he's offering Putin to try to get him to stop the war. | ||
| And neither person has decided to talk to Ulinski or have them have him either FaceTime because we have video, we have technology. | ||
| He doesn't necessarily have to be in Alaska, but he could have FaceTime to be able to talk to them and tell him how he feels. | ||
| So by leaving one person out of the meeting, that's kind of one-sided in fans. | ||
| And I just wanted to say that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| La Monica there with her thoughts. | ||
| We'll hear from a Republican, John, in California. | ||
| John, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| This summit absolutely needs to take place, and Trump is going to give Putin a chance to end the war, to stop the killing. | ||
| And if they don't, Trump will sanction everything that the Russians have. | ||
| He's already put a 50% tariff on India because they continue to buy Russian oil. | ||
| And he'll bring Russia to its knees economically. | ||
| These people that say we ought to just ignore it, Senator Murphy, that is absolutely ridiculous. | ||
| You can't stand by in the world and let a million casualties go by without trying to do something to stop it. | ||
| What is Trump supposed to do? | ||
| Do we want America to give nuclear weapons to Ukraine? | ||
| It's the only way Ukraine's going to win. | ||
| Ukraine will lose this war if it continues, if the United States doesn't want to continue to squander its treasure to protect a country that honestly doesn't have much effect on the United States. | ||
| Trump probably is not going to accomplish very much today, but he's at least going to give Putin a chance to walk away from this disaster that he's created with a little bit of dignity left. | ||
| Yeah, John, go ahead, finish your thought. | ||
| And that is what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that is the point. | |
| These people, and I'll tell you one of the things that really makes my hair stand on end. | ||
| Everybody wants to ignore the fact that the 2020 election maybe wasn't up to speed, and you're not supposed to even mention it. | ||
| But we'll talk about something as ridiculous as the Russians taking over Alaska. | ||
| And the lady said, what's going to stop them? | ||
| The might of the American military is what's going to stop them. | ||
| All right, John. | ||
| I'll jump in. | ||
| I'll just share with you and others from BBC what Russia wants from this summit. | ||
| Territorial control of parts of eastern Ukraine. | ||
| They want Ukraine to back off plans to join NATO. | ||
| They want to end, they want an end to U.S.-EU sanctions. | ||
| John was mentioning the energy sanctions and potential restart of nuclear talks with the United States. | ||
| From the New York Times reporting, what leverage does the U.S. have over Russia? | ||
| While previous American presidents might have agreed to a summit as a reward for concessions toward a peace deal, there is no sign that Mr. Putin has changed his attitude toward rejecting any such outcome. | ||
| Continued energy sales have allowed Russia to endure the toughest Western sanctions imposed thus far, and the country has minimal direct trade with the United States. | ||
| Mr. Trump has not imposed the sharp tariffs on Russian imports levied against some American trading partners. | ||
| Mr. Trump said in an interview with CNBC last week that, quote, Putin will stop killing people if you get energy down another $10 a barrel. | ||
| Mr. Trump has not moved to sanction China, the largest importer of Russian oil. | ||
| And Indian officials have said they intend to continue buying Russian oil despite the president putting sanctions on India recently for purchasing the Russian oil. | ||
| Robert in San Antonio, Texas, Democratic caller. | ||
| Robert, good morning. | ||
| All right, Robert, you have got to mute your television. | ||
| Go ahead and talk through your phone. | ||
| Listen and talk through your phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I did it. | |
| Great. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I guess I was sitting here thinking, you know, the summit, we are sending President Trump to a summit with Putin. | ||
| Well, what? | ||
| What does America get out of it? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| You know, America needs to wake up. | ||
| This president, ever since he'd been in office, he had been turning Americans against Americans. | ||
| What has he done to bring us together at the country? | ||
| I'm American. | ||
| He has done nothing. | ||
| All right, Robert there in San Antonio. | ||
| Daryl, Caldwell, Idaho, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Daryl. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Greta. | |
| The situation you see is that Putin is accused of being a BS expert, and a whole bunch of people know that Trump is also the same expert, so they should get along in that area. | ||
| The bad news thing is that people don't understand that the world has a spirit being who's called Satan, but nobody can believe in him because he's invisible. | ||
| Just like you can't see me going through the air more than I can see you, but I got a machine called a TV that is able to communicate with us and have visual. | ||
| And yet the scripture says that knowledge will increase in the end time. | ||
| And it also says that women will rule over you in the end time. | ||
| And then you get this situation right now where nobody considers the fact you go one step too far with Russia and they're going to show you how good they are with their nukes. | ||
| And we don't want to do that because we want to show them how good we are with our nukes. | ||
| So we're all headed towards one thing: the wall. | ||
| And when we hit the wall, if you're a race car driver, it could be your last day. | ||
| So, Greta, I don't see anything good happening as long as the world has men in charge. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mike in Idaho, Republican. | ||
| Mike, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, and thanks for taking my call. | |
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I come from a family of eight veterans. | ||
| My dad was in the Air Force from 1951 to 1971. | ||
| He went on top secret missions for President Eisenhower to monitor the Soviet Union who claimed there were missiles and that sort of thing. | ||
| And I served in West Germany from 1963 to 1966, no phone calls home, no trips home, paid $73 a month with 16 bombers outside my barracks window ready to take off to stop the Soviets in support of NATO to stop the Soviets on the East German border from invading West Germany and Europe. | ||
| This Mr. Trump, and I call him Mr. Trump, as far as I'm concerned, and everything that I put, and I'm a veteran, and I can see things differently. | ||
| Brought up in the military, in a military family, and having served in the military, deterring the Soviet Union from invading West Germany and Europe as a kid from 18 when I was 19 to 22 years of age. | ||
| And I see what's happening here. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Trump is a real good friend of Mr. Putin. | ||
| And as far as that meeting that's going to be taking place in Alaska, I think it's a coordination to take over the United States government. | ||
| They've got, especially with him taking over DC and the National Guard and the Capitol. | ||
| And I actually called my congressmen. | ||
| They're all Republicans. | ||
| And I told them basically to get their heads put on straight because it appears to me that there's going to be a coup sometime in the future. | ||
| And it's going to be coordinated between Mr. Putin, whose total goal and the Soviet Union and Russia's total goal is to destroy the democracy of the United States. | ||
| And it's working, and I see it, especially with the division and some of these callers. | ||
| They don't understand. | ||
| And he's a crime man, he's a liar. | ||
| And by the way, my dad told me this. | ||
| When I was five years old, he caught me in a lie. | ||
| He said, the only thing worse than a liar is a rattlesnake. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, because he was in the military, and if you lie in the military, you get somebody, you get your buddies killed, and you can get some people killed. | ||
| So anyway, that's my thoughts. | ||
| But I think it's a coordinated event up in Alaska with Mr. Putin. | ||
| All right, all right, Mike, I'm going to leave it there. | ||
| I want to show you from the White House moments ago the president leaving the White House grounds. | ||
| He's making his way over to the Joint Base Andrews. | ||
| There he is on your screen, getting into the beast to drive over to Joint Base Andrews, where he will then depart for Anchorage, Alaska for this face-to-face summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| The president calling it high stakes on Truth Social this morning, and we're getting your thoughts on it as well. | ||
| There's Joint Base Andrews with a shot of Air Force One. | ||
| He will arrive there, board Air Force One for a seven-hour flight to Anchorage, Alaska, meeting the Russian president on the tarmac later this afternoon. | ||
| And we will have live coverage of this summit on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| We'll, of course, take your calls, get your reactions. | ||
| We'll want to hear your expectations for this summit, and then get your reaction to what you heard from the president about this face-to-face meeting with the Russian leader. | ||
| From the USA Today, reporting, Ukraine has been largely left out. | ||
| Much of the discussion leading up to the summit has been about who won't be there. | ||
| Ukrainian President Zelensky isn't attending, which raises questions about how much can be achieved when one of the sides pivotal to any peace deal won't be present. | ||
| Zelensky and European leaders said no decision about peace agreement can be made without Ukraine. | ||
| Zelensky spoke with Trump twice ahead of the summit, the second time on a call that included European leaders. | ||
| Here's a quote: I'm going to make a deal. | ||
| It's not up, I'm not going to make a deal. | ||
| It's not up to me to make a deal, Trump declared on August 11th. | ||
| Don in Michigan, Democratic caller, Don, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
| Good morning to American people. | ||
| I think this is just another one of Trump's diversions from the Epstein tapes. | ||
| And are we going to know what he talked to Putin about this time? | ||
| Because in his first administration, when he met with Putin, he put all American journalists out the office. | ||
| So is it another one of his secret meetings with Putin to continue splitting the American people? | ||
| All right, Don, you're talking about 2018. | ||
| Take a look at previous Trump-Putin meetings. | ||
| They met in 2016 in Germany during a G20 meeting. | ||
| And then in November of 2017, at the APEC summit in Vietnam, there was that Helsinki summit that Don was referencing in July of 2018. | ||
| In November of 2018, the two had a private G20 meeting in Argentina. | ||
| And then in June of 2019 was the last time the two were face to face at a G20 meeting in Japan. | ||
| Let's go to that July 2018 meeting. | ||
| Here is President Donald Trump in Helsinki when he defended Russia over claims of interference in the 2016 presidential election. | ||
| Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. | ||
| Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. | ||
| You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict. | ||
| I've never been to Ukraine. | ||
| Did you say what problems we have? | ||
| I have been to what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President. | ||
| Do you disagree that you've had problems bringing people into your military? | ||
| I have problems. | ||
| And do you think that it's respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country? | ||
| A lot of questions. | ||
| Let's start from the beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| First of all, during the war, everybody has problems. | ||
| Even you. | ||
| But you have nice ocean and don't feel now. | ||
| But you will feel it in the future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
God bless. | |
| You don't know that. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| Don't tell us what we're going to feel. | ||
| We're trying to solve a problem. | ||
| Don't tell us what we're going to feel. | ||
| I'm not telling you. | ||
| Because you're in no position to dictate that. | ||
| Remember this. | ||
| You're in no position to dictate what we're going to feel. | ||
| We're going to feel very good. | ||
| We're going to feel very good and very strong. | ||
| We'll feel influence. | ||
| You're right now not in a very good position. | ||
| You've allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. | ||
| And he happens to be right about it. | ||
| From the very beginning of the war. | ||
| You're not in a good position. | ||
| You don't have the cards right now. | ||
| With us, you start having playing cards. | ||
| Right now, you don't have to play cards. | ||
| You're playing cards. | ||
| You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're gambling with World War III. | |
| All right, that was the president with the Ukrainian president back in February of this year, that Oval Office meeting. | ||
| We're on live television here, hit the wrong button, wanted to show you the 2018 Helsinki summit. | ||
| We'll go to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Trump, you first. | |
| Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. | |
| What, who, my first question for you, sir, is who do you believe? | ||
| My second question is, would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again? | ||
| So let me just say that we have two thoughts. | ||
| You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. | ||
| Why haven't they taken the server? | ||
| Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? | ||
| I've been wondering that. | ||
| I've been asking that for months and months, and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. | ||
| Where is the server? | ||
| I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying. | ||
| With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. | ||
| My people came to me. | ||
| Dan Coates came to me and some others. | ||
| They said they think it's Russia. | ||
| I have President Putin. | ||
| He just said it's not Russia. | ||
| I will say this. | ||
| I don't see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server. | ||
| But I have confidence in both parties. | ||
| I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. | ||
| What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentlemen that worked on the DNC? | ||
| Where are those servers? | ||
| They're missing. | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| What happened to Hillary Clinton's emails? | ||
| 33,000 emails, gone, just gone. | ||
| I think in Russia they wouldn't be gone so easily. | ||
| I think it's a disgrace that we can't get Hillary Clinton's 33,000 emails. | ||
| I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. | ||
| And what he did is an incredible offer. | ||
| He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. | ||
| I think that's an incredible offer. | ||
| President Trump meeting then back in 2018 with Russian President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| You saw his interaction there with the media before that, showing you the last time he was face to face with the Ukrainian president, Mr. Zelensky, there in the Oval Office in the United States. | ||
| He's now headed toward Alaska, where he will meet on American soil Russian President Vladimir Putin for a summit to potentially end the war between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| Mo, an Upper Marlborough, Maryland, Independent, what's your message to the president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, when President Trump said that he would stop the war on day one once he got in office, I mean, I knew that wasn't going to happen because at that point, too much damage had already been done and they were already at the point of no return. | |
| And that's the same thing now. | ||
| I mean, we're wondering, we'll know what was said in that private meeting by what happens with the war. | ||
| Because Zelensky is in a lose-lose situation because the only way that Putin would stop the war is if he gave up territory. | ||
| And Zelensky said he's not going to agree to that. | ||
| So the good thing about this is there have been wars that have gone on for years and years and years. | ||
| Eventually all of them will end. | ||
| And unfortunately, because so much damage has been done, so much life has already been lost, I mean, stopping the war now without any, you know, yielding to what Putin wants, because he's the aggressor. | ||
| Yeah, Moe. | ||
| Your comments, your observations about the Ukrainian president. | ||
| What about his efforts leading up to the summit today? | ||
| Frantic meetings, frantic women, is how the New York Times frames it this morning. | ||
| He posted on his ex-account that he's met with over 30 leaders ahead of today, ahead of the president meeting with Mr. Putin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what do you make of those efforts? | |
| And believe it or not, it would be a good thing if Zelensky stepped down, but I know he would, I don't think he would do that voluntarily because I don't, he thinks he's in a position to drag this thing out. | ||
| I mean, he needs America. | ||
| Needs us in order to do that, and Trump's not going to commit to that. | ||
| All right, well, Mo, take a look at the statement from EU countries, 26, I believe, EU countries that signed this letter of support for Ukraine. | ||
| The people of Ukraine must have the freedom to decide their future. | ||
| The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine. | ||
| Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. | ||
| Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has wider implications for European and international security. | ||
| We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine's and Europe's vital security interests. | ||
| So, Mo, if he has Europe on his side, is that enough? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree. | |
| It's a nice letter. | ||
| Okay, let's say you get to ceasefire. | ||
| And then, once you get a ceasefire, then what? | ||
| There has to be a next step. | ||
| Why are we, you know, what are we getting for our ceasefire? | ||
| And the one that when you talk about ceasefire, you're talking about Russia because they're the ones. | ||
| Ukraine is only responding to what Russia is doing. | ||
| So Russia is the aggressor. | ||
| I mean, the letter that you read, I mean, it's a nice letter, but it only lets us know their opinion because the fact of the matter is, Zelensky is, unfortunately, him and Putin hate each other. | ||
| And I just don't, it's going to be, I don't think this war is going to, it's going to go through a duration. | ||
| At some point, it's going to have to end because all wars do end. | ||
| So, but we'll see. | ||
| I pray that it does. | ||
| I mean, if I was Zelensky, I would, I don't know, because if he gives up territory, Trump's going to be out of office soon. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You know, two or three years from now. | ||
| So, you know, they're only going to come back, you know, if he gets territory now. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Understood, Mo. | ||
| We'll go to Phyllis, who's in Durango, Colorado, Republican. | ||
| It's your turn, Phyllis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Greta. | |
| You just showed the tapes of President Trump on day one till now saying he's going to end it in 24 hours. | ||
| It's been six months. | ||
| Why does he think that he can control two foreign presidents that are fighting over line in the sand? | ||
| If he wants to sanction Putin because he's a bad boy, let him do it. | ||
| All right, Phyllis, let me jump in and show you and others. | ||
| The president's limousine has arrived at Joint Base Andrews. | ||
| You can see the motorcade there on your screen, pulling the president up to Air Force One. | ||
| He'll get out of there and possibly talk to reporters. | ||
| We'll see how close they are to him if he'll come over and share his thoughts with them before he gets on Air Force One for that hours-long flight to Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| Let's keep watching here while we hear from Karen in Redford, Michigan, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Karen, go ahead with your thoughts. | ||
| If we see that the president's going to talk to reporters, though, I'll jump in. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, I just want to say that this whole thing is a farce. | ||
| How can you have a meeting and that includes Zelensky in it? | ||
| You guys are going to divvy up his land, tell him, well, we're taking your land, we're taking this, we're taking that. | ||
| No, you're not going to be allowed to join to NATO. | ||
| Who are they to decide this for him? | ||
| And Russia has to give up concessions. | ||
| They're the one that invaded this country. | ||
| They didn't ask for this. | ||
| They were just sitting there minding their own base, their own business. | ||
| And then here comes Putin invading their country. | ||
| And Donald Trump says, well, you should have ended that war a lot sooner. | ||
| This wouldn't be happening right now. | ||
| But the thing that really scares me is the way he's all powerful. | ||
| It's definitely going to take land. | ||
| He's going to take land. | ||
| All right, Karen. | ||
| And there is the president making his way up to the top of the steps there for Air Force One, making a wave to the crowd and entering Air Force One. | ||
| He has a long flight ahead of him. | ||
| He was supposed to leave around 6.45 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| It's now close to 8 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| So running behind schedule. | ||
| We'll see how that impacts the rest of the day. | ||
| Once he lands in Anchorage, Alaska, according to the agenda, he has a bilateral meeting right at the way with the Russian president, and they're expected to allow cameras at the top of that bilateral meeting. | ||
| Then they will begin behind closed doors their discussions over this war between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| And then according to reports in the Wall Street Journal today, Trump-Putin plan to hold a joint news conference around 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| And of course, that remains fluid. | ||
| We'll given the schedule here this morning, and we'll see where the Russian president is at this point. | ||
| We will have live coverage this afternoon starting around 2 p.m. Eastern Time of this Trump-Putin summit. | ||
| We'll have joining us on our set here will be the Kennan Institute Deputy Director Jennifer Wistrand. | ||
| She'll join us to give her analysis of this summit. | ||
| We'll take your calls, share information with you as well, whatever we're learning about this summit on the ground. | ||
| So 2 p.m. Eastern Time right here on C-SPAN or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, and online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| Let's go back to Joint Base Andrews and Air Force One in preparations to take off here while we listen to more of your take on this Trump-Putin summit. | ||
| Jeannie in New Jersey, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Jeannie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just wanted to say that Trump, I believe, is doing again what he has always done before, and he leaves Ukraine out of the conversation. | ||
| I don't believe Trump is going to get any closer to ending the war without throwing Ukraine under the bus because this is what Russia wants. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Russia wants concessions. | |
| Ukraine does not. | ||
| So to me, I don't see how this is going to get us any closer without, of course, Trump really, you know, saying I have to give Russia concessions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to see if that's going to really happen. | |
| It hasn't happened in the past. | ||
| He hasn't done that in the past. | ||
| Do you think he's going to do that in the future? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| All right, Jeannie. | ||
| Sue in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Independent. | ||
| Sue, good morning to you. | ||
| The president is moments away from taking off here at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., and then headed toward Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| What is your take on this? | ||
| What would you say to the President right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
May I say what I'd like to say, please? | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| I would like to respond to a comment by another caller earlier, just ahead of your clippings showing here from the last several years. | ||
| And that is, he called in and he met that we actually, under Obama and Biden, installed this new regime over in the Ukraine. | ||
| This is what Trump knows, and this is what President Trump found out from others in Putin once he took over in the U.S. | ||
| And all of that about the Democratic National Committee, those people criminals. | ||
| Hillary Clinton is actually Should be held accountable for those emails she's gotten away with so much. | ||
| But do you remember that President Biden, when he was vice president, was over there threatening a billion dollars and the release of the prosecutor? | ||
| I mean, you have some of those clippings there. | ||
| That's the real truth. | ||
| We started it. | ||
| And this is what President Putin and President Trump, this is what they are dealing with. | ||
| And so President Trump going in now, I think the best thing that could happen is that both countries get out of there and get Zelensky out of there. | ||
| He's a puppet. | ||
| He's a Zionist. | ||
| Just like the big media, they're running the show. | ||
| We're not getting the real facts anymore. | ||
| This is really rough on the people trying to understand. | ||
| All right, Mr. Sue's thoughts in Grand Rapids, Michigan. | ||
| She's a Republican. | ||
| Debbie is in Pennsylvania, an independent, or Charles, excuse me, in Preston, Connecticut. | ||
| A Republican. | ||
| Charles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I've got a crazy idea. | |
| When Trump greets Putin at the airport, he should shake his hand and he should say, Welcome to the United States. | ||
| You're under arrest. | ||
| He should put him under arrest right there. | ||
| Or he should wait until they're all sitting around the negotiating table and American Army MPs enter the room and they put them all under arrest. | ||
| The war would be over. | ||
| The people of Russia would be dancing in the streets just like the East Germans did when the wall fell down. | ||
| The whole thing would be over. | ||
| It would be so simple. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| All right, Charles in Connecticut, a Republican caller as well. | ||
| Air Force One taxiing on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. It'll be wheels up shortly for President Trump. | ||
| Hours-long journey there to Anchorage, Alaska, where he will meet the Russian President Vladimir Putin at a U.S. military base in Anchorage to discuss efforts to end the war. | ||
| NBC says agenda and expectations. | ||
| Trump told European leaders this week that his goal is to secure a ceasefire and that he does not intend to discuss any possible divisions of territory. | ||
| Days earlier, though, he said there would be some land swapping between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| As you know, Ukrainian President Mr. Zelensky, excluded, shut out from the talks to the alarm of his European allies, is Ukraine's President Zelensky, who has warned that decisions taken in absence will be meaningless. | ||
| Again, a timeline for today. | ||
| The face-to-face, expected around 3 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| And then behind closed doors, the Russian leader and U.S. President Donald Trump and their translators will begin discussions, followed by later this evening, a joint news conference. | ||
| It's unclear how long the two leaders will meet in private. | ||
| Again, we'll begin our coverage at 2 p.m. Eastern Time here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org online on demand, or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| While we watch Air Force One get ready to take off, we'll let you know what's coming up next here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Later on, a closer look at the laws and the limits around the use of the military and domestic law enforcement situations like the one here in Washington, D.C. right now. | ||
| We'll have that conversation with Scott Anderson, a national law expert at the Brookings Institution. | ||
| But right after this break, we're going to continue with our conversation about the Trump-Russia summit, and we'll be joined by Brad Bowman from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Weekends bring you Book TV featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
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| And then at 9:15 p.m. Eastern, Michael Grinbaum gives an inside look at the glamorous Condi Nast publishing empire, the people who crafted its publications, and the standards they set for American culture with his book, Empire of the Elite. | ||
| And at 10.15 p.m. Eastern, Book TV takes you to Freedom Fest, an annual libertarian festival held this year in Palm Springs, California, to hear three authors discuss their works. | ||
| We'll talk with Wrong Speak Publishing founder Adam Coleman, attorney Kent Heckenlively, and computer information technologist Sean Worthington. | ||
| 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. | ||
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| Exploring the American Story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| We are back more on the Trump Putin Summit. | ||
| We're joined by Brad Bowman, who is the senior director for the Center on Military and Political Powers at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| Brad Bowman, let's begin with the president just taking off from Joint Base Andrews. | ||
| Long flight for him, similar length of flight for the Russian President Putin, and meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| According to BBC, this is what the Russian president wants out of this summit. | ||
| Territorial control of eastern Ukraine. | ||
| Ukraine to back off plans to join NATO. | ||
| End to the U.S.-EU sanctions. | ||
| And potential restart of nuclear talks with the United States. | ||
| Let's just begin with each of those. | ||
| Territorial control of parts of eastern Ukraine. | ||
| So, you know, I've thank you for the opportunity to join you and thanks for the question. | ||
| You know, over the last three years since Putin started this unprovoked naked aggression, this massive reinvasion of Ukraine, I've referred to what he's doing as being a home invader. | ||
| He's invading the home of Ukrainians. | ||
| And what he's essentially demanding is equivalent to a home invader saying, let me keep the part of your home that I've stolen, and then I'll stop attacking the rest. | ||
| So he basically wants to lock in his control of Luhansk and Donetsk, Zaporizha, and Kherson Oblast. | ||
| And he'd like to keep as much of that as possible. | ||
| And then he wants to weaken Ukraine so that he can come back for more later. | ||
| You know, I was watching a clip on NBC News this morning, and there was a really touching interview of a funeral. | ||
| And the crew had gotten permission from the family to video their funeral. | ||
| Of course, the mother was inconsolable because she had just lost her younger son, who had been drafted, and he went off to fight on the front line and was killed by Russians. | ||
| He was defending his home against this invasion, and she was there mourning underneath the cross above his grave. | ||
| And he left behind two children. | ||
| And just shortly after the funeral had concluded, because they had to wrap it up because there was another one right behind it, they interviewed the older brother. | ||
| And the older brother was asked what he thought about this idea of trading land for a ceasefire. | ||
| And he said, you know, if we have a ceasefire like this, the Russians are going to come back stronger and do this again and again. | ||
| And you can't trust the Russians. | ||
| This is a man who just lost his younger brother, leaving behind two children, who's fighting and risking his life defending his homes. | ||
| And he's closest to the threat. | ||
| He understands it best. | ||
| And that's what he's saying. | ||
| And I think we should listen. | ||
| Let me just show you the BBC map that we showed our viewers earlier. | ||
| You were talking about the military, Russian military control in Ukraine. | ||
| If you can just speak to that map a little bit, those red territories. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, so I just mentioned the four main oblasts in question. | ||
| And so you have Luhansk in the northeast there, on the right of the screen. | ||
| You have Donetsk, which together we refer to as the Donbass. | ||
| Russia currently controls almost all of Luhansk. | ||
| They control a majority of Donetsk. | ||
| That's where much of the fighting and some of the lines where we see the lines shifting to a modest incremental way, that's happening in Donetsk. | ||
| And the reason Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblast are important to Putin is that as you can see on the map there, it provides a land bridge to Crimea, which of course Putin, via his little green men invasion of 2014, now controls, and that's Ukrainian territory as well. | ||
| So in short, he wants to keep what he has, get as much as possible, and basically saying, give me what I've stolen, and then I'll stop attacking you. | ||
| And by the way, after that, Ukraine, you need to disarm and not join NATO. | ||
| And why would he want Ukraine to disarm? | ||
| Why would he want Ukraine to not join NATO? | ||
| Well, because he's not done with Ukraine. | ||
| He wants more and he's going to be back for more. | ||
| And anyone who's looked at Putin for more than a day or two understands that. | ||
| So he also wants an end to U.S. and EU sanctions. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Are the sanctions working? | ||
| The sanctions are having some effect, but they are far from sufficient. | ||
| There is so much more that the United States can do with our European allies to impose economic consequences on Putin. | ||
| Unfortunately, since January 20th, when President Trump returned for a second term, it seems to me, and I think this is a fair characterization, the carrots have been for Russia and the sticks have been for Ukraine. | ||
| And that's exactly backwards, because let's remember, there's no moral equivalence here. | ||
| Ukraine is the invaded and Russia is the invader. | ||
| And you don't give carrots to the invader and sticks for the invaded. | ||
| That's exactly backwards. | ||
| So there's been a learning curve, shall we say, over the last many months in the second Trump term. | ||
| We're in a better place now. | ||
| We've had some cul-de-sacs along the way. | ||
| Some statements that I would have regretted. | ||
| I'm not sure I would have advised this summit. | ||
| The president's saying he's going to be listening. | ||
| Well, you know, if anyone who's listening understands what the Kremlin wants, they keep telling us. | ||
| And, you know, we all, I do give the president credit for this. | ||
| You know, he wants the killing to stop. | ||
| I mean, the casualties on both sides have been extraordinary. | ||
| You know, roughly a million casualties, dead and wounded in Russians, roughly half that Ukrainians. | ||
| This is the worst war in Europe since World War II. | ||
| Anyone with a heart wants this to stop, of course. | ||
| But how wars stop matter? | ||
| And there's a good peace and bad peace. | ||
| And bad peace tend to lead to more conflict in the future. | ||
| So yes, let's end the suffering. | ||
| Yes, let's get the ceasefire. | ||
| The key American demand here, in my opinion, that President Trump will hopefully pursue in his call with the European leaders in Olensky suggests that he'll do this. | ||
| I hope he follows through, is that he'll demand a full, immediate, unconditional ceasefire and not give anything to Putin for that. | ||
| Putin's going to come, he's going to flatter. | ||
| He's going to manipulate. | ||
| He's going to deceive. | ||
| He's going to be duplicitous. | ||
| Of course he is. | ||
| He spent more than 15 years in the KGB. | ||
| That's what he's trained to do, of course. | ||
| I mean, you know, President Trump himself said, you know, I have a very nice phone call with Vladimir, and then Melania says, well, he just attacked another city last night. | ||
| So, you know, I hope the president listens and confirms his gut instincts about Vladimir Putin. | ||
| More importantly, I hope he speaks. | ||
| And when he should speak, I think, would be, end this unprovoked naked aggression or the consequences start tomorrow. | ||
| But if you keep threatening consequences and you don't implement it, you're like a bad parent that says, stop it, stop it, or I'll spank you. | ||
| And the spank never comes, and the child realizes I can do whatever the heck I want and get away with it. | ||
| On the consequences, the New York Times reports this morning that there could be more done with sanctions against China for buying Russian oil. | ||
| And India, despite the president saying sanctions are coming for buying Russian oil, said they're going to keep doing it. | ||
| Yes, no, I mean, let's remember, the Ukrainians are basically fighting all four members, what we've been calling it at our research institute, the Axis of Aggressors. | ||
| They're essentially fighting China, Russia, Iran, North Korea in some way. | ||
| I mean, Iran, don't forget, has sent these Shahed 136 drones. | ||
| They've helped Russia build a manufacturing facility inside Russia that's going to allow Russia to, instead of sending dozens of drones, we're talking about hundreds of drones per attack trying to overwhelm the Ukrainian defenses. | ||
| The North Koreans have sent troops. | ||
| They've sent artillery. | ||
| And the Chinese have provided dual-use support for the Russian defense industry. | ||
| And many of the weapons that Russia is using to kill Ukrainian men, women, and children have Chinese parts in them. | ||
| So, you know, we have a beleaguered democratic partner that is not asking Americans to come and fight and die on their behalf. | ||
| They're simply asking for the means to defend their homes against this unprovoked invasion. | ||
| American support for Ukraine is a wise investment. | ||
| It's not charity. | ||
| It's sustainable. | ||
| If you look at what we've spent providing security assistance to Ukraine, it's less than the equivalent of 2.8% of what we spent on the Pentagon over the same time period. | ||
| We can do that forever. | ||
| And that should be the message of Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Not only are we going to sell American weapons Europeans will deliver into Ukraine, we're going to do presidential drawdown authority, we're going to do Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and we're going to have sectoral sanctions and other steps to reduce the oil revenue that Putin's getting to fund this unprovoked war. | ||
| Also, the Council of Foreign Relations has put these numbers together based on the Kiel Institute and other resources that shows Europe has committed more aid to Ukraine than the United States has. | ||
| When you take Europe as a whole, look at that number on your screen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Billions more than the U.S. | ||
| The U.S., though, has, when you break it down, each European country, the United States, has spent more. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I mean, the United States is a leading contributor to helping Ukraine continue to exist and defeat this unprovoked invasion. | ||
| But yes, when you combine the aggregate contributions, overall contributions, Europe has contributed more. | ||
| And that's been true for a long time. | ||
| And what's true recently is now they're just barely exceeding the United States in the aggregate on security assistance. | ||
| So for anyone listening, if you've heard otherwise, that's just not true. | ||
| And by the way, remember the number I just said. | ||
| I mean, as of last September, the percentage has gotten even lower. | ||
| It's less than the equivalent of 2.8% of what we spent on the Pentagon. | ||
| For what? | ||
| We're degrading the second leading conventional threat we confront. | ||
| We're helping Ukraine continue to exist. | ||
| We're reducing the chances of a direct war between U.S. and Russia where you would have Americans fighting, dying. | ||
| And we're sending a very helpful deterrent message to Beijing that Americans are not neutral when it comes to naked aggression, which will impact their decision-making in the Taiwan Strait. | ||
| Brad Bowman referred to the Russian president's bio earlier. | ||
| Take a look at this. | ||
| He's been the president since 2019. | ||
| And he, excuse me, he's been the president since 2012, served also as president from 2000 to 2008. | ||
| He was the prime minister, you'll recall, for four years. | ||
| And Dmitry Medvedev was the president during that time. | ||
| And then he's the former director of Russia's Federal Security Service and served in the Soviet KGB intelligence service for 16 years. | ||
| Let's get to calls, see what our viewers have to say here. | ||
| Michael and Rochester, New York, Republican. | ||
| Michael, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just want to bring this to the attention of the listening audience here. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Ukraine was invaded under Barack Obama. | ||
| Carmere was invaded under Barack Obama. | ||
| Ukraine invaded under Joe Biden. | ||
| And they did nothing. | ||
| When Trump got in office, he ended the North Stream pipeline. | ||
| To y'all that are listening here, the North Stream pipeline is how Russia gets its revenue. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And he ended that North Stream pipeline to Europe and start funding Europe. | ||
| Europe was using the American gas lines. | ||
| Then not only that, right there, when Biden gets in office, the first thing Biden does, he restated the North Stream pipeline so Putin could fund his war. | ||
| And then, you know, what is going on here is going to be an all-out assault on President Trump, who inherited Crimea being invaded by Russia under Biden, and now Ukraine. | ||
| And this all-out assault is going to be by those like that gentleman you got there, a Trump-hayden individual. | ||
| Trump has NATO increased defense budget to help Ukraine. | ||
| Trump is doing practically everything he can. | ||
| And if an asteroid happened a zillion miles away from here, it'll be Donald Trump's fault. | ||
| All right, Michael, let's unpack what you had to say. | ||
| Brad Bowman, there's a lot there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, thank you, Michael. | ||
| Thanks for the call. | ||
| I share your passion on this issue because I think it really matters. | ||
| And I appreciate the historical references. | ||
| Let me give you a few more historical references. | ||
| In 2008, Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, unprovoked invasion there. | ||
| Russian forces continue to occupy part of Georgia and keep moving the boundary, creating a frozen conflict, much to Vladimir Putin's liking. | ||
| In 2014, Vladimir Putin's Little Green Min, as I referenced earlier, invaded Crimea and continued to occupy all of Crimea today. | ||
| And in 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a massive reinvasion. | ||
| And by the way, between 2014 and 2022, he sparked a war in the Donbass where thousands of people were dying in Ukrainian territory. | ||
| And then in 2022, as we know, we've had this massive re-invasion. | ||
| And so that's some key historical anecdotes to keep in mind. | ||
| So you're talking about partisan blame. | ||
| The way I would say it is there's plenty of blame to go around. | ||
| I could give you an hour lecture on all the good things and bad things that previous presidents have done. | ||
| But I would just respectfully say, if we're spending more time criticizing the other party, then you're missing the point. | ||
| Russia wants us to be divided as Americans. | ||
| They want us to be more focused on the other party than the fact that this is naked, self-aggrandizing conquest by Vladimir Putin. | ||
| So if you're spending more time thinking and talking about the other party or the other president, you're playing right into Vladimir Putin's hands and you're missing the whole point. | ||
| And sir, you say I'm Trump hating. | ||
| I'm really just trying to call balls and strike. | ||
| So let me compliment one thing that President Trump has done. | ||
| He has elicited commitments from our European allies to increase defense spending, 3.5% on core defense spending, 1.5% on non-defense spending for a total of 5% at the recent NATO summit. | ||
| By when? | ||
| 2035. | ||
| That's not soon enough. | ||
| Okay, so nice job getting those commitments, but I would have liked to see it 2035. | ||
| So I think what you're hearing from me is a willingness to call balls and strikes, and I think we need a little bit more of that right now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Steve, Chatsworth, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, basically, I'm going to follow the other caller. | |
| And I'm going to say, Joe Biden said on national TV, oh, if Russia does a small invasion in Crimea, or not Crimea, Ukraine, no big deal. | ||
| He stood up in front of everybody and said, no big deal. | ||
| All right, Steve, let's take that. | ||
| Yeah, no, so this is a similar tone from the previous caller, where the focus is again on partisan politics here in the United States. | ||
| And I'm sitting here in Washington where the politics seem particularly tribalistic and vitriolic these days. | ||
| And that's the liking of our adversaries. | ||
| The more we are at basket cases here at home, the more we're sniping in each other, the less unified we are, the weaker we are, and the less we are able to protect our interests overseas. | ||
| And let there be no doubt, America has interests in Europe. | ||
| Some of our best allies are there. | ||
| We have vital economic interests there. | ||
| And two world wars started in the first half of the 20th century in Europe that pulled us in, and more than 500,000 Americans ultimately made the ultimate sacrifice. | ||
| So I'm going to focus on issues like that, the American interests, and I'm going to leave the partisan sniping to others. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's go to Alaska and show our viewers the joint base, Elmendorf-Richardson. | ||
| Look at this map. | ||
| This is where the two leaders will be meeting at this military base north of Anchorage. | ||
| When you look at that map, Brad Bowman, what do you make of holding this summit here in Alaska? | ||
| I would have, if asked, I would advise President Trump not to do this because I think it is a political diplomatic win for Vladimir Putin. | ||
| It reduces his isolation. | ||
| It gives him an international podium and platform that suggests an equivalence between Russia and the United States and between the leader of the free world, dare I say, and Vladimir Putin, who's committed war crimes in places like Buka in Ukraine and who is overseeing the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children. | ||
| And the list goes on and on and on. | ||
| And, you know, if you buy the numbers that are reporting 1 million dead Russians, excuse me, casualties, 1 million Russian casualties, roughly half that Ukrainians, that's 1.5 million casualties for a self-aggrandizing war of conquest. | ||
| If that sounds ancient and ugly, it is. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Newsflash, human nature hasn't changed. | ||
| Wars of conquest still happen, and some principles are still worth fighting for. | ||
| Listen to that older brother at that funeral outside of Kharkiv. | ||
| He understands the Russian bear. | ||
| He said that standing on the outskirts of Kharkiv. | ||
| He says they'll be back in the future and they'll be stronger. | ||
| And the Russians don't keep their agreements. | ||
| Don't keep their agreements. | ||
| You don't believe me? | ||
| Look at the Budapest Memorandum where Russia committed to respecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. | ||
| Have they done that? | ||
| Note to self, they haven't. | ||
| Maybe we should learn from that. | ||
| We'll go to Ron, Round Lake, Illinois, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, first of all, you wear your Democratic Party on your sleeve, so you keep on yelling, complaining about this divide that we have in this country, and you're part of that divide. | |
| So let's just get past that. | ||
| Right now, at least he's talking to Putin. | ||
| At least he's got this losing a little land in Ukraine, it's a lot better than losing more lives. | ||
| Joe Biden slow walked all that material, the military aid to Russia instead of giving what they needed all at once right away. | ||
| We spent $300 billion of our money, my tax dollars that I work hard for every day, on a country that that doesn't affect us as much as it affects Europe. | ||
| You say, oh, the percentages are so much higher for the EU. | ||
| The EU is numerous countries. | ||
| It's numerous countries pitching it. | ||
| This is just the United States money. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Rob Bowman. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for the call. | ||
| Sir, so, you know, it's good to do a little research before you make an assertion. | ||
| You say, I wear my Democratic Party on my sleeve. | ||
| I'm not a member of the Democratic Party. | ||
| Actually, I worked for three Republican senators in the U.S. Senate, sir. | ||
| So if that's a qualification for being a member of the Democratic Party, I'm not sure I understand that. | ||
| But I work at a nonpartisan think tank now. | ||
| And as you can see, I'm trying to call balls and strikes as best I can. | ||
| So you cited the $300 billion number. | ||
| That's just not accurate, sir. | ||
| Spend five minutes Googling. | ||
| Be careful what sources you rely on. | ||
| That number is not accurate. | ||
| And like I said, this is a wise investment for the United States. | ||
| You know, people talk about endless wars, right? | ||
| 170,000 troops in Iraq fighting at the high watermark, 100,000 American troops fighting Afghanistan at the high watermark. | ||
| There's not a single uniformed American service member fighting Ukraine right now. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Ukraine is simply asking for a Louisville slugger baseball bat over the back fence so they can brutalize Vladimir Putin, the home invader, not for the purpose of brutalizing someone, for making him reconsider his line of work. | ||
| That is not a Democrat talking point. | ||
| That is not a Republican talking point. | ||
| That is a talking point and a fact that is based on a clear-eyed view of American national security interests. | ||
| So again, third caller here, where you're focusing on the politics, take a deep breath, look in the mirror, think about what kind of world you want for your children. | ||
| Do you want a world of citizens or a world of subjects? | ||
| Vladimir Putin, and I'm borrowing from Kurt Volcker there. | ||
| He wants this world of subjects, where the might makes right, borders don't matter. | ||
| Is that the kind of world you want? | ||
| I don't want that kind of world, and that's why I think we should be supporting Ukraine. | ||
| On the number of U.S. aid to Ukraine from the Council on Foreign Relations, they total it at $195 billion. | ||
| You can take a look at when, the time of year, the month, the time of year, when packages to Ukraine were approved by executive action or otherwise. | ||
| $14 billion in March of 2022, followed by another $41 billion in May of 2022. | ||
| In October that same year, $12 billion. | ||
| And then January of 2023, $47 billion. | ||
| The president in the Oval Office yesterday, he put that number at $350 billion. | ||
| That's where you hear viewers echoing that number. | ||
| Has the Trump administration allowed any more money to go to Ukraine? | ||
| So it's a great question. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So what we've seen since January 20th is basically weapons that the Biden administration committed to provide Ukraine. | ||
| Those have continued to flow with two exceptions. | ||
| We had the suspension of the flow of weapons in March, and we had that again in July. | ||
| And the Pentagon did that on July 1st, and then Trump reversed it on July 7. | ||
| And when he was asked by a CNN reporter who did that, he said, I don't know. | ||
| And then he reversed it. | ||
| And we actually dug down into the weapons that were suspended. | ||
| The Pentagon's argument was we had to do that because we didn't have enough. | ||
| We looked weapon system by weapon system. | ||
| They're right that we don't have enough air and missile defense capabilities, but we looked at the others and it just didn't stand up to scrutiny if I'm being honest. | ||
| We can afford to help Ukraine. | ||
| We can arm ourselves and help our other beleaguered Democratic partners at the same time. | ||
| If we're spending enough on defense, making wise investments in our defense industrial place and our munitions, we can do this. | ||
| And as I keep saying, it's a wise investment that's sustainable. | ||
| It's far more sustainable than what Vladimir Putin is doing. | ||
| We can do this forever. | ||
| He can't. | ||
| And I think that's one of the messages that Donald, I would recommend respectfully President Trump convey in Alaska. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Gabriel Burlington, Kentucky, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| I just wanted to say that I really agree with the guests. | ||
| It's really sad to see the Ukraine war become a political issue. | ||
| And I long for the days when both sides really wholeheartedly supported Ukraine. | ||
| And, you know, Russia is obviously a really bad actor and pulling out of the SART treaty. | ||
| And they're not really holding up to all of their obligations. | ||
| You know, and I just want to say we love Brian Lamb and boil her up. | ||
| All right, Greg, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, independent caller. | ||
| Hi, Greg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Guest, I have a question for you and also for Ms. Bronner. | ||
| Let me start with Ms. Bronner. | ||
| Why did you cross-examine people this morning? | ||
| I tried to get in many times about Senator Murphy. | ||
| Senator Murphy is a partisan hack. | ||
| If you're going to cross-examine people and ask, reply to this politician statement, you should do it to all sides. | ||
| And you do not. | ||
| And I've called in multiple times. | ||
| Now, do when people call in on the comment line, do hosts like you ever listen to them and/or get a summary of comments that are made? | ||
| Yeah, where I'm listening to you right now, Greg. | ||
| And I'll just say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| In the comment, I made a comment earlier this morning on the comment line. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| 202-737-3220. | ||
| Anybody listening who tried to get in and didn't get in, you can call that number, follow the prompts, you can leave a message. | ||
| Will you end up listening to that message or is somebody going to tell you about that? | ||
| I sure can. | ||
| And your point, Greg? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My point is you're not non-partisan. | |
| You are showing your bias. | ||
| Now, as to the guests, when, guests, did you start calling balls and strikes, which you've said multiple times this morning? | ||
| When did you start? | ||
| Did you start in the Obama administration? | ||
| Did you start in the first Trump? | ||
| Did you start in Hunter's dad's administration? | ||
| Did you start since January 20? | ||
| When? | ||
| Got it, Greg. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| We got your question. | ||
| Mr. Bowman. | ||
| Thanks for the call. | ||
| I think I'm doing that right now. | ||
| I can compliment and criticize all the presidents you just mentioned. | ||
| It would take too long. | ||
| I'm trying to be brief. | ||
| But let me, you know, we're talking about Alaska here, and I think we should be focusing more on the American interests and what our adversary Vladimir Putin is going to try to do. | ||
| And what he's going to try to do is to delay or avoid the consequences, consequences that President Trump has promised. | ||
| He's going to try to lock in his control of what he's attempted to steal in Ukraine and weaken Ukraine further so he can come back for more later. | ||
| He's going to try to flip the script and make Ukraine the obstacle to peace by offering something that's appealing to Donald Trump but not acceptable to Europe and Ukraine, thereby trying to drive a wedge between us and our European allies in Ukraine. | ||
| And he's going to try to sideline American power so he can more effectively prey on the people of Ukraine. | ||
| That's what's going to happen in Alaska, I predict. | ||
| What do you make of this EU statement? | ||
| The 26 countries have signed a letter saying the people of Ukraine must have the freedom to decide their future. | ||
| The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine. | ||
| Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. | ||
| And Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has wider implications for European and international security. | ||
| We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine and Europe's vital security interests. | ||
| I think that is a good statement. | ||
| And what they're essentially saying, there's nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. | ||
| Now, let me bring that home for American listeners. | ||
| Can you imagine two other countries sitting around a table talking about us, talking about our country, our security, our safety, our borders, land, you know, hey, we're going to give four or five states away to some invader without us being at the table? | ||
| You would be furious. | ||
| I would be furious. | ||
| That's what we're doing to Ukraine right now. | ||
| We should not be holding this summit without Ukraine at the table. | ||
| It's a mistake. | ||
| The administration is trying to mitigate the damage of that poor decision since they've made it. | ||
| But we should not be talking with Vladimir Putin without Zelensky in the room. | ||
| That's what we would expect for ourselves and do unto others as you've had done unto you. | ||
| And we're not doing that right now in Alaska. | ||
| And I think it's contrary to American interests. | ||
| And I think it violates basic decency principles. | ||
| We'll go to Helena in Virginia, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Helena, good morning. | ||
| Share your story with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a Ukrainian immigrant. | ||
| You know, I'm very surprised how people are unfortunately misinformed of what's going on in Ukraine. | ||
| The point is that we, most of the Ukrainian people, agree with President Trump that this war must be stopped by any means possible. | ||
| Any means possible. | ||
| We don't want to die for another mineral deal or other people's national interests. | ||
| It's not a secret that buses are going on in Ukraine. | ||
| Anybody can Google it. | ||
| They grab people, man, against their will, take to frontline where they would die next day. | ||
| Why do you do that, people, to Ukrainians? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Please stop this war. | ||
| Stop it, please. | ||
| This is a civil war, and that's what we want. | ||
| We really want President Trump to stop this war. | ||
| Okay, Helena, understood. | ||
| We'll go to Mr. Bowman. | ||
| Ma'am, thank you for the call. | ||
| And thank you sincerely. | ||
| And I'm so sincerely sorry for what Ukraine and the Ukrainian people have suffered and hearing from someone who has direct connection to it is powerful. | ||
| I want that too. | ||
| I hope today in Alaska, President Trump is successful in getting a full unconditional ceasefire. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| We all want that. | ||
| And I think President Trump has a sincere desire, set the politics aside. | ||
| He appears to have a sincere desire to want the killing to stop. | ||
| He said that repeatedly. | ||
| That's what any person with a heart should want. | ||
| And so let's see if we can get that in Alaska, but don't hold your breath if you know Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Caitlin Collins, reporter for CNN on Air Force One on the way to Anchorage, Alaska, reporting that on his way on the flight, the president told reporters this of Putin, quote, I notice he's bringing a lot of business people from Russia, and that's good. | ||
| I like that because they want to do business, but they're not doing any business until we get the war settled. | ||
| It looks like Putin's up to the same old tricks. | ||
| He's going to offer all sorts of incentives. | ||
| He's going to play to the commercial and business interests that appeal to Donald Trump. | ||
| And he's going to try to dupe and deceive him, as you would expect a former KGB colonel to do, to try to agree to him recognizing what he's tried to steal in Ukraine. | ||
| So that is exactly, you know, I see my comment earlier about carrots and sticks and Vladimir Putin appealing to President Trump and what he wants. | ||
| And, you know, he's been talking about not only economic opportunities for American businesses and other things. | ||
| He's essentially trying to bribe Trump to consent to what he's stolen from Ukrainians. | ||
| Caitlin Collins, more reporting, says that the president continued on Russian attacks in Ukraine leading up to the talks today, saying, quote, he thinks it gives him strength in negotiating. | ||
| I think it hurts him, but I'll be talking to him about it later. | ||
| The Russian attacks in Ukraine continued last night. | ||
| They're continuing as we speak. | ||
| Vladimir Putin is casting the shadow of power over the negotiating table because he believes it gives him leverage, and it does. | ||
| He's trying to shift the reality on the ground, and he's trying to influence American decision-making. | ||
| Here's my question for the Trump administration. | ||
| How are we casting the shadow of power over the negotiating table? | ||
| He's doing it. | ||
| Are we? | ||
| When you keep threatening consequences and you don't impose them, you start to look like you're all talk. | ||
| Palm Harbor, Florida. | ||
| Chris is a Republican. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Brad. | |
| Obviously, you know, you're a Democrat hack, and you can say nonpartisan all you want, but everybody can see exactly who you are. | ||
| The problem is that Kamala said, hey, we want you to join NATO. | ||
| And if China or Russia said, hey, we're putting a base in Mexico tomorrow, you can bet that we would say, no, you're not, no matter what. | ||
| We did it in the Cuban Missile Crisis anyway. | ||
| But you playing that this is not what causes his wrong. | ||
| And furthermore, Biden gave all of this cash to Ukraine, probably because of the cash gotten from Hunter, from them, and the issue with the prosecutor against his son's involvement in that company. | ||
| It was for pensions. | ||
| It was for salaries, just free money for them. | ||
| And when Trump came in, he said, no, no more. | ||
| And we're going to stop this. | ||
| And the way he's going to stop it is to tell Russia, you keep screwing around. | ||
| we're going to cut out your funding by putting tariffs on India, not allowing you to sell your oil for them to come in and say, okay, we're not going to go in anymore or we're going to leave. | ||
| But playing this whole. | ||
| All right, Chris, we heard your point. | ||
| Mr. Bowman. | ||
| You know, yeah, there's kind of a similar theme here for many of the callers. | ||
| I won't repeat what I said earlier. | ||
| You know, behind a lot of the things you're expressing concern about, sir, I hear a desire for the rules to be followed, for laws to be followed, for consent of the governed, basic principles that we Americans across party lines support. | ||
| Well, what Putin's doing is the antithesis of this, antithesis of this. | ||
| He's trying to seize territory with military conquest. | ||
| That is not the rule of law, sir. | ||
| That is not the basic sense of principle, law, fairness, right and wrong that I hear behind your concerns. | ||
| So take the principles behind your concerns and apply them to what you see in Ukraine. | ||
| Set aside the politics for five seconds if you can, and ask yourself what right and wrong here is. | ||
| And I think maybe you'll see it clearly. | ||
| Tom is in Sparks, Glencoe, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| And Greta, I'd like to give your guest a chance to maybe correct a couple of comments that I think he knows are untrue that he said a couple of times before asking my question. | ||
| And the first one is that Ukraine is a democracy and that the war was unprovoked. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for the question. | ||
| Yeah, so Ukraine, you know, I taught American politics and foreign policy and grand strategy courses at West Point. | ||
| I know a little bit about these things. | ||
| We'd have to define democracy, wouldn't we, sir? | ||
| But if you define democracy as elections, consent of the governed, Ukraine is a democracy. | ||
| Is Ukraine a perfect democracy? | ||
| No. | ||
| Are there corruption issues in Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Was Zelensky's decision a while back related to corruption not good? | ||
| No, it was not good. | ||
| So Ukraine is an imperfect democracy. | ||
| So are we. | ||
| So are we. | ||
| So they are a democracy, and the war was unprovoked. | ||
| And by unprovoked, I mean Ukraine was in no way a threat to Russia. | ||
| And anyone who is willing to look at this objectively understand it. | ||
| So, and by the way, don't forget that before the February 24th, 2022 invasion, by the way, I was in this chair one day after that. | ||
| It seems like yesterday, and so much has happened since then. | ||
| Let's remember the Russians were saying, I think Lavrov, the foreign minister, was saying, this isn't an invasion. | ||
| This is just a training exercise. | ||
| We're just doing a training exercise. | ||
| Until the very end, right up until that largest invasion in Europe since World War II, they were lying, lying, lying, lying. | ||
| And then they invaded. | ||
| So, you know, there's a pattern here. | ||
| There's a pattern for anyone who's willing to be objective to see. | ||
| So, sir, I stand by what I said. | ||
| Ukraine is a democracy, an imperfect democracy. | ||
| There are problems there. | ||
| But, you know, the reason why Zelensky, one more example, can't give up territory is because they have a constitution. | ||
| And their constitution lists what Ukraine includes. | ||
| And they have a part of that constitution that says you can't give up that territory without a full vote of the Ukrainian people. | ||
| That's starting to sound a lot like a democracy, sir. | ||
| A lot unlike what Vladimir Putin has in Russia. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Lorraine is in Ithaca, New York. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Hey, Lorraine, go ahead. | ||
| You've got to mute your television. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I wondered, Mr. Bovin, if you believe in your heart of hearts that Trump has something personally embarrassing that Putin has on him or has such plans for commercial interests that this is just a big part of what makes Trump not actually respond in a normal way to somebody who just invades another country and grabs territory. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for the question. | ||
| I don't know what the Russians have on Donald Trump. | ||
| I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. | ||
| I'm just going to stay focused on what I think the American interest here is and what happened in Ukraine and recommend policies that I think make sense. | ||
| Clifford, Hudson, Florida, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| We keep talking about the Ukrainians not being part of Russia. | ||
| You and I both know historically the Ukrainians were right white Russians and then you had the red Russians and then you had the Russian Revolution. | ||
| So Ukraine has never been an independent country. | ||
| Yes, I believe in democracy and that's the way Europe is run. | ||
| But we are not a democracy. | ||
| We are a republic under democratic laws. | ||
| All right, Clifford, let's take all those points. | ||
| Thank you for the call. | ||
| Yeah, I know there's a history there. | ||
| We'd need more time to go through it. | ||
| But, you know, the core problem in your argument, sir, is that Moscow has recognized in the past Ukraine as being an independent sovereign country. | ||
| They've done it. | ||
| They did it in the Budapest Memorandum. | ||
| So I guess they've changed their mind, huh? | ||
| But implicit in what you're saying is exactly right. | ||
| The day before I sat here on February 25th, 2022, what were the Russians trying to do? | ||
| They were trying to conquer all of Ukraine and topple the government in Kyiv and put a stooge there. | ||
| So you can get, okay, all these details, whatever. | ||
| Here's the essential question for you. | ||
| Who do you think should be able to call the shots about who governs Ukraine? | ||
| The people of Ukraine or Vladimir Putin. | ||
| And how you answer that question gets back to what I said earlier about subjects versus citizens. | ||
| I'm with citizens. | ||
| I'm against unprovoked naked aggression that tries to seize territory with military force. | ||
| And before you dismiss this as some partisan issue, you better think about what China, North Korea, and Iran are concluded if we make the wrong decision, how that might affect their decision in their regions about whether they can accomplish their political objectives with military aggression too. | ||
| Brad Bowman is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Senior Director at the Center for a Center on Military and Political Power. | ||
| You can learn more about our guest, Mr. Bowman, if you go to FDD.org. | ||
| If you're interested in his background, as he mentioned, served for three GOP senators, Armed Services Committee, Foreign Relations Committee, served more than 15 years on active duty as a U.S. Army officer, including time as a company commander, congressional affairs officer in the Army and the Pentagon, and staff officer in Afghanistan, Black Hawk pilot, and assistant professor at West Point. | ||
| Thanks for the conversation. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| When we come back, Scott Anderson, a national law expert at the Brookings Institution, joins us. | ||
| We'll take a closer look at the laws and the limits around the use of military in a domestic enforcement role. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| So you interviewed the other night. | ||
| I watched it about two o'clock in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching. | |
| Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happen to have a little rerun. | ||
| Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week? | ||
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN, and we all should review the tape. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone wonders when they're watching C-SPAN what the conversations are on the floor. | |
| I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN. | ||
| There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on. | ||
| We can all watch that on C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN. | |
| That was a major C-SPAN moment. | ||
| If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground. | ||
| And welcome forward to everybody watching at home. | ||
| We know C-SPAN covers this live as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We appreciate that. | |
| And one can only hope that he's able to watch C-SPAN on a black and white television set in his prison cell. | ||
| This is being carried live by C-SPAN. | ||
| It's being watched not only in this country, but it's being watched around the world right now. | ||
| Mike said before I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| In our earlier discussion with Zakir Tamiz about his full biography of Charles Sumner, he discussed his differences with Professor David Herbert Donald on the same subject. | ||
| On December the 24th, 1995, Professor Donald talked about his book called Lincoln on the television program BookNotes. | ||
| David Donald died in 2009 at age 88. | ||
| During his teaching career, which he finished as a professor of history at Harvard, Professor Donald was praised for his Lincoln book by historian Eric Foner. | ||
| Quote, it is often considered the best single volume of Lincoln ever. | ||
| It's the most balanced of the biographies out there, said Foner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We discuss author David Herbert Donald and his book, Lincoln, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| And at our table now is Scott Anderson. | ||
| He's the Governance Studies Fellow at Brookings Institution. | ||
| He's also the senior editor and general counsel at Law Fair. | ||
| We're talking about domestic deployment of the U.S. military and the law. | ||
| Just explain first, Scott Anderson, the legal justification the president has used to take over D.C., the D.C. police force. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So the president has taken kind of three different actions related to law enforcement right now. | ||
| He's deploying federal law enforcement officers around D.C. | ||
| He has, as you mentioned, taken over, well, it's a little more complicated than that, but kind of taken over the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. | ||
| And then he has deployed D.C. National Guard troops to the streets of Washington, D.C. Specifically in regard to the police department, Section 740A of the Home Rule Act, which is the statute that provides for self-governance in Washington, D.C., says essentially that the president can request from the mayor the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for various federal purposes for 48 hours or up to 30 days if he sends a notice to relevant congressional committees. | ||
| That's the authority he's relied on in this case for a 30-day period to control the military, although he suggested that he expects Congress to extend it further than that if he sees it as necessary. | ||
| This isn't quite the same as a complete takeover, and that's become a point of tension with Mayor Bowser just today, at least according to media reports for the last 24 hours, where there's been an effort by the Attorney General to appoint someone in charge of the police to basically take complete control of it. | ||
| And the mayor has pushed back saying essentially that's not what the statute says. | ||
| It doesn't say you can exercise control. | ||
| It says you can request services and I'm obligated to provide them and I'm doing that. | ||
| But you don't get to replace my commissioner and you don't get to take complete control of the personnel and other decisions at the police department. | ||
| We'll have to see where that legal fight ends up exactly. | ||
| It's interesting to see it's a real first real pushback from the mayor's office we're seeing in terms of the legal authority of this deployment. | ||
| But it's an interesting point of tension and the mayor certainly has an argument there that maybe the president's authority doesn't go quite as far as he's trying to assert. | ||
| Scott Anderson was just citing the Home Rule Act of 1973 allows the president to take control of DC police for 48 hours if he, quote, determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist. | ||
| 48 hour period can be extended if he notifies a relevant congressional committee or committees and taking control for over 30 days must be passed into law by Congress. | ||
| You were just referencing that. | ||
| So what are the special conditions of an emergency that exists right now for the president? | ||
| What has he cited? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's pretty broadly worded. | |
| I mean, the president is essentially saying there is a crime emergency in Washington, D.C. | ||
| That is, and he's pointed to a variety of statistics that show that there is, in fact, high levels of violent crime in Washington, D.C. That's true. | ||
| Anybody who lives in the district knows that we do have violent crime here. | ||
| It's a reality, as it is in many metropolitan areas around the country. | ||
| All of them, I would most likely posit. | ||
| The issue is what makes it an emergency? | ||
| What's different? | ||
| Critics of what the president's done will say, well, look, we've actually seen violent crime on a downward trajectory if you look at statistics that people use to track these various things. | ||
| The president has taken issue with those statistics, said they're not accurate, but we really haven't seen a robust set of counter statistics at this point. | ||
| The issue here, though, is that when you have statutes like this, traditionally courts give the president and the executive branch a wide, wide degree of latitude in how they interpret it. | ||
| And this statute is not super specific in regards to the qualifications. | ||
| It uses very broad terms about what can constitute an emergency. | ||
| And for that reason, the president is in the position to say, well, if I determine it's an emergency, odds are I'm right. | ||
| And the courts aren't going to go along with it. | ||
| And notably, the mayor's office really hasn't contested that element of it. | ||
| The mayor is providing the services the president is asking for for these 30 days. | ||
| They're picking a fight over a much narrower part of the statute, the question of the degree of control. | ||
| On the 30, if he goes over 30 days and seeking congressional approval, what does that look like? | ||
| Because he would need 60 votes in the Senate, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe he would. | |
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| So maybe a bit more of a reach than he appreciates. | ||
| I believe it requires a joint resolution that would require full enactment by Congress. | ||
| So 60 votes in the Senate to get over the filibuster unless they change Senate rules and a majority in the House. | ||
| That might be a little bit of a reach, but he seems to feel inclined to go for it, at least according to his public rhetoric. | ||
| The challenge there will be for the mayor's office is that if Congress is inclined to go along, they can take apart whatever restriction they want. | ||
| Congress will be enacting new legislation. | ||
| So if they want to say, no, in fact, we are actually going to take back control from in-hand control over to the president of the police force, they can do that. | ||
| They can change the rules of the game. | ||
| They're not limited to the amount of authority granted by the existing statute. | ||
| They can amend it. | ||
| That's the risk factor. | ||
| But it does pose a question as to whether the votes are actually there to take a step like that after 30 days. | ||
| We're talking about domestic deployment of the U.S. military by the president. | ||
| We want you to join us for this conversation this morning. | ||
| We'll take your questions and your comments here. | ||
| Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Also, former military at 202-748-8003. | ||
| That last line, 202-748-8003, can be used by all of you. | ||
| If you don't want to call, you can text at that number. | ||
| Please include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Here is what the president has announced. | ||
| Mobilizing 800 National Guard members, put the D.C. police under federal control, and FBI agents to control parts of the city. | ||
| Now, can the president do this in other cities across the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not nearly as easily. | |
| D.C. is really unique. | ||
| The president has an extraordinary amount of authority around Washington, D.C. generally, in regards to the governing institutions here, so the D.C. National Guard, the D.C. Police Department. | ||
| The statutes that he's relying on for both of those prongs of his strategy just don't exist in regard to other cities. | ||
| And in regards to even the use of federal law enforcement officers, that is something the president has done in other cities. | ||
| But when he does so, he's limited to them enforcing federal law or protecting federal personnel and facilities. | ||
| There's a variety of statutes that allow for that that Congress has enacted. | ||
| That's not quite as big a deal in other cities. | ||
| It can be significant. | ||
| We saw in Los Angeles, but there's just not the density of federal buildings and federal property we have here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| The federal government controls huge swaths of this city. | ||
| And so when you're saying, well, you get to patrol the law, enforce federal law, and secure buildings in Washington, D.C., that gives the federal law enforcement a whole range of things they can do between the parks and federal buildings we have here. | ||
| Not true in other cities. | ||
| What about deployment of the National Guard specifically? | ||
| What allows the president to do that when governors typically have control over the National Guard in their states? | ||
| So does the President also have National Guard? | ||
| Does he have control over the National Guard as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He does here in Washington, D.C., but to a much greater degree than he does in other states. | |
| Washington, D.C. essentially puts the president in what would be the governor's seat for the D.C. National Guard with some more constraints, interestingly. | ||
| So this has been a point of contention. | ||
| Several people have advocated for reform on this point since the 2020 deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., where essentially they've said the mayor should have control of this and not the president. | ||
| But right now, the president still is more or less in control of the D.C. National Guard. | ||
| And the statute says the president can mobilize them for a variety of specified purposes. | ||
| It's not totally a free hand, but he can mobilize them first upon a request by a certain handful of officials in cases where a body of men or a group of people, gangs, are engaged in conduct that violates federal law. | ||
| Super broad terms that you can read really a lot of different ways. | ||
| Or there's another provision that actually says the commanding general can mobilize the National Guard for drills, for exercises, or for other duties. | ||
| And the federal government has long interpreted that provision of other duties to be just about anything. | ||
| We actually don't know, or at least I'm not aware of exactly which of those two prongs of the law the administration is relying on. | ||
| I suspect it might be the latter because I haven't seen a report of any of the requests that are required to activate the former. | ||
| But regardless, the key point here is that the president's got a fair amount of leeway under the statutes, particularly as it's been interpreted by the executive branch for the last several decades, to use the D.C. National Guard with a fair amount of flexibility. | ||
| That's not true of National Guards in the states to the same degree. | ||
| Are there limits on what the military can do and can't do in domestic law enforcement? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, so this is very complicated. | |
| Again, this is a case where D.C. is in a little bit of a different position than a lot of other places. | ||
| Most of the time, there's a law called the Posse Comitatus Act that has been on the books since the late 19th century that essentially makes it a crime for anyone to use federal military officers to enforce the federal federal law, except where it's expressly authorized by Congress or expressly authorized in the Constitution. | ||
| The problem is, is that National Guard personnel aren't always federal personnel. | ||
| Often they are reporting to their governors. | ||
| And when they're reporting to their governors and acting at their governor's direction, they are excused from these obligations because they only apply to federal military personnel. | ||
| Now come to Washington, D.C. Again, D.C., we have a National Guard. | ||
| It is framed like National Guards like other states. | ||
| So when National Guardsmen are acting in their National Guard duty at the direction of the person at the head of the D.C. National Guard, they are actually acting as something similar to a state capacity troops. | ||
| They're not federalized personnel. | ||
| But in this case, they are actually acting at the direction of the president. | ||
| So D.C. National Guard are not bound by the same Posse Comitatus Act limitations that other National Guard troops are if they were to be federalized and act at the direction of the President. | ||
| That gives them a lot more leeway in participating in law enforcement activities. | ||
| We'll go to Mabelville, Rhode Island. | ||
| Mark is watching there. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Mark, your question or comment on the domestic deployment of the military here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| Hi, Mr. Anderson. | ||
| This is obviously a very, very, very, you know, it seems like a very complicated and institutionalized type of way about going for what would be considered the security of the capital. | ||
| Yesterday I was listening to one of the other media sources and they were saying one of the president's advisors had actually used the term that his foreign and domestic policy was similar to absurdist play waiting for a gun. | ||
| And I was trying, after I stopped laughing a little bit, I then realized in horror, wow, that play, if anybody knows anything about it, it's just basically absurdist where everybody's waiting for doom to come along, the impending doom and everything else, and talking about there's the old man on benches and everything. | ||
| So I'm wondering, sir, this just all seems super performative rather than doing anything to ensure our security. | ||
| And after having heard one of those guys use a masterpiece of theater of the absurd to describe our president's actions. | ||
| Any comments, sir? | ||
| That's a totally fair critique. | ||
| I think a common critique we're going to hear of what the president is doing in Washington, D.C., what he did in Los Angeles, and what he may yet do in other places. | ||
| I want to complicate it slightly, this idea of this being strictly theater. | ||
| At least in Washington, D.C. and in Los Angeles, soldiers are really doing something. | ||
| They are amplifying law enforcement efforts or adding them to them. | ||
| Technically, they're not participating in law enforcement in either case, at least according to the views of the executive branch that's being contested in court in California. | ||
| But they are supporting law enforcement personnel by providing security kind of in the, up to the point where the law enforcement personnel are actually doing the law enforcement activities. | ||
| So they will help defend their buildings, help defend the personnel if they're facing pressure from protesters, things like that. | ||
| Lots of things you can contest about that, lots of things to object to that. | ||
| That's having a real impact. | ||
| And if you really are saying, okay, federal law enforcement personnel need to be more effective in their work, that probably is having some sort of impact. | ||
| It's doing something. | ||
| It's helping them. | ||
| We are seeing more roadblocks being manned by federal law enforcement personnel and National Guardsmen in D.C. | ||
| And we're told we're going to see more of those in the next few days, next few weeks. | ||
| The real question is, how much does it really matter? | ||
| How big a difference does it make for the amount of money and for the amount of man hours and resources and personnel that are being spent on this? | ||
| Remember, these are National Guard soldiers. | ||
| The energy, the time, the effort that's being spent on them is usually time spent trying to prepare to defend our country from bigger national security threats like conflict with Russia and China, terrorist attacks, things like that, or addressing what many people more credibly view as national emergencies, whether natural disasters or things like the COVID pandemic. | ||
| All of these are tasks that are really different from what they're being asked to undertake, particularly in D.C. and also in Los Angeles. | ||
| And the real question is, is the actual trade-off going to be significant enough to warrant that expenditure of resources? | ||
| The president said there will be no violent crime left in Washington, D.C. after these 30 days. | ||
| I suspect that's going to be a very, very bold proclamation that he's going to regret issuing. | ||
| I think actually the Attorney General said that specifically. | ||
| I think they're going to come to regret that because it's a really, really hard and practicable problem that they've taken on and taken responsibility for. | ||
| And at the end of this period, people are going to ask, was it all worth it? | ||
| And that's the real question they're going to have to answer. | ||
| Let's listen to the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| He was on Fox News earlier this week, and he was talking about how he sees the National Guard's role here. | ||
| Will the National Guard be detaining Americans on American soil? | ||
| Under Title 32, which is the authorization they'll be using, they have broad latitude, but they're not going to be involved in law enforcement functions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They will be standing right alongside our federal agents like they were in Los Angeles. | |
| They're going to be proactive. | ||
| If you take an action or a shot at them, there will be a consequence. | ||
| So there's a lot of people. | ||
| If a crime is being committed, in other words, and if a National Guardsman sees a crime being committed, then what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They can come alongside and assist law enforcement. | |
| What if law enforcement isn't on the state? | ||
| I will have their back to ensure they can take the necessary action to protect citizens of D.C. and to protect themselves. | ||
| So there's no rogue law enforcement going on from the National Guard, but there's also the application of common sense. | ||
| We're not going to have National Guards just sitting there like this, seeing a crime committed and not do something about it. | ||
| You can help somebody interdict, temporarily detain like we did in Los Angeles and hand over to law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are the types of things that National Guard can be trained to do. | |
| Do you guys have... | ||
| Scott Anderson? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, the secretary is actually wrestling with a really complicated legal wrinkle that comes into play here that's worth addressing. | |
| And actually, he's clearly gotten a briefing from his lawyers and he's trying to wrestle with it. | ||
| He's doing an okay job. | ||
| I think, you know, this is for a non-lawyer, he's handling it. | ||
| The issue is this Title 32 status he describes, is something called hybrid status. | ||
| And it's a unique situation Congress has built into the laws where it allows the federal government to pay for missions that state governors volunteer their National Guard personnel for and to participate in. | ||
| That means those National Guard personnel are technically still under the command of their state governors, but those state governors often said, but follow the orders of this federal personnel. | ||
| So in 2020, when National Guard personnel from around the country were deployed to Washington, D.C., this was the authority used to do this, or one of the authorities. | ||
| Title 32 contains lots of different statutory provisions allowing the president or other authorities to do this in certain specified circumstances that are fairly broadly worded. | ||
| So in this case, he is saying, look, these troops in Title 32 status are being called up by state national. | ||
| They're under the command of their governors, but they're doing a federal mission at our direction with the permission of their governors. | ||
| They're kind of lending them to us. | ||
| And that's the capacity in this sort of role. | ||
| Then he gets in this question about saying, well, they're not actually performing law enforcement functions, but they may detain people and pin people down or do other things as part of their Title 32 mission. | ||
| What he's getting at there is this idea of saying, we're not violating the Posse Comitatus Act because they're not actually doing law enforcement. | ||
| They're just defending law enforcement personnel, defending federal personnel trying to do their job. | ||
| That gets into this another authority the federal government has carved out a use for these sorts of personnel called the protective principle. | ||
| The basic idea is that there's an implied authority the president has to protect federal personnel and property, particularly when they're doing their job of enforcing federal law. | ||
| The problem is that general proposition is well accepted, I will say. | ||
| The problem is we don't have a very clear sense about where the line is between the protective principle and law enforcement action when they are defending law enforcement personnel engaging in law enforcement action in the field. | ||
| And obviously, it's a very flexible spectrum. | ||
| And that's actually what we're seeing challenge right now in court, in federal district court in California around the California deployment. | ||
| They are exactly arguing, well, where is the line and should the line be between what people can do under this protective principle and what they can do under the that actually constitutes law enforcement activity that will be prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act. | ||
| This is the Associated Press this morning. | ||
| New lawsuit challenges Trump's federal takeover of D.C. Police Department as crackdown intensifies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I haven't actually gotten to see this lawsuit. | |
| I saw this headline as I was walking in today, so I'm curious exactly what the basis for it is. | ||
| My suspicion of it is that the statute does say, hey, look, there's certain circumstances where you're allowed to do this. | ||
| It's supposed to be a national emergency. | ||
| And they're going to contest whether that national emergency is actually met because of all the statistics and other information we have suggesting no. | ||
| In fact, crime's on a downward trend in Washington, D.C., even if it is still a very real problem. | ||
| The challenge the plaintiffs are going to have in this case is, again, courts are traditionally very deferential to the president in making these sorts of determinations. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that that deference goes all the way to the president to do whatever they want. | ||
| In the California litigation, we saw a district court judge actually rule against the president on his use of a very similar authority, but not the same statute. | ||
| And then an appellate panel came in and said, no, actually, Mr. President, we're not going to stop you temporarily from using troops until we resolve the merits. | ||
| They stayed the preliminary injunction the district court have issued. | ||
| But they did also say, but this is definitely reviewable. | ||
| And there are legal limits here that the court is appropriate to be scrutinizing. | ||
| You don't have carte blanche under these sorts of statutes to do it, to determine what a national emergency is, and no one can second guess it. | ||
| In fact, we can look at that. | ||
| And that was a panel of, I believe, two majority Republican, I think majority of Trump appointees. | ||
| So they will see judicial scrutiny here. | ||
| There will be a real question. | ||
| And whatever the outcome of the litigation, that puts a lot of pressure, just having to face the questions, the inquiries, take the stand to address the questions of these plaintiffs. | ||
| So we may get some really interesting things out of this litigation, whatever the ultimate outcome may be. | ||
| The AP reports that the District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwab said in a new lawsuit that Trump is going far beyond his power under the law. | ||
| And Schwab asked a judge to find that control of the department, the police, remains in district hands and sought an emergency restraining order. | ||
| Let's go to Jay in Penny Farms, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Jay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good to hear who you're talking about. | |
| I think it's very, very good that he can have the extra people to hold the crime back in these cities. | ||
| He's not going to just do it in D.C. either. | ||
| He's going to go to other states and do it also. | ||
| We need more control in our cities. | ||
| There's a lot of innocent people are dying for no reason. | ||
| And plus, you've got all these immigrants that came in over the border. | ||
| And that's got a lot to do with it, too. | ||
| So it's not only just controlling the minorities or the whites or the people that came over the border. | ||
| They're also trying to keep on what he needs to do to keep control of our country. | ||
| I think it all stems down to the bottom of the rock that Biden came to Call Delanda. | ||
| He's the one that started all this. | ||
| And it's got the American people really upset because of what he did. | ||
| And he ended up taking it out on the guy that got handed the ball and take care of all his mistakes that he made. | ||
| I think Biden should have been court-martialed. | ||
| I think him and his son and his uncle there, I think they should all have been court-martialed instead of him getting away with a pot and they'll ball off. | ||
| Now, Trump's trying to do the best he can to make America great. | ||
| And that's what I voted for. | ||
| And that's what he did. | ||
| He promised that he's going to do what he said he's going to do, and he's doing the right thing. | ||
| All right, Jay. | ||
| Scott Anderson, any thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, you know, I hear you, Jay, about the argument that, in fact, it's a good thing to get some additional support to police departments that are under strain in urban areas. | ||
| And there's definitely an argument there. | ||
| And it's an argument that perhaps even Mayor Bowser is willing to accept. | ||
| Remember, this lawsuit that we're getting word of, the first big pushback, I believe is contesting the efforts by the Attorney General to take over control of the personnel and decisions of the police department. | ||
| The mayor, I said, we're willing to provide you services and support you in your use of the police department generally. | ||
| I think that may reflect the fact that it's okay. | ||
| They may be okay with doubling down and taking some additional resources to fight against crime in these areas. | ||
| And other cities might be too. | ||
| Note, state governors don't actually need the president's permission to use the state National Guard to do this in most corners of the country. | ||
| And sometimes they do. | ||
| Often they don't, because there's a trade-off there, because National Guardsmen aren't really well trained to do this. | ||
| This isn't the sort of thing that they do routinely. | ||
| And police operations are really sensitive, particularly in urban areas. | ||
| You know, you have to do a lot to know your community to do it effectively, responsibly, and in a way that doesn't hurt people who are innocent and restrict them in ways that might be a big problem. | ||
| So it's not, you know, occupying a foreign city in warfare, which itself, by the way, is a very complicated enterprise that doesn't necessarily solve everything. | ||
| In the same case here, just putting more troops on the street isn't always seen as an effective solution. | ||
| The other point I would make about President Biden, I would say, finally crime in Washington, D.C., metropolitan cities, you'll be shocked to learn, existed prior to 2020 and 2021 when President Biden entered office. | ||
| It predates President Biden's whole political career and whole life, however far back that may be. | ||
| We've seen really epidemics of violent crime in Washington, D.C., a place I've lived for just about my whole adult life. | ||
| And it's a recurring problem. | ||
| The peak of it arguably came in 1989, around that period, where we actually saw Congress make an effort to take over law enforcement for a fair relatively brief period that was widely seen as relatively unsuccessful, but reflected how desperate people have become with the city and the level of crime, as well as fiscal management and other issues that they had. | ||
| And we've seen progress since then. | ||
| The real question I think we have to ask ourselves isn't blaming people about what this really, really serious problem of violent crime is in America, lots of urban areas, not just in Washington, D.C. is. | ||
| The real question is what's most successful about combating it. | ||
| And the case that critics of the president will make is that what was being done before was working. | ||
| We were seeing violent crime drop precipitously and has been on the decline for a long time, a really intractable problem that's been around for decades. | ||
| So we shouldn't upset the boat by pretending that jumping in and just putting more troops on the ground is going to be more effective. | ||
| In fact, it might be counterproductive. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's go to Mario in Florida, Independent. | ||
| Mario, it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Number one, I'm supporting Trump on this because I've been in Washington recently and it was terrible there. | ||
| And I brought my Thai non-citizen, and we had to go to Thai embassy to get passports. | ||
| But what I'm hearing, and through the media and everybody else, and including yourself over there, is nobody getting to the root cause. | ||
| The root cause is a cultural thing. | ||
| Most of the crime in D.C. is coming from the black community. | ||
| And that's not a racial thing. | ||
| It's a fact thing. | ||
| And the problem is, is these young people are not being grabbed before they can get to these gangs. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And if you want to stop the crime in Washington, you got to get into those communities, preach having fathers. | ||
| You got to preach all the priests and all the reverends and all, they have to put community centers. | ||
| They got to get these kids before they go out. | ||
| And nobody's really talking about that. | ||
| Now, we're putting a band-aid on this right now, but I understand why Trump is doing it is because he wants people to visit Washington, D.C. and feel comfortable. | ||
| But we have to go beyond that even. | ||
| And the fact is, you've got to get these kids off the street. | ||
| You got to give them another way. | ||
| They got to have better education there. | ||
| Mario, heard your points. | ||
| Scott Anderson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I think foundationally, this question as to whether this is a band-aid effort or doesn't really address the actual roots of these crimes is a fine question to ask. | |
| And I think a lot of critics of Donald Trump and what he's doing in this particular situation are going to embrace a similar line of argument. | ||
| Although I will say I'm not going to co-sign. | ||
| I don't think they would co-sign the idea that this is a problem that stemmed from just one part of our population in D.C. | ||
| I don't think that's fair and I don't think that's accurate. | ||
| But what I will say is that I think it's true. | ||
| We have systematic, in this country, as well as in the city, economic disparity, cultural disparity, a lot of real intractable social problems. | ||
| Those do contribute to violent crime. | ||
| There is a degree of involvement with youth in violent crime, including this latest incident that seemed to have instigated and kicked off the president's actions. | ||
| And I think there is probably a very good argument to say this is a broader cultural societal problem that needs the types of engagement. | ||
| And that critics of what President Trump is doing in this case will say putting more troops on the ground to simply arrest people or install checkpoints doesn't only not get at those problems, it actually could aggravate them substantially because you're making big parts of the city, big parts of the country, feel more marginalized, and you're treating them in a way that you don't treat other parts of the country. | ||
| And that really exacerbates, I think, some of the root problems that some people see in this sort of conflict. | ||
| And I think you're going to hear that narrative play into more critiques of what President Trump is doing as opposed to people supporting it. | ||
| Let's go to Nick, Gaithersburg, Maryland. | ||
| Hi, Nick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead with your question or comment. | |
| I'm going to be pretty blunt. | ||
| I think it's a disgrace what he's doing. | ||
| I think most people countrywide understand and we're leaning farther and farther right in this country. | ||
| And the fact that he's utilizing the armed forces for his terrible things he's doing, you know. | ||
| What matters is what's first and foremost is the Epstein files. | ||
| They need to come out. | ||
| We need to know who's in them because ultimately I feel like there's a lot of people like the Prince in England that is a pedophile. | ||
| So we need to know. | ||
| And the information is, I feel like, priority. | ||
| Okay, Nick. | ||
| Let me go to Eddie, who's in Illinois, Democratic caller. | ||
| Eddie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Thank you for answering my call. | ||
| My question is a straightforward question. | ||
| I wanted to know who was in charge of calling out the National Guard or extra help for the D.C. police in the January 6th insurrection or riot or whatever you want to call it. | ||
| Who was in charge for calling out the National Guard to help the D.C. police? | ||
| Was it an anti-bloom? | ||
| All right, Eddie. | ||
| Well, Scotty, I understand you're familiar with that situation. | ||
| Who can call out the National Guard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a good question, and it's one of the great ironies of this sort of situation. | |
| The same two provisions of law that we're debating here were on the books on January 6th. | ||
| So there is a question here. | ||
| One provision says, okay, the president can react and mobilize the National Guard to help with various law enforcement activities when he gets a request from the mayor for the D.C. Marshal and from one other official who exactly is escaping me at the moment. | ||
| Another provision says, okay, the president can, as commanding or the commanding general appointed by the president, can mobilize the National Guard for a variety of drills, exercises, and other purposes. | ||
| Again, that's been interpreted really broadly to incorporate to encompass a lot of law enforcement-like activities without requiring that primary request. | ||
| The question is: if President Trump can lean on those now, why couldn't he lean on them on January 6th? | ||
| There is an awkwardness there. | ||
| That's a question maybe worth pushing forward insofar as we're hearing this narrative of that the president couldn't do something. | ||
| The president is clearly able to mobilize the National Guard, at least in his view of his authority now in response to an incident of street crime. | ||
| I think it is a genuine contradiction here between the arguments that Hill and Howie was not able to do so in response to riots at the Capitol on January 6th. | ||
| Peter in Rochester, New York, Republican? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'd like to discuss how the U.S. Marines are in a whole different category, that they're not covered under the federal law, and that the Marines can be deployed domestically by the authority of the President, and that Truman historically was going to get rid of the Marines, but they then had a riot in Alcatraz, and he was able to deploy Marines without congressional authority. | |
| And second, the President can't deploy federal troops on congressional property. | ||
| It's a separation of the Powers Act. | ||
| It would be considered a coup or something. | ||
| He can't do that without authority. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, Peter. | ||
| Scott Anderson, is Peter correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So on the first point, it's actually a really well-informed question, Peter. | |
| There was for a long time, the Posse Comitatus Act, because it was a very old law, only specifically referenced certain parts of the armed forces, not other parts of the armed forces. | ||
| The Marine Corps was in a bit of a gray area. | ||
| The executive branch often interpreted this statute to say, okay, well, actually, like it seems to suggest the whole armed forces, but there certainly was a view available to say, well, it doesn't expressly address the Marine Corps, so it doesn't necessarily extend to them. | ||
| Congress did amend the Posse Comitatus Act to encompass the Marine Corps and a variety of other armed forces just in the last few years. | ||
| So that loophole has been filled at this particular point. | ||
| That wasn't true just a couple of years ago, though. | ||
| So a very astute question there. | ||
| In regard to this point about being able to access property on Capitol Hill, I understand this is part of the debate over the January 6th response, and that is maybe a valid point. | ||
| I don't know the law around that particular question well enough to address it. | ||
| I haven't looked into it specifically. | ||
| All I would note also is that a lot of the law enforcement situation on January 6th wasn't just about what was on Congress proper. | ||
| It was about in the city broadly, more proper, in the aftermath and leading up to. | ||
| And so the critiques aren't just focused on accessing Capitol Hill. | ||
| Jane in Georgia, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| This issue is not about safety or crime. | ||
| Donald Trump is obviously trying to detract from his abysmal poll numbers and the coming Epstein storm. | ||
| If he were serious about dealing with crime, he would be working with the existing authorities to provide solutions to the poverty and drug addiction that lead to crime. | ||
| Donald Trump is desperate, and he's using this as a means to deflect from the disaster that he's turning the United States into. | ||
| This is a power grab that is typical of all authoritarians. | ||
| All right, Jean. | ||
| Scott Anderson, final thoughts here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it is a fair critique. | |
| I think it's a line of critique that we're likely to hear from a lot of people that echo something Nick said earlier, that this is a distraction, whether it's from poll numbers, whether it's from economic issues the president may or may not be responsible for, whether it is for the Epstein files, as Nick referenced. | ||
| All these are real possibilities. | ||
| It's a real part of the critique in this case that the president is doing something mostly for show or as a distraction. | ||
| Again, it really gets going to get down to this question of, well, how much does it cost and what are the payoffs? | ||
| And the real question is, what are the advantages that ultimately come out of what the president is doing? | ||
| What steps is he taking to actually improve and address the problem that is the basis for which he's taking this action? | ||
| And that's what we have to weigh his actions against. | ||
| You may prove right and you may prove wrong. | ||
| Again, I think that we really need to try and get down to actual facts and evidence and say, is progress being made on these goals the way the president has promised? | ||
| And if it's not, then we have to ask, was this worth it and was there an ulterior motive? | ||
| Scott Anderson is with Brookings Institution. | ||
| He's also the senior editor and general counsel at Law Fair. | ||
| Thank you very much for the conversation this morning. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| We're going to take a short break. | ||
| When we come back, we'll pick up our conversation this morning on President Trump's trip to Alaska to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. | ||
| He's been in the air for almost 90 minutes. | ||
| He's expected to land around 3 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Ahead of that, we want to get your take on the Trump Putin Summit in Alaska today. | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| Start dialing in. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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| In our earlier discussion with Zakir Tamiz about his full biography of Charles Sumner, he discussed his differences with Professor David Herbert Donald on the same subject. | ||
| On December the 24th, 1995, Professor Donald talked about his book called Lincoln on the television program BookNotes. | ||
| David Donald died in 2009 at age 88. | ||
| During his teaching career, which he finished as a professor of history at Harvard, Professor Donald was praised for his Lincoln book by historian Eric Foner. | ||
| Quote, it is often considered the best single volume of Lincoln ever. | ||
| It's the most balanced of the biographies out there, said Foner. | ||
|
unidentified
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We discuss author David Herbert Donald and his book Lincoln on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| And past precedent nominals. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
|
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This is outrageous. | |
| This is a kangaroo club. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity, Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join political playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| ceasefire this fall on the network that doesn't take sides only on c-span washington journal continues Welcome back on this Friday morning. | ||
| President Trump is on his way to Alaska for that face-to-face meeting with the Russian president. | ||
| President Trump taking off from Washington around 8 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| He's been in the air for almost 90 minutes. | ||
| It's a seven-hour journey for him to Anchorage, Alaska, where he will meet with Vladimir Putin. | ||
| We expect to see the two of them somewhere around 3 p.m. Eastern Time, maybe before that. | ||
| Our coverage will begin around 2 p.m. as we wait to see the president shake hands with the Russian leader. | ||
| They will have a bilat meeting and then they'll go behind closed doors. | ||
| We do not know how long they will be behind closed doors. | ||
| However, the Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that the two of them could hold a news conference, possibly around 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Look for our coverage this afternoon at C-SPAN on C-SPAN right here on this network, as well as online on demand at c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, 2 p.m. Eastern Time, somewhere around that. | ||
| Of course, the times all remain fluid this morning, and we'll see when we get to see the two leaders in Anchorage. | ||
| The President did not talk to reporters when he left the White House or at Joint Base Andrews, but on Air Force One, he did talk to the reporters. | ||
| Jennifer Jacobs, who's a senior White House correspondent for CBS reporter for CBS, summarizes it this way: He'll lead decisions on territory swaps to Ukraine. | ||
| Quote, I think they'll make a proper decision, but I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine. | ||
| I'm here to get them at a table. | ||
| Security guarantees for Ukraine are possible with Europe and other countries, but quote, not in the form of NATO. | ||
| And good respect level on both sides with U.S. and Russia, he told reporters. | ||
| And then, quote, I noticed he's bringing a lot of business people from Russia, and that's good, is what the president had to say to reporters. | ||
| Now, Caitlin Collins said on him bringing business people from Russia, he said that that's good. | ||
| I like that because they want to do business. | ||
| But he went on to say, but they're not doing business until we get the war settled. | ||
| Let's go to calls. | ||
| Larry in Los Angeles Independent. | ||
| Larry, what's your take on this summit today in Alaska? | ||
|
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I believe that the president and all civilized countries should make every effort to move Russia out of Ukraine. | |
| Putin is a bloodthirsty war criminal. | ||
| So, do you agree with the president then heading to Alaska today? | ||
| He said it'll be a success, this summit, if it leads to a second meeting where the Ukrainian president is there at the table as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think cowardice in the face of aggression never works. | |
| It leads to chaos and disaster. | ||
| How is it cowardice to have this summit? | ||
|
unidentified
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The summit itself is not the problem. | |
| The problem is lack of forceful, united effort to force the Russians out of Ukraine. | ||
| All right, Larry's thoughts there. | ||
| An Independent in California. | ||
| Mike's a Republican in Jarrettsville, Maryland. | ||
| Mike, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning, Greta. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good to see you on here. | ||
| I had a quick question for C-SPAN about your position there. | ||
| And I wanted to know: I see like John is on for a couple days. | ||
| You have Mimi on, she's on for a couple days. | ||
| And then you're on, I think you were on yesterday. | ||
| I was just wondering if at the end of my question or comment, I was wondering if you could perhaps comment on that, tell us about your scheduling a little bit, a little insight on C-SPAN. | ||
| It would be great. | ||
| Okay, so here's the thing. | ||
| Listen, I've been studying Russian, the Russian language and culture and history for since I was 18 years old. | ||
| I'll be 65 in December. | ||
| You know, my family was Polish, and when I went to college, they said, well, what language do you want? | ||
| And I said, well, what do you got? | ||
| So the priest went through, the Jesuit priest went through all the list of everything. | ||
| I know I couldn't get them to repeat it twice, so I chose Russian for some reason. | ||
| I thought it sounded a little like Polish. | ||
| So I didn't know any Polish. | ||
| But anyway, so I'm learning Russian. | ||
| I'm in school. | ||
| I'm in college. | ||
| You know, I even get on this co-op program to study at Hopkins for a year. | ||
| Okay, everybody's headed school trip, college trip to Russia. | ||
| And of course, I would like to go. | ||
| We didn't have a lot of money, you know, so I'm talking to my grandmother about going. | ||
| My Polish grandmother forbid me to ever go to Russia. | ||
| She said, you speak Russian so well, they will actually keep you. | ||
| No, you can never go. | ||
| So my point is this, Greta. | ||
| I'm hoping that today, you know, it would really be nice for Russia to open up itself to business and we could trade and we could do a cultural exchange, an intellectual exchange, and language and all that. | ||
| You know, it's just really a shame. | ||
| But I'll tell you, I'm hopeful, but I'll tell you, I just, I know the Russian, I mean, I guess I know Putin too well. | ||
| And I think it's going to be, I think he's, Trump really has a tough road to hoe. | ||
| And, you know, I'm hopeful, but at the same time, I want to be realistic about it. | ||
| And anyway, and Mike, I'll just let you know about hosting. | ||
| Most of the hosts here of the Washington Journal have other responsibilities here at C-SPAN. | ||
| We wear a couple hats, not just hosting. | ||
| And so it just, when we are here, it depends on our other responsibilities. | ||
| I'm going to go to Larry in Idaho, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| We're listening to you, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I really like to keep it simple. | |
| I really think that Trump is just on his way in every action he does to become a dictator. | ||
| He idolizes Putin and the way Putin runs his country. | ||
| It's a real slippery slope that we're putting military, just like the Gestapo did in Germany into the cities. | ||
| You know, it's a real slippery slope. | ||
| The American people need to wake up and realize what Trump is up to. | ||
| And that's about all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Larry, what Trump is up to. | ||
| BBC says this is what Russia wants from the summit. | ||
| Territorial control of parts of eastern Ukraine. | ||
| Ukraine to back off its efforts to join NATO. | ||
| An end to U.S. and EU sanctions, and a potential restart of nuclear talks with the United States. | ||
| So compare that, what the BBC says right there with what we showed you earlier, Jennifer Jacobs' post on X about what the president said on Air Force One this morning. | ||
| Here is Jennifer Jacobs' post summarizing the president's comments to reporters. | ||
| Take a look at that while we go on to Debbie in Pennsylvania, independent caller. | ||
| Debbie, morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Greta. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| You cut me off the first segment. | ||
| You said my name in the state, and then you jumped to Michael, Republican, and I waited. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I don't know what happened there. | ||
| Apologies. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's all right. | |
| I think this thing is with Trump and Putin is a bad idea and a waste of time because two weeks ago on BBC news they showed on there that India was sending missiles over to Russia in spite of the ceasefire. | ||
| And nobody in the United States on the news was saying anything about it. | ||
| And so I called into the White House and the senator and the news station to let them know. | ||
| And still, nobody has said anything about it. | ||
| And then the other day I saw on the news that Putin was at his military base and looking over some weapons. | ||
| And I don't know if they were supposed to be like small torpedoes or what, but they weren't, you know, big missiles, but they were definitely military weapons. | ||
| So I don't know if that was something that India just sent to Russia or not. | ||
| And then the fact that toward the end of last week on the news, a reporter asked why are they going to Alaska? | ||
| And I don't know if it was Trump that said it or who said it, but they said that because Putin didn't want to get shot down. | ||
| And I thought that was kind of odd to say a comment to be made like that. | ||
| All right, Debbie, they are headed to Alaska. | ||
| Both the President of the United States and the Russian leader. | ||
| Take a look at the map there on your screen. | ||
| You can see the proximity of Russia to Alaska, some of those territorial islands off of Russia, just miles away from Alaska, over 50 miles between the two mainlands, according to reporting from CNN this morning. | ||
| Where they are headed to is the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson military base there on your screen. | ||
| It's located just north of Anchorage, Alaska, headquarters for the Alaskan Command, the Alaska-NORAD region, Joint Task Force Alaska, the 11th Air Force and more military. | ||
| 3,376 miles from Washington, D.C., 4,343 miles from Moscow. | ||
| So Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is the location for today's Trump-Putin summit. | ||
| Barre in Georgia, Democratic caller, what do you think of this summit? | ||
| It's your turn. | ||
| It's your turn, caller, in Georgia. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, this is about the year. | |
| Thank listening to my call this morning. | ||
| I just want to say, Trump doing a good job. | ||
| I wonder how much he's going to say in Alaska. | ||
| All right, Anthony in Minneapolis Independent. | ||
| Anthony, before we hear from you, that caller saying how much will he sell Alaska for? | ||
| CNN reporting that Alaska was sold to the United States from Russia in 1867 for $7 million. | ||
| Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call, Ms. Kretta, as well as good morning to your C-SPAN listeners. | ||
| I believe that a lot of people are failing to look at the actual reason that Putin and Trump are meeting today. | ||
| It goes back to recent threats from what were termed threats from Dmitry Metviev in recent weeks there and how the president responded to those. | ||
| His own press secretary has described this as a listening exercise. | ||
| Therefore, he's there to receive information. | ||
| However, he's spending it this morning that he's looking to do some talking or a discussion. | ||
| What a lot of people are also failing to see is that weeks ago, he posted a picture and also publicly came out about Obama, former President Obama, in handcuffs and how he was in the Russian collusion and how that involved in a cycle around his first term in the voter interference or all of that distraction. | ||
| That's the key thing is that this is a distraction from him gaining information from Putin when it's already been publicly disclosed that there was no interference there. | ||
| What I'm also wanting to show is that this is also a further distraction from the Epstein case from Gaza, from the troops being deployed around the country, from the economy hardship, economic hardship the country is currently facing, from his failure to get any tariff agreements from all these countries that he stated he was going to be able to do. | ||
| And so that's where my last question comes. | ||
| What does Vice President JD Vance do? | ||
| Because they were hard on Kamala Harris about the border, but show me what he has actually done. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I enjoy your weekend. | ||
| All right, Anthony, a Minneapolis Independent Caller. | ||
| The president early this morning before he left the White House posted on Truth Social these two words, high stakes, all capital letters, and three explanation points. | ||
| Now, Alaska has been home to the location of previous summits. | ||
| Take a look at this. | ||
| In 1971, the president met with the Japanese emperor in Anchorage. | ||
| In 1994, President Reagan met Pope John Paul II in Fairbanks. | ||
| And in 2021, Biden administration officials met with Chinese counterparts in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| David in Cookville, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| David, morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| My statement or question two would be, number one is, I noticed you posted something that what Russia was expecting out of the meeting and what they're expecting out of the peace deal or whatever. | ||
| And I've noticed, and everybody should note, that for the last few years, neither country, Ukraine or Russia, has had a free or fair election. | ||
| So actually, we're not really talking about the nations. | ||
| We're talking about two large egos, Zelensky and Putin, that they are what they are wanting, not their countries. | ||
| I'm certain the people of Russia and the people of Ukraine want this war to end. | ||
| You know, they're losing money, they're losing lives, thousands and thousands and thousands of lives, excuse me, in a senseless conflict. | ||
| And I'm thinking that with enough pressure from their own people that I'm sure is coming right now, there may be peace on the horizon. | ||
| I'm hoping anyway that that will happen. | ||
| And I'm sure this Mr. Trump, President Trump, and his wisdom will point that out, as well as the economic benefits of this for their countries. | ||
| And they can see that, that hopefully there'll be enough pressure from their own country to make them come to the table and do the right thing. | ||
| And now my question that I was going to ask is, do you think, and in your own opinion, not necessarily C-SPAN, but your own opinion, that the tariffs, according to all the things we've seen, are working? | ||
| Because from what I can see, it looks like they're getting more money into the nation now than we're spending. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| And David, I'll just tell you, the hosts of this program moderate the conversation. | ||
| We don't give our opinions because we want to facilitate a conversation between our viewers in Washington, whether that's a lawmaker, a member of the administration, journalists, analysts, professors, etc. | ||
| So we stay neutral in this chair. | ||
| We don't give our opinions, and the reason why is because we want to facilitate the conversation. | ||
| And it's also part, obviously, of C-SPAN's mission as well to present a neutral, present the debates that are happening here in Washington in a neutral way. | ||
| I'm going to go to the New York Times. | ||
| What does Putin want from a summit? | ||
| On a larger scale, they report. | ||
| The summit corresponds to Mr. Putin's worldview that great powers should determine their own spheres of influence, much as Stalin met with President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain in Yalta in 1945 to carve up post-war Europe. | ||
| Mr. Putin believes that Russia's vast nuclear arsenal still makes it a world power, even though Russia produces very little that the rest of the world wants apart from energy. | ||
| On nuclear weapons, take a look at these numbers from the Arms Control Association. | ||
| The total U.S. nuclear arsenal stands at 5,225. | ||
| Deployed is 1,419. | ||
| For Russia, their total nuclear arsenal, 5,580, and Russia deployed 1,549. | ||
| Mary Lou, Newington, Connecticut, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Mary Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Can you imagine this conference take this meeting taking place under Biden? | |
| If Trump had won that 2020 election like he should have, I don't think that Putin would even have gone into Ukraine. | ||
| For four years, we had a man in that White House who did not know what he was doing or what was going on. | ||
| And I don't understand. | ||
| Now, it's four years later. | ||
| The Ukrainians and the Russians have been fighting, and Putin has got a lot of territory. | ||
| But if Trump had won in 2020, I don't think this war would have even started because Putin would know that Trump would not put up with it. | ||
| Okay, Mary Lou. | ||
| And the president made that same argument. | ||
| He has repeatedly made that same argument. | ||
| Listen to what he had to say in the Oval Office yesterday when he was marking the 90th anniversary of Social Security. | ||
| He talked with reporters and he was asked about today's summit. | ||
| We're going to see what happens with our meeting. | ||
| We have a big meeting. | ||
| It's going to be, I think, very important for Russia. | ||
| It's going to be very important for us. | ||
| And important for us only that we're going to save a lot of lives. | ||
| Look, we have, you know, we're not paying any money, as you know, to Ukraine. | ||
| We're supplying equipment. | ||
| We're being paid 100% plus for that equipment by NATO. | ||
| And I got NATO up from 2% to 5% of GDP. | ||
| They now have billions of dollars. | ||
| NATO is a very rich group of countries, and we make the best military equipment anywhere in the world by far. | ||
| And they're buying our equipment, and they're paying 100% for the equipment, 100%. | ||
| In fact, they owe us about $2 billion now. | ||
| They're going to send a check. | ||
| Another one was sent recently for a billion dollars. | ||
| So we're not spending any money anymore. | ||
| Biden gave $350 billion, got nothing for it. | ||
| And if you look, and by the way, we also signed a rare earth deal where we get, you know, years of rare earth to get our money back, the money we spent. | ||
| But what I'm really doing this for is to save thousands of soldiers a week. | ||
| You have Russian soldiers, you have Ukrainian soldiers, and then you'll have missiles dropped into various cities and towns in Ukraine. | ||
| And they're losing seven. | ||
| Last week they lost 7,251 people, mostly soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. | ||
| I'm doing it for that reason. | ||
| We have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow. | ||
| I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. | ||
| We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not. | ||
| I don't know that it's going to be very important. | ||
| We're going to see what happens. | ||
| And I think President Putin will make peace. | ||
| I think President Zelensky will make peace. | ||
| We'll see if they can get along. | ||
| And if they can, it'll be great. | ||
| You know, I've solved six wars in the last six months, a little more than six months now, and I'm very proud of it. | ||
| I thought the easiest one would be this one. | ||
| It's actually the most difficult. | ||
| President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday, you heard him giving numbers on casualties and death toll in this Russia-Ukraine war, giving the most recent numbers. | ||
| In June, the Guardian put this together in their reporting that that month Russia's wartime toll of dead and wounded reach a historic milestone. | ||
| According to the British Ministry of Defense, more than one million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24th, 2022. | ||
| The estimate aligns with a recent study by the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, which puts Russian military deaths at up to 250,000 and total casualties, including the wounded, at over 950,000. | ||
| Ukraine has suffered high losses as well, with between 60,000 and 100,000 personnel killed and total casualties reaching approximately 400,000. | ||
| And this is the map from BBC's reporting on the territory where Russia has taken over or controls currently inside Ukraine. | ||
| It includes the 2014 takeover of Crimea on the bottom of your screen. | ||
| Yesterday, we also heard from Vladimir Putin. | ||
| He in Moscow yesterday, in meeting with top Russian leadership at the Kremlin, praised Mr. Trump's peace efforts and signaled a possible U.S.-Russia nuclear deal. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's what he had to say yesterday. | |
| To tell you about the stage we are at with the current American administration, which as everyone knows is making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis, and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict in order to create long-term conditions for peace between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole. | ||
| If by the next stages we reach agreements in the area of control over strategic offensive weapons. | ||
| President Putin, yesterday in Moscow at the Kremlin, he is also on his way to Anchorage, Alaska to meet with President Trump. | ||
| Again, we will have live coverage starting around 2 p.m. Eastern Time right here on C-SPAN, online on demand at c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN now. | ||
| You can download it on the go wherever you'll be today to catch the latest of this Trump-Putin summit that'll be taking place in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| We'll of course include your phone calls as well this afternoon. | ||
| The two will have a bilateral meeting mid-afternoon before they go behind closed doors. | ||
| We don't know how long the negotiations or the talks will last between the two leaders and their staff, but the reporting is from the Wall Street Journal this morning that there will be a news conference that follows sometime around 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Stick with C-SPAN today for our coverage of the summit in Alaska. | ||
| Ken in Washington, D.C., Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Longtime listener, first-time caller. | ||
| First, just want to say that I commend you and your guest on continually remaining apolitical and just presenting the facts and sharing with statistics and things like that. | ||
| I know that a lot of callers called in earlier and said they were partisan or this or that, but I just'm not seeing it that way. | ||
| And I just wanted to make that comment. | ||
| Regarding the meeting today, I feel that we would have been in a lot better position to work out a deal had we already put those sanctions in place. | ||
| Without those sanctions being in place, we're kind of behind the curve, I believe. | ||
| And I just wanted to share that thought. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| All right, Ken, you're echoing what was written in the New York Times today that most presidents meet, would have scheduled this summit after concessions had been made by the Russian leader. | ||
| That's what they wrote in the New York Times this morning, their analysis. | ||
| Adriana in Crosby, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Ken. | |
| Adriana in Crosby, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Can you mute your television? | ||
| Go ahead and talk to you in your phone. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, Anne, sorry. | |
| No worries. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I believe that he's not there to sell Alaska or anything like that. | ||
| He's there to try to really find an end to the war peacefully between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| As we know, Ukraine was funneled with money through the last presidency, which doesn't solve anything. | ||
| That's if the money even went to Ukraine. | ||
| But he's in NATO. | ||
| He's in Alaska. | ||
| It's closest to Russia. | ||
| People just use common sense and stop all the fear-mongering and just listen. | ||
| So, like, it's something that needs to be done. | ||
| And I think that the presidency before that couldn't do it without, I don't know the word, insulting or just being the bigger person to sit down and have the conversation with Putin. | ||
| Even Trump's last presidency, he did the same thing with Putin. | ||
| And then, you know, they tried to do the whole Russian collusion thing just because he spoke to the man. | ||
| But it just, it needs to stop. | ||
| And the tariffs are working. | ||
| It's bringing money in. | ||
| He's using it as a negotiating tool, which a lot of people before that, presidents before that, never did because they weren't businessmen. | ||
| He's a businessman first. | ||
| How he made his empire. | ||
| So he uses that to help the country, the American people. | ||
| All right, Caller. | ||
| I'm going to jump in and I'll just share with our viewers because you mentioned that President Trump in his first term did meet with the Russian president. | ||
| And those previous meetings took place in July 2017 at a G20 summit in Germany. | ||
| And then November of that year at the APEC summit in Vietnam. | ||
| He also met with Mr. Putin at the Helsinki Summit in July of 2018, a private G20 meeting in Argentina in November of 2018. | ||
| And then their last meeting was of June 2019 at a G20 summit in Japan. | ||
| Today, the two will meet face to face again in Anchorage, Alaska. | ||
| On aid to Ukraine from the United States, the number, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, is $195 billion total aid from the U.S. to Ukraine. | ||
| And those are the months and the years where the money was distributed to Ukraine. | ||
| Let's go to Ryan in Florida, Independent. | ||
| Your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| It's Ryan, like the late Brian Sandberg, people player just died. | ||
| First of all, just thank you for what you do. | ||
| I appreciate all the work that C-SPAN and you and your guests do in keeping just a neutral and impartial conference for people to talk over. | ||
| I wanted to just give my opinion where I feel this administration and Trump in particular has been rather unfortunately weak and feckless when it comes to their defense of Ukraine. | ||
| Ukraine was a sovereign, there is a sovereign nation that was invaded by Russia. | ||
| And a lot of the framing to me often feels to neglect the fact that the Ukrainians are people under siege right now. | ||
| And I think a lot of Americans lose that perspective when they think about what we would do as a country if we were invaded. | ||
| And I think just the constant delay of tariffs and constant just pushing back of deadlines has really been ineffective for the president. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm going to go to Kelvin, who's in Cincinnati, Ohio, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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Kelvin. | |
| Yes, to me, it's kind of sickening listening to the public in the sense that they don't realize that Trump is his clip and all his faults. | ||
| Do they not realize that in the late 70s and 80s, Trump was borrowing money from Russian banks and from Putin? | ||
| Him and Putin, it is Putin. | ||
| America would be straightforward if they're getting alert on Trump for all the stuff that he and Putin were doing. | ||
| All right, Kelvin, it's difficult to hear you. | ||
| Reminder to you. | ||
| The next time you call in, you got to mute your television. | ||
| Rex, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Oh, we lost Rex, so we will leave it there. | ||
| As we said, the president on his way to Alaska to meet face to face with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Our coverage begins sometime around 2 p.m. Eastern time. | ||
| Today, we expect to see the president and the Russian leader together at the top of their meeting. | ||
| And you can watch our coverage here right here on C-SPAN, on C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, or on c-span.org. | ||
| And the two gentlemen then will go behind closed doors. | ||
| We are expecting a news conference that happens after the meeting. | ||
| And then the president will head back to Washington. | ||
| All of that coverage right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Stay with us today as we cover the Trump Putin Summit in Alaska. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'll look now at some live coverage coming up on C-SPAN today. | |
| First, at 10:15 a.m. Eastern, it's day two of the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference, where journalists and advocates discuss liberal democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. | ||
| Coverage begins with a panel discussion on restricting cross-border immigration. | ||
| That's followed at 11:30 a.m. Eastern with a look at strategies for resisting authoritarian ideology. | ||
| And then at 2 p.m., President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss Russia's war with Ukraine. | ||
| We'll have coverage of their arrivals and any comments to reporters. | ||
| Also, Cannon Institute Deputy Director Jennifer Wistrand will join us in studio for analysis of the summit as it unfolds. | ||
| You can also watch live coverage of these events on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| This August, tune in to C-SPAN for highlights of our America 250 coverage. | ||
| Join us as we continue to explore the American story through the voices, sites, and stories that shaped it. | ||
| Give me liberty or give me death! |