| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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These other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | |
| Washington Journal is next, and we want to hear from you. | ||
| Call in. | ||
| Text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Leave a Facebook comment at facebook.com slash C-SPAN. | ||
| Or send us a tweet using at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Saturday, September 6th. | ||
| There were a lot of news stories this week in Washington, such as the August Jobs Report shows a continued slowdown in hiring. | ||
| President Trump informally renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. | ||
| Health Secretary RFK Jr. had a heated three-hour Senate hearing. | ||
| Victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were on Capitol Hill urging the release of all the files. | ||
| President Trump threatened a federal crackdown in more cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans. | ||
| And the U.S. military struck a suspected drug cartel boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing 11. | ||
| Those are some of the stories this week. | ||
| But we want to hear what you thought was the top news story and why. | ||
| Here are the numbers. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8,000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can send a text to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And also post your comments on social media, facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Before we get to your calls, let's take a look at the Wall Street Journal that says this. | ||
| Hiring stalled in August with 22,000 new jobs. | ||
| Revised figures show a summer slowdown with 13,000 jobs lost in June. | ||
| You can see a chart here. | ||
| This goes to 2022. | ||
| These are non-farm payrolls changed from a month earlier. | ||
| And you can see here, this is 2025. | ||
| And this right here is June. | ||
| It's kind of hard to see, but it shows a loss of jobs from the previous month. | ||
| That's July. | ||
| And then this right here is August. | ||
| So this is our latest number on the jobs. | ||
| Well, President Trump was asked about the jobs report yesterday. | ||
| Here's his response. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. President, we learned this morning that we've lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. | |
| How do you explain? | ||
| Well, one thing we have is, you know, we have the interest rates are too high. | ||
| That was, you know, a matter of the Fed. | ||
| But the other thing is so many different elements aren't included yet. | ||
| And one of the things we've learned, and we learned that the hard way watching over the last few months, are the corrections that people have been making. | ||
| They'll say you're losing jobs and then they'll say, by the way, we have a correction a month later of, you know, 100,000 jobs are missing. | ||
| They actually had a correction once of 850,000 jobs. | ||
| But I'll let Kevin just speak about that a little bit because I heard him speaking about it this morning. | ||
| I thought he did very well. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Thank you very much, sir. | ||
| Well, I think that if you look at the indicators, there's capital spending boom, industrial production at an all-time high. | ||
| The Atlanta Fed says GDP now is north of 3%. | ||
| And so all the indicators are saying that things are really strong. | ||
| And what we've also seen is that Goldman Sachs put out a study yesterday that said that the August number tends to be really messed up because of seasonal adjustment things, and they tend to be revised way up. | ||
| And so I think if they were revised up, which has happened on average over the last 50 years by about 60,000, that everything else would make sense. | ||
| But right now, we're puzzled about the BLS numbers and looking forward for new leadership there to make it so that the numbers are more reliable. | ||
| And some response from Democratic lawmakers. | ||
| Here's Chuck Schumer, Senator, a Democrat. | ||
| He says, Donald Trump's chaotic tariffs, failed policies, and fake trade deals have strangled job growth and continually raised prices on American families. | ||
| The pressure is pushing working families closer to the breaking point. | ||
| And this is what Hakeem Jeffries said, House Democratic leader. | ||
| He says, electricity costs are up, job creation is down, and Republicans are driving the economy toward a recession. | ||
| You deserve better. | ||
| Well, that's one of the stories. | ||
| We also had the Jeffrey Epstein victims on Capitol Hill this week. | ||
| And here is Thomas Massey. | ||
| He's speaking in front of the Capitol. | ||
| He is pushing for Congress to force the release of all the files in 30 days. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| The Washington establishment is asking the American public to believe something that is not believable. | ||
| They're asking you to believe that two individuals created hundreds of victims and they acted alone, and that the DOJ has no idea of who else might have been involved, that nobody else did anything that rose to a criminal enterprise. | ||
| The American people know that's not true. | ||
| Now, the Speaker of the House just offered a fig leaf to my colleagues. | ||
| They're going to vote on a non-binding resolution today that does absolutely nothing. | ||
| I appreciate the efforts of my colleague James Comer, who's leading the Oversight Committee. | ||
| They may find some information, but they're allowing the DOJ to curate all of the information that the DOJ is giving them. | ||
| If you've looked at the pages they've released so far, they're heavily redacted. | ||
| Some pages are entirely redacted. | ||
| And 97% of this is already in the public domain. | ||
| So I'm calling on my colleagues. | ||
| Be one of the next two who sponsors this discharge petition. | ||
| I think it's shameful that this has been called a hoax. | ||
| Hopefully today we can clear that up. | ||
| This is not a hoax. | ||
| This is real. | ||
| There are real survivors. | ||
| There are real victims to this criminal enterprise. | ||
| And the perpetrators are being protected because they're rich and powerful and political donors to the establishment here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| That was Thomas Massey on Capitol Hill this week. | ||
| We're asking for your top news story of something that happened this week. | ||
| You've got a lot to choose from. | ||
| A lot has happened. | ||
| The numbers are on your screen. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000 and Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| If you're an Independent, it's 202-748-8002. | ||
| Well, Herbert is an independent, and he's in Romulus, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Herbert. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I kind of have two points here. | ||
| One is on this economy and the jobs. | ||
| We're pretty much not creating any jobs now. | ||
| And I mean, you go back to Biden, they say he was bad, but the average of 25, 250 to 300,000 jobs a month he created. | ||
| People, we're in a lot of trouble here. | ||
| And giving more money to corporations has never worked. | ||
| The working class is the one that gets a paycheck and goes out of spenders. | ||
| That's what makes your economy go round. | ||
| We are in a lot of trouble. | ||
| Then the other thing is the Epstein thing. | ||
| I believe. | ||
| Why are we hiding this? | ||
| I mean, Donald Trump says he's never been on the Epstein's plane, and this is probably true because Epstein brought those young girls to his clubs and his resource for him. | ||
| People, wake up, please. | ||
| You know, if we keep standing behind this orange turd, we're in a lot of trouble. | ||
| And here's Robert in Worcester, Massachusetts. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| My main worry is the way Donald Trump is recognizing the military department, the way he sends the National Guards into California, and the way he says he wants to send them to New York. | ||
| Now he wants to send them to Louisiana, that many might live. | ||
| But what happened on January 6th, Donald Trump said to the mayor, he said, the mayor should call off the National Guard and stop all this stuff in January 6th. | ||
| This is what Donald Trump said. | ||
| But he was the only man that had the right to stop the January 6th. | ||
| Look at him right now. | ||
| He bringed the military into Washington, D.C. | ||
| He militized it. | ||
| Why did not he do that on January 6th? | ||
| And the last thing I got to say, I want to talk about Steve Miller and Steve Scolise. | ||
| These are the two most dangerous men that this country had known in many, many, many years. | ||
| Steve Scolise is the mastermind of Mr. McClonnell. | ||
| He's the mastermind of Little Minnie Mike. | ||
| Steve Miller is the most dangerous. | ||
| Every time you see Donald Trump write a tweet, I will guarantee you it was Steve Miller that wrote that tweet. | ||
| But remember, everybody, Donald Trump called off the National Guard on Washington, D.C. Why did not he do that on January the 6th? | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| And regarding the Pentagon, this is Politico, White House to rebrand Pentagon, the Department of War. | ||
| The name change would likely require an act of Congress, although the White House is looking for ways to avoid a vote regarding how much it. | ||
| So here's some background. | ||
| A War Department existed after U.S. independence until 1947, when the Trump, the Truman administration split the Army and Air Force into separate military branches and joined them with the then independent Navy to form a new agency. | ||
| An act of Congress two years later coined it the Department of Defense. | ||
| So it says it would likely cost billions of dollars to change the names of hundreds of Pentagon agencies, their stationary emblems, plaques, and other signage at the Defense Department, along with bases around the world. | ||
| The expense could put a serious dent into the administration's efforts to slash Pentagon spending and waste. | ||
| Here is John, Silver Spring, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| I think the biggest story is the Epstein files and the identity of co-conspirators and perpetrators. | ||
| I approve of many of the corruption reducing efforts Donald Trump has made. | ||
| He's removed a lot of government entities that were toxic. | ||
| But right now, I think a lot of these news stories are ones that Donald Trump is generating to remove attention. | ||
| I don't think he probably was a client or a co-conspirator, but he definitely seems to be protecting someone. | ||
| It seems like the Department of War is a good example where he's just trying to create more news to drown out the Epstein stories. | ||
| Nothing he says about it is credible. | ||
| They just need to release the names of U.S. clients and perpetrators with Epstein. | ||
| Leave everything else redacted, but they're powerful people he's protecting. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| And this is Haley Robson, who was among the Epstein accusers that was on Capitol Hill this week. | ||
| And she talked about her reaction to President Trump calling the Epstein issue a hoax. | ||
| Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican, not that that matters because this is not political. | ||
| However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. | ||
| We are real human beings. | ||
| This is real trauma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What does it feel like emotionally to hear that? | |
| Devastating. | ||
| It's being gutted from the inside out. | ||
| Not that I would know what that feels like, but I imagine it's the anxiety buildup with the depression and the survival mode. | ||
| And then your nervous system goes limp and ironically is shot. | ||
| And it feels like you just want to explode inside because nobody, again, is understanding that this is a real situation. | ||
| These women are real. | ||
| We're here in person. | ||
| To say that it's a hoax is just not. | ||
| Please humanize us. | ||
| I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, to see us for who we are and to hear us for what we have to say. | ||
| There is no hoax. | ||
| The abuse was real. | ||
| Now, what goes on behind closed doors, I can't speak for that. | ||
| What happens around the world politically, I cannot speak for that. | ||
| But I am here with all of these women, including our attorneys, and I would be more than happy to meet with him, and I will meet him halfway. | ||
| And that's one of the stories that happened this week. | ||
| We're getting your top stories. | ||
| We'll go to Greg now in Coral Springs, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I believe the largest story, the biggest story, would be the one regarding the Fed. | ||
| Donald Trump has attacked the Fed and the Reserve, the Federal Reserve Chairman, and members of the board and the governors, I should say. | ||
| And I found it very interesting that after the last time and him firing the people that he's wanted to fire in other departments, now when this jobs report came out, he was not as upset as he was the previous time. | ||
| And I think the reason is that he is actually manipulating the numbers or allowing it to be bad now because he wants a larger tax cut coming up in September when the Fed meets. | ||
| A rate cut, Greg. | ||
| A rate cut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Sorry, a rate cut. | ||
| He actually wants a rate cut larger because he's talked about getting two or three basis points, complete points, taken off of the Federal Reserve rate. | ||
| So he's probably wanting a half a point rate cut, and he knows that the Fed's been reluctant to do anything. | ||
| So you don't believe the jobs numbers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's funny. | |
| I've always believed whatever the government is reporting, whether it's correct or not is another story. | ||
| But now I actually believe that he's allowing it to be bad because he wants it to be bad because he wants to move the Fed faster. | ||
| So I think that we should all be very concerned at this point. | ||
| Republicans, Democrats, I'm an Independent. | ||
| I think that this is more serious than people realize. | ||
| When the Federal Reserve is going to be in his control by May of 2026, this could be a very serious problem that we're going to have. | ||
| All right, Greg, let's talk to Will in Baltimore, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Will. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Seuss fan. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The genocide taking place in Gaza is the top story, hands down. | ||
| What could be more important to recognize than thousands of people being murdered and through starvation and just total rubble over there? | ||
| And then don't forget the fact that there's lawlessness in the West Bank where Israeli citizens are killing innocent Palestinians there also and taking their land. | ||
| And what makes this so important to America is we are involved in this with Israel. | ||
| We can stop this if we want to. | ||
| We can help the world inflict sanctions upon Israel. | ||
| But Donald Trump is looking the other way and still supporting Israel. | ||
| And I knew that once he won this election and beat Joe Biden, that this situation was going to get worse, and it has. | ||
| So, America, please, please recognize the Epstein files and all the other things that are going on is very important. | ||
| But people are dying. | ||
| People are dying. | ||
| And we need to do something. | ||
| And thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| And this is NBC News about what's happening. | ||
| This is the latest. | ||
| It says Israel orders evacuation of Gaza City. | ||
| As Trump says, U.S. in quote, deep negotiations with Hamas. | ||
| Israel Defense Forces spokesperson urged civilians to move to the El-Mawasi safe zone, a coastal area in the southern city of Con Yunus. | ||
| This is a picture of Palestinians fleeing south. | ||
| They ride their vehicles with their belongings in the central Gaza Strip. | ||
| This is from yesterday. | ||
| That's a picture from yesterday. | ||
| It says that the Israeli military, its forces pressed deeper into the city, intensifying a major offensive. | ||
| It's ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate. | ||
| It says the announcement came after President Donald Trump said that the U.S. was in very deep negotiations with Hamas, who had earlier released a video showing two Israeli hostages seized from the music festival. | ||
| Addressing residents on X, IDF spokesperson urged the civilians to move from Gaza City. | ||
| And it says there he said they would find food, supplies, tents, medicines, and medical materials. | ||
| Here's Tom in Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My top story of the week, you could pick a half a dozen, but I will go with the cover-up on the Epstein files. | |
| And in a very close second would be the military parade between Russia, China, and India. | ||
| We cannot allow India to fall in line with Russia and China and North Korea. | ||
| We would be totally outgunned. | ||
| And close by to that was renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are you against that, in favor of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, I'm not in favor of any of this. | ||
| So tell me why. | ||
| Tell me why the renaming bothers you. | ||
| Well, part of what Trump ran on was he's going to keep us out of all these wars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There will be no more wars. | |
| And lo and behold, he renamed it the Department of War and got a newscaster at the top of the list. | ||
| So, Tom, regarding your other item about that summit and the military parade in China, we do have a guest coming on later in the program that we're going to talk about that. | ||
| We're going to talk about India's relationship with China and all that. | ||
| So, be sure to stay with us for that, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for that. | |
| And this is CNN, China showcases military strength at parade as she stands alongside Putin and Kim. | ||
| That's at CNN. | ||
| And this is Ed in Ocean City, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Ed, how are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ed O'Donnell, the unemployment rate is a telephone survey of heads of households. | |
| So it does not count spouses looking for work, adult children looking for work, people in prisons, mental hospitals, the homeless, part-timers, temps, self-employed. | ||
| It's a hoax. | ||
| And the irony is the unemployment rate is much higher. | ||
| The irony is that the first time, and you could get this, I think it was on CNN if you have tape files, when Donald Trump ran for president, he said the unemployment rate might be 40%. | ||
| So it's much, much higher. | ||
| But the solution is that our charities and churches have the money for a guaranteed job for everybody. | ||
| That's what we should be focusing on. | ||
| Ed, where have you been? | ||
| You haven't called in a long time. | ||
| I was wondering, why haven't you called? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm a third-party candidate for President of the United States, first announced candidate for 2028. | |
| So you only call when you're running for president, huh? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Google Ed O'Donnell, candidate for president of the United States. | |
| I've been busy running for president. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Edna, New Iberia, Louisiana. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My big news of the week was Trump killing all these people in that boat. | ||
| The 11 people. | ||
| Yes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nobody's talking about that too much. | |
| We need to know who those people were. | ||
| We just can't take his word that they were carrying drugs and whatever. | ||
| And my second news story was the girls that Epstein molested and everything. | ||
| They really need to give those girls what they want for closure. | ||
| All right, Edna. | ||
| And about that strike in Venezuela, here is Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. | ||
| He was asked about it. | ||
| This is from Wednesday when he was in Mexico. | ||
| The United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence to allow us to interdict and stop drug boats. | ||
| And we did that. | ||
| And it doesn't work. | ||
| Interdiction doesn't work because these drug cartels, what they do is they know they're going to lose 2% of their cargo. | ||
| They bake it into their economics. | ||
| What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them. | ||
| So they were designated as what they are. | ||
| They are narco-terrorist organizations. | ||
| So the same information and the same intelligence mechanisms with maybe a higher focus was used to determine that a drug boat was headed towards eventually the United States. | ||
| And instead of interdicting it on the president's orders, he blew it up. | ||
| And it'll happen again. | ||
| Maybe it's happening right now. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But the point is, the present United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations. | ||
| This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States to flood our country with poison. | ||
| And under President Trump, those days are over. | ||
| That was Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. | ||
| And we are taking your calls. | ||
| The numbers are on your screen. | ||
| We want to know what your top news story of the week is. | ||
| And regarding that strike, here's the latest news on that. | ||
| This is from NBC. | ||
| U.S. sending 10 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for operations targeting drug cartels. | ||
| It says, the U.S. is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to the Caribbean for operations targeting drug cartels. | ||
| Tensions with Venezuela have been rising over the drug trade and the deadly U.S. strike earlier this week on a boat carrying alleged drug traffickers and narcotics. | ||
| In late August, the U.S. assigned three Aegis-guided missile destroyers to deploy to the waters off Venezuela as part of President Trump's effort to combat threats from Latin American drug cartels. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| And we are taking calls. | ||
| This is Bobby, San Antonio, Texas. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| My problem is with Donald Trump renaming the Department of Defense. | ||
| We are not an aggressive country. | ||
| War is bad. | ||
| War, it's ugly. | ||
| Nobody worships war but Donald Trump, commanding the draft, the dod, the drought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He hasn't been in a war yet. | |
| But yet he wants to talk about war. | ||
| War is evil. | ||
| People die in war. | ||
| And still he's up there trying to get America to pull together and love each other. | ||
| He's worried about having war. | ||
| And the end of this. | ||
| On top of that, he's going to attack a country that does not even have an army. | ||
| They're pushing drugs. | ||
| Well, if they had nuclear weapons, he wouldn't attack them. | ||
| He's a bully. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Well, here is President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talking about the name change from the Oval Office. | ||
| We've been talking about this Department of War. | ||
| So we won the First World War. | ||
| We won the Second World War. | ||
| We won everything before that and in between. | ||
| And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense. | ||
| So we're going Department of War. | ||
| And I'd like to ask our Secretary of War to say a few words. | ||
| Pete Hegseth, I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now. | ||
| We have the strongest military in the world. | ||
| We have the greatest equipment in the world. | ||
| We have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far. | ||
| There's nobody to even compete. | ||
| And you see that with this and so many other things. | ||
| The Patriots are the best. | ||
| Every element of the military, we make the best by far. | ||
| So, Pete, I'd like to ask you and maybe Dan Raising to say a few words, please. | ||
| Mr. President, thank you. | ||
| After winning a war for independence in 1789, George Washington established the War Department, and Henry Knox was his first Secretary of War. | ||
| And this country won every major war after that, to include World War I and World War II. | ||
| Total victory, Mr. President, as you said. | ||
| Then 150 years after that, we changed the name after World War II from the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947. | ||
| And as you pointed out, Mr. President, we haven't won a major war since. | ||
| And that's not to disparage our warfighters, whether it's the Korean War or the Vietnam War or our generation of Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| That's to recognize that this name change is not just about renaming. | ||
| It's about restoring. | ||
| Words matter. | ||
| It's restoring, as you've guided us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos. | ||
| That was yesterday, and we are taking your calls. | ||
| This is Joe, Red Bank, New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
| I'd just like to say that, you know, you hear everybody complaining about the vote that they shot out of the water. | ||
| What I'd like to ask them is that the last four years they lost 400,000 kids in America. | ||
| 400,000. | ||
| Why don't they go ask their mothers and fathers how they feel about it? | ||
| That's what they should be asking. | ||
| They can't stop these people. | ||
| The only way they can stop them is to make them stop. | ||
| And the only way they're going to make them stop is to stop them. | ||
| And if that means killing a boat with 11 Narco terrorists in it, well, guess what? | ||
| Te La V that killed 400,000 in four years. | ||
| Ask their mothers and fathers how they feel. | ||
| But thank you. | ||
| And hopefully the people will wake up and realize that this is a real war. | ||
| And the only way you fight it is to do what you have to do, which is take care of business. | ||
| All right, Joe, Pamela, Independent Line, San Antonio, Texas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I would like to say that regarding the Epstein files, does anybody really believe that anything is going to be released? | ||
| Because there's too many important names on those lists and too many important politicians and businessmen that are on both sides, both Republican and Democrat. | ||
| They're never going to let those names come out, not until all parties are deceased. | ||
| So they should just stop because it's not going to happen. | ||
| And that's all I've got to say. | ||
| All right, Pamela. | ||
| Here's Emma, North Carolina Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Emma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| Good. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I don't agree on nothing they did this week, but my thing is what they're going to do if Trump passed away. | ||
| That's my thing. | ||
| If Trump passed away, every one of his people that's working for him, they are going to jail because they're doing wrong. | ||
| They're not doing stuff by paper. | ||
| They're not doing stuff by paper. | ||
| They're going to jail. | ||
| If Trump deceases, they're all going to jail. | ||
| They're having fun now. | ||
| They're having fun. | ||
| They're having fun now what they're doing. | ||
| But when it all comes boiled down, they all are going to jail. | ||
| Every one of them is going to be counting for something. | ||
| Even the ones out there done hurt them millions out there in the camp, in the prison camp. | ||
| This is not good. | ||
| This is not fair to the world because Trump done started a war. | ||
| This is what he wants. | ||
| And he is getting a war. | ||
| You just can't go out and kill people. | ||
| You just can't make people starve. | ||
| You just can't take people money and not be charged with it. | ||
| And this is what it's all about: money. | ||
| So everybody have a good day. | ||
| All right, Emma. | ||
| And a news story that came out this week from the New York Times was this: a top secret SEAL Team 6 mission into North Korea fell apart. | ||
| It's a 2019 operation greenlit by President Trump, sought a strategic edge. | ||
| It left unarmed North Koreans dead. | ||
| It says this, a group of Navy SEALs emerged from the Ink Black Ocean on a winter night in early 2019. | ||
| It says this, the objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump. | ||
| The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence, but it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil, a move that, if detected, not only could sink negotiations, but also could lead to a hostage crisis. | ||
| It says it was so risky that it required the president's direct approval. | ||
| This is the same squadron that killed Osama bin Laden at SEAL Team 6. | ||
| They rehearsed for months, but then things swiftly unraveled. | ||
| It says a North Korean boat appeared out of the dark. | ||
| Flashlights from the bow swept over the water. | ||
| Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire. | ||
| Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead. | ||
| And the president was asked about this. | ||
| And this is the Hill. | ||
| Trump denies knowledge of failed Navy SEAL North Korea mission in his first term. | ||
| He was asked about it by reporters who says, the president said this, quote, I don't know anything about it. | ||
| No, I'd have to, I could look, but I know nothing about that. | ||
| This is Antonio, a Republican in Farmington, Michigan. | ||
| Hi, Antonio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for having me on. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Top news story, I believe, is the blowing up of the 11 narco-terrorists that were headed for the United States with drugs. | |
| And having 10 fighter jets stationed in Puerto Rico, I think, is the biggest news and overlooked as the biggest news because the war has started on the narcoterists. | ||
| And it's not going to be a traditional war that we see like in Ukraine or anywhere else. | ||
| This is a different kind of war, but it has begun. | ||
| I think everyone should be excited about this because especially the Mexican people that I talk to that I know are very happy about this because their country has been starved of progress and growth because of narcoterrorist control. | ||
| The politicians are there. | ||
| So I think this is the biggest news story. | ||
| If they're going to liberate these southern American, South American countries that are under these socialist and dictator regimes, they're going to start seeing the opportunity for freedom under President Trump. | ||
| All right, Antonio, and this is Tony in Waterbury, Connecticut, Independent Line. | ||
| Tony, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I tell you that the biggest story of the week has been the biggest story going on for 120 days, whatever it is, since the president came in. | ||
| And that is the media's lack of honesty. | ||
| When people call in, and I'm talking to the Americans here, when you call in, you remember, ask the people that they have guests, ask them when did they know that President Biden was incapacitated and was unable to do his job. | ||
| Remember that. | ||
| When these people are coming out talking to you now, the American people have a short memory. | ||
| We've been duped for years from the media. | ||
| You have to cross-reference your information. | ||
| Don't just listen to the left. | ||
| Don't listen to the right. | ||
| You can try something like News Nation that's in the middle. | ||
| And you will find out. | ||
| Just like we said, we found out before, the media is dishonest. | ||
| Why is it that everything falls to a problem with one side or the other? | ||
| I heard your point. | ||
| Let's talk about this week. | ||
| What do you think rose to the top for you as far as the most important thing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
For me, the most important thing is starting to kill those narco-terrorists. | |
| It's a problem. | ||
| Remember when Obama took out that American over there? | ||
| He was a hero for doing that, right? | ||
| All of a sudden, now we say an alleged, an alleged thing, this alleged thing that, again, it's the media does not, is not honest. | ||
| People ask your guests, when did they know about that, Tony? | ||
| Sandy in California, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Sandy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, Mimi. | |
| My top story, I think, this week is: yes, the bombing of the boat, civilian boat, in international water with no evidence that there was any nefarious activity whatsoever on that boat. | ||
| Anybody that believes anything that Donald Trump says is a fool. | ||
| Donald Trump is a compulsive liar. | ||
| His administration is full of crackpots and shills, political shills, selected from Fox News so they could promote the Project 2025 propaganda. | ||
| In my opinion, the entire lot of them, Russell Boat, the authors of Project 2025, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, little Mikey Johnson, they should all be arrested for treason, for conspiracy against the Constitution of the United States of America. | ||
| They are dismantling the American government. | ||
| They are engaged in a hostile takeover of the American government. | ||
| They did not run on any of this. | ||
| Are you serious? | ||
| We're changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. | ||
| How in the world is the United States military supposed to respect Commander-in-Chief bone spurs? | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| What the hell has happened to this country? | ||
| People have lost their minds. | ||
| This is not normal, people. | ||
| Donald Trump is creating a police state. | ||
| That is what he is doing. | ||
| He started in Los Angeles. | ||
| He moved to D.C. He's planning to go to Chicago. | ||
| He's already setting up camps in Louisiana. | ||
| These are concentration camps. | ||
| You don't snatch people off the street without due process, without an arrest warrant, and throw them into camps incognito. | ||
| They can't contact their families. | ||
| They can't contact lawyers. | ||
| And then you're just dropping them off in any old random ass country around the world. | ||
| All right, Sandy. | ||
| And Justin also sent us this on Facebook. | ||
| His top news story is: quote, War Department from the man who promised to end all wars on day one. | ||
| Also, the lackluster new job creation numbers. | ||
| Regarding the situation in Venezuela in the Caribbean, it says the BBC has this headline. | ||
| Trump says Venezuelan jets will be shot down if they endanger U.S. ships. | ||
| That's at the BBC. | ||
| If you'd like to read that. | ||
| Cindy, Spring, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Cindy, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| You know, Tony was absolutely correct about the media not reporting things correctly. | ||
| First of all, that narco-terrorist boat, they had the intelligence. | ||
| These people were talking. | ||
| They heard them loading the boat. | ||
| They saw the drugs. | ||
| They were in bags. | ||
| Our Department of Defense warned them twice. | ||
| They were warned that if they kept going, they were going to get blown out of the water. | ||
| However, they just ignored it. | ||
| And the other thing, one other thing, Mimi, when the Democrats attempted to name Trump as a pedophile in this Epstein case, that's when Trump said it's a hoax. | ||
| They're just trying to nail me again for nothing. | ||
| That's what he was talking about. | ||
| And media, again, misrepresented that. | ||
| He didn't say that these, as a matter of fact, he actually testified on behalf of the victim that named him when Trump kicked Epstein out of the country club. | ||
| He then testified on behalf of the victim. | ||
| So media did not report that correctly. | ||
| And Tony was absolutely right. | ||
| We can't trust the media. | ||
| You know, you guys are great, but we can't trust Maine media anymore. | ||
| Well, Cindy, let's hear that part from Wednesday where President Trump calls the effort to release the files a Democratic hoax. | ||
| This is him in the Oval Office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right now, there have been survivors of Jeffrey Epstein speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, and they're calling for these case files, these documents to be released. | |
| And Thomas Massey, who is sponsoring a discharge position to get the House to vote on release those documents, says he hasn't been urged in these files, but many of your friends and donors may be. | ||
| And he says that's why the Justice Department is redacting them and slow walking the release. | ||
| Is the Justice Department protecting any friends or donors, sir? | ||
| So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends. | ||
| You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation. | ||
| We gave him everything over and over again, more and more and more, and nobody's ever satisfied. | ||
| From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. | ||
| But it's really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get people to talk about something that's totally irrelevant to the success that we've had as a nation since I've been president. | ||
| Even if you look at D.C. right now, D.C., it's a totally safe zone. | ||
| It's called a safe zone. | ||
| That's a term. | ||
| It's a term of art. | ||
| It's a safe zone because it's very safe. | ||
| You could walk down the street now and nothing's going to happen. | ||
| No crime, no murders, no nothing, because we had a lot of problems with certain places, and we still do. | ||
| All run by Democrats, or for the most part, run by Democrats. | ||
| So what they're trying to do with the Epstein hoax is get people to talk about that instead of speaking about the tremendous success like ending seven wars. | ||
| I ended seven wars. | ||
| Nobody's going to talk about because they're going to talk about the Epstein, whatever. | ||
| I understand that we were subpoenaed to give files, and I understand we've given thousands of pages of files. | ||
| And I know that no matter what you do, it's going to keep going. | ||
| And I think it's, I think, really, I think it's enough because I think we should talk about the greatness of our country and the success that we're having. | ||
| That was on Wednesday, and we're getting your top news story of the week. | ||
| Here's James, Independent, Carrollton, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I would like to try and help to inform the listening audience. | ||
| And my story is about the boat. | ||
| I actually worked and did that type of work as far as helping trap these boats that are going through the Caribbean. | ||
| There are people right now at work that are tracking these things. | ||
| They see it all the time. | ||
| I think it's not fair. | ||
| It's unfair that the president touts this, or the administration touts this as a big win in the war against drugs. | ||
| We blew up one boat, one vote that had drugs in it. | ||
| And even Marco Rubio said, hey, these drug dealers, they know they're going to lose 2%, 20%, whatever. | ||
| So if they send that boat east or west towards the United States, they'll send another one around Jamaica or they'll send another one some other way. | ||
| We're not catching all these things. | ||
| And I just think this one incident, I think it should have been, we are trying to stop drugs. | ||
| But these folks in these boats, I've watched them. | ||
| I've sat up all night long tracking, helping agencies track. | ||
| So I'm not just talking off the cuff. | ||
| This is what I did for four years, and I stopped doing it because I retired out of the military. | ||
| But the great thing is this: people, wake up. | ||
| That one boat being destroyed did not put a dent in the amount of drugs that these drug smugglers are trying to bring into our country. | ||
| And we need a concerted effort, not this back and forth, to fight this so that we can win. | ||
| Because I'm 70 now, and I remember Ronald Reagan. | ||
| Back then, the war on drugs. | ||
| We've been talking war on drugs for years. | ||
| And Mimi asked those folks, give us a number. | ||
| If we're winning the war, what did it start at? | ||
| How are we doing? | ||
| So the American people can truly know how we're either winning and or not winning this war on drugs. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You guys have a great day. | ||
| All right, James. | ||
| Here's Zame in Bouille, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Fighter jets to fight drug cartels. | ||
| Yet, Trump pardoned Ross Albright. | ||
| Remember him? | ||
| He's the one who founded and ran that online drug market, Silk Road. | ||
| Trump pardoned him, so that's okay. | ||
| Also, Democrat hopes about Epstein. | ||
| Listen to Katie Johnson's interview, 2016, where she tells what happened to her and other young girls at the hands of Trump and Epstein. | ||
| Also, these Republicans keep calling in, talking about why didn't Biden or Obama do something about releasing the files. | ||
| Maxwell was found guilty and sentenced in 2022. | ||
| She filed an appeal in July of 22. | ||
| The conviction was upheld in September 2024. | ||
| And then April 25, she filed a petition to the Supreme Court. | ||
| The Epstein files could not be released because it was under the appeal process. | ||
| And most importantly, the genocide of those people in Gaza is horrible. | ||
| It needs to stop. | ||
| Biden shouldn't have funded Israel. | ||
| Trump definitely shouldn't have fund Israel. | ||
| Trump wants to have all that line, that land for resorts with his rich friends so they can do whatever they want whenever, with whomever in the future. | ||
| Mimi, please, these people need to wake up and stop listening. | ||
| There's no hoax. | ||
| What's going on is a takeover, destroying of this country by Donald Trump. | ||
| The only reason why he ran for president was to keep out of jail. | ||
| He knows he was guilty on all those charges. | ||
| Also, Mimi, they're going against Lisa Cook, who's on the Federal Reserve Board, claiming that she claimed mortgage fraud. | ||
| Thank you, Mimi, mortgage fraud. | ||
| That Ken Paxton, Attorney General in Texas, he did the same thing with three different homes. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| These mega cult people are destroying America. | ||
| It's just like what happened in the 1930s, Germany. | ||
| All right, Tommy. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| Tom, Newark, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, Mimi, you look fabulous this morning, darling. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You should consider a job in acting, perhaps. | |
| But let me say this. | ||
| I'm listening to all these people's talk. | ||
| Will you please wake up? | ||
| Our president is using the National Guard to help ICE in the removal of illegal immigrants. | ||
| The Democrats fully intend to give all illegals the right to vote and their criminal lust for perpetual control of our nation. | ||
| They are committing high treason against our sovereignty. | ||
| Remember this. | ||
| Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War, then out of hatred was assassinated by the Democrats five days later. | ||
| All Democratic mayors reduce their city's police an average of 20% and insist that there is no crime. | ||
| The first Americans, the first Democrats to be charged and convicted will be these lying mayors of the city. | ||
| People are going to go to jail. | ||
| Have a nice day, Donald. | ||
| Wait, wait, Tom. | ||
| So your first point was about deportations. | ||
| Did you hear about the raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, in Georgia, yes, I did. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So what did you think of that? | ||
| Let me just get everybody up to speed on that. | ||
| New York Times, South Koreans are swept up in immigration raid at Hyundai Plant in Georgia. | ||
| They're among nearly 500 workers apprehended at a construction site for a South Korean battery maker. | ||
| This is Batteries for Electric Vehicles. | ||
| The episode prompted diplomatic concern in Seoul. | ||
| What did you think of that? | ||
| So it was, this happened on Thursday, 475 people, most of whom South Korean citizens, and this is in Elabelle, Georgia, near Savannah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think Hyundai is trying to make a few extra bucks on some illegal workers is what I think. | |
| Now, again, that's Korea, and I don't know their involvement, but they are not citizens of the United States. | ||
| Yeah, so the article says no criminal charges would be announced on Friday, adding that investigators are still determining employment details for those arrested, some of whom worked for subcontractors. | ||
| So that's at the New York Times if you'd like to find out more about that story. | ||
| But that is considered the largest raid employment rate on one site for immigration. | ||
| Robert, Potomac, Maryland, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Robert. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| There are actually too many subjects for me to cover, but I do want to cover one. | ||
| Look, I've lived in the D.C. area for over 10 decades. | ||
| So you know that I'm not a young person. | ||
| And I've loved Washington, D.C. I've been a major supporter of the restaurateurs in Washington. | ||
| My wife, my clients, I always took them to a Washington, D.C. restaurant. | ||
| That's no longer the case. | ||
| And it was interesting to see. | ||
| Why is that, Robert? | ||
| Why are you not going to restaurants anymore? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't want to go through zones where I'm stopped. | |
| And I think that that is absurd. | ||
| I don't want to be profiled as an American citizen and possibly be detained or have one of my clients or my wife detained for any reason. | ||
| It's got nothing to do with safety as it is the fact that it's a bad appearance. | ||
| We don't need this. | ||
| If you are someone who makes their reservations on Open Table, you can check with Open Table. | ||
| Reservations in the District of Columbia are down 30%. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So, Robert, here's Fox 5, D.C. | ||
| This is a local TV station. | ||
| D.C. restaurant dining plunges as Trump's crime crackdown continues, according to data. | ||
| This is from two weeks ago. | ||
| It says that the number of patrons dining out in D.C. has plummeted since President Trump deployed federal troops across the city, according to research conducted by Open Table. | ||
| Largest drop was last Wednesday, against this is two weeks ago, when the number of diners dipped by 31%. | ||
| Despite this data, the president told Ukraine's President Zelensky in the Oval Office that restaurants in the district are, quote, busier than ever. | ||
| And this is Ron, Liverpool, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wanted to comment about that boat being blown up. | |
| It was a small boat with 11 people on it. | ||
| Trump sold 30,000 lives in his first term. | ||
| That's 21 a day. | ||
| He didn't sue the Washington Post. | ||
| The Washington Post are the ones who counted as lies. | ||
| His cabinet has no credibility. | ||
| Nobody in his party has credibility. | ||
| The GOP now stands for Guardians of Pedophiles. | ||
| The only people that believe the crap that comes out of his mouth are right-wing media consumers, Fox, Newsmax, OAN. | ||
| And when that 37% of people stops believing his shit, maybe we won't become a fascist country. | ||
| All right, Ron. | ||
| This is Bubba in Memphis, Tennessee. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Mimi. | |
| I see that you like the fact check the Republicans when they call in about stuff. | ||
| Give me an example, Bubba. | ||
| Give me an example. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just a while ago about the hoax, the Trump saying it was a hoax. | |
| But anyway, people have been calling in on the Democrat line for the last two years calling Trump a rapist, a pedophile, a Putin, Hitler, and y'all let them go on and on. | ||
| You just had a guy to call in and said he was an orange turd. | ||
| The last guy just got through saying a cuss word. | ||
| Usually y'all hang up on people when they cuss, but I mean. | ||
| So what's your top news story, Bubba, for this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my top news. | |
| My top news story is that when people start calling Trump a rapist, a pedophile, that you correct them because there's actually Democrats out there that believe it. | ||
| And there's no proof. | ||
| He's never been charged for it. | ||
| And it's not fair for y'all to let the Democrats just make up stuff. | ||
| I mean, it's completely ridiculous. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Phyllis, Greeley, Colorado, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Phyllis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| My story of the week is the change of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. | ||
| I've always been under the agreement that the Department of Defense was to defend the people of the United States of America, who I think at this time really need defended, but not by the Department of War. | ||
| I think that it's just inviting people from other countries to look at us as powerful. | ||
| And yet, you know, we just had a deal with China and Russia and all of them getting together. | ||
| It just seems to me like he's trying to pick a fight. | ||
| And I think that we're not a nation of war. | ||
| And the Secretary of War should not be. | ||
| It should be the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is New Hampshire Senator Jean Shaheen. | ||
| She's a top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| She had this to say about the name change on MSNBC yesterday. | ||
| I have real concerns about the impact of this kind of an effort on the readiness of our men and women in the military. | ||
| I sit on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. | ||
| And we are struggling for resources and dealing with conflicts around the world that we haven't seen in my lifetime. | ||
| It is a very dangerous environment. | ||
| And for the President and the Secretary of Defense to spend time and energy is a distraction from what we need to do to focus on the readiness of our troops who are serving. | ||
| And it's nothing more than an effort to distract from other issues that are going on in the country as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| Here's Shelly, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Shelly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| I was concerned because one story didn't get top story, and that was September the 2nd, which marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the surrender of Japan. | ||
| That's a personal story for me because my father was a POW in Japan for three and a half years, a survivor of the Bataan death march. | ||
| So I watched the commemoration that you broadcast on C-SPAN, and it brought tears to my eyes because there weren't that many people in attendance. | ||
| And it just broke my heart in memory of my father. | ||
| And now changing the name to the Department of War makes it even more heartbreaking for me. | ||
| And people are losing history. | ||
| But I guess my top news story is what's going on at HHS and Bobby Kennedy Jr., who I've followed for a long time. | ||
| I'm a pediatric, former pediatric nurse, spending like half of my career taking care of children with cancer. | ||
| I saw, starting in the 70s, the tremendous impact that studies and clinical research did in the survival of kids with cancer. | ||
| And it's all being decimated. | ||
| And now I work for the University of Pittsburgh, and I'm in a role where I work for a cooperative group supported by NCI and grants. | ||
| And we develop and implement and study and follow people with cancer. | ||
| Primarily, my focus is on breast cancer. | ||
| So I understand clinical studies. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| And I just, I watched the hearings, and I was just totally just dumbfounded because If you did a little bit of research, you could find out, you know, what this man has done for four years starting in the 2000s. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| I think that's something. | ||
| Shelly, did you see the news about what RFK Jr. and HHS said about autism, the causes of autism? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yeah, and I think that you have to study that further. | |
| You're going to have to go back and you're going to have to get a whole core of women pregnant who took Tylenol. | ||
| But it's really hard to make a causal temporal sort of like relationship. | ||
| Now, Tylenol, either. | ||
| Because you can't really test, you can't really take a pregnant woman and say, here, take a lot of Tylenol. | ||
| Let's see what happens to your baby. | ||
| Right, right, right, right, right. | ||
| So let me get everybody up to speed. | ||
| This is Wall Street Journal, RFK Jr. HHS, to link autism to Tylenol use in pregnancy and folate deficiencies. | ||
| It says that Kennedy's autism report touted by Trump will suggest that using the pain reliever during pregnancy might be linked to the developmental disorder. | ||
| That's at the Wall Street Journal if you'd like to find out more about that. | ||
| And Mary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| My major top story was the Hyundai arrests of undocumented people in national people from Korea. | ||
| Now, I worked for the government for 45 years, and our primary goal was to process our employments in this country using e-Verify. | ||
| And when we got the jobs report, the information never matched. | ||
| If you said you have 3,000 people that were hired, 3,000 people were supposed to be on our e-Verify system and also on our tax system with IRS. | ||
| It never matched. | ||
| So this is how we knew fraud was going on. | ||
| And I'm hearing now that they use subcontractors, major corporations, businesses to hire undocumented people to avoid paying taxes. | ||
| This needs to be prosecuted in this country because when they said we're $37 trillion in debt, the information was right in front of you because they were using subcontractors in this country. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| All right, Mary. | ||
| And that'll do it for this first hour. | ||
| But later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll have Miles Yu of the Hudson Institute giving us his take on that summit and military parade in China, hosted this week with the leaders of Russia and North Korea and India. | ||
| But first, after the break, Omar Nural-Dean from the government watchdog group Common Cause discusses a new bipartisan effort to ban congressional stock trading. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| 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 Chaplin 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 Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| And pass precedent nominees. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo quarter. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join political playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| ceasefire this fall on the network that doesn't take sides only on c-span there are many ways to listen to c-span radio anytime anywhere In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-SPAN.org slash radio on SiriusXM radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN radio. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We have Omar Nuraldine. | ||
| He is Senior VP for Policy and Litigation Strategy at Common Cause. | ||
| We're talking about that bipartisan push to ban congressional stock trading. | ||
| Omar, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me, Amy. | |
| So just remind us about Common Cause, what your mission is, and what your political point of view is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So Common Cause is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to uphold the values of American democracy and ensure that our government is responsive, representative, and resilient, and that people hold the power, not politicians. | ||
| And we are proudly and unabashedly nonpartisan. | ||
| So this new bipartisan effort to ban stock trading for Congress, for lawmakers, it's something Common Cause has talked about for a long time. | ||
| Why the renewed effort now? | ||
| What's going on now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I think people are fed up. | ||
| They're fed up that folks in Washington, members of Congress, get to benefit from their public office. | ||
| Several things have happened in the last few years. | ||
| During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were approximately 2,000 stock trades that happened that resulted in about like $140 million of money that flowed by members of Congress in a way that they benefited from during the early days of the pandemic when they were able to kind of see what was going to happen before the rest of the American people. | ||
| And how do you know these numbers? | ||
| Do they have to report it? | ||
| Are you able to see exactly what was traded by who, how much money they made? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, yes. | |
| There is a law that was passed in 2012 called the Stock Act, which requires disclosure. | ||
| So members of Congress are supposed to disclose stock trades that are over $1,000 between 30 and 45 days after they make those trades. | ||
| However, those current rules are not good enough. | ||
| It leaves too much room for conflict of interest and not enough room for accountability because the fine, the penalty, is $200. | ||
| That's not really a penalty. | ||
| That's more like a parking ticket. | ||
| If you're making a lot of money, $200 is just the cost of doing business. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Well, so let's put up on the screen the Stock Act. | ||
| So this is what's currently been passed. | ||
| This is, as Omar said, passed in 2012. | ||
| This is lawmakers are required to disclose any trades over $1,000 within 30 days. | ||
| Otherwise, they get a $200 fine. | ||
| The trades over $1,000, is that they make over $1,000 or they buy or sell $1,000 worth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's that they buy or sell $1,000 worth. | |
| Okay, now let's put what this new act is. | ||
| This is called Restore Trust in Congress Act. | ||
| So this is what it would do. | ||
| It would require lawmakers to sell all individual stocks within 180 days. | ||
| Newly elected members have to divest of individual stock holdings before being sworn in. | ||
| Members who fail to divest would face a fine equivalent to 10% of the value of the stock. | ||
| And the proposed ban extends to spouses and dependent children. | ||
| So let's break that down. | ||
| The first thing is that all lawmakers, all members of Congress, would have to sell every stock that they own as long as it's individually owned, not in, for instance, a mutual fund or something like that. | ||
| So I would imagine they would push back on that saying, if I sold now or, you know, within the next six months, I'm going to lose a lot of money. | ||
| That was not my plan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as long as these rules are in place, people will know them going into it and they'll have to make that decision. | |
| I mean, being an elected official is a privilege. | ||
| It's not a right. | ||
| And they can do financial planning that sets them up well before they enter public office. | ||
| And for those that are in public office already, this is part of the cost of doing business if you want to make sure that the government that you are supposed to lead is actually reflective of the people and not for your personal gain. | ||
| So they should be laser focused. | ||
| All members of Congress should be laser focused on the public good and not their stock portfolios. | ||
| And then this, so the fine now would be 10% of the value of that stock that they own. | ||
| So everything, the value of it right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And I think there were some versions of the bill that also said up to a month's salary, whichever is greater. | ||
| And so those are actual penalties. | ||
| That's not the parking ticket $200. | ||
| And that would be a deterrent because currently the current rules are not an actual deterrent. | ||
| We are taking calls for Omar Nural Dean of Common Cause. | ||
| We're talking about the new push to have lawmakers divest of all their stock and not be able to trade stock while they're holding office. | ||
| You can join the conversation. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| I want to show you a portion of Democrat Seth Magaziner and Republican Chip Roy. | ||
| They were at Wednesday's news conference and they talked about including other branches of government in this stock ban. | ||
| Here they are. | ||
| Many of us, I think, in both parties support, including the president and vice president. | ||
| We are working to see if we can get a critical mass of support to include them or not. | ||
| If there is, that can always be introduced as an amendment or as a separate bill. | ||
| But in the meantime, we are putting in this bill that has broad consensus to get the process moving, to keep the pressure on while that conversation continues. | ||
| I certainly support it. | ||
| I think many people here do. | ||
| We're working to see if we have that critical mass. | ||
| It's really easy for us to go point. | ||
| And I would say this last year, a year ago, with President Biden, President Trump doesn't matter. | ||
| This is not a political issue. | ||
| But we've got to work through executive branch application and getting the votes for that. | ||
| I would love to have that debate. | ||
| I would love in regular order to have this come before the committee, come to the room of the admin committee, and then offer amendments and have that debate and bring it forward and offer an amendment that applies equally to all three branches. | ||
| That would be a fantastic debate. | ||
| And I would likely support going in that direction. | ||
| But I just, I think we need to focus right now on one very clear message. | ||
| Congress, those of us here responsible for managing our own affairs, we shouldn't be trading stocks while we're voting on these important issues. | ||
| I think it's that simple. | ||
| Now, Congressman Metzinger said that there's broad support for this. | ||
| How broad is that support and do you expect this to pass? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the support amongst the American people is very broad. | |
| It's, I think, over 80% of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all support these types of measures. | ||
| And we've seen similar types of laws introduced in previous Congresses. | ||
| There is broad support, but at the end of the day, it hasn't passed yet. | ||
| And there are some reasons for that because usually the folks who are writing the rules don't like to write the rules about themselves. | ||
| But at the beginning of this year, there was a lot of light shed on how similar stock trading that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic happened during the tariff turmoil. | ||
| So when we weren't sure what types of tariffs, who they were going to apply for, members of Congress had briefings about what to expect. | ||
| And again, there was a lot of stock trading happening during that time. | ||
| Even the president mentioned that when he put a pause on the tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs, and the stock market rose. | ||
| And he said he bragged. | ||
| There was a lot of people that made a lot of money off of this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| The interesting thing is he didn't then say we should ban congressional stock trading and include the executive in it. | ||
| That would have been real leadership. | ||
| Are there any loopholes in this act or in this bill, how it's written? | ||
| Are there exceptions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as we heard from the representatives, the executive branch is not currently included in it, the president, vice president. | |
| There are already pretty robust ethics and conflicts of interest laws for the executive branch broadly, but the exceptions, as you mentioned, are for the president and vice president. | ||
| And so hearing members of Congress saying that they're open to amendments that would include the president and vice president is encouraging. | ||
| So what are the rules currently for members of the executive branch, whether they are political appointees or civil servants? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Political appointees and civil servants have broad disclosure requirements across their entire portfolio, listing out mutual funds, individual stocks. | |
| They also don't necessarily have the same level of access to non-public information that a lot of other lawmakers or lawmakers do. | ||
| So in fact, the civil servants and political appointees have greater restrictions and less information, which makes it all the more bewildering why the people with more information and more power don't have greater restrictions. | ||
| Let's talk to callers now. | ||
| Let's start with Todd in Madison, Wisconsin, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Todd. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thanks for fighting the good fight. | |
| I've been thinking about this for a while. | ||
| Why not take a different approach and say if you want to make side money, great. | ||
| But while you're employed with a government job, you get taxed on that income at 85%. | ||
| If it's worth it, trade your hearts out. | ||
| Or there's somewhere the economics of that equation could line up that you'd minimize some level of corruption. | ||
| Because I just think it's impossible to completely clean it up. | ||
| People find ways to work around that stuff. | ||
| So what do you think of that thought? | ||
| Thanks, Todd. | ||
| I mean, that's actually an interesting idea. | ||
| I think some of the problems with things like that is that when you create incentives for people to try and make even more money, that could lead to even greater potential corruption, saying like, all right, well, if I'm taxed at 80%, let me try and make a return that's, you know, 200x percent, and so it'll wash out in the end. | ||
| I don't want members of Congress to be trying to figure out how to game the system. | ||
| I'd rather them have rules that don't allow them to play the game at all. | ||
| I mean, I think this is like an idea that many people can get behind: if you're the folks making the rules about how our economy works, that you shouldn't then be also playing the game. | ||
| So you write the rules, but you don't get to play the game. | ||
| So, what has leadership in Congress said about this particular act? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't heard about this particular act, but both Hakeem Jeffries and Speaker Mike Johnson have come out in support of stock trading bans. | |
| And so it'll be interesting to see how this moves through the committee process and what kind of priorities the speaker is going to put to something like this. | ||
| I mean, I don't often agree with Chip Roy, especially on issues around civil rights, but in this instance, I do agree that this should be a priority. | ||
| Here's Scott, Oxen Hill, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| So most members of Congress, they're not even outperforming the NASDAQ 100 index, even if they have a spouse who's a professional stock trader, like Nancy Pelosi does. | ||
| So, I mean, the big question for me is like, why didn't they even bother or try to outperform it when, you know, all the evidence points do they're very unlikely to do that? | ||
| And I don't remember the guest's name, but it kind of sounds Muslim sounding. | ||
| And I wonder, like, does the guest even have stocks? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But anyway, did you want to address the other part of that question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| The part about, you know, why do they even bother if they're not outperforming the market? | ||
| I mean, that's a good question. | ||
| I think many people try to play the stock market and don't do so well at it. | ||
| It doesn't stop them. | ||
| And members of Congress, whether sometimes we believe it or not, are just regular people too. | ||
| And so it doesn't surprise me that they try sometimes to play the game and don't always win. | ||
| We have a question on text from a guy in Oklahoma. | ||
| He says, is it true that Nancy Pelosi was worth $150,000 40 years ago and now is worth $300 million through stock trading and investments and never lost on a trade? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am not an expert in Nancy Pelosi's portfolio, but I do know that before Nancy Pelosi came to office and her husband Paul Pelosi, they were wealthy already. | |
| And I wouldn't be surprised if their wealth had accumulated over the course of her time in office. | ||
| And at the same time, I believe Nancy Pelosi is now in favor of a ban on stock trading. | ||
| And so that is a good sign. | ||
| Let's talk to Eric, who is in Palm Beach, Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking the call. | |
| If I can just give me my point of view and then ask you a question at the end, please. | ||
| I like this topic. | ||
| This reminds me kind of back in school days when one person was bad and the whole class was punished. | ||
| I never thought that was fair being as I abided by the rules. | ||
| What occurs to me, and if you can address this in the question after I'm finished, if we have the Securities and Exchange Commission that monitors insider trading, why isn't that sufficient without any additional laws if there are Congress people actually doing illegal things and violating things to stop and enforce the laws that we already have? | ||
| And if there are violators of insider trading, who are they? | ||
| I mean, there haven't been any not yet named on the program or examples of them. | ||
| I just think we already are creating a new law when we have the SEC already to enforce this already. | ||
| I think the SEC ought to be just doing a better job if you could comment in that regard. | ||
| Go ahead, Omar Norandeel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So first I wanted to take a little bit of pushback on the idea that only people should be punished who are following the rules. | ||
| I think what we're saying here is that we need new rules. | ||
| So it isn't about singling out everybody for the bad acts of some people. | ||
| We believe that there needs to be rules that account for the type of temptation that can happen when you are a member of Congress, have non-public information, and then can act on that. | ||
| Everyone should be on the same playing field. | ||
| Everyday Americans like you, like me, and members of Congress. | ||
| So I wanted to address that first. | ||
| The second point about the SEC is a good one, the Securities and Exchange Commission. | ||
| There are insider trading rules that are criminal offenses and civil penalties. | ||
| However, insider trading laws are really hard to prove for a couple of reasons. | ||
| One is there is a high mensrea, or that means intention prong to those types of rules that require some type of knowingness and intention basically to game the system rather than doing so either offhand or unknowingly. | ||
| And so those are really hard to prove. | ||
| And as you mentioned, the reason why we haven't talked about any individual that has been prosecuted in Congress for breaking insider trading rules in this way is because there aren't any. | ||
| And by the numbers that I described earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic, the numbers that Mimi talked about when we talked about the turmoil that happened during the tariff chaos earlier this year, is that do we really believe that there were no members of Congress who benefited from insider information or non-public information during those processes? | ||
| I find it really hard to believe. | ||
| And so that tells me we do need new rules. | ||
| We've got this on text from Diane in Morristown, New Jersey. | ||
| She said, what's to keep the member from having their spouse or family making these stock buys based on inside information? | ||
| Now, part of this proposed ban does extend to spouses and dependent children, but there's always adult children, there's family friends. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And these are the types of nitty-gritties that can be hashed out, I think, in the committee process and through public debate. | ||
| There were versions of these bills that only included the member themselves. | ||
| And for the reason that the viewer raised is that the thought was like, it's too easy for a spouse or a dependent child or someone in the same household to maybe offhand hear non-public information or to pass that communication along. | ||
| I think the wider the circle gets, the harder it is to pass that information on intentionally or unintentionally. | ||
| Here's Ronald in Concord, New Hampshire, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Ronald. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First, I'd like to thank C-SPAN for being probably the only agency on television that allows both sides and all sides of political positions to be aired so that people that ordinarily wouldn't listen to anything that had to do with another party's position to be heard. | ||
| With regard to allowing stock trading by congressional members or members of the presidency or any government official, | ||
| the vote, first of all, has to be by referendum, national referendum, because the Congress is not going to be susceptible or willing to vote for something that will cause them to lose money. | ||
| The other issue is as far as corruption is concerned, there's no way to stop stock trading. | ||
| It has to be banned totally. | ||
| And as I said, the only way to accomplish that is with a national referendum. | ||
| Thank you very much for my. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we currently don't have a process where folks can vote by national referendum to create federal laws. | |
| And so at this stage, we are relying on members of Congress to pass laws that will affect them and, as Ron mentioned, do something, a vote that will put limits on themselves. | ||
| And oftentimes, people in power don't like passing laws or making rules that put limits on themselves. | ||
| But here, that's what real leadership is about. | ||
| And the folks that we heard in the press conference are really focused on ensuring that public trust is regained through something like this and that members of Congress are focused on what's best for the American people and not for their pocketbooks. | ||
| Let's talk to Tom next in Lafayette, Louisiana. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Tom. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to, I read something in a book. | ||
| It's called The Lords of Easy Money about the Federal Reserve. | ||
| And the statistic blew my mind. | ||
| It said that between 2010 and 2013, the banking lobby spent $1.5 billion. | ||
| That's a half a billion a year over a three-year period. | ||
| And it's like, how can we fight that? | ||
| The money, the lobbying, the money there, that everyday people that vote and watch C-SPAN, we can't compete with that. | ||
| And those people in Congress, I mean, the congressmen, they get re-elected every two years. | ||
| They spend all their time trying to get re-elected. | ||
| They get money from these people, these lobbyists. | ||
| And I just, I salute your efforts, but I believe it's futile. | ||
| And I'll hang up and take your response off the air. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's a lot of money, Tom. | ||
| $1.5 billion over three years. | ||
| I don't have the actual source for that information, but I'll take your word for it for sake of argument here. | ||
| And to say that it is an uphill battle, but I don't view it's futile. | ||
| Otherwise, I wouldn't be here talking about this with Mimi and with all of you. | ||
| I wouldn't be doing the work that Common Cause has done for 55 years. | ||
| Our tagline is to hold power accountable and that we colloquially call ourselves the people's lobby because when John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause, a former member of President Johnson's cabinet, he said everyone is organized in D.C. except the people. | ||
| And so the work that we do with good government groups, with civil rights groups, is try to make sure that we still have hope. | ||
| And we don't believe the fight is futile. | ||
| And I hope that after kind of watching this and engaging on these issues, that you join us in the fight to make sure that big money in D.C. doesn't have the power that folks want it to have. | ||
| How is Common Cause funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are funded entirely privately from individuals, from private foundations who believe in our mission. | |
| Let's talk to Harry in Greenville, North Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Harry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The problem is we've never had the amount of money for bribery. | ||
| It's always going on. | ||
| But it used to be like 5,000 to 10,020, 30,000. | ||
| Now you've got Mark Meadows. | ||
| He's like worth $30 million. | ||
| We get it. | ||
| Mark Arubio, you know why he's changed? | ||
| Because he's got, his net worth is in the vicinity of $400 million. | ||
| This is what's happening. | ||
| It's the degree that the money is so tempting. | ||
| It's like trying to buy the election, the Georgia election, and coming up with $27 million. | ||
| You know, the money is overcoming people from doing their job. | ||
| And it's at a level that's never been heard of before. | ||
| You know, people would get offered 10, 15, 20, 50, maybe 100. | ||
| But these people are getting hundreds of millions. | ||
| I mean, you know, and they're willing, for that kind of money, they're willing to jump on the gravy train with the Republicans. | ||
| And that's why I've always wanted to figure out what's going on with these. | ||
| They didn't ever expect to be a point where there's so much money and grit going on, it's worth them to take it, take it. | ||
| Anything to add there? | ||
| I agree with Harry that there's too much money in our politics. | ||
| Tom's point about the $1.5 billion spent on lobbying, we can look at recent campaigns and how much money is spent in those campaigns. | ||
| I forget how much money Elon Musk dropped into the last election, $200 million, $250 million presidential election, and then another $30 million in a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice race. | ||
| Like these numbers are absurd. | ||
| And the Supreme Court has allowed for this type of money to flow into our political system through the Citizens United decision. | ||
| There are state laws and state proposals that require greater disclosure, that require sorts of public financing for campaigns, democracy dollars. | ||
| There are some ideas out there that are being done at the local level to try and reduce the influence of money in politics. | ||
| The stock trading ban for members of Congress that we talked about today and some of these other proposals are good for a start. | ||
| And I want to bring it back to Tom's point that we've got to have hope and we've got to keep fighting because our democracy and our children's futures is too important to just sit this one out. | ||
| And just so you know, the Washington Post says Elon Musk donated $288 million in 2024 election. | ||
| The final tally shows, it says the official count of Musk donations further cemented him as the country's largest and most prominent donor. | ||
| So $288 million in that election cycle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy. | |
| So something else that Common Cause has been focused on is the redistricting arms race, it's being called. | ||
| It started in Texas, now has grown across several states. | ||
| What's your group's message and your role in that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Common Cause has long been opposed to partisan gerrymandering. | ||
| Partisan gerrymandering is the way in which politicians draw their voting district maps to ensure that they or someone from their party wins before a single vote is cast. | ||
| We took this case to the Supreme Court in Common Cause v. Rucho. | ||
| Unfortunately, the majority of the Supreme Court said that there was nothing in the Constitution to prohibit this practice. | ||
| We took this to Congress with the Freedom to Vote Act, which would have banned mid-decade redistricting, which is what's happened now, drawing the lines in between the decades and partisan gerrymandering. | ||
| And we also spearheaded, designed, and implemented one of the most robust independent redistricting commissions in California back in 2008 and 2010. | ||
| So Common Cause has been a leader to make sure that it's people who choose their politicians and not politicians who choose their people. | ||
| Well, there is, you mentioned California. | ||
| And what has been your group's reaction to California deciding to forego that independent commission and putting it to the voters in November? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So the story actually begins in Texas. | ||
| And what happened in Texas was the President of the United States directed the Department of Justice to send a legally dubious letter to Texas legislature and the governor saying that their current congressional voting maps, the way in which members of Congress are elected, violate the Voting Rights Act and are maybe a violation of law. | ||
| Really, and Trump said the quiet part out loud later, is I need five more Republican seats from Texas before the 2026 midterms so that we can hold on to Congress and a Congress that is not holding the president accountable. | ||
| Then at first glance, Democrats in California said, we're going to do the same thing. | ||
| We're going to get five more Democrats in California and didn't talk about what the process would be or why. | ||
| So it was this partisan tit for tat. | ||
| And at first, Common Cause came out and said, we oppose that. | ||
| We oppose partisan gerrymandering from whoever does it. | ||
| And we were vocal about that. | ||
| And I believe that our vocal opposition to what was happening in California before there were any details actually shifted the conversation in California and moved Governor Newsom and the legislature there to be a lot more thoughtful and careful with what they were doing. | ||
| And the plan that eventually rolled out was explicitly said to be a countermeasure or a counterbalance to what was happening in Texas so that we would have a Congress that could hold the president accountable and not allow him to distort or manipulate the election before a single vote is cast. | ||
| And in that circumstance, we decided not to oppose what's happening in California because it met a rigorous set of criteria that we established in order to make sure that fighting the current threat doesn't undermine the long-term reforms. | ||
| This is what Politico is reporting about that. | ||
| California Common Cause Advisory Board members quit in gerrymandering fallout. | ||
| It says it's a fraught moment for an organization that has historically fought the kinds of partisan map drawing that California Democrats are now pursuing. | ||
| You're saying this is, you know, as some have said, bringing a knife to a knife fight. | ||
| That this is a fair counter to what some people see as not playing by the rules. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And, you know, to address the headline there is that this was a vigorously debated within our organization because as I mentioned, we have a long history of opposing partisan gerrymandering because we believe that people should choose their politicians, not the other way around. | ||
| But we're in a different moment. | ||
| These are not normal times. | ||
| It is unprecedented for the president of the United States to go to a state and say, find me five more seats. | ||
| And so the lens in which we look at all the work we're doing has to focus on the current battles, but also the longer-term war. | ||
| And that's why we established a fairness criteria to evaluate any current proposals meant to counterbalance. | ||
| And reasonable people who care about these issues deeply are going to disagree. | ||
| And so we should be, I think, celebrating the fact that we can have such a rigorous debate and come out on different sides and do so in a respectful manner. | ||
| Summitville, Indiana, Bruce is on the independent line. | ||
| Good morning, Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| This subject is something that should have been talked about a long time ago, but it's mainly because the people in power were making money and they didn't want to bring it up. | ||
| In Indiana, we had a senator, it's been probably 20 years ago, that after he was elected, | ||
| his wife all of a sudden became board members on some of the largest corporations, and she was getting paid huge amounts of money for being on the boards. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's another way that they scam the system. | |
| And there's got to be some. | ||
| I also have to say that I voted for Trump, but he has been making money with the crypto coin. | ||
| And it's been said that his kids are making all kinds of money through trading. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this has got to stop, or they've got to be held accountable. | |
| All right, Bruce. | ||
| Well, sorry, you were going to say something. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| One other thing that I think should be put in place is that lobbyists and even the two parties, if they talk to a person in Congress, | ||
| they should have to pay like $100,000 an hour, which would go towards the debt so that we can get that under control. | ||
| So that only wealthy lobbyists could lobby Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, you know, Bruce's instinct here that people in power get to make money in ways that other people don't is why this stock trading ban for members of Congress is so important. | |
| And, you know, I don't know the particulars of the senator from Indiana mentioned whose wife was on boards of corporations and made money, but there are lots of ways in which people in power and political leaders and elected officials get to, as Bruce mentioned, scam the system. | ||
| And so this stock trading ban for members of Congress is a good start. | ||
| It is not the end-all-be-all of this, and it's not going to solve all our problems, but we've got to get in the habit as voters, as people, to demand this sort of leadership and this sort of accountability by our elected leaders. | ||
| Here's Jerry in Carrollton, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| And thanks for having me on. | ||
| I just want to say the guy that you have on now, forget his day, but he's doing the right thing. | ||
| I feel he's doing the right thing, but our government is so corrupt and they're going to figure out a way around this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And lobbyists, it should be against the law to even have a lobbyist messing with our government because you know what they're doing. | |
| They're giving out millions of dollars to these government senators and stuff. | ||
| And you know what they're going to do. | ||
| They're going to do what that lobbyist wants. | ||
| Everybody knows that. | ||
| And I think it's time for them to take some laws from us because they sat and make laws every day for the common people of this country. | ||
| I think it's time for us to make laws to them that they got to abide by. | ||
| All right, Jerry. | ||
| Let's get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, I think the first piece around that they're going to find a way to get around this is not wrong. | ||
| And that's why some of these proposals include an independent body that would monitor what members of Congress are doing and have powers to investigate and get information from them that's not controlled by the members of Congress themselves. | ||
| Currently in the House of Representatives, there is some mechanism around that. | ||
| It's not as strong as it could be. | ||
| But in the Senate, there is no independent body that can investigate what senators are doing. | ||
| So that's one way to make sure that folks are held accountable once we have the rules. | ||
| On the second piece is, yes, Jerry, you're right that members of Congress should be playing by the same rules that they expect every other person to play by. | ||
| And that's why this law is so important. | ||
| We're going to take one more call. | ||
| Rita, Jackson Heights, New York, Independent Online. | ||
| Hi, Rita. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| What I'm talking about is everyone calling up. | ||
| I agree that the senators, and I'm sure if you asked the Congress, they would agree to they shouldn't have stocks. | ||
| Okay, but let's talk about the people. | ||
| Let's talk about us. | ||
| There's such a thing as war bonds. | ||
| Remember war bonds? | ||
| I don't know if you know, of course you do. | ||
| And war bonds, we're talking about now people, citizens, those people calling up and calling other people crooks. | ||
| And the war bond. | ||
| What happens by you're supposed to declare when you turn, when you cash them in, you're supposed to declare. | ||
| However, most people didn't declare it. | ||
| Many people didn't. | ||
| I know for a fact they didn't. | ||
| People told me they didn't. | ||
| They didn't pay attention, so you don't declare what's going to happen. | ||
| Well, the government found out and realized, well, you know, all this money's beaten, but where's the taxes? | ||
| Then in the 60s or 60s, they said, really? | ||
| You have to have your social security number now on your savings bonds. | ||
| First thing. | ||
| Second thing, income tax return. | ||
| So, Rita, we are focused on Congress and government here. | ||
| Is there a question? | ||
| I know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But we are, but the point is, we cannot, the point is, income tax. | |
| When they declared there was a time you could declare four, five, six children, the government said, what? | ||
| All this money. | ||
| Then when we were born by the 1960s, you had to have a social security number the minute you were born. | ||
| So what I'm trying to say is we call and say, oh, this was a, but the instinct or the money we put down for charity. | ||
| One man said if we put down all the money we gave for charity, we'd have cancer would have been cured. | ||
| So Rita, are you saying regardless of the laws that the lawmakers will still find a way to no, I'm not saying that at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm saying that people who call into criticize, and I think that most, I think the Congress, I think most of them, what they have to ask publicly, yes, we agree with it. | |
| They have to say that. | ||
| And they should say it. | ||
| And it's right. | ||
| But I'm talking about those of us who constantly pull and denigrate and it's gotten together. | ||
| I see. | ||
| Okay, let's get a reaction for you. | ||
| Omar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, Rita, that our politics has become really negative. | |
| And to Tom's point earlier, I'm trying to inject some hope into all of this because our government should be working for all of us. | ||
| And we should feel some confidence that those who are elected, that they have our trust. | ||
| And right now, the problem is they don't have our trust. | ||
| Congress approval ratings are at all-time low. | ||
| And as I mentioned at the top, over 80% of Republicans, Democrats, Independents support this type of measure. | ||
| And by enacting it, they'll start to rebuild some of that trust. | ||
| And hopefully that'll turn down the temperature on our negative politics. | ||
| All right, that's Omar Nural Dean, Senior VP for Policy and Litigation Strategy at Common Cause. | ||
| You can find more on them at commoncause. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mimi. | |
| Coming up in about 15 minutes, Miles Yu of the Hudson Institute gives us his take on that summit and military parade in China, hosted this week with the leaders of Russia and North Korea. | ||
| But first, it's open forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Independence, and 202748-8002 for independence. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| 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 Chaplin 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 Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a 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 party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John Malone with his book, Born to Be Wired, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | |
| Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and the Senate are in session. | ||
| The House and Senate will work on their versions of 2026 defense programs and policy legislation known as the National Defense Authorization Act. | ||
| On Tuesday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett launches her latest book, Listening to the Law, with a book signing hosted by the Reagan Foundation's Center on Civility and Democracy. | ||
| And then on Wednesday, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratzios, will testify before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on President Trump's artificial intelligence strategy. | ||
| And on Thursday, watch C-SPAN's live all-day coverage of the September 11th commemoration services for the National 9-11 Memorial in New York City, the National 9-11 Pentagon Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Watch live next week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy, Unfiltered. | ||
| And pass precedent. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a Kangaroo Carl. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join Political Playbook Chief Correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| Ceasefire this fall on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're in open forum, and we would like to see what you would like to talk about for about the next 12-13 minutes. | ||
| This is Jimmy in Athens, Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Jimmy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Mimi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I decided just to lighten things up this morning. | ||
| Melania Trump gave a great speech the other day, and I was impressed. | ||
| But then towards the end, she said that once America leads in artificial or in AI technology, then we will also lead in building drones, robots, and driverless cars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so I'm hoping somebody comes up with a good meme of American robots designed by artificial intelligence. | |
| Now, I guess I should say she mispronounced the word robot and she said robot, but nobody else ever has made that mispronunciation as far as I know. | ||
| So let's see those memes online with Melania Trump in a robot designed by AI. | ||
| And let's see, this is let me get you an article about that, Jimmy. | ||
| Here is Jim, Cairo, Missouri. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm concerned about Trump's immigration problem or policy. | ||
| The worst of the worst? | ||
| Well, then, how did they come up with hundreds of children that they are going to deport? | ||
| These National Guard in the cities, they seem to be more geared towards helping the immigration roundup. | ||
| It's not about crime. | ||
| National Guard cannot do police work. | ||
| They can help ISO round up people. | ||
| DC, We're going after crime and the homeless people. | ||
| What happened to the homeless people in DC? | ||
| I haven't heard anything about that. | ||
| This is misdirection. | ||
| I don't believe a word that comes out of Trump's mouth. | ||
| And this is what Jimmy was talking about. | ||
| This is a BBC with the headline: Melania Trump warns robots are here in rare public outing. | ||
| This is from earlier this week. | ||
| Said that she said that robots are here. | ||
| It's our responsibility to prepare America's children for the AI-driven decades ahead. | ||
| Quote: Our future is no longer science fiction. | ||
| During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children, empowering but with watchful guidance. | ||
| And here is Bernard, New York, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I want to speak about the trans movement, which I think is beyond sick. | ||
| A Hollywood star made the following statement: Oh, I knew my son was gay because when he was four years old, all he played with was dolls. | ||
| Now, none of our fake news people asked the question: How did the dolls get there? | ||
| Did the four-year-old boy put them there? | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| She put them there. | ||
| Then she said, I'm going to have them operated on when he's seven because he's really not a boy. | ||
| Now, you cannot change, the scientists cannot change DNA. | ||
| You can't change that. | ||
| So, if you're a boy born a boy, your DNA will always remain the boy, which means you'll always think like a boy. | ||
| So, this movement does not just destroy the seven-year-old boy. | ||
| And I remember when I was seven, I remember how I thought and everything. | ||
| And the idea of having my penis removed by an operation would have terrified me at seven years of age. | ||
| Now, number two. | ||
| Sorry, Bernard, who was the Hollywood star that was saying this? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't remember her name, and they're all the same anyhow, so it doesn't matter. | |
| Okay, I just want to continue. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, go ahead. | ||
| The other thing you wanted to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is very important. | |
| Can I finish, please? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Okay, this is very important. | ||
| You're not just destroying the seven-year-old boy. | ||
| When that boy becomes a teenager, his DNA is still going to go towards his DNA, which will still be a teenager, which means he'll fall in love with girls, but he won't be able to get married or love a girl because he's been operated on by these sick people. | ||
| So, you are destroying, not you, but you as the trans people are not just destroying the child, you're destroying the teenager and the adult that will never be able to get married. | ||
| It is evil. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Kenny, Independent in Wilson, North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I wanted to get on with the last caller when he was talking about the money into politics. | ||
| And I was kind of surprised Ceasefam didn't ask him the question. | ||
| But, you know, the foreign money is the problem. | ||
| The foreign money into our politics is what's causing us to become a communist country. | ||
| Russia has been doing this for years, and it seemed like none of the news organizations, even Juice Eastman, don't pick up. | ||
| So, Kenny, what do you mean by foreign money in politics? | ||
| In what way exactly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Say, for instance, if I'm a candidate and I have a Russian company or some kind of company in their zone, which we have a lot of foreign countries here now, companies here, and they want to dump all this money into politics to get this guy in office that don't care and don't mind us becoming communists, which they have. | |
| And they end up putting all these people in office. | ||
| And you don't even know it's Russia. | ||
| Can you know that foreign federal law prohibits foreign contributions in our elections? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Directly, ma'am. | |
| But, you know, use your, well, I don't mean to say that. | ||
| But, you know, use common sense. | ||
| They can do it without just coming up here and saying, this is a check from Russia. | ||
| They can funnel that money into the country. | ||
| We love money over here. | ||
| So they don't mind if they're funnily in here. | ||
| And so that's what's happening. | ||
| That's how we got all these Russian thinking people that agree with Russia and the government now. | ||
| And it's infested. | ||
| And none of the news media even looked over there. | ||
| They was always saying, oh, all this money and politics. | ||
| These people don't think like Americans that we have up there now. | ||
| And they don't have to be born overseas. | ||
| We got a lot of those people that's born over here. | ||
| People that you hear them call them to your show all the time talking about we are not a democracy. | ||
| They hate democracy. | ||
| Y'all didn't read the line. | ||
| These people have been gaining to do this stuff. | ||
| And they've been using UC SPAN, especially the Heritage Foundation Cato Institute. | ||
| And they come up there and you just let these guys talk. | ||
| And I hear maybe two or three callers get in sometime. | ||
| And the guys just talk, talk, talk. | ||
| And they brainwash our people. | ||
| And it makes me so mad to see this happening. | ||
| And we really became a real, real stupid country. | ||
| And one more thing I want to say is that I was in military. | ||
| Now, when I went in, no one, you wouldn't even be able to get in the military. | ||
| If you did, it would be an insecure job where you won't be around classified information. | ||
| If you was an ex-Harrion addict, now we got a Harrion, well, not ex, but once an addict always. | ||
| This guy, am I still on, ma'am? | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're talking about this guy, Kennedy, I have an addict and he could relapse at any day. | |
| That's why they wouldn't even let people in the military that was ex, that was addicts. | ||
| All right, Kenny. | ||
| I got to move on to Shirley, an Ohio Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Shirley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is Shirley. | |
| I want them to stop hating on Trump and start praying for him. | ||
| He's going to need a lot of prayers. | ||
| This man is a Satan disciple. | ||
| And whoever put him in office is responsible for whatever he do and whatever he says. | ||
| And may you, and I told the lady when she said that she hated she voted for Trump. | ||
| I told her, ma'am, don't do that. | ||
| You pray for him. | ||
| He's going to need a lot of prayers. | ||
| He's never been in the army, and none of his boys has ever served in the military. | ||
| And that's what hurts me, the way he talked, laid off all the veterans, the military, when he laid them off. | ||
| I wouldn't have nothing to do, but the veterans, they do what he says, and the National Guard. | ||
| But they should pray for this man. | ||
| He needs prayer. | ||
| He needs prayer. | ||
| Okay, and Andrew, Independent Marlboro, Massachusetts, you're on Open Forum, Andrew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I just wanted to say, first of all, we have Donald Trump who has embraced crypto. | ||
| We brought crypto into the government. | ||
| We have a now national crypto stockpile. | ||
| We removed all the regulations. | ||
| We removed all the oversight. | ||
| So, all the things that was crypto in the background for buying drugs and people and blackmail and all those things that crypto is used for. | ||
| And now, surprise, surprise, the Trump family is making billions off of crypto. | ||
| So, Mayo, I just wanted to call that out and thank you very much. | ||
| And everybody have a great day today. | ||
| All right, Andrew. | ||
| And we will have more time for open forum later in the program. | ||
| So, if you didn't get a chance to call in during this time, you'll have time later. | ||
| After the break, we'll dig into that summit that China hosted this week in Shanghai, including the leaders of Russia, North Korea, and India, and what message it sends to the West. | ||
| That conversation with Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why are you doing this? | |
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join Political Playbook Chief Correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| ceasefire this fall on the network that doesn't take sides only on c-span next week on the c-span networks the house and the senate are in session The House and Senate will work on their versions of 2026 defense programs and policy legislation known as the National Defense Authorization Act. | ||
| On Tuesday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett launches her latest book, Listening to the Law, with a book signing hosted by the Reagan Foundation Center on Civility and Democracy. | ||
| And then on Wednesday, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratzios, will testify before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on President Trump's artificial intelligence strategy. | ||
| And on Thursday, watch C-SPAN's live all-day coverage of the September 11th commemoration services from the National 9-11 Memorial in New York City, the National 9-11 Pentagon Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Watch live next week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Non-fiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Miles Yu. | ||
| He's senior fellow at the China Center. | ||
| He's the director there at the Hudson Institute. | ||
| We're talking about that summit that was held today. | ||
| Welcome, Miles, to the program. | ||
| Welcome back, I should say. | ||
| Thank you for having me, Mimi. | ||
| Let's talk about that summit. | ||
| This was held in Shanghai. | ||
| How did this come about and why was Putin there? | ||
| Why was the Kim Jong-un there? | ||
| And why was the leader of India there? | ||
| It took place not in Shanghai, but in Tianjin instead, not far from Beijing. | ||
| This is just immediately before the parade, the big hoopla. | ||
| So the reason why that's important is that China wants to use this event, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as a way to attract as many leaders from mostly Central Asia countries there for the parade. | ||
| And another reason why you asked me about Putin and Kim Jong-un there, you know, Vernon Putin has very few places to go to on the international stage because he's a wanted criminal by the international court. | ||
| So China is one of the only places, one of the few places it could go. | ||
| So that's one reason we were there. | ||
| And Kim Jong-un was not there, but Modi and other people were there for the SCO. | ||
| So Kim Jong-un was in the parade. | ||
| The interesting thing is that Xi Jinping hosted the SCO as he's the host. | ||
| He's the host, but he was somewhat upstage by Modi, Prime Minister of India, because I use the phrase, Prime Minister Modi is now possibly aggressively unhappy with the United States, mostly over tariffs. | ||
| So he went there to send a message, but there's a limit. | ||
| There's a limit there because he cannot go too far to the China side because India is also a good friend with Japan and South Korea. | ||
| Those countries were not really China's friends. | ||
| So in other words, Modi was there and proposed a major theme about one earth, one family, and one future. | ||
| So Xi Jinping adopted that. | ||
| The question is, who's the head of the family? | ||
| And whose future is it? | ||
| And I don't think Xi Jinping is very happy to answer that question. | ||
| Let's talk a little bit more about India because India has historically always been an ally of the United States and been at odds with China. | ||
| They share a border with China and there's some disputed areas there. | ||
| Where does that stand now? | ||
| Have they made up? | ||
| What's their relationship? | ||
| No, the border issue is very intense. | ||
| As a matter of fact, China borders 14 land countries. | ||
| China has land disputes with virtually every one of them over the past several decades. | ||
| India's border dispute with China has been going on since 1959 when Dalai Lama fled to India and Indian government provided sanctuary for him. | ||
| So in 1962, China and India went to war and that kind of animosity never ceded. | ||
| So if somebody tells me the first shot in Asia was not over Taiwan, but it was over the border between India and China, I would not be surprised because tension was very, very obvious there. | ||
| Now, of course, right now, the issue is the United States. | ||
| So China always regarded the United States as the number one adversary. | ||
| India is having trouble with the United States. | ||
| But I think, you know, these two countries are totally different in terms of their own fundamentals. | ||
| India is a democracy, China is not. | ||
| So I think Chinese-India relationship is very tense, yet they find some temporary commonality at this moment. | ||
| This is what President Trump put on Truth Social. | ||
| He said this, the big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and blood that the U.S. gave to China in order to help it secure its freedom from a very unfriendly foreign invader. | ||
| Many Americans died in China's quest for victory and glory. | ||
| I hope that they are rightfully honored and remembered for their bravery and sacrifice. | ||
| May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. | ||
| Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un as you conspire against the United States of America. | ||
| What did you make of that when you saw that? | ||
| That's a typical Trumpian. | ||
| And it's basically sending a very strong message that China, Russia, and North Korea, and they conspire against the United States. | ||
| So that tweet was actually not in response to the SCO, but rather in response to the parade. | ||
| So the image was very interesting because you have this Xi Jinping, Putin, and Kim Jong-un together. | ||
| This basically is a coalition of bad guys. | ||
| So President Trump was responding to that. | ||
| And this also, there's an irony here. | ||
| That is, China holds this parade, Jagans parade, to claim political legitimacy as if the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Republic of China, was responsible for the defeat of Japan. | ||
| As a matter of fact, that was false because the Chinese Communist Party didn't do anything significant in contributing to the defeat of Japan. | ||
| Its previous government and Chinese Communist Party defeated. | ||
| So that one was not really noticed in the president's message, but everybody who watched this with a sense of amusement and irony because the Chinese Communist Party does not have the right and legitimacy to inherit the position of the major force against Japanese during the war. | ||
| Let's hear from President Trump reacting to the parade in China. | ||
| He was with the Polish president in the Oval Office earlier this week. | ||
| They're only doing this. | ||
| They're really there looking to, when they did what they did, I thought it was a beautiful ceremony. | ||
| I thought it was very, very impressive. | ||
| But I understood the reason they were doing it, and they were hoping I was watching, and I was watching. | ||
| My relationship with all of them is very good. | ||
| We're going to find out how good it is over the next week or two. | ||
| I think that we helped China very much, as you know, when they talk about freedom. | ||
| And I don't believe that, and maybe I'm wrong, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't believe that America, that the United States was acknowledged for helping China to get to gain its freedom. | ||
| But perhaps that was just a sleight of hand. | ||
| I mean, I was very surprised. | ||
| I watched the speech last night. | ||
| President Xi's a friend of mine, but I thought that the United States should have been mentioned last night during that speech because we helped China very, very much. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| And what do you think China makes of that? | ||
| The Chinese government has not responded directly to that comment. | ||
| But the China News Service, which is one of the official news organizations, basically just took it out of context because of what President Trump said that China did not acknowledge America's contribution to the defeat of Japan. | ||
| So the Chinese propaganda basically said, oh, President Trump, congratulations on Chinese people celebrating this wonderful day. | ||
| That's the sentence, right? | ||
| But that's not the essence and spirit of these remarks. | ||
| And I think President Trump said, Xi Jinping is my friend, and Robert Putin is my friend. | ||
| And that's basically, you know, it's a negotiation tactic. | ||
| You cannot be your true friends and conspirators against you at the same time. | ||
| So that's basically Is very typical of this White House statement in the last several years. | ||
| But I think it captured the spirit. | ||
| He looked at them, he said, impressive. | ||
| But the message was not welcomed to Washington. | ||
| Interesting thing is Kim Jong-un was on the stand, reviewing stand. | ||
| He must be thinking impressive, but it's not the best, because North Koreans are the best in terms of those communist type parade and the goose steps. | ||
| So I think there's a match there. | ||
| We've got Miles Yu with us from the Hudson Institute. | ||
| If you would like to ask him a question about China, you can do so. | ||
| Our lines are bipartisan. | ||
| So Democrats are on 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| I wanted to ask you about Russia and China. | ||
| What is Russia gaining from China? | ||
| And what is China gaining from Russia? | ||
| China acts alone because China wants to be the dominant power in the world. | ||
| China has virtually no strategic partnership to speak of, of any consequence, right? | ||
| Yes, you have some countries in Africa, they have Pakistan, but those countries do not normally play the decisive role in global politics. | ||
| So Russia is critical for China. | ||
| And Russia is a bad boy all over the place. | ||
| So China wants Russia to do all kinds of things to create strategic distractions for the United States. | ||
| But the United States' strategic focus now is on China. | ||
| So China doesn't like that. | ||
| So that's why China is bankrolling Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. | ||
| That's one of the biggest distractions for the United States, hoping that the United States will be dragged into that kind of ongoing war. | ||
| So President Trump said, well, that's not the case. | ||
| We're going to extricate ourselves from Ukraine in a very peaceful, respectful, responsible way, and then go back to focus on China. | ||
| So this is basically what China wants from Russia, to support Russia as the bad boy of the world. | ||
| And then in return, Russia basically getting financial support, military support, as well as alliance support from China. | ||
| So that's one of the reasons why I think Vladimir Putin wants it from China. | ||
| There's also another reason that Putin wants China to help. | ||
| That is Vladimir Putin regards Russia's Far East, Siberia, as its key critical security vulnerability. | ||
| So for years and years, Putin wants China to spend a lot of money to build up Siberia, particularly economic and energy-wide. | ||
| And China keeps promising hundreds of billions of dollars, but never fulfill the promises. | ||
| So Vladimir Putin went to China this time just last week. | ||
| He wants China to sign the third agreement, again, forcing China to sort of pay off what is promised over there to build up the Siberia. | ||
| That's what the MOU was all about. | ||
| So there is, yes, there is an anti-West commonality among China, Russia, even Kim Jong-un. | ||
| But there's a lot of clash of ambitions. | ||
| The purpose of different. | ||
| I think China regards Russia and Iran and North Korea as its proxies because it has money. | ||
| And you take all the money, and there's a lot of very intricate interaction among these three because they have all their own ambitions, their goals. | ||
| And so that's basically what it is. | ||
| You wrote this column at Hudson.org. | ||
| You said why China must be excluded from post-war Ukraine's reconstruction and security guarantees. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Why do you think they should be excluded? | ||
| China, before Ukrainian war, had a very cozy and almost promiscuous relationship with Ukraine. | ||
| Because Ukraine, for the last three decades, since its independence, has been the primary supplier of Russian-designed new generation advanced weapons, ranging from aircraft carrier to heavy bomber engines to amphibious craft and missile technologies. | ||
| So Ukraine played a very important role, particularly during Yanukovych's period. | ||
| So China benefited a lot from Ukraine. | ||
| And then when the war started, China switched, abandoned its former strategic partner of Ukraine and took a side on the Russian side because Russia and China had a similar logic of aggression. | ||
| That is, if another sovereign independent country that has historical ethno-linguistic ties with Russia, and then therefore Russia is justified to invade, take over that country. | ||
| China's attitude toward Taiwan to a lot of countries in Asia is exactly the same. | ||
| So for that principle, they come together. | ||
| And also the two countries share this common anti-West ideology. | ||
| So that's why China is opportunistic. | ||
| They should never be part of the post-war reconstruction and security guarantees. | ||
| But shouldn't we? | ||
| Shouldn't we take some of their money and rebuild Ukraine with it if they're offering it? | ||
| What would the danger be? | ||
| This is not a corporate relationship. | ||
| We should learn bitter lessons from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| Thousands of American soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| And we spend a lot of money, trillions, stabilizing the post-war places in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| Yet, who gets the peace dividends? | ||
| Not the United States, China. | ||
| Iraqi government signed contract deals with China at the expense of the United States. | ||
| Afghanistan is a similar thing. | ||
| So that's why peace dividend has to be excluded from, has to be something without China. | ||
| So because China is not a very constructive country in some of the places. | ||
| This is one reasons why I think President Trump wants to sign a muneral deals with President Zelensky. | ||
| By the way, this is not just the United States government is saying. | ||
| President Zelensky said specifically he does not want China to be a part of the post-war security guarantees because China has been on the Russian side providing weapons and the material financial support for Russia to kill Ukrainians. | ||
| This is a very, very harsh truth. | ||
| And you cannot allow somebody like that to be your post-war security guarantee because there's no guarantee for China. | ||
| China has signed no fewer than three strategic security guarantees with the Ukraine over the decade, since 1991. | ||
| None of them has any meaning at all when Ukraine is in crisis. | ||
| I just want to ask you about North Korea and then we'll take calls. | ||
| Most people say there would not be a Kim regime in North Korea without China, without China's support. | ||
| Why does China continue to support that regime? | ||
| Because North Korea is avowedly anti-American. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Because also China has this strategic view. | ||
| Somehow, the Korea Peninsula is some kind of security buffer for China. | ||
| And so Japan, South Korea is an ally of the United States. | ||
| Therefore, China view this strategic mutual defense treaty system headed by the United States with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines as the mortal threat to China. | ||
| So that's one reason why to have somebody like Kim Jong, like the Kim dynasty in North Korea is critical for China. | ||
| But that normally worked, but sometimes it doesn't, because North Koreans have minds of their own sometimes. | ||
| So that's why it's very hard to manage, very hard to manage somebody like Kim Jong-un. | ||
| In a very similar way, it's hard for the Soviets in the 50s to handle independent-minded Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| So that's why the Soviet Union and China split. | ||
| Because eventually this relationship is not working. | ||
| So I think there is, again, they share something in common, but also they have a lot of clash of interest and objectives. | ||
| Let's go to calls. | ||
| David's calling from New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Very interesting topic. | ||
| So I'm calling just to find out what Mr. Yu thinks of China's Belt and Road Initiative, right? | ||
| It's something that has been reported. | ||
| And basically, it's China investing in other countries. | ||
| Like, for instance, they'll go into a country that doesn't have the means, let's say, to develop their port. | ||
| So China will go in and promise them all these things. | ||
| They'll develop the port. | ||
| But then they'll say, well, you pay us back. | ||
| But what they have to pay back, they'll never be able to do. | ||
| So to me, it seems like it's a way of China being able to control trade around the world. | ||
| That's really what's behind it. | ||
| But I don't know if that's something that has really been widely reported. | ||
| And I'm just wondering what he thinks about that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Belt and road. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Belt and road initiative fits very well with this Marxist-Leninist strategic view. | ||
| That is that China, according to Lenin, right, and Mao and Chinese leadership all believe in this, that the whole capitalist world is against the communist movement, particularly the communist part of China. | ||
| But you cannot really attack where the enemy is strong, that is, like the center, like the United States and Europe, well-developed capitalist countries. | ||
| So what you do is you have to do encirclement from countryside to encircle the center. | ||
| So that's basically a main idea. | ||
| So Berlin Road Initiative is just like that. | ||
| So they spend a lot of money to create the inference, proxies, and the sphere of influence to use the old phrase in countries, in areas where the West is not predominant. | ||
| That's the whole idea. | ||
| So by so doing, China would have to spend a lot of money over there. | ||
| And so you can see in Africa, in Central Asia, and in Latin America, China spend a lot of money. | ||
| Now, this has its success and failure as well. | ||
| Success is that you do have a lot of countries who would vote on any critical issues in the national organization like the WHO and the UN with China. | ||
| The backside of that is very expensive. | ||
| And so, you know, Xi Jinping's nickname in China, he has many nicknames. | ||
| One of the most popular one is Da Sa Bi, which is some word, translation is not really that printable. | ||
| But the closest to the one you can translate a word is the big money dispensing idiot, because he spent tens of billions of dollars on other foreign countries, but in where Chinese people were suffering. | ||
| So that's one of the problems. | ||
| Another problem is quality. | ||
| So and I think Chinese Bayon Road Initiative have a lot of problems with qualities. | ||
| However, you do produce, you can produce some spectacular things like the SCO and also Tiananmen parade last week. | ||
| That is, many countries who are sort of bought off by China, particularly Central Asia, very impoverished country, that stands, and they will show up for the show. | ||
| So that's one face-saving. | ||
| Well, let's get back to that parade because there were three new weapons that were highlighted during that parade. | ||
| Submarine drones, so underwater autonomous vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and laser weapons. | ||
| So to what degree do we have concern about those specific weapons or do we have more and better of those weapons? | ||
| Where do we stand on that? | ||
| So there are two extreme perspectives on this. | ||
| One is this is something that sent us into panic, right? | ||
| This is Chinese weapons. | ||
| Another one is TFCR. | ||
| It's not really that big deal because some people even say this is like a basis parade with a lot of inflatables. | ||
| If you watch some of the very heavy equipment, like a DF-61, this big advanced things, and ICBMs, you look at tires, they're not really that weighted. | ||
| So that means that it's not, maybe it's dummy, right? | ||
| And another thing is the weapons submarine, that's a big deal. | ||
| That's something over there. | ||
| But we don't know how good they are. | ||
| So China, like all communist countries, they show their military strength through parade. | ||
| So their strength is assumed, not tested. | ||
| In the United States, we basically show our military strength and our weapons efficiency through actual combat, right? | ||
| F-22s, for example, engaged in many, many combats, not one have lost. | ||
| So that's why you believe this is really, really game-changing platform. | ||
| And, you know, Midnight Hammer operation against Iran. | ||
| So this is something over there. | ||
| However, you mentioned about submarine and the laser, and those are very important because this is the Chinese weapons on display in Tiananmen Square has three categories. | ||
| One is the old, like the DF-31, and then another new, new ones like the DF-61, laser submarine drones. | ||
| And the rest of it is just developing. | ||
| You don't know how good they are, but they look very good on the show. | ||
| But we have to take them seriously. | ||
| But do not panic because there's a lot of very interesting nuances over there. | ||
| We don't know how good they are, but one thing that is very interesting is on the day of the parade, virtually all China's defense companies, their stocks in Chinese stock market, plummeted. | ||
| They just nosedive. | ||
| That doesn't sound right. | ||
| No, that's right, because somebody must know what's really going on, right? | ||
| So that's why we should not really panic in this country. | ||
| There are a lot of things going on in China. | ||
| It's very mysterious. | ||
| And I think China has its own strategic ambiguity about this weapon, the real things. | ||
| Xi Jinping is known in China also by the moniker of purger-in-chief. | ||
| He purged so many people, and particularly in the military. | ||
| You know, the most awesome weapon on display over there are basically long-range strike missiles, ICBMs, and many other very fancy equipment. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| The most severely purged area in the People's Revolution Army are the Rocket Force and the armament department. | ||
| So that's one reason why I think you have something that's very interesting going on. | ||
| Let me show you this from Steve in Cincinnati, Ohio. | ||
| We got this on a text. | ||
| He says, Americans always claim that we have the strongest military in the world. | ||
| Does China believe that? | ||
| So, I mean, in the sense of how does China react to our military strength and how do they assess it? | ||
| Military strength is not only about hardware. | ||
| Hardware is one thing. | ||
| How to use hardware, right? | ||
| How to prove your hardware actually is better than your enemy. | ||
| United States, beyond any doubt, is better than anybody. | ||
| So China, I think, knows this. | ||
| Not only how to use it. | ||
| Another thing is about the system. | ||
| The Chinese system, military system, is highly centralized. | ||
| So they don't have command independence. | ||
| So most of care were generals, admirals were purged by Xi Jinping. | ||
| So he's the guy who's pushed the button, make the decision at the top. | ||
| So that's one of the reasons why I think you also have that issues with this. | ||
| And Chinese military basically, generally, this is cliché, but it's true, a lack of combat experience. | ||
| So last general war they fought was 1979 against Vietnamese. | ||
| And also, they do not have a really kind of a long-range power projection capabilities like we do. | ||
| We can go anywhere globally very quick, very quickly. | ||
| And they have a limited overseas footprint. | ||
| I mean, they have, yes, they have a base in Djibouti, and that's about it, right? | ||
| But they're expanding. | ||
| They're expanding place. | ||
| But most importantly, it's a corruption. | ||
| Corruption with the people of the Russian army is mind-boggling. | ||
| I mentioned about the stock market. | ||
| Somebody who bought this stocks know the inside story. | ||
| So that's one of the reasons why it's all about confidence, right? | ||
| If Chinese people do not have confidence in your weapon system, and I don't think that should be very telling to us. | ||
| Let's talk to William, Atlanta, Georgia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| So what you're saying, Mr. Yu, is that China doesn't attack people every year like the United States does. | ||
| So, you know, China being this big enemy, I don't really see why they need to be our enemy. | ||
| I don't see why we need to be number one. | ||
| You know, and then in order to be number one, you're keeping down whole continents. | ||
| You don't even like your own people. | ||
| You know, you're putting your military at your own people. | ||
| You're doing the same thing. | ||
| You're saying that the Chinese, do they purge the generals? | ||
| Trump is purging the generals. | ||
| You know, it's just, you know, I'm just tired of the United States. | ||
| We're number one. | ||
| We're this, we're that. | ||
| You don't even like your own people. | ||
| All right, let's get a response. | ||
| Okay, so this is moral equivalency, obviously, is not warranted. | ||
| I mean, yes, President Trump fired some people, but that's totally different from purging. | ||
| If you're purging China, you're done. | ||
| You'll disappear. | ||
| You don't even know. | ||
| Many of them will be dead, right? | ||
| Long presentation. | ||
| So that's basically a totally different system. | ||
| Number two, I totally disagree that we attack this attack that a lot of stuff Americans doing basically is in response. | ||
| I mean, would you consider our attack in Taliban as American attack then? | ||
| Well, they attack us first. | ||
| So this is basically something that's going on. | ||
| And the United States, for better or for worse, is indeed the only country of consequence in the world for global peace. | ||
| China benefited incidentally tremendously from the peace and security the United States has secured over the decades, right, in the Middle East and in East Asia. | ||
| Without the United States, China probably could not have such an economic miracle. | ||
| That's why President Trump in his tweet said, hey, listen, China should be thankful to us. | ||
| We help them a lot. | ||
| Another thing is, you say China is, you imply China somehow is not aggressive. | ||
| China has fought more wars against most of its neighbors than any country since World War II. | ||
| It attacked Vietnam. | ||
| It has war with India. | ||
| It has war with skirmishes, big or small, against the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan. | ||
| So China has more ongoing hot-button territorial disputes. | ||
| and the tensions with more countries than any country in the world. | ||
| So that's what I'm saying. | ||
| The reason why China viewed the United States as its adversary is because the very existence of the United States could be the inspiration for the Chinese people. | ||
| If every Chinese people could enjoy the right, you, the caller, just exercise to be critical of your government. | ||
| And then Chinese Communist Party regime will be finished. | ||
| So that's one of the reasons why it's the inspirational power of the United States that really scared the Chinese Communist Party down to its core. | ||
| That's why China, and Chinese Communist Party in particular, really tried its best to replace the United States as a global leader. | ||
| So they want to create some kind of alternative universe where China will be the boss. | ||
| Xi Jinping euphemistically call it the community of common destiny for mankind. | ||
| And that's not really good for everybody, including you, the caller. | ||
| Here's Dave in Littleneck, New York Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Dave. | |
| Nihao, Mr. Yu, I'm really enjoying the show this morning and your insights. | ||
| And I just want to say I traveled through China. | ||
| I arrived in Beijing on Christmas Eve, 1988. | ||
| I did the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia. | ||
| And arriving in China, I noticed it was a very poor country. | ||
| Everybody was on bicycles. | ||
| I'm sure it was a much, much different country than it is today. | ||
| I look at it, especially on TikToks, these amazing accomplishments that they have with the cities that they have built. | ||
| And it was built on the American business that they did with us, letting them into the WTO. | ||
| I think the big mistake was believing that China would align with us and take our values. | ||
| And especially after Tian Minh Square in 1989, we didn't learn the lesson there that the Chinese people wanted to be free. | ||
| They made a goddess of democracy that looked like the Statue of Liberty. | ||
| They wanted to be free people with Western types of ideas about independence and freedoms. | ||
| And we let that go in favor of doing this business for the business community. | ||
| George Bush made a huge mistake there. | ||
| And now we've given away the farm. | ||
| And it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. | ||
| Mr. Xi Jinping is, from what I can see from this conversation, is somewhat megalomaniacal with his natural enemies there. | ||
| You mentioned that, India, enemy of China. | ||
| Putin, Russia, enemy of China. | ||
| And they're all getting together for one purpose, which is to see how they can align their resources against the United States. | ||
| And my philosophy is that we need to onshore, decouple, and stop investing in China. | ||
| And Trump is trying to do that. | ||
| And he's getting a lot of flack. | ||
| People are crying about tariffs and paying more for sheen and all these idiotic things, not understanding that the big hand and the big hammer will come down one of these days. | ||
| And we need to be ready for that. | ||
| So we're going to tell them, if you want part of this market and you want to play ball with the United States, you're going to have to change your philosophy and mentality. | ||
| And one last thing is this fentanyl. | ||
| People don't realize that the fentanyl coming into this country, Mr. Yu, if you could update the people here. | ||
| China was abused by the opium wars. | ||
| And this is a very reminiscent of the opium wars. | ||
| And I think that's a good question. | ||
| Okay, let's get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Okay, so thank you for your comments and for your interest in China affairs. | ||
| And I think a lot of people do not understand the extremely unbalanced relationship between U.S. and China. | ||
| China is taking advantage of the United States and its generosities and its access to its market, capital market, industrial base. | ||
| China never allow U.S. to do the same. | ||
| So this is not a reciprocal. | ||
| What President Trump wants to do is to keep the area more balanced. | ||
| You open up China market to the United States. | ||
| The tariff on China is not really Trump's tariff war. | ||
| He was responding to what China is doing to the United States. | ||
| The American export to China were heavy, were levy, very heavy tariffs for decades. | ||
| So this is a problem. | ||
| You know, I'll share one statistic which I did this on numerous occasions. | ||
| That is, you know, we allow open our doors to Chinese students in this country. | ||
| Each year, China constitutes, sends the largest number of students in this country. | ||
| This year is about 270,000 to 300,000 Chinese students over there. | ||
| But China does not like the influence of Americans studying in China. | ||
| So they have all kinds of restrictions. | ||
| So far, Americans study in China number fewer than 1,000. | ||
| That's less than 1% of Chinese students allowing in this country. | ||
| So this is an extreme imbalance. | ||
| We have to keep the issue, the relationship reciprocal and balanced. | ||
| That's all we're doing. | ||
| So we're not particularly sort of biased against Chinese people, but the party itself really, really is the culprit for a lot of problems between U.S. and China. | ||
| Miles, do you think that the U.S. should limit the number of students allowed to study in American universities coming from China? | ||
| Reciprocity is a principle. | ||
| How we treat Chinese students here should be applied to how China should treat Americans. | ||
| Does that mean that it's mostly to China's benefit for their students to be studying here, or does the United States gain any benefit from having those students? | ||
| We have some benefit, but the French benefits. | ||
| This policy of sending a massive number of Chinese students to the United States started with Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, early 1980s, because the Chinese university could not produce the talented people for its regime because there's a lack of academic freedom over there. | ||
| So they outsource the training of the talented people to the United States, American campuses, right? | ||
| So that normally is good because India and Taiwan all send people here too, huge numbers too. | ||
| But majority of them will try to stay in the United States. | ||
| The Chinese government has tried all kinds of methods to guarantee overwhelming majority of the Chinese students sent here by the government will go back to China. | ||
| According to Chinese Ministry of Education's own statistics, over the years, over 5 million Chinese students have been sent to the United States. | ||
| 86% of them have returned to China. | ||
| So that's not benefiting to the United States. | ||
| So the illusion somehow we accept the Chinese students over the full tuition and therefore they're going to contribute to the American economy, American technology, is just that. | ||
| It's an illusion. | ||
| So what I'm trying to say here is there is a national security threat here. | ||
| We have to consider that. | ||
| So specifically, we have to really adopt some big measure to keep this imbalance into balance. | ||
| So that's one of the reasons. | ||
| Many things can be viewed from that perspective. | ||
| Ed in York, Maine, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on the air, Ed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hey, thanks. | |
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN and Mr. Yu. | ||
| I'm a big fan. | ||
| I'll try to get this question out. | ||
| It's kind of complicated, but I'm wondering if I would like to know your opinion on the idea that China, like with the Ukraine, that they get involved in that in the aftermath to make Ukraine or any other country after a conflict, to make those countries more dependent rather than independent, | ||
| where we go in after a conflict and we want to make these countries independent and grow and work with us, whereas China would really like to make these countries more dependent on them. | ||
| I'd like your opinion on that. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Yeah, that's actually a very good question. | ||
| The United States economic relations with the rest of the world is based upon one thing, that's market. | ||
| So you go there, you secure some deals, but still there's a market force. | ||
| You trade, right, according to free market mechanism. | ||
| China is different. | ||
| When they try to make a deal with their own, their own equity of those countries' strategic assets, China has bought basically some of the energy sectors and its infrastructure in Africa countries, people like Kenya, countries like Kenya, Egypt, and Angola. | ||
| And also, you can see some of the Central Asian countries, China own a lot of assets. | ||
| That's like Kazakhstan, for example. | ||
| Interestingly, one of the few countries that does not allow China to own anything is Russia. | ||
| Vernon Putin knows the Chinese approach because they basically follow the same playbooks, right? | ||
| So if you look at this, Russia actually is more vigilant against Chinese espionage than most Western countries. | ||
| Russian government constantly arrests spies working for China. | ||
| So what I'm saying here is China's approach is to create dependency on China of total. | ||
| And their ultimate goal is not to export communist ideology at this moment, even though it's a die-hard communist country, because nobody wants to buy expired milk. | ||
| So what China tries to do is that China wants to dominate the world through creation of economic and technology dependency. | ||
| So everybody would have to rely on China and listen to China. | ||
| That's basically what's been going on for two decades. | ||
| Velma Ashland, Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Velma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Mr. Hugh, I would like to know why we have never heard anything from Trump or his administration about taking all the land and property that China owns in our country. | ||
| When Nikki Haley campaigned, of course, I supported Trump, but when Nikki Haley campaigned, she talked repeatedly about that, taking back our land from China. | ||
| You know, they own a large part of our country, and you just talking about they want to dominate the world economically, et cetera. | ||
| So why do we never hear anything about that from Trump? | ||
| Isn't it even a possibility? | ||
| I mean, is it something that would have to go through Congress, which takes forever and ever, never gets, you know, they never accomplish anything. | ||
| Sorry, Velma. | ||
| We got the question. | ||
| Actually, that's a very good question because I touched on something that's very fundamental. | ||
| You know, this nation was built upon this fundamental principle of all men are created equal, assuming human conditions are all over the place, the same. | ||
| So given opportunity, China will behave like the United States. | ||
| So that basically led to our primary model mode of dealing with China, assuming China basically is also a free market system. | ||
| So we allow China to buy land in this country, Chinese nationals, right? | ||
| But China is a communist country. | ||
| There's no private ownership per se. | ||
| There's no constitutionally protected private ownership per se. | ||
| So that's why Americans, foreigners, cannot buy land, what China called means of production. | ||
| Land and properties in China, you can spend money and use it, but you don't own it. | ||
| Government has a right to take it anytime, anyway. | ||
| So that's one of the reasons why we have to deal with China by recognizing the fundamental difference in political systems, economic systems. | ||
| It's not just about policy. | ||
| People in Washington are obsessed with the policy toward China, but it's far more than that. | ||
| It's a doctrine, it's ideology. | ||
| One more really quick question on text from Cam in New Jersey, who's asking about Chinese dominance in AI and quantum computing. | ||
| China has enough American trend talent pool to create something that's very awesome and quick and very intimidating. | ||
| And I think China is really a worthy competitor in this new frontier, such as artificial intelligence. | ||
| However, we also have to realize the limits of China's artificial intelligence and technology because the system is not built upon transparency and truth telling. | ||
| China has this rollout in January, this very powerful artificial intelligence AI tool called DeepSeek. | ||
| DeepSeek is a rival to ChatGPT. | ||
| It had a glorious entrance. | ||
| The world was taken by surprise. | ||
| It's a very good world design. | ||
| But ultimately, it's usership sort of plummeted because you cannot use DeepSeek, the Chinese software, to find the truth about the regime. | ||
| How many people were killed in Tiananmen Square? | ||
| Did China spy on the United States? | ||
| And was Xi Jin being really a wise guy or he's just an idiot. | ||
| So you cannot really find any answer to those kind of things in Chinese sort of artificial intelligence software and apps. | ||
| So this is one reason there's a fundamental limit to how China can go technologically. | ||
| But they do have some very talented people. | ||
| They can create something that we are not good at. | ||
| The most important issue for the United States is we must have our national awareness, sense of urgency to focus on something. | ||
| If this nation can put our actors together, we can do something very miraculous. | ||
| The Chinese have been talking about artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 10, 15 years ago, when nobody in this country was talking about. | ||
| So now, when we have this kind of national focus on something and we can do it, we can do it better than anybody. | ||
| All right, that's Miles Yu, senior fellow and China Center Director at the Hudson Institute. | ||
| His work is at hudson.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| And we'll just take a real quick break and come back to Open Forum and take your calls until the end of the program. | ||
| Start calling in now. | ||
| The numbers are on your screen. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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Have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now. | |
| This is a great format that C-SPAN offers. | ||
| You're doing a great job. | ||
| I enjoy hearing everybody's opinion. | ||
| I'm a huge C-SPAN fan. | ||
| I listen every morning on the way to work. | ||
| I think C-SPAN should be required viewing for all three branches of government. | ||
| First of all, if you say hello, C-SPAN, and how you all covered the hearings. | ||
| Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens. | ||
| It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people. | ||
| Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage. | ||
| I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You and C-SPAN show the truth. | ||
| Back to the universe for C-SPAN. | ||
| It's the one essential news network. | ||
| Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and the Senate are in session. | ||
| The House and Senate will work on their versions of 2026 defense programs and policy legislation known as the National Defense Authorization Act. | ||
| On Tuesday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett launches her latest book, Listening to the Law, with a book signing hosted by the Reagan Foundation's Center on Civility and Democracy. | ||
| And then on Wednesday, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratzios, will testify before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on President Trump's artificial intelligence strategy. | ||
| And on Thursday, watch C-SPAN's live all-day coverage of the September 11th commemoration services for the National 9-11 Memorial in New York City, the National 9-11 Pentagon Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Watch live next week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy, Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Open Forum. | ||
| We are taking your calls until the end of the program. | ||
| Jackson, Tennessee, line for Democrats. | ||
| Shirley, you're up. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I was calling to see about, I'm concerned about the fact that they're talking about putting a nuclear reactor out in space. | |
| Has anyone heard about that and could get more information on that? | ||
| Because what if that thing blows up expo out there? | ||
| How does that affect the overall environment? | ||
| Yeah, let's look that up for you, Shirley, and see what we can find, okay? | ||
| Gene in Arthur, Illinois, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I was calling about the Epstein files. | ||
| I had called earlier and said I was all for them opening them up. | ||
| But I've kind of had a different outlook now that these girls have came out because the Democrats could pay any one of those girls, and all they would have to say is they had sex with Trump. | ||
| And that would be the way they could get rid of him. | ||
| They've tried everything else. | ||
| Well, and then another way to look at this, if you get into another leader, foreign leader, that has had sex with one of these girls and it comes out, that's a security risk because we don't know what that other country would do if something like that came out. | ||
| And if they did, you can look back at history, though, what the Democrats do to the Republicans. | ||
| Go back as far as Joe Biden with Clarence Thomas. | ||
| Then you had Kavanaugh. | ||
| Those backfired. | ||
| But I'm sure this one wouldn't backfire. | ||
| We might have a civil war over something like this as divided as we are right now. | ||
| That's the only thing that concerns me. | ||
| All right, Gene. | ||
| This is Ben, New Milford, Connecticut, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ben, thank you for the call. | |
| Yes. | ||
| My question is regarding the Chinese discussion. | ||
| We had for many years a lot of students from China, exchange students, and we allowed them to go back with all the knowledge that they acquired here. | ||
| So it only makes common sense that the Chinese would gain tremendous amount of knowledge from sending students over here and getting educated and then going back. | ||
| So that should be something that should be better controlled. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Donald Richmond, California, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I just wanted to comment that there was a particular scientist, his last name is Lee, that I've read before that he's the one that Chinese guy that suggested using the cloud chamber for the discovery of the neutron. | ||
| But it was actually the credit went to James Chadwick back in 1933. | ||
| So I just wanted to throw that out there instead of the common political, I don't know, circus sometimes, you know. | ||
| But thank you very much. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Here's Robert in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| I vote, and I'm independent, but I sometimes vote in each one of the Democrat or Republicans. | ||
| I vote for the one that do the least harm to the African-American community. | ||
| But my question is, it appears to me that all Chinese states look much alike. | ||
| The United States is different. | ||
| The United States, a lot of Europeans who took millions of people and took this land. | ||
| So is that a difference? | ||
| And the African people don't have freedom in this country either. | ||
| Not like maybe some people in China don't, but they all look alike and they look after one another. | ||
| But in this country, the Europeans who came here, they are not indigenous to this country as the Chinese people are. | ||
| So isn't that a great difference? | ||
| Here's Mark in Chester, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Mimi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
| I want to make a comment on what I saw yesterday about the DOJ possibly banning trans from buying a weapon. | ||
| I agree that there's some genetic for you there, but I don't want to open up that door to that slip of the sliding to somebody with PTSD or depression or other things along those lines. | ||
| So I just don't think that taking that route would be very good for the country and for Second Amendment rights for average people. | ||
| So you have a good day, Mimi, and I love when you're on host and have a good day. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| Here's Glenn in Shelby, North Carolina, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Glenn. | ||
| You're on Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd just like to make a statement about using the military, using the Marines, and using the National Guard in our cities. | ||
| Hey, I'm a 76-year-old Vietnam veteran. | ||
| I took an oath. | ||
| We all took an oath to protect the citizenry of this country and to protect this country, not to go against the citizens, not to take our M16s against our citizens. | ||
| And here's the problem. | ||
| It's just simple. | ||
| You know, instead of South Carolina, all these states send National Guards, why don't they send 500 or 1,000 policemen, the police in the train to take care of all this inner city crime? | ||
| You know, you don't need you better save your National Guards and your army for Russia, China, North Korea, and the other countries that's your adversary. | ||
| So I don't understand it, and it's kind of crazy to me that they're doing this because American people better wake up because we're going to be just like in Nazi Germany with the SS-2s marching in, pulling people out of the house, chewing them and taking them and putting them in prison. | ||
| Because if you go against the administration, that's what they're planning. | ||
| All right, Glenn. | ||
| And for the caller that asked about nuclear reactors in space, this is the BBC article from April of 2024. | ||
| It says nuclear reactors that could power bases on the moon. | ||
| It says astronauts living on the moon will need lots of power, but they can't take fuel supplies with them. | ||
| A new generation of miniature nuclear reactors could be the answer. | ||
| So this is in support of NASA's Artemis program going back to the moon and then beyond. | ||
| You can see that at BBC if you'd like more information about that. | ||
| David in Dallas, Georgia, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I would like to say that I have no confidence in Republicans. | ||
| I have no confidence in Democrats. | ||
| I will either be voting a blank ballot or I will be looking at a third party because I have no confidence in the current parties. | ||
| I feel like they're out for their own benefit and they got a set of laws for theirself and a set of laws for the middle people and the poor people. | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| And David, how did you vote in the last election? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I'm Republican, but not at this time. | |
| Things have changed. | ||
| I don't like the current situations, and I have no confidence in either party, Democrat or Republican. | ||
| Was there something in particular that made you change your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Epstein, for one thing. | |
| And of course, I don't go along with the Democrats, but I do go along with them on some things. | ||
| I'll tell you another thing that changed my opinion is what they're trying to do to Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| I think anybody that messes around with that does not have any compassion for the people that are on it. | ||
| So I am put out with the current system, and I'll either vote for none of them or I will look at a third party. | ||
| All right, David. | ||
| Here is Joan in New Jersey and an independent. | ||
| You're on Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| There are just so many things to be concerned about, but as I listen to this show, all I hear is Republicans, Democrats. | ||
| We are Americans, and we have to start looking at the situation that we're in right now. | ||
| We're going to have to come together as Americans. | ||
| And it should be country over party. | ||
| I think that's the direction we have to go in if we're going to have a democracy. | ||
| It's obvious to me that Trump and his administration, they're not leaving. | ||
| They're going to start a civil war. | ||
| If you see all the distractions, they're putting military on the ground. | ||
| They're getting us used to certain conditions that's not American, and it's not part of the Constitution. | ||
| This administration poo-poos on the Constitution. | ||
| We should be insulted by that. | ||
| I don't understand why we're constantly running to court over things that are already established in the Constitution. | ||
| So if they are breaking the Constitution, they should be breaking the law, and the president should be held accountable. | ||
| I don't understand what's going on. | ||
| And all of Congress and the Senate who are supposed to protect the Constitution are just sitting back and doing nothing. | ||
| They should all go home because we're paying their salaries and they're doing nothing. | ||
| And they should be held accountable at the end of this administration. | ||
| But I see a civil war coming and it's very scary. | ||
| And it's all going to be due to the fact that we're so racist and hateful to each other. | ||
| And then we're going to sit back and then say, remember the good old days when America was free. | ||
| All right, Joan. | ||
| Here's Liz, a Democrat in Marleton, New Jersey. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hats off to the previous caller, also from New Jersey. | ||
| I think we have a lot in common. | ||
| Our acceptance at some level of the National Guard being placed in our cities and walking up and down our streets, if the American people read the Constitution regularly and looked under Amendment 3, it says that we were not going to be made to allow British troops to sleep and eat in our houses back in colonial days. | ||
| Now, those ancestors of ours would not want National Guards marching around in our streets if they didn't want the British troops to be housed in their homes. | ||
| So it's unconstitutional. | ||
| And yet, on public media, not C-SPAN, but other stations, it's always a mystery. | ||
| How's the court going to decide? | ||
| The call of reformy had it right. | ||
| Everything doesn't need to go to court to be adjudicated if you just follow the United States Constitution. | ||
| It's not necessary. | ||
| We've established this back in 1787. | ||
| It hasn't changed. | ||
| And then it's a big surprise. | ||
| And everything he does is unprecedented. | ||
| Yeah, it's unprecedented because it's also anti-the American Constitution. | ||
| So I think it's time we wake up, get our copy of the. | ||
| Well, that's all the time that we've got. | ||
| Thanks for everybody for calling, and thanks for watching. | ||
| We will be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Have a great day, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| 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 Chaplett 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 Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
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| And past President Dominic. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo crime. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join Political Playbook Chief Correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| ceasefire this fall on the network that doesn't take sides only on c-span good morning It's Saturday, September 6th. | ||
| There were a lot of news stories this week in Washington, such as the August Jobs Report shows a continued slowdown in hiring. | ||
| President Trump informally renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. | ||
| Health Secretary RFK Jr. had a heated three-hour Senate hearing. |