CSPAN - Washington Journal 08/28/2025

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Aug. 28, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:30

Washington Journal 08/28/2025

Participants

Main

john mcardle

cspan 33:22

stephen moore

08:33

trymaine lee

24:44

Appearances

amy klobuchar

sen/d 01:02

jacob frey

d 01:17

jason riley

00:32

tim walz

d 01:39

Clips

kyle bailey

00:11

steve moore

stephen_moore 00:03

wayne paul

00:22

Callers

bill in north carolina [2]

callers 00:03

jefferson in virginia

callers 00:11

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Live.
		And then Stephen Moore, longtime economic advisor to President Trump, will talk about recent economic actions by the Trump administration, including the federal government's direct investment into semiconductor manufacturer, Intel.
		And journalist and author Tremaine Lee talks about his documentary, Hope in High Water, a people's recovery 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
		Washington Journal is next.
		Join the conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		It's Thursday, August 28th, 2025.
		The flags over the United States Capitol here in Washington, just like the flags over all federal facilities today, are at half staff out of respect for the victims of yesterday's shooting at Annunciation Catholic School located south of downtown Minneapolis.
		Two children were killed in that attack.
		14 other children and three adults were wounded.
		This morning, we'll begin by getting your reaction to yesterday's tragedy in Minneapolis.
		Phone lines are split as usual by political party.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
		If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
		Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on XITs at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
		It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
		And a very good Thursday morning to you.
		You can go ahead and start calling in now.
		This is the front page of the Star Tribune out of Minneapolis, the main paper there in that city.
		Two children killed, 17 wounded in shooting at South Minneapolis Church.
		The picture, mourners at a vigil last night in Minneapolis.
		This is the Associated Press story about yesterday's shooting.
		The story notes, a shooter opened fire with a rifle Wednesday through the windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis and struck children celebrating Mass during the first week of school, killing two wounding 17 people armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol.
		23-year-old Robin Westman approached the side of the church and shot dozens of rounds through the window towards the children sitting in the pews during Mass just before 8.30 a.m.
		Police said the shooter then committed suicide.
		The shooter was identified, the Associated Press notes, as a transgender woman who, according to her social media posts, harbored a deep hatred for President Trump and religion and repeatedly wrote and said flamboyantly hateful things.
		The children who died were eight years old and 10 years old.
		That's the story of the Associated Press.
		That's the news yesterday out of Minneapolis.
		We're taking your phone calls this morning, getting your reaction as you're calling in.
		This was Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry after the tragedy yesterday.
jacob frey ▲ ● ▼		Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now.
unidentified		These kids were literally praying.
		It was the first week of school.
		They were in a church.
		These are kids that should be learning with their friends.
		They should be playing on the playground.
jacob frey ▲ ● ▼		They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence, and their parents should have the same kind of assurance.
unidentified		These are the sort of basic assurances that every family should have, every step of the day, regardless of where they are in our country.
jacob frey ▲ ● ▼		I'm so deeply saddened and I'm so sorry to the families that I know are suffering right now.
unidentified		My ask is to everyone, stand by them, love them.
unidentified		These families have forever been changed and we've all been changed with them.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry yesterday, also speaking yesterday, was the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		He offered these remarks after the tragedy yesterday.
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		Speaking with all the people here and grateful to our federal partners, Senator Klobuchar speaking early this morning and receiving a call from President Trump, who was with his leadership team of the Attorney General and the Vice President, expressing their deep condolences amongst the horror that happened and an offer to provide the support to the folks here in Minnesota of what's needed.
		So there's a lot of cameras here, and unfortunately, we have been through these types of things.
		They will be gone at some point, all of you, you have to.
unidentified		You have to do your jobs.
		But what happened here today will not be gone.
		Minnesotans will not step away.
		We'll stand with this community.
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		We'll redouble ourselves to do the best we can to understand what we can do to prevent any parent from having to receive the calls they receive today from any school dedicated to children having to respond to a situation that,
		as we said, is unthinkable, but that's all too common, not just in Minnesota, but across this country.
		It's Minnesota's day to day, and it's my strongest desire that no state, no community, no school ever experiences a day like this.
		So I ask the rest of folks around the country who are watching, keep us in your thoughts and prayers, but also keep us in the thoughts for action.
unidentified		Keep us in the ideas that we can work together.
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		And it's on these days like this, I think, and I hope we can hold on to it, we are unified as a community.
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		Everybody across the country today is part of the Annunciation Parish, and they're with those families.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, yesterday, as we said, President Trump ordered that flags around the country be lowered to half staff on federal facilities at military bases at all federal facilities.
		That's the scene this morning out front of the White House at his proclamation yesterday, the president saying, as a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on August 27th in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by the authority vested in me, I hereby order that the flags of the United States shall be flown at half staff.
		This is Thursday, August 28th, and we're getting your reaction to yesterday's shooting in Minneapolis at that Catholic school.
		And again, our phone lines are split as usual by political party for you to call in.
		We'll start with Jonathan in Rhode Island Independent Line.
		Jonathan, good morning.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Good morning, John.
		Can you hear me?
		Yes.
		Well, this is a tragedy.
		This is an American tragedy.
		My views on, quote, gun rights or, quote, gun control are actually rather nuanced.
		I do not believe that there is an absolute right to bear arms as far as the Second Amendment is concerned.
		I don't believe guns should be banned.
		But the fact that it is a state-by-state issue and that it seems every almost every day we watch the news and we see these tragedies, these horrors.
		For whatever reason, whatever the motive, whatever the grievances, there are too many guns.
		And yet, yes, there are those that say it's not the guns that kill people, it's people that kill people.
		And I'll be honest, I am very pessimistic that anything will be done for a very, very long time in this country about controlling these assault-style weapons.
		I remember in the 1990s, they passed an assault weapons ban when Bill Clinton was president.
		And, you know, the lobbyists couldn't take that.
		And it's not, it is not purely a partisan thing.
		I am an independent.
		I'm kind of an old-fashioned, socially liberal New England Republican.
		Well, if I was once a Republican, but I now consider myself an independent on gun issues.
		I would just hope that one day we can fix certain things at the very minimum that what do they call that?
		The NIC system.
		So you can have the federal systems that at least see these ghost guns, the Saturday Night Specials.
		It's ridiculous because, you know, we need to have a more civil culture.
		And I'm so heartbroken when I see these things, and I just hope that something can be done.
		But I'm not optimistic, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is in Savannah, Georgia, line for Republicans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Richard, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		I've watched C-SPAN for probably since 1979, 1980.
		These definitely don't get any easier, but we have a mental illness problem.
		Of course, guns are a problem, but someone has to pull the trigger.
		I think we have a huge media problem.
		I sit here all the time, and I don't watch that much anymore, but I used to.
		But the Trump derangement syndrome, the hatred, the spewing of hate, calling Donald Trump Hitler and a pedophile on this show, I've watched it, and it's allowed.
		In Minneapolis, they're having the Democratic National Convention that ended yesterday in Minneapolis where the shooting occurred.
		And I saw Tim Waltz spewing hate on Donald Trump, just hate, hate, hate.
		And then my son showed me a video of the shooter.
		And he went to his bedroom with a clip of bullets saying kill Donald Trump.
		And this child, I know he's 23, but he lived in a house with a lot of children and parents.
		And probably up in Milwaukee, all he heard was hate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Richard in Georgia.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Richard, were you done?
unidentified		No, something happened to the phone.
		Go ahead and finish your thought.
		I'm just saying I would love to have the media stop the host of Donald Trump, the Trump deranger syndrome.
		Stop getting clicked.
		Stop wanting more money.
		It's terrible.
		And we need to do it on both sides.
		Donald Trump needs to stop saying stuff about Gavin Newsome.
		Gavin Newsome needs to stop saying stuff about Donald Trump.
		This is America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point.
		That's Richard in Georgia.
		Speaking of President Trump, along with ordering flags to be flown at half-staff, he was updating the country via TrueSocial amidst the tragedy.
		This is yesterday before 11 a.m. The president saying, I've been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
		The FBI quickly responded, and they are on the scene.
		The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation.
		Please join me in praying for everybody involved.
		To Rob and New York, Independent.
		Rob, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I, too, am a believer in the Second Amendment.
		I personally own three shotguns.
		That's all I own.
		But I was going to ask C-SPAN to do the country a favor.
		I believe it was in December of 1976 that Chief Justice Warren Berger gave an interview on public television.
		If you guys could look that interview up and replay it for the country, because he had something very specific to say about the Second Amendment generally, but something about the NRA in particular.
		And it was the first time that a chief judge of the United States Supreme Court went on public television and spoke both about the Second Amendment and the NRA.
		And thank you for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Rob in New York.
		This is Mary out of Mission, Texas.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		In Texas, I think we will see that the gun shows are the crowds at the gun shows are going to pick up because they're worried after each school shooting that their gun rights will be taken away.
		Nobody is going to take all your guns away.
		Just take those automatic war guns away.
		And 18-year-olds being able to buy the mental ill people, we need to do better background checks.
		We have tried everything.
		Nothing is working.
		The other thing is with schools, RFK, when are we getting rid of him?
		I mean, him on vaccines.
		Look at measles here in Texas.
		Now, the other thing, my grandchildren are in schools in an air base in England.
		Thank God.
		There's no guns on that airbase.
		And I know when they come back, they're going to be scared to go to school.
		Think of how many kids in this country that are scared to go to school now.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mary, what are you going to tell them if that's the case?
unidentified		I don't know.
		I don't know.
		What can we tell them?
		Oh, you're safe.
		Yeah, you live in Minneapolis.
		You're in a church.
		Oh, no.
		You'll be safe.
		It doesn't matter where you are.
		You will be safe.
		Yes.
		And we have an absenteeism problem in schools already.
		So we're going to have, what are we going to do?
		The Congress, both the Democrats and Republicans, need to think this thing through.
		You know, we had a ban on those assault weapons.
		Bring it back.
		You know, 20-year-olds being able to have an assault weapon is not it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mary in Texas.
		It was FBI Director Kash Patel providing real-time updates yesterday amid the investigation following the shooting.
		This is what he posted yesterday afternoon.
		The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.
		There are two fatalities, an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old, in addition to 14 children and three adults injured.
		The shooter, he writes, has been identified as Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman.
		The FBI will continue to provide updates on our ongoing investigation with the public as we are able.
		Kash Patel, the FBI director, yesterday on his ex-page.
		This is John in Scheiner, Texas, Republican.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is a tragedy.
		We can pray for the children and their families.
		But once again, I hate to say this.
		The left is going after our guns while not addressing the main corporate.
		I had a chance to read this guy.
		He was a man.
		He's a boy.
		We thought he was a girl.
		And his manifesto, he said he was very depressed.
		He wanted to die.
		He thought he had cancer from vaping.
		He was one messed up kid.
		And a lot of the reasons he was messed up because the Democrats and left keep promoting this craziness of transgenderism.
		So they refuse to do that, talk about that.
		But instead, if you're a boy and you think you're a girl, you have a mental problem.
		If you're a parent and think your kids got that problem and you don't do something about it, then you're the problem.
		But what's worse, what's the worst of all, you have politicians promoting such tragedy with these kids who need our help instead of promoting it and saying, oh, it's okay.
		It's okay to boy putting boys and girls in locker rooms.
		It's okay to have boys compete against girls.
		And that's driving, what's driving this mental illness problem.
		Let's face the fact.
		Boys are boys, girls are girls, and we got to stop this madness.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's John in Texas.
		This is from the Washington Post reporting on the tragedy yesterday.
		The assailant's name was legally changed from Robert to Robin about five years ago because Westman, quote, identifies as female and wants her name to reflect that identification.
		According to court records, the police have disclosed a few details about the three weapons that Westman carried.
		He was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol.
		A lot of attention to those YouTube videos posted by the shooter since taken down by police and federal officials.
		But from the videos that have been viewed, the shooter references suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts.
		Doesn't lay out a clear motive for the attack.
		The Washington Post notes later in one of the videos, Westman shows 10 magazines filled with ammunition and multiple firearms.
		On the side of one magazine, Kill Donald Trump is written.
		Others carried slogans and sayings that were anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-Hispanic, anti-God.
		Some of the reporting from the Washington Post on the investigation into the shooter.
		This is Sue out of Pennsylvania, Line for Democrats.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yeah, I did some teaching in the past.
		My daughter's a teacher in France at a Catholic school.
		And when they got the kids together, my daughter said, Well, what is your first impression of America and the schools in America?
		This is a couple years ago.
		And the number one thing they said was shooting in schools.
		We don't want to go to America.
		All the kids are getting shot in school.
		And I've talked to people in other countries.
		And that's the perspective they have on this country.
		I don't mean to be shaky, but every time I see this, I get so upset.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sue, what was your response when they said that about American schools?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you say to that?
unidentified		I don't know what to say.
		And my daughter doesn't know what to say.
		She's been living there for 10 or 12 years.
		I only have one grandson.
		He lives in France.
		And I'm almost happy he's living there, that he hasn't he's only three, that he doesn't have to deal with this.
		I mean, this is just an ongoing thing.
		And a lot of my relatives, they're all retired teachers, but I just can't believe this.
		When I grew up, we had things to deal with in school, like bullying, but nothing like this.
		This is horrific.
		This is like something out of a nightmare.
		And it just really gets me upset to see this every day.
		And that's all I have to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Sue and Pennsylvania.
unidentified		I do have one other comment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Sue.
unidentified		You know, they're cutting back on medical things.
		And a lot of these people have mental health issues.
		Well, they should be pouring more money into mental health issues and pouring more money into the school so that kids can have this.
		There's kids that are poor that can't deal with this.
		And I don't think any of this is being addressed.
		It's just being shoved under the carpet.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Sue in Pennsylvania.
		This is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal today.
		One of their editorials, Shooting Madness in Minnesota, the alleged killer of children at church fits a too common profile, they write.
		One subject, though, that deserves debate is a more aggressive identification and forced treatment, if need be, of the mentally ill.
		The editorial board saying most school shooters have been disturbed young men who also should not have access to firearms.
		The mental health lobby, they write, and gun rights advocates may protest, but a society serious about protecting its most vulnerable needs to have this debate.
		That's how they end their editorial today on the shooting.
		Yesterday, it was Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar who was on CNN and talked about what she thought members of Congress could do.
		This is what she said.
amy klobuchar ▲ ● ▼		And there's one thing we can do to make this better and stop the angry rhetoric, start working on solutions that we know have worked in other countries or could work here.
		And it's not just one size fits all, but we've got to be willing to do it.
		And especially some of my colleagues who've been afraid to do it.
		We did do one bipartisan bill for community violence, including with Chris Murphy and Senator Cornyn and a number of other people.
		It included my provision on domestic violence and people that have been convicted shouldn't be able to go out and get guns.
		We've done these things, but there's much bigger things we could do when it comes to background checks and assault weapons and having more national standards in place and being stricter about getting these guns out there.
		And if a bunch of kids praying in a church and shot down through the windows of that church and locked into that by a madman isn't enough to make people move, I just don't know what it is anymore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Senator Amy Klobuchar, that was yesterday on CNN taking your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal, getting your reaction to that school shooting yesterday.
		It took place in a church, the church connected to Annunciation Catholic School.
		It's just south of downtown Minneapolis.
		Two children killed, 14 more injured, three adults injured, the shooter dead by self-inflicted gunshot wound.
		Robert, Indiana Republican, go ahead.
unidentified		I tell you what, C-SPAN, why don't you get a subject on?
unidentified		All this is prophesied in the Bible.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		And people don't realize that we're almost at the Battle of Armageddon.
unidentified		It's not only this, it's drugs.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		Guns hasn't got a damn thing to do with it.
unidentified		It's the people.
		Look at the Democrats.
		They will not help the Republicans do anything.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Robert, you think we're in the end times?
unidentified		Each other down.
unidentified		Get together.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		These children that are supposed to be men or girls and they are ever crazy such and we stegalize same-sex marriage, that's our problem.
unidentified		We took God out of this country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's Robert.
		This is Ronald, Oyster Bay, New York.
		Democrat, go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, John.
		I think you know something about Oyster Bay, New York.
		I've had the pleasure of speaking with you before.
		In any case, I'm not a gun owner, and I don't care to be, but I do respect the Second Amendment.
		And I'd like to point out something that I don't think has been mentioned, that in Switzerland, a neutral country, well, Switzerland is armed to the teeth, and average Swiss citizens have guns, and on a per capita basis, they have even more guns than we have in the United States per person.
		But it's just about unknown for there to be incidents of this type in Switzerland because the culture there is very different from the culture here.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And also what's different about the culture that creates this problem, Ronald, that keeps happening.
unidentified		I think that there's more of a sense of right and wrong that is taught to Swiss citizens from childhood.
		And I think there's a spiritual element that they have, which we unfortunately have lost so much of, which is causing this type of problem and other problems in this country.
		And as has been mentioned also, that mental health, and I want to emphasize that with certain medications that are prescribed for mental health problems like depression,
		well, if you read, if you open up and you read the insert in the package of some of these medications, the insert indicates clearly that these drugs can cause violence against oneself and against others.
		And this hasn't been pointed out to people that these medications and the so-called mass shootings are actually a factor that has that's important that should be emphasized.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Robert in New York to gun ownership per person by country.
		This article is a few years old at this point.
		It's the CBC out of Canada, but they have the United States as the country with the most guns per person in the world.
		Their estimate at the time of this article, again, this was six or seven years ago, 88.8 guns for every 100 residents.
		Yemen coming in second with 54.8 guns per 100 residents.
		And then there's Switzerland, what you were talking about, 45.7 guns per 100 residents.
		The CBC out of Canada with that report.
		This is Deborah out of Salem, Massachusetts, Independent.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, thank you for taking my call.
unidentified		Should I take it off speakerphone?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm hearing you just fine.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, I took it off the speakerphone.
		I want to start with one of the Supreme Court Justice is Anthony Scalia.
		I was interested when he started talking about it, sounded like he was thinking about limiting these types of guns that can shoot a lot of shots per minute.
		And I was thinking back to our Constitution.
		It's supposed to be flexible.
		And in the beginning, I don't think the framers envisioned these guns.
		Those guns they had back then, it would take how many minutes just to stuff it and get it ready to load in one shot.
		And so I think that that's one thing we have to consult.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, Deborah, we've reached that point.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I mean, automatic weapons are very heavily controlled and regulated.
unidentified		Not as much as they could be.
		I think one of the things is it has to be a mindset by Americans.
		Why do we need those?
		I mean, what I see is fear being pushed into the arms of the right, so to speak.
		I mean, I listen to the people that identify as on the right, and they sound fearful.
		They sound fearful of the left.
		They sound fearful of transgenders.
		They sound fearful of a lot of things.
		And why are they fearful?
		I mean, no one's going to take their guns away.
		You know, I grew up in South Dakota.
		I had guns as a kid.
		My dad taught me how to shoot.
		We went hunting for pheasants.
		It's very much a respectful sort of thing.
		And we cleaned the guns, we put them away.
		We knew the difference between a toy gun and a real gun.
		I don't think there's that respect for guns nowadays that there used to be a lot of people.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, when you say no one's going to take their guns away and you say there's a lot more that could be done on the regulation side, then so what are you saying?
unidentified		Okay, well, let's go here.
		Is that let's see what's happened.
		We banned the automatic weapons, and then what happened?
		It was allowed to lapse, right?
		So it lapsed.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Deborah, you're talking the assault weapons ban.
		Automatic weapons, something where you hold down the trigger and it just keeps shooting.
		Those are still very much heavily federally regulated.
		But I think you're referring to semi-automatic weapons where it's one shot for every pull of the trigger.
unidentified		Yeah, whatever.
		I don't really care what it's called.
		To me, it's all the same because it seems like these people can just shoot these guns.
		They can get these guns pretty easily.
		But going back to Scalia, I think he was trying to understand that the framers saw that we could change this.
		But nowadays, what I see is the right seems fearful that all their guns are going to be taken away.
		And yes, some of the far left get into that.
		But when I'm thinking about all of these regulations that have been allowed to lapse, you know, up here in Lewiston, Maine, I think it was a couple years ago, we had a young man who was in the service who had some mental health issues and was allowed to get weapons.
		Why was he allowed to get weapons?
		Well, the very first law that President Trump passed in his last legislative session 10 years ago was one to weaken the law so people with mental health issues could get guns easier.
		We have the bump stocks.
		Didn't they just say, hey, you don't need the bump stocks?
		It seems there's always a weakening of the gun laws.
		But people talk about mental health issues.
		And the one thing I have noted in all of these mass shootings, aren't they mostly white men, white boys?
		Is it not white men and white boys that maybe have the mental health issues that need to own all these guns?
		Why do they need hundreds and hundreds of guns in the House?
		I don't understand why we allow people to own all of these guns.
		They're addicted to them.
		They just have to have their guns.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So amid all of this discussion yesterday, Minnesota is a state that does more than a lot of other states when it comes to controlling guns and a state with red flag laws when it comes to those with mental health issues or in crisis trying to obtain a firearm.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What specifically do you think could have been done to prevent this?
unidentified		To prevent this young man?
		Well, I think nowadays we all do the same thing.
		We ignore it.
		We all just mind our own business.
		We don't talk to our neighbors anymore.
		We don't get involved.
		We are taught not to get involved.
		And if we put more National Guard on the street, we're going to stay in our houses and we're going to be more fearful.
		And I think we're going to have more violence because people are going to get more scared.
		You know, hate and fear has been taught for a number of years now.
		And I'm not going to call what side does it because a lot of people call in here and spend most of their time spieling hate towards the other side.
		And that's all they do.
		They spend their entire time blaming the other side.
		It's something that, you know, I honestly believe that we could probably be accomplished if we had a lot more women in Congress.
		I think there's a lot of posturing in Congress.
		I think there's a lot of caving in.
		I don't think they're honest at all with their constituents.
		And I think it's men.
		I think it's some sort of male ego that makes them spiel on and on with a bunch of lies and makes it impossible to get something done.
		They're influenced by the lobbyists.
		I mean, the NRA has influenced quite a bit of this when it comes to how they handle things because they get money from these lobbyists.
		And it doesn't matter what side it is.
		And it really doesn't.
		They're not honest with their constituents.
		I do think a senator like Klobucha is trying to be.
		But when it gets back to the thoughts and prayers, that's not going to help us any.
		And what I see out in one more thought.
		And when I see out there in Minneapolis, it makes me think back to Sandy Hook.
		And it makes me think back to when Alex Jones spieled his lies and kept saying that this was fake.
		Now that's not going to help us either.
		And he's a big Trump supporter, and that's all I have to say.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Deborah in Massachusetts.
		When it comes to gun laws in Minnesota, every town, the gun control advocacy group, has their rankings of states with the toughest and weakest gun laws in the country.
		Their states that they note as extreme risk laws, states with extreme risk laws, the red flag laws that we were talking about.
		This is what they write.
		Minnesota's had success in passing gun safety policies, including passing laws requiring background checks for all gun sales, an extreme risk law, and laws blocking access for domestic abusers under restraining orders.
		The state does have relatively low firearm violence, they noted in this research report, with a gun death rate below the national average.
		Of course, this report coming before what happened yesterday.
		But you can take a look at everytownresearch.org and look into the gun laws in your states and other states around the country.
		This is Neva in Oregon.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Another sad day happening with the shootings in America.
		My question is, how much meds are these young people on that are trying to intertrance, going into a man or woman, vice versa?
		How much meds are they on?
		And how much meds have been checked out to make sure they were okay?
		I have a friend working with a trans person right now.
		This person is sick a lot, can't go to work.
		Right now, this person's in a state psych ward, going to be let out, and probably be going back again.
		This person has been working there for quite a while, and they have to keep doing this.
		And they can't fire them because they can't work because they're sick, and they're scared to death to say different pronouns for fear of being sued.
		This is a sad day where we have people that we pay for their medicine on our tax dollars to make them be whoever they want to be.
		This is a day that has to be stopped.
		I want to know how much money are the pharmaceutical people getting from the taxpayers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Neva in Oregon.
		This is James, Greenville, North Carolina.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, James.
unidentified		Okay.
		I'm listening at all this gun violence in this country.
		And we can thank the Republican Party for two more kids being killed this morning because they have advocated for these automatic weapons to be put on these streets.
		We have, I get you gave the numbers earlier about which country has the most guns per capita.
		I didn't hear it all, but I believe that the United States have over 100 and some guns per person.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In that report, it was close to 100, but I've seen other reports that have it higher than that, James.
unidentified		Yeah, about 125 I heard before.
		Why do we need all these guns?
		The Republican Party had advocated for gun right laws in this country for decades.
		And every children don't even have a chance to understand what life is about are gone from some foolish.
		And y'all try to put it on, they're trying to put it on mental health.
		The mental health is in the Republican Party Congress.
		We can stop this today if they wanted to.
		Take these guns off the street.
		Killing people.
		There could be a law that said that if a person uses a gun against a human being that without it being self-defense or defending their kids or their property, they should get the same punishment.
		They should face a firing squad.
		Republicans, you need to get off your butt, pass the law to take the automatic weapons off the street.
		And I think that will do this country a lot more, will be better off.
		Take the guns away.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's James in North Carolina.
		Mark is just across the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia.
		Morning, Mark.
unidentified		Good morning to you, sir.
		You know, these tragedies, everybody wants to blame everybody, you know, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Independents.
		You know what?
		How about the parents?
		How about blaming the parents of these kids that are screwed up?
		You know, when I was coming up, my mother and father made us responsible for everything we did.
bill in north carolina [2] ▲ ● ▼		And if we did something wrong, boy, we got an ass whooping.
unidentified		You know, today it's not like that.
		Where's the parents?
		They didn't know that this kid's messed up.
		They didn't know that, you know, it's just the blame game.
		How about the parents?
		Let's boil it right down to where it needs to be the parents.
		Messed up parents raise messed up kids.
		That's the problem here.
		Not guns.
		Guns shoot people, but it takes a human being to pull the trigger.
		You got a kid who doesn't know if he's a man, woman, or whatever.
		And the parent, where are the parents in this?
		That's my question.
		You can make all the laws.
		You can do this.
		You can do that.
		You can do the other thing.
		Let's boil it right down to the parents, the home.
		Put the responsibility right where it needs to be instead of blaming everybody else.
		That's what everybody does in America these days.
		That's why America is screwed up.
		There's no responsibility, no blame.
		Oh, well, you know, I can't be, I'm a man, but I can't be a woman, so I'm going to go kill some kids.
		Put the blame, you know, more men, they say pass more laws, pass, you know, get them more mental health.
		Mental health starts at home, just like everything else.
		That's all I have to say about it.
		It's a tragedy.
		We see it every week.
		We see it every month.
		I want to know when they're going to do, you know, this is the greatest country on earth.
		We can't allow messed up kids to screw it up.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Mark on the independent line.
		A couple callers have brought up the shooters' transition from male to female and the reporting on that as part of this story.
		It was Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye yesterday who said the trans community should not be scapegoated for this incident yesterday.
		This is Jacob Fry.
jacob frey ▲ ● ▼		Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity.
		We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone.
		We should be operating from a place of love for our kids.
unidentified		Kids died today.
unidentified		This needs to be about them.
jacob frey ▲ ● ▼		This needs to be wrapping our arms around these families with every bit of love that we can possibly show.
		And I know that our Minneapolis family and well beyond is prepared to do exactly that.
		And so my message to everyone out there is, again, these families are experiencing some acute pain right now.
unidentified		But don't just think of these as somebody else's kids.
unidentified		Think of your own.
jacob frey ▲ ● ▼		Let's make sure that we're acting now to not just say it's never happening again, but ensure it doesn't.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jacob Fry yesterday speaking to reporters after the shooting, one stat that's cited by the New York Times and they're reporting about yesterday's tragedy in Minneapolis, talking about school shootings in this country in the year 2025.
		One database that tracks it, noting that the killing at Annunciation Catholic school represented the 146th time that a gun had been fired at a K through 12 school so far in 2025.
		That database shows a surge of guns being fired in schools starting just after the pandemic.
		Steve in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
		Go ahead.
		You're next.
		Republican line.
unidentified		Thank you, John.
		I want to answer your question that you asked a fellow a few callers back about are we in the end times?
		Absolutely, man.
		All you got to do is read the Bible.
		It tells you in Peter 1 and 2.
		It tells you in Revelations.
		Are you there?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm there, Steve.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Bring me to yesterday's tragedy.
unidentified		That's sad that it happened, but I hate to tell you this.
		It's going to get a lot worse.
		We're in the birth pains, and it's going to get a lot worse.
		So people need to get ready.
		True Christians, you need to remember not to let this stuff get to you.
		We're going to be okay.
		But it's just all about evilness and good and evil.
		And the guy talking about the parents and all that, he's absolutely right.
		That's where the problem is.
		Kids don't get their butt busted like we did when we were growing up.
		And I'm absolutely fine.
		Guns and the whole nine yards.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Steve in North Carolina.
		This is Joe, Fort Worth, Texas.
		Line for Democrats.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I was calling because of, I think it's President Paul and the GOP and Fox News and some of the Republic parents.
		When we were growing up, we all got along.
		We played with Mexican kids, white kids, black kids.
		We all got along.
		The Republic, some of the Republic parents, they tell their kids, don't play with blacks, don't play with Mexicans.
		And then when they grow up, they listen to somebody like Trump and the GP and they listen to Fox News.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So Joe, bring me to yesterday's tragedy and what you think.
unidentified		And they tell them about guns.
		And then what they do, they grow up, they get these guns, and they're mad because what they've been taught.
		And then they go in there and they shoot innocent little babies all the time.
		Just think about it.
		Mostly are the 20-year-old Republic white young mans that go, they'll go across state just to kill for no reason at all until they stop with these guns that the Democrats have been trying to get the Republic to sign something to stop with these guns for about almost what 15, 20 years, and the Republic just would not stop.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Joe.
		This is Michael in Pennsylvania, Independent.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, you know, have the Democrats lost their mind.
		This previous guy says it's a Republican that shot these kids.
		It wasn't.
		It was a transgender liberal Democrat that did that.
		We have targeting gun law.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I haven't seen any reporting on the political party.
		I do know from the reporting that the magazines that were shown in the Facebook video or YouTube, wherever it was posted, on one of the magazines was written, kill Donald Trump.
		But, you know, there's still a lot to learn here about the shooter.
		And I don't know if he was registered with the political party or she was registered with the political party.
unidentified		Would have done that.
		I don't think the Republican would have done that.
		The Democrats want to support crime.
		They want to support MS-13 gang members.
		They want to support transgender people in women's sports.
		Okay?
		And this previous scholar, has he lost his mind?
		Donald Trump has got nothing to do with it.
		Donald Trump is trying to protect their country.
		He's cleaning up the streets of D.C.
		Okay?
		Now, I do agree that we don't, every family doesn't need to have 80-plus guns.
		I had probably about two rifles and three handguns, and I sold two of my rifles back because I don't need an assault rifle to protect me.
		I really don't.
		Okay, so I think you have to find a balance where Democrats and Republicans have to come together and find a resolution.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Michael, what Donald Trump, what's a balance in your mind?
unidentified		My balance, I would say that, you know, why do people need assault and automatic rifles?
		They don't.
		Why do they need the bump?
		Those are all military equipment.
		We don't need to, general civilians don't need to have access to that kind of weaponry.
		Okay, you want to buy a gun?
		Buy a handgun.
		Buy a semi-automatic rifle that you want.
		But why do you need to have more than?
		Okay?
		I think it should be limited, limited.
		But on the flip side, you can't just go out there and blame the president.
		Oh, he's the one responsible for this.
		And this guy was obviously a coward.
		Okay, if you want to fight against Donald Trump's policies, get involved with politics.
		But going to a Catholic church and shooting up little kids, I don't see the bravery in that.
		Okay.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Michael in Pennsylvania this morning.
		Show you a live shot of Union Station here in Washington, D.C.
		The flags there, just like the flags at all federal facilities at half-staff.
		And speaking of Union Station, the caller was talking about Donald Trump cleaning up D.C. were his words.
		This is the story today about Union Station in D.C.
		The Department of Transportation plans to reclaim management of the capital's Union Station rail subway and bus hub as part of Donald Trump's efforts to increase control of Washington and fight crime and homelessness encampments.
		USA Today notes that Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the move yesterday after the president took control of the police department and mobilized National Guard troops to Washington, including at Union Station.
		The department, which already owns Union Station, is renegotiating a cooperative agreement with the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation and Amtrak, which leases the station.
		The federal government renewed control of the station, which Duffy said has been neglected for decades.
		Quote, we're going to make the investments to make sure that this station isn't dirty, that we don't have homelessness in Union Station.
		Not a power play.
		We've always had it, but we think that we can manage the property better.
		Sean Duffy's quote about Union Station.
		There is Union Station this morning live shot here in Washington, D.C., just down the street from where we are here on Capitol Hill.
		Got about 10 minutes left in this segment.
		This is Joey out of Marietta, Georgia, Republican.
		Thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I believe you asked a previous caller about what he thought about the end times, and I believe that you have previous callers say a little bit about that.
		And let me tell you this: as a Christian, we could see up front, clear, as simple as you could possibly see all the signs about the end times.
		This country has lost its morality, and we are falling down a path that might not be of no recovery.
		We have a two-party system in this country, and one party has been sinful with lies.
		They're manipulating people to think, and they're passing these laws that are corrupting their minds.
		Our children are being manipulated in our schools, and these politicians, they're just sinful people who are passing sinful laws.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joey, what's up?
unidentified		That's what they're clearing down.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's a law that's corrupting people's minds?
unidentified		Oh, my God.
		I mean, to ask a question like that is so unbelievable.
		You can look at every newspaper in every city in the United States, and you will see laws and policies about the morality of this country being eroded.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Joey, what's a law in Marietta, Georgia that is corrupting people's minds?
unidentified		Just here in Georgia, you could see how the corruption is so upfront.
		What our politicians are passing laws about that you have to protect and you have to honor, you have to obey these transgenders, and you have to do this and do that.
		It's ridiculous.
		We have to understand when something is wrong, you can't support it.
		You can't stand by it.
		You have to love the person and hate the sin.
		And this country has a pottle with that idea.
		We love our people.
		We love each other, but we have to be honest with each other and say, this is wrong.
		When you say that a man could have a baby, this is simple wrong.
		And when you have children listening to that rhetoric, how in the world do you want them to respond?
		These are kids that are listening to adults that are saying that it's okay to put a temp on in a male's bathroom.
		Come on, give me a break.
		These children are lost, and they're lost because we have elected officials and we have the media pushing these crazy, sinful policies and ideas that's corrupting our country.
		We are a Christian nation.
		We will found it under Christian values.
		And until we get back to those Christian values, this country will tear itself apart.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Joey in Georgia.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Ross in Westport, California.
unidentified		Hey, thanks for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Ross.
unidentified		I just wanted to say that I believe that every policing agency in America, large or small, should have a permanent gun buyback program.
		It could be paid for in a number of ways.
		This is really a war or peace kind of issue.
		And I would also say to President Trump, if you're really interested in the Nobel Peace Prize, check it out because this is the kind of thing that could really get it for you.
		So if you're listening, and I know you like C-SPAN or any of your people, now to pay for this, you could have tax, you could do it through taxes.
		In other words, taxpayers could have a certain percentage of their taxes go specifically towards that.
		The other way to do it would be to have the manufacturers chip in a little bit.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And so, Ross, this idea is to get some of the guns off the street.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you say?
unidentified		I mean, obviously, the culture is saturated with guns.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So what do you say to folks who say if somebody wants to commit a crime with a gun, they will find a way to get a gun?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How does a buyback program?
unidentified		We all know that this is true.
		And as a culture, we have to look deeply at ourselves.
		The solution, I think, is, again, a probability thing.
		If someone wants to do a crazy thing like this kid yesterday, they're going to do it.
		But the less access that people have, you know, the gun permanent gun buyback program, that would be my thing, because it would just put fewer guns out there.
		It's like Chris Rock said, give the guns away for free, but charge $6,000 per bullet.
		I mean, you got to think about this in several different ways.
		There's no one solution.
		But policing agencies, in Oakland, I'm from Oakland.
		Every time they have that program in Oakland, they run out of greenbacks.
		If people could designate some of their taxes towards that, or businesses could designate, then that would go a long way to help out in the long run.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Ross in California.
		This is Deborah out of Ohio, Independent.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hi.
		Good morning, everybody.
		You know, I've been a nurse my whole life, working in emergency rooms.
		We've seen every one of these shooters before.
		What changed was the HIPAA laws.
		They tightened them.
		All you have to do is have a conversation with people, and you're going to figure out real quick the triggers that cause these kind of things.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, help me with the HIPAA laws and the point that you're getting to there.
unidentified		Well, the HIPAA laws, privacy laws, that you can't tell anybody anything.
		We'd see these people come in the emergency room, and you ask them questions, oh, are you safe at home?
		Or are you depressed?
		They all say no, every one of them.
		But if you have a conversation with them, you know, they brought in because they fell down on their head because they were drunk at a bar.
		And the guy will tell you, well, my wife left me.
		She ran off with my best friend and I lost my job two weeks ago.
		Huge triggers.
		These are huge, huge triggers that stress people.
		You know, I'm losing my house.
		All these things.
		Or kids, this transgendering and stuff.
		They need a lot of mental health.
		You know, you've got to find out if it's hormonal or if this is really what they believe since they were born or whatever.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Debra, this isn't done anymore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is it mental health red flag laws then that family members, and you're saying people in the medical field should be able to raise red flags and say this person?
unidentified		So if someone came in and they were a vet and they did something stupid and things like that happen, my wife died, I'm losing my house, I lost my job, I'd call up to the VFW.
		Hey, we've got one of your buddies down here and we need some help.
		Or we'd call, you know, ask them if there's a priest or somebody or religion or friends or family we could call.
		We're not allowed to tell family members and call the VFW or something like that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You can't make those calls anymore.
unidentified		I mean, they would have to say, I need help.
		And to the threshold to say someone is a danger to themselves and others, I mean, they basically got to say, I'm going to kill myself or, you know, things like that.
		People don't say that usually.
		But just having a conversation with people, we can tell that they need help.
		But because of the stringent laws on privacy, we can't.
		Unless it's blatantly, they come out and say they're going to do it.
		That never happens.
		And that's really all I had to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, before you go, did that happen?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Has that happened recently for you that somebody walked out?
unidentified		We're not working anymore?
		But it happened all the time in the emergency rooms.
		Believe me, the doctors, the nurses, we've seen all these patients that have done these things.
		We've seen them all before.
		And when they tightened the HIPAA laws, I mean, we'd call a doctor and say, hey, your patient's here.
		He can't drive anymore, believe me.
		Or something, you know, and we'd call their friends or whatever and say, hey, can you go to their house?
		I don't know if they have guns in the house, but can you take them?
		And we work with the police.
		All the friends or family or their members up at the VFW or something would say, sure.
		And basically the patient says nothing because he knows he needs help, but they're afraid to say it because they don't know what's going to happen to them.
		And for a doctor and a nurse to reach that threshold to say, oh, something is wrong that we've got to repair them to?
		Who are you going to report them to?
		Call the police, and the police have a high standard threshold to take somebody's guns away, too.
		Unless somebody says and you have actually family members and everybody else there at that time saying take their guns, it's not going to happen because it's just like you can't even have a conversation with anybody anymore.
		You can't call their family members because of privacy laws.
		You can't call their buddies, you know, for veterans and stuff like that.
		You can't do this anymore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, thanks for talking to me.
unidentified		All right, bye-bye.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just a minute or two left.
		Try to get a couple more calls in here.
		Mark Viana, Virginia, Republican, thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Thank you.
		Okay, I'll be brief.
		So a couple things.
		You have to be careful when you refer to a female are terms that refer to sex, not gender.
		Sex and gender are not the same thing.
		This is a horrible tragedy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I tell you what, Mark, you're going in and out.
		So I'm not sure we have time to get that fixed before we run out of time here.
		Franklin, here in D.C., Independent, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, just quickly, I was a senior in 2007 at Virginia Tech when that shooting took place.
		And watched all these, you know, at that point it felt rare, but I'm sure a lot of people listening today probably have a closer proximity to shootings, events like this than any of us would probably venture to guess.
		But I think the thing that just occurs to me is, you know, what's changed between now and then, you know, the issues have changed.
		The politics have changed.
		The hot button issues have changed.
		But, you know, what was really different then is there was a sense of shared humanity that we don't have anymore.
		And I know time's running short, so rather than trying to expound on all of them, I would just ask people to, you know, as we go through these issues day after day on Washington Journal or anywhere else in our political discourse, well, what's the issue that really matters to you where you actually care about somebody else's life?
		Whether it's Gaza, whether it's abortion, whether it's fill in the blank.
		Everybody just wants to run to their corner and yell about whose fault it is or get their talking points out.
		But what's the thing that really motivates you to care about somebody else's life?
		And until we actually do, these things like this are totally pointless to talk about because we're never going to do anything about it.
		It's not about politics.
		It's not about money.
		It's not about religion.
		It's about us deciding to do something about it.
		It's always been within our power to do something about this and to fix all the other things in our society.
		But the issue is we are in our little camps.
		We're split into a million different in-groups and out-groups.
		And until we get out of those corners, things like this will continue to happen forever and ever and ever.
		So ask yourself as you go through the next news week, what issue do I really care about where I can see the humanity and the other person on the other side of this?
		It used to be easy to answer that.
		These days, it's harder and harder.
		And I just think that's within all of our power to just step back, realize that any one of us could be a victim of any one of these issues and find the common ground in our common humanity to solve these things.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Franklin, before you go, you mentioned you were a senior when that tech shooting happened in 2007.
		Was there a time after that shooting that you thought this issue would be fixed?
		And what does an incident like yesterday do to you personally when you hear about it when it's suddenly all over the news 18 years after the tech shooting?
unidentified		Yeah, I have to tell you, I mean, immediately after tech, I felt like there was momentum.
		There were real questions being asked.
		There were, you know, if you recall, there were lawsuits.
		There was litigation.
		There was a real national conversation about what went wrong.
		We took a real look at how did this individual get these guns?
		How could we fix those laws?
		Tim King is governor.
		Not great movement, but there was incremental movement, which felt like in the right direction.
		It felt like in the months and years to come, maybe there would be some momentum and that would keep up.
		Obviously, that wasn't the case.
		And when I see something like yesterday and I hear all of this nonsense on the calls this morning, it's devolved into just such a culture war that it's what does it do to me?
		It's just depressing.
		I mean, it's just, I mean, I honestly, I would say in the intervening years, I've tried to tune a lot of it out because of exactly what I just tried to express.
		It doesn't matter.
		Of course, these lives matter.
		Of course, these families matter.
		But what the hell are we even talking about this for?
		It doesn't matter to anybody.
		If it mattered, we'd do something.
		But instead, we're all delighted to turn this into a food fight and get our little talking points out, point fingers.
		Until we can get past that, we're so far from talking about the actual solution to these issues.
		It just feels like one great big noise.
kyle bailey ▲ ● ▼		And obviously, feel terrible for everyone affected by this, but there'll be another one tomorrow until we all decide to get our heads out of our own rear end.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Franklin, thanks for talking through it this morning.
		Franklin's our last call in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around.
		Plenty more to talk about this morning.
		A little later on today, we will talk about the 20-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina coming up next, though.
		We'll focus on economic issues.
		We'll be joined by Steve Moore for that conversation.
		Stick around.
		Steve Moore with the Committee to Unleash Prosperity right after the break.
unidentified		Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A.
		Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley, author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that the racial preference policies of the 1960s and 70s have had an overall negative impact on the success of black Americans.
		There are racial differences in America, in our society, cultural differences, ethnic differences.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		But when it comes to public policy and how the government treats us, treats the population, no, it should not be picking winners and losers based on race or treating people differently based on race.
unidentified		It's been a disaster.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		Whether the effort was under Jim Crow to elevate whites or the effort was under racial preferences to elevate non-whites, it's been a disaster.
unidentified		You know, people like to say that diversity is our strength in America, but I disagree.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		Our real strength in this country has been to overcome our racial and ethnic differences and focus on what unites us as a country.
unidentified		That has been the strength of America.
		Jason Riley with his book, The Affirmative Action Myth.
		Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
		You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
		This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation.
		From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet.
		Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story.
		Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system.
		Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life.
		Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food.
		Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience.
		The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future.
		America's Book Club, premiering this fall only on C-SPAN.
		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And we're glad to welcome back to our desk economist Steve Moore, a longtime advisor to President Trump on economic issues, syndicated columnist, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
		I want to start with the news that the U.S. government is going to take a 10% stake in the chip manufacturing company Intel.
		What are the economic implications of that?
		And is this a good deal for Americans?
unidentified		No, it isn't.
unidentified		And the federal government should never give money to corporations.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		It's a terrible idea.
unidentified		It becomes corporate welfare.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		The government does not do a good job of picking winners and losers.
		We should have learned that over the last 30 years with Salindra and Fisker and the solar power companies.
		And so many of these things that the government has invested in, the California high-speed rail system, have just been boondoggles that have lost a lot of money for taxpayers.
		So it's not appropriate for the federal government ever to bail out companies.
unidentified		We have a vibrant semiconductor industry.
		NVIDIA is one of their major companies, a trillion-dollar company.
		So, no, we shouldn't do this.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		It is privatization in reverse.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Instead of the government selling off assets, it would be buying assets.
unidentified		So I think this is a very bad idea.
		And I'm a Trump guy.
		I admire a lot of what Trump is doing, but I don't like this idea.
		And we should not be giving money to companies.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Did President Trump consult you at all before?
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I have not talked to him about this particular question.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Because he said on his True Social page, this is a great deal for America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		He said that Intel and chip building is fundamental to the future of our nation.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So I think it's important for people to understand, you know, we have lived through an internet digital age over the last 30 or 40 years.
unidentified		And it was really driven by, and by the way, the United States is completely dominant in the Internet age.
		All of the major companies in the world, whether it's Google, whether it's Apple, whether it's Meta, whether it's Amazon, were all spawned here in the United States.
		And we made a decision back in the early 1990s under Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress that we were going to allow this industry to be like the Wild West.
		The government wasn't going to subsidize it.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		It wasn't going to tax it.
unidentified		It wasn't going to regulate it.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And boom, we have completely dominated Europe and the Asian countries in that.
unidentified		We should allow that to happen with artificial intelligence, with robotics, with the microchip industry.
unidentified		No, we don't want the government to be subsidizing that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Does a 10% stake in Intel mean that Intel now can't fail?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Because the USA has to be able to do that.
unidentified		That's a good question.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can't fail.
unidentified		Well, the question is whether the government would allow it to fail.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		You know, companies go through a lifespan just like we do.
unidentified		So companies go through growth phases, and then sometimes they grow old and sometimes they die, and that's the appropriate thing to allow happen.
		So I don't think this is going.
		And by the way, one of the things if you're a free market guy like I am that I worry about is if the government takes some kind of ownership stake in the company, is it going to dictate ESG policies?
		You have to do environmental policies, this, that, the other thing.
		We don't want the government to be telling companies what to do.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What counts in your mind is the nationalization of an industry.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is it a 10% stake, a 50%, a 50% stake?
unidentified		I don't know exactly.
		I mean, look, certainly if it's 51%, you call it nationalizing an industry.
		You know, 10% is a pretty big stake in the company.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And people say, well, if the government's going to give them money, we should take a government ownership of it.
unidentified		And my attitude is, no, well, the problem here is giving them money in the first place.
		Remember, we passed one of the worst pieces of legislation in 20 years with this CHIP Act.
		It was supposed to resurrect the chip industry and had exactly the opposite approach.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Oftentimes, when the government subsidizes an industry, it becomes a curse, not a blessing.
unidentified		By the way, let me give you a good example of this.
unidentified		The auto industry in the last five or six years, where the Biden administration said, we'll give you all of this money if you invest in electric vehicles.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		By the way, I don't have anything against electric vehicle.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I have a hybrid.
unidentified		But so, in other words, what happened was GM and Ford chased the government money rather than trying to make cars that Americans actually wanted to drive.
		People want hybrids.
		They don't necessarily want all-electric vehicle.
		My point is, Ford lost $45,000 for every electric vehicle it made.
		So that wasn't a very good decision.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned the company Solyndra.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's Solyndra?
unidentified		Yeah.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What is it?
unidentified		Solyndra?
		Solyndra was a solar company that went bankrupt.
		And we had dozens of these experiments where we invested.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Invested in Fisker was a car company.
unidentified		It was supposed to be the next big electric vehicle company.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And it failed as well.
unidentified		I mean, we could go on and on and on with these failures.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		But the point is the government is not very good at deciding what industries to invest in, what not.
unidentified		One of the things that makes American industry so hyper-productive is that we have the most sophisticated capital markets in the world.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		We're really, really good as a country at directing capital to its highest value-added industries.
		And that's how we got these trillion-dollar industries like Google.
		So why would we think that politicians could make better decisions about where money should be directed than people on Wall Street?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Steve Moore with us for about another 35 minutes.
		He's always happy to take your questions.
		So let me promote the phone lines.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		While folks are calling in, another topic I wanted to get to.
		What's your view of President Trump's efforts, his attempts to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook?
unidentified		I was hoping you were going to ask me about Taylor Swift.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Happy to get your thoughts on the economic implications of that as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Hearst by her tour certainly has that economic.
unidentified		That has been a hot potato issue, no question about it.
		The question is whether the president has the legal authority to fire her.
		Now, that's something I'm not a constitutional scholar.
		I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know about the legality of this.
		But I will say this.
		And by the way, you may recall that I was actually nominated by Donald Trump to be on the Federal Reserve Board back in 2017 or 18.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So I've gone through that process.
unidentified		I didn't make it through the process.
		I had skeletons in my closet.
		But my point is that having gone through that, one of the things that they do is you go through all your financial records To make sure that you're qualified for this thing.
		And one thing that I find puzzling about this whole incident is if, and it's if, because she's only alleged to have committed this mortgage fraud, we don't have any kind of conviction.
		But if she did, if she, and basically the allegation is she had two, she was claiming two different homes as her principal residence, and that is mortgage fraud.
		Now, some people are saying, well, this isn't really that big a transgression.
		And I disagree with that.
		If you look at what happened in 2008 when we had the mortgage crisis and it destroyed the American economy, hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars had to bail out these companies.
		There was the single biggest factor that caused the mortgage crisis was mortgage fraud.
		People lied on their mortgage applications.
		So I would say this: that if this woman, if she did, if she is guilty of this mortgage fraud, she cannot be on the Federal Reserve Board.
		They have oversight over the whole housing industry.
		So the question is whether he should have fired her now or waited till we had more evidence.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Between this and between President Trump's criticism of Jerome Powell over whether to lower the interest rate, is Donald Trump politicizing the Fed?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And if the answer is yes to that question, what does that mean for markets, for the economy?
unidentified		So this is a tough one because I do believe, as most economists do, that we should have an independent Federal Reserve Board that is, you know, and by the way, this is one of the most powerful institutions of Washington.
unidentified		They control the money supply, how much money is coming in, how much coming out, how much inflation we have, et cetera.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So it's a powerful institution.
unidentified		And the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you know, you could argue other than the president, the vice president, maybe the people on the Supreme Court are extremely powerful.
		They are an independent agency.
		The question is whether they should be, who are they accountable to?
		In other words, who is, if Jerome Powell screws up, and I would say that he's been a very bad Fed chairman, he's the one that allowed prices to go up by 22 percent when Biden was president.
		How do you get rid of someone like that if they're not performing in their job?
		And so that's the question: is we, yes, we want independence, but we also want accountability.
		And Jerome Powell is just saying, you can't fire me.
		And, you know, I'm going to, now his term is up, I think it's in March, April, or May or something like that.
		So he only has about six months left to go.
		I think what's going to happen is that he'll probably serve that six months out and then Trump will replace him.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		There's plenty more you and I could talk about.
		Let me bring in some callers, though.
		They always enjoy chatting with you.
		Deborah Lee in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Independent.
		You're up first with Steve Moore.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, America.
		And my question actually is not for Mr. Moore, it is for C-SPAN.
		And it is about how often that you have representatives of the Heritage Foundation on your show.
		I believe that that gives them an awful lot of credibility.
		And in my book, they really don't have that much credibility because they're the authors of this Project 2025 that is stripping America of every good thing we have.
		I just like to know why.
		I wonder if the Heritage Foundation doesn't make very large financial contributions to C-SPAN.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deborah, I can assure you that's not true.
		The reason we have folks from the Heritage Foundation and other think tanks, and not just the Heritage Foundation, there's plenty here in Washington, D.C., is that these people are the people that talk to the folks on Capitol Hill who make the laws.
		So if members of Congress who are making those laws are talking to these people and getting advice and information from these people, we want you to hear from them as well.
		So you can go back into our archives.
		All of our segments are available to see how many times we have somebody from the American Enterprise Institute, from the Heritage Foundation, from Third Way, all these institutions here in D.C.
		And again, there are plenty of them.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Steve Moore, I'll say something about that, if I may, because one of the things I really appreciate about C-SPAN, and thanks again for having me on, is you do provide all different perspectives of issues, and that I think is fantastic.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Now, the Heritage Foundation was just rated the most influential think tank in the world, not just in the United States in the world.
unidentified		And by the way, I'm a visiting senior fellow with Heritage, so I do other things, and I'm very proud of my association with Heritage.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		But come on, I mean, the most, we're really proud of the fact that in our Project 2025, now there are some issues in 2025 that I don't even agree with, some of the recommendations.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, we were very influential in the passage of the Trump Tax Cut, which saves the average family $4,000 a year on trade policy, on defense, on coming up with all sorts of proposals that most Americans would agree with about how we can downsize government, make it more efficient, which was Does the Doge people used a lot of our recommendations.
unidentified		So it is a very impactful organization.
unidentified		I'm proud of my association.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Since you cracked the door on it, what was one recommendation in Project 2025 that you did not agree with?
unidentified		Some of the issues, well, for example, I'm much more of a free trade guy, and Heritage was a little bit more interested in more of a kind of managed trade.
unidentified		I'm not really involved in the Transport.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We're talking tariffs.
unidentified		On tariffs.
		I'm not really too involved in some of the social policy issues.
		So I'm much more of a kind of libertarian.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		But I would say I agreed with 80 to 90 percent of the and look, Trump did use, no, he distanced himself from some of the issues that were in Project 2025.
unidentified		But we're very proud of the fact that so many of our recommendations actually have been implemented.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Palm Bay, Florida, Keith, Republican line, you are on with Steve Moore.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Hey, good morning, and thank you for taking our calls and answering our questions, especially Stephen Moore.
		You know, back to current issues and not guilt by association background of a person commenting and giving opinions.
		I'll accept your opinion, John.
		Now, my philosophy is government, anything government touches goes bad.
		So there really shouldn't be any loans or taking over, you know, free market, like you said.
		The government shouldn't be involved in the ownership of businesses and stuff.
		But now, if I'm not mistaken, a couple years back in the CHIPS Act, President Biden's administration gave Intel $20 billion or something to say to company because there are more factors of strategy toward AI and defense and everything else.
		And now the Republicans are doing just the opposite wanting to take ownership.
		Now, even though I don't believe government should be involved until something happens, what about something like an equity stake where like a loan?
		Like we got small business loans.
		Let's make big business loans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me take up.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, it's a good point this gentleman is making.
unidentified		And if we're going to give money to companies, and I'm almost always against that.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Now, by the way, the one kind of thing that makes Intel a little bit different is a lot of my friends in the national security area are saying, well, we need to do this for national security.
unidentified		And I'm not a national security expert, so I can't really respond to that.
		But I would say that if, if, if we're going to give money to companies, it should always be in the form of a loan.
		In other words, if Intel is facing tough times right now, their stock has fallen, et cetera, and they need a cash infusion, we could do that.
		We did this with the car companies, remember.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		That money should be repaid in the form of a loan, not in terms of an equity share by the federal government.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Logan, Utah, Bob, Democrats, go ahead.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Good morning, Mr. Moore.
		You kind of made me wonder how I was going to ask that question.
		This is going to be on tariffs.
		You know, as well as I know that a tariff is nothing more than a tax on the consumer.
		So the tax that the Republicans say they're going to give the American people, you know, that's going to be taken away quick.
		Because every cost the business has, the consumer pays for it.
		You know it, I know it, and the world knows it.
		So if you have an answer for that, please tell me.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So I'm glad this gentleman called in because obviously this is one of the hottest economic topics of the day is the Trump tariff strategy.
unidentified		I'm a kind of a traditional Milton Friedman free trade guy.
unidentified		And there's no question in my mind that over the last 30 or 40 years, as the United States has moved more towards free trade since the Reagan era, the United States has greatly benefited from that.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's a reason that the United States has just blown, our economy has just blown away the rest of the world, Europe, the Asian countries, et cetera.
unidentified		And that is because we benefited so much from free trade.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		We have been, we globally integrate all of the stuff that's coming in the United States and create incredible high-value added companies.
		Our stock market has gone up 40-fold, whereas you look at Japan and Europe, they've been basically sclerotic with almost no increase.
		And so free trade has been a benefit.
unidentified		But what Trump is doing, just so people understand, and I think there's some value to this, is saying to these countries like China, like Canada, like the Brits, like the Europeans, hey, you're not playing by the rules.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		There is no level playing field.
unidentified		Trump is absolutely correct that most of these countries have applied a lot higher tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers on our goods than we have when they bring stuff in the United States.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So if we want our farmers to get a fair deal, if we want our manufacturing companies, our manufacturing workers, if we want our technology companies to be number one, our dairy farmers, Trump is going to these countries and saying, stop discriminating against our products made in the US of A.
		And if you don't stop, we're going to whack you with these tariffs.
		And so far, even though it makes me a little uncomfortable because I am a free trade guy, so far, you look at the trade deals that Trump has gotten, the ones with China.
unidentified		Now, the China is a special case because they are a villa and they're an enemy of the United States and you can't trust them, but we'll see what that turns out.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I love what happened with Canada just the other day said we're going to stop the non-tariff trade barriers.
unidentified		Europe is now going to invest hundreds of billions in the United States.
		The Brits, same thing.
		These are trade deals that could very well benefit not just American companies, but American workers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		President Trump, we'll talk about the money raised from tariffs.
		Should we be celebrating $100 billion in tariff collections in the first half of 2025?
		Projections of if these tariffs stay, $2.8 trillion by the end of the decade in tariff revenue.
unidentified		And some are saying it could even be higher than that.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I read $3.6 trillion.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, these numbers are all the places.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'll give you the $800.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I'm not a big fan of taxes.
unidentified		And so it's funny you should ask me this question because I was just writing a column last night saying, well, wait a minute, all of a sudden Republicans are celebrating all these taxes that they're raising from tariffs.
		I thought we were against taxes.
		But what is interesting about this debate is who bears the burden of a tariff.
		So it could be one of three parties.
		It could be the foreign company that wants to bring in the United States.
		If the tariff is applied to them, clearly they're going to have to absorb some of that cost, right?
		And then you've got the companies in the United States that import that stuff, and they bear some of the burden of that tariff.
		And then, of course, there's the final user, you and me, when we go to the store.
		I mean, if you buy toys from China and we put a 50% tariff on those toys, guess what?
		You're probably going to pay more.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Of that three-legged stool.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Which party is carrying the most weight?
unidentified		Well, we don't know exactly.
		You know, that's an empirical question.
		But certainly some of this is passed on to the consumers.
		There's no question about it.
		How much is borne by the...
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think it's 33%?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think it's more than that?
unidentified		Let's just say.
		It really is.
		I mean, you'd have to have, you know, maybe, I'd say maybe as much as half of that cost of that tariff might be passed on to the consumer.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Certainly the companies that make the products abroad bear some of the burden, because if they didn't, why would they be complaining about the tariffs, right?
unidentified		So I think everybody bears some of this burden.
		But they are taxes.
		You're right.
		Tariffs are taxes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		About 15 minutes left with Steve Moore.
		Bill is in Buffalo, New York, Independent.
		Thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I've been following your career for a long time.
		You're always for tax cuts for the rich, but now the consumer's paying these taxes to pay for our military.
		It's impossible to have a world-class military at 15% corporate tax rate.
		The last century, for 100 years, there was a point where the corporate tax rate was at 1 or 2 percent.
		But in 1950, after the Second World War, it was over 50 percent.
		And you supported George Bush Jr.'s administration, which was the worst economy since the Great Depression.
		And in 23 or 24, 2023, 2024, my NASDAQ stock was up over 50%.
		And what I get a kick out of Trump is he's against what Reagan and Bush and Nixon did by extending jobs to China, NAFTA.
		He's against all that.
		And it was all created by the conservatives.
		And now he's going to tell the states how to run their elections.
		When I listened to you guys the last 40 years, you're talking about state rights are the most important thing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So you bring up a lot of different topics.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of topics.
		Listen, I mean, the gentleman is making an interesting point, which is that, you know, look, the Republican Party is a Trump party right now.
		There's no question about it.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And in most areas, I think for better, in some areas, for worse.
unidentified		So we need to really, okay, let's take taxes, for example.
		One of the things that I believe in is we want a tax code where the tax rates are as low as possible, but you have a broad base, so everybody is paying the tax.
		And by the way, there used to be a national consensus on that.
		In 1986, we passed a law that dramatically lowered tax rates, broadened the base so everybody paid their fair share.
		And that passed 97 to 3 in the Senate.
		So that seemed like a bygone.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of 97 to 3?
unidentified		We passed 97.3 today.
unidentified		So we have lowered our tax rates, and that has been highly effective for the United States.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		It's one of the reasons we've seen the big boom of the U.S. and the fact that we've kind of taken over the global economy.
unidentified		So I'm not going to apologize for that.
		I think that the Trump tax cut was fantastic.
		I mean, we were basically making our American companies more competitive.
		We're allowing American manufacturing companies to immediately expense when they buy equipment or build a plant in the United States.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		They write that off, which is appropriate.
unidentified		So I think this is going to create jobs and help American workers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On jobs, and the car brought up jobs as well.
		Do you trust the jobs numbers that come out each month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
		And if the answer is no, how long have you not trusted them?
unidentified		So that's a good question.
		I've been following this stuff for 40 years.
		Every first Friday of the month, you know, I'm on one of the networks talking about the jobs report because this is what we all pay attention to.
		It's the number one gauge of how the economy is doing month after month, is how many jobs were created.
		And what I've discovered, having done this for a long time, is the numbers are becoming more and more unreliable.
		And I'm not pointing fingers at anybody.
		I'm not saying this, it's just a fact.
		Why?
		We don't really know why the numbers are becoming more.
		One of the reasons is that these are done by samples.
		We sample people.
		We ask people, are you working or are you not working?
		And what we're finding out is that the response rate from these surveys is way down from what it used to be.
		And when you have a reduced number of people responding, you're not getting as good numbers.
		So let me give you an example.
		If you look at over the last two or three years, what you're seeing is the fluctuation of the numbers are way up and down.
		And also the correct, in other words, they do revisions each month, you know, the previous number, the headline number, and then they revise it and they revise it again.
		We're finding the revisions are getting bigger and bigger.
		So one of the things, you know, and by the way, E.J. Antonio, I think, will be an excellent Bureau.
		He's an outstanding economist.
		He's worked at the Heritage Foundation.
		He's worked with me.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		He's a really good statistician.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And he's been nominated to be the new head.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		He's really good with numbers.
unidentified		I think he's going to get us more accurate.
unidentified		And we need to, it's not just the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by the way.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So many of the numbers that we're generating in Washington, like the census numbers, the census numbers in 2020, even the Census Bureau admits that we miscounted millions of people.
unidentified		So we've got to do something.
		I mean, the Census Bureau said, yeah, we we overcounted people in New York.
		We undercounted people in Florida.
		And that that makes a difference.
		So we've got to figure out how I'm not saying I'm not trying to be partisan.
		I'm just saying, let's make sure we have accurate numbers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In your mind, what is the most reliable economic number that comes out of Washington on any topic?
unidentified		That's a good question.
		I think the inflation numbers are pretty good.
		Why?
		Because it's easier to measure what's happening with prices than measuring how many people working.
		We have 180 million people in the workforce.
		It's hard to measure how many people are laid off, how many did each part of the year.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		sampling though the price of eggs here and the price of eggs there and the price of eggs over there isn't there a lot of sampling they have to do for yeah but I mean we can it's easier to figure that out because you just go to the stores and you can say okay what are they at what are the eggs cost What does the beef cost?
unidentified		What does the carrot cost?
		So that's a little simpler.
		But what I'm saying is all of these numbers really need to be, because we make important policy decisions based on what these numbers are.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Tula Vista, California, Susanna, Republican.
		Susanna, go ahead.
		You're on with Steve Moore.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Thank you, Mr. Moore.
		I've seen you on various programs, and I've always appreciated your point of view.
		Thank you.
		I'm Senator Meek Live.
		I'm a senior citizen, and I'm very happy with the Trump policies, especially with the big, beautiful bill and a tax break for our seniors.
		As I am still working to supplement my social security.
		And I just have to say that the one thing I do like is the monthly meetings, the transparency that we could see the different departments in our administration working in their comments.
		I wish more could be done to help California because it's just a mess.
		I think Doge and the swiftness of the Trump policies being put into effect, just all of these factions all coming into play, the American people have to understand it takes time.
		And I've never seen the president act so swiftly on many of the problems that our country has.
		I look forward to a very bright future for my daughter and my granddaughter.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Susanna, thanks for the call.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Just I'll take one of those issues that you mentioned, which is not taxing Social Security.
unidentified		I've never understood why we do that.
unidentified		And now we didn't exactly change.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		What we did was give some relief to seniors who were still working and still earning money.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		We shouldn't take people's money out of their paycheck and then pay them a Social Security benefit and then tax it.
unidentified		I mean, it just didn't make any sense.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So that's just one area of so many areas of that tax bill were really fantastic.
		I mean, we did, as I mentioned, we lowered our business tax rate.
		We're helping small businesses.
unidentified		If we had, and I want to remind people, if we had not passed that bill, if we had not passed that big, beautiful bill, the average American would be paying about $4,000 or more taxes starting in January.
unidentified		And I'm not talking about rich people.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I'm talking average American.
unidentified		So it was a big relief for American businesses and workers.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You didn't want to take up cabinet meetings?
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Sorry?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You didn't want to take up cabinet meetings that the caller brought up?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Does anything get done at a cabinet meeting?
unidentified		You know, Trump is really, and I've sat in on a couple of those.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		You know, he has really used those cabinet meetings as a way of just going over what's happening in so many of these agencies of government, and they're all reporting to him about what we're doing, for example, with respect to Doge.
unidentified		Okay, what are you cutting?
		What regulations are you getting rid of?
		How are you helping us reduce our deficit?
		You know, we've reduced the federal, it's pretty amazing.
		We've reduced the federal workforce in just the first six months of the Trump presidency by 300,000 people.
		Fantastic.
		Now, let's get rid of about a half a million more.
		Everybody agrees our government is too big, too inefficient, too bureaucratic.
		So I think it's off to a good start.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where does that half million come from?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where would you point to?
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think every agency and government could cut their workforce by about 20%, no question about it.
unidentified		We've just built up this incredible bureaucracy.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Just let me give you a statistic.
unidentified		When I first came to Washington in 1984, our federal budget was $1 trillion.
		Here we are 35, 38 years later, almost 40 years later, and instead of $1 trillion, we have $7 trillion.
		The debt back in 1984 was $1 trillion.
		Today, $38 trillion.
		Houston, we have a problem here.
		We have to downsize our government.
		We can't keep borrowing $2 trillion a year.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I think Democrats, Republicans, and Independents can all agree on that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A few minutes left with Steve Moore.
		This is Darrell in Matthews, North Carolina, Independent.
		Darrell, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, Mr. Moore.
		Good morning.
		Great topic.
		I think you said at the beginning of the program that the government shouldn't be into picking winners and losers.
		But hasn't a lot of these policies and these handouts been ingrained in government since forever?
		Case in point is that when I look at like what Trump has done, I think he's taken a novel approach about it is if the government is going to be bailing out a needed company or industry, at least get something back on it for the taxpayer.
		I, as an average taxpayer, I get no kind of bailout.
		If I fail, I fail.
		But didn't we do what do you think about our bailout from both the car companies and the banks?
		Should they have not failed because of their they just didn't do a good job running their companies?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Daryl, got your point.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
unidentified		Look, I'm a free enterprise guy.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I believe that, you know, if a government, if a company is performing and creating jobs and also creating a profit, that's why we have companies to make a profit for the owners of it, that then it should continue to prosper.
unidentified		I don't believe the government is very good.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I don't think we should be throwing a life preserver to every company that fails.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		By the way, we have millions and millions of small businesses in this country.
unidentified		It's the backbone of our economy.
		Do you see the government bailing out small businesses?
		No.
		What they're doing is bailing out the big giant companies.
		That's not fair.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Why should a small business have to pay taxes to bail out an Intel or a General Motors or Boeing?
unidentified		I just don't understand the logic of it.
		It's not fair.
		Let's have a level playing field.
		And by the way, if you really want to help American companies, do what Trump has done with the taxes.
		Lower their tax burden so they get to keep more of what they earn.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is this a bailout?
		What's happening with Intel?
		Would you call it a bailout?
		Yes, absolutely.
		If the federal government is going to bail out anybody, is it better to get something rather than money?
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		That's the point this gentleman is making.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		If we're going to bail them out, we should get something.
unidentified		And my point is let's not bail them out at all.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jimmy in Maryville, Tennessee, Democrat.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
		What's your question?
		We've got about four minutes left with Steve Moore.
unidentified		Okay, my question is about Social Security.
		With Trump firing all these people and everything else like that, how are we going to know that the economic numbers are correct?
		They go by what we call COLA.
		And if the economy's doing good, we usually get a small increase, but not much.
		But if the comm is bad, we kind of get a big increase.
		So my question to him is, how do we know if the true numbers are accurate?
		And second of all, we need to keep the people that's in there right now.
		We don't need to change anybody because we need somebody in there that knows exactly what they're doing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Steve Moore.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So let me say this about Social Security.
unidentified		I just turned 65, so I will be in a few months eligible to get a Social Security check.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Now, I'm not going to retire anytime soon, but I would be.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So I looked up, you know, in the Social Security Administration what my monthly benefit would be.
unidentified		And I would be eligible, I think, for about $3,100 a month benefit until I die.
unidentified		And then I looked at, okay, what if I had been able to do what I've been advocating for for 35 years?
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		What if I had been able to take just 10% of my paycheck and instead of sending it into Social Security, what if I could have just put it into a 401k type of account where you just put your money, some of the money in bonds, some of it in stocks, et cetera.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And if I had done that over my working career and then annuitize the money when I retired so I'd get a monthly benefit till I die, I wouldn't be getting $3,100 a month.
unidentified		I'd be getting $11,000 a month.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		So Social Security is the single worst investment every person watching this show has made.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		If you could have put that money into a private account and just let it grow, you would be getting benefits to, even if you only earned the minimum wage your whole working life, which is very, there aren't many people who only earn the minimum wage, you'd still have gotten a higher benefit.
unidentified		We have got to transition this system starting tomorrow.
unidentified		Let young people and make it an option.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		You can either put your money into Social Security or you can put it into a 401k plan where the money, you know, do you have to do one or the other, though?
unidentified		No, you could say to people, if you want to stay in the system and get this crappy dealer to get out of Social Security, you can do that.
		And this is for our children, folks.
		This is for our kids so they can get a deal.
		Because right now, Social Security has gone bankrupt.
		I hate to tell people the train is going to come off the tracks.
		It's going to go bankrupt within the next nine years.
		Why not let people get a much better deal?
		We're ripping off people, especially for young people, minorities.
		They would actually own things, and that would be a system much more efficient than what we have right now.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Would there be an option under your plan for people to take their money and walk and not do either of those things?
unidentified		It would be a saving plan.
unidentified		You couldn't take it out.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And it would be an index fund.
unidentified		You can't choose stocks.
unidentified		You'd just be investing in every company in America.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		We have index funds all over the place.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		There's no fee associated with an index fund.
unidentified		And it would be a great system.
		And I would make it optional.
		Every worker under the age of 40, if you care about your kids, this is one of the most important things we could do for them.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Time for one or two more calls.
		This is Texas Kelly Republican.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hello.
		Thank you so much for taking my call.
		I love your show.
		I agree so much with the last caller.
		I mean, I'm my late 50s, never been married, not by choice.
		Don't have any kids, don't own any real estate.
		And my nephew works for Fidelity Investments.
		He is a stockbroker, stock analyst.
		And my 401ks, which I started in my late 40s, it has continuously given me 16 to 18% ROI.
		So return on investment.
		So thank God for him.
		But anyway, I'm calling because the Trump, I voted for Trump the first time.
		I voted for him the second time.
		I'm a lifelong Republican.
		I was a secretary for the Young Republicans Club when I was in college.
		But the thing is, is that I've been out of work now for three years.
		And I'm a Texas Department of Insurance licensed escrow officer.
		And the housing market has been flat here in Texas.
		It's been dead.
		This is worse than the Great Recession back in 2008.
		I was only out of work nine consecutive months.
		I've now been out of work for three years.
		And I'm just thinking, Trump's done a lot of good things for the border and those.
		I don't always agree with everything.
		I think that, you know, the thing with the vaccines and the medical research, I think he needs to put the money back in there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Kelly, are you saying that this economy is not working for you?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is that what you're saying?
unidentified		Oh, no, it is not working for me at all.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, Kelly, let me give Steve Moore a chance to respond.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, thanks again for having me on C-SPAN.
unidentified		Listen, I think the economy is on the mend, no question about it.
steve moore ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the fact is that Trump has been in office now for a little over six months.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		We've already reduced illegal immigration by 92%, which is incredible.
		We've seen big wage.
		The average worker just in the last five months has gained about $1,000 more in average income.
		We have a new study coming out on that.
		We're seeing a record high stock market, which is always a good indication that the businesses are doing better, better trade deals for the United States.
unidentified		Inflation is down from what it was under Biden.
unidentified		So I'm really optimistic.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		I think that I'm super bullish on the U.S. economy.
unidentified		We are the alpha male.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		We're going to continue to dominate, and we're going to put America first.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		And that's what every president should do.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		For much more from Steve Moore, you can go to Committee2UnleashProsperity.com.
		That's his group, and you can see his writings there.
		And we always appreciate your time on the Washington Journal.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up in about 30 minutes this morning, journalist and filmmaker Tremaine Lee joins us to talk about his new documentary, Hope in High Water: A People's Recovery 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina.
		But first, it's open forum.
		Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about?
		Now's your time.
		Numbers are on your screen.
		Go ahead and start dialing, and we'll get to those calls right after the break.
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		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Time now for our open forum.
		Any public policy issue, any political issue, here's how you can call in.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		This is that part of our program where you lead the program.
		As you're calling in, a couple notes today on C-SPAN at 4 p.m. Eastern time, headed into the Labor Day weekend, a workers' rights rally being organized by the Metro Washington chapter of the American Federation for Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO, as you'll probably better know it.
		The president of the current DC chapter and union leaders all meeting, and we're airing that again 4 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN video app.
		Also, today, this evening, 6:30 p.m. Eastern, a discussion with Federal Reserve Board member Christopher Waller about the nation's economic outlook.
		This ahead of the Fed September meeting that is being hosted by the Economic Club of Miami.
		Again, you can watch 6:30 p.m. Eastern, C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN now video app.
		With that, your phone calls in open forum.
		Renee's up first out of Iowa Independent.
		Renee, what's on your mind?
unidentified		Good morning.
		I actually have a comment about the previous segment about the job numbers.
		I'm concerned that because we're sort of living in a gig economy now and people are working two, three, four, five jobs, that the jobs numbers report is not accurate.
		Just because someone added a job does not mean that they're getting a full income or full benefits.
		My second comment is about your first segment.
		And there was a nurse calling, I believe, from Ohio, calling about people who have mental health problems who approach who are admitted to hospitals.
		And I'm a medical coder, and we code what are called social determinants of health.
		And those are codes that are specific to housing, your economic status, if you have problems with your family or your social support.
		And those codes are fairly new, and hospitals are not required to report those, but they are very important for research purposes.
		And I'm concerned that those are not being accurately captured by hospital inpatient admissions and therefore not reflected in the research.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Renee, where does a medical coder work?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you work in a hospital?
unidentified		I actually work for an inpatient hospital.
		I am remote.
		I work for a hospital in the South.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And how do you get into that line of work?
unidentified		Well, you need a certification.
		I'm a registered health information technician.
		It required an associate degree, and I have to keep up my certification with CEUs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for telling us about it.
		Out of Iowa, that's Renee out of Virginia.
		It's Maura, Republican.
		It's Madison, Virginia.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Good morning.
		I just have two issues on Social Security.
		Social Security is an insurance program.
		Your former guest said that Social Security was a bad investment, but Social Security was set up to replace lost earnings through death, disability, retirement.
		So I have auto insurance, I have homeowners insurance, thousands of dollars every year going out, and I've never used it.
		That was the one issue was on the purpose of Social Security, which also the Fairness Act that was passed last year.
		$17 billion has come out of the Social Security trust funds to pay retroactive benefits for supposedly fairness.
		Now, the second issue with Social Security is the gender.
		Social Security used to consider gender identity crisis disorder.
		It was a disorder according to the diagnostic codes.
		Then it was changed in 2013 to gender dysphoria.
		And then all of a sudden we had 72 genders and pronouns and all these things that go with it.
		And it was no longer in the mental illness category.
		So those are my two, oh, and the World Health Organization, the WHO, they changed the definition of gender confusion or I forget different words that they used, but they took it out of the mental illness category because they didn't want the stigma attached to being mentally ill.
		So thank you.
		That's those are my two issues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Maura in Virginia.
		We'll head to the Old Line State.
		This is Mike, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, I just wanted to say a few things.
		First, I get a kick out of the Republicans that come on the air and say they voted for Trump and this is their president, but they don't like the economy and this is the worst economy and inflation is getting better.
		I mean, now it's getting better, but they don't take into account that it's not the president that controls inflation, it's the Fed.
		And what we're under is we're under this lawless president, this pedophile in office that is flooding our streets with military and law enforcement, not understanding that crime is down in the areas where you flood the police.
		Republicans claim to be for smaller government, but they advocate larger government, larger police force in areas that aren't theirs.
		The highest crime rate is not Washington, D.C.
		It's not Baltimore.
		It's not Chicago.
		If the president wants to address the high crime rate and violent crime, then he needs to send them to Alaska.
		That's where the crime is.
		And in addition, it's the president's desire to whitewash American history by eradicating the effects of slavery on American people, not just black people, but all people, because he's uncomfortable with it.
		So he's pushing his own narratives.
		He's destroying American culture, American history.
		And the only place that I can remember where something similar to this happened was Nazi Germany, where they burned books and they changed the curriculum.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		That's Mike and Marilyn.
		This is Joe in Pennsylvania, Republican.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, my question is, remember when Trump was running for president?
		He ran on drill, baby, drill, and then he's going to bring the prices down with that.
		I'm wondering, he does all these press conferences.
		Why doesn't he ever talk about that?
		That is what he ran on.
		Joe, what's the point?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's the price of gas in Tobiehanna, Pennsylvania?
unidentified		It's like $320.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And has that shifted much in the past eight months?
		Excuse me.
		Has that moved much in eight months?
unidentified		No, it hasn't moved.
		In fact, prices are still going up.
		And I just don't understand it because he ran on drill, baby, drill every time he went out there.
		He doesn't even talk about that now.
		And that's my comment.
		I'm thinking, like, where is it?
		Why doesn't he bring it up as press briefings?
		You know, it's ridiculous.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Joe in Pennsylvania to Andrew Southfield, Michigan Independents.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
unidentified		How are you guys doing?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's up, mind?
unidentified		A couple of quickies that I wanted to go with.
		The last guest, he was mentioning about how the numbers were corrected, received.
		How do we get the numbers?
		If the number where we're receiving the numbers is not a good way, so it doesn't matter who is in charge, the numbers are going to fluctuate.
		So you either change the way we get the information or don't do it.
		The other thing is, I would like for any, whether it be Republican representative or Congress or Democrat, when every one of those bills I keep seeing, when they do the tax, for some reason, a certain income, the bill, the tax bill is permanent.
		For the lower, lower middle or lower middle class, it's temporary.
		Now, the tax break this time is going to be temporary.
		It's going to go away in 2028.
		Why don't they make it permanent for both or temporary for both?
		And those are the things I wish you guys would ask one of the representatives for either party.
		Why don't they make it permanent or temporary for both?
		Why different?
		That's what I'd like to know.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Andrew in Michigan to Miami, Florida.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alan, Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Well, good morning.
		This is the very first time I've ever called the station for anything whatsoever.
		I would like to talk to you about your last person that you had on.
		That's Stephen Moore.
		$3 million in the bank.
		He lies most of the time about everything.
		You have to understand the foundation of what he represents.
		You know, it's ridiculous.
		Let's talk about Social Security really quick because I'll start stuttering and I'll lose my train of thought.
		You want to fix Social Security?
		Take a person like Mr. Moore and make him pay more into Social Security after $97,000.
		You know that there is a $97,000 cutoff once you make $97,000.
		You no longer pay into Social Security.
		And also, anybody that makes a million dollars a year should not even be allowed to tap into the Medicare Social Security system.
		I have worked my entire life as a blue-collar worker.
		Blue-collar means, yes, I am a Democrat, okay, but I'm also a union man.
		You know, there's so many different things and stuff that you can talk about all the way down the line.
		And what I don't like is when people get on your show and they give half information, they want to take Social Security is a multi-trillion dollar account.
		And the Republicans have been wanting to put their fingers in Social Security for years.
		George W. Bush tried this.
		He wanted to privatize it.
		Am I not correct?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Keep watching.
		I'm sure you'll find a guest that you do agree with.
		And you said it's your first time calling.
		You can call in during the segments.
		Steve Moore, always happy to chat with callers, and I'm sure he would have chatted with you.
unidentified		I would love to have a conversation with Stephen Moore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		He'll be on down the road.
		Next time, give him a call when he's on.
		This is Lewis in Rutherford, New Jersey.
		Republican, go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, all.
		I just have a few things to say here.
		Mr. Moore, I was hoping to talk to him, but I called a bit too late.
		There's pros and cons with the government helping out.
		Number one, Obama gave a solar company a hell of a lot of money.
		And then one week, that company went belly up.
		And Obama gave money to insurance company AIG, I remember.
		And they didn't even want the money because they had their own insurance, but he gave them money also to help them out.
		The government, I believe, helped out the railroad companies to exist and the energy companies to exist.
		And I'm the guy who called up about Chrysler, you know, in the 70s with Iacoka.
		He helped, the government helped him out, and that came out to be a pretty good ending.
		However, I don't know what happened after that.
		Now, he mentioned also privatizing, you know, for Social Security.
		Now, the little bit I've seen is once they see the people having a little too much money, a depression comes out or COVID comes out where the people have to get into their savings to pay the mortgage or the rent.
		That's what I see.
		That's it, sir.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Lewis, are you saying those two things are connected?
unidentified		No, no.
		What I see is when they see that the people, things are going well for the people, COVID comes out, or something comes out, or a depression, or something happens where the people have to devolve into their savings to pay their bills.
		And that's what I see.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I guess I'm asking, are you saying there's some sort of conspiracy there?
unidentified		I don't know.
		This is what I see.
		You can call it what you want.
		But things were going pretty good, and then COVID came out.
		Am I correct?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point.
		That's Lewis in New Jersey.
		This is Ken, Tampa, Florida, Independent.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Hello, John.
		Been a minute since I called and spoke with you.
		Matter of fact, last time I called, I kind of spoke with you.
		And when I first called about six, seven years ago, it was when Donald Trump first started saying make America great again.
		But I'm not calling about that, but I got something else I want to say.
		And ever since that time, no one has ever, me listening to the show, no one has ever called in and say when were there a time when America was great for everyone.
		But moving forward, you know, John, I noticed that a lot of time it's hard to get through.
		And sometimes people don't call when you are on because you will challenge them and ask certain questions.
		Like when people call and say, you people, you ask them, well, who are the you people?
		Stuff like that.
		But, you know, when it comes to what happened in Minnesota, I know everyone's talking about, oh, we don't want to politicize it, this or that.
		But, you know, I know nothing is going to get done because when those kids got killed in Sandy Hook, 23 of them, the Republican Party didn't do anything then.
		So I don't expect anything to happen now.
		And just like for as long as we can remember, and you have some good callers calling, like the one gentleman that called in from Georgia that said you should love the people but hate the sin.
		And that's true.
		And all these so-called Christian people should understand that.
		But until America admits it's wrong to so many people, I believe, John, that we're going to still continue to deteriorate.
		The country was built on hate from the beginning until they admit it.
		None of them want to stand up and say, you know, we have wronged so many people in other countries.
		John, you do an excellent job.
		I hope that, you know, that you continue to challenge us who call in and say certain things.
		And I just wish the country is broken.
		And when hate comes from the highest office, for the highest office, the person that says, I hate, because he said I hate Democrats, what do you expect the country to be like?
		But these people who call in do not see the hate that comes from high down to low.
		And last thing, Lyndon B. Johnson said a long time ago, you can get the lowest of a white person to make him feel better than he said the word colored and then Negro or whatever.
		Lines, you make them feel a certain way, you can pick their pocket dry.
		And that is exactly what Donald Trump is doing to this country.
		Thank you, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Ken in Florida.
		This is Linda in Greenville, Tennessee, Republican.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I just want to call and say that my prayers are with the families that lost their children.
		And I want to say thank you to the gentleman in Georgia that called in because what he said is just what's happening.
		And thank you very much and have a great day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		West Babylon, New York, Evie, Independence.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're up.
unidentified		Oh, hey, good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		Okay, good morning.
		I just wanted to make a statement about a response to what two of the callers had said.
		You know, if it's okay for last summer, I'm from New York City.
		If it's okay for last summer for us to get the National Guard inside the subway in Manhattan at Grand Central Station for the MTA during the Biden administration, what is the difference between now, a year later, when the residents of Chicago are demanding that they get what Donald Trump is doing for Washington, D.C.
		The residents of Chicago want that in their city in response to what the person said about the highest crime rate being Alaska.
		The Alaskans did not ask for the National Guard.
		And the fact that Chicago and NASDAQ is in Chicago the same way Wall Street is in Manhattan.
		They were protecting something and the people would prefer to have the National Guard protecting them, in addition to in Washington, D.C.
		And the thing about it is the National Guard doesn't have the power to arrest anybody anyway.
		It's just a purpose of security.
		And so if the National Guard is in Union Square Station in Washington, D.C., a place I've never been to, and they cleared out the homeless encampments, and they even found four missing children who were abducted, I don't understand what's the difference between the current president doing what the previous, what Joe Biden did last year with the National Guard.
		It doesn't make any sense because these military men and women don't have the authority to arrest anybody anyway.
		That wasn't the purpose.
		The purpose was just to provide security.
		Experts for bombs, bomb security.
		I mean, we went through this during September 11th.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's your point.
		This is the story on it citing the deployment of National Guards to New York and the subway system from last year.
		This story just came out a couple weeks ago of talking about the history here.
		President Trump, not the only elected leader to deploy the National Guard in response to a supposed crime wave that many have questioned.
		In March of 2024, Governor Kathy Hochle of New York, a Democrat, announced that she would deploy 750 members of the National Guard to New York subway system.
		Christopher Magg for the New York Times writes, it was a jarring sight for some New Yorkers who are not accustomed to seeing troops in military uniforms patrolling the subway.
		Does write there's an important difference between the situations in Washington and the one in New York.
		Ms. Hochl, as New York's governor, controls the state's National Guard and can deploy it as she sees fit.
		Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is sending the guard into the streets of Washington against the wishes of the city's leaders, just as he sent the guard to the streets of Los Angeles in June over the objections from both the mayor and the governor of California.
		That story from the New York Times.
		This is Danette, Portland, Oregon, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just wanted to say first, real quick, to that lady that just called: I think having the military patrolling our streets is so bad and so anti-American.
		Okay, the reason I really called was because I want to speak about Donald Trump.
		Once again, I think you are, you can tell who someone is by who their best friends are.
		Let's first go the great man Putin, international war criminal who we roll out red carpets for.
		Second best friend, for 10, 15 years, Jeffrey Epstein, the most notorious child criminal rapist there is.
		Another best friend, Benjamin Netanyahu, who's bombing starving little children to make his own country better.
		These are the people he admires.
		I could go on and on.
		The North Korean guy.
		He just keeps going around, finding the worst people.
		He pretends he's against them, but really he's for them.
		Every time he has a meeting with Putin, big bombing for Ukraine, Kyiv, everybody right after that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Deanette, got your point.
		That's Danette.
		Just a couple minutes left this morning.
		You bring up Palestine.
		This is a story from the Washington Post, and I should show the pictures to go along with the story as well because it's part of the story.
		Mariam Daga, I believe that's how you say it, or Daga, a Palestinian journalist whose photos for the Associated Press and other news outlets captured the destruction and misery in Gaza, died in an Israeli strike on Gaza's Nasser hospital on Monday, along with at least 20 other people, including four other journalists witnessing the scene.
		This is according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
		The journalists were documenting civil defense workers moving bodies of people who were killed in the initial strike when a second strike hit.
		The photojournalist Aga's wire photos from Gaza, including those of grim conditions in the hospital where she was killed, were published widely across international media, including by the Washington Post.
		They write: at least 189 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel in Gaza during the war that began with Hamas leading that attack on Israel on October 7th of 2023.
		That makes it the deadliest conflict to cover in modern times.
		Israel has accused some journalists of connections to Hamas, the Washington Post writes, without providing verifiable evidence.
		Aside from occasional heavily supervised visits, Israel, they write, has blocked outside independent media from access to the Gaza Strip, and that has left Palestinian journalists alone to cover the conflict.
		That obituary and some of her photos in today's Washington Post.
		Frank is in Silver Creek, Georgia, Republican.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good afternoon.
		Good morning.
		Yeah, my thing is America's open 24-7.
		Everybody's working.
		You know, the family unit has been destroyed.
		There was a time in this country when families ate dinner together and they all went to bed together.
		Now, everybody's working shift work.
		A lot of times the kids are left unattended or they're in a one-parent home.
		Required to be in church on Sunday.
		That was required in my house, my family.
		I am 66 years old, but there's no turning the clock back.
		You know, you're not going to be able to turn that back.
		But to compare us to Europe, France, and Germany, they don't have a night shift.
		They're not open 24-7 like America is.
		The global conglomerates come here to, I mean, to enslave America.
		I mean, we're working our tails off in this country.
		And lots of times I worked text to work through college, and it wasn't that bad.
		It was 12-hour shifts.
		But now, boy, it's five days a week, 12-hour shifts, and eight hours on Saturday.
		The Americans are stressed out.
		And I don't know.
		It's going to be interesting to see how it all turns out because we're in a constant change mode.
		I mean, it's coming quick, too.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Frank and Georgia, our last caller in open forum.
		About 45 minutes left this morning.
		In that time, we'll be joined by journalist and filmmaker Tremaine Lee to talk about his new documentary, Hope in High Water, a people's recovery 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
		Here's a preview of Hope in High Water.
unidentified		The simplest version of the poem.
		I still have air in my lungs, so I need to make use of everything.
		It feels like Katrina was yesterday, and then sometimes it feels like it was a dream of another life.
		Katrina runs like a long movie in my brain.
		I take deep breaths because I come from a people who know how to come back, so I will start again.
		Even though I'm like 27 now, I was like seven when it happened.
		Convention, I just remember like being like shoulder to shoulder, people like shoving each other.
		We lived in the hotel for a year because something without lungs blew the city into a wound.
		Katrina was the first time my family ever evacuated.
		When I saw the water rising at Circle Food Store, which was about five blocks from my house, that's when I knew there was something quite beyond expectation or even imagination that was happening in my city.
		My city, as mean as a bride mistaken for a widow.
		My city always loved because it was a home made of instruments.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's wild to imagine that 20 years ago, I was just a cover reporter in this city for the Times Picayune.
		And I was a police reporter, and I got to know the city, and I got to know the people in the neighborhoods.
		In those early days, when I didn't have any contact to the outside world, no cell phone service, no computers, no laptops, no social media.
		The only thing I knew to do is keep telling the story.
		And so to come back to this city time and again, to help amplify the voices of those with the truth who know the story, who've survived so much, it's an honor and a privilege.
		There are still problems in this city.
		There's still holes that need to be filled, right?
		That'll scarred over, let alone totally healed.
		But even with that, there are people here who are committed to doing the hard work, the work of patching an American city back together.
unidentified		I happen to serve a community that lives 25 to 30 years less than the white members of the same community.
unidentified		In order to have a healthy community, we have to have a peaceful community.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		20 years later, there is hope.
unidentified		There's always hope.
		I think New Orleans is the proof of that.
		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The executive producer and host of that documentary, which is streaming on Peacock, is Tremaine Lee.
		He joins us now via Zoom.
		Mr. Lee, take us back 20 years ago today.
		Where were you?
		What were you doing the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, John.
		Thank you so much for having me.
		You know, it's hard to imagine that it's actually been 20 years.
		And thinking back to those early days, I was just, you know, a young reporter finding my way through the city.
		I'd only been a journalist for maybe two and a half, three years.
		And at the time, I was a police reporter for the Times-Pikayun, which is the local daily newspaper.
		And I remember that day before, not being from the South, being from the East Coast, had no sense of what hurricane season was like.
		And I remember having lunch with a colleague, and we were in a little restaurant, and I looked in the corner of the room and saw the TV.
		And you could see the hurricane approaching.
		And it was as wide from like Florida to Texas.
		And I had never seen anything like that.
		And it was kind of just a foreshadowing of the enormity of what this event would be.
		And so being a police reporter, I worked a Sunday shift.
		And the Times-Picayune building had actually been a shelter for staff and employees.
		So that Sunday, I worked the shift, and then I stayed overnight, you know, like my colleagues as a shelter.
		And I remember going into Monday morning, really early before the sun rose.
		You could hear the wind whipping up and roaring.
		And I remember a moment when I heard this huge crash, and it was a 100-year-old tree right in front of the building that had come crashing into one of the windows in the front of the building.
		And then soon after that, the levees broke.
		We were on higher ground and closer to downtown, so we didn't get a bunch of flooding, but the water started to rise around us.
		And that was just a foreshadowing of the city literally swamped, flooded.
		80% of the city would soon be underwater.
		And we'd go about the business of trying to tell the story of this city struggling to survive.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		At what point did you realize that this was real bad, that this was a major historic natural disaster, still the third highest death toll from a hurricane in recorded U.S. history?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		It was probably the next day.
		And so Monday morning, I was, as reporters started to descend out into the city and get a sense of just how bad the flooding was, I was sent out to City Hall to stay close to the mayor, the police chief, and the emergency preparedness folks with the idea that someone from the paper would come back and get me the next morning.
		And so I loaded up into a delivery van, got down to City Hall, and for the next several hours was reporting on the news conferences and updates that would happen once every hour or so.
		That night I slept on the floor in City Hall in an office.
		And then the next morning, the City Hall started taking on water downtown.
		And so we left City Hall and went across the street to a hotel, the Hyatt, which had these blown-out windows.
		And I got inside and I felt this warmth.
		And you see the orange glow of the backup lighting going off.
		And there was a woman who was crying in tears.
		And she had her arms wrapped around an emergency worker.
		And she was thanking him profusely.
		And he said, you know, it's our job to save lives.
		And she's crying.
		And as soon as they split, I go over to her and I say, you know, what's going on?
		And she told me this story of her family escaping the lower ninth ward.
		Her family had a family reunion in town.
		And so there were dozens of family members, and a bunch of them went to her house as the water is rising.
		They go up to the second floor where her apartment was, and the water kept rising and rising until they got to the attic.
		And they were fearing for their lives.
		And a few of the men were able to break through a hole in the roof of the apartment, into the trestle of the building.
		And they heard boats in the distance.
		They heard the hum and the motors.
		And so they took their shirts off and they started waving them to try to get their attention.
		And she's telling me this story, and she says they load it into the boats.
		And the part that got me, when I realized how bad it really was, she said they could see bodies of people who hadn't survived the flooding.
		And she said there was this little baby.
		And the way she said that the baby wasn't bloated or anything, this baby was perfect.
		It just brought tears to my eyes.
		So she's crying.
		I have kind of tears welling in my eyes as I'm taking notes.
		And that was the first moment I realized that the human toll was going to be much more than we could have ever imagined.
		This one woman's story, and this is early, so this is still as people are streaming downtown from all parts of the city.
		She went to the superdome first and said the conditions were so deplorable and the way folks were being treated was so bad that she had to find somewhere else to stay.
		And that's where she ended up in the Hyatt.
		And we have this chance encounter.
		And that moment crystallized and solidified for me just how bad it was.
		But that would also change the trajectory of my career in so many ways because that was one of the defining moments for me in my reporting career.
		My early career, but also 20 years later, it still stands out as an important moment for me.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The human toll.
		More than 1,300 people died in Hurricane Katrina.
		The economic toll estimated at $200 billion in damage or more.
		And the new documentary streaming on Peacock is Hope in High Water, a people's recovery 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
		Hurricane Katrina came ashore in Louisiana 20 years ago tomorrow.
		Tremaine Lee with us to take your phone calls and your questions.
		Phone line split this way.
		If you're in the eastern or central time zones, 202-748-8000.
		If you're in the mountain or Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
		And then a special line, if you were impacted by Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago, 202-748-8002 is that number.
		Tremaine Lee, the title of this, Hope in High Water, a People's Recovery 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
		What does the word recovery mean to you?
		And are we still recovering 20 years later?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Without question, the city is still recovering.
		I wouldn't say it's limping forward into that recovery.
		It's moving, but really slowly.
		You know, it was important for me coming back to New Orleans, having experienced the worst of that disaster and watching people try to survive the worst moment in the city's history, certainly one of the worst, and certainly the worst moment in so many people's lives.
		And we've seen the destruction.
		We've seen the trauma that folks continue to carry.
		We've seen every system in that city, the infrastructure torn asunder.
		But I wanted to tell the story of what it means for a people's recovery.
		You know, what happens when systems fail?
		What happens when the promises of politicians fail?
		What happens when the money for the recovery isn't fully established?
		What does it mean for a community to heal itself in the wake of all that?
		So 20 years later, I wanted to tell the story of people patching their city back together and healing themselves.
		And so the recovery in this context means what does it look like when your school district is taken over by a charter system?
		What does it mean for community members to stand up and help resource teachers and students and families?
		What does it mean in a city where the life expectancy for black folks is much less than white folks?
		And even bringing life into this world, into the city, from mothers is precarious at best.
		What does it mean for organizations to help give black mothers in particular what they need to deliver healthy babies?
		And then what does it mean for a community reeling under the weight of incessant gun violence?
		What does it mean for people to stand up and try to put a barrier between a generation of young people and those bullets?
		What does it mean to recover the land that you've lost from the encroachment of big industry, but also coastal erosion?
		And so I take a look at this lens, kind of from cradle to grave, how people move through this city, move their lives, and heal 20 years later, even as the floodlines might have diminished, but they're still there.
		Those lines are still there in so many communities, like in the lower 9th ward, where folks still haven't fully returned, where you still see across that neighborhood these concrete steps to nowhere, right?
		And in the midst of all that, there is literal hunger.
		So it's a barren, some parts of that neighborhood are still barren, but it's also a food desert.
		And so what does it look like for people to literally grow food and teach a new generation to grow food so they can feed themselves?
		That's what we're doing with Hope in High Water, that despite the high water, despite the losses, there still is hope.
		And this is what I describe as a people's recovery in action.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And here's one of those people that you interviewed for Hope in High Water talking about housing and wealth disparity after Katrina.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is just about 90 seconds.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		How tough has it been for folks to hold on to their homes, especially in communities that were already struggling against so many other economic and social forces?
unidentified		If you had insurance, for instance, and you were able to rebuild quickly, but if you were underinsured, oftentimes we have what we call heirs property.
		So when you have heirs property, it's like the home your grandmother lived in and then grandmom passes and someone or relative lives in that house generation after generation and then a disaster hits.
		Well in order to get resources from FEMA, either local resources or federal resources, you have to have title in that property.
		And if you don't, then you find yourself either uninsured or underinsured and unable to rebuild.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		You must have been seeing a lot of people coming in with that issue.
unidentified		Yes.
		And that rolls back to particularly black families having the ability to keep that asset in their family, which helps build generational wealth.
		Oftentimes that's the only asset we as black families have is mama's house.
		So keeping that is important.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Are we still seeing the ripples from Katrina today?
unidentified		So you still have families who had land here, who lost everything.
		The Katrina recovery took anywhere from 10 to 12 years.
		Like there were families who were still trying to recover.
		Our Vietnamese population who, with the sailboating community, you know, that took years for them to recover from that.
		They've lost their boat.
		You lose your boat.
		That's your way of life, your way of feeding your family.
		So that is a ripple effect.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A portion of Hope in High Water, a people's recovery, 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
		Jermaine Lee is the host and the executive producer.
		Mr. Lee, was doing this documentary part of your personal recovery?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		It most certainly was, John.
		I think about what I experienced during Katrina, and it wasn't for me personally.
		You know, I'm from New Jersey.
		My family was safe and sound.
		I wasn't married and didn't have a child at that point.
		I was just a young reporter.
		But what I saw, my colleagues experience, but what I saw folks I gotta know, communities that I gotta know and love, the trauma that they continue to carry to this day.
		And by proxy, what I've carried, the little pieces of the trauma that I've held on to, given that closeness to this community, it was a full circle moment.
		And so it's recovery, it's healing.
		It's also giving flowers to people and organizations who do tireless work every single day in New Orleans.
		Folks who are without resources are feeding people and helping people find homes and helping to establish community organizations and groups that will help the city.
		And so for me, it's part recovery, but it's really an opportunity.
		Despite everything else we will see around this anniversary, certainly the destruction, certainly the abuses of power, certainly the political failings, certainly the brutality that folks had long been accustomed to in New Orleans, exacerbated and amplified by the storm.
		But to go and tell the story of not resilience, but deep resolve, right?
		The deep humanity, the love for community and love for self-that for me was certainly healing.
		And I hope that it offers some degree of healing for those who may still be triggered and traumatized by what they experienced.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up on 9:30 on the East Coast, Tremaine Lee, our guest until the top of the hour, 10 a.m. Eastern.
		That's the end of our program this morning.
		So plenty of time for your phone calls.
		Kathy's waiting in Cleveland, Ohio.
		You're up first with Mr. Lee.
unidentified		Hello, thank you.
		I just wanted to quickly comment that Katrina was a signpost of sorts.
		I think the American people came to realize, unfortunately, that they cannot rely on their government to help them as people used to think.
		I am especially disgusted with the response of former President George W. Bush, who sat on his ranch on vacation for nearly a month while this was happening.
		That was just utterly disgusting.
		And that's part of his legacy.
		And they seem to, you know, put it under the rug, but I think it should be recognized that he was an abject failure in his response to this tragedy.
		Thank you for doing the documentary.
		Now, listen off the air.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Lee?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
		I think that when we think about this in terms of being a natural disaster, right, we think about the wind and the storm surge and the toppling of the levees.
		But if anything, there are many people who see this as a man-made disaster.
		And part of the disaster and the tragedy in this was the political response and the failure to deliver resources in the wake, right?
		The road home money to get folks back home, the way folks' homes were valued, and the lack of restoration in that space.
		But it's not lost on many folks in that city that they were failed, again, not just by the levee system, which was crumbling before the storm, but the political infrastructure.
		And so it's one of those things that I think folks are still grappling with.
		But to your point, that will certainly be a stain on former President Bush's legacy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The Daily Signal with a story up this morning about the anniversary of Katrina, the 20th anniversary.
		And they published along with it that famous picture of George W. Bush looking out the window of Air Force One at the destruction caused by Katrina.
		What do you think of?
		What's your reaction when you see that picture 20 years later?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's like the literal 30 or 40,000-foot view and still having blindness.
		The idea that we were on the ground and there were people huddling under the interstate who weren't eating for days.
		You have people who died and passed away covered in blankets.
		You have helicopters and trucks dumping water off for people and they're exploding on the ground.
		You have elderly people without their medications.
		Yet here we have the leader of this country flying over and looking as if, oh, it's so sad, right?
		It's just so sad and so troubling, right?
		Meanwhile, there are people starving.
		And while people are trying to seek safety, mind you, incidents like folks trying to get over the Crescent City Connection and a neighboring community, police officer started shooting over their heads to turn them back, as if there was something inherently criminal, something inherently violent about the people trying to survive the storm.
		Yet here we have the president flying over.
		And I think Tylisa Rice was out shopping, and there were photos of her getting some Louboutins or some fancy shoes.
		Meanwhile, folks are still trapped in the flood.
		It's one of those indelible images that speak to the great divide and disparity, the political divide, and certainly political, what some would say, political violence.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Peter in New York, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're next.
unidentified		I wondered if can it happen again?
		Has enough been done right now to prevent it?
		What needs to be done in the future to prevent it?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		So there's been a lot of money pumped into boosting the levee system in New Orleans.
		You had these canals and these levee systems that were crumbling at every corner.
		And so I think there has been great, there have been great strides in shoring up the physical levees.
		But when you think about the part that made Katrina and the flooding that followed extra dangerous, extra damaging, extra lethal, was that you had poor people on the front lines of those communities in the lowest parts of the city that are still flood prone to this day.
		When we were shooting this documentary, we had a number of days with just heavy rain, nothing torrential, but just heavy rain.
		And there were communities flooding where cars had water up to past the wheel wells.
		And so while we've solved for part of the problem, if we ever get to the point where the water is pouring in again, without proper drainage, without that part shored up, you're likely to see something similar.
		Again, part of the issue was there were a number of levees that cracked across the city, all around surrounding New Orleans, and it filled like a bowl.
		Those have been shored up.
		But folks who don't have the resources, don't have the money, don't have the wealth to live elsewhere, and on top of that, there are a lot of insurance companies that fled the state that won't be insuring those communities.
		You're going to see more of the same.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Chris out of Valley Cottage, New York.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning, guys.
		Thanks for having me.
		I have a very interesting story about Katrina and how it impacted me as a New Yorker.
		I'm a musician-songwriter.
		I was working with Alicia Keys and Jermaine Paul, and I was called to come down to New Orleans to come and perform at the New Orleans Essence Festival at the Super Coca-Cola Lounge up there at the Superdome.
		Well, the irony of my story is that it was 2006.
		I was there for the recovery.
		And I'm here to highlight the psyche of America.
		All right.
		I'm a musician.
		I'm here working in a black band.
		Nobody comes to our show at the Superdome.
		I was pretty disappointed, you know, to say the least.
		I was like, wow, I really thought there would be a bigger turnout.
		I see the city starting to rebuild one year later.
		Two people actually came to our event.
		One was a man named Ruben Stutgard.
		He was a former American Idol winner, a great singer.
		And the second guy was Barack Obama.
		And I remember he was just talking about starting to campaign for president.
		My friend Jermaine Paul and I, we looked at each other, we looked at him, we shook his hand, and we shrugged our shoulders because we said to ourselves, how could a black man think that he could be audacious enough to be the president of this country?
		Just look at this place.
		Like, where is your head at?
		And I'm saying this to say, as a black man in this country, to look at the future president of the United States with no faith, no faith at all.
		And we're good guys.
		You know what I mean?
		We're all good people.
		And most people are inherently good.
		But imagine looking at the future president of the United States and thinking, this guy can never win because of his skin.
		And I'm saying that to say that that's the mindset I had after Katrina.
		I saw the documentary, ironically, just last night.
		Great job, by the way.
		Fantastic, fantastic capture of the time.
		And you brought back a lot of memories.
		But I just want to point out the psyche in this country.
		And just on another point, very quickly, I think even the immigration issue, everything it seems like with our country seems to be about race.
		It seems that lives are only valuable when they're dying in Ukraine for obvious reasons.
		The lives in Gaza are not as valuable.
		Seems like having a tan is not really financially attractive.
		And it's not investable.
		But great black people have built a lot of America.
		I live in a town called NYAC, New York, which was built by black people.
		It is now one of the greatest towns in America because it's black and white people who own property on the river.
		I think NIAC should be a model for how America should be run.
		Everybody has a chance to have a voice, and I appreciate having a voice on this channel.
		And thank you so much for having me.
		And that's all I have to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jermaine Lane.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much for that.
		I think, unfortunately and sadly, your sentiments have been shared by much of black America.
		We're all well aware of the social hierarchy reinforced by great actual violence, economic violence, social violence.
		But we're all aware of the baseline in America.
		And the baseline is anti-blackness, right?
		We've made great progress.
		We've made great strides.
		We've had great moments of unity among races.
		I always think back to when there are Confederate sympathizers who will make apologies for enslavers saying they were men of their times.
		But there are also abolitionists who were men of their times, white men and women who fought the abominable system of slavery.
		And so while we have had these moments, we all fully aware that the baseline is anti-blackness, and that some of that was on display in the way the people of New Orleans were treated.
		But it's an interesting time for you to reflect on, thinking back where this young guy, Barack Obama, was just starting to have the audacity to run for office.
		But I think it speaks to how long ago that actually was, 20 years ago.
		We've had two Obama presidencies, two Trump presidencies.
		We've been moving along in a way that feels a little dizzying.
		But yeah, man, thanks for your reflection.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Nicoller brings up that he was a musician.
		You use the music of New Orleans in this documentary.
		Can you talk through how and why you chose to do that?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, highlighting the arts.
		There's a great institution in New Orleans called the Ashea Cultural Center, really a hub and a home for artists and thinkers and entertainers.
		And when you think about New Orleans and everything you love about New Orleans, it's the music, it's the food.
		It's the most potent form of black art that we've seen.
		The truest form of American art has always been black art through jazz, right?
		And so it's important for us not just to highlight the folks in community organizing and helping and pushing, but those who capture the emotional ethos, the cultural ethos of that city.
		And that was through, we did that through jazz and poetry and dance and drummers.
		It was important for us to use that as our through line.
		And I think also through the arts and through music especially, I think we're able to tap into the breadth of humanity at our simplest form.
		Because music moves you in a way that nothing else does.
		And there are few places on the face of this earth that has created more of a lasting impact for music than New Orleans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Hope and High Water is streaming on Peacock.
		It is Tremaine Lee, who's with us for about another 20 minutes to talk about it this morning.
		A special line for those who have been impacted by Hurricane Katrina, who were impacted 20 years ago.
		It made landfall 20 years ago tomorrow.
		Sean is up next out of California.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, everyone, and Tremaine and John.
		I am calling this morning because I have two questions, and I want to emphasize my main point after the question.
		My first one is: 20 years ago, that it was said that there was a cargo.
		I'm trying to go back in my brain that, okay, I did see a cargo there, but I want to clarify.
		It was a cargo that was by the ninth ward that actually helped with that levees breaking a lot sooner, even regardless that the levee should have been brought up to standards.
		My second question is: the Mexico, I mean, Mexico had sent in some of their soldiers, and they were waiting for George Bush to give them the okay to go in.
		Can you please clarify those two questions?
		And my bold point, I want to send to the United States of America and other countries.
		Be prepared.
		Have your first stage together.
		Love your neighbors.
		Know how to garden.
		We are going back to those times and ways and be prepared.
		I see too many Americans that are not prepared and on the luxury things.
		Get back to the old ways and be prepared.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Sean in California.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Lee.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for those questions.
		I think both, well, the first one regarding the cargo, as you call it, is part of what many believe was a conspiracy where many folks in the lower ninth ward heard a loud boom and believed that the levee was somehow blown up.
		Later, it was discovered that there had been a cargo ship or a barge or something in that area.
		And even though most of us don't believe that the levee was intentionally blown, there has been a history in Mississippi and New Orleans during other floods where levees higher upstream had been blown to help direct the floodwater into black communities and poor black communities to save white-owned land.
		And that is a fact.
		And so even though it's unlikely, not probable, that an explosion created some of the breaches, it's not completely implausible, especially for those in communities where there is a long memory and they haven't forgotten.
		So that's one point.
		I think in terms of, I don't recall the Mexican soldiers waiting to be let in, but one of the greater travesties every step of the way was the failure on the local, state, and federal level to mobilize much sooner.
		It took days and days for folks to start getting transported out of the city and to get the proper resources for those that remained.
		And so the foot dragging, without question, hurt folks.
		And it caused the loss of life, certainly.
		But it was just, again, one of many, a litany of travesties after the storm.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Plainfield, Illinois.
		This is Michael.
		You're next.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I worked at that time 20 years ago for the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
		And unemployment compensation is a part of Social Security.
		People forget that.
		So they asked for volunteers to go down.
		This was about two weeks or three weeks after the hurricane hit.
		So five of us from Illinois went down there for three weeks we were, but we were on the Mississippi side.
		And people forget that the epicenter, I think, actually hit between on the border between Louisiana and Mississippi.
		That's actually where that ayah, that hurricane came over.
		And I'm not diminishing anything that happened to New Orleans.
		That was a horrible tragedy.
		But the devastation to the east of New Orleans was almost shocking.
		I had never seen anything like that in my entire life.
		The economy had completely collapsed.
		In fact, the first few days we tried to register people for unemployment insurance benefits, which were incredibly small down there in that area.
		And after a few days, we just gave up and we just gave, we were just giving the maximum benefit to anyone that could show that they worked in the previous year.
		They would come in with their tax return.
		And it's just, I mean, the devastation.
jefferson in virginia ▲ ● ▼		I was in the Army during the Vietnam War, and I'm telling you, this was like literally a city bombed to oblivion.
unidentified		There were barges that these casinos used to be floating in the water.
		They were washed a mile inland and then just deposited across the road.
		And I agree with the gentleman, there's a lot of prejudice in the way the, you know, aid sort of shows up.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, Michael, you bring up a couple topics.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me let Jermaine Lee jump in on some of them.
unidentified		Yeah.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, I'm so glad that you brought up Mississippi.
		And so when you watch the documentary, Hope in High Water, you'll see that we leave New Orleans for a bit and go to Mississippi.
		The Gulfport, Mississippi, was hit with a storm surge of 30 feet.
		And so when you talk about that destruction, 30 feet of storm surge pushing into the heart of the city, decimating the local fishing economy, decimating the resorts and travel in the casino, decimating well-hilled communities and those who had struggled alike.
		I spent some time in a place called Turkey Creek, which is an historic black community in East Piloxi that had been formed in the aftermath of emancipation.
		And they're fighting to hold on to the land, but they had lost so much due to the flooding.
		And then you had the encroachment of industry and the encroachment of a big old outlet mall.
		And so folks are like, they had to deal with the actual losses from the flooding and then the encroachment of industry.
		But lest we forget, in Mississippi, they lost a few hundred lives.
		And you talk about seeing a mile inland of that destruction.
		New Orleans sat in a bowl.
		And so that bowl filled up.
		But that destruction you saw in Mississippi did look apocalyptic.
		And this isn't like any kind of tragedy Olympics here to compare the two.
		But we forget about Mississippi because New Orleans, this beloved American city, had suffered such a great loss that we forgot all about, largely forgot all about the hurt and pain and destruction in Mississippi.
		And then they're still, not unlike New Orleans, still fighting to recover fully.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned Turkey Creek.
		Let me take viewers there from your documentary.
		This is about two minutes of your interviews from Turkey Creek.
unidentified		When disasters happen, they also blow in media, people from government, academicians, volunteers, building materials.
		But if you know who to look for in that mob to say, hey, you're from a special FEMA task force on heritage restoration and recovery under the Stafford Act, welcome to Turkey Creek.
		And while you're at it, here's 11 other historic black communities and other communities that have got to survive this the way that Turkey Creek has to.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		And through his work as founder of the Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, Derek waged a multi-front campaign to save Turkey Creek.
		He built coalitions, brought in policymakers and historians, and pushed federal agencies to see what he saw in his hometown, a place worth saving.
		Turkey Creek was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
		Hundreds of acres of land was preserved through a land trust, and a long-term plan to restore and protect the watershed is now underway.
		One that could help blunt the next hurricane and soak up the next flood.
unidentified		I think there's a lot of people locally rooting for Turkey Creek, in part because they're rooting for themselves.
		This could be other neighborhoods, other communities, other people that are increasingly flood prone.
		Turkey Creek has become kind of like a, it's kind of like a guidepost, a beacon.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Where do you think we are now in Turkey Creek, 20 years later?
unidentified		Stronger in some ways, more vulnerable in others.
		You know, we try to stay engaged, open circle.
		My mother once said, when people make a circle that excludes us, make a bigger circle that includes them.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That from the documentary, Hope in High Water, a people's recovery 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.
		Jermaine Lee is the producer, executive producer of that documentary.
		It's airing on Peacock.
		It's streaming there.
		Mr. Lee, in that clip we just played, the gentleman said that Turkey Creek is stronger in some ways and more vulnerable in others.
		Is that applied to New Orleans as well?
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
		In some ways, in the aftermath of the storm, we saw how strong people really could be and how folks found the energy and courage and savvy to push forward with a sense of agency that many didn't have before.
		There was, to use that word again, a savviness in Turkey Creek of, you know what, how do we save our land?
		Maybe we get it protected.
		Maybe we use some of the mechanisms that are already in place to literally protect this land.
		But then on the other hand, there have been so many people who haven't returned to the Gulf Coast.
		There have been folks who have struggled to rebound after the loss of their land.
		And in part of that rebuilding, there's this kind of these, you know, a disaster economy that sets in, where those who are already well off, if you have a home that's valued at $2 million and you have the roof blown off and your front deck is all messed up, you can gut it, right, and rehab it because your home value was worth more.
		And so now it's worth even more after the storm.
		But for those who were underinsured in flood-prone communities already, whose home, despite the fact that it might also be 1,500, 2,000 square feet, is valued much less, they were never able to economically rebound.
		And so while we see the strength in some ways and redevelopment in some places, it's really struggling in others.
		And even 20 years later, people have not found their footing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ann is in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
		Good morning.
		You're next, Jerome Tremaine Lee.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I would like to ask your guest this morning.
		I remember Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
		But what I want to know from your guests is it seems as if we're about to slide, we're about to slide back into another Katrina, the black of America, men's and women.
		I was listening to when you said about President Obama, the amazement of President Obama, but when a black woman ran for president, it was more black men and women that turned it back on Ms. Harris.
		And I wonder why it's that.
		Why is more blacks is voting for the white?
		Can you tell me what have changed in the black community?
		I seem like it's more of balance now with the younger men of black race.
		They are killing each other.
		And I don't see people such as yourself being a model, law, for these black young men and women.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Ann in North Carolina.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Tremaine Lee.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think there are a couple dynamics that you're speaking to right now.
		I've spent a lot of time the whole last election cycle primarily engaging with black men across this country, black people in general, but black men specifically.
		And one thing I've heard time and time again from black men who were either voting for Democrats but did so reluctantly on the fence or folks who said they were willing to give the Republicans a chance and Donald Trump a chance is that they felt taken advantage of,
		taken for granted on the Democratic side, that even though they've been loyal voters for a number of generations and they grew up, you know, taught to vote, basically encouraged culturally to vote for the Democrats, that they haven't gotten much out of it.
		That when you think about the crime issues you're mentioning, the violence, but also the deep inequality and disparities in wealth and income and access to quality health care and education, all those things hasn't changed much for many people.
		Certainly those who are politically astute recognize the stark differences in how these parties engage with the machinery of politics and where their values are.
		But there are a lot of people who've become disillusioned.
		And another thing that I've heard time and time again from young black men especially is saying that with this big tent Democratic Party where certainly black women are heralded as the base and LGBTQ and all kinds of issues around immigration, you know, rightly so many would say, but no one ever mentions black men.
		Black men on both sides of the aisle still seem to be something else, a different conversation, not engaged with, not reached.
		And so I think we're seeing that play out.
		When it comes to the violence piece, I think what we're seeing is a desperation, a community still coiled up from all of the weight of all the disparities, and young people are lashing out.
		And there seems to be even more of a social disconnect given social media, given the false connectivity of cell phones, right, and all this technology.
		Folks feel even more separated.
		When we think about for a long time, young white men dominated when it comes to the suicide rate.
		Now we've seen leaps and bounds higher for young black men and black boys in particular.
		And so when you liken it to a flood, I think we are certainly in a crisis, but it's not a crisis we haven't been in since we've been here, honestly.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Time for one more call.
		We'll head to the Pelican State.
		This is Pierce in Louisiana.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, thanks for the opportunity to talk.
		I'm of the age where I can remember Hurricane Camille, Hurricane Betsy, which flooded parts of New Orleans.
		Definitely remember Katrina.
		But my question is more in the future.
		With climate change and FEMA being downgraded, I mean, what do you see for us for the future?
		And thank you for your response.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jermaine Lee, give you the final two minutes here.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
		I think for many people, for many of us, the alarm bells are already ringing, right?
		It's like a Class 10 emergency here.
		And when you go across the country, and I spend a lot of time in the South in particular, in frontline communities, there seems to be this deference to big industry and capital.
		We're making ourselves and our communities so much more susceptible so that companies and corporations can still benefit economically at all and any cost.
		And so I think you're right to be concerned.
		It happens time and time again, whether it's the algae bloom from all the runoff or it's the literal drilling and digging into barrier islands and coastal areas that should be protecting us from high winds, that should be soaking up floodwaters.
		We're seeing a continued decimation and it won't change until we get serious about it.
		But again, like so many other aspects in American society, we show this great deference to capitalism and this great deference to profits and those who make it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		If you want to see Tremaine Lee's documentary, Hope in High Water, a People's Recovery 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina, it's currently streaming on Peacock.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Tremaine Lee, we appreciate your time this morning.
trymaine lee ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for having me, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And that's going to do it for our program today.
		We'll, of course, be back tomorrow morning.
		It's 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific.
		In the meantime, have a great Thursday.

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