| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live. | |
| And then Sarah Longwell, founder and publisher of The Bulwark, will talk about media coverage of U.S. politics and the Trump administration. | ||
| Also, John Olyot, former spokesman for the National Security Council and deputy assistant to President Trump, will discuss the Trump administration's approach on national security matters. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| On this Friday, September 5th, we'll begin this morning with RFK Jr. in the hot seat on Capitol Hill yesterday defending his recent actions at the Health and Human Services Department, while Democrats and some Republicans expressed frustration with his decisions and the turmoil over vaccine policy. | ||
| Here's how you can join the conversation this morning. | ||
| We want to get your reaction to what you heard on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Democrats dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you don't want to call, you can text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city and state, or you can post on facebook.com slash C-SPAN and also on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Before we get to your calls, we'll begin with the opening statement by the Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| Here's RFK Jr. talking about the recent shake-ups at the Center for Disease Prevention and Control and his explanation to the Senate Finance Committee yesterday. | ||
| These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world's gold standard public health agency with the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease. | ||
| CDC failed that responsibility miserably during COVID when its disastrous and nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools, caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science, and heightened economic inequality. | ||
| And yet all those oppressive and unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself. | ||
| America is home to 4.2% of the world's population. | ||
| Yet we had nearly 20% of the COVID deaths. | ||
| We literally did worse than any country in the world. | ||
| And the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving. | ||
| And that's why we need bold, competent, and creative new leadership at CDC. | ||
| People able and willing to chart a new course. | ||
| As my father once said, progress is a nice word, but change is its motivator, and change has its enemies. | ||
| That's why we need new blood at CDC. | ||
| That's also why it's imperative that we remove officials with conflicts of interest and catastrophically bad judgment and political agendas. | ||
| We need unbiased, politics-free, transparent, evident-based science in the public interest. | ||
| Those are the guiding principles behind the changes at the CDC, and that is what you can expect all across our agency for the next three years. | ||
| Robert Kennedy Jr. on Capitol Hill yesterday, that was his opening statement. | ||
| sat in the chair taking questions from senators for three hours yesterday. | ||
| This morning we're getting your reaction to what you heard from the Health and Human Services Secretary and the senators in their questioning of the Secretary. | ||
| Here is Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. | ||
| He's the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. | ||
| He questioned the Secretary about the Wall Street Journal op-ed that read yesterday and claims by the former CDC director Susan Menarez that she was fired for refusing to endorse unsupported vaccine recommendations. | ||
| Here's that exchange. | ||
| Burr Chairman, I'd like to put in the record today an op-ed written by Susan Menarez, who was fired by Mr. Kennedy. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| So what we know, and Dr. Menarez, you know, was approved by Republicans. | ||
| She wrote an op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal, which I've just put in the record, and I quote her. | ||
| She said, I was told to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric. | ||
| So this is not some liberal philosopher or something. | ||
| This is the CDC director who tells the Wall Street Journal, which is not exactly interested in progressive theories and the like, that she was told to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel filled with people who've publicly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric. | ||
| So my first question, Mr. Secretary, is, did you, in fact, do what Director Monarez said you did, which is tell her to just go along with vaccine recommendations, even if she didn't think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence? | ||
| No, I did not. | ||
| That's a yes or no. | ||
| So you have an opportunity to call her a liar if you say that you didn't do it, but I'd like to see you respond to this. | ||
| No, I did not say that to her. | ||
| And I never had a private meeting with her. | ||
| Other witnesses to every meeting that we have, and all of those witnesses will say, I never said that. | ||
| So she's lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Up on Capitol Hill yesterday before the Senate Finance Committee, RFK Jr. taking questions and heated exchanges with senators on the finance committee. | ||
| Your reaction to what you heard this morning. | ||
| From the New York Times reporting, they note that the removal of Dr. Mineras just one month after she was confirmed by the Senate has irked senators of both parties who say it negates their own role in the confirmation process. | ||
| Among them is Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, and the majority leader. | ||
| Here's a quote from him. | ||
| We go through all the work and confirm somebody to one of these important posts and then a month later they're gone. | ||
| He added, the person, whoever ends up in that position, it shouldn't be disqualifying to be in support of or in favor of vaccines. | ||
| That's a quote from the majority leader, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune. | ||
| Teresa, Danridge, Tennessee, Republican, good morning to you. | ||
| Did you watch yesterday? | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I watched, and good morning to you also. | |
| I watched, and I have to tell you, it's not, I have three boys, they're all grown. | ||
| They're in their 40s now. | ||
| It's not RSK that makes people afraid of the vaccinations. | ||
| It's what the Democrats and what Joe Biden and Dr. Fauci did by using the vaccines as a weapon, forcing people against their will to take a unproven, unsafe, deadly vaccine and forcing you to take it and mandating that employers take the vaccine. | ||
| I never took the vaccine. | ||
| I had COVID one time. | ||
| I never took it. | ||
| My husband took it. | ||
| He was forced by his employer, either keep your job and take the vaccine or be fired. | ||
| That's what people are afraid of. | ||
| The mandates and the lies that come out of the CDC, none of it was true. | ||
| None of it. | ||
| Well, Teresa. | ||
| RFK Jr., the secretary, was asked about the effectiveness of the vaccine. | ||
| And he said there was no data to support that. | ||
| So let me just read the New York Times because they say, in fact, the data is readily available. | ||
| Hundreds of reports have tracked the efficacy of the vaccine since they first debuted in 2021. | ||
| The shots have saved millions of lives in the United States and elsewhere. | ||
| Dozens of studies have estimated. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Teresa, respond to that. | |
| I had two family members that died from the COVID vaccine. | ||
| One had an autopsy performed because of her death, and she had a clotting issue after being given the vaccine that was so bad that she had clot blood clots in her lungs, in her heart, in her brain. | ||
| She had blood clots all over her body that was like snakes. | ||
| And I'm not lying. | ||
| And then an uncle, who completely went insane after taking the vaccine because he was so afraid of it, but was mandated by Kroger that he had to take it or lose his job. | ||
| I mean, that was the predicament we were put up against. | ||
| And that's why people are afraid of vaccines. | ||
| Now it has nothing to do with Robert F. Kenney. | ||
| And let me say one more thing. | ||
| You know, people are getting about sick and tired of Democrats always hating everything. | ||
| They looked like vicious animals yesterday, attacking that man so viciously when he is trying to do his job. | ||
| I mean, is there anything that the Democrats will stand up for the American people for? | ||
| I mean, they're for the criminal. | ||
| They're for the illegal. | ||
| They're for everything that's wrong with this country. | ||
| And I don't understand. | ||
| They're just so vicious. | ||
| They should never be allowed to hold office again. | ||
| They should. | ||
| And why not the thing? | ||
| Please let me know. | ||
| Teresa, do you know what? | ||
| I've got other people waiting. | ||
| We heard your two points. | ||
| We'll go to Edward in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Democratic caller. | ||
| Edward, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow, that hearing was, I thought, a complete disaster for RFK because, and the previous caller should listen, they were Republicans critical. | |
| They asked him, didn't Donald Trump develop through the warp, what was it, Warp Speed program to develop the vaccine? | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
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The COVID vaccine. | |
| They asked him, I think three Republican senators asked him, didn't Donald Trump develop the vaccine for COVID? | ||
| And he reluctantly said yes. | ||
| And then they said, why aren't we supporting the vaccine program, the COVID vaccine program? | ||
| Apparently, he's pulled the rug out under the COVID vaccine so that people cannot get the COVID vaccine. | ||
| I think under the age of 65, RFK is a nutty conspiracy theory anti-vaxxer. | ||
| So when I wrote down, are we going to get rid of the measles? | ||
| These are the vaccines that work, that save millions of lives. | ||
| The measles vaccine, the measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, polio, those are the ones, those are all the vaccines that work, that are safe and effective. | ||
| And Robert F. Kennedy is going to tell us that these vaccines are dangerous. | ||
| I mean, it's just there isn't any evidence that the COVID vaccine is in any way risky or right? | ||
| I mean, and then here's the other thing I have to say before hanging up: is there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. | ||
| This is the lie that RFK wrote into Washington, D.C. on, that vaccinations causes autism. | ||
| There is no evidence, none, zero, that we don't know the cause of autism. | ||
| And by the way, RFK was supposed to announce the cause or the cure of autism this month in September. | ||
| He announced that three months ago or four months ago, and I thought, oh, no. | ||
| Yeah, so I still there? | ||
| Yeah, we're okay. | ||
| So, Edward, heard your points. | ||
| All right, Edward there in Michigan, Democratic caller. | ||
| He was referring to questioning by some Republican senators. | ||
| We'll show you Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana. | ||
| He's a physician. | ||
| He's also the chair of the Senate Health Committee, and he was a critical key vote in support of RFK's nomination to serve as the Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| Yesterday, he criticized Kennedy's decision to cut funding for the mRNA vaccine research, pointing to the success of President Trump's Operation Warp Speed during the pandemic. | ||
| I said yesterday, I believe it, that President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed. | ||
| If he had been President Obama, he would have gotten it. | ||
| But because of Operation Warp Speed, forcing the federal government to come to a vaccine development within 10 months when others said it couldn't be done, we saved millions of lives globally, trillions of dollars. | ||
| We reopened economies, an incredible accomplishment. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, do you agree with me that the president, that the president deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed? | ||
| Absolutely, Senator. | ||
| Let me ask you. | ||
| But you just told Senator Bennett that the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID. | ||
| Wait, that was a statement. | ||
| I did not say that. | ||
| Okay, then let me ask because you also want to make clear. | ||
| I cannot say that. | ||
| We'll check the record. | ||
| That's a question of fact. | ||
| You also said that you are also, as lead attorney for the children's health defense, you engaged in multiple lawsuits attempting to restrict access to the COVID vaccine. | ||
| Again, it surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when, as an attorney, you attempted to restrict access. | ||
| I'm happy to explain why. | ||
| I have three minutes and 30 seconds left. | ||
| It also surprises me because you've canceled, or HHA's did, but apparently under your direction, $500 million in contracts using the mRNA vaccine platform that was critical to Operation Warp Speed. | ||
| Again, an accomplishment that I think President Trump should get a Nobel Prize for. | ||
| You also told Senator Wyden at the outset that you didn't want to take vaccines away from people. | ||
| And as I conclude, I would like to say this. | ||
| Because of the conflicting recommendations made about COVID, this is from Eric Erickson, good conservative out of Atlanta, Georgia, occasionally gives me help. | ||
| My wife has stage four lung cancer. | ||
| She is one of the people the COVID vaccine actually helps. | ||
| Thanks to the current mess at HHS, CVS is unable to get her a vaccine. | ||
| Secondly, an email from a physician friend of mine. | ||
| Hey, Bill, I'm not even sure what I'm asking you, but we're all confused and concerned about who can get the COVID vaccine. | ||
| We are having our attorney try and render an opinion, but there's no firm guidance and concern about liability if vaccines are given to a patient requested, but not on the current CDC list. | ||
| Pharmacists are requiring a prescription now, even for patients over 65, creating a huge headache. | ||
| I submit these for the record without objection. | ||
| I would say effectively, we're denying people vaccine. | ||
| Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, there, chair of the Senate Health Committee. | ||
| Take a look at a recent poll conducted by CBS. | ||
| RFK Jr.'s policies are making vaccines. | ||
| 39% of the people polled said his policies are making vaccines less available. | ||
| 19% said no change. | ||
| 9% said more available. | ||
| 33% said they were not sure. | ||
| From the Washington Post reporting on this, Kennedy purged the entire membership of the influential vaccine advisory panel and replaced the experts with his picks, most of whom have criticized coronavirus vaccine policy. | ||
| They are scheduled to consider recommendations for coronavirus vaccines at an upcoming meeting this month. | ||
| Goes on to say last week, the Food and Drug Administration narrowed approval of an updated coronavirus vaccine to high-risk groups. | ||
| Kennedy has said shots will be available for all patients who choose them after consultation with their doctor. | ||
| But physicians and major medical associations say the reality on the ground is far more complicated, and that's what you heard from Senator Cassidy in that exchange. | ||
| We'll go to Carol in Massachusetts, Independent. | ||
| Carol, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the hearing yesterday from the senators was absolutely a crucifixion of Kennedy. | |
| They did not let him answer. | ||
| They interrupted him constantly. | ||
| And all those senators were absolutely need to retire and get out of the way. | ||
| They are like taking the advantage of the benefits they get them. | ||
| They need to retire. | ||
| They're all over 70 and they're way behind the times. | ||
| And everything they said, they read what somebody else wrote for them. | ||
| And I do agree that people should have a choice and not be mandated to take any kind of vaccine. | ||
| This is not democracy. | ||
| And I do know people who took that COVID vaccine and swear that they got dementia and side effects and everything else. | ||
| So I myself am going to have to make that decision. | ||
| And I don't think I want it again. | ||
| And for God, please don't mandate it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Because it should be my choice, like everything else. | ||
| And as far as autism is concerned, let me just say this: Autism, all of a sudden, so many people have children who have autism. | ||
| And I'll tell you why. | ||
| Because the government started to give a benefit to parents of children who have autism. | ||
| So the Gallier lawyers and the doctors got in on the act, signed, and said, yes, this child has autism, so they could get another government handout. | ||
| Okay, Carol, with her thoughts there in Massachusetts, the Washington Times front page, they frame yesterday's hearing this way. | ||
| Kennedy accuses lawmakers of failing nation's children, squares off with Democrats on Hill over vaccines. | ||
| After the hearing yesterday, President Trump was asked about the exchanges on Capitol Hill with his health secretary. | ||
| Here's what he had to say about his confidence in Secretary Kennedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Bill Cattle, you said effectively we're denying people vaccines. | |
| Do you have full confidence in what RFK Jr. is doing? | ||
| Well, I didn't get to watch the hearings today, but he's a very good person. | ||
| And he means very well, and he's got some little different ideas. | ||
| I guarantee a lot of the people at this table like RFK Jr., and I do. | ||
| But he's got a different take, and we want to listen to all of those takes. | ||
| But I heard he did very well today, but it's not your standard talk, I would say. | ||
| And that has to do with medical and vaccines. | ||
| But if you look at what's going on in the world with health and look at this country also with regard to health, I like the fact that he's different. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| President Trump yesterday at the White House, a dinner he hosted for tech executives there responding to questions about the performance of his health secretary, RFK Jr., on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| CBS also did a recent poll on RFK Jr.'s job approval rating. | ||
| This is what they found. | ||
| 45% approve, while 55% disapprove. | ||
| George, in Circleville, Ohio, Republican, we're getting your take on yesterday's hearing. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you just mentioned those statistics, and I think Congress has like a 13% approval. | |
| So that says a lot about RFK Jr. having at least a 45%. | ||
| But let's get back to the brass tax. | ||
| The pharmaceutical industry has made billions of dollars. | ||
| In fact, they're one of Elizabeth Warren's main sponsors of her campaign. | ||
| 4%, our population is 4% of the world, but we had 20% of the fatalities from COVID. | ||
| So were the vaccines working that well? | ||
| How about sudden cardiac arrest? | ||
| Thousands and thousands of people that died within two days after the shot. | ||
| And most of them might have had some prior conditions, but you can't explain all that. | ||
| And if the Democrats are so concerned about life, why they want to kill baby children? | ||
| It doesn't make sense. | ||
| It just doesn't make sense. | ||
| The lady before me that talked about the crucifixion of RFK Jr. at the at the hearing, when this senator that you played at the beginning, Ogden Ogden from Oregon, he said, okay. | ||
| He said, yes or no. | ||
| Did you do that? | ||
| And RFK Jr. said, I did not. | ||
| And he said, I want a yes and no answer. | ||
| I guess the guy can't understand yes and no. | ||
| Yeah, George, I mean, you watched, did you watch the full three hours yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I watched a lot yesterday. | |
| Yes, I did. | ||
| So it sounded like you were frustrated with Democrats not allowing the secretary to respond fully to their questioning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| They badgered him. | ||
| I mean, it was a crucifixion. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| And he's got a disability to boot. | ||
| Don't they have any common understanding? | ||
| Do they have any illness? | ||
| What's the word for that? | ||
| Just the understanding that this guy has a disability. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good word. | ||
| Thanks for your help. | ||
| But, you know, just shows you what the Democrat Party stands for. | ||
| You know, if it was a lady that was applying for the abortion pill, what would they say about that? | ||
| I mean, and I grew up when the Vietnam War was in full swing. | ||
| My brother was a Marine in Vietnam. | ||
| And did they care about life? | ||
| LBJ was a Democrat. | ||
| They sent 50,000 young men and women over there to get slaughtered. | ||
| George, there in Ohio, Republican. | ||
| George, and previous calls talking about the heated exchanges between Democrats and RFK Jr. on the Hill yesterday. | ||
| Here's the secretary with Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. | ||
| They get into it over discussing access to COVID vaccines at pharmacies. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| Last November, while you were under consideration to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mr. Kennedy, you said, quote, if vaccines are working for somebody, I'm not going to take them away. | ||
| No exceptions, no ifs, ands, or buts. | ||
| You would not take away vaccines from anyone who wanted them. | ||
| Then last week, you announced the COVID-19 vaccine is no longer approved for healthy people under the age of 65. | ||
| In announcing the change, you said the vaccine will be available for anyone who wants it. | ||
| Now, obviously, both things cannot be true at the same moment. | ||
| So let's clear this up right now, Secretary Kennedy. | ||
| Will you tell America that all adults and all children over six months of age are eligible to get a COVID booster at their local pharmacy today? | ||
| Anybody can get the booster. | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
| Anybody can get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anybody. | |
| So you're saying that is now the official rule of HHS. | ||
| Anybody is eligible to get a booster by just walking into the pharmacy. | ||
| It's not recommended for healthy people. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| If you don't recommend, then the consequence of that in many states is that you can't walk into a pharmacy and get one. | ||
| It means insurance companies don't have to cover the $200 or so cost. | ||
| As Senator Dr. Cassidy said, you are effectively denying people vaccines. | ||
| We're not going to recommend a product for which there's no clinical data for that indication. | ||
| Is that what I should be doing? | ||
| What you should be doing is honoring your promise that you made when you were looking to get confirmed in this job. | ||
| You're going out. | ||
| That is, you promised that you would not take away vaccines from anyone who wanted them. | ||
| You just changed the classification of the COVID vaccine. | ||
| I'm not taking them away from people, Senator. | ||
| It takes it away if you can't get it from your pharmacy. | ||
| Well, most Americans are going to be able to get it from their pharmacy for free. | ||
| Most Americans will be able to get it from their pharmacy for free. | ||
| The question is, everyone who wants it, that was your promise. | ||
| I never promised that I was going to recommend products with which there is no indication. | ||
| And I know you've taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator. | ||
| Exchange on Capitol Hill yesterday between Elizabeth Warren and RFK Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras were there for the entire three hours. | ||
| If you missed any of it and you want to see more, go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| JD Vance, the vice president, reacted to those exchanges on Capitol Hill yesterday, saying this on X. When I see all these senators trying to lecture and gotcha, Bobby Kennedy today, all I can think is you all support off-label, untested, irreversible hormonal therapies for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma. | ||
| You're full of shit and everyone knows it. | ||
| Maxine in Leavenworth, Kansas, Democratic caller. | ||
| Maxine, what's your take on that tense hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Greta, I watched a whole three hours of it, and I think that people are missing the point. | |
| It's not just the COVID vaccine. | ||
| JFK is against all vaccines. | ||
| That's why you have the state of Florida suddenly saying that all school, the school-a children, should not be vaccinated. | ||
| Now these people who are calling in in support of JFK were probably themselves vaccinated as children. | ||
| That's why they live to be at an age to call in on a program like this. | ||
| They also probably vaccinated their own children. | ||
| And that's the issue. | ||
| It's not just COVID. | ||
| It's all vaccine. | ||
| Vaccines to protect you from polio, vaccines that protect you from measles, vaccines that protect you from all kinds of diseases. | ||
| He's nothing supported. | ||
| And anybody who thinks that that's a good thing should really rethink it. | ||
| And another thing, the reason that they didn't allow him to answer questions fully is because he filibusters. | ||
| And when he's filibustering, he's lying. | ||
| And they know that he is. | ||
| And I think we used to think about that. | ||
| It's not just COVID. | ||
| It's all vaccine. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Maxine heard that point. | ||
| You touched on a headline in the Washington Post. | ||
| RFK Jr. drives a wedge between red and blue states on vaccines. | ||
| From their reporting, Democratic governors have promised to continue promoting coronavirus vaccines and other shots that Kennedy and his allies are targeting or no longer recommending. | ||
| State in the newly announced West Coast Health Alliance plan to coordinate vaccine recommendations based on the guidance of national medical organizations. | ||
| Compare that with Florida's Surgeon General, who compared vaccine mandates to slavery, announced a shift away from all vaccine requirements, including long-standing ones for diseases such as measles and polio. | ||
| Jerome in California, Independent. | ||
| Jerome, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it was really interesting watching the debate yesterday between the various political entities. | |
| On one side, they always position in one manner, and on the other side, they always position on the other manner. | ||
| Right from the very get-go, when they first had the problem with the COVID, if they had been more forthright with the public indicating and explaining to them that actually the virus was smaller in size than the filtering capability of the masks, | ||
| and that possibly the understanding of true virus and how it affects the human body with the immune system's capability to resist certain viruses would be really much more understood if they were humble and said that they really do not know that much about the immune system. | ||
| They theorize. | ||
| And if they present things to the public in a much more forthright manner, both the Republicans and the Democrats, I think there'll be a lot less aggravation in this society. | ||
| I mean, I was listening to Robert Kennedy Jr., and in response to one of the questions, he said he had to go back to the White House and check with the president. | ||
| This is like the song and dance that all the cabinet members make. | ||
| Nothing is a final decision until they check with the President Donald Trump. | ||
| All right, so Jerome, as an independent, where do you come down on this? | ||
| Which side are you on when it comes to RFK's tenure at Health and Human Services Department? | ||
| There are all the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, plus more, who have called for his resignation. | ||
| A thousand, more than a thousand current and former Health and Human Services employees have called on him to resign. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't think he ever should have been confirmed to begin with. | |
| As a man who admitted to being a heroin addict, I'd be interested to know about what current medications he's taking. | ||
| I feel sorry for him, actually. | ||
| He seems like he's underneath a tremendous amount of stress when he's being questioned, and he probably goes home with a tremendous amount of aggravation. | ||
| Everyone I know, I'm a retired optometrist. | ||
| I did an FDA study years ago on a particular medical device, and every one of my patients I had a take out of it because the device was useless. | ||
| And then the device did get FDA approval. | ||
| This was many years ago when I was practicing my profession. | ||
| I'm old. | ||
| I'm over 80. | ||
| I'm almost 82, actually, 81 and change. | ||
| I've been listening to politicians now for a long time. | ||
| And it's all the same song and dance. | ||
| They basically, not all years ago, it didn't seem like every politician was basically a career politician. | ||
| They seem to have a little more dignity in what they espouse to the public. | ||
| Now, it seems like they're all career and they're fearful of what's the word, disputing the validity of what the president says, the president's power. | ||
| The president does this. | ||
| Yep, understood. | ||
| Jerome, your thoughts. | ||
| Got them. | ||
| We're going to continue taking your calls this morning, getting your reaction to that heated hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras were in the Senate Finance Committee room for the entire three hours, and we want to get your take on what you heard from the senators and from RFK Jr. in response to their questions. | ||
| News update for you. | ||
| This is from the CBS News. | ||
| The headline this morning, Venezuelan fighter jets flew over a U.S. Navy ship in quote show of force. | ||
| That in reaction to the Trump administration firing on that boat. | ||
| We'll have more on that coming up on the Washington Journal today. | ||
| And then also up on Capitol Hill, C-SPAN was covering the hearing with Trump advisor Stephen Moran, who was testifying on Capitol Hill. | ||
| And the headline of that is that he'll take an unpaid leave from the White House if confirmed to the Fed. | ||
| In other words, he'll still stay in the job, answering to the president while also serving on the Federal Reserve Board if he's confirmed. | ||
| That was an issue for Senator Reed yesterday. | ||
| And again, if you missed that hearing, you can find it on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Also, yesterday at the White House, President Trump, at that dinner for tech executives, was asked about today's jobs report. | ||
| You'll recall that today's jobs report usually comes out around 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, will be the first since President Trump fired the director at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, claiming that the numbers that were sent out to the public were political. | ||
| So here is what he had to say last night at the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| Tomorrow we have a jobs report coming out. | ||
| The first since the BLS commissioner, who you fired, won't be there. | ||
| A lot of people will be turning to you to see if you believe the data that's released. | ||
| Can you commit to saying the data will be incredible? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They come out tomorrow, but the real numbers that I'm talking about are going to be whatever it is, but will be in a year from now with these monstrous, huge, beautiful places, the palaces of genius. | ||
| And when they start opening up, you're seeing, I think you'll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible. | ||
| Right now, it's a lot of construction numbers, but you're going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before. | ||
| President Trump on the job numbers coming up at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| We'll let you know what those numbers say when we get to that point. | ||
| This morning, though, here on the Washington Journal in our first hour, we're getting your reaction to the exchanges on Capitol Hill yesterday between senators on the Finance Committee and RFK Jr., the health secretary defending his vaccine policy and CDC shakeup on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| Here's how the national, some of the national newspapers are framing it. | ||
| This is the Washington Post. | ||
| RFK Jr. defends moves at Hill hearing heated exchanges with lawmakers amid rising frustration over CDC upheaval and vaccine confusion. | ||
| Then you have the New York Times this morning with their headline, Grilled by Senate Kennedy Defends Vaccine Moves. | ||
| And the Wall Street Journal this morning, their headline reads, RFK Jr. clashes with senators on CDC chaos and vaccine stance. | ||
| Gloria in Staten Island, New York, a Democratic caller, we'll go to you next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question in reference to that situation yesterday. | ||
| I don't understand how this man can get up and recommend getting rid of the vaccination that's been saving people's lives for years. | ||
| This man is not a doctor. | ||
| He doesn't know what he's talking about. | ||
| Yeah, he's frustrated because he cannot answer the questions that are being asked. | ||
| And how is it that Trump shows this man? | ||
| He doesn't know what he's talking about, number one. | ||
| And chose somebody that does not know what's going on with people and saving people's lives. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| All right, Gloria. | ||
| Mary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Republican. | ||
| Mary, it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's very clear to me that we have somebody who is fighting for the people in this fight to represent real public health. | ||
| So, RFK, I would really like to thank him so much for what he is enduring and what a view we're getting. | ||
| These senators are so repulsive. | ||
| I used to be a Democrat, but I left that party when they hatched Bernie Sanders and went with Hillary Clinton, which was a complete travesty. | ||
| The politics are so dirty, folks. | ||
| They really are. | ||
| So, about the CDC, okay? | ||
| The CDC was exempt from getting the vaccinations. | ||
| The mandates didn't apply, and they also didn't apply to Congress and all these effetes that you're watching here attack Robert F. Kennedy. | ||
| If we didn't have him, we wouldn't be able to establish a new standard for science because the former director of the CDC had to quote Israel and the Zenists when she went for research material to try and support vaccinations. | ||
| So, mRNA is formulas. | ||
| It's a new development, a new genetic technology. | ||
| It is not the same thing as the vaccines that we all had when we were young. | ||
| These are different. | ||
| This is why Senator Kennedy has to be, or Robert Kennedy has to be so careful and is being so careful. | ||
| So, I support him 100% and I thank him. | ||
| And those senators need to retire. | ||
| They're just awful. | ||
| But the pharmaceutical industries, the Zionists that run those, you got to watch that too, folks. | ||
| It's everywhere. | ||
| How do you know that, Mary? | ||
| I mean, that's a broad And could be perceived as an anti-Semitic statement that all pharmaceutical companies are run by Zionists. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anti-Catholic. | |
| You know, wouldn't that be terrible to really talk about things? | ||
| Wouldn't that? | ||
| Kathleen, Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you, C-SPAN, for taking my call. | |
| I watched most of the testimony yesterday, and I am appalled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just cannot believe that the head of the health of this country knows so little. | |
| And it was very rich to me that Barrasso and Cassidy are so upset, which you could tell by their questioning and their very appearance. | ||
| They're both medical doctors. | ||
| They both approved of him in the beginning. | ||
| And if they would have listened to reason, their doctors. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This man, Kennedy, has no medical experience. | |
| And he's getting rid of the scientists. | ||
| Dr. Susan, he said she admitted to being untrustworthy. | ||
| Who would admit to being untrustworthy to an employer? | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| He fired the panel, all of the people, the 12 people that were on the panel, he fired them. | ||
| We have no scientists there. | ||
| And I just listened to Bernie Sanders and he asked him who approves of what he's doing because the AMA doesn't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Association of Pediatric Medicine doesn't. | |
| There are no scientists. | ||
| So who does the public trust? | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do we believe when there are people there that have absolutely no scientific knowledge? | |
| They're going on pure anecdotal. | ||
| And we're in trouble. | ||
| And I pray that people will not die because they can't get vaccines. | ||
| I'm in Pennsylvania right now, and CVS is not going to honor requests for vaccines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They don't, no one knows what to do. | |
| Everything is in complete turmoil. | ||
| And so I don't know what will happen. | ||
| Kathleen, I want to share with you and others Deborah Howery's piece in the opinion pages of the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| I resigned from the CDC. | ||
| Here are my questions for RFK Jr.: The writer is an emergency physician and was the chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. | ||
| And she writes: Trust is the foundation of public health. | ||
| But in the past several months, I have seen how far America is from achieving that standard. | ||
| I learned about the change to the CDC's COVID-19 guidance not from scientific briefings or official channels, but from a post on X by the HHS Secretary announcing it. | ||
| That change was not based on science or data. | ||
| At the most recent CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, presentations were delivered that had not been vetted by the agency, including one that had been fabricated references on thimerserol. | ||
| And the agency's own document was pulled from the CDC website. | ||
| The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, long considered the gold standard of public health reporting, was paused for two weeks without explanation. | ||
| Although it has resumed publication, there are no longer news media materials or public summaries to make findings accessible to practitioners and patients alike. | ||
| These changes weaken the transparency and rigor that Americans deserve. | ||
| You can read that in the Washington Post. | ||
| The caller also mentioned Senator Barrasso, a physician, a Republican from Wyoming, the number two in the Senate Republican leadership ranks, also challenging Senator Kennedy at the hearing yesterday. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| The last 50 years, vaccines are estimated to have saved 154 million lives worldwide. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I support vaccines. | |
| I'm a doctor. | ||
| Vaccines work. | ||
| Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. | ||
| Since then, I've grown deeply concerned. | ||
| The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership in the National Institute of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The recently confirmed director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired. | |
| Americans don't know who to rely on. | ||
| You know, a recent poll said 89% of voters, 81% of Trump voters agree vaccine recommendations should come from trained physicians, scientists, public health experts. | ||
| So they believe, you know, Senator Marshall, Senator Cassidy, they believe me when it comes to vaccines. | ||
| If we're going to make America healthy again, we can't allow public health to be undermined. | ||
| So could you explain what steps you're going to be taking to ensure vaccine guidance is clear, evidence-based, and trustworthy? | ||
| We're going to make it clear, evidence-based, and trustworthy for the first time in history. | ||
| For most, right now, you know, when I was a kid, I got three vaccines. | ||
| I was fully compliant. | ||
| Today's children have to get between 69 and 92 vaccines in order to be fully compliant. | ||
| Between maternity and 18 years. | ||
| Only one of 19 vaccines, 92 doses, only one of those vaccines has ever been tested against an inert placebo. | ||
| And what we're doing now is any new vaccine that before it's approved and licensed will have to show, demonstrate safety against inert placebo. | ||
| And we're going to go back and do observational studies on the existing vaccines to see if they're linked to any of these chronic disease epidemics so that people can understand the risk profile of those products and make good assessments for their own health. | ||
| RFK Jr. in the hot seat on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| And again, if you missed this hearing and you want to see the key moments, go to our website, cspan.org. | ||
| When you play the video on our website, gold stars will appear. | ||
| Those are the key moments that happened at the hearing yesterday. | ||
| Dan in Santa Barbara, California, an independent. | ||
| Dan, you're next. | ||
| Did you get to watch yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I didn't used to. | |
| I didn't watch, but I used to be an acolyte of RFK Jr. and Dr. Andrew Wakefield, if you want to call him a doctor. | ||
| I used to be a conspiracy theorist. | ||
| I used to be an anti-vaxxer. | ||
| I've been all over the horseshoe. | ||
| I was, you know, on the far left, on the far right. | ||
| And I want to thank you to that lady who called in from Michigan because she basically just proved my point. | ||
| She's like the epitome of what this type is. | ||
| Like, you know, the far left, Bernie Sanders, anti-vaxxer. | ||
| Now she's on the far right. | ||
| I mean, this is what this type of people are. | ||
| And I'm sorry, they are a cult. | ||
| It is a narcissistic cult who are dangerously ignorant of modern science and vaccines. | ||
| And I know what it's like to be part of that cult because it feels good. | ||
| You feel like you're like, oh, I'm in the know. | ||
| I'm like, I'm smarter than all these shee. | ||
| I know what these pharmaceutical companies are up to. | ||
| It's a collective narcissism. | ||
| And some of your other callers who called in literally have no idea how vaccines work. | ||
| They have no idea about herd immunity. | ||
| I mean, like, vaccines are not going to work if enough people don't have them. | ||
| That's the basis of it, is herd immunity. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I'm just calling in to say that I used to be part of that weird anti-vax movement. | ||
| I know what it's all about. | ||
| There's a psychology behind it. | ||
| It's usually on the fringes, the far left and the far right. | ||
| And I would like to suggest to C-SPAN, maybe one of these days on Washington Journal, do a call-in show. | ||
| Did you used to be on the fringes of the far left, far-right horseshoe theory? | ||
| Have you come back to the center, to the normal, to team normal? | ||
| And ask people to call in and tell their stories of what it used to be like to be on these far fringes. | ||
| And last I'm going to say, is unfortunately with social media and the world we live in now, this is kind of the direction we're going in. | ||
| And that's what worries me. | ||
| Thank you for listening. | ||
| Before you go, Dan, I want to get your reaction to the president's Truth Social post from earlier this week. | ||
| Tell me what you think of this. | ||
| He said, it is very important that the drug companies justify the success of their various COVID drugs. | ||
| Many people think they're a miracle that saved millions of lives. | ||
| Others disagree. | ||
| With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer and I want it now. | ||
| I have been shown information from Pfizer and others that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| They go off to the next hunt and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out, he writes on Truth Social, the success or failure of the drug company's COVID work. | ||
| They show me great numbers and results, but they don't seem to be showing them to many others. | ||
| I want them to show them now to CDC and the public and clear up this mess one way or the other. | ||
| I hope Operation Warp Speed was as brilliant as many say it was. | ||
| If not, we all want to know about it and why. | ||
| Thank you for your attention to this important matter. | ||
| So Dan, what do you think of the president there on these companies? | ||
| Sounds like he talked to maybe Pfizer about their numbers. | ||
| Do you agree with them that if the public knew, maybe there would not be, given what you said, your argument, conspiracy theorists? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I think the president is playing both sides as he usually does. | ||
| But from what I know, mRNA technology is amazing. | ||
| And what that did to Trump's credit with Operation Warp Speed was to get the vaccine out there. | ||
| And it did lessen the severe cases and did lessen death. | ||
| And so I don't know why people are freaking out about this vaccine. | ||
| Like we've had vaccines for measles, mumps, polio, rubella, and they've saved lives. | ||
| And now, unfortunately, we're going backwards. | ||
| And now we're actually having measles breakouts in America. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| So thanks for listening. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Patrice in South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Patrice. | ||
| Patrice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for taking my call this morning, Greta. | ||
| Every time I call in, I want to remind everybody that mainstream media is the number one weapon used against the people. | ||
| We are in a war, folks, for our lives. | ||
| We're in a war of good versus evil. | ||
| It is very evident to me that Democrats and the mainstream media are on the same side, pure evil. | ||
| 80% of Congress is being dissolved, military tribunal for crimes against we, the people. | ||
| Big Pharma made and is making billions of dollars off of meds, including vaccines. | ||
| Bill Gates, Bill Gates made billions off of vaccines that have killed several millions and millions of people from here to India. | ||
| Okay, Patrice, listen to the exchange between Secretary Kennedy and Senator Warner, Democrat of Virginia. | ||
| They sparred over how many Americans have died from COVID and the efficacy of the vaccines. | ||
| Go back to just again some basic facts. | ||
| Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID? | ||
| I don't know how many died. | ||
| You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services. | ||
| You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID? | ||
| I don't think anybody knows because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC, and there was a lot of service incentives. | ||
| And these are modern answer of how many Americans died from COVID. | ||
| This is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. | ||
| Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths? | ||
| Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data. | ||
| You have had this job for eight months, and you don't know the data about whether the vaccine is not available. | ||
| That's the problem, is that they didn't have the data. | ||
| The data by the Biden administration, absolutely dismal. | ||
| So when you say, who is politicizing? | ||
| You're saying the Biden administration politicized all the data? | ||
| Go back to what Donald Campwell just said. | ||
| You fired Dr. Trump Surgeon General. | ||
| They fired Dr. Grubby. | ||
| They fired all the people who questioned the orthodoxy. | ||
| They fired Dr. Gruber, Dr. Kaus. | ||
| Chairman, Secretary of Health and Human Services doesn't know how many Americans died from COVID. | ||
| Don't know if the vaccine helped prevent any deaths. | ||
| And you are sitting as Secretary of Health and Human Services? | ||
| How can you be that ignorant? | ||
| Senator Warner and RFK Jr. on the Hill yesterday. | ||
| Brenda in St. Louis, Missouri, a Democratic caller. | ||
| We'll get your take on that hearing. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I did watch it, and I got totally frustrated just watching Robert Kennedy sit there and lying. | |
| And, you know, you're getting a little tired of Donald Trump putting people in major, major positions that have no experience. | ||
| You know, where was his decisiveness or what were Robert Kennedy's mental thinking when he got his self-hooked on a Coke, a drug? | ||
| You know, so it just makes me wonder all these type of people that they would look against us about that something's wrong with us because, of course, you got Mike Hesse that's the alcoholic. | ||
| They wouldn't have taken one of us just like that. | ||
| You know, they look down on that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And Brenda, on that exchange that we just showed you with Senator Warren, if you go to the CDC's website, covid.cdc.gov, they have on the website the deaths caused by COVID-19. | ||
| There they are, the total deaths. | ||
| You can find it again if you go to covid.cdc.gov. | ||
| John in Florence, Massachusetts, an independent. | ||
| John, we'll hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I was wondering if anybody remembers Javier Becerra and his letting illegal aliens in without getting the COVID shot and saying he didn't know if it caused more COVID or how about he believed in the trans issue. | |
| It's absolutely ridiculous. | ||
| We had orders and people are calling this guy a dictator, you know, Trump and everything, but we were locked in, ordered to get shots, couldn't fly without passes, but that wasn't, you know, of course, a dictator. | ||
| So I'm just curious, you know, like I said, he didn't know. | ||
| He couldn't tell us whether illegal aliens needed the COVID shot. | ||
| I mean, we got so many, they told us that you guys want to talk about science. | ||
| There's only two genders. | ||
| Ask any scientist. | ||
| You can't change your gender. | ||
| It's only science fiction that they're talking about. | ||
| You know, so people need to get a little bit of a grip when they talk about, oh, this guy wouldn't do this and this guy wouldn't do that. | ||
| They did fire people from the CDC that had a difference of opinion. | ||
| They didn't have any different things. | ||
| And you can say that you think the shot worked, and that people were saved, but that's just the speculation that you guys are talking about. | ||
| These shots did not work. | ||
| And why don't you talk about the guy who invented the mRNA vaccine and said that you're not supposed, the guy who invented it and said that you're not supposed to get so many shots so close together because it's bad for you and it's bad for your DNA because it changes it. | ||
| And they don't know the long-term effects of it. | ||
| So, I mean. | ||
| Okay, Don, let's listen to your point. | ||
| Let's listen to Senator Kennedy, excuse me, Secretary Kennedy, defending his agency's efforts and his focus on chronic illness from the hearing yesterday. | ||
| This morning, I got the latest numbers from CDC that 76.4% of Americans now have a chronic disease. | ||
| This is stunning. | ||
| When my uncle was president, it was 11%. | ||
| 1950, it was 3%. | ||
| Today, it's 76.4%. | ||
| Eight out of 10 of our kids cannot qualify for military service. | ||
| This is a national security issue. | ||
| When my uncle was president, we spent zero on chronic disease. | ||
| Today, we spend $1.3 trillion. | ||
| It's the biggest cause. | ||
| It's increasing. | ||
| And all of the arguments that Republicans and Democrats have about single-payer Obamacare or with various ways of allocating the health dollars are all like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. | ||
| If we don't end this chronic disease, we are the sickest country in the world. | ||
| That's why we have to fire people at CDC. | ||
| They did not do their job. | ||
| This was their job to keep us healthy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn't happen again. | ||
| Senator Kennedy defending his recent actions at the Center for Disease and Prevention Control. | ||
| George in Orchard Park, New York, Republican, what did you make of the turmoil and the Capitol Hill hearing yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I'm all for what Mr. Kennedy said. | ||
| I'm actually a practicing anesthesiologist in Western New York, and he is 100% correct when he says how sick America is. | ||
| I can't tell you how much obesity, sleep apnea, high blood pressure. | ||
| It's unbelievable how sick America is, and it's not good. | ||
| If you go back in time to like when my father, I'm going to be 65, when my father was younger, you didn't see the diseases of high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and all the problems it causes. | ||
| And, you know, I think a lot of it for what he's doing, he's trying to do something. | ||
| And, George, do you agree with him on vaccines? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, as far as vaccines, what I think he's saying is, you know, he wants, he thinks people should be more selective with their choices. | |
| I mean, I got the COVID vaccine three times. | ||
| I still got COVID twice. | ||
| So, I mean, I think he's trying to do things. | ||
| And, you know, it's unbelievable. | ||
| I can't tell you. | ||
| If you look at the average adult male, if I see, if I take care of a male who's less than 200 pounds, it's pretty remarkable nowadays. | ||
| And it all stems from what we're eating. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, George, how would you, what did you, do you, what was your reaction when you heard Republicans who are physicians as well, Senator Cassidy, Senator Barrasso, expressing concern over Secretary Kennedy's vaccine policies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know what to make of it. | |
| I mean, I think it's good that they're objective and it's open for discussion. | ||
| But, you know, my take, I've been following more the food problem in America, which then causes all of the problems that Americans are experiencing. | ||
| You never seen that years ago. | ||
| It's very, very prominent. | ||
| If you could see what I could see, you would be very careful what you eat every day. | ||
| As far as his vaccine policy, I just think he wants to be a little more selective. | ||
| And he is right in the way. | ||
| We don't have to shoot ourselves up with vaccine after vaccine. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It has to be proven to work. | |
| Politico wrote a piece ahead of yesterday's hearing about Senator Bill Cassidy. | ||
| Bill Cassidy's election re-election once looked tenuous. | ||
| Things are looking up. | ||
| And it says the Louisiana Republican is counting on Donald Trump's silence after voting to impeach him. | ||
| And here's a quote from Politico's piece yesterday ahead of the hearing. | ||
| Of course, I prefer his endorsement, but if it's not an endorsement, neutral is probably the next best thing. | ||
| We've worked very well together, and I've worked hard for his agenda, and I think he recognizes that. | ||
| Mac in Germantown, Maryland, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Mac. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I have several points to make this morning. | ||
| I listened to everybody. | ||
| If I talk too long, please, and you're just kind of pausing. | ||
| But here's the thing, my first point: Trump doesn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for COVID vaccine. | ||
| If anybody go back, go to YouTube and follow the whole thing again. | ||
| Trump was reluctant about even starting the COVID vaccine. | ||
| It was Democrat that pressured him to start the COVID vaccine project. | ||
| And besides, he anemia Operation Wopspeed for a reason. | ||
| He anemia wop speed because he's trying to discourage people from taking. | ||
| Remember, they were talking about her immunity. | ||
| That's what he wanted, her immunity. | ||
| So he anemia wopspeed because he's trying to discourage people from even thinking about taking the vaccine. | ||
| That's why we have so many people reluctant to begin in the beginning to use the vaccine. | ||
| Okay, Mac, we've reached the top of the hour this morning. | ||
| A couple more viewers for you. | ||
| Ben on Facebook says he has some good basic ideas on nutrition and pesticides, but when we start talking about ending vaccine programs, scaling down cancer research, fitting policy to match his agenda versus science, firing people who speak the truth, and laying off thousands beyond that, Senator Warnock is right. | ||
| This guy is one of the greatest hazards public health the country has ever seen. | ||
| And then you have Diane who says, our House appreciates the dedication and hard work from Mr. Kennedy in trying to make sure the vaccines and medications we take are safe. | ||
| It's time to get to the bottom of what's causing our kids' health problems. | ||
| We'll leave the conversation there for now. | ||
| We're going to take a short break. | ||
| Later on on the Washington Journal, John Elliott will join us, the former chief spokesman for the National Security Council under President Trump. | ||
| He'll discuss the administration's approach to national security matters. | ||
| But first, after the break, we're joined by Sarah Longwell, founder and publisher of The Bulwark, to discuss media coverage of U.S. politics and political news of the day. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This weekend, join us for 48 hours of nonfiction books on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. | |
| This Saturday, starting at 9 a.m. Eastern, join Book TV in partnership with the Library of Congress for live all-day coverage of the 2025 National Book Festival from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And on Sunday, at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, historian Kari Winter, with her book, The Blind African Slave, recounts the life of Jeffrey Brace, an enslaved man who won his freedom through his service during the Revolutionary War. | ||
| The author is joined by Jeffrey Brace's descendant, Rhonda Brace. | ||
| Then, at 7, Harvard University professor Joyce Chaplitt talks about Benjamin Franklin as a scientist and how the stove he invented in 1742 became a popular product in and beyond the United States. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Yoram Hazzoni argues that nationalism is necessary to protect democracy and freedom around the world in his book, The Virtue of Nationalism. | ||
| Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, Liberty Media Chairman and cable TV pioneer John Malone, author of Born to be Wired, discusses his life and entrepreneurship. | ||
| He also talks about his many successful business ventures, competing with Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, the value of philanthropy, and living life as a high-functioning autistic. | ||
| I still, to this day, I don't like to be in crowds or in groups of any size. | ||
| I really enjoy people one-on-one. | ||
| I enjoy talking, you know, but I really am uncomfortable in any kind of situation. | ||
| Like I said, I would pay a fortune to avoid a cocktail part. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John Malone with his book, Born to Be Wired, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | |
| You can listen to Q&A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Sarah Longwell. | ||
| She's the founder and publisher of The Bulwark and also the host of the Focus Group podcast. | ||
| Sarah Longwell, thanks for being with us this morning. | ||
| I want to start with this story from earlier this week in Washington, and that was over the Epstein files. | ||
| We saw on Capitol Hill survivors of the Epstein abuse all gathering, some for the first time in public, telling their stories along with some strange bedfellows. | ||
| You had Congressman Roe Conna, liberal from California, Marjorie Taylor Greene, conservative from Georgia, Congresswoman Jayapaul, and others all getting behind the release of the Epstein files. | ||
| And those survivors on one of them on our screen right now talking about responding to the president's characterization of this as a hoax. | ||
| And meanwhile, as they're talking, the president's in the Oval Office, again, saying, this is a hoax. | ||
| What did you make of the news story this week and the developments on the Epstein files? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think one of the things that showed us is this is a story that is not going away as much as Donald Trump would like it to. | |
| For some reason, Donald Trump has decided that the way he's going to try to handle the Epstein situation is to try and ignore it, try and hope that it goes away. | ||
| They literally dismissed Congress. | ||
| Congress went out of session in order to avoid discussing the Epstein files. | ||
| But as a result, what it has done is it has prolonged this story. | ||
| It has made it increased people's interest because they don't understand why, after Donald Trump's cabinet members, people like Kash Patel, like Dan Bongino, like Pam Bondi, who all promised not just before they were in the administration, but while they were in the administration, you know, Pam Bondi was saying things like, I've got the Epstein files on my desk, and at the president's direction, I'm going to release this material. | ||
| But what they continue to do over and over again is release things that are already public. | ||
| And so, one of the things I hear about in focus groups a lot from people who voted for Donald Trump is that they expected him to be a very transparent president. | ||
| They expected him not to cover up for powerful people or for himself. | ||
| And they don't understand why he has changed course so significantly on the release of the Epstein files and why he is treating them like they are stupid and don't understand that they're releasing things over and over again that are already public. | ||
| And so I just think this is one of those sticky issues for the president that's not going away. | ||
| There's something called the Streisand effect, where by the way you engage with an issue, you sort of make it bigger instead of smaller, which is what the president has done with Epstein. | ||
| And so, and now you've got the situation where the survivors, these women who were girls at the time, who were abused by Epstein, have now seen Donald Trump out there who had promised that he would be transparent, promised that he was going to stand up against sex traffickers and criminals, instead protecting them. | ||
| It's starting to really shake people's faith in who Donald Trump is. | ||
| My faith was already shaken. | ||
| I don't think Donald Trump is a good person, but there are a lot of his supporters who thought he was going to be transparent about these things. | ||
| And they're the ones now who don't understand why Donald Trump is behaving this way. | ||
| Quinnipiac University did a poll recently, and this is what they found: that 70% say they are following news about the Epstein files either very closely or somewhat closely. | ||
| 28% say they are following it not too closely. | ||
| What do you make of those numbers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that sometimes people don't realize how significant the Epstein files were, not among sort of just everybody in the voting population, but specifically Donald Trump's most fervent voters. | |
| I mean, even sort of QAnon and a lot of the things that were animating some of the deepest Trump supporters over the course of years, it is rooted in this idea that there are pedophiles, both among the elites and who are also being protected by the elites. | ||
| And so this issue, like the reason people care so much is that this isn't, there was a child sex ring going on. | ||
| There was a pedophile who was serially abusing people. | ||
| And there appears to be a lot of very powerful people in his orbit who knew about it or were participating in it. | ||
| And I think Donald Trump and his team, like people who are close to Trump, who are in his cabinet, who have roles in the cabinet because they said they were going to release the Epstein files, they talked about it with voters on podcasts and in the news. | ||
| I mean, Kash Patel was on Steve Bannon's podcast over and over again talking about the Epstein files. | ||
| Dan Bongino on his own podcast was talking about the Epstein files. | ||
| Like this has been an issue for the right. | ||
| They are the ones who made this an issue, who have focused on this now for going on six years. | ||
| And so it is deeply embedded. | ||
| People want answers. | ||
| And so for Donald Trump to become the president and then immediately say, why are people still talking about this? | ||
| This is a hoax, feels like a deep betrayal. | ||
| And I think the reason people care about it is because there's a bright moral line around something like this, around the abuse of children, which is what was happening. | ||
| And so people want answers and they want accountability. | ||
| They don't understand why Donald Trump sent his deputy attorney general, which is a very unusual thing to do, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, get no new information from her, and then move her to a cushy facility, like a club-fed. | ||
| That doesn't happen for pedophiles. | ||
| So why is Donald Trump giving Ghislaine Maxwell this kind of special treatment? | ||
| And look, voters have understood. | ||
| Trump's voters know that he was close to Epstein. | ||
| They know that they have a long-term friendship going back a long time. | ||
| And I think that they were hopeful that that information meant that Donald Trump could expose Epstein, not that he would end up covering up for Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and for the other people who might have been involved. | ||
| And it's obviously creating more and more questions among the Trump faithful about whether or not Donald Trump himself, like, what is it that he is hiding? | ||
| And so I think that's the reason it continues to stick with voters. | ||
| Well, we want to have the president's supporters, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, join us in this conversation this morning. | ||
| Here is how you can do so. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text as well at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Sarah Longwell. | ||
| We also heard from Marjorie Taylor Greene at that news conference when reporters asked her about this list that's being compiled by the survivors of powerful people who they saw with Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, I'll read it on the House floor because the survivors, some of them saying, I'm scared. | ||
| I don't want to say it in public. | ||
| And Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, give it to me. | ||
| I'll read it on the House floor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green is taking what I would call sort of a principled position on this issue. | |
| Now, I don't often agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene, but she is one of those people who I think feels. | ||
| So one of the things that Donald Trump has done to kind of cover this up is as a lot of right-wing media has talked about this, Charlie Kirk, Megan Kelly, he got so frustrated with the fact that they continued to talk about it after Pam Bondi said she wouldn't be releasing it that he called them up and said, stop talking about it. | ||
| Stop it, Benny Johnson. | ||
| He called all these right-wing influencers and waved them off of it. | ||
| But a few people have remained committed to getting people the truth, in part because they talked about it for so long. | ||
| And so they feel like their own credibility is on the line. | ||
| And so there's become a bit of a dividing line between the MAGA influencer crowd who is shutting up because Donald Trump has told them to. | ||
| And in fact, Donald Trump told members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, that voting to release the Epstein files would be considered a hostile act against them. | ||
| And so most of the Republicans are being cowed into not releasing these files. | ||
| But somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, even Lauren Bobert, even Nancy Mays, and I think it might be, I mean, it could be in some ways, maybe because they're women and they feel like these survivors deserve to be heard. | ||
| Maybe it's because they talked about the Epstein files so much that they feel personally like they owe the people who believed them a response. | ||
| But Marjorie Taylor Greene has stayed pretty true to the idea that she's going to get answers on this, which is what voters want. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene on this instance, she's very much on the side of what voters want. | |
| You know, when I'm in focus groups and I'm listening to voters, more than there are two things that they are most disappointed in Donald Trump about that I hear over and over again. | ||
| One is his inability, despite all his promises, to lower prices, specifically grocery prices, but prices in general. | ||
| People are still feeling deeply squeezed in this economy and things are getting worse. | ||
| And the other is that he hasn't released the Epstein files. | ||
| And so I think that you're going to see, and they only need two more votes to get there. | ||
| And so every Republican right now who is refusing to release these files, refusing to vote for it in Congress, is doing so against the wishes of their constituencies because their voters want to know the answer to this. | ||
| Thomas Massey is the one with the discharge petition, and he is two Republican votes short of bringing it to the House floor to compel the Trump administration to release the Epstein files to the public. | ||
| Sarah Longwell, you mentioned the right-wing media. | ||
| You said you don't like President Trump. | ||
| Is the bulwark the left-wing media? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, all of us at the bulwark started out our careers as Republicans. | |
| I worked in Republican communications for over 15 years, almost two decades. | ||
| But Donald Trump's not a conservative. | ||
| Donald Trump doesn't represent the values of people that I came up with. | ||
| I mean, when I was coming up as a young Republican and a young conservative, the things that sort of animated the party were free markets. | ||
| And Donald Trump is not a free market Republican at all. | ||
| The tariffs are a great example of something that is not free market. | ||
| We believed in limited government, distrust of the federal government, but Donald Trump is deploying the federal government into cities, probably unconstitutionally and illegally. | ||
| It was just ruled against, he was just ruled against in LA for deploying the military there because he is declaring states of emergency where there are not emergencies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There might be crime, but there are not emergencies. | |
| We believed in that character mattered. | ||
| And Donald Trump is obviously not a person of good character. | ||
| You know, we were, I was a Reagan Republican. | ||
| I remain true to a lot of those ideas. | ||
| And one of those animating ideas was we don't cozy up to dictators. | ||
| And Donald Trump has cozied up to Vladimir Putin and other dictators at every opportunity. | ||
| He's abandoned Ukraine. | ||
| He has, you know, I think he's sort of a failure across the board of what it meant to be a conservative for most of my lifetime. | ||
| And so, no, I don't think the bulwark is left-wing media at all. | ||
| I think actually we're in the center of a lot of Americans. | ||
| And I think Donald Trump is very extreme. | ||
| And I also, I got to say, one of the things that's always struck me as odd about Donald Trump is that if you look at a lot of the people, both Trump himself and the people around him, right? | ||
| So there's Donald Trump, there's Tulsi Gabbard, there's Elon Musk, there's RFK Jr. | ||
| You think about Joe Rogan or other people that endorsed him. | ||
| 10 years ago, they all had one thing in common, which is that they were Democrats. | ||
| And a lot of the ideas that Donald Trump has brought to the Republican Party, they bear no resemblance to Republican or conservative ideas. | ||
| They're things that, I mean, tariffs were something that the industrial left supported, you know, 10, 15 years ago. | ||
| And so I really bristle at the idea that Donald Trump is a Republican or a conservative in any fashion. | ||
| He was a limousine liberal who supported Hillary Clinton. | ||
| And he hijacked the Republican Party. | ||
| And I think it's unfortunate that the Republican Party went along with him. | ||
| But I think what the bulwark does is fearlessly tell the truth about Donald Trump. | ||
| It chronicles the ways in which things that he do are not only not conservative, but deeply un-American. | ||
| The idea of deploying the National Guard and other military into cities, deeply un-American, the way he talks about immigrants, deeply un-American. | ||
| And so the bulwark is just there to, I think, bring some accountability in a world where most of the other Republicans have decided to just go along to get along. | ||
| We'll go to calls. | ||
| Tuck in Alabama, Independent. | ||
| You're up first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm curious about the first cover-up. | |
| You know, Epstein was supposed to have been on, you know, I think suicide watch. | ||
| Cameras go out. | ||
| You have doctors say that his high, you know, his broke was broke, so he was probably choked to death. | ||
| And then you have others said that he committed suicide. | ||
| And plus, this was under the Biden administration. | ||
| You know, you'd think that the person of, you know, that nature would be well watched and all that. | ||
| And yet they let him get killed. | ||
| I mean, you know, that's the first cover-up we need to be talking about. | ||
| What is going on with that? | ||
| And Sarah Longwell, when you do focus groups, has this been a consistent trust issue when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I do need to correct the caller on one thing. | ||
| Epstein died under extremely strange circumstances. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| There's missing tape. | ||
| It is very unclear what happened there. | ||
| It's one of the reasons people are interested in this. | ||
| He did not die, though, under the Biden administration. | ||
| He died in 2019 when Donald Trump was president. | ||
| Now, so the idea that the Biden administration was the one sort of that it was under those weird Biden circumstances, that's just not true. | ||
| I think it's strange to me how often people forget so many of the things that they're frustrated with, whether it was the widespread deployment of the vaccines, the handling of COVID, the economy falling apart, Epstein's death. | ||
| Those all happened in 2019 and 2020 when Donald Trump was president. | ||
| We'll go to Kenny next in Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Kenny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey. | |
| The guy was hitting the right marks, but why didn't Biden staff bring all this out when he was president, but they had to wait to Donald Trump just to bring something out against Donald Trump? | ||
| They always do that. | ||
| That's the Democrats for you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Sarah Longwell, why weren't the Epstein files released under the Biden administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Biden administration didn't run an entire campaign on the idea that they were going to release the Epstein files. | |
| All of the members of Biden's cabinet didn't talk about the Epstein files, didn't make an issue of the Epstein files. | ||
| It was Donald Trump's cabinet. | ||
| It was Kash Patel. | ||
| It was Dan Bongino. | ||
| It was Pam Bondi. | ||
| It was the entire right-wing media influence machine. | ||
| They were the ones who were desperately looking for the Epstein files. | ||
| Now, I don't have an answer about why Joe Biden didn't do it. | ||
| I think, but I also know they didn't run on doing it. | ||
| They didn't say they were going to do it. | ||
| That was most people. | ||
| Given the public's interest, though, as we just talked about in this, should the Biden administration had made this more public? | ||
| I mean, any politician, just given the interest that people have and the mystery around his death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think that it was more Republican voters who were really, really interested. | |
| And so I think that Democratic voters, what they were pushing for from the Biden administration was just a bunch of, was just wholly different things, right? | ||
| Like they wanted Joe Biden to focus on getting the COVID vaccine out, lowering prices, passing the infrastructure bill. | ||
| And so in terms of Joe Biden being, and his administration focusing on the priorities that they had promised the American people that they thought the American people were most concerned about, they were, that's, I think they focused on the issues that they ran on. | ||
| It was Donald Trump and his team who ran on these issues, the issue of Epstein. | ||
| And it's their voters who had been sort of talking about this for years and years. | ||
| And so that's why it's so strange that Donald Trump didn't do it. | ||
| It's not that strange that Joe Biden didn't do something he didn't, never said he was going to do and never ran on doing and was focused on entirely different things. | ||
| Trump and his team were focused on Epstein. | ||
| So for them to then turn around and not do it is much stranger. | ||
| We'll go to Dorothy, who's in Baltimore, Democratic caller. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation, Dorothy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you. | |
| I want to ask a couple of questions, and maybe she can answer this or even give us some more information. | ||
| I look here and I see where Jeffrey Epstein was being questioned. | ||
| It may be by the FBI or someone was questioning him, and it's on video. | ||
| And when they asked him, you know, they asked him about Trump about their friendship, and they asked him a question. | ||
| And he said, have Trump ever been with girls under the age of 18? | ||
| This was Jeffrey's answer. | ||
| He said, I'm going to have to assert my fifth, sixth, and 14th Amendment rights. | ||
| And he wouldn't answer it. | ||
| Also, Michael Wolf, a Nobel Prize winner, he did an interview with Jeffrey Epstein because he was doing a book about him. | ||
| And he also said he witnessed pictures with Donald Trump surrounded by topless young girls. | ||
| He said he couldn't tell what the age, but they looked very young. | ||
| And he also mentioned, he described something sexual about it, but I'm not going to get into that because it can be looked up. | ||
| And Jeffrey Epstein's brother also said that Trump was on that Lolita plane. | ||
| And everybody should know what Lolita is about. | ||
| People don't even know what that's about, but they should know about it. | ||
| It was a movie about a man in love with a 12-year-old girl. | ||
| That's what her name was. | ||
| But you should look up the, the people, it's right there. | ||
| All right, Dorothy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's why. | |
| Okay, let's get Sarah Longwell's reaction to what you said. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Lolita was a book and then a movie. | |
| And Epstein's plane was called Lolita Express. | ||
| And Donald Trump wrote it, I believe, seven times, was on there. | ||
| Look, their friendship is very well documented. | ||
| Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein knew each other very well when they were in their sort of 40s. | ||
| They partied together all the time. | ||
| There's lots of footage. | ||
| There's lots of like video footage of them together partying. | ||
| There is lots of photographs of them together. | ||
| Donald Trump has said publicly that Jeffrey Epstein was a friend of his, was a great guy, and somebody who liked very young women. | ||
| Donald Trump is himself been on the record in interviews with Howard Stern talking about how his daughter, Ivanka, said that he, when she was quite young, I believe 17, said that he wasn't allowed to date anybody younger than her, which he noted in the interview was getting quite hard for him. | ||
| And so I think that culturally they were at a time, like we all know this, Donald Trump partied with Epstein. | ||
| Now, there was at some point much later in recent years where they had some kind of a falling out where they've given conflicting reasons for falling out. | ||
| And Jeffrey Epstein did plead the fifth in matters of Trump. | ||
| And frankly, in the most recent interview, where Trump's personal attorney, the person who is his personal defense attorney, who is now the deputy attorney general, when he interviewed her, his questions were very, were sort of meant to not put her in a position to implicate Trump. | ||
| And so she gave a very mealy-mouthed answer that was to the effect of, I never saw anything inappropriate by Donald Trump. | ||
| So this is a person who was not just procuring these young girls for Jeffrey Epstein, which, by the way, one of the victims who is now dead, Ghislaine Maxwell met her and procured her for Jeffrey Epstein at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| This is all well documented. | ||
| That woman now has committed suicide, but she said that she didn't see anything inappropriate. | ||
| So to have a pedophile, a convicted pedophile, because she wasn't just procuring the girls, she was a pedophile herself, along with Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| They were abusing these young girls together. | ||
| For her to be the arbiter of what is appropriate or inappropriate, I mean, we don't take her word, especially since what she is looking for is better treatment while she's in prison, which she's gotten now. | ||
| She's been moved to a much cushier facility, and she's hoping for a pardon from Donald Trump. | ||
| You can see the obvious potential quid pro quo there for in exchange for a pardon, she doesn't say anything about Trump. | ||
| And so this is all right in front of our eyes. | ||
| This is like not, this is not one of those complicated things. | ||
| It's a very weird story. | ||
| It is very strange the way Jeffrey Epstein died. | ||
| It is, but the idea that we don't know a lot about Donald Trump's relationship with Epstein, we do. | ||
| And so I think, you know, the previous caller was saying, well, what about Biden? | ||
| I just think that's a very silly kind of dodge when we have this mountain of evidence right in front of our eyes, if Trump voters care to look at it, about Donald Trump's long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as coupled with his treatment of women, his on-the-record interest in young women. | ||
| I just think that, you know, it's very easy to look at all of that and draw your own conclusions. | ||
| We'll go to Gordon next, who's in Wisconsin, Republican caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I was just curious, what would happen if it came out that Donald Trump was with a 16, 15, or 17-year-old? | |
| I mean, what's the outcome of that? | ||
| What are the Democrats looking for? | ||
| Another impeachment process? | ||
| Sarah Longwell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if Donald Trump had been with minors, where are the minors? | |
| How come they're not coming forward and putting the finger on them? | ||
| Well, look, I can't speak for the survivors themselves, but I think it could have something to do with the fact that as the president of the United States, he's quite a powerful person. | ||
| And I think temperamentally, he's made it very clear that he's a vindictive person who seeks retribution against people who might speak out against him. | ||
| So I would imagine anybody who is a survivor who knows things about Donald Trump might be quite afraid to come out and that they're hoping that powerful people in Congress will investigate this and come up with answers. | ||
| And also, look, it's not just about Trump. | ||
| I think the point here is that there are a lot of powerful people who are participating in this, and all of them should be held accountable, regardless of political party. | ||
| And these survivors should have justice. | ||
| Now, your question about what are the consequences for Donald Trump and our Democrats after another impeachment, I mean, what do you think should happen if somebody was a pet. | ||
| There's no statute of limitations on that, but my hope would be that if it came out, it's less of a Democratic issue or Republican issue, but that it's a moral issue and that people would say this was wrong and I was wrong about Donald Trump. | ||
| I mean, I just hope that people, it would be a moral red line for a lot of Trump supporters, as I'm sure it would be for most Americans. | ||
| The caller mentions the Democrats, and I want to show the cover story of The Economist and the picture that they include with this headline about America's missing opposition. | ||
| And you can see on the football field, Donald Trump surrounded by a team, and across that line, the scrimmage line is a mule represented by the Democratic Party. | ||
| And inside this story, they say most Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump, yet everywhere he seems to be getting his way. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Lots of them, Democrats, think rightly that Mr. Trump poses a danger to the country's Democratic values and conclude that this alone should make him toxic to most voters. | ||
| Alas, it does not. | ||
| Instead, the question Democrats need to keep asking themselves is this. | ||
| Why do voters think they are the extremists rather than the guy trying to establish one-man rule? | ||
| Sarah Longwell? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, Democrats have some of the lowest approval ratings that I think their party has seen in quite some time. | |
| And I think a lot of that is coming from voters in their own party. | ||
| In fact, I'm sure of this, who are deeply frustrated at Democrats' inability to effectively fight back against what Donald Trump is doing right now. | ||
| And I think that there's a couple things going on. | ||
| One, I think that Donald Trump has always understood because of his celebrity, because of his history on television. | ||
| I think he's always understood how to talk to people, manipulate people, sell to people, make promises and not keep them, you know, and be bombastic in this way. | ||
| And I just think he understands the new media environment, the TikTok media environment, the fast news cycle, his ability to sort of manufacture crisis after crisis to feed the beast of the news cycle and control it is something that is in his bloodstream. | ||
| He knows how to do it. | ||
| And as a result, people are quick to fall for what Donald Trump is selling. | ||
| And they've had a long time relationship with Donald Trump. | ||
| He was in their living rooms as a game show host on The Apprentice. | ||
| And as a result of people seeing him in a boardroom, they think that he is like a real, like a good businessman because he was firing celebrities on The Apprentice, as opposed to somebody who was bankrupting casinos and refusing to pay his contractors. | ||
| But then there's the Democrats, and I think they don't understand the new media environment. | ||
| I think they don't understand how to connect with voters right now. | ||
| I think they've lost their connection to many working class voters because they have not been good. | ||
| I mean, look, I think Joe, the four years of Joe Biden, he made a grave miscalculation in running again. | ||
| He was far too old. | ||
| Voters did not think he was capable of doing the job at his age. | ||
| And frankly, though, Donald Trump's not much younger and his age and health is starting to flail. | ||
| And we're starting to see a lot of that from him too, because we shouldn't have presidents who are 80 years old. | ||
| It's just, it's an age where this is an extraordinarily demanding job running the country. | ||
| And Joe Biden should have never run for a second term. | ||
| And because he did, he put the Democratic Party in a horrible position. | ||
| And also because he was so old, he was not a very good communicator about the things that he did. | ||
| I mean, Republicans right now are able to take credit for a bunch of the new infrastructure projects that are popping up all over the country, which is from a bill that Joe Biden passed, but didn't really promote or talk about. | ||
| He wasn't very good at communicating the threat that Donald Trump posed in the off years. | ||
| And so I do think Democrats, and look, a lot of their legislators are old. | ||
| And a lot of them don't know how to communicate in this new media environment. | ||
| They don't know how to tell their story. | ||
| And so the frustration from Democratic voters about how inadequate Democrats are being to this moment, I cannot overstate it. | ||
| I listen to Democrats in the focus groups all the time. | ||
| In fact, I did one recently where I was asking Democrats, I split them into different groups. | ||
| And so I did several groups in each category. | ||
| One was Democrats who wanted the Democratic Party to be more progressive, and the other one was Democrats who wanted the party to be more moderate. | ||
| And I thought there was going to be really big differences between the two groups. | ||
| But instead, they sounded very similar. | ||
| What they wanted was to see their party fight back against Donald Trump. | ||
| They want to see good messengers, people who are out there able to explain the threat that Donald Trump poses. | ||
| And I think they are deeply disappointed that their leaders appear to be just unable to meet the moment. | ||
| And I think that's why you're seeing Democrats with such low approval rating. | ||
| We'll go to David, who's in Massachusetts, independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I first of all feel like one of the best things Sarah has just said is that the Democrats are in very, very low, low ratings. | |
| And as they should be, you know, the Democratic Party is not what it was years ago. | ||
| Their morality has sunk to new lows with endorsing abortion on demand. | ||
| They voted for or tried to get a man in who didn't know where he was half the time. | ||
| And they knew that was happening. | ||
| And even going back to Bill Clinton, you know, the hypocrisy. | ||
| I did not have sex with this woman. | ||
| I get that that happens with a lot of people. | ||
| But for me, the Democrats are the worst. | ||
| And I'm basically an independent. | ||
| It's just horrible. | ||
| I mean, it's not horrible that they're low. | ||
| I can see why the ratings are low. | ||
| She just explained why she thinks they're low, which I agree. | ||
| But for the Democrats, to like continuously knock down Donald Trump when the things have been happening much better for us, trying to control crime. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's really scary. | ||
| It's really scary. | ||
| Sarah Longwell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I, too, I think, am an independent at this point. | |
| And yeah, Bill Clinton was part of why I became a Republican. | ||
| I watched him lie to the American people about his affair with the young intern, Monica Lewinsky. | ||
| And I watched the Democratic Party defend them. | ||
| And I was really turned off by that, as I think I was probably 18 at the time. | ||
| But I remember thinking, boy, this young woman's not much older than I am. | ||
| And he's clearly lying to us. | ||
| And it gave rise to, on the Republican side, a real movement around the fact that character mattered. | ||
| And that was the Republican Party in the conservative movement that I was raised in, that are public leaders that we look to to lead our country should be people who have good character and who care about people. | ||
| And that's why it's so surprising to me that people think Donald Trump is a good president, that that same movement welcomed Donald Trump. | ||
| Because people who spent a lot, they wrote a lot of books at that time, when character was king and the five virtues. | ||
| And I've been shocked to watch the Republican Party embrace Donald Trump, who is in every way corrupt and who has never been faithful to a human in his life. | ||
| Now, the question of, you know, if Donald Trump is, when you say, so just as that caller's sort of dismayed at the idea that Democrats could, you know, defend Bill Clinton, but criticize Donald Trump, I would say I have the inverse, | ||
| which is for the Republican Party to have said that, you know, to have condemned Bill Clinton and talked about so much about the moral issues only to embrace somebody who was flagrantly immoral and amoral has always struck me as a grave hypocrisy. | ||
| Sarah Longwell, breaking news here, we need to get your reaction to and share with our viewers. | ||
| The U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, confirming dramatic slowdown in the labor market. | ||
| That's NBC News, 4.3% unemployment rate. | ||
| Your reaction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My reaction is that Donald Trump is destroying the economy. | |
| I think that one of the things that I hear, he's doing it mainly with the tariffs, but last time we got the jobs numbers last month, and they were also this dismal. | ||
| He, instead of addressing the jobs problem, he fired the person giving him the statistics. | ||
| That was his response. | ||
| Not to do something about his performance, not to do something about the fact that he has been constricting an economy that Joe Biden was growing. | ||
| Joe Biden, I mean, the economy, the recovery that Joe Biden led for our economy out of COVID was the wonder of the world. | ||
| I mean, all the other countries were very jealous of the United States and how it was recovering. | ||
| Donald Trump has gotten into office and in six months has basically destroyed all of the progress that Joe Biden had made economically. | ||
| And I'm not surprised to see the job numbers be low again because Donald Trump has not only been imposing tariffs, but he's also been doing it in a way that has been chaotic. | ||
| He puts them on, takes them off, announces them, stops them. | ||
| And as a result, businesses don't know what to do. | ||
| They don't know how to invest. | ||
| They don't know how many people to hire. | ||
| They don't know how to price things. | ||
| And so he is creating chaos in our economy that I think is going to ultimately lead to a slowdown. | ||
| And that's on top of the fact, on top of the fact that despite his promises to lower grocery prices and housing prices, he's done none of that. | ||
| Prices continue to increase. | ||
| And in fact, he is too focused on things. | ||
| And this is something that shows up in polling. | ||
| It shows up in my focus groups. | ||
| Americans are very frustrated about how he's prioritizing things. | ||
| He's focused on deploying National Guard and the military into cities that are not having emergencies, that do not need them, instead of focusing on the economy, which is the number one reason people voted for him. | ||
| The number one reason people voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris was because they thought he as a businessman was going to be better for the economy. | ||
| Now, I dispute his reputation as a good businessman, but that is why people voted for him. | ||
| And so one of the things I hear in the focus groups, like I said before, is a deep disappointment that he is not focused on the economy and the economy is not improving. | ||
| And this is further evidence that he is digging us into a hole that is going to be difficult for us to get out of. | ||
| Let's go to CNBC's website in reaction to the jobs report and take a look at how the market is reacting. | ||
| You can see red in the Dow, SP futures is in the green. | ||
| And you can see how the 10-year treasury is reacting as well. | ||
| CNBC says SP 500 futures gain on hope that this tepid jobs data will trigger a federal rate cut in September. | ||
| You heard the Federal Reserve Chair recently say that the labor market is what they are concerned about now and that that could inspire the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates in September. | ||
| Kara in Springfield Gardens, New York, Democratic Caller, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I'm just calling to say because I was hearing all the callers call in and we were talking about Epstein and the Trump and his administration. | ||
| And then one of the callers mentioned about why the Biden administration didn't release any of the records. | ||
| And I was just calling to remind everybody that during this time, we had between the Epstein file in 2019, we had COVID hitting us. | ||
| And then after COVID, we had all of the protests that was going on. | ||
| And along with the protests, after that, we had the insurrections going on in 2001 when Biden became president. | ||
| So he had a lot to deal with. | ||
| These should be released. | ||
| He should have released them, Biden. | ||
| And Trump should release them. | ||
| What they're hiding, we don't know, but we know there were pages that was redacted with names on them. | ||
| And the Trump administration knows who they are. | ||
| They ran on it. | ||
| They said that they were going to release the files, and they should. | ||
| Okay, Kara. | ||
| Sarah Longwell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They should release the files, and that's entirely correct. | |
| I mean, that was essentially my answer before. | ||
| I think Joe Biden felt like, and his administration felt like it was their job to focus on digging us out of COVID. | ||
| That is what he was focused on. | ||
| It's what he was elected to do. | ||
| He didn't run on Epstein. | ||
| But Joe Biden, but by the time, sort of somewhere between the middle of Joe Biden's term, we did have COVID under control. | ||
| And we were starting to move on from COVID. | ||
| And it was Donald Trump's, like I said, cabinet members who spent the four years of the Biden administration agitating about Epstein and talking about, and then Ghislaine Maxwell was prosecuted during that time. | ||
| She was prosecuted by somebody who was then fired by the Trump administration because she's James Comey's daughter. | ||
| And so it is to say that Biden didn't release it is different from what's happening right now, which is an obvious cover-up. | ||
| Joe Biden may have simply had other priorities and they weren't focused on this and their voters weren't demanding it. | ||
| But Donald Trump's entire, many of the people in his cabinet, including his kids, including his vice president, they all demanded the release of the Epstein files, promised that they would do it when they were in power. | ||
| Why isn't he doing it? | ||
| If you ask yourself, you're Trump supporter, ask yourself why he's not doing it. | ||
| Ask yourself what he's hiding. | ||
| Where is that coming from? | ||
| Sarah Longwell, you said that this is a sticky issue for the president. | ||
| So what are you watching for next? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When I say sticky, what I mean is that I think it sticks. | |
| It's going to continue. | ||
| Donald Trump is often a master at distracting people from conversations he doesn't want to have. | ||
| But this one's going to keep coming back, not only because there are some principled Republicans who are going to push for it in Congress, but also because now we have the survivors speaking out and Donald Trump's own voters. | ||
| I mean, this is the thing. | ||
| Donald Trump's own voters want answers. | ||
| And so I think the next thing we're looking for is as voters continue to push, the pressure should, like, you want to increase the pressure. | ||
| You want to find, tell your Republican legislators to vote to release these files. | ||
| Put the pressure on them so we can see them and understand what's in there. | ||
| But that's what I think. | ||
| I also think that Democrats, if they are, if they're worth their salt, they will use this issue, the Epstein issue, the absence of transparency, and they will fuse it to the other things that Donald Trump has been lying to you about. | ||
| Trump is lying to you. | ||
| He lied to you that he was going to lower grocery prices. | ||
| He lied to you that he was going to release the Epstein files. | ||
| They're doing cover-ups. | ||
| Both their ICE agents are in our streets with covered faces. | ||
| Donald Trump is covering up the Epstein files. | ||
| And so I think that it will be an issue in the 2026 midterms. | ||
| And I think it's going to be a tough one for Republicans to answer, not because it's a convenient Democratic talking point, but because it's their own voters who want answers to this question. | ||
| Sarah Longwell, the founder and publisher of the Bullworks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's also the host of the Focus Group podcast. | |
| You can find more if you go to thebulwark.com. | ||
| Thanks for the conversation this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| And when we come back, we're joined by John Elliott, former chief spokesman for the National Security Council and deputy assistant to President Trump. | ||
| We'll discuss the administration's approach to national security. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This Saturday, join C-SPAN 2's Book TV in partnership with the Library of Congress for live all-day coverage of the 2025 National Book Festival from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Our signature uninterrupted coverage starts at 9 a.m. Eastern. | |
| This year's guests include acting librarian of Congress Robert Newland, Garrett Graff on his book The Devil Reach Toward the Sky, a conversation with Jill Lapore, author of We the People, A History of the U.S. Constitution, Ron Chernow on his biography of Mark Twain, and a discussion of the launch of C-SPAN's new series, America's Book Club, with host David Rubinstein and senior executive producer Marie Arana. | ||
| The 2025 National Book Festival, live all day, Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. | ||
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, Liberty Media Chairman and cable TV pioneer John Malone, author of Born to be Wired, discusses his life and entrepreneurship. | ||
| He also talks about his many successful business ventures, competing with Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, the value of philanthropy, and living life as a high-functioning autistic. | ||
| I still, to this day, I don't like to be in crowds or in groups of any size. | ||
| I love, I really enjoy people one-on-one. | ||
| I enjoy talking, you know, but I really am uncomfortable in any kind of situation. | ||
| Like I said, I would pay a fortune to avoid a cocktail party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John Malone with his book, Born to Be Wired, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q Day. | |
| You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| And pass precedent dominance. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a kangaroo class. | |
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join Political Playbook Chief Correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| At our table this morning is John Elliott, former deputy assistant to the president in the Trump administration, former National Security Council spokesman in the Trump administration as well, here to talk about national security. | ||
| So, John Elliott, let's begin with this deadline. | ||
| The president set another one for Russia to come to the table with Ukraine and get a peace deal done. | ||
| The president has not said what the consequences will be for today's deadline. | ||
| It appears it'll be missed again. | ||
| What do you think of the president from just three weeks ago today in Alaska saying he within one week would have the Russian president and the Ukrainian president at a table together? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Greta, it's great to be on with you. | |
| And what I would say to that is there was a lot of momentum coming out. | ||
| That was an amazing trip in Alaska to get both planes arriving there at the same time, both of them sitting down and then both of them going back, you know, just a few hours after that. | ||
| And they really got down to details and they had a one-on-one. | ||
| And he came out of that with a lot of momentum and saying that, hey, there's possibly a breakthrough. | ||
| And the problem is that it takes two to come to an agreement there. | ||
| And so if Zelensky is not willing to sit down with Putin and Putin's not willing to sit down with Zelensky, that's a different impression than the president had coming out of that meeting. | ||
| And so it's not in the president's hands. | ||
| He said very much that he wants it to be something that he wants this to be closed as soon as possible and them to get to an agreement. | ||
| The problem is that the president said that he would get the solution on day one of his presidency, and that takes, it's out of his hands. | ||
| It needs both sides to come together. | ||
| And both sides were so far apart and they remain far apart. | ||
| So the president can exercise a lot of pressure if he wants to go into the sanctions route or the tariffs route that would be put on countries like India that still deal and get their oil from Russia. | ||
| So there's going to be a lot of, it's up to the president how much pressure he wants to put on Russia because he's got a lot of cards, but he hasn't decided to play them yet. | ||
| Well, the headline that we were just, the deadline that we were just talking about, the president set the deadline two weeks ago. | ||
| This is from the Military Times. | ||
| Trump's two-week deadline for Russia to start peace talks comes and goes. | ||
| And you said it takes two. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| This is a headline about the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who was in Beijing. | ||
| And now he's been this week, traveled to a conference for Eastern countries on economics. | ||
| And here's the Hill newspaper. | ||
| Putin questions point of Zelensky meeting and offers a summit in Moscow. | ||
| Is he serious if he's offering a summit in Moscow when Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has said that idea is dead on arrival? | ||
| He's tried to assassinate me numerous times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, but Zelensky, once again, what he said is that there would be no deal whatsoever unless Putin stepped down. | |
| That was his position two years ago. | ||
| And so, look, this is something where obviously it's tough for him to say that he's going to go into Moscow. | ||
| There's a security threat there, no question about it. | ||
| But this shows how far the sides remain apart. | ||
| And so unless there's pressure on Putin and on Zelensky to just come together for something like this, the thing that President Trump has emphasized, which is important for everyone to keep in mind, is just the cost and human lives on both sides here. | ||
| And that's something that if you look at the Ukrainian people, they were 70% in favor of the war and continuing the war. | ||
| If you look at that now, they've lost so many people that the Ukrainians themselves want there to be a deal, and they have 30% approval of this entire war and continuing it there. | ||
| So you'd think that there'd be some pressure on Zelensky as well as a lot of international pressure on Putin. | ||
| But once again, President Trump emphasized that this has just called, it's caused 100, rather a million dead and wounded on both sides. | ||
| And so this is something if you're putting your, if you're a Ukrainian mother and you've got an 18-year-old or even a 23, 24-year-old and you're putting him to the front, he's 85% likely never to come back or to come back wounded. | ||
| And so that's just a huge, huge toll. | ||
| That shows that this is something that's serious. | ||
| And so President Trump will, he has a lot of cards, but he's the one who has to decide whether to employ them or not because there are downsides, obviously, to having secondary sanctions on India, for example. | ||
| I mean, we rely on India for a lot of our economy, and so it's not as easy as just turning on a switch. | ||
| And he realizes that, so he's got it. | ||
| But at the same time, he really is committed to a ceasefire and to get this resolved as soon as possible. | ||
| So the ball's in his court, but he's got a lot of cards to play. | ||
| But he's very smart because he sees the ramifications of every move that he's going to make. | ||
| And he's the only one who has that vision right now. | ||
| President, while President Putin is in Beijing and meeting with other allies, you have European countries gathering together to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, including their own boots on the ground possibly inside of Ukraine. | ||
| Washington Post story front page this morning, Trump to acts aid for European security. | ||
| Trump's administration intends to halt long-time security assistance programs for Europe, including an initiative to fortify the continent's eastern flank against a potential attack by Russia as it endeavors to recast Washington's role within NATO. | ||
| What do you make of that possible move? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's a smart move because a lot of people look at what we're doing here at home, and if you look at what President Trump's mandate was from the campaign, it was not to secure endlessly the, if you look at Biden's position, he said that it will support Ukraine however long it takes. | |
| And you look at that, that means a big commitment, not only financially from the U.S., but in giving weapons systems, et cetera, to Ukraine. | ||
| And so when you're talking about the actual alliance and what you just read, which is somewhat related to Ukraine but is directly on the alliance, we visited in the early part of this term with Secretary Pete Hegseth, and he delivered a very powerful message from the president that is, | ||
| look, we need to think about our commitment to Europe because if you take a step back, Greta, and you look at when NATO was founded, NATO was founded right after World War II when the European countries had nowhere withal to actually protect themselves and that's why they needed the presence including hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops on the ground in West Germany, etc. | ||
| So this is something where, look, we're in a totally different situation now. | ||
| This is, what, 70 years, 80 years after that? | ||
| And so if you look at the way that the European countries have so much, their GDP combined is close to the GDP of the U.S. | ||
| So they can fund their own defense. | ||
| They've been used to having us as a crutch that they can really lean on. | ||
| And this is something where President Trump sees the problems in Venezuela, other problems in our own hemisphere. | ||
| And he's taking a position that Europe can do much of this on its own. | ||
| They have to step up and pay for their own defense because, and we can support that. | ||
| But once again, this is something where if we provide those funds, et cetera, to them, he's already told them to step up and he's gotten a commitment, very historic commitment this summer to have them step up to 5% of their GDP funding on defense by 2035. | ||
| And that's a historic agreement. | ||
| But at the same time, he needs to continue to tell them, look, you guys have the same amount of money as we have and you've got to invest much more and you've got to take responsibility for, for example, putting troops on the ground if you want to end the Ukraine war and there's going to be a security guarantee. | ||
| Nobody wants to have U.S. troops on the ground. | ||
| Most people don't even want to see air cover by the U.S. over there, even though President Trump reportedly has that still on the table. | ||
| But this is something where they have to really step up from the European standpoint. | ||
| They have plenty of aircraft there where they could have a no-fly zone if they want to or provide guarantees to Ukraine and there would be no need for the U.S. to be involved. | ||
| The U.S. has done a lot on Ukraine in terms of specific security guarantees. | ||
| And the president is very smart to tell Europe that, look, you guys can provide for almost all of your defense and we can just be there as an ally. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, we will talk about Venezuela as well because that is also part of national security. | ||
| Our topic here this morning with John Elliott. | ||
| Here's how you joined the conversation. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| While we wait for your calls to come in, listen to the president on Wednesday in the Oval Office and his exchange with a reporter when the Polish president was visiting about a lack of process on a peace deal with Russia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've expressed many times your frustration and disappointment with Putin, but there's no action since you took your office. | |
| How do you know there's no action? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't you worry. | |
| Wait, wait, who are you with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who with Polish radio? | |
| Okay. | ||
| How do you know there's no action? | ||
| Would you say that putting secondary sanctions on India, the largest purchaser outside of China, they're almost equal? | ||
| Would you say there was no action? | ||
| That costs hundreds of billions of dollars to Russia. | ||
| You call that no action? | ||
| And I haven't done phase two yet or phase three. | ||
| But when you say there's no action, I think you ought to get yourself a new job. | ||
| Because if you remember, two weeks ago I did, I said, if India buys, India's got big problems, and that's what happened. | ||
| So don't tell me about that. | ||
| From the Oval Office Wednesday. | ||
| Now, John Elliott, perhaps the reporter was referring to no action on the part of Russia. | ||
| Has Russia taken one step toward peace? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's talk. | |
| We don't know what exactly the conversations are going on with Putin and the president. | ||
| Only the president has that perspective. | ||
| Once again, he's got a lot of leverage, and that's what he pointed out in that clip. | ||
| But when you think about he's the one who knows what the downsides are to the secondary and other level of sanctions that he's talking about with India, and he's already laid on some sanctions with a deadline with India. | ||
| And so to say that he is not starting to use those cards is just flat out wrong. | ||
| And he pointed that out to the reporter. | ||
| But once again, this is something where if you take a step back, this is a terrible situation we're in. | ||
| But I maintain, and a lot of analysts maintain, that we would not be in this situation were President Trump in office. | ||
| Or we know that when he was in office, Putin never invaded a fortress, never invaded Ukraine. | ||
| And President Trump is the only president elected this century on whose watch Putin did not invade a neighboring country because, once again, he did with George Bush and he went into Georgia when also with Obama. | ||
| He went into Ukraine the first time and took Crimea and most of the Donbass. | ||
| And here it is again. | ||
| He did nothing for the four years President Trump was in there. | ||
| So now President Trump has to play cleanup for what was put in there by the previous administration, by the Biden administration. | ||
| And a lot of people maintain that it was what Biden did when he had a terrible withdrawal of Afghanistan, where he demonstrated that weakness. | ||
| And that's something that only less than six months later, President Putin went into Ukraine, or rather, he went toward Kiev. | ||
| He was already in parts of Ukraine. | ||
| But anyway, this is something where people need to have that perspective as the president works very carefully to get this to a resolution because he was dealt these cards and he's the one who has to play cleanup now and he's doing that in a very very careful and measured way. | ||
| All right, we'll go to Scott who's in Olean, New York, Independent. | ||
| Morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, humans out there in America. | |
| I am the co-founder of the Human Party, but that's not why I'm calling this today. | ||
| This morning I heard something on news would disturb me, but I need to say this, Bruce. | ||
| If a gentleman was to tell me that they could find an end to both Palestine and the Ukraine war in one day, I would say that gentleman is not very intelligent, but I'm not here to say anything about that gentleman. | ||
| Oh, yes, I am. | ||
| This morning I heard on the news, and this is when I hear things God talks to me. | ||
| I heard that now we are no longer the Defense Department. | ||
| We are the War Department. | ||
| Okay, well, Scott, yeah, we'll talk about that, Scott. | ||
| That the President is expected to announce. | ||
| Here's a Fox News headline. | ||
| Trump to rename Pentagon, Restoring Historic Department of War and latest military move. | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
| You've spent a lot of time in national security circles. | ||
| What does it mean to name it, rename it the Department of War? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what he's doing there by renaming it the Department of War is going back to where it was right, in fact, all the way through World War II. | |
| So it's nothing new. | ||
| We've had the Defense Department only since World War II. | ||
| And so if you look at the executive office building that's right next to the White House, part of the White House complex, that was the Department of War building since the 1800s when it was built. | ||
| And so this is something where, look, it's historically been the Department of War for most of our history. | ||
| And this is a smart move by the President because what he's doing is he's demonstrating that we are on an offensive footing, not because we want to have endless wars the way other administrations have had, but showing that our capability is to be on our front foot as a nation militarily to be able, such as he did with that very good strike that he did on the cartels who were bringing illegal drugs toward our country. | ||
| And this is something where he's demonstrated that that is to be on an offensive footing and that sends a strong signal. | ||
| When you look at whether it's the Department of War or Department of Defense, it's the same men and women in uniform, and those are the most capable military on the planet. | ||
| And he's demonstrating that by showing that we're on offense, not defense. | ||
| Front page of the New York Times on the Venezuela issue, without arrest or trial, killing drug suspects. | ||
| And Charlie Savage writes in there: Ms. Trump is claiming the power to shift maritime counterdrug efforts from law enforcement rules to wartime rules. | ||
| The police arrest criminal suspects for prosecution and cannot instead simply gun suspects down, except in rare circumstances where they pose an imminent threat to someone. | ||
| Did he have the legal authority, the administration, to blow up that boat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll leave that to the lawyers. | |
| I'm not a lawyer, certainly not an international lawyer or any kind of lawyer. | ||
| But what I know as a Marine veteran and somebody who's been the National Security Council, been Senate Armed Services Committee, and looked at the way all this is hashed out. | ||
| This is something where while I was on the staff of the National Security Council in the last, in the first Trump term, he took out Baghdadi, right? | ||
| And he took out Soleimani. | ||
| They were both designated terrorists. | ||
| The Trende Aragua and the other cartels, the Mexican cartels, were named on day one. | ||
| This is one of the first executive orders that the president signed, which was that they're terrorist organizations. | ||
| And so if we're able to go after Baghdadi, if we're able to go after Soleimani, that was a brilliant strike on Soleimani that happened just in early January of 2020. | ||
| And look, he was somebody, other presidents had the ability to take him out, and they were given an opportunity. | ||
| President Trump was briefed and he was given that opportunity, reportedly. | ||
| And he said that he's going to take the shot. | ||
| And this is something where clearly he was briefed ahead of time and it was up to him. | ||
| And he said with his counsel and others that he's going to take the shot. | ||
| Whether or not legal underpinning that that has, we'll leave that up to the lawyers. | ||
| But the president always stays within the law. | ||
| And so this is something where he clearly has backup. | ||
| And if people are challenging him on that, I understand that he's gone to Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, and actually today and yesterday are laying out that legal rationale. | ||
| But everybody agrees that that was a great move for him to do that because this is something that if Solimani killed, if he killed, as he did, 4,000 Americans or close to 4,000 Americans with his special IEDs that he gave to the opposition in Iraq, then this is something that he was taken out for that. | ||
| And if you look at what happened with fentanyl and other drugs that are coming to the United States, on Biden's watch, he let that be an open border. | ||
| And there are 80 to 100,000 deaths per year. | ||
| Put that into perspective over four years. | ||
| You know how many we lost in World War II? | ||
| We lost 440,000 men in uniform there. | ||
| And this is something where you look at that's way more than Solimani took out if you accept that he took out somewhere between two and up to two, three, four thousand Americans that were killed in combat there. | ||
| It pales in comparison. | ||
| So this is something that you need to send a strong signal. | ||
| He was given the ability to do that and he took that shot. | ||
| And I'd say this is a 90-10 issue. | ||
| I don't think anybody argues with taking out the terrorists. | ||
| So good on the president. | ||
| You said the president is seeking that congressional approval. | ||
| The New York Times notes that trafficking of an illegal consumer product is not a capital offense, and Congress has not authorized armed conflict against cartels. | ||
| New York Times reporting and others this morning, in reaction, the Venezuelans flew jets over a U.S. Navy ship in show of force. | ||
| We're talking national security this morning, Peter, in Silver Spring, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, I appreciate you having the speaker on, and I would hope he would open his mind to other points of views than the ones he has about Ukraine. | |
| Give you a scenario. | ||
| Canada invades Michigan to take over our auto industry. | ||
| Americans die fighting to protect our auto industry. | ||
| And England comes and screams at us for causing all these deaths. | ||
| And why don't we just let Canada run over the United States because all these people are dying? | ||
| Russia took over the Donbass. | ||
| That is Ukraine's economic industrial heartland. | ||
| They're fighting to defend their country. | ||
| And you're complaining about them dying to protect their country. | ||
| Would you complain about Americans dying to protect our auto industry? | ||
| All right, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, Peter, I think you always raise good points there. | |
| Most of the callers raise good points, but we'll give a different perspective to that. | ||
| If the U.S. were invaded by Canada, number one, Canada wouldn't invade the U.S. because the U.S. has the wherewithal to, nobody's going to invade our land as long as you have presidents that are committed like President Trump is to have the strongest military in the world. | ||
| So that's an inapt or an inapposite comparison. | ||
| So if you look, though, what the analogy would be is if Canada were to invade the U.S. and once again, there's a wild, wild hypothetical, but if they were to do that, the analogy is that we don't turn to Europe and we say, hey, Europe, why don't you come in there and let's say France and one country in Europe, France or the U.K., and you're now going to pay us as a country to fight that battle and you're going to arm us. | ||
| And if you talk about arming the Ukrainians, let's take a step back once again. | ||
| If you look at when Putin invaded on Biden's watch the first time, he invaded twice on Biden's watch when Biden had, and it wasn't just that he was vice president, he was given the purview of, or he was given the responsibility under Obama and by Obama to run policy on Ukraine. | ||
| That's why his son got involved in there with all the business dealings is because he was the point man on Ukraine. | ||
| Biden was. | ||
| If you look at Republicans on the Armed Services Committee where I used to be a staffer, Lindsey Graham, John McCain wanted to arm them and give them Ukraine to push back against this invasion by Ukraine. | ||
| Guess who said no to that? | ||
| The Democrats led by Obama and Biden particularly said because he was the point man for Obama on those issues. | ||
| So what they say is we'll give them ponchos, we'll give them canteens, et cetera, but we're not going to give them any lethal force. | ||
| You know, the first president or presidential candidate has said that they would give him lethal force, and the first one who did was President Trump in 2017. | ||
| So if you don't think President Trump is committed to the security of Ukraine, once again, this is not the smart comparison whether Canada were to come in here is we don't look. | ||
| President Trump doesn't look to a country in Europe to provide for our defense. | ||
| We can do that ourselves. | ||
| And he wanted and other Republicans wanted to give Ukraine that ability back before President Trump came in office the first time. | ||
| And Biden said no and Obama said no. | ||
| So that's just the historic record. | ||
| So it's important to keep that in mind. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Carolina in Arizona. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling because my parents fought and Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, all those dictator types. | ||
| And now we're looking at somebody who, my dad was a Marine, and we're looking at Marines that are being sent against Americans. | ||
| And I think that is totally shameful. | ||
| And as a kid, as far as hiding under desks because of Russia, then you have Trump greeting Putin, practically kissing his, you know what? | ||
| So shame. | ||
| You're turning away our friends. | ||
| Canada and Mexico are our neighbors. | ||
| We are a gigantic, gigantic group if we are together. | ||
| And I think that President Trump is a dictator. | ||
| My mother said he is a dictator. | ||
| And she was 94, and she said she was very afraid of what was going to happen to the United States with that crazy man in control. | ||
| So shame on him. | ||
| And my Marines are flipping in their graves that they are being used against Americans. | ||
| John Elliott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first I'd like to say that to your father, who is a father in your family, who are your father's service as a Marine, I had modest service for four years on active duty with the Marine Corps after college, and I consider that to be one of the best times in my life, if not the best time in my life, to be part of such a tradition. | |
| So semperfy to your family, both your father, grandfather, and the others in your family who are Marines. | ||
| And look, we understand that there is that Democrats, you're on the Democrat line, that there was a poll, I believe it was last week, that said that President Trump's approval among Democrats is 0%. | ||
| Okay, so we know that there's going to be issues where people look at different media and they have different contexts there. | ||
| But I don't really know when Marines are being used against Americans. | ||
| I don't know what that, maybe that refers to L.A. where they're providing security for what's going on in there. | ||
| George H.W. Bush did the same thing. | ||
| And so this is something, if you're talking about the troops, for example, who are here in D.C., those are National Guard troops. | ||
| Those aren't active duty U.S. Marine Corps. | ||
| And this is something where the President looks at these things. | ||
| And he made the decision. | ||
| And we came, we're right next to the Union station here in the nation's capital. | ||
| And you can probably see over our shoulders that there are troops from the National Guard that are in Union Square area. | ||
| And that was just a squalid area where nobody wanted to go in and even go to the train there. | ||
| So good on the National Guard for protecting regular order here in Washington and good on the President to have directed that along with other supporting agencies like ICE, ATF, and others who are in this city. | ||
| On my way over here today, I looked at one of the worst areas that we would drive through here in D.C. and there were uniformed Secret Service people standing out there. | ||
| And you better believe they looked at one of the people who was possibly going to rob somebody and the guy took off on his bike. | ||
| And that's a very strong presence to be in there. | ||
| But I don't know what you're talking about about using Marines against other Americans. | ||
| I just challenge you on that. | ||
| That's not happening. | ||
| Here is Paul in Cleveland who texts us to say, with Russia, North Korea, and China forming a stronger alliance, is it a good idea to drive a wedge between the U.S. and our European allies? | ||
| Referring, of course, to President Putin meeting in Beijing with China and the Indian leader as well. | ||
| There's the picture on your screen. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| Well, this is something that is important to raise. | ||
| But once again, it was President Biden who took what was a very good relationship or at least a working relationship that President Trump had with Putin. | ||
| Remember, Biden met in Geneva with President Putin on, I think it was the first six months of his presidency, and President Putin looked him in the eye. | ||
| And two months later, President Biden had a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. | ||
| And then President Putin, six months after that, just invaded Ukraine for the second time on Biden's watch. | ||
| With this president and what is happening in that summit, is it a good idea to the viewer's question to put a wedge between the U.S. and our European allies when they are meeting together and there's a military parade, etc.? | ||
| They seem to be forming an alliance there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, but what it is is it's weakness on the U.S. part that pushed Putin into the alliance with China, and that wasn't the case because President Trump had a very good relationship with President Putin, a very good working relationship. | |
| And so you better believe if President Trump were in office in the four years between his first and second terms, that was something where Putin would not be over-cozing up to China because he had the good personal relationship with Putin and could talk them out of that and talk about where we can actually work together. | ||
| And so and he could do that now, though. | ||
| He could do that now. | ||
| Well, what he did, he met in Alaska with Putin, and then remember right after that, he had all the European leaders come. | ||
| They blocked out their schedule to come with him. | ||
| And they all stood in unity saying that, hey, look, there's two sides to this thing. | ||
| It wasn't just Putin there, but we also are showing resolve for Ukraine. | ||
| So there is an alliance here that's very strong with the European countries to get a very speedy ceasefire here because it's in everyone's interest. | ||
| We'll go to Max next. | ||
| Silver Spring at Maryland Independent. | ||
| Hi, Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| First of all, yeah, I've been to you, I frequent Union Station quite a bit lately, and usually when I travel to the city, I've seen those two vehicles. | ||
| They park two vehicles out in front of Union Station, and there's a man or a woman standing next to them in uniform. | ||
| They're doing nothing but being a photo op for the president. | ||
| Seriously, it's silly. | ||
| But that's not what I call for. | ||
| What I called about was to. | ||
| So I have a feeling you've swam around in the same circles as John Bolton. | ||
| And you probably know him. | ||
| You probably have met him or at least know him. | ||
| And he's being investigated by Donald Trump for basically doing the same thing that Donald Trump was busted for at Mar-a-Lago when they found the top secret documents in his bathroom, for instance. | ||
| And I'm curious how you feel about the investigation on John Bolton. | ||
| And does that make you question whether or not you can ever go against the president yourself in your job position? | ||
| Or how do you feel about that? | ||
| How do you morally connect the dots there? | ||
| That's a very good question. | ||
| So, look, I have always been, I didn't serve at all under Bolton. | ||
| I've always been skeptical of his neocon outlook, and that's probably why he didn't finish out his term or finish out his job in the president's term because they were at odds. | ||
| And so I came in right on the National Security Council staff with Robert O'Brien, who was the successor to Bolton when Bolton was fired by the president. | ||
| So what this is, though, this is about safeguarding classified information. | ||
| And that's something that we really need to hold everybody, no matter what administration to, including Bolton, including others. | ||
| If you look at mishandling classified information, that's something that just in March of this year, you had a former Defense Department official given three years in jail and fined $10,000 for mishandling classified information and to include giving it to people who had no classification or no security clearance rather. | ||
| And this is something that's very serious, needs to be taken seriously with Bolton. | ||
| As to the president, this was looked into. | ||
| I know that the FBI had some midnight raid or early dawn raid with sirens screaming and helicopters overhead at Mar-a-Lago, and that was directed by Biden. | ||
| Everybody knows that. | ||
| And so that was looked at by the courts, and it was looked at very heavily prosecuted by Jack Smith, the prosecutor, and they ended up having the case thrown out there. | ||
| So let's look at handling classified information is absolutely important. | ||
| That's something I was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps over 30 years ago. | ||
| And look, if you were a Lance corporal or a young lieutenant in the Marine Corps in intelligence and you had that clearance and you were mishandling that, if you showed it to your wife, for example, if you showed it to somebody else as alleged here, that's something that you could go to jail for up to 10 years and be fined up to $500,000. | ||
| So this is something we need to take very seriously, no matter who is accused there. | ||
| It was looked at in President Trump's case, but hey, it needs to be looked at for other people. | ||
| I mean, I've made very clear, I mentioned that Secretary Pete Hegseth himself, look, he's been accused of disclosing classified information to his wife, and he should have the same scrutiny that Bolton has. | ||
| He should have the same scrutiny that any Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps did if he mishandled classified information. | ||
| Once again, you can be imprisoned up to 10 years for that. | ||
| It's deadly serious, and everybody who has a security clearance needs to keep that in mind and make sure not to violate that responsibility that they have. | ||
| And that's the case with Bolton. | ||
| It's the case with Hegseth. | ||
| It's the case with anybody who mishandles classified information. | ||
| This is deadly serious. | ||
| Lives are at stake a lot of times. | ||
| That's why we have the classification levels of top secret and secret and confidential. | ||
| That top secret means there'll be exceptionally grave damage to national security. | ||
| If that's disclosed secret, it'll be serious damage. | ||
| And confidential is also serious damage. | ||
| But look, this is something where those levels of classification need to be respected, no matter whether it's Bolton, Hagseth, anybody else in this administration. | ||
| And President Trump and Kash Patel, the FBI, have made very clear in Pam Boni that these are standards that need to be upheld, but they should be done across the board, not just for troops who violate the law, but also for people like Bolton and, if need be, cabinet secretaries. | ||
| John is in Arlington, Virginia, a Republican caller. | ||
| John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think we should, in regard to this blowing up of that boat in the Caribbean, I think we should note that there's a big difference between al-Qaeda and these guys. | |
| Al-Qaeda was trying to kill Americans. | ||
| These guys are trying to make profit out of Americans. | ||
| A little reckless. | ||
| A lot of Americans die because of overdoses. | ||
| But it's not the same thing. | ||
| Especially when we had the option of going in there, grabbing the boat, and getting information about who these guys were and what they were doing. | ||
| We know that when you get a little trigger happy like they did in the Caribbean, bad things happen. | ||
| For example, when we were bombing Yemen, we bombed, well, I'll put it like this. | ||
| Somebody bombed the jail that killed 70 migrants from Ethiopia. | ||
| The Israelis didn't do it. | ||
| The Yemenis didn't do it. | ||
| And I don't think the Eritreans did it. | ||
| So it probably was us, but we haven't said too much about it. | ||
| The thing is, when you go around shooting stuff off, things happen. | ||
| And if you're going to blame the Iranians for, and it wasn't 4,000 people, that's as many people that was killed in Iraq. | ||
| It was around 600. | ||
| If you're going to blame them because Iraqis use those weapons, then we're responsible for the deaths of 50,000 Palestinians because we give aid to Israel. | ||
| All right, John, well, let's take that. | ||
| Let's take those comparisons. | ||
| John Elliott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, once again, that Soleimani and the IRGC, the Republican Guard in Iran, he was a terrorist. | |
| He was designated as such. | ||
| And President Trump on the first day of his office, once again, on first day in office, on January 20th, in addition to a raft of dozens, close to 100 executive orders, that one of those executive orders, I read it this morning, designates cartels, including Trend del Aragua, where these terrorists were reportedly from, from Venezuela, as terrorists that are potential targets, just like any other terrorists, just like Solomani, just like Baghdadi. | ||
| for this caller to say that one is different than the other, they are both terrorist organizations. | ||
| And if you talk about that they had no deaths or that they didn't kill Americans, they killed under Biden's watch alone close to the number of Americans that were killed in World War II from the fentanyl that came over that open border that Biden, when he opened that border wide up. | ||
| And you have, once again, 80 to 100,000 Americans were killed. | ||
| Most of these were young men and up to age 35 who sometimes didn't even, many times didn't even know what drug they were taking. | ||
| And so if you say that deadly force is not authorized there, once again, I'm not a lawyer, but we'll leave it up to the lawyers to hash it out. | ||
| But President Trump has the best legal advice in the world. | ||
| And just like he was given the opportunity to take this vessel out, he was given the opportunity to take Solomoni out that no other president who had been given reportedly that same information that he decided to take this action. | ||
| And I think you would find that 90 to 95 percent of Americans say right on you, President Trump. | ||
| We will go to James next in Virginia. | ||
| Democratic caller, welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I don't know how people can be so crazy to follow, I don't call him President Trump, Donald Trump, because he's a crook himself. | ||
| Where was all the secrets on his daughter and son-in-law and all of them was up there looking at Secret Service stuff with no secret clearance? | ||
| And then again, Trump is the one that got the money and say he's going to close the border, and Mexico is going to pay for it. | ||
| And to check into Donald Trump, he owes Putin money, that's why. | ||
| And it came through that Dutch bank in New York. | ||
| So that's why he's never going to go against Putin until, because Putin would kill him because of the money that he owe Putin. | ||
| All right, James there in Virginia. | ||
| Do you have any thoughts, John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| James, you threw a lot at us there. | ||
| And understand that you're not a fan of the president, but that's why we have a democracy. | ||
| So respect your opinions, but absolutely disagree with the facts is that President Trump did close the border. | ||
| Number one, is that he did that on the first week in office. | ||
| I went down along with Secretary Pete Hegseth and Tom Homan down to the border in El Paso. | ||
| And frankly, if I take a step back, I served on the border as a Marine in support of the Border Patrol back in 1992, where we were, back then the border was just six strands of barbed wire there. | ||
| And now President Trump wanted to build the wall. | ||
| He was blocked by Pelosi from building the wall. | ||
| And so now he's back and he put down in the first two weeks in office, he put the troops, actually it was the first day in office, he ordered troops down to the border, including Marines, put up barbed wire and others for porous areas where Democrats had blocked him from finishing the wall there. | ||
| And so, and to take a step back once again, when you were talking about Putin, if Putin is, if President Trump owes Putin something, then why didn't Putin invade a neighboring country on his watch while he was president? | ||
| John Elliott, John Elliott here is with us this morning, former deputy assistant to the president in the Trump administration, former National Security Council spokesman with the Trump administration. | ||
| Let's go to William in Burlington, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| A couple of things. | ||
| I want to go back to this new coalition of the five new, I guess, axis of evil. | ||
| You can't blame Biden for that. | ||
| I mean, this happened on Trump's watch. | ||
| It didn't happen on Biden. | ||
| You guys always go back to Biden, Biden, Biden. | ||
| Everything's Biden. | ||
| When as an administration and as a group of people, do you take responsibility for anything that Trump does? | ||
| Everything is somebody else's fault. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| They specifically did this because they're tired of the tariffs. | ||
| They're tired of Trump's bullying them. | ||
| And they said, we're going to stand together as a team now. | ||
| That didn't happen under Biden. | ||
| That didn't happen under Barack Obama. | ||
| You guys keep going back to a well that doesn't make any sense. | ||
| It's tried up now. | ||
| And blowing up a motorboat in the middle of the ocean is not bravery. | ||
| It's not lethality in the sense of, oh, look at us, we're strong and mighty. | ||
| It's cowardly. | ||
| You hit a boat that was speeding along with a plane from above and blew it completely out of the water. | ||
| How does that make us look like we're a good lethal force? | ||
| It makes us look like a bunch of cowardly assassins. | ||
| William, I want to take your points. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great, William. | |
| Thank you for your points. | ||
| Once again, this is why we have a democracy, and we disagree on a lot there with what you put out there. | ||
| You were saying that this was just a speedboat moving along. | ||
| That speedboat carried fentanyl, reportedly, according to the best intel that we had, and we have very good intel on what's going on in the Caribbean. | ||
| And this was carrying fentanyl that would kill Americans, kill American, mainly men between 18 and 35 who might be studying for a midterm in a community college somewhere and they need to stay up in the evening. | ||
| They think that they're taking an Adderall and terrorists, frankly, because that's what they are, such as those who are on that boat, they're introducing that fentanyl right into our cities, right into our colleges and elsewhere that has killed, once again, close to the number of Americans that were killed in the entire World War II. | ||
| So look, they're an even bigger threat than the IRGC with Soleimani. | ||
| Once again, he's somebody who killed thousands of Americans and many more than that around the world. | ||
| And we're talking about these very terrorists who were on that boat. | ||
| These cartel terrorists were narco-terrorists who were designated once again by the president on day one in office as a terrorist threat, just like al-Qaeda were. | ||
| That you better believe it if we're given an opportunity to take out those terrorists, those 11 on that vessel, with all their fentanyl that they're bringing into our cities. | ||
| That's a 95 to 5 issue, my friend. | ||
| So you can, you know, I respect your opinion, but that's just not where the American people are. | ||
| And we'll leave it up to the lawyers to figure out the basis for that. | ||
| But President Trump has the best lawyers in the country and that he wouldn't act if he were not on firm legal ground. | ||
| And that's being explained to the Congress today and yesterday. | ||
| John Elliott, thank you for the conversation this morning. | ||
| We appreciate you talking to our viewers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Greta. | |
| My pleasure. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| When we come back, we will be in open forum. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue on your mind, there are the lines. | ||
| Start dialing in. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal on this Friday morning. | ||
| We are in open forum. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue, there are the lines you can start dialing in now. | ||
| We'll begin with the economic news. | ||
| This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announcing that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, confirming dramatic showdown, slowdown, excuse me, slowdown in the labor market. | ||
| The August report is the first since President Trump fired a top labor department official over accusations of releasing inaccurate data. | ||
| The unemployment rate you can see there on your screen, 4.3%. | ||
| Now take a look at how the stock market is reacting to this news about the labor market. | ||
| The S ⁇ P 500 rises to record as traders bet the latest jobs report will push the Fed to cut rates. | ||
| President Trump was asked about the jobs numbers being released today, last night, when he was at the White House hosting a dinner for tech leaders. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| Tomorrow we have a jobs report coming out. | ||
| The first since the BLS commissioner who you fired won't be there, a lot of people will be turning to you to see if you believe the data that's released. | ||
| Can you commit to saying the data will be credible? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They come out tomorrow, but the real numbers that I'm talking about are going to be whatever it is, but we'll be in a year from now with these monstrous, huge, beautiful places, the palaces of genius. | ||
| And when they start opening up, you're seeing, I think you'll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible. | ||
| Right now, it's a lot of construction numbers, but you're going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before. | ||
| That was the president last night when he was asked about today's jobs report. | ||
| And again, from NBC News, the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, confirming dramatic slowdown in the labor market. | ||
| We are going to hear from President Trump today at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| The White House said that he will make an announcement, and we're going to have live coverage of the President on C-SPAN, right here on C-SPAN, 4 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| And if he takes questions from reporters, he will likely be asked about these jobs numbers. | ||
| Greg, we're in open forum. | ||
| Tampa, Florida Independent. | ||
| Let's hear from you first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I have three points I'd like to make. | ||
| First, in regards to your last speaker that you had, I would like everybody to understand one basic fact, not opinion, but fact. | ||
| Concerning the border, the only thing that changed as far as the open border on January 20th of 2020 was the president's political party. | ||
| Nothing else changed. | ||
| It's the same border that it was when Trump was president. | ||
| Second point I'd like to make is when all you can do is demean, diminish, and denigrate people, you have nothing worth listening to. | ||
| This is directed directly at President Trump. | ||
| All right, Greg. | ||
| Number three. | ||
| Okay, number three, quickly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Number three, I don't believe that there is any reason for political divide in this country except for Donald Trump. | |
| He's liberals and Democrats against Republicans and conservatives. | ||
| You don't hear that from the Democratic side. | ||
| It's only the Republican side. | ||
| All right, Greg, with his three thoughts there in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Cast Lake, Minnesota. | ||
| Craig is watching there, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Craig. | |
| Yeah, I got three things that I'd like to say. | ||
| First, the autism thing. | ||
| My kid was just diagnosed with autism. | ||
| So as it seems like everybody I talked to, my kid had no shots, just the vitamin K shot, which was absolutely had to have it for circumcision. | ||
| And that's just that. | ||
| Then the other thing is, you know, looking into all these bad foods and soy and everything. | ||
| And no matter where you go, you're going to find soy almost. | ||
| But that's my conspiracy theorist. | ||
| The soy is getting us. | ||
| And the other problem I'm having is just yesterday I got robbed for $12,000 because I sold my freeze dryer to a Facebook marketplace buyer that traded me some gold. | ||
| I found out the gold is fake when I tried to sell it and recourse through the police. | ||
| Fake money, fake gold, fake coins, fake silver. | ||
| It's all legal to sell. | ||
| It's not illegal to cheat somebody over it. | ||
| It's only a civil matter. | ||
| I got their license plate, their Facebook accounts. | ||
| All this stuff's hidden. | ||
| You can't get subpoenas. | ||
| There's no help. | ||
| I think it's part of the big plan to get us away from cash. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Craig there in Castle, Minnesota, Republican caller. | ||
| Also on Capitol Hill yesterday, the president's pick for a Federal Reserve Board spots. | ||
| Mr. Moran was testifying before senators yesterday, and he's the nominee to fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve. | ||
| Democrats on the panel, like Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, questioned his independence from the White House. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are member of the Council of Economic Finds. | |
| If you're confirmed, will you resign from the council? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| I have received advice from council that what is required is an unpaid leave of absence from the Council of Economic Advisors. | ||
| And so, considering the term for which I'm being nominated is a little bit more than four months, that is what I will be taking. | ||
| As long as that is the advice of council, I will follow the law. | ||
| Well, your independence has already been seriously compromised by your statement. | ||
| You are going to be technically an employee of the President of the United States, but an independent member of the Board of the Federal Reserve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's ridiculous. | |
| And you also said that a Federal Reserve Board member should refrain from involvement for four years after he leaves office with any executive branch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you committed to that also? | |
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Look, I'm committed to the independence of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| I have in the past proposed a suite of reforms to improve governance of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| That suite was a package deal. | ||
| It was a system of checks and balances designed to diffuse political power and isolate the Fed from political interference. | ||
| It would be inappropriate to take one check or balance away from the entire suite and think about implementing it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, the answer is no. | |
| So, you're going to be a consistent lawyer, you're going to be an employee of the President of the United States on leave. | ||
| So, he can call you up in his capacity as president and said, Here, I want you to do this, this, and this. | ||
| Well, I guess I have to do it since I'm an employee of the president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is absolutely ridiculous. | |
| Stephen Myron on Capitol Hill yesterday, President Trump's pick to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. | ||
| We're in open forum. | ||
| Barb in Derwood, Maryland, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Barb, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| There's so many things that we could talk about and what you do talk about. | ||
| I was just going about fentanyl from your guest speaker because if they are so concerned with stopping fentanyl from getting into the country because it kills people, and he specifically said men of a certain age group, well, then why don't we look at gun control and the guns that kill our children? | ||
| So, you know, I'm just frustrated, and that's all I wanted to say. | ||
| Okay, Barb. | ||
| Rick McHenry, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Rick. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling about the Epstein files. | ||
| And if anyone wonders why Trump does not want to release the files, I strongly urge them to look up on YouTube an interview with Katie Johnson, 2016, a 29-minute interview. | ||
| And I think it will convince everyone why President Trump does not want the files to be released. | ||
| And by the way, GOP now stands for Guardians of Pedophiles, as far as many in my community are concerned. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Rick's thoughts there. | ||
| Gloria is in Pennsylvania, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Gloria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| I'm upset about that gentleman that you just had on. | ||
| He actually reminded me of the Stepford wife. | ||
| And I want to say that how do we know what was on that boat? | ||
| That could have been somebody. | ||
| There could have been a child in that boat. | ||
| Why didn't our Navy and Marine Corps just stop them, surround them, and take them into custody? | ||
| It doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| And I'm totally against Trump, and I really hope he stops this nonsense of being a dictator because he is a dictator. | ||
| And I'm very upset about that gentleman because Stepford wife all the way. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, Gloria. | ||
| Steve in Schenectady, New York, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| May I make three quick points. | ||
| One, the military in our neighborhood, the military, they don't have bullets to open fire. | ||
| They don't have arrest powers and they don't have the ability to investigate. | ||
| So I don't understand why people are clamoring for the military. | ||
| That's one. | ||
| Two, the jobs numbers from June, July, and August are atrocious. | ||
| And if these numbers don't waken people up, we are in trouble. | ||
| The Donald Trump's thing movement is in full swing, and America is in trouble. | ||
| And three, three, please, I called this show before, and Harriet Hegeman was on here, and she filibustered everything. | ||
| She threatened to sue me without hearing what I was trying to say. | ||
| I wasn't calling her a racist. | ||
| I was just trying to make a point. | ||
| So when you have your guests on, can you please have them allow the callers to speak and not filibuster so that I don't be threatened with being sued for defamation? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Stephen, New York Republican caller. | ||
| We're in open forum this morning, dominating the front page of the national newspapers is RFK's appearance on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras were there for the three hours that the health secretary sat in the hot seat. | ||
| Washington Times this morning, their headline, Kennedy accuses lawmakers of failing nation's children, squares off with Democrats on the Hill over vaccines. | ||
| And then you also have the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| JF RFK Jr. defends moves at Hill hearing, heated exchanges with lawmakers amid rising frustrations over the CDC's upheaval and vaccine confusion. | ||
| That's the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal with a picture of the health secretary. | ||
| RFK Jr. clashes with senators on CDC chaos and vaccine stance. | ||
| And then finally, you also have the New York Times front page story. | ||
| Grilled by the Senate, Kennedy defends vaccine moves. | ||
| If you missed any of yesterday's hearing and you want to see it, you can go to our website, c-span.org, or our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow. | ||
| We'll go to Mark, Knoxville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Mark. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I just want to make three points. | ||
| First and foremost, everybody remember how they want to fast track this vaccine that Trump is supposed to be nominated for Nobel Prize for. | ||
| However, he didn't want that meat vaccine. | ||
| He said the vaccine was fake and blamed everything on Fauci. | ||
| So there's one. | ||
| Number two, these people, these poor victims, they need to have their time. | ||
| They need to have their justice, okay? | ||
| It doesn't matter who's on that list. | ||
| Somebody knows exactly who's hurt these people when they were kids. | ||
| Kids. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They may look like adults, but they're kids. | ||
| Anyway, third and finally, just pray for this country because we really need it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Catherine, Burlington, New Jersey, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Catherine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| How are you? | ||
| It's been a long time since I spoke with you. | ||
| Anyway, I did watch the hearings yesterday, and I was wondering why they didn't swear the secretary in. | ||
| And another thing, he was ill-prepared for what the hearing was all about, Greta. | ||
| And my concern is with the CDC, with all the chaos going on there, and I'm in the medical profession, that the next epidemic that we have, we may not be prepared. | ||
| And it's just so much is going on, Greta, but it's good to talk to you again. | ||
| And have a good day. | ||
| You too, Catherine. | ||
| Don in New York, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Don. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Greta, how are you doing? | |
| I got pretty much questions about the people that are demeaning Trump. | ||
| Everything he does is wrong. | ||
| Everything he touches is wrong. | ||
| The thing yesterday with RFK, he's trying as best he can, but again, he inherited a system that has really what has it done? | ||
| We still have, you know, we still have the medical problems and stuff like that. | ||
| But again, I'm as curious, it's amazing that the people hatred for Trump. | ||
| Anything is just a killer. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Donna, Far Rockaway, New York, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Donna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I just have to make the point that Caroline Levitt, Trump's press secretary, is the most obnoxious, immature person that I've ever seen speak. | ||
| Every time she, every press conference, she berates the Democrats and the Biden administration. | ||
| And it's so divisive. | ||
| And I wish they would take into account that it's the Democrats that put Trump over the, you know, over the top to win this election. | ||
| 26% of black men voted for Trump. | ||
| They were mostly registered Democrats. | ||
| I just don't understand why they would try to alienate half the country every press conference. | ||
| I just want to say it's so immature. | ||
| She is the most obnoxious to immature press secretary that I've ever seen. | ||
| That's all I want to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Donna, there in New York. | ||
| At the White House yesterday, First Lady Melania Trump hosted tech leaders for a meeting on artificial intelligence. | ||
| Here's a portion of her remarks from the White House. | ||
| We are living in a moment of wonder, and it is our responsibility to prepare children in America. | ||
| Cars now steer themselves through our cities. | ||
| Robots hold steady hands in the operating room. | ||
| And drones are redefining the future of war. | ||
| Innovations of first-generation humanoids, factory automation, and autonomous vehicles have surged from private sector investment. | ||
| Every one of these advancements is powered by AI. | ||
| The robots are here. | ||
| Our future is no longer science fiction. | ||
| Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that AI innovation is clearly boosting America's GDP growth. | ||
| Surely this is not a trend, for AI will serve as the underpinning of every business sector in our nation, including education, life sciences, finance, and design. | ||
| In fact, I predict AI will represent the single largest growth category in our nation during this administration. | ||
| And I won't be surprised if AI becomes known as the greatest engine of progress in the history of the United States of America. | ||
| But as leaders and parents, we must manage AI's growth responsibly. | ||
| During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children. | ||
| Empowering, but with watchful guidance. | ||
| First Lady Melania Trump at the White House yesterday hosting a conference on artificial intelligence. | ||
| Today here in Washington, the Atlantic Council also looking at artificial intelligence and exploring strategies to measure, communicate, and improve important AI components and talk about ways to potentially avoid supply chain disruptions. | ||
| That conversation this morning, 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time, right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also watch on our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW, or online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| Also, C-SPAN Cameras will be this morning, this afternoon, talking, covering an event at the Council on Foreign Relations. | ||
| Michigan Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin joins a discussion on the future of U.S. national security and foreign policy. | ||
| Senator Slotkin serves on the Senate Armed Services and Homeland Security Committee. | ||
| And that takes place at 12.30 p.m. Eastern Time right here again on C-SPAN, C-SPANNOW, our free video mobile app, and c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Also, we told you earlier, we're going to hear from the president today at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| The White House says he will make an announcement in the Oval office. | ||
| Again, that will be here right here on C-SPAN and C-SPANNOW, C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Let's go to the White House. | ||
| The President's economic advisor, Kevin Haset, talking to reporters following these job numbers. | ||
| Which is why GDP Dow has the third quarter at about 3%. | ||
| And so, like, all the indicators that we're seeing are that inflation is low and economic growth is solid. | ||
| Income growth is solid as well. | ||
| So that the only part of the data that's disappointing is that the jobs numbers have been a little bit lower over the last three or four months. | ||
| But again, Goldman Sachs had a report out yesterday that said that the seasonals of the summer are kind of unusual and that in August, typically, the advanced number is about 60 to 70,000 lower than the final number ends up being. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's the White House's justification and easy to stay on and the CEA long? | |
| That's a matter between Steve and the President. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think that there can be a public advantage there in London? | |
| Steve's a very honorable guy, and I think that he'll do the job well if he's confirmed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kevin, if somebody is on leave from the CEA, how often, like how disconnected are they from the White House or connected to the White House while they're on leave? | |
| I don't recall anyone being on leave from the CEA, but I'm sure that Steve will respect his job as an independent Fed governor if he gets the job. | ||
| Yeah, that 232 investigation has been moving forward. | ||
| I think that there'll be something to bring to the president within a few weeks, maybe even sooner than that, and then the president will judge next steps. | ||
|
unidentified
|
India's get reprehensive just for the tensor would be a problem. | |
| I'm sorry, could you say it again? | ||
| I didn't hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would the companies that invest in the U.S. get reprieved just on the downstream products and the consumer electronics? | |
| That's a work in progress for the 232. | ||
|
unidentified
|
India continues to import large amounts of food given now in sanctions for imposed. | |
| What are the trade negotiations looking like in the near future? | ||
| Is there any momentum to go strong on this? | ||
| I think that the trade team and the president are disappointed that India continues to fund Russia's Ukraine war. | ||
| And hopefully it's a diplomatic issue that it will have positive developments soon. | ||
| Well, I'll let this guy, but I promise that I'll let everyone have a shot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| No, what I'm saying is that if you get the typical revision for August, which is about 60,000, then the jobs number would be about consistent with the other indicators that we're seeing. | ||
| This isn't. | ||
| This is a lower number than seems like you would normally get, given how strong. | ||
| So, for again, GDP now is saying that economic growth is about 3%. | ||
| It's a pretty good estimate, given all the real-time data of where we are. | ||
| And normally, with a 3% growth, you would be talking, you know, 100,000 jobs or something. | ||
| And so the jobs number is an anomaly. | ||
| And so the question is: when we look at the final numbers, do we expect that the revision will be more consistent with the rest of the data? | ||
| That's usually what happens. | ||
| Not concerns. | ||
| I'm looking forward to seeing what the benchmark revision is. | ||
| But again, it highlights the fact that we've got to do a lot better job of collecting and fixing and easily adjusting the data because the revisions have been so huge. | ||
| And if you think about it, like the previous revisions, which knocked about a million jobs off of the jobs rolls, could have had a big impact on policy, both in Congress and the Federal Reserve. | ||
| And so it's just not an acceptable thing that the jobs numbers are so unreliable that they're being revised all the heck over the place. | ||
| Completely different story if we have a million fewer jobs, as happened the last time that there was a revision. | ||
| And so that's one reason why President Trump thinks we need a new set of eyes over there at BLS to fix this problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Given the president wrote that we've lost India and Russia to China, what does that say about our relationship with this country? | |
| Well, we're certainly hoping that it improves. | ||
| I think that the Fed will certainly want to consider what moves it would make. | ||
| And I would imagine that when you set an agenda at the Fed, the chairman of the Fed sets the agenda, then they have options that they all consider and discuss. | ||
| And I would guess that they'll be discussing the main market expectation is 25 basis points. | ||
| But I would guess that there would be an expectation, a discussion of a higher cut. | ||
| But I wouldn't expect it to happen. | ||
| It's because the inflation numbers have come way, way down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's on average about 1.9% since Trump took office. | |
| Anybody else? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Asset, is there any connection between the job supports and immigration activity or for deportation activity? | |
| Yeah, there is, again, like, so all the job creation at the U.S. has come from native-born workers, whereas in the Biden administration, it would be like maybe about half was foreign-born. | ||
| And so if the sort of supply of new illegal immigrants goes to zero, as it has, that there won't be non-native-born workers taking a whole bunch of jobs from native-born workers. | ||
| And so that is an issue. | ||
| the supply of new labor has certainly gone down a lot because of the closed border. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I don't have a comment on the fat issues there. | |
| Employment rates have ticked up a little bit, but right now we're highly confident with the trends that data board workers are replacing the illegal workers that are either now not new coming to the country or going back to their homes. | ||
| So thank you very much, everybody. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Kevin Hassett at the White House, one of the president's economic advisors, they are talking about these new jobs numbers that were just released today, one week after the president or following the president's firing of the director who oversees the job numbers. | ||
| And as we told you, 22,000 jobs added and 4.3% unemployment rate. | ||
| A slowdown of the economy is the headlines today coming out of that. | ||
| We'll go to Warren in Portsmouth, Virginia, Democratic Caller. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead, Warren. | |
| Hey, I just wanted to wonder from your last guest, all this stuff that he was saying about all about the summit that they had over that Kim Jong-un and Putin and T. | ||
| The thing people should understand that Donald Trump loves Twitch because he's able to control over a billion people. | ||
| Something to that fact. | ||
| We all should remember that they wrote love letters to Kim Jong-un. | ||
| And Putin, he said, is more intelligent than all our intelligent agencies. | ||
| And all of this. | ||
| I think that we're going down. | ||
| He's trying, I believe that Donald Trump is trying to turn the United States into Alterian state. | ||
| All right, Warren's our final call here this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Shelby Telcott, who reports for Semaphore, has a scoop here this morning that President Trump plans to attend the U.S. Open men's final on Sunday afternoon in New York. | ||
| The White House has confirmed with Shelby Telcott with that scoop this morning. | ||
| That does it for today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern Time for another conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have live coverage throughout the day here on C-SPAN. | |
| At 10:30 Eastern, a conversation with officials in the artificial intelligence industry on supply chains and improving AI components. | ||
| Then, two events from the Council on Foreign Relations. | ||
| Michigan Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin joins a discussion on the future of U.S. national security at 12:30. | ||
| And Energy Secretary Chris Wright shares the Trump administration's priorities for energy security and global competitiveness at 1:30. | ||
| And later, at 4, we'll go live to the White House for an announcement by President Trump. | ||
| Watch live coverage all day here on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Sparklight. | ||
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unidentified
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Is it strong? | |
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| At Sparklight, we know connection goes way beyond technology. | ||
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unidentified
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Because it works. | |
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| Sparklight supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| This Saturday, join C-SPAN 2's Book TV in partnership with the Library of Congress for live all-day coverage of the 2025 National Book Festival from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Our signature uninterrupted coverage starts at 9 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| This year's guests include acting Librarian of Congress Robert Newland, Garrett Graff on his book The Devil Reach Toward the Sky, a conversation with Jill Lapore, author of We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, Ron Chernow on his biography of Mark Twain, and a discussion on the launch of C-SPAN's new series, America's Book Club, with host David Rubenstein and senior executive producer Marie Arana. | ||
| The 2025 National Book Festival, live all day, Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. | ||
| Several tech CEOs, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined a dinner hosted by President Trump at the White House. | ||
| President Trump addressed the group and talked about tech investments, tariffs, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | ||
| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
| It's an honor to be here with this group of people. | ||
| They're leading a revolution in business and in genius. |